Snoskred Travels

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Fires and Floods

3 Comments Posted on February 10, 2009May 30, 2015 by Snoskred

Obviously Australia is a little challenged weatherwise at the moment. I’m sure you’re all aware of the horrible fires in Victoria where the death toll is predicted to reach 200. The Other Half has a sister within flying ember distance of the big fires, so we’ve been worried but we finally got in touch tonight and she’s ok. It has been horrible watching the news and hearing what has happened to people. It also has me thinking about our personal fire plan – and if you live in Australia I hope it has you thinking about that too.

Up the top end of the country – where we are travelling to in exactly 10 days time – there are floods. And also Dengue Fever, which is something horrible you get from mosquitos. And just in case you didn’t know, mosquitos ADORE me. They’ll travel out of their way to bite me. So this = me covered in insect repelling goodness.

Sephy told me to make sure to get one with DEET in it. Note to Sephy – all those ones smell somewhat like a chemical warfare potpourri. With a squeeze of lemon! So I will smell bad, in case you all happen to be there and meet me or anything. Also, Cairns has no food in the supermarkets. Cindy from Artistsblog is up there, and has been writing some very interesting posts like this one.

So the whole fire thing and travelling to somewhere there is a nasty mosquito thing that could possibly dead me and floods and possibly not brilliant roads has me thinking some pretty weird thoughts. Would it be bad to say that if something happened to me tomorrow and I died, I’d be thinking that I had a pretty decent life? That is if I were able to think, of course. ;)

Because I have. As I sit here now, I’ve had 10 wonderful years with a man I truly adore and who makes me laugh all the time. I’ve lived in a couple of places that have made me vastly happy. I’ve been blessed with a fantastic family who have only made me want to banghead very occasionally. I have a wonderful online family – the mudflats, and aussie bloggers – who have made me laugh, cry, and every emotion in between. I’ve been the President. Not of anything especially important, but of something I cared about and believed in.

The only things that would upset me would be leaving people I love behind and the concern of who would take care of my pets, and a concern over would they do it the way I feel it should be done as far as keeping them inside.

I think that since I have taken up kayaking and the exercise thing, some kind of bizarre inner peace and general contentment has settled in. It is hard to explain. I’m not sure I want to try and explain it.

Anyway, I will be blogging more than usual while away, we have organised wireless for the laptop and I can even do it while we’re driving, how cool is that? It’s an easier way for people to keep up with what I’m up to, etc. ;)

First we go to my sister’s wedding on the Central Coast of NSW. I bought a dress, and I have shoes! w00t! I might even post a photo of such – with the face blurred for obvious reasons. ;)

We’re going to the Marriott on the Gold Coast for 2 nights, the one with the lagoon pool and actual real live fish in there. I’ve got swimming goggles which are prescription so I can see the fish. We got nose plugs today so we will still be able to use the snorkels – I actually think this will work better than using the masks.

We’ll be staying overnight in Rockhampton, 2 nights in Airlie Beach, 3 nights in Cairns, 1 night in Mackay, 2 nights in Maroochydore, a night in Port Macquarie and then back home. We’re heading up the Pacific Highway and then onto the Bruce Highway I think it is – if there is anything must see that you know about, leave me a comment. Especially butterfly houses, because we love that kind of thing. The furthest I have been before is Brisbane (World Expo 88 – how many other people went too?) – we do plan a stop at Australia Zoo while in Maroochydore.

I’ve almost got all the ironing done for the trip already and we’re still 10 days away from leaving. I have begun to collect items to pack on the dining table. ;) I plan to be organised this time.

I also have been fake tanning. This is not out of any desire to look pretty or because I am wearing a dress, but because I got very badly burnt on my hands a few weeks ago while wearing a rash vest – so my arms were completely covered – and I look a bit like I dipped my hands in brown ink or something. So I am just trying to even it out so people stop looking at me with the “OMFG WTF HAPPEN TO YOU” look on their face.

In fact one guy in a surf shop actually asked me what happened, this was right after it happened. I was in there looking for longer shorts that had SPF protection in them. I told him what happened, which went something like “Well, I bought some new sunscreen because I didn’t like the one we had, and it was sucky and didn’t work even though I reapplied it more often than it told me to reapply it, and therefore I got extremely crispy even though I am totally anti sunburn”.

Well, this has been a bizarre post. But that’s what’s going on here at the moment. ;)

Australia, fears, travel

Room With A View

2 Comments Posted on August 8, 2008May 30, 2015 by Snoskred

I love the Sydney Airport Stamford. Truly, I adore it! I have stayed there many times over the years and it never gets old. They have fantastic bathrooms with Aveda toiletries. They have comfortable beds. The furniture is tasteful and solid. They offer excellent food. The parking is excellent and they have many single parks surrounded by concrete, perfect for those of us who own performance vehicles and might find our sleep interrupted by thoughts of “is someone too close to my car”. But above all else, they have one thing which is rare when it comes to a hotel.

Brilliant views with extremely comfortable chairs to sit and watch the view in.

Of course this is not something everyone appreciates but for those of us who are plane enthusiasts (read, plane geeks) a 5 day stay at the Sydney Airport Stamford in which you never leave the room would be the perfect holiday. As long as you have an airport view room. And you need to ask for airport view because sometimes they put you on the other side of the hotel. I’ve never had a problem getting the room with a view yet and we have stayed there *a lot*. Including several long stays where we rarely left the room. ;) Here is a panorama of the view from the room – click for a larger view.

However you will have to do a little moving the chairs around, because for some unknown reason the hotel puts them away from the window. This is fine, it doesn’t take a lot of work and once you’ve done it you can sit down with your scanner flicking through the air control frequencies and enjoy the view. In fact you might not leave the room at all. Why would you go outside to watch planes when you can do it from the hotel? The only possible *better* view would be sitting in the control tower..

There is one small problem. If there are two of you, there is only one chair. However we share nicely and there is the ottoman at the end as well. Planes fly right over the top of the hotel – and you can barely hear them thanks to some amazing double glazing. It is quite the experience.

We stayed there with my parents who had the room next door. It is times like those when you realise how nutty they are. We’d parked in the carpark and The Other Half got a brilliantly fantastic park in between the concrete poles I mentioned. Then we decided we wanted to go out for dinner, but we did not want to lose the park. What to do? My Mum suggested we “borrow” one of the big witch’s hats and put it at the entrance to the park – she meant it as a joke, but Dad and I decided it was a brilliant idea and picked one up. They were incredibly heavy so the two of us had to drag it halfway across the carpark giggling the whole way. It worked too – the fantastic park was empty and waiting for us when we returned. There was heaps of spare parks, no harm done but we were happy. ;)

The next morning we had breakfast in the buffet for the first time. We did not know they had an egg chef. But they do. :) Good to know! I had me a nice omelette. We saw the Singapore A380 for the first time. Amazing.

BYO binoculars, scanner and bottles of water. Remember to put the “do not disturb” sign on the door. We almost had a visit from housekeeping before we got out of bed. Use the door chain as well, just in case. Of course you do that anyway when staying at a hotel, right?

No, the Sydney Airport Stamford did not pay me for this post however if they happen to be reading this I will happily accept a free stay or something. Because I love ya’all. And your hotel ain’t cheap, but it *is* worth it. And I didn’t roll the housekeeping carts and steal a shedload of Aveda toiletries, however sorely I was tempted.

5 star hotels, planes, Sydney

Concrete Sheep

11 Comments Posted on May 19, 2008May 30, 2015 by Snoskred

Over the weekend The Other Half and I travelled to Canberra for a meet with fellow Aussie Bloggers. We stopped in Goulburn, as you do. Here is The Big Merino, which seems to have a distinctly superior expression on his face.

It is not until you drive around to the back of The Big Merino that you see why he is looking all superior. But why would you put an enormous pair of concrete testicles on a sheep that is a tourist attraction when you know that kids are going to ask their parents what that is about?

And why would you move the sheep to a new location, build a lovely new tourist centre around it, but make the sheep’s butt (and consequently large testicle/s) be the major thing that people parking at the centre get to see?

I’m surprised they didn’t install some lovely concrete poop just to make it a little more realistic. :) They now have a lovely shop attached to the sheep which contains some of the most expensive woolen things you will ever see in your lifetime. $316 for a thin woolly jumper? Err, no thanks. Even though it feels very nice. :)

I went there because I was hoping they would have a sheep snow globe. And they did, for $7.25 or some crazy price like that. I would have bought it but it already had air bubbles in it, which is something you want to avoid when creating or buying a snow globe.

So instead we went to Mcdonalds to get a coffee as we’d missed out on coffee at breakfast due to 16 zillion screaming families trying to eat the buffet breakfast at the same time we were there. I guess that is what happens on a Sunday morning when everyone wants to sleep in and show up to eat breakfast 30 minutes before the buffet closes. We threw some food on a plate and retreated to the safety of our room where I discovered that I had found some of the most incredible mini croissants ever, and only taken two of them. I would have gone back for more but I could not face the adults literally fighting over food and berating the service staff when the scrambled eggs ran out.

I spoke about how brilliant the croissants were most of the way from Canberra to Goulburn, much to the dismay of the other half who had not taken any croissants – he went for the hot food but I allowed him one tiny bite of croissant heaven. The moment we stepped out of the car at Goulburn we were hit by this freezing cold wind. Some evil beyotch had tied up her poor dog right where it was getting hit by the freezing wind and the poor thing was shivering, whimpering and crying while she was inside getting her immense rear fed – I felt so sorry for that dog! Sometimes you *should* leave them in the car, with the window down. And an 8 degree C day with a biting wind is one of those times, providing you park the car so that the wind isn’t going right inside the car.

Our drive back was lovely and we arrived home to find the kitties were fairly happy as we’d managed to leave the heater on. That is especially hilarious in light of the fact that we’d unplugged every other appliance from the wall. Yes, the TV’s computers etc were unplugged in case something went wrong, but we left the heater plugged in and switched on.

We have another meet in one month, this one closer to Sydney. So if you’re a Sydney blogger and you’re reading this and would like to go to a meet, let me know.

travel

Meeting A Fellow Blogger, Ikea, Cameras, Insurance.

16 Comments Posted on October 13, 2007March 19, 2015 by Snoskred

Yesterday we took a little trip to Sydney. Our camera lens was finally ready to pick up. Canon had called us earlier in the week and let us know.

I’ve been on the internet since 1992. Some of the best people I have ever met I originally got to know via the internet. I used to be a part of an IRC chat group in Adelaide and they had meets all the time. I met The Other Half that way. We have ICQ text logs of our early chats that go on for pages and pages.

One of the other people I met, Simon, became our house sitter. He is the most beautiful person, inside and out. He went on to meet himself a girl who is also just as beautiful inside and out. Then they would both house sit for us. When we left Adelaide, we left them a lot of our furniture – and our fish tank!

Internet VS “Real Life” –

Always whenever we moved, our internet friends were the ones who showed up to help while the “real life” friends had excellent excuses. I soon learned I would rather have an internet friend than a “real” one – especially when we went through the difficult times with the other half’s ex wife. My internet friends stuck by me, the real life friends were nowhere to be seen. Not a one of them, and I’m not joking about that.

Plane Crazy –

We also met a lot of plane spotter friends online, some of whom became very dear friends indeed. One of them was a mentor to many of the younger plane spotters and encouraged them to go after their dreams, whether it was being a pilot, whether it was photography, or working as a plane engineer. Many of his mentees now work for Qantas, Virgin Blue and other international airlines. On top of all that, he was just the best bloke, funny and great to be around. People gravitated towards him. He was a magnet.

He also had cancer but he never complained about it, in fact a lot of people had no idea. When he died, we drove all the way from Adelaide to Sydney in order to be at the funeral. We felt like we had to be there and I am so glad we made that effort. I still miss him very much. His absence is noticeable in the community. He kept the egos out of it and since he left us to go to the great airplane spotting mound in the sky complete with beer and comfortable recliners the egos have got a bit out of control, sadly.

Scambaiter = Paranoid –

Then in 2004 I became a scambaiter and I suddenly became a bit.. paranoid. Well not exactly paranoid, more like determined to be anonymous. I was happy to be friends with the internet people we knew but I became a lot less open to meeting new people, especially people who knew about the baiting. I did meet with some scambaiters here in Australia, one of whom I adore (yeah that’s you Dbest03, and when are you coming to visit us on the South Coast?) and have met again since. Since moving to New South Wales we had not met anyone from the internet at all.

But Not Anymore –

All that changed yesterday. Meg from Dipping Into The Blogpond had invited us to drop in when we went to pick up the camera so right after Canon called I sent her an email and arranged to visit on Friday. We had a lovely time and Meg and her Other Half are wonderful people. I am hopeful the visit will be returned soon – and perhaps some of the Canberra bloggers might venture over to join us as well. Facibus, that means you!

Mild Confusion Reigned At Canon –

There was one unhappy moment in the day – when we got to Canon, there was some confusion over who was supposed to pay for the lens repair. Canon had not sent an invoice to the insurance company – which the insurance company had requested in their fax when they approved the repairs to go ahead. I don’t know how they expected to get paid if they didn’t send the invoice! We had to find a couple of grand on the spot in order to take our lens home with us – I’ll take the receipt into the insurance agency on Monday to get reimbursed. Yes, you heard it right – the repair was just under $2,000 – which is why we have specified insurance for that lens, for accidental damage as well as theft. I can tell you an iron grip will be kept on that camera lens from now on. We don’t want to go through that again!

People, insure your stuff –

It’s worth it. Our policy covers us to go anywhere in Australia with that lens and be covered for any event that might happen with it. It costs us the grand total of .60 cents a day to have four items specified – two laptops, the camera and lens. On top of that our policy itself covers us for unspecified personal effects up to $2,000.

A Pit Stop @ Temporal Vortex –

That unhappy moment was soon forgotten when The Other Half announced he was taking me to Ikea. YAY! All I wanted was a timer which would sit on my desk and chime when 55 minutes was up – then I can reset it for my 10 minute break. I almost got sucked into the temporal vortex when a chandelier called my name and told me to buy it. I was drawn to it and found myself standing there, holding the price tag ($29AUD, how reasonable) looking up at its brilliance, going all deer in the headlights. The Other Half did not notice I was missing because he was looking at computer chairs. When he spotted me he knew what was going on and he rescued me quickly, gently leading me away from the brilliance I wanted to buy. Unfortunately they did not have any left to sell. :(

But he did find me a springform cake tin, and a set of in trays which I wanted. It was a cheap Ikea trip at just under $50 and it was superfast, too. We were there for less than an hour.

Music Played –

Before we left we quickly created two cds – one each. It was a lot of music we hadn’t heard in a while and we totally rocked it out in the car, singing along. Neither of us can hear each other singing in the car – now that is a sign of a good car stereo! At least I always thought it was because I used to have a friend who was totally tone deaf who liked to sing.. ;)

Happiness Reigns –

Since moving in here – both the house and the new blog – days have been joyous. I have a lot of organization going on and it feels wonderful. I’ve been cooking some great meals. We had a week of cheesecake last week. I also have some fantastic incense and new oils for my oil burner which are keeping the house smelling amazing. The chores have been cut down because I am keeping on top of them. The kitties are happy, I’m happy, the other half is happy. I know that me merely mentioning this may cause some to dislike me or be mad at me purely based on my being happy, but I figured I should share it. Those who are my real friends will be happy for me. ;)

Blog Friends, IKEA, Sydney

Snoskred Answers Some Questions.

6 Comments Posted on October 1, 2007March 19, 2015 by Snoskred

There’s been a recent rash of question asking and answering around the blogosphere. I put up my hand to be interviewed by Emily, and I got these questions. I changed the order around a bit, sorry Emily! ;)

1) How did you meet the Other Half?

Online, oddly enough. This was many years ago in the beginning of the internet. I got into online gaming – playing Quake. I went to a network game party one night. For those who don’t know network gaming requires you to take your computer along and they all get plugged into each other and then you play games against each other.

Back in those days the internet was too slow to play games over it, like people do these days. And there was my other half, who I knew virtually right away was my other half, strangely enough.

2) You read a lot of blogs regularly. How do you choose which ones to read, which ones to comment on, which ones to link to, etc.?

I read probably 95% of blog posts which arrive in my reader.

I would link to every blog post I read, if it was humanly possible. Sephy will tell you, I’m forever pasting links to blog posts to him in Skype. I have to make do with linking to every blog that I read in the sidebar, and then I have to be very picky about the posts I choose for the weekly wrap up, otherwise there would be 500 links and none would get clicked on.

So the bottom line for me with those weekly wrap up posts is – a post has to stand out, touch me in a major way, make me think, make me want to share it with other people, make me go “Oh, what a great idea” or “I’m going to do that” or “That’s brilliant!”.

Commenting is difficult these days. I don’t have as much time as I used to for it and I hate that, because I want to comment on probably 95% of the posts in my reader.

3) I (and I bet a lot of your readers) know nothing about NSW. What are five things someone who has never visited would be surprised to know about your home?

a. New South Wales = NSW

b. The capital of New South Wales is Sydney, which might be the most famous city in Australia, however it is not the *capital* city of Australia. The capital city of Australia is Canberra – which is completely surrounded by New South Wales. Nobody knows why or how this odd arrangement came to be. Well probably some people do but I’m not one of them.

c. I live on the South Coast of New South Wales. There is also a North Coast. All of these coasts are located on the East Coast of Australia. Yes, it is quite confusing!

d. New South Wales is home to the Funnel Web spider, which mostly lives within a 20km radius of Sydney itself. These spiders are able to stay alive underwater for up to 30 hours by trapping air under their hairs, or something. So I was told, but it was on a documentary tv channel so I am assuming it is true.

e. You can probably tell, I don’t know much about NSW. ;) That is because I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. That’s about a 15-17 hour drive from here.

4) For those of us unfamiliar with Scambaiting, can you tell us how it works? And how are you able to get compensated for all your scambaiting efforts?

Scambaiting is really pretty simple. You email a scammer (from a safe email address like gmail which does not show your location to the scammer) pretending to be a real victim. You play along with their scam, pretending you are going to do what they want you to do.

You ask a lot of questions, you make a lot of promises, you let them begin to dream of the money you’re supposedly going to pay them. If you have the means you use Skype to receive calls from them, which costs them time and money. I don’t talk to them on the phone much anymore but they call me constantly.

When they’re hooked on the dream, you keep stringing them along as long as you can. I’ve known scammers who have been strung along for well over 12 months. You’re always just about to pay them the money – but there’s an emergency, there’s a problem, there’s another question they need to answer.

I like to make them fall in love with my characters – usually using photographs of models like Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks. As those characters I pretend to be a virginal, extremely rich, naive girl who is looking for her perfect man. My character might be a model just starting out, she might be a singer, she might be a minor celebrity, or she might have family money. The scammers think everyone in the USA is a millionaire, so they believe it.

When they have fallen in love, I like to take their heart and crush it into tiny little pieces, like they do to their victims. The girl might find out he is a scammer. She might find a man closer to home. She might be on her way to meeting them at the airport in their country and the plane somehow falls out of the sky. I make newspaper clippings (it’s easy and simple to do) which support the story. If my character dies, it turns out my character has left them money – and they have to jump through hoops to get it, fill in forms, take photographs, etc.

There is no compensation for it, sadly. It is like any hobby, you have to put a little money into it. I pay 30 euros a year for my Skype In number, I pay around $80AUD a year for my post office box. Both of those cause a lot of anger and frustration to the scammers, so to me it is worth it. ;)

5) How did you get into scambaiting?

A scammer was silly enough to send me an email asking to borrow my bank account, I googled and found one of the scambaiting websites and began to bait them. Soon after I started I found my “first husband” and within a month I was “engaged” to six scammers. It was sometimes difficult to keep the stories straight, and tell them apart when they called. Strangely, none of these relationships worked out!

Thanks for asking me the questions. If anyone wants to be interviewed by me, just leave a comment and ye shall receive 5 questions of various goodness. ;)

Emily is hosting the Hump Day Hmmm this week as well – the topic is – something you experienced that affected and affects you. Feel free to join in the Hump Days, they are an excellent way to blog, I find.

About Snoskred, Australia, scambaiting, The Other Half

Facibus from On Blogging Australia – Out Of His Niche!

6 Comments Posted on September 21, 2007 by Snoskred

Country life is a wonderful thing. The following post from Andrew Boyd – known as Facibus on the net – stunned me with the similarity to the place I have moved to. It shouldn’t be so surprising because Robertson is only a half hour drive from where I now live. I have been there many times when we’ve had a day out driving.

In 2003 I moved to Robertson in the Southern Highlands of NSW to live with my then-fiance. At the time it was a sleepy village of 1,000 souls, mostly harmless. After living in the dry areas around Canberra the lush green grass and remnant temperate rainforest plants made it seem like the garden of Eden – that and being in love.

I found the locals fairly evenly divided between newcomers and those who had grown up in the area. The “weekenders” or “yuppies” as they were known locally were usually refugees of the urban hell of Sydney – much beloved of the real estate agents and members of the Robertson Business Association (in itself, sometimes known as The Mafia).

A village also fairly evenly divided in their future vision of the place – some saw Robertson as the new Berrima (as opposed to New Berrima itself, a fairly working-class hamlet between Moss Vale and Berrima much noted for it’s roving dog population and dead car bodies). The Mafia saw a thriving quaint tourist trap, swarming with well-heeled Sydneysiders ever-ready with their wallets. A lot of other people just wanted the tourists to f*ck off and leave them alone – they had come to Robertson to get away from that kind of thing, or had grown up in a place that they wanted to never change. For myself, I was happy if I could park my car in the main street on the weekend to go and buy milk, and good luck to those that made their living off passing fools.

A note here on the Famous Robertson Pie Shop – the locals knew (and still do, so far as I know) that the best pies are down in the village itself, in the bakery – and to say “I know Robertson, I’ve been to the Pie Shop” is equivalent to saying “I am a proud member of the Young Liberals” to those in the know. I’ve eaten at the Pie Shop myself, some days they had nice chips – but the pies were nothing to brag about, and not a patch on those at the Gunnadoo Bakery in Bungendore. But I digress.

When I first moved to Robertson, like all good small country towns, there was a Chinese restaurant in the Bowling Club. Albert’s was run by, well, Albert. A great bloke who had been there for years and made the best Lemon Chicken I’d had in my life. He was part of the villiage, part of the charm. I literally wept when some short-sighted people ran Albert out of town by refusing to renew his lease. Bastards.

The only other restaurants in town at the time were:
– Chats, a burger and chips sort of place (excellent chips) at the motel
– The coffee place at the Old Cheese Factory
– The bistro at the pub
– Last but not least, Pizzas in the Mist – God bless them, excellent wood-fired pizza and fairly adventurous (their Peking Duck Pizza was my favourite, and I can still smell it as I write this years later).

We later got another three cafes, Albert’s became the Bowlo Bistro, the Old River Grillhouse opened (and while the service was surly, the steaks were excellent), and the pub food got better quickly with a change in management.

I mentioned that Chats was at the motel. In a village of 1,000 people, there were lots of “Thes” – The Traffic Light, The Cemetary, The Oval, The footpath, The Pub, The motel, The Hardware (store), The Supermarket. The only things that came in multiples were real estate agencies and antique shops.

The people were generally great – except for the aforementioned bastards, they know who they were. Behind the scenes there was a fair bit of quiet desperation going on – jobs not easy to get unless you brought work with you, and money was tight for a lot of people. Lots of gossip about – we won’t go there today. Some great characters, and you just knew that every time the police were called to the hotel that it was out-of-towners that were to blame.

The relationship with my then-fiance broke down last year – and my relationship with Robertson changed with it. We’ve since sold the house there and divided the proceedings, each going their separate way. I miss the mist and the call of the bower bird, the constant year-round green-ness, the friends I made there, the slow pace of life. I miss some of the people – if you’re passing through, and stop at the petrol station (not the tractor shop), remember me to Steve, and to the supermarket, to Neil and Heather, and to the Community Technology Centre, to Melissa.

My life has since moved on – I’m back consulting based out of Canberra again, and while I enjoy it, I sometimes long for the view from the Cemetary, the chips from Chats, the pies from the bakery, and the smell of the pizza oven starting up in the afternoons. I went back there with my new lady earlier this year to show her what I missed about the place, and the people who were worth talking to were still worth talking to and were nice to her. Them I miss.

Facibus is the nom-de-net of Andrew Boyd, consultant Information Architect and food-fan. Facibus means “we make” in Latin, and is one half of an obscure motto. You can find him at several blogs in the blog-o-sphere, including On Blogging Australia. Thank you for writing this wonderful post, I appreciate it!

I have not yet been to the Robertson Pie Shop and after reading that am somewhat glad. ;) The slow pace of life is exactly what I am appreciating here in our new village. People say hello. On the surface it seems nice but I am sure beneath it there lurks a few bastards. I am yet to get involved in the community but once we’re all settled in there will be no stopping me. ;)

Australia, country life, Get Out Of Your Niche

When you move..

9 Comments Posted on August 23, 2007February 28, 2015 by Snoskred

What do you pack first? Do you think whatever that item is must be the most precious to you?

As I type this, my office room has a sad echo. There are only two books left on my shelves – Feng Shui which I’ll need for laying out the new house – and one by my bedside. The rest are packed away in 6 boxes. I won’t see them again for a good couple of weeks. Every time I do this, it is like saying goodbye to much loved friends. Even though it is only a short time I will miss them and the freedom to pick any one of them up and return to wherever they take me when I open them.

The book I never pack, the one I always take with me from the house in my hands is the complete works of Jane Austen. That’s mainly because my complete works of Shakespeare is heavier than your average teenager and just as difficult to co-exist with.

Today we had to take a little trip to Sydney. You may recall that I am quite well endowed. For a girl, I have an enormous..

A rather unfortunate event took place when the other half decided to go out and photograph some lightning recently. The lens fell off the tripod. Of course being that it is such a large and expensive ($3,700AUD) lens, we have it insured as a specified item on our insurance policy, so it is covered completely. But being the camera nuts that we are, we (and by we I mean me) did not want anyone but Canon themselves touching it. So we drove to their head office in Sydney.

On the way we had to drive past Lone Star, so we stopped and had lunch YAY! Then we had to drive PAST Ikea, which was possibly the hardest part of the trip. I did not shed tears but it was almost a very sad moment until I remembered that I would not be happy to leave the car in the carpark on its own.

The head office of Canon is no small place. It was at least 5 stories high, and quite posh and impressive. Unfortunately they seem to suffer from a lack of carparking for customers who want to visit but despite my urge to remain with the vehicle and keep it safe from any door flingers who might park near it, I wanted to go inside. So for the very first time since we bought the car, it was parked in a normal carpark without one of us keeping watch over it. Yes, it’s been a while. ;)

The estimate for fixing it is $1,200. It’s worth it but it is difficult to show you why it is worth it without you being here in person looking at printed out versions of the photographs at full resolution.

photography, Sydney

Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

13 Comments Posted on August 2, 2007March 1, 2015 by Snoskred

When you read a book, you remember things from it. I carry authors with me but the strongest one, the loudest one, the author voice that speaks most often in my head is the voice of Lindy Chamberlain. Her book – Through My Eyes – is one of my most prized books. It’s actually starting to fall apart because over the last 10 years I have read it so often, especially as I was climbing out of that nasty hole known as depression. Lindy may not know this, but I consider her a great friend of mine. ;) In the way that many of my blog friends have become great friends of mine even though I have never met them.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lindy Chamberlain, her daughter Azaria was taken by a dingo at the big red rock known as Uluru these days, formerly known as Ayers Rock. Lindy was later jailed for killing Azaria in one of the worst abuses of our legal system ever seen here in Australia. You can read more on Lindy’s website but if you want the real full story, you’ll need to read the book, which you can also buy on the website – Lindy will sign it, too. I really need to grab a new copy myself. You may have seen the movie Evil Angels based on her story with Meryl Streep as Lindy.

I hear so many people say “I’m not a good writer” and I am always shocked to hear it. I don’t think there is such a thing as a good writer. I think writing is about communicating, expressing your thoughts and ideas, letting people inside yourself by writing what is in your head. Either I get what you’re saying, or I don’t. That’s not due to the quality of the writing. Sometimes people I connect most of the time write something I can’t connect with. That’s not because they’re a bad writer, that’s because I don’t understand it. As Chani said to me in her comment on my post from yesterday “Sorry to be so disconnected. I simply don’t understand”.

So how can any of us understand what Lindy went through? To have your baby stolen from you and killed, to go through two inquests and a trial, to be sent to jail when you are pregnant with your next child and have that child taken from you while you stay in jail for something you’re innocent of.. these are not everyday experiences. However we all experience loss and grief, we’ve all been accused of something we didn’t do at some point in our lives – I think that’s true. Most of us were not arrested and sent to jail, for many of us it might have been something that happened in a moment, at school, at work, a misunderstanding. On top of all this, Lindy brings such a strong and clear voice to the telling of her story.

What made me think of Lindy today was a post I read about Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. I’m sure many of you have heard of that event. What I’m seeing happen to those people rings a familiar bell having read Lindy’s story – but on the other hand the press are being downright polite to those people compared to how the press skewered Lindy. Those people left their child in a ground floor unit which was unlocked and they went quite a distance away. Lindy was within hearing distance of the tent where she’d momentarily left her baby intending to return to go to sleep.

So what is going on with the media? As Juliet says – “There is much disquiet and puzzlement at the UK media’s kid-glove approach towards the McCanns”. I haven’t seen any of the media because I live in Australia but the UK tabloids are known to be some of the loudest in the world. If they’re not asking the same kinds of questions Juliet is asking in her post, is something wrong? Are strange things afoot?

Aussies reading this will probably agree with me when I say Lindy Chamberlain is a major part of history in this country. If you ask people what they think about her, you’ll get a mixed bag of opinions. Some people still think she is guilty of murdering her baby. They don’t know the facts, and they seem to have missed entirely that the Chamberlains were exonerated (found not guilty) by a Royal Commission. Knowing the facts as I do it is difficult to believe they were ever found guilty. If you are Australian and you do not own a copy of this book, you should grab a copy and get educated on the truths instead of the myths.

Tourism was such a major industry for the Northern Territory and the people in charge wanted the *dingo* found innocent because they wanted people to feel safe camping at Ayers Rock, a major tourist drawcard. Australia is not a safe place. Those of us who live here know some of the risks but even we do not know everything. We know about the venomous snakes. We know about the spiders. We know about some of the dangers lurking in our oceans. We have to be responsible about these things, so tourists can make the right decisions, so tourists can be aware of the dangers.

Some years later a 9 year old boy was killed by two dingoes on Fraser Island. Three years later a dingo was found stalking a baby in the hotel room of some tourists. The problem is made worse by the fact that tourists feed the animals.

There’s another situation happening in Queensland now, with the Irikanji jellyfish. Here’s a little background on the situation from the 7:30 report. Tourism is a huge industry there so would you want to tell people there is a possibility of deadly jellyfish in the water? It’s irresponsible not to tell people. There have already been deaths. Money needs to be put towards research and anti venom.

I’m not one to judge – as I’ve said before I leave that to Judge Judy. As far as the McCann’s are concerned, I have absolutely no idea what happened to their child. I personally would never have left children alone in an unlocked hotel room. I don’t wish to judge them on the fact that they did so. I do think questions have to be asked, especially in light of this supposed “pact”some people have made with the McCann’s . I am surprised that they aren’t being shredded by the media and I find that very unusual. It leaves me wondering, is there more to this story than meets the eye? Are we all so blind now – the mere mention of pedophiles and people shut up and stop asking important questions?

Australia

Our Humans went out today..

7 Comments Posted on July 30, 2007February 28, 2015 by Snoskred

Hi, this is the Big Kitty typing. The Little Kitty has the attention span of a goldfish and is too busy stealing my Tuna and the warmest spot next to the heater so don’t expect her to be posting anytime soon. The Humans are busy looking at this funny website they found – Daisy the Curly Cat. I laughed at that funny cat too, but I was inspired to say something myself! Here’s what I look like, in case you forgot. If you Humans reading this want a bigger view you can click your mouse on the photo. I like mouses, too.

I have to tell you something. Our Humans are going out more and more, and leaving us at home without the heating on. Ever since they got that new car they take off for hours at a time. When they found out we could turn the airconditioner on from the remote control with our paws they hid the remote in a drawer. Now we’re having to find warm places to curl up instead of hanging out on our cat towers, which is where we really want to be..

People say we’re spoilt kitties to have so many cat towers – these are only two of them. We have more in other rooms. Today when they got home I found these photos from when they were out and I thought I would post them so you can see what kind of fun those Humans are having while they leave us kitties alone.. cold.. with no laps to sit on.

What side of the road are you supposed to drive on in Australia? Or doesn’t it matter, can you just drive in the middle? I think that is really dangerous and my Humans should keep away from cars like that, right? Do you agree?

Maybe you can change sides as long as there’s nobody on the other side, I don’t know. This driving stuff looks confusing. I don’t like cars. I don’t like those cat carrier things the Humans always put us in when it’s time to go in the car either. Why can’t we just roam around the car and find a nice warm spot to sit?

My Humans are smart. It looks like they pulled over in order to get away from the scary drive all over the road Holden car. My Dad Human has a joke about Holdens – they’re just holden together. But I seem to remember he drove one once. That was a long time ago.

My Mom Human likes cows. I remember when they took us to see the EVIL Human with the BIG NEEDLE and we drove past some cows, and she was yelling “Hi Cows! Hi Cows!” at them. The Dad Human tells me she does this anytime she sees cows. I told him I know where the earplugs are and maybe he should use those in order to concentrate on the road better. But look at the view these cows have from their field? I don’t have much of a view here. This house only has one level so I can’t sit in an upstairs window and survey my kingdom.

Wow, it looks like those Humans were going fast!

The Humans keep the car in the Garage. I like the Garage. It’s the only room in the house we’re not allowed to go into but I can’t understand why. Whenever I get in there they say GET OUT to me. I like to hide in between the boxes so they can’t pick me up and carry me out. These cars look like that car they keep in the Garage, and look, they have that XR5 Turbo thing written on them too, just like that one in the garage but I don’t think these are theirs even though it is hard to tell what color the car is when it is inside. Is it possible that three of the five XR5 Turbos within a 50km radius were all parked in the same car park today?

Wow, look at that! Why can’t the Humans get a house with that kind of view where I could look out and dream of catching fish out of the water with my claws all day, and lazily watch the Humans on the beach with one half closed eye?

I’m not a beach cat. I don’t like sand in my paws. But if you could make me a special pair of kitty socks that keep the sand out, I’d like to roam around this beach and put my paw prints everywhere.

Do cats have to be on a leash at the beach? I don’t do leashes. Those are for dogs. Intelligent animals who can bury their doings don’t need to be on a leash, but I wouldn’t want any dogs to chase me. That silly dog next door, he barks all the time at nothing. He just stares off into space saying woof, woof woof, woof and disturbs my napping. I have to go sit on the windowsill and look down at him all superior like.

When the Humans got home, they put all this stuff on the pool table so we could sniff it and check it out. I think they should give the money cards to us. Clearly they can’t be trusted. They go out for a drive and bring home a new car, and then they go out in the new car and bring home.. stuff.

What is this stuff useful for? It’s not tuna, cat towers, toys for us to play with or kitty safe milk. We don’t need it! The Humans tried to get us Kitties to stand on those scales but we refused to put all four paws on at once. We don’t want them to take our Tuna away. Even though that Little Kitty could be considered plump, I keep telling the Humans she is just fluffy. Bye for now from the Big Kitty!

Australia, beach walk, kitties, photo blog country NSW, photos

Photo Blog – Currarong and Huskisson

5 Comments Posted on July 26, 2007February 28, 2015 by Snoskred

Tomorrow it will be two weeks that we’ve had the new car. I still have not posted a photo of it, I’m sure some of you noticed. As usual, I won’t be lying to you – the truth is I feel a little uncomfortable about doing that since we found out it’s a bit of a rare vehicle around these parts. I didn’t post a photo of my Dad’s car because you could spot it a mile off – we did yesterday when out driving and he went the other way – and there’s less than 500 of them in Australia. So at this stage I’ve decided not to put photos of it on the blog. Yes, it is killing me. Yes, I want to share it with ya’all. Yes, I have photos right here ready to post. No, I just can’t do it. I may get over it soon, but until then if anyone would like a pic, shoot me an email.

What I can do is let you know – the novelty has not worn off. The Other Half has had 5 days off since we got the car. We’ve clocked up 1274kms as of putting her in the garage tonight. Yesterday evening we went for a little drive ending with a beach walk at Currarong at sunset. Today we drove down to Batemans Bay and dropped in to Huskisson on the way home. Just because we could. ;) So here’s some pics from our outings. Click on any for a larger image Below – The beach at Currarong

Below – the bridge across Batemans Bay.

Below – Looking out across Batemans Bay. It was a lovely calm day and the water was like glass, beautiful.

Below – Looking out to Point Perpendicular from Huskisson.

Below – Looking back towards Huskisson. I have seen dolphins swimming in this inlet before, they often go quite a way up the river.

Below – Looking towards Myola and Callala Beach from Huskisson and you can see the now empty swimming pool which is filled with sea water in summer.

Below – looking down to the beach below the point where I have been standing taking these photos.

Below – The dolphin and whale watching boat heads out, looking for the whales. We’d seen a pod of dolphins out in the bay while we were taking these shots. We’ve been out on this boat before and it is a brilliant day out, most of the time Jervis Bay is just as calm as you see in these photos.

The red stuff you can see washed up on the shore in some of the pics is actually red algae, which isn’t too pretty nor does it smell great but it is totally normal at this time of year. In the summer, the beaches will be pure white.

Australia, beach walk, photo blog country NSW