London Singapore - Sentosa Island On our last day in Singapore (Thursday 10th July) we headed to Sentosa Island to see the famous pink dolphins. They really ARE pink, but only underneath.It was an enjoyable final day out before heading home. Jasper, Ella and Karina posing for me. Mum, Dad and I posing for
London Interlude in Singapore We’ve been having a very relaxing few days doing more tourist things in Singapore. On Saturday Karina and I left the kids with their Grandma and Grandpa and went to have a look at both the Arab District and Little India for a browse. Karina standing on Arab street.
London Tioman Island We arrived in Singapore on Sunday evening, spent Monday recovering from the Journey, then got up at 5.30AM to set off for Malaysia and Tioman Island on the Tuesday morning with Grandma and Grandpa.Tioman Island is 56km off the coast of Malaysia and was voted by Time Magazine
London Ready to go and on our way home Well, a little over 10 months ago, we set off from Melbourne “London Bound”. Now we’ve left London and are now bound for Melbourne (at least it’s not Botany Bay!)Here’s Jasper back in August looking after our luggage before we left. Here’s Jasper and Ella
London Plane trip from hell, well maybe not THAT bad We asked for an upgrade weeks ago, but didn’t get it. Tim is a Platinum frequent flyer and has hundreds of thousands of points, but getting 4 Business Class seats together was always a wish rather then a likely reality. Fortunately we were all seated close to eachother (a
London Last Day At Fircroft School Well after 10 months in London, here we are. It’s Saturday morning and we leave at 10PM this evening. Yesterday was the kids last day at school and it turned out to be far more emotional than we expected, particularly for Ella.Both kids received lovely cards from their
London Ich bin ein Berliner I returned yesterday from a final wrap up meeting for our project in Berlin. Unusually, partially because this was the last meeting, we had time for some organised activities. I was really impressed with Berlin as a city, it’s got a fascinating history, both ancient and through to more
London Fircroft chick visits fire fighters Ella won a prize through school recently for designing a poster for smoke alarms. The winners get to spend the morning in the local fire station, so Ella headed off today for her prize. She was the only student there today as we’re leaving London soon and they had
London Where the Wombles live We went to Wimbledon Common on Saturday, partly because I had gone there during the week and wanted to show Tim and the kids, and partly because they were holding their annual village fun fair. The suburb of Wimbledon was starting to look ready for the tennis – they had laid
London Where the Wombles live We went to Wimbledon Common on Saturday, partly because I had gone there during the week and wanted to show Tim and the kids, and partly because they were holding their annual village fun fair. The suburb of Wimbledon was starting to look ready for the tennis – they had laid
London The boxes have gone Well today marks something of a milestone, we’ve packed and shipped our boxes that we are bringing home. It’s a little scary to think that 10 months ago we arrived with only 5 suitcases (actually 2 suitcases, 1 large carry bag, 1 suit bag and a back-pack), and
London A day at Brighton It was a spur of the moment thing……we had to get out of London and visiting Stonehenge was going to be a 3 hour journey, so we opted for the sunny seaside at Brighton, merely one hour away.We LOVED it! We spent the first 2 hours on the
London Ella's International Dress-up Day Last Thursday was international dress-up day at school, where the kids are supposed to come in an international costume. Jasper wore Billabong shorts and a Tank Top, but Ella wanted to put more effort in. Tooting is the Pakistani capital of London, so Karina had no problems finding this costume
London Greenwich River Trip One of our friends here had suggested that a trip to Greenwhich by boat made a great day out. With fine weather yesterday, we decided to do it. It was a great suggestion and we had a fantastic time. The nice thing about being on the Thames is that it’
London Flying over the ice cap I was in San Jose, California last week for work. Great trip, good company and lots of work done, plus we finished a day early. From London, you fly up and over Greenland to get to San Francisco, then we hired a car to drive the 40 minutes south. I
London Pedestrians have priority Another thing we have noticed while we have been in London is that pedestrians are very well respected by drivers. Most times if I am waiting to cross a road, the cars will stop and flash their lights, or the drivers will gesture for me to cross the road – even
London Spring in England The English always seem slightly obsessive about spring.If I mention Bill Oddie to the average Australian, the immediate response will be “The Goodies”, but to your average English man, Bill Oddie is the somewhat obsessive bird watcher, still with beard (although a lot greyer) who hosts “Springwatch” and enthuses
London I've forgotten what our frypan looks like Weird feeling. I was just about to cook dinner for tonight, and was looking at the scarred and scratched frying pan we have used in England, when my mind wandered…….what did my frypan in Ivanhoe look like?And I really can’t remember! I can’t even remember if
London Ella wants to make some pocket-money... So she has listed one of her paintings on e-bay. If it goes well there might be some more. Link to listing on ebay in the UK
Baby Web Baby Web comes of age... Back when internet connections were done by modem and web pages were hand-crafted HTML, before there was really a thing called a blog, we started a web site to record our experiences during pregnancy and leading to Ella’s birth. Since then, I’ve had a bunch of HTML files
London Did we just go back in time? You might notice that the archives now stretch back to August 2005.With only 5 weeks to go now until we leave, we’ve been starting to think about how we might use the blog going forward. In fact we’ve enjoyed it so much that we are going to
London Weekend with Grandpa Grandpa popped in for a couple of nights this weekend on his return journey from Germany. We were all very excited as he’s the first family member to see where we’re living in London. Jasper was so excited after he arrived that he very nearly wet his pants!
London My arms hurt...... I spent time at the school yesterday preparing for a working bee that’s coming up on Friday. Four hours of sweeping and scraping moss off the bitumen. And now my arms hurt.Haven’t done so much physical work for months! An ‘after’ shot of the areaThis photo may
London Kids' Top 5 Things We recently posted our Top ten lists (what we’ll miss from UK, what we’re looking forward to). At dinner last night we asked Ella and Jasper what their Top Five were: Jasper Top 5 Miss from UK1. Fircroft School2. Our London house3. My friends at Fircroft4. Working (he
London Kew Gardens It’s been now over a week of wonderful weather here in London, averaging around 20 – 25 degrees every single day. Ironically, so many of the shops don’t cope in even this very mild heat, with one of our favourite cafes so warm inside that we can’t go
