Concert

I did it!! Got through the Carnival of the Animals on piano on 'cello. It's all Maureen's fault. She came around demanding that I play piano 2 with her and the Beecroft orchestra. The piano part is totally impossible. She ended up in hospital for a few days because of the first part. I was also asked to play The Swan. That has high notes. Anyway, amazingly ... it went well! I hacked my way through the piano music and got lots of nice comments about the Swan ... such as "I never knew Saint Saens wrote that ... I thought Tchaikovsky did". Sha, Chen Ding, Jessica, Bob and Dominic all turned up!

The concert also included a marimba concerto that was superb! We also played Walton's Facade with David Ellyard as a narrator. I've just discovered his rather interesting webpage!

Maureen, Sha and I went out afterwards for a beer.

Great fun.

Albert and Novi's wedding

I'm always behind on this blog. Last weekend was exciting. We went to the wedding of Albert Teoh and Novi! I'm sure that quite a few people reading this blog know Albert! Sha and I started the day by gutting some fish that Yu Meng had brought around (apparently his landlord had gone fishing and caught heaps of fish). Sha then cooked an amazing fish dish. On the way to the bus stop we stopped by the largest mushroom that I've ever seen!

We arrived early into the city, had some coffee and then ambled through China Town to the Bodhikusuma Buddhist and Meditation Centre where the wedding was being held.

It was great to meet up with Albert's parents again! I've just discovered that "Theravada (pronounced — more or less — "terra-VAH-dah"), the "Doctrine of the Elders," is the school of Buddhism that draws its scriptural inspiration from the Tipitaka, or Pali canon, which scholars generally agree contains the earliest surviving record of the Buddha's teachings." We all sat on cushions on the floor and were provided with a book of the text (like a service book in a Church). The text was in Pali: "a dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan that was probably spoken in central India during the Buddha's time." Dick and I gave up trying to achieve inner peace whilst sitting on the cushions and started to study the language. The help guide to the language was interesting: "`bh' are pronounced with `h' sound immediately following, as in blockhead, pighead, fathead, loghead, etc."

We had been told by Albert beforehand not to wear short skirts in case we upset the monks. They came in at the start of the ceremony and sat on a raised platform on the side of the hall. Then the various family members arrived. Novi's family is from Indonesia and so it was a very multi-cultural wedding!

It's going to be hard to describe the ceremony. The lady in charge read the wedding ceremony and chanted from the book. Albert, Novi and their parents lit candles and provided gifts to the monks etc. We all got splashed with water from the monks. The vows were interesting. Albert said something similar to "Towards my wife I undertake to love and respect her, be kind and considerate, be faithful and present gifts to please her." Afterwards Novi vowed something like "she'll look after their earnings and make sure that there are no arguments between the two families"!

Oh dear ... I hope that if Albert reads this blog he'll actually be able to say exactly how the ceremony was carried out. I recall that he and Novi got wrapped up in a blanket. The monks chanted producing an amazing sound. Rings were exchanged. Actually, it seemed an interesting mix of a Western-style wedding (white dress, rings, the words of the Australian legal wedding ceremony ...) with the East (incense, chanting, monks ...)

After the ceremony finished we all went downstairs where the room had been set up for a huge banquet. It was great. We chatted with the various people on our table, congratulated Novi and Albert, listened to the speeches and a few songs, watched a powerpoint presentation(! - typical computer guy) that Albert and Novi had prepared about themselves (!) and then ... it was over. A great wedding!!

On the way home, Sha discovered a Japanese gaming place where, in theory, you could win lots of cuddly, cartoon characters. Even with a careful scientific study of the machines, I didn't succeed in getting her one.

I'd better stop now. Sha's cooking fish with chilli. Actually I think that it's more like chilli with a little fish. Today we're having a rest. Tomorrow Sha's coming along to the Beecroft concert to hear me attempt the Carnival of the Animals on piano and cello!

Shandong Accent

I'm being teased for having a strong "Shandong accent". Apart from the teasing I had a great weekend. On Friday, I met up with Sha and Joanna in China town to go to a market that I didn't know existed. It was great. We started off eating chicken bones which were chicken bones. Then we had the most amazing fish with some part of a pig. Wonderful!!

On Saturday, Sha, Ding, Yu Meng and I went to Manly. We did the standard trip of taking the boat from Meadowbank (only Sha and I were brave enough the stand outside in the wind and watch the Qantas A380 fly overhead - we'll be on it very soon!) to Circular Quay and then taking the Manly ferry. We paddled in the water, had a huge fish and chips lunch, watched a Scottish/Aussie wedding and then walked up the cliffs. Wonderful (apart from the sun burn)! Sha found another large lizard. Sha ate spinach noodles for dinner.

On Sunday, I rehearsed for a concert that will take place tomorrow. We're playing the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with an old man who's always dreamed of playing it for his 70th birthday! I hope that it goes well ... he plays really well when he doesn't get nervous. I'm nervous for tonight. I'm going back to the Beecroft orchestra to play the piano part in the carnival of the animals (+ the solo cello part in the swan). Arghhh .... I haven't practiced enough.

Work is going very well!! We have another pulse@parkes run tomorrow.

33 years old

I'm now old. Very old. But my birthday was fun. Thanks to all for the birthday greetings (particularly to Alexander). I received some great presents from around the World. Including a package full of jammie dodgers, custard creams, spotted dick and much more from Emma. Sha likes the jammie dodgers which I have discovered contain "raspberry flavoured plum jam".

We stayed up to midnight to celebrate the arrival of my birthday. We stayed up by watching the original Italian job. What a wonderful film! Then I opened my presents and was given a wonderful surprise by Sha of a birthday card representing each month that we'd known each other! She also gave me the DVD of Planet Earth and a new wallet. After work, we met up in Ashfield to eat a huge crab and for Sha to pick up the amazing chocolate cake that she'd ordered for me!!

I enjoyed my birthday!

The crab was "lively" before it was boiled.

These photos do make me look a bit strange. I did partake of a "da tsingtao pijou" which may explain a bit.

An exciting weekend!

What a weekend! I'm writing this blog entry on Sha's computer and the font is huge. Everything is also in Chinese so I'm not sure that this is going to work! Oh dear, a warning message has come up - I have no idea what it means.

Anyway, last Friday I rented a car. It was very small. Actually, I took the entire day off, picked up Sha's Spanish visa, went to see a huge crocodile in Darling Harbour, met a large dai shu and then I picked up the car. Vikram was staying at home and so we all randomly decided to drive to Dee Why beach. Why not? Sha ate fish-and-chips. Vikram and I were healthy. Then we drove home again.
On Saturday, we met Ding and Yu Meng for a drive to the Royal National Park. Apart from getting a bit lost the drive was fun. We headed off down little, windy roads in the national park until we found the Otford Lookout. On the way to the start of the proper walk, Sha found a little path leading down the cliff edge and, to Yu Meng's dismay, insisted that we took that path instead. It was fun! We saw lots of butterflies, lizards and birds. At the bottom of the cliff we ended up at a beautiful beach where I paddled in the water and picked up sea-urchins whilst Sha tried to teach a young boy how to surf in a rock pool (Sha can't swim at all). Ding took about 1000 photographs.

We then walked all the way back up again in the heat. At the top we collapsed in the cafe for a well deserved break, but Yu Meng amazingly disappeared through the cafe wall when a huge blue tongue lizard came to join us. Sha loved the lizard. Apparently it was 23 years old.




We decided it was too hot to stay out of the shade and so drove inland into the forest. We stopped to do a 2-hour walk through the rainforest. It was beautiful. .... oh ... the warning message that I got earlier apparently was telling me that the battery was about to run out ... Anyway, Yu Meng's trip didn't end so well as Sha tripped over an enormous Goanna(nearly stepped on it before finding - Sha). It must have been about 2 metres long. It rushed past Yu Meng and shot up a branch of a tree. Ding took another few hundred photos! Sha wants one as a pet (then can beat up all the dogs in our neighbourhood - Sha). Yu Meng doesn't want to go into the forest any more! We walked back to the car park to discover an echidna trying to hide from us in the bushes - Sha wants one as a pet( it looks like a durian - Sha)!


Finally, we started to drive back. After turning a sharp corner I had to stop quickly to let Sha jump out, run into the middle of the road, try (and fail) to pick up the huge echidna that was sitting there and then chase it off the road (chased it to back to the point which was opposite way where it wanna go. Apparelly, this thing used half day to reach the middle of the road~lol -- Sha)


What a trip!


Sunday was more relaxed. Sha and I simply drove to the Cumberland State Forest and spent hours walking around the small tracks. Unfortunately, one was closed because of the danger of falling bunya pine cones. Sha ate a lot.