9 days

...and it feels like so much longer.  Time passes before you know it and to be fair we have been so busy.  We have bought a car.  Got our Australian driving licences.  Looked inside 6 houses and discounted them all!  4 more over the next 2 days.  Andy has had an interview - waiting to hear.  Been to the city on the ferry, car & train.  Ferry will be my mode of choice for the future.  Been to numerous parks.  Been to Curl Curl beach.  Visited Manly and had Fish & Chips and Ben & Jerry's - great!  Registered with Centrelink.  Not got our air freight - awaiting clearance from customs.  Had our container delayed again - not expected until 10/9 and then 10-14 days clearance.  Skyped.  A lot.

Been stressed.  Short with the children.  Apologised and tried to reason that this transition is hard on all of us.  Spent an awful lot of time in the car.  Realised that as of 14/9 we are homeless.  Been homesick.

So much has happened and we have had an amazing and life changing time.  The best way to show a little of us:

This is in Singapore.  Finn & Isla got an awful lot of attention.  This happened when we visited with Finn in 2008.  I think it's the very large blue and green eyes.  While they played at times there were around 15 locals watching and wanting to talk to them and take their pictures!  They dealt with it very well.  I started to feel like a minor celebrity!

This is some of the crowd they drew!

Finn was so excited to see the bridge after all this time looking at pictures.

We took a walk around inside - what a view and such a beautiful day.

I had to bribe Finn to sit for this one - what's a little chocolate between friends....?

Contemplative.  This view is iconic for Finn in his vision of Sydney & in fact Australia for the last 9 months.

Lane Cove National park - in amongst the Kookaburras, cockatoos & lorikeets.

My little explorer.

Boys love sticks.  And girls do too!

Long anticipated beach time.

New Crocs with a jibbit each.  Much excitement.  Finn picked a racing car and Isla a butterfly or futtfy - her words.

Footprints in the sand.

Good times.

A few people surfing and one particularly brave swimmer in his speedos!

Sibling love!

Getting clean after another busy day.  'Get the camera, Daddy' Finn said!

Hello Sydney!

More soon....

A few pics of our stop in Singapore

Enjoying the BBQ on the terrace at the hotel.

Dipping a toe in the stream at the Singapore zoo

Do they look hot? Ha ha - we all were!

Cheesy

Gorgeous Andy

In the tropics

All tuckered out!

Gorgeous girl - she's only little!

No way was she getting any closer and Finn wasn't even getting that close!

Singapore, baby

We said our goodbyes for now, had a party, cried and flew out of Heathrow Airport on Wednesday 18th August 2010.

In short:  nothing prepared me for how hard it would be to leave our family and friends.  Heart wrenching 4 days of emotions.  I feel guilty.  I feel sad.  I feel excited.  It's hard to quantify and accept really.  

It was a 12 hour flight to Singapore and the children were so good.  Best flight we have had with them.

We have tried to get into the time difference as quickly as possible but nothing could convince us to get out of bed before midday yesterday - we all slept for 14 hours and it was so needed!

I haven't even landed in Australia yet and already I feel a little homesick.  It feels so different to being on holiday.  In 2004 we honeymooned in Oz for 6 weeks and I felt fine.  I was gone around 36 hours this time before I had a real wave of homesickness.  It's been OK today and I'm sure it's just while I adjust to this life changing path we are on.

We have done some amazing things in Singapore over the last few days which include:

• Night Safari - Amazing atmosphere and all 4 of us ate some wonderful authentic Asian food - I will get crab girl from Isla!  Saw lots of nocturnal animals from a tram during the evening.  All home and in bed by midnight and the children were so good...until the last hour! - it was a very late night for them though.
• Duck tour - road and then river cruise (ex American aquatic military vehicle)
• Bus tour - a great way to see Singapore on an open top bus.  Needless to say Finn & Isla loved it!
• Botanical Gardens - amazing, lush, tropical rainforest type gardens with fruit trees, bananas and orchids growing.  Singapore is so wet and humid that plant life is incredibly prolific, the trees all have lichens and ferns growing on them.  We visited the children's garden which had water fountains, bridges, tree houses and a waterfall.  We stripped the children off and they spent a good 45 mins splashing in the fountains!
• 2010 Youth Olympic Games - as an aside, these are being held here at the moment and the athletes are competing in the Suntec Centre next to our hotel.  They are also preparing for the Formula 1 race in September - the track is on the existing streets.
• Marina Bay Sands -We visited this amazing hotel which is made from 3 towers and has a huge ocean liner style ship on the roof which houses the pool and the restaurants.  It's only just finished - but what a sight it is.  Makes me think Singapore are really trying to put themselves on the map - it looks like something you would see in Dubai.
• Chinatown & Hawker Market - great place to walk around and watch the locals.  Or actually be watched by the locals as we were really in the minority being Westerners.  It was very liberating.  The 4 of us had lunch and drinks in the hawker market for around £5.
• Buddhist Temple - we strolled around here (after I had put a shawl over my shoulders) and it really was one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen.  Buddhas everywhere - as you would expect.  It made me think about how lucky Finn & Isla are at this young age to see such parts of the world.  I hope living near Asia will help to make this sort of thing more accessible to them.
• BBQ night - the Pan Pacific hotel do a BBQ night on the terrace with salads and cuts of meat and fish that you request to be BBQ'd for you.  Lovely feeling sitting in the tropical heat with tall cold drinks, good food and the sun setting around you.  Tall skyscrapers for a view as the lights come on and the dusk draws in.  The terrace is on the 4th floor of the hotel and has hundreds of fairy lights sprinkled through the plants.  I think we may have caused a little trauma at the sight of our 2 though as they are not the tidiest of eaters!  The staff were very attentive though and Finn & Isla generally took the adulation well.
• Malls galore - They are all over the place - you can walk from one mall to another under ground and not come up to the surface.  They are all air conditioned.  I have never seen shopping like it.  Extensive.  The only problem is that we came over with 108kg of luggage and our allowance is 100kg.  We were lucky to not get charged at Heathrow and Andy has totally banned me from buying anything.  Gutted.
• Temperature - OMG - 28-32 degrees - which is fine, but 80% humidity.  Now that is humid.  I knew it would be like this as we have been twice before, however, the climate is exhausting.  What's more, I often see the locals walking around in jeans and a long sleeved shirt - even someone in a jumper earlier!  I am in the bare minimum and everything is still sweating!  In fact, all 4 of us are constantly sweating when we are outside.  It is not a good look.  Plus, Isla and I have a tendency to frizz.  Nice.

Finn & Isla have very large green/blue eyes and this always pulls a crowd in this part of the world.  People want to look at them, touch them and even have their picture taken with them.  They don't see eyes like it very often and to top it off Isla has gorgeous corkscrew curls - even more so in this humidity!  The children swing between enjoying the attention and hiding with shyness!  It's quite amusing.

So for the next few days we plan to go to the zoo tomorrow and the Island of Sentosa on Monday and then we fly out to Sydney on Monday night, where the weather is forecast to be sunny, dry, not humid (!) and around 18 degrees.  Sounds wonderful!

Good news, Andy has an interview on Thursday morning, one on Friday morning and is seeing a recruiter Friday afternoon.  Which means that the children and I have all day Friday to occupy ourselves.  I'm thinking a trip to the beach.....

3 sleeps

Time is slipping away and I can't slow it down, which I can't make happen and I can't speed it up which I would also like.  It's like catch 22.  I'm excited to go but sad to go at the same time.  Bitter sweet.

It seems like I don't have time to blog at the moment.  I have been pretty bad for the last 6 weeks as we genuinely never have enough time.

Today marked our open house/leaving do.  So many near and dear people came and I am so touched.  It was lovely to see them but so very emotionally exhausting as well.  I feel a little like I have been run over tonight.  Mum arranged a banner which was amazing and made me cry straight away, and that is how we started the day!  BFF, Bronnie, made me a scrap book of our lives together until this point.  Cried like a baby.  She had put so much thought and effort into it.  BFF, Charms, wrote a poem about our lives and attempted to sing it to the tune of Bobby Brown, "two can play that game" (long story..!).  I cried more and asked her to just read it!  

Family, friends, children, they were all there.  Amazing, emotional, sad and happy day. The trouble is that because we were so busy we didn't take many pictures at all.  There were around 70-80 visitors which was amazing and it was hard to keep up at times!

Sports car fun!

Best girls forever.

Us.

Packing tomorrow.  Travel to London on Tuesday for a night in a hotel.  Fly Wednesday.  O.M.G!

M.I.A

That's us.  Missing in action.  We have been on holiday.  Again.  I say holiday when really I mean away from home doing what we normally do with 2 small children and not remotely relaxing or holiday like!  I'm not complaining.  I love, love, love travelling and exploring with Finn & Isla however holidays just become very different.

We went away with one of the best girls and her son.  Cottage, 4 bedrooms (totally required!) and a hot tub on the veranda that the children worshipped each day.  Finn & Isla are really much more confident in the water now after we spent all that time in the pool in Centre Parcs and I'm really pleased.  Nippers here we come!

We visited the Eden Project.  Twice.  It was really good as they have so much on for the children during the holidays.  Padstow, speed boat trip and Rick Steins Fish & Chips = fun & yum!

All in all very good.  Came home for a rest though.

We are off again this weeked to the Edinburgh Tattoo and have tickets for Charlie & Lola and Stick Man at the Fringe.  1 hour flight and a great hotel in an amazing location which we have stayed in before.  All good!

Finn & Isla are so funny at the moment.  They have recently started talking to each other and not using me as a mediator and Finn can ask Isla something and she will respond to him.  It is so very cute!  

I watch them start to interact and my heart skips a beat and I gulp when I realise how very lucky we are to have such lovely well rounded children.  Don't get me wrong - they have their moments.  They can be naughty, mischevious and disobedient etc...but they are so amazing!  I am doing my best to make them polite, observant, interesting, interested and embracing children.  It's a pleasure to watch them grow.  They change each day and I desperately want to slow it down.  ...or have a another one.....!  Did I say that out loud?

With this in mind I have started looking at schools again this weekend as I feel it is important for them both to have some structure and learning in their lives when we arrive.  I have found a Steiner School which looks really lovely and there is an open day in September on a Sunday.  We will be in Sydney and we are free that weekend so we are going to go and take a look! 

Finn left his nursery the week before last as they broke up for the Summer holidays.  It was such an amazing start for him and did wonders for his confidence.  I hope we can find them somewhere just as lovely.  

I haven't posted any pictures for ages and I really must but I have 3500 pics on my camera to sort through and do a little post processing before they are ready.  We had a little hiccup with the compact flash card (and nearly lost them all) but thankfully Andy managed to get them off and on to the laptop.  I have such a problem with storage at the moment (our container with our main computer equipment is at sea) that I had been leaving my pictures on the card in the camera.  That will teach me!

My name is Andy, and I am an addict

I think I have a problem... I have an addiction.  It’s not causing a problem yet but some time in the future I know this is going to cause a rift between me and the rest of my family.  I have a dark secret... I’m addicted to Steam sales :-(

For those that don’t know, Steam is an online game platform developed by Valve software (one of my favourite developers/publishers).  For a price you can download games directly to your PC and play them, but what’s more you’re buying the right to download and install to as many different PCs as you like whenever you like.  It’s really, really convenient and when it’s linked to Paypal it only takes about two clicks to buy something (always fatal)... which is where the sales come in.


Every now and again (most recently Christmas and the Summer holidays) Steam has a massive sale.  Almost everything is reduced, sometimes by as much as 80%.  Who couldn’t resist money-saving offers like that?  Certainly not I.  Since November I’ve bought and paid for 24 games.  The galling thing is that due to our emigration, work, studying, family, life, et al I haven’t had a chance to play any of them yet, and in fact my PC has been in a container since January!  They’re all stored up waiting for some undetermined point in the future, when everything is unpacked and all the important tasks (find a house, job, kindy, supermarket) have been done and I can sit down and think ‘Right, nothing needs doing, the kids are asleep, Sarah is otherwise engaged enjoying the sights and sounds of our new life... time to play a computer game’ – which you know is never going to happen.  They are going to sit there and sit there being picked at here and there and will always be taunting me.

To make matters worse I’m the kind of person that likes to stick with a particular game until it’s finished.  I don’t like to jump around between different games so I’m going to have to come up with some kind of ranking plan to decide what gets played first.  I know, it’s a major conundrum up there with the likes of Fermat’s last theorem.

At least I’ve been quite picky, IMHO.  There’s no rubbish in there, it’s all quality stuff (although some is quite old).  For those that are interested, here’s the complete list...

Nov 24, Plants vs Zombies (£3.49)

Nov 26, Osmos (£2.00)

Nov 27, Star Wars: KOTOR, Geometry Wars (£4.73)

Nov 28, Left 4 Dead (£6.24)

Nov 30, Evil Genius, Mirrors's Edge (£4.98)

Dec 29, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor (£2.49)

Jan 03, Bioshock, Red Alert 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R:Shadow of Chernobyl (£5.49) - that was a good day!

May 09, Civ 4 plus Warlords, Beyond the Sword, Colonization (£6.25)

Jun 16, Command & Conquer 3 plus Kane's Wrath (£14.98)

Jun 19, Mass Effect (£3.24)

Jun 26, GTA: Episodes from Liberty City (£9.99)

Jul 02, Star Wars:Empire at War Gold, Thief: Deadly Shadows (£3.74)

24 games (including addons and extras) totalling £67.62.  At least my addiction isn’t going to put us all on the streets.

Andy