Our Lovely Garden

The latest pictures of our garden. We just bought 4 outdoor chairs so we can have breakfast outside on the weekends, which is really nice!




These are some more snapshots of our garden. I just played a little bit with my digitial camera and photographed our lemon tree an a gerbera.

My New Rain Jacket

I needed a new rain jacket, so my parents gave me some money for my birthday to buy one. And of course they wanted to see my new jacket.
So Ian made some pictures of me and my new rain jacket. And yes, the yellow flowers are there for a purpose. Ian gave me these lovely flowers yesterday when he came back from work and I think he wants my parents to know this… ;-)

And there is another funny story in connection with this jacket. I bought it at MountainDesign in the city and when I came home I found the security device (this little white plastic that you can only remove with a magnet or so) still attached to my jacket! I think there were 2 of them on my jacket and they just removed the first one. But funny enough we walked out of the store without any “peep”.

This is actually the second time this happened to me! Can you believe that?! I bought a leather jacket a couple of weeks ago and found a texture fault when I came home. So I brought it back and exchanged it for another one. But when I got home with this new leather jacket I found this security device still attached to it. Again there was no “peep” when I left the shop because it was temporary under construction. So I had to go back to that shop a third time and asked them to remove this security thing. It was really funny to watch the face of the salesgirl as well as the faces of the surrounding customers :-)

Chicken - Rice - Soup
First of all, my cooking experiences are close to zero. So far I didn’t do much cooking and I am very happy that Ian likes to cook and he cooks really good!!
Therefore I must admit that I am a little bit proud of myself for cooking such a yummy Chicken-Rice-Soup last night :-)
I just boiled some chicken legs and soup vegetables (carrots, parsnip, celery, potatoes) in some chicken stock. Cut the ready cooked chicken off the bones and added the rice from the rice maker.
Very easy and very yummy! And I will have some leftovers for lunch now :-)

Australia - Italy (0:1)
It was just not fair...
We were all so excited the whole game! Australia played really good! They just needed a little more luck! So we were all hoping for very good additional 15 min (each side).
But then this supposed foul in the Australian penalty area - a penalty shot for Italy! We just couldn't believe it!
The the ball actually entered the goal - not a chance for the Australian keeper. We were all just sitting there saying nothing - it was so cruel!! We couldn't believe it! It was just not fair!!!

I just booked my return flight today :-)
On the 16th of December I am going to fly to Singapore and stay there for 6 days. So I will be back in good old Germany on the 22nd of December - just in time for Christmas :-)

Fingers crossed for Australia tonight!!!
Australia is playing against Italy in the World Soccer Championships tonight. So please cross your fingers for Australia!!! Italy is probably the better team but maybe if Australia is lucky....

The post office...
You walk in there with a letter and you want to buy stamps in order to send this letter to, say Germany. The guy behind the counter will measure and weigh the letter and sell you the appropriate stamps. He lays the stamps on the letter and wishes you a good day!
Your job now is to glue the stamps onto the letter, take the letter outside and put it into one of the post boxes... :-)

The Socceroos are through!!! Australia - Croatia (2:2)
Australia will play in the round of the last 16. This is the second participation of Australia in the World Soccer Championships after 1974. And in the 1974 FIFA World Cup they lost against East Germany (0:2), West Germany (0:3) and only reached a draw against Chile (0:0).
But who won really? Australia or Croatia?
7 of the Australian players have Croatian background and 3 of the Croatian players were born in Australia :-)

German Restaurant
Yesterday Ian took me out for dinner in a really nice German restaurant called "Alt Heidelberg" (http://www.altheidelberg.com.au/index.html).
Everything was really really German!! There was wallpaper on the walls and the furniture was very typical German and we even had to pay for tap water.
The food was very good. I had Rouladen with Rotkraut and Klöße and Ian had Kassler with Sauerkraut and Bratkartoffeln. That was all very yummy!!!

A quarter of a century...
This day started already quite early. At 5.45am the telephone ran and woke me up – Nicole wanted to be the first to congratulate me on my birthday. And indeed she was the first :-)
We finally got up at 7am and had breakfast together. Yummy crumpets [for those who don’t know crumpets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumpet] with Nutella!
Then I finally unwrapped my presents! The parcel from my family arrived yesterday already, but I was strong and didn’t open it until this morning. They sent me a cook book with yummy German recipes.
And among other things Ian gave me Holeproof Explorer Socks (http://www.holeproof.com.au/Our-Products/Holeproof-Explorer.asp). They are really fantastic! They are just “unkaputtbar” (not damageable)!
After that I hopped on my little “lawn mower” and drove to uni. And I saw a rainbow for the first time here in Perth! Ah well… I also got pretty wet because it rained… but the rainbow was very pretty!
Tonight we are having our 5^th (out of 6) language lesson (Ian does German and I do Arabic). And after that we are going to watch the soccer game Germany – Ecuador.

Australia - Brazil (0:2)
The Socceroos lost but it was still a really good game! The Brazilians had just more luck ;-) We watched the game at a friends place...
[A short note about Australian TV...
There are 3 main channels (Channel 7, Channel 9 and Channel 10) and 3 minor channels (SBS, ABC and Channel 31). They are all local and broadcasted via aerial. Therefore you hardly find any satellite dishes which are very common in Europe. So far so good...]
But the big antenna on the roof was broken so we had to use the small aerial antenna at the back of the TV... the reception was really bad! So another friend brought a digital receiver because we thought the digital (aerial) signal might be better - didn't work either.
We tried really everything to get a better reception, we even deformed some old coat hangers which surprisingly improved the reception quite a bit :-) We ended up with about 5m of antenna cable wound around the house with the end hanging down a metal lamp. This way we got the best reception possible - we even had colours!!! So the football lawn was really green!! But it was still pretty hard to distinguish the black and white ball from the white noise, especially in the view from above. We still had a lot of fun last night trying to find the ball ;-)

Mysterious flowers
When I came home last night I found a very nice bunch of flowers (lovely fragrant orchids) just in front of the door. The card was addressed to me but there was no sender. But I was pretty sure that Ian would have sent them to me. He did this a couple of times in the past already and hasn't done it for a while.
So when Ian came back from work I gave him a big hug and wanted to thank him for the lovely flowers... but he didn't order it...
So I phoned the florist this morning and asked who the sender is. But they just knew that it was an Interflora (Fleurop in Europe) order from Germany with no sender and no message...
I mean it is my birthday next week Tuesday but why did I get these mysterious flowers exactly one week before my birthday?
So if anyone knows who the flowers are from please let me know!!! ... because they are really lovely!!

Australia - Japan (3:1)
What a game!!! After the first, quite unfortunate, goal for Japan in the first half of the game the second half started pretty slow. But the last 10 minutes of the game were so much the better!
3 goals in just 10 minutes - just great!! The atmosphere in the pub was just great!
Aussie! Oi! Aussie! Oi! Aussie, aussie, aussie!!! Oi, oi, oi!!!

Getting a student card...
Student administration: You are not enrolled yet we can't give you the card. Go to the International Office.
International Office: We cannot enrol you. We need a confirmation that you have this scholarship. Go to the Scholarship Office.
Scholarship Office: Sorry, but you have to be enrolled to get this form signed.
MUST BRAKE THE CIRCLE!!! MUST BRAKE THE CIRCLE!!!
They signed it anyway which was very nice of them!
International Office: Mhm.... I am not qualified to enrol you but thanks for getting this form. [She made some phone calls and sent me to the Students Office.]
Students Office: I was enrolled within 10min.
Back to the Student Administration: Well... it takes at least 24h for the enrollment to get onto our computer system. [Ok, so it takes 24h for all the bits and bytes to travel from one end of the campus to the other...] Ok, I will come back tomorrow then...

eStudent Visa III
I am not in the system anymore... somehow my application has been erased from the system. But the good news is the I applied again - this time using my credit card - and my student visa has been approved on the same day!!!
The bad news are that I don't know when I will get my money back from the first application. Because they can't refund me because I am not on the system...
So always make sure you are registered on the system :-)