Old MacDonald only has one duck

Unless Sha has forgotten the rest, it seems that Old MacDonald only has one duck in China.  It does make the song rather short.  The duck also doesn't say "quack".  Apparently the ya zi says "ja ja ja".  I ate a wonderful Thai roast duck last night.  I treated myself after driving back and forth to pick up Sha's mum.

Sha's mum and Sha seem to be finding Australian hospitals very strange.  In China, a lady must not touch anything cold for at least one month after giving birth.  The hospital gave Sha ice-cream for her first dinner.  They have also told her where to get ice.  In China the mother would basically stay in bed for up to a month after the birth.  Here they were getting Sha to walk around after a day.

I'm a dad

I'm a dad.  I've just changed a nappy.  Sha is looking at our baby with a big grin on her face.  Edward oscillates between feeding, sleeping and crying.  He was born by Caesarian section.  I've just discovered from wikipedia that Caeser wasn't. Being present at a birth here is rather a full on experience.  I was told to wear a heap of gowns, feet covers and a mask and then went in to the operating theatre.  I got to take photos of the baby coming out and then cut the cord -- it's very tough.   In a few minutes I'm going to demonstrate my skills at bathing a baby to Sha and her mum.  I went on a 10 minute course this morning and so there's a small chance that I'll know what I'm doing.  The course tomorrow is on breast feeding.  I probably won't take such an active role in that.

The HTML5 widget wasn't added because it doesn't define a main HTML file

So annoying. I've been playing around with iBooks Author and trying to make a "widget".  I followed all the instructions for making a Default.png file, Info.plist and main.html.  It kept complaining that my widget doesn't define a main HTML file.  The solution?  Quit and start again.  Then it works fine.

Food

The barramundi tasted better after cooking 

This blog is now going to turn into a blog about food.  Our little garden has now provided us with chives, lettuce, a huge cucumber, coriander and strawberries.  The tomatoes seem to be dead.  The chilies are growing. The watermelon radishes are doing whatever watermelon radishes do.

The pancake

I cooked a fish today with a bing.  The bing is a Chinese pancake that included our chives.  Sha gave the dinner high marks! Buying a fish in Eastwood is rather interesting.  You go into a small shop that seems to contain about 100 customers.  Every shelf is full of fish or squid.  Some of the squid are on the floor.  You randomly go around trying to pick up fish and then realise that they're very slippery and rather spiky.  Then you drop one on the floor or into another customer's bag.  Then you get hang on picking up a fish and hand it to a random person who goes off with it for about 30 minutes.  Then they give you it back and charge you some ridiculously small amount of money and then you leave.

Our cucumber

At this point, Sha takes you to a vegetable shop that has the world's largest vegetables in it! I have never seen a peach so big as the one that Sha bought. It weighs almost 0.5kg.  We didn't buy the radish as it wouldn't fit in the bag.

lettuce and cucumber from the garden

Sha adding the last ingredients to the fish

Sha with her large peach

Newspapers

Front page of the BBC 

Front page of the Sydney Morning Herald

Obviously different views on what's important at the moment!

Quantummansite

My dad pointed out the existence of http://www.quantummansite.com today and I have had a lot of fun reading their pages.  Anyway, they will cure you (or your pet) of basically anything. You just have to download their medicine!!  It's very straightforward, you "simply open a portal with your purchased product's Portal Access Key (trademark) (PAK - trademark).  Data then transfers from a remote quantum computer to your brain's neutral network for the benefits desired."

My arm hurts a bit and this sounds rather good.  So I dropped them an email:

"Hello.  I've just come across your website.  I've had some

pain in my shoulder for a while, but have been worried about the

side-effects of standard pain killers for such a minor problem.  I'm

therefore interested in your Zaxis™ product.  However, my wife is

pregnant and I want to be absolutely sure that anything that I use

cannot hurt her or the baby.  Has there been any testing to show that

Zaxis™ would be okay?  Also, how many doses would you suggest that I

take?"

They got back to me really quickly:

Dear George:

You can be absolutely sure that all of our quantum medicines are 100% safe for a pregnant woman and her fetus. Please refer to the clinical trial titled: "Prenatal Polycystic Kidney Disease" wherein Supercillin was use to cure the mother's child, while in the womb, of a usually fatal kidney disease... a feat not possible with chemical based medicines. Whether it is Zaxis or any other quantum product on our site, a pregnant mother and her fetus are safe regardless of the dose uploaded. One of the huge pluses of all quantum medicines is their extreme safety profile.

There is a dosing guide on the aite for Zaxis.  I would recommend for her 8 to 10 doaes at a time as needed for pain.  If she has back pain carrying the child while in utero, Quantum Chiropractor (QCHiro) would be terrific for her.  In fact, I happen to know that QChiro was also used

for that mother whose child had the kidney disease mentioned above.  Although the dosctor did not mention it, it was highly effective for her back and also does many positive things for the fetus in its cramped confines while in utero.

Thank-you for the opportunity to answer your questions. I look forward to any other questions or concerns you may have.

Sincerely,

Dr. John Thomas

Senior Medical Advisor

So, there we go!! Sha, by the way, does not have a bad shoulder.  I think that Dr John Thomas misunderstood my email a bit!

Wentworth Pass walk

It's a long way down!

 It's a wonderful walk. I've just discovered that it's only 5.6km, but it took about 4 hours and feels a lot longer. That's mainly because of all the ladders that you have to climb down.  I've always been amazed at the crazy people that made this walk - it's simply chopped out of the cliff edges with sheer drops of 100m or more on one side.  It's difficult to find any information on the history of the walk online, but I have just come across this site which even includes a movie!  Apparently the walk was created by James Somerfield Murray in 1906 (actually he built the National Pass walk not the Wentworth Pass walk, but they're the same for the most dramatic bit).  It's shocking -- there isn't even a wikipedia page about why this guy decided to spend 2 years blowing up bits of the cliff to make a walk.  Anyway, he did and it's great. We didn't see too many animals, but we were concentrating on not falling off the ladders.  However, we did spot two rosellas, a flock of black cockatoos and heaps of white cockatoos.  The most incredible part was at the bottom of the valley where we heard the cicadas. They were really loud and we were with them for at least 1 hour.

There are lots of different species of plants in this picture (including the mountain devil)

A very large tree (turpentine?)