2007 August « Spilling my own thunder

Spring has sprung

August 30, 2007 at 4:41 pm | In All, Australia, Events, Melbourne, Weather | 1 Comment

spring has sprung

and that means

goodbye coats, hello spaghetti straps

goodbye soups, hello fresh salads

goodbye boots, hello thongs

goodbye skivies, hello tank tops

But I say spring calls not only for change of fashion and food choices. It also is an opportunity to come out of inactivity brought about by winter. It is a time to rise and shine. Being a pre-cursor to summer, it is the best time to start losing pounds and be ready to show fab abs and not flabs.

With noticeably longer and warmer days, it would be much easier to stay outdoors. Time to take out the barbie and gather all friends and rellies.

And oh, spring is also the season of big events around Melbourne. There’s the Royal Melbourne Show, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and best of all, the Aussie Rules Footy Finals and Spring Racing Carnival which includes the Melbourne Cup – the celebration that stops the nation.

But with the equine flu outbreak, I hope the spring racing wouldn’t be affected as much.

For more Melbourne spring events, check out this sites : Visit Melbourne & That’s Melbourne.

Or better yet, just come visit this beautiful cosmopolitan city.

See you here?

*Makybe Diva photo stolen from NSWROA.

Aussie Bush

August 30, 2007 at 11:02 am | In All, Australia, Politics, Something Funny, news | Leave a Comment

Australia is this year’s host for the APEC Summit. In line with this, The Age has come up with an interactive cartoon to dress up American President George Bush the Aussie way.

Here is my Aussie version of Bush.

George Bush with an Aussie make-over. ;-)

Blood Moon Eclipse

August 29, 2007 at 11:01 am | In All, Australia, Environment, news | 3 Comments

It was spectacular looking at a moon with the red coppery glow. Last night’s lunar eclipse was the first time I have ever sighted the phenomenon. It was awesome looking at it in binoculars. You can actually see a bit of details of the moon’s surface. Although the viewing was a bit intermittent owing to the extremely overcast skies, we were still able to have good glimpses of this rare occurence.

The eclipse started at about 7:50 pm when the moon started to move slowly into the earth’s shadow. The clouds obscured the view so I didn’t really appreciate it at first. But the skies cleared at about 9 pm. We had good views since then. Just as the moon disappeared into the shadow, it slowly turned reddish. The glow was more of a red-orange than a bright red.

Later as the moon moved out of the shadow of the earth, we saw a bluish glow in the top most half of the moon while the bottom half was still red.

We were also following a live video streaming of the eclipse from the Springbrook Research Laboratory in Queensland at the Discovery Channel Australia website. The website was streaming live videos from two other sites, Talbot Observatory in Victoria and Southern Cross Observatory in Tasmania but Queensland offered the clearest views.

Our camera was not powerful enough to be able for us to take good photos but I was able to take screenshots of the video streaming from Queensland.

The next total lunar eclipse that can be seen from beginning to end after this one will be in 2011.

One fine weekend

August 20, 2007 at 5:14 pm | In All, Australia, Environment, Life et al, Travel, Weather | 2 Comments

Dark clouds enveloped the skies to the west while the sun is bright and white clouds hugged the skies in the east. Melbourne was not its normal miserable winter morning but it was still awfully cold as we drove out of the city going to Euroa. It’s Saturday, the 17th of August.

Billy, mum’s big ball of fluff. The two-hour trip became more enjoyable with Billy, (a 5 month old Bichon Maltese dog) restless in the back seat with mum, trying to move to the front seat to co-pilot the car. Such a gorgeous, lovely ball of fluff.

Views of green and live trees and bushes abound. Although the state is still officially in drought, the surrounding mountains and bushes have somehow recovered. Winter temperature and rains have helped re-surrect the ailing flora.

It was a beautiful day in the country town. Skies are blue with just a few patches of white cotton-like clouds. The motel was going to be quiet for the whole weekend with only 3 reservations for the night. After an hour or so of rest, we took to the creek and stroll along the walking path. It is a bit of a relief for the townsfolk to see water flowing into the creek now. A few months back, the creek was as dry as an autumn leaf. The bank has cracks all over.

Billy enjoyed the walk the most. New surroundings. New smell. He was all over the place, running in all directions. So restless. So much energy for a puppy.

Dinner was a belated (second) celebration of my birthday. A three course meal starting with a heartwarming tomato soup. Main course was a medium grilled eye-fillet steak with black pepper in cream sauce in a bed of mashed potatoes served with steamed fresh pumpkin and green beans. Mouth watering. A generous slice of pavlova at the end was hard to resist.

The saying about Queensland “Beautiful one day, perfect the next” was an apt description for the weekend. Saturday was beautiful. Sunday was perfect. Temperature was in low twenties, no wind, no clouds, fresh country air, just one lovely day. Another opportunity to go out for a walk.

One highlight for the day was my first sighting of alpacas (some spell it alpackers) . At first Alpacas in our midst! I called them sheep with long necks. shane called them giraffe – sheep owing to their long necks and sheep looking features. The wool of these domesticated animals are apparently expensive.

All in all the weekend was very relaxing. The sun aided to relieve some muscle aches from the cold weather and the fresh air recharged tired bodies of us city slickers.