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.^^.