Tag: fun

Share Your World – 2015 Week 9

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How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

I think I would be a similar age to the one I am now. I am happy to be 52 and starting to count down the years to retirement or working part-time or casual instead of full-time. My life is more stable the older I get—I only need to plan what I want to do with my husband and not around the many children’s activities I had to arrange in my forties.

Are you left or right-handed? 

I am right-handed. I have never really had the need to teach myself to do anything with my left hand although I do admire people who can use both.

If you HAD to change your name, what would you change it to?

I think the name I would choose would depend on what was going on in my life when I had to make the decision. Names are so important and they have to fit the person. My favourite names vary greatly. I don’t write my blog under my real name and choosing a name for it took me about a week—I am happy with it as it works for me.

Where do you hide junk when people come over?

Most of the time people come to our house we know they are coming so we tidy up. I use this as a great opportunity to sort out the papers I was always meaning to get to. If anyone drops by unannounced I am comfortable tidying up around them. My theory is that they have come to visit me—warts and all—not judge the state of my house. I use the closest closed-door to hide the junk and with a new kitten there is plenty of choice as most doors are closed.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week I was grateful that it was the cleaners week to come as I love coming home from work after they has been as the house smells and looks beautiful. To me as I rarely see the cleaners it is like the fairies come in and fix it up.

During the coming week I am looking forward to starting to work with my new exercise physiologists. I have never had a formal exercise program before and am looking forward to the challenge. I am using the move your body to move your mind premise. It should be fun.

http://ceenphotography.com/2015/03/02/share-your-world-2015-week-9/

Blue Mountains – Australia

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What’s your dream tourist destination — either a place you’ve been and loved, or a place you’d love to visit? What about it speaks to you?

The beautiful Blue Mountains are located 60 kilometres from my home in Sydney. For this reason I don’t take my annual holidays there but like to visit for a weekend getaway with my husband. I love the peace and ruggedness of the area that includes rare and endangered flora and fauna. Blue Mountains are also home to some of Australia’s greatest writers and photographers due to the serenity and beauty of the area. People find it truly inspiring.

The mountains get their name from the colour they appear to be when the sunlight mixes with the oil from the eucalyptus trees that cover the area. There are 91 species of eucalyptus trees here—13% of the global total. This is one of the many reasons that in 2000 UNESCO appointed the Greater Blue Mountains Area World Heritage Site—14th in Australia. This area encompasses 7 amazing and individual National Parks some of which I have not yet explored—Blue Mountains National Park, Wollemi National Park, Yengo National Park, Nattai National Park, Kanangra-Boyd National Park, Gardens of Stone National Park and Thirlmere Lakes National Park.

The above photos are from our last visit and are from the Mt Wilson area—six weeks after devastating bush fires had raged through. We were excited to see that new life was emerging.  Internationally Australia is known for its beautiful beaches but just as important is its natural bush land very different to other parts of the world. If you ever get the chance come and spend a few days exploring any part of our beautiful Blue Mountains—they are so large you won’t be able to cover it all—do so as you will be greatly rewarded.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/tourist-trap/

Our Home

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What do you display on the walls of your home — photos, posters, artwork, nothing? How do you choose what to display? What mood are you trying to create?

Over the years we have gradually decorated our home with a mixture of things that have meaning to us—either as individuals or as a family. There is no theme. When we were married my husband had a collection of Australian paintings that he loved and I had a miniature alcohol bottle collection. These two items have formed the basis of our lounge and dining area decoration in the 8 homes we have lived in.

A small selection

A small selection

Special photos  have a pride of place in our home. We have photos of people, places and activities that have were special to us. I enjoy occasionally studying them closely and letting them take me back in time—bringing a smile to my face as I remember the details surrounding the photo. This is more important when our loved one is no longer with us.

I love collections. For me there is something about having a group of similar things. It allows you to continue to make an area unique without spending a lot of money. My belief is that if you gave ten people the same 4 items to start their collection and told them to grow it to 20 items within a six months period—each collection would be different.

We currently have four collections are working on.

  • My little bottle collection that started with 4 bottles about 30 years ago.
  • My Mickey Mouse collection that I have collected for years, however, was only put together in one place earlier this year. It now sits pride of place above my desk and helps me write while at the same time bringing joy to the room.
  • Our cat collection
  • Our travel collection—this collection includes something special from each country we have visited. It is still only a small collection however, I plan on expanding it over the next few years.

For us decorating each of our homes was never a planned thing. It was always a work in progress that took on its own life. I like it this way and it seems to work for us. However you decorate your home, I think they reflect strongly who you are. This is true for us—a fun, happy eclectic mix ready for anything.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/wall-to-wall/

Better Than Sliced Bread: Accessible Air Travel

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Most of us have heard the saying, “That’s the best thing since sliced bread!” What do you think is actually the best thing since sliced bread?

Live has changed dramatically since 1928 when sliced bread was first sold. However most of those changes that have affected my world have occurred since 2000’s. For me, besides the obvious—accessible internet, Google and WI-Fi hot spots—I choose increased and affordable air travel. Today, you can decide to go anywhere in the world and there would be a way to get there. Years ago, this was not the case.

I flew for the first time when I was 12. It was a school excursion so there was no choice. It has also just occurred to me that I have never flown with either parent as my next flight was to Nouméa in my twenties. During these times air travel was rare and special—something most of us saved for.

My daughter first flew at 9 to Brisbane. It was 2004.  While we were away she had her 10th birthday and a new airline was born in Australia—Jetstar Airways—bringing with them cheap flights throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia. It was fascinating, when we landed at Brisbane airport all the check-in counters were Qantas. Then six days later, when we left majority of them had turn into Jetstar check-in counters. We flew back to Sydney on one of those Jetstar flights. This changed the cost of domestic travel in Australia. Suddenly people were choosing to fly instead of drive. A revolution had started. Because of this change, by the time my daughter was 12, she had flown so often she could check herself in and knew the procedure well.

International air travel has also reduced in price over time so the world is now our oyster. We can travel everywhere and everywhere can travel to us.  Australia is now a truly multicultural country and  has opened up as a major tourist destination for the world. A lot has changed since Paul Hogan made our most successful tourist campaign for Northern America 30 years ago.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/sliced-bread/

Will I Go?

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Is there a place in the world you never want to visit? Where, and why not?

I love to travel.

If money were no object I would travel to more countries across the world. From my experience, more can be learnt about different cultures by getting off the usual tourist path—we have traveled recently to regional China and Canada in winter.  Learning about a country through its history joins the dots on why things developed and are the way they are.

When my husband and I are considering traveling to a new destination, I ask myself the following questions to discover if it is a place we can visit now. Even if the answer is no, it doesn’t mean it is a place I never want to visit. Everywhere has something new to offer.

  1. Will we be safe? This is particularly important as we like to get ourselves around places not go on tours where you may have a built-in safeguard.
  2. Will we be able to stay healthy? Is the food and water safe?
  3. What , how and where will we eat? What is it advisable not to eat?
  4. How will we get around the city? Will this be possible? In Nanjing we thought we would catch a train however when we arrived at the train station it was literally packed with people. There no signs were in English, we felt claustrophobic so we quickly left and made other plans.
  5. Where do we plan to stay?
  6. What local rules or customs do we need to follow? Can we live with them for a couple of days?
  7. What is the reason we want to visit the country or area? If this is strong enough it can change some of the other answers.
  8. How do we get from the airport to our accommodation? Once we needed to pre-book a private car for a two-hour trip across provinces in China.
  9. Are injections required to protect us from disease?
  10. All things considered is the risk too great for us to travel to this part if the world at this time? YES or NO.

If the answer is yes, we reconsider visiting if the situation changes. In the meantime we will go somewhere else. We will never stop traveling—meeting new people and learning new things as it takes us out of our comfort zone and allows us to grow in ways we couldn’t imagine. Bring on our next adventure.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/no-thanks/

My Interesting Week

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Tell us how your week went by putting together a playlist of  five songs that represent it.

I was excited to see the topic of today’s Daily Prompt. This week for me has been varied and interesting which is unusual. My week began on Monday with Australia Day, which I celebrated with my blog post Celebrating Australia Day—an A-Z of interesting Australian information. The song I selected to represent this is “I am Australian” by The Seekers.

On Wednesday evening I participated in my Toastmaster club’s International Speech competition coming third. It as a fun night to end a particularly busy day at work. As there are no songs on speaking competitions so I choose a new song dedicated to Toastmasters International to represent this part of my week.

Friday evening saw me joining colleagues for farewell drinks with one of my staff leaving to work overseas for a few years. It is an exciting time and many memories were discussed.

On Saturday morning my husband and I attended a travel expo and began planning a trip for our 25th wedding anniversary later in the year. We haven’t made any decisions yet. However, I think a tropical holiday is in order and “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys represents that well. Unfortunately, Jamaica is a little for  us to travel for a week so won’t be the destination.

Today my husband finished putting up glass shelves above my desk. They are to  house my expanding Mickey Mouse collection in one place. We have planned this for about the last 5 years, so it is exciting. Now I just need to find everything and arrange them in a display.

This week also saw the completion of two other tasks we had planned since last year. On the public holiday Monday I did a Spring clean of all my kitchen pantry cupboards. I found things I didn’t know I had as well as made a lot of space by throwing out many bags of expired or no longer required food and containers.

Over the last two weeks we have had an opening and closing pergola build over our courtyard. On Friday after a week of rain the electrician was able to come and complete it. We are very happy with the result and look forward to using it now as an outdoor indoor living space.

In Australia we are now into February. I can’t believe how quickly this year is moving. January was a very unusual month. It was filled with many different things and many goals were completed—the question is will it continue from this week and month into this year. I hope so.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/playlist-of-the-week/

Weekly Photo Challenge: Depth

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Whether visually or emotionally, this week let’s dig (or dive) deep.

This amazing old dead tree has been turned into a work of art. It’s home is the Australian Botanical Garden Mount Annan and it adds depth and character to an otherwise ordinary field. Painting the tree bright blue allows it to be special and blend into the skyline at the same time. The animals and birds can still use it for shelter also helping to sustain the environment.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/depth/

Fire Beware

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Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?

In the Sydney bush fires of 1994 I had to do consider this in real life. All main highways into Sydney were cut off by bush fires and we lived on the northern end of the city. We overlooked a major bush gully that hadn’t had a bush fire through in 30 years so officials were very worried about what would happen if it caught alight.

My life has changed greatly since 1994 so what I would pack today is different to what I packed them although core items are the same. In 2015 my choices are:

  1. Formal documents that are difficult/unable to be replaced including passports, insurances, special awards, medical information.
  2. Camera bag which includes the USB’s of digital photos.
  3. My handbag which contains mobile phone, wallet, keys and other everyday essentials.
  4. My prepacked overnight bag containing a change of clothes, toiletries and sleeping device to make a difficult situation easier.
  5. My laptop and associated hard drives which hopefully will give me access to everything I want.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/burning-down-the-house/

Celebrating Australia—Songs

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This long weekend Australians celebrate our nation’s birthday. The 26th January was chosen from the date from which we were settled—January 26th, 1788. Over the years we have developed into a multicultural nation. Because of this the 26th January,sees people from all nations gather to celebrate being and living in Australia. Today I would like to share with you three songs that make me proud to be Australian. They stir emotion in me wherever I am.

 

 

John Williamson is an Australian icon and this song reminds me of my time living in country New South Wales connecting with the land and its people.

 

 

This song describes the development of our multicultural nation. I remember it being acted out as a play when my children were in kindergarten and it was even more powerful.

 

I can still remember clearly 30 years ago when we were arriving back to Sydney from a South Pacific cruise, how stirring it was when “I still call Australia home” played through the air—bringing a smile to everyone’s face.

Rideau Canal

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What was the last picture you took? Tell us the story behind it. (No story behind the photo? Make one up, or choose the last picture you took that had one.)

We have just returned from six weeks in Canada, where we took literally thousands of photos. It was a fun time. However a little disappointing as the lack of snow meant many of the things we had planned were not doable. Our last planned event was to skate on the Rideau Canal—the world’s longest skateway. It opened 4 days after we left, so we only got to see the preparation and dream.

 

Oh and experience our coldest temperatures ever, -18 feels like -29. The other problem we had to content with was the frostbite warning. We were attempting to take photos but had to limit them because our fingers were going numb and the cameras couldn’t cope with the cold.  One passerby heard our accents as we were taking our last photos and stopped to advise us get inside as quickly as possible. Our solution as it was a bright sunny day despite the cold, was to stop taking photos regularly and as long as we were warm to continue exploring what Ottawa had to show us.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/moment-in-time/