Dinner Conversation - Facebook

We were invited at a friend's place for dinner - traditional German cuisine *yummy* One of the conversation topics that came up was - facebook, which is one of those social networking websites. We were all wondering why we didn't come up with the following marketing idea:
Design small little images of bears, turtles, ducks,... and other cute things, no bigger than 70 by 70 pixels - would be too much work otherwise. And then sell them as "GIFTS" on facebook for 1$ each! A couple of years ago I would have said that this is never going to work! I mean who would ever going to spend 1$ for a small little image which you can just copy from the screen??!! But these days it seems to work! I am still waiting for my brilliant idea though...
(image taken from the facebook gift shop)

German Plum Cake

Winter is slowly on its way and I am getting into the baking mood again :-) This weekend I made a German Plum Cake with crumbs on top. My friends at uni loved it, but they kept calling it a PIE!! Bunch of ignorants ;-)

"Something you wouldn't usually wear"

This was the theme for the birthday party we went to this weekend - and I really like this theme. People were wearing their pyjamas, all sorts of wigs, we had 2 safari suits and (only) one guy wearing a woman's dress. Ian was wearing his diving wet suit and savety glasses and I was allowed to wear Ian's old army uniform. So me - a German - dressed in an Australian uniform on the ANZAC day weekend; I almost felt like spy ;-)

Surfing on ANZAC Day

Just like last year we spent ANZAC day again up north in Lancelin. But this year we just went to the very popular back beach instead of finding our own quiet beach further north. On ANZAC day this beach was really crowded and so was the pub where we went for lunch. But fortunately we were the first to arrive at the pub and got the best seats :-)
We all had a really great day - blue sky, sunshine, fantastic waves! And I nearly managed to stand up at least twice - which is a rather positive way of saying that I still can't stand up ;-)

Wedding Dresses II

While searching the internet for wedding dress designs I came across Judy Mott's page, a designer from the UK. I just love her dresses for their simplicity and elegance. This one is my personal favourite so far. But unfortunately they will only serve as a reference since her dresses are not available here in Australia, as far as I know.

German Film Festival

This years Festival of German Films in Australia takes place from 16 - 27 April, unless you live in the country or in Perth! We only got to see 10 out of 22 film!! And each film was only shown once - sometimes it sucks to live in the most remote city in the world ;-)
But nonetheless I was looking forward to watch a German film in the cinema again. But we picked this one: "Latebloomers" - a Swiss German film, which meant that I had to read the subtitles as well because I just couldn't understand them ;-)
The film was really lovely! A real feel good film without being one of those kitschy Hollywood movies. It is about an old lady who opens a lingerie shop in a small village in the Swiss Alps and the trouble that this causes. As I said really great film, feel good but still quite realistic.

Moulin Rouge

This was the theme for this years annual party organised by the company Ian works for. So we hired costumes and drove to the Burswood Casino on Saturday evening. I was actually expecting a rather boring night because I hardly know any of Ian's work colleagues. But we had a really good time! The wine was good, the food was great and they even had a group of girls dancing can-can. After dinner a live cover band played songs from the 70's, 80's and 90's. Was great fun and we really enjoyed the evening. And we actually stayed in the hotel overnight because Ian had a bike race up in the hills the next morning. So we got up at 6.30am the next morning!! But even though Ian was pretty hung over and tired he still had a great time riding with his team.

Australian Toothpaste

The other day when I was brushing my teeth I had a closer look at my toothpaste. I went through the list of features that were printed on the back of the tube. It says things like ' No animal testing' - good, ' contains Vitamin C' - can't harm. But on the top of the list - the best feature that this toothpaste has to offer - 'Sugar Free'. As far as I got told sugar is bad for our teeth, right? That's we be brush them... so why advertise a toothpaste with 'no sugar'? I better check that any other toothpaste I buy in the future also says 'contains no sugar', looks like this is not as obvious as I thought.

Bike Ride to Uni

Yes, I did it again! I rode to uni on my road bike, which takes me just over 1h. I actually managed to do this once a week for the last few weeks, of which I am quite proud ;-) But since it takes me more than 1h, I am rather reluctant to do this more often - I just don't like getting up even earlier in the mornings.
But yesterday I fell off my bike :-( While approaching a traffic light I couldn't decide whether to stop or not and as I slowed down.... and eventually stopped... there was suddenly not enough time to get off those ---ing click-in-pedals. So yes, I just *plunk* fell over :-( It must have been really funny for people watching me though ;-) So when I came home the first thing Ian asked was 'Are you ok?!'. But after I said 'yes', he was more concerned about the scratches and missing bits on the bike ;-)

Addendum

'Thank you for your application for the next German Red T-Shirt Day. Pls find attached a photo of the finalists of last GRTS day to help you choosing your dress for the upcoming event.'

Authorized by the State Government Perth.

Germans, red t-shirts and scooters

There are 3 Germans here at the department where I work, including me, and we all ride our scooters to work everyday - in fact were are the only ones here at the department riding a scooter. Additional to that we celebrated German-Red-T-Shirt-Day today. Totally accidentally we all wore a red t-shirt and this happened for the second time already!! But this time another friend (a half-blooded German ;-) ) wore a red shirt as well. So the 4 of us had lunch together - matching shirts and actually matching trousers as well. People just turned their heads and laughed ;-)

Wedding Dresses

I went shopping for a wedding dress today! For the first time! I was so excited! I also had moral support and helpful advice from a friend from uni. She is getting married this year already. So we checked out the shops in the city and I tried dresses on in 2 shops only but 4h went by soo quickly!
So far I haven't found THE dress yet and I think it will take me quite a while - there is just too much choice! But I am lucky that I started looking now because I just found out that it will take about 6 months to order and then alternate the dress.
Each shop only stocks one size of each dress which means that when trying the dresses on they are either too small or, as in my case, need lots of pins to be tightened in the back. But I had actually one dress that fitted perfectly and it was really great wearing it :-) Can't wait to find THE dress ;-)

Facebook is not blocked anymore at uni :-) So our productivity, that reached its high during the last 1-2 weeks or so while facebook was blocked, has now experienced a hard drop due to facebook poker ;-)

Helicopter Trial Introductory Flight

I gave Ian a voucher for a Helicopter Trial Introductory Flight for his birthday this year. So last Sunday he redeemed his voucher and we drove down to Jandakot airport - an airport south of Perth for small planes and helicopters.
Since Ian loves to fly his little remote controlled helicopter I thought he would enjoy flying a real big one as well. But talking about size, the helicopter there was actually quite small - a 2-seater with no doors!! So every time they did a right turn Ian could see the ground very clearly :-) But I think he really enjoyed it. He sat in the pilots seat on the right hand side and his instructor sat next to home. While the instructor did the take off and landing Ian was allowed to steer the helicopter once they were flying. But going through a quick theory with him I now know how difficult it is to fly a helicopter! You have to adjust the steering constantly in order to keep the helicopter stable and parallel to the ground. But I think he had lots of fun flying to the beach, across our unit and along the coast.

Rainy Saturday

When we woke up this morning the weather outside was really miserable, cold and rainy :( But then there is nothing better than staying in bed and / or reading a good book. I haven't had a really good book for ages but the one that I finished reading this morning is "Going Postal: A Discworld Novel by Terry Pratchett". It is exciting, really funny and (important for me) easy to read. I usually lose interest in a book if it is too hard to read.
But this weather also motivated us to do boring things like shopping for a new kettle, a washing basket and door mats - exciting, isn't it?! :-) But we were really happy to find these things, especially our new kettle looks great!

German Language Course

I have noticed before that Perth is a really small place, but events keep reminding me of this :-) Like the other day we went to a restaurant with a couple of friends. In one of the conversations we had, we discussed a possible German language course for Ian and some of his friends. It also happened that a young German couple with a baby girl was sitting next to us.
Anyway, a friend of mine recommended a German teacher to me, telling me that she has a baby and can only do casual jobs at the moment. So at a party a couple of days later my friend introduced me to this teacher and, you guess it, it turned out to be the young woman from the restaurant a few days earlier :-)

This video was recorded at Ian's birthday party the weekend after last.