The world down under

WARNING: long post!

It is now officially the Friday after... our return, and I thought that if I don't write a post now, I will probably forget all the wonderful experiences and it would be such a shame.

Most of August we spent in the southern hemisphere, visiting Eugene in Singapore and then our home in Australia. First things first... Singapore was humid, hot, sticky and full of amazing food. For a minute I even thought that it had the perfect climate and atmosphere for me - but that was before we stepped onto Aussie shores. Eugene is a great host and showed us the town and the good life. My experiences of Asian big cities are pretty much limited to Bangkok, Hong Kong, some cities in Japan (when I was about 9 years old) and now Singapore. Out of these cities I have to say that Singapore struck me as most relaxed. Of course the fact that we were there on the weekend and on public holiday might have something to do with it.

Even though I really don't like the whole business of hot and humid outside and freezing air-conditioned inside, I love tropical climates. Being able to go out in the evening without taking a jumper is just so so nice. Did I mention the food? Along with many servings of dumplings our cuisine for the weekend included chili crabs, yummy buns on the go, Chinese fried chicken, some strange but yummy cold blackish-greenish jelly stuff (very refreshing), and many more that I can't even quite remember. Eugene also took us for Singapore Sling cocktails at the Raffles hotel which was a great idea because a) they were very refreshing, and b) the hotel is a good example of colonial architecture which I find completely gorgeous, so I was double happy. Along with seeing the town we also managed to find Jack a new phone and drop by to Eugene's office.

Sat evening we also spent on the roof of our hosts' penthouse apartment watching the fireworks for the national day of Sing and drinking champers. This was afterwards followed by a walk along the red-light district where the girls are organised by their nationalities along various street corners (Germany take notes) and lastly we bought a durien (sp?) which is this spiky funky fruit that I kept on wanting to try but in the end got more than I bargained for, because unlike being watery and refreshing (what I was actually expecting) it was more like a mix between banana and avocado... very very creamy and rich. But Eugene helped me out and we even managed to finish this gigantic piece of Gods creation.

There definitely needs to be a "next time" in Singapore!!! Some photos can be found here :)

And so after these two lovely days we took a Qantas flight 06 to Melbourne. Arriving at an ungodly hour of 4am on a Monday morning we went through security very quickly to our great surprise and were met by Emmi on a cold rainy and pretty miserable morning. The climate change was so dramatic that I spent most of Monday curled up in front of the heater in the lounge room while Jack was getting Lady out of the garage.

Since we decided to send some of our stuff over from Melbski to Berlinski it meant spending some time in the shed pulling apart boxes, containers and various pieces of old student furniture which we kept on wondering "why did we ever decide to keep it?"... it probably took us a good four to five days to find everything (well almost everything) that we wanted to take with us and to actually ship it. Hopefully it should arrive to Berlin sometime in the middle of October. Our shed adventures also included locating four dead mice... and no - these little chaps didn't die in the name of science... but more in the name of rat-sack... shouldn't have been so curious! Overall we were happy with the fact that aside from mouse crap all of our things (especially books) were ok... oh and there was one box where ants decided to nest, but we evicted them and that was fine.

Next on our plan was to go to the Grampians and celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary. Quite a few of you were surprised that it has been that many years... well it's pretty surprising for us, too. I mean it feels only yesterday that we met... but it's not. Five years... hmmm... yes - they have been an amazing, wonderful, happy, great, grand, magnificent five years :) In any case we went off to the same place where we got married and aside from the fact that it was cold, miserable, rainy, the car's back breaks breaking on the way there, me having a cold it was a really good time. Nah - it was actually very nice to be back there and to get away from it all. We saw much wildlife and fed kangaroos outside our doorstep... and reminisced in the time gone by as well as booing our Olympic commentators. A selection of photos for your viewing pleasure can be found here.

The rest of our time was spent catching up with our families, friends and Melbourne itself. I must've had the most coffee's this whole year there. I think my grand total was five latte's in one day... but it's SO good!!! We also squeezed in a trip up to Adelaide to celebrate Axel's 40th birthday and catch up with the gang there. Another day was spent driving around the Dandenongs with our folks... even though the walking tracks were very muddy we still did some walking, spotted a Rosella and two Kookaburras and had enormous ice-creams at Miss Marple's Tea House. We had a big catch-up with everyone at Prudence and a get-together for my birthday at Ginger. To my great disappointment they stopped selling the alcoholic ice-creams, but the cocktails were great anyway, so no complaints there. There was one evening spent visiting Mr Marvin and having dinner with his foster parent Paul. All in all, as usual, not enough time for everything and everyone... but we hope to be back for good at some point in the future and then we'll have the rest of our lives to spend together. I think now this needs a quote about something like "the stream of life"... but I really can't be bothered searching for one... you know what I mean! Some photos here.

oh ok, fine! this is roughly what I was looking for:

George Eliot: "The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone."