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The Nomadan Aussie across the world March 09 Dining outKirsty's birthday again this weekend, on Saturday to be precise. As usual for Kirsty's birthday it snowed! Craazy weather, it was sunny for a big part of the day, then hail and snow at night. We went to dine at Preservation Kitchen in Bothell. It was pretty good and reasonbably priced. The Wild Boar rack with chard etc was really good. The boar came out delicately pink in the center, tender and very tasty. Duck for appetizer was good as well, and the sorbets for desert were good. The restaurant itself is a little old house on teh 522, and the couple who own adn run the restaurant meet people at the door. Definitiely a nice building and good ambiance. Recommend it to people looking for well prepared slightly out of the ordinary food in plesent surroundings at a good price. Wine list is good and reasonable. Had a Sleight of Hand red blend that was very good.
The house is all dark wood and low lighting with tasteful decorations. It almost has a fading empire feel. Personally I find that a condusive atmosphere for enjoying fine company and food. Thanks Kirsty for having another great birthday. January 03 Bouncing funNo photos this time, but a report. On New Years eve went with a bunch of friends and their children to "Jump Planet". It is a place up in Bothell here that has an amazing selectin of bouncy castles. Generally for children, but if you book the whole place out then big kids are allowed as well. We spent about an hour and a half bouncing, catching, throwing and being jumped on over and around children. It was a blast, the best work out I have had in years. I think I used pretty much every muscle in my body, at least once of twice. Any parents that have not been there, I recomend it. And if you don't want to go, can I borrow your child so that I can go again?
Big thanks to Theresa and Q and all teh Ahdieh family for making it possilbe. November 04 On the beachJust got back from three days up north of Brisbane on the Sunshine coast. We stayed at Alexandra Headlands, just north of Malloolaba. It is pretty nice up there, a nice compact little township with all you could need, surf shops, fish and chips, bakery and patisserie, and of course the beach. I should also mention the Australia Zoo shop, also known to children as "Bindi's shop". Bindi is the daughter of Steve Irwin who was the most prominent ambassador for the Zoo. Bindi has becaome a huge star here is Australia in her own right now. The beach up at the headlands is pretty good, swam every day as expected, and we had some good coffee and breakfast at the bakery. For the non-Aussies, great bakeries on teh beach is a bit of an Aussie speciality. Adding a couple of photos of our activities, and here is one of the beach. The photo with the umbrella is from teh Malloolaba Starbucks, if only they all had such a vi Sisters concertOn vacation in Australia at the moment so I got to attend one of my sisters concerts! It was a concert in the grounds of one of the choristers houses, on a wonderful warm Brisbane evening. The concert was pretty good, and the food was yummy and a good time was had by all. I have added a couple of photos of the event so that you can get the feel for the event, I may try to work out how to put a video up there, if I can get a fast enough link. It was a fantastic experience to be able to see my sister in action conducting choirs that she has been developing. You rarely get this sort of oportunity to watch a sibling do things at which they are among the best there is. Looking forward to catching a rehersal before I head over to visit Mum and Dad in Perth as well. October 31 Back in OzBack in Australia for a visit for the first time in 3 years. Landed in Brisbane this morning for a stay with my sister and her family. Had a good day in the sun, and this evening there was a Halloween street party just down the road at the bay. Didn't see a cloud all day, which is a bit of a contrast to the usual weather in Seattle at this time of year.
Started reading the Saramago book "Blindness", so far it is pretty good. Also read through a new magazine that I got at the airport, "Seed", with the tag like Sicen as Culture. Its not a bad mag, a little bit shallow with most of its articles, but generally of interest and with enough data that you could find more pretty simply. Adding a coupld of photos from the Halloween party. One of the Phoenix fire performers is a little blurry, but you get the idea. October 25 Tech and healthGiven how frequently I seem to post here, I will change the theme a little and try to post a few things I find interesting. Been seeing a bunch of work recently about using cell phones as health awareness devices. It seems that in many less well off countries the cell phone is one of hte most pervasive devices. Lots of pre paid phones, for example South Africa hasabout 80% as many cell phones as people. Saw this article today about using the free SMS service that exists there to push out information to help raising the awareness of AIDS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7688268.stm
It is great to see technology hi jacked for the betterment of society :-) Gates Foundation is funding a bunch of things like this as well, it is interesting to different condition and problems that just don't occur to most of us. Examples are: computers are only useful to people who can read and write. That count out a huge portion of hte world population, so much for the internet. In many cases a couple of cell phones with a list of numbers and pictographic instructions give people communications with relatives, friends and information that they simply don't get access to otherwise. For example remote villages can call a central number for health care advice, agricultural advice, and crisis management can call the villages in case of disaster to get data on need. The fact that it can all be done either by speech, or by streaming a video to the phone device, makes lack of literacy less of a barrier.
Enough for now, this blogging thing is tiring. Cheers. March 06 End of empireAnother indication of the increasing irrelevance of the US at the global scale, this NYT article about OPEC oil production and good old GW
It isi interesting to see that even though OPEC did not reduce production at this time of year as it usually would, Mr GW Shrub is still trying to put the blame for the US economic decline at their feet. Good one GW. Even though pretty much every analyst has said the problems are the current US amdinistration is doing nothing to reduce the economic problems, Mr Bush will continue to do nothing and search for others to blame. Oh Yay.
The good news is that even though the federal government here is rather clueless and has much in common with a large flightless bird, the local scene is very different. There is already a consortium of mayors who get together and look at ways to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint, and a bunch of states are gettign together to do the same thing.
Disappointingly, I am sitting at a conference on Virtualization and there is almost no interest in energy efficiency. People from VMWare in particular seem to b completely stuck in the performance improvement grind, they were baffled by questions around energy efficiency. Sigh. Particularly as their advertising talks all about how much energy their products will save you. Looks more and more like the real energy saver is doing a consolidation analysis. This usually precedes the implementation of virtualization in a large IT installation, so I guess it is still a good thing that virtualizatoin is becoming popular. It would be better if people recognised exactly where the improvement is coming from though.
No photos from this one sorry. |
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