The Chinese Temple

The Chinese temple is just beautiful and a very calm place to visit.You can go in and feed the huge goldfish and then light incense to the Goddess. Everyone shows it such respect no matter what their religion. It's just a great place to be. 

Bendigo

Bendigo is one of our original cities in Victoria. It is a place of its own with strong connections with the Chinese and mining. It also has its beautiful trams and some of our original mines. The art gallery is superb and certainly one of our best regional galleries. Bendigo is also pretty techno savvy as a city too. 

It's all just choofing along

We have a tram in Adelaide. Goes from the city to Glenelg on the beach front and back. 20 minutes. Melbourne has its trams still and I think they are a great way to travel around. In Bendigo there's the talking tram which talks you around on a city tour and then there's the tram where you can have afternoon tea. I haven't done that. I can't imagine eating and drinking an a tram. As for the time on the blog...well, I set it properly in the settings!! I need pages which take me through the process. There are so may boxes to check and fill out for different programmes. I heard on the radio the other day that out of 1000 people surveyed 80% said computers had increased work place stress and 25% confessed to absolute rage when using computers! Flying monitors, mobile mice....Doesn't happen where I work, but people do get frayed at the seams every so often. It's the slow access or slow response or weirdo messages when you don't want them. Then you are supposed to know everything about everything..software, hardware, multimedia, data bases, printers...it's all designed to make you feel inadequate...and rogue files which clash with programme openings. One trick I found the other week was if I took a certain programme shortcut out of the start menu...it worked perfectly!!! Explain that to me.

Time

I was hoping the time would stamp itself...but I have to put my own time on. I bet there's an easy way to do it since most other word processors can add the time. We are back to rain. Athens is coming to an end and so it the lovely warm weather it brought. I have loved seeing the highs and the emotion of those who have worked so long and hard to achieve their gold. We have had the best medal tally ever. It annoys me our PM has chosen to use today to announce the election date so the athletes will get lost in the election twaddle instead of a heroes welcome home. It's been great to watch us do so well, but it has also been great to watch people from other nations achieve something for themselves and their countries. This sounds a bit trite. I don't mean it to be. It is clear that the two medals for the runner from Morocco mean so much to him and the Ethiopian runners speak of doing well so they can inspire the next generation. I have enjoyed these Olympics. I am baffled as to the rules of greco roman wrestling and am equally non-plussed by synchronised swimming where all you see are wiggling feet. I accept it requires skill and strength ; that it is an athletic talent.
7:26 PM 29/08/2004

Woo-hoo!!

By george I think I've done it! I have set the time in the settings. What amazes me is the rabbit warren of things to fill in and if I want to FTP files myself....because I found this great little blogger programme which can run offline and then publish..well, trying to fill in the fields and then the ftp stuff is all too much. One thing at a time. I have fixed the time. I'll see. I want a programme like Hello which just does it even though it baffled me for the first night! I did at least work my way around it. Just read a blog where everyone was being told off for not publishing daily!! So who has made these rules? A log is a log. A web log is a web log. To be logged and blogged at one's leisure I shouldhave thought.

Time out!!!

I have tried to get this blog to tell the time. In vain. For the record..it's 12.04 am. Anyone would think I stay up all night blogging. Not this little black duck. Incidently, the lovely 2 weeks of sun and blue skies is over. It's back to the rain, rain rain. Maybe the water birds will come back!

The star photographer at work! 

The town hall on the square in Christchurch 

One of the lovely parks in Christchurch 

This is the church in the main square in Christchurch 

Suster Sutty

New Zealanders pronounce their vowels differently and an i sounds like a u so you get Fush and Chups and Suster Sutties. Christchurch is Adelaide's sister city and the cities have much in common. Christchurch is also on a river and you can have a gondola ride. It's really pretty and like Adelaide there are some nice speciality shops and some excellent eating! There is a big square in the centre of Christchurch and they have stalls there and you can buy locally made handcrafts. I loved it. I didn't love so much nearly being flattened by the tram. As you cross over the road to the square there are tram lines, but it's not so obvious as here , so silly crossed the road and the tram just whooshed past me. I had plenty of adrenaline for my sightseeing. They have lots of internet cafes and the tourist shops are stocked with woollen products and things which are different. The service was excellent and there wasn't that jaded touristy feel of lots of places.

OOpsa!

Tried to post a picture at work today..you know how it is, you get hold of a blog and all of a sudden it starts pushing you along. Hello wouldn't let me load there was a network error 0x000247c or some such. Being the clever clogs I am I looked it up on the Net...another blog site came up and there were my words, my actions. They had done exactly as I had for the same reasons...synchronicity? Do, do, do, do do..close encounteresque?? I went to the techie to confess my sins incase I was going to break something or be censured for trying to commit some awful travesty of technological ironmongery. No. He was actually helpful. Truth is, an Australian-type blog would be quite handy for us. I need to do all this discovery learning. So it was no more Hello..just lots of good-bye because corporate Australia is an upload free zone. Quite right. Quite right. Oh how I blush...but I fiddled with my page when I got home and shall post at the weekend..tomorrow!!! More pictures!

Heron

A heron like this was walking along the neighbour's roof top a couple of weeks ago. 

Heron

I have just posted a picture of a white faced heron. Our winter has been unusually wet. I realise some of you will find this ridiculous, but we aren't used to torrents of rain , icy cold wind and wet, wet, wet. Thankfully we have had a break and it has been sunny and around 20 degrees. A couple of weeks back it was just pouring. All day, all night. Day in and day out. We were getting ducks everywhere whcih was really cute, but one morning I got up and was struck by this bright yellow. Then I just goggled. My neighbour's roof is lower than mine and strutting along it was this amazing water bird with bright yellow legs. Buttercup yellow. Sunflower yellow. It was amazing. I knew I had no time to get the camera . I watched it strut to the end of the gable and then...with such grace , its beautiful grey wings took it away. A white faced heron. In suburbia. Though this suburb is 5 mins from the beach and 10 mins from the hills. I love living here. Full of surprises!

Emu

Don't you just love him? He is in the nature reserve near the blue lake. These emus come right up to you and are quite at home here.  

The Blue Lake at Mt Gambier. It really is that blue. I have been on holiday there. You can walk around the lakes.  

Woo-hoo!!!

Now we are in business! I have published 3 pictures tonight and with Hello. It wasn't the programme...yesterday I just didn't get it . Today I do. Now we really are cooking with gas. All the talk here has been the rowing fiasco. Should she be blamed for stopping or understood or forgiven? Should it be a team effort? Most of all..is it Australian to help your mate who is clearly in trouble or is it Australian to conquer all and work with your mates to get to the finish line no matter what? What to think? It is great how the Olympics always highlight the human issues, the humanity and the moving stories which go with greatness. Imperfect as we are we can still perform some astounding feats. Then there is the suspicion of whether that feat was chemically enhanced or not and whether it should or shouldn't be. Sport and fitness. Sport and health. The dollar driven dynamics of success. One human dilemma after another and we certainly need to take the time to sit and discuss these things instead of flying off to the next appointment. I am fed up with modern living being one sitting exercise after the next. This is what is "lifestyle". Flatbumming. Not for me. I wonder why my blog can't tell the time. It's 9.08pm if you are interested.

Life without strawberries would be dull indeed 

Life's little miracles

Who knows how that picture got on here. No help from Hello, that's for sure. I need something REALLY simple. I typed the URL and posted that. Maybe that worked. I am not in control here..but it says 4.35 on my last post..no wonder I am frazzled. According to my computer , it is only 9.13 pm... oh, how miraculous is technology. If all goes well..you'll see some REAL pictures tomorrow. I live in paradise. You'll see.

a day in the life

Hallo. I have started this because I need a spot to call my own and it might as well be a blogspot. Eventually I expect it to take form and shape but for now, it will just be a free form experiment where I can come to grips with the fun and intricacies of blogging. There are some great blogs on the Net and it continues to be a wonder to me that I can live in an age and see the talent of others here onthe Net.