Feeding a tiger

Lots happened!! After having a fun Christmas at home, Sha ended up taking me to hospital. Anyway, we got up early the next day to go to Canberra by train. Beautiful journey. Kangaroos bounced alongside the train! The weather cleared up as we got away from Sydney.

When we arrived in Canberra, we checked into our hotel and then walked down to the lakeside (with a bit of a detour as I got us lost) and went to the National Museum of Australia. This is an interesting museum. We watched a film on the history of Australia in which the entire seats rotated around. In the evening we went to a Sri Lankan restaurant that seems to keep winning the "Canberra restaurant of the year". Very good!!

Yesterday we had a very arty day. During the day we went to the National Gallery of Australia to see the exhibition entitled "Masterpieces from Paris". The exhibit contained post-impressionistic paintings from the Musee D'Orsay. These paintings included La Nuit Etoilée by van Gogh along with his self-portrait. Sha is now very excited about seeing even more art in Paris. In the evening we went to see "Bright Star" a film about John Keats (oh ... in complete contrast, I should say that we watched Avatar in 3D a few days ago - that was an incredible experience).

Today was amazing. Sha and I went on the ZooVenture tour at Canberra Zoo. During this tour we got to help the zoo keepers feed the animals. Sha went first feeding a huge Bengal tiger. We also got to feed white lions (so beautiful), brown bears, a cougar, otters, giraffes ("deer with long necks" in Chinese) and a big antelope. We also got to hold a snake (the first time that Sha had done that ... in fact, it was the first time she'd fed a tiger as well!) and stroke a dingo. A wonderful experience!!

wo mang

I've just finished Chinese Mandarin 1 (for beginners). We learnt about food. The teacher got very excited and told us that in winter one should eat "snake with chicken and cat". Apparently this is a delicacy. Also one should try the great soups that include "bear paw simmered for 7 days" which is "hard to find" as it is illegal. Anyway, I impressed the teacher with my knowledge of dumplings (jiao zi) and really did enjoy the lessons.

Last weekend was wonderful. Really wonderful. Sha came around and we decorated the house with Christmas decorations. We have a tree (which is still missing the pulsar that will sit on top), lots of lights and a huge amount of tinsel. We had some Christmas crackers, but they may have been damaged in the flood. errr .... we managed to flood the kitchen with bath water (don't ask how!). This caused a short circuit in the electric stove which subsequently (and impressively) produced a large number of sparks and little fires before blowing the fuses. It now doesn't work.

Leaving the receding flood waters behind I drove, with Jonathan, Rabbit and Andrew to Parkes on Monday. We all woke around 4am to help run a PULSE@Parkes session from Cardiff with students from Whitchurch school! We had a moderately relaxing day at Parkes before getting up early again to drive back to Sydney this morning. We managed the drive in just over 4.5 hours which is a record for me. Tomorrow we have astrofest and then a gravitational wave meeting on Friday. Lots to do ....

A long time since the last update

I've been really bad at keeping my blog up to date. Since our Tasmania trip Sha and I have been doing lots of things. We went to see the Egyptian and dinosaur exhibitions at the Australia Museum. That was fun! Dick, Barbara, Sha, Meng Yu and I also went for a hike around Sydney harbour. We got very wet.

Off to Parkes tomorrow until Wednesday and then lots of meetings

I'm exhausted but happy.^^.

Some more photos

Just a few extra photos ...

Xiao hou hou and da zhu zhu go on holiday: day 4

Day 4 was our last day in Tasmania :( We woke early, had a rather slow breakfast in the town (in the only cafe that was open) and went to the internet cafe because I'd forgotten to print out our return tickets and so didn't know when the flight left. We visited Launceston Gorge. I finally managed to convince Sha to go on the chair lift - the longest single span chair lift in

the World. This chairlift brought us to the edge of the gorge where we walked around some spectacular flowers, watched the peacocks, had coffee and found a big blue-tongued lizard before walking back over the swing-bridge across the gorge. We drove back into the town and went shopping (where I bought Sha her first English book - My

Family and Other Animals - to make up for parking the car a few miles from the shops), had lunch and finally drove to the airport. Sha lost her boarding pass.

The flight back was fun and then, after a big argument with our taxi driver (which Sha enjoyed), the holiday was over. The holiday was great!

Xiao hou hou and da zhu zhu go on holiday: day 3

Sha got attacked by lots of animals on day 3. We also spotted three different echidnas. It was a good day. This blog entry is going to have lots of pictures of animals. After getting up early and eating a huge cooked breakfast we headed straight off to the Bichino wildlife park. This is a wonderful zoo! It is a beautiful zoo. The animals have large enclosures (including the snakes) and the zoo is definitely rather hands-on.

Sha decided that the Tasmanian devils were rather cute and so thought that it would be a good idea to dangle her camera in their enclosure. We can now report that a devil can just about 0.5m directly upwards whilst showing an awful lot of teeth! Luckily the camera survived. Then we went and fed some kangaroos. At this time a pelican flew in and decided that Sha was edible. We later fed the pelican some fish. Sha and I then went into a section of farmyard animals to feed the goats. I must say that watching Sha run around with a big goat chasing her was rather funny!! Sha probably doesn't agree!! Then she went off to feed a kangaroo. It grabbed hold of her hand and wouldn't let go. Obviously animals like Sha!

We saw a quoll!

Then we continued driving north. We headed up towards St Helens with a few stops en-route to search for more shells on the various white-sand beaches that we drove past. We stopped for pizza in St Helens before turning West and driving inland across the mountains. Wow! The road was windy. It was a long way. The views were spectacular. We stopped off in a rainforest to go for a walk and found a beautiful waterfall. We spotted echidnas. The road kept winding its way up and down the mountains.

We stopped in Derby, but the tea shop was closed and we'd missed the recent "Duck racing". Nancy from Pioneer had won. The duck from Derby came 3rd. We went along some dirt roads trying to find a museum of the Chinese tin miners that had been in the area. We couldn't find the museum.

Finally we drove into Launceston. It's a fun town. We found a motel and then walked into the town and discovered that Launceston has plastic seats in the street that speak to you. We found a Chinese restaurant. Apparently, according to a website that I've just found, this restaurant is a place to "Discover the delights of the Orient". To my great delight and to Sha's digust we discovered that all the shops were closed. We ambled around the town watching all sorts of strange people in Halloween costumes, found what definitely was a street full of ghosts, and then headed back to the hotel.