Wednesday, October 29, 2014

 

Chinese Gardens Again

Here's some more photos from our visit to the Chinese tribute Garden at Lambing Flat a month ago. Actually, the first photo is of a thing that you pass on the way from Canberra to Young. You go through a small town called Wombat, and apart from the pub the most obvious thing is a large boulder with a statue of a wombat on it. Naturally, I just had to get a photo with that. The entrance to the formal Chinese garden is through a gate guarded by two stone lions. How could a small bear pass through without climbing on the lions and playing "go on, chew me if you can". Mum says that I should be more careful just in case I pick on a real lion by mistake. One of the things that impressed me was the way that rocks are used in the garden. The arrangements really are art. Mind you, to a small bear they are also great things to climb and play on. Look how high I managed to get on the tallest rock spire; not bad for a short-legged critter like me. It really is great to see a place that saw so much anger and violence back in the gold rush days now a quiet and peaceful garden for all to enjoy.

Labels: ,


Monday, October 20, 2014

 

Hospital Hoist

Dad was in hospital all last week. The doctors tried to cut a nasty thing called a cancerous prostate out of him. They couldn't do it because the nasty thing was too close to major nerves and the risk was too great. However, they checked and cleared everything they could and when he recovers from the surgery they will plant radioactive seeds in the prostate and zap it that way. I hope it works because I need my Dad, he helps me get into (and out of) lots of interesting mischief. For example, have you ever played with the controls for a hospital bed? You can get it into all sorts of interesting shapes, some of which Dad wouldn't let me try because he couldn't bend without yelling. One thing we did do was to see how high we could get the bed above the floor. We were up to about 2.5 m when a nurse caught us and scolded Dad. Anyhow, he is home now and slowly recovering. I am waiting to see if he glows in the dark when the radio treatment starts. Maybe he will grow big, green and mean and I will have to call him Incredible Hulk instead of what I call him now (Incredible Bulk).

Labels: , ,


Sunday, October 12, 2014

 

I Am 12 Years Old

It's my birthday, and I am 12. Well, my birthday is actually next week while Dad is still in hospital, so we celebrated yesterday. The best thing about birthdays are presents and I usually score pretty well, so these yellow packages looked very interesting. The first one was one of those presents that only Mums think are OK. Slippers! And bunny slippers at that! No 12 year old small bear or boy can even pretend to be excited by that. Hmmmm... the bottoms of the slippers are big and flat and the right shape for wakeboards. Now, if I got some of Dad's plastic stuff I could turn them into great water-ski thingies. If I can ever manage to avoid Mum's eagle eye and get into the water that is. Second package, WOW, a small-bear sized iPad with a stylus for drawing and taking messages. That's more like it, and it completes my iThings (iPad, iPod and iPhone). Of course it makes it harder for Santa to think of what to bring me at Christmas, but that's his problem.

Labels: ,


Friday, October 10, 2014

 

New Zealand Buildings

So many pictures from so many trips. The only way to show them is to do them 4 at a time. Still, it will be a while before we go overseas again, so there is a slight chance of catching up. I love old buildings, and we saw some beauties on our New Zealand cruise in 2012. The top images are of the railway station in Dunedin. It was opened in 1906 and was NZ's busiest railway station for many years, but today it is pretty quiet apart from tourist trains. The station is now home to the NZ Sports Hall of Fame and the Otago Art Museum. Both inside and out, the architecture is spectacular and you should put it on your bucket list for NZ. In the Botanic Gardens at Wellington there are two observatories. The lower left image is of Carter Observatory, which was the main research observatory in NZ from 1941. Nowadays it's focus is more on public astronomy education as the lights of Wellington make the sky too bright for research work. The older observatory is the Dominion Observatory, built in 1907 for the task of calculating NZ Standard Time and tying it into the worldwide timekeeping network. The astronomical work finished early in the 20th century and the building is now private offices. From 1916 it has also been a seismological observatory, the seismometers being housed in one of the underground bunkers of the old Garden Battery. The building actually covers part of the battery and some of the guns are displayed nearby. The fun way to get to the gardens, observatories and battery is to take the cable car from central Wellington; search the blog for my photos of that ride.

Labels: , ,


Tuesday, October 07, 2014

 

Floriade Again

How the time whizzes past. It doesn't seem like a year since I posted photos of last year's Floriade. For those who don't know, Floriade is the big flower show held each Spring in Canberra. The flowers are mostly bulbs and natives. Mum drags Dad and I along each year; I kind of like it, but Dad says that he saw flowers like that last year so why go again? Sometimes I think he is just a natural grouch, but he has his uses. The acres of flowers do look pretty and provide a good place for small bears to hide in. There were other places for small bears and kids to play this year. There were 6 or so cubby houses of different shapes on display, being auctioned at the end of Floriade. I really liked the one like a mushroom. It had 2 storeys and a slide down from the top one. I had to fight off a batch of schoolgirls to get a clear go on the slide. There were also a couple of giant snails. Once again I had to shoo small kids away before I got a chance to ride on one. Actually, if you search back in the blog you will find photos of another giant snail who lives over the border in Queanbeyan. Despite grumpy Dad, I really like our days each year at Floriade.

Labels: ,


 

My New iMAC

You may have been wondering where I've been for the last 3 weeks. Well, it has been a bit of a rough period. My old computer has been slowly dying for the last few months, getting slower and "wobbly". So it had to be replaced. Now, what would you replace an iMAC with? A bigger and better iMAC of course. So here's my new 27" one. Faster and more efficient all round so the blog continues!!! The rougher part of the break in posting is that Dad was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and is being operated on next Monday, so I may be a bit erratic with posts for a while. Now, on with learning the new ways this computer can do things.

Labels:


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?