Allendale Square Abseiling

About 2 weeks ago Ian mentioned that he needed to get up early on Saturday to go to his abseiling lesson. And I just thought – WHAT?! He never told me about abseiling before… [btw abseiling sounds really weird to a German as abseilen is actually a German verb]
Anyway, so yesterday Ian abseiled down from Allendale Square, a 135m high skyscraper in the Perth city. It is a charity event where each abseiling team raises funds for the Prince Margaret Hospital in Perth and YouthFocus. Ian’s team raised about A$31.000 and altogether they try to raise about A$250.000 this year.
Afterwards the whole team was invited for some drinks and nibbles at the 30^th floor of Allendale Square because they were amongst the teams that raised most money. The view from there was just stunning!!
Afterwards we went to this Good-Bye-Party of one of Ian's friends who is going back to Melbourne. There were thousands :-) of kids between 10 days and 6 years! So while all the parents were busy running after and watching their kids we ended up in this circle of single and/or unmarried persons without kids. It was pretty funny to watch but we still had a very good time!

Experiencing Ramadan

Yesterday was the last day of Ramadan. Muslim people all over the world weren’t allowed to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset for the last 4 weeks. But as soon as the sun goes down everyone started eating :-) Usually they break their fast with dates and a salty and spicy yoghurt drink (similar to Lassie). After that the men go to the mosque for praying and the women prepare the dinner and pray at home.
A friend of mine is Muslim, she comes from Bahrain. And she used to brake the fast with her “family” here – a couple of other Muslim girls. On the weekends I was also invited to break the fast together with them.
Here I have to add that I tried fasting myself …. but I gave up on this after 2 days or so. I was soooo hungry during the day! But what is even worse in summer time – you aren’t allowed to drink! Nothing for me…
But I really enjoyed gathering together with the girls and break the fast together with them. They start with dates and sesame sauce and this salty, spicy yoghurt drink. After that we shared some really yummy traditional food where everyone brought a different dish. This was really nice and I am happy that I was invited.

Setting up a bushfire

We drove up to the Hills on Saturday morning to help Ian’s mum and dad with their bushfire. The place were they live, up in the Hills is really lovely! They have a big house in the middle of the bush/forest. You can’t hear any other neighbours nor see any other houses. When I walk around the property I see all sorts of different wild flowers and plants I have never seen before – it is really a nice place.
Once every year they burn off half an acre of their 5 acre property in order to prevent bush fires from reaching the house. So every half an acre gets burned once every 10 years and if there is a “real” bush fire in summer the change of reaching the house is smaller.
First Ian’s dad had to get a fire permit for this day. Then we were armed with hoses, watering cans and water canisters with a little hose and hand-operated pump and Ian’s dad lit up a couple of matches to get the fire going. And our job was basically to watch the fire and prevent it from going up the trees [once the tree tops are burning the fire will spread to the other surrounding tree tops and we can’t control it anymore] or spreading to other areas where it shouldn’t go to.
It was very interesting to see all the little creatures, bugs, beetles, ants and spiders running away from the fire. This was actually the first time I wasn’t afraid of these spiders because I knew that they were much more afraid than I was. And there were magpies everywhere hunting for these running insects – it must have been a real feast for them. They even picked little creatures out of the burnt black areas – they really must like BBQ’s :-)
But I can now say that I appreciate the work of “real” fire fighters much more. I mean we just had to control a very small and slowly burning fire and it wasn’t that warm that day…. but fighting a really big bush fire in summer time when it is 30 – 40°C is something complete different.

We celebrated a friend’s birthday yesterday. So we went to this really fancy restaurant just 2 min. from where we live. It was just recently reopened.
The interior looked really stylish, modern, with lots of funky lights and even a small waterfall - everything was newly renovated. But somehow they couldn’t get the service right… we were sitting there for 1h!!! without drinks – all we got was water! Nobody asked for orders or anything…. The food was good but for what we got definitely overpriced.
One of the presents he got this evening was a stamp saying “Absolute and utter Bullshit” and of course we had to try this stamp on the menu… I wonder when they will find out :-)
Anyway we definitely had lots and lots of fun this evening! But I think with these people we would have fun no matter where we are – in a cheap fish and chips shop or a very fancy restaurant.

Little Miss Sunshine

Yesterday we went to see “Little Miss Sunshine”. It was one of the funniest movies that I’ve ever seen; it is number 208 out of the 250 best movies on imdb.com ever and deservedly so. But it is actually a really dark comedy that takes the piss out of Americans and Beauty Contests – maybe that’s why I liked it so much :-) I really recommend watching it!
After that we (6 people) went to have dinner in one of Ian’s favourite restaurants (http://www.ginoscafe.com.au/index.htm) in Freo. And as usual we shared a “Penne a la Vodka” with spinach. But somehow we ended up eating from each others plate. Three of the others shared a sea food platter where we all picked out some nice bits and in the end we just eat from the other plates as well – was good fun :-)

Daylight Saving in WA

Everyone has daylight saving - nearly all western countries use daylight saving to save energy and to make more out of their summer!
But only the northern states of Australia (WA, NT, QL) don’t! But have a look at the different time zones within Australia during standard time and during daylight saving time – it is just crazy!
I would prefer to have daylight saving. It is so nice during summer time in Germany when you can sit outside until 9.30pm and it is still light. Here in Perth the sun sets at 7.30pm latest!!
They tried it 3 times, each time for one year only (1975, 1984, 1992) but somehow it was defeated every time. So recently there has been an article in the Sunday Times concerning this topic once again including a voting. Unfortunately this voting is useless because you can click as often as you want - click it 10 times and vote 10 times... but maybe it will help.

Growing fern in our garden. One of the oldest living plants on earth.

Garden Stuff

About 2 weeks ago we bought some basil seeds and I sowed them right away. The package contained about 150 seeds and I thought, well they will not all bear fruit… but they did… So I put about 120 little basil plants in separate pots.
But we already know what to do with so much basil – pesto!! Once these plants are bigger we will harvest most of them, add garlic, pine nuts and parmesan cheese – yummy!!!

Crazy WA Drivers

The most dangerous thing for me when riding a scooter are these teenage idiots! The other day there were a couple of them just about to cross the road. When I passed them on my scooter the yelled out really loud “Boo!!”. This really scared the hell out of me!

And yesterday there were these crazy P-plate drivers who overtook me in their car. But then they suddenly slowed down… the guy on the passenger seat pulled down his pants… and stuck his naked bum out of the window… NO COMMENT!!

Surfing in WA!! Woo! Hoo!

This weekend I went surfing for the first time in my life. Actually a kind of a must-do here in WA. On Saturday early in the morning we went up to Lancelin with 14 other friends to do a 2 day surf camp.
Getting ready to surf:
We were all equipped with wetsuits, hats, blue rashies (so everyone could tell that we are a surf school) and of course surf boards. And they had really nice big soft boards that floated much better than the ‘normal’ hard fibreglass ones – perfect for beginners ;-)
And even more important we got lots of sunscreen and ‘zinc’. [Zinc is a very sticky white sunscreen that is highly water resistant and therefore also hard to get off your skin again :-)]We all had pale white faces, hands and feet. And apparently the sun is the most dangerous thing when learning how to surf.
After a short safety and a ‘How get onto your board in 4 steps’ introduction we were ready for our first surf.
And because I never did bodysurfing or body boarding before it was really great to experience the power of the waves when they push you towards the beach. And once you caught the wave the board was surprisingly stable and getting up is not as difficult as I thought. I actually came quite close to standing up a couple of times ;-) But I can get on my knees and surf all the way to the beach :-) And our surf teacher told me that knee boarding is also a sport and that all great surfers do knee boarding as well, so maybe I am a kneeboarder ;-)
In the evening we were all really tired! So we sat down in front of the TV and watched “Blue Crush” – a rather bad surfing movie.
Sunday morning we got up really early at 5:30am to do dawn surfing. Apparently the waves are best in the morning when the wind blows from the land towards the ocean.
It was great fun and I really enjoyed surfing!!
See some more pictures here!

Queen’s Birthday

The Queen’s Birthday is a public holiday and it is celebrated at least on 6 different dates around the world.
- the actual birthday of Queen Elisabeth is the 21^st of April (1926)
- the UK celebrates it on the 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd Saturday in June
- Australia (except WA) celebrates it on the 2^nd Monday in June
- New Zealand celebrates it on the 1^st Monday in June
- Western Australia celebrates it sometime in September or October depending on the school holidays and the Perth Royal Show :-)
- Canada celebrates it the Monday on or before the 24^th of May

Anyway, we (Westen Australia) celebrated it yesterday. But this public holiday does unfortunately not hold for universities. So I had to go to uni whereas Ian could stay at home. But I came home earlier then usual to spend the late afternoon with him. We went to a nice café in East Freo and went shopping for plants and pots. Now we have our own little herbal garden with peppermint, parsley, marjoram and basil (only seeds yet).

Things that happened on the weekend

The West Coast Eagles won the AFL Grand Final against Sydney by just one point. During the first 3 quarters the Eagles were always ahead of Sydney but during the last 30 min. Sydney got one goal after another and the game was really thrilling in the end. In last years final Sydney won against the West Coast Eagles.

I went shopping shortly after the game finished and the shops have never been that empty on a Saturday afternoon! Everybody was at the pub or at home watching the footy. And people were waving flags and screaming “Eagles!!” :-)

Ian woke up with a really strong headache and 39C fever on Saturday morning, followed by a not very pleasant diarrhoea. It was the first time I experienced him being really sick. And believe me you get to know your partner better when he is sick ;-)

Ian was still sick on Sunday morning but insisted to go to work because he had to finish a presentation. Therefore I went to the Swan Valley with some friends just for lunch. It is a beautiful flat valley north east of Perth with lots of nice wineries where you can test wine for free :-) We had a really nice relaxed and lazy afternoon enjoying the sun, the wine and the food – the strawberries were so yummy!!