Saturday
26th March 2005 Even though it is the Easter weekend, this saturday is just
a regular saturday, so most things are open. Also, because many people have
taken a few days off before or after the Easter weekend to take advantage of
the extra days off, it's very busy.
There have also been lots of car accidents over the last couple of days - it's
become front
page news.
Today we decided to take Thomas to the 
Zoo.
We went straight to the children's petting zoo
at the far end, and Thomas loved it. We arrived early, paid the 20c parking
for the space outside the main entrance, and we had the place to ourselves for
an hour or so. There was a large shed filled with hirable pushchairs that look
like little cars, and all the children were clamouring to ride in them. Later
in the day when we passed the entrance again, there was a line of screaming
children waiting for people to return the little cars. All the way around, we
could hear the rumble as the carts approached.
We spent quite a while at the meerkat enclosure, and all of us loved their antics,
as they scurried around and climbed up to the highest point to be lookout. Thomas
was excited by the penguins and the otters, and we all found the hippos very
entertaining.
I'm going to cut back a bit on the blog entries, and not do them every day. Now that the evenings get darker quicker, there feels to be less time available to spend time with Thomas and Ann when I get home from work.
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Today we were invited over to Linda and Ashley's house for
Easter lunch. Thomas had a great time being chased by Brendan around the garden,
burning off all the energy that he had got from eating lots
of chocolate. It was another day of perfect weather, with warm sun and a
slight warm breeze that made eating outside a pleasure.
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No news about the home loan. It's all just a waiting game now! We called the broker and pushed her a bit, but you can't rush everyone in the chain in these big companies.
At the Astronomy class today I volunteered to make a little
presentation in the Planetarium. Volunteers were called for during the class,
to tell people about the stars that they remembered the name of. I stood up
and told everyone about my favourite bits of sky to look at, and after my 5
minutes, I got a round of applause (not very good in a room with a domed roof!)
and congratulations from some of the listeners. I quite enjoyed it, mostly from
the appreciation at the end - whilst I was doing it I felt a bit weird, and
the laser pointer that I was directing at the stars was shaking terribly...
I had started to talk about the Pliades and then told everyone about how Orion
appears the other way up in England, and how the sword hangs down from Orion's
belt instead of sticking up to appear like a saucepan. I told everyone about
the "great nebula" in Orion, also called M42, and then went over to
the southern sky and showed Crux, and pointed out the Small Magellanic Cloud
and the Large Magellanic Cloud, and how far away they are (250,000 light years
away). Then I went back to Crux and explained about the jewel box and the great
viewing of stars in that area. It was only after Ihad sat down that I remembered
what else I could have talked about.
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Last night Ann and I were watching a travel program where
you could win a year's travel to all the exotic destinations that they had been
to in their previous programs. One of the snippets showed people watching a
humpback whale breeching (leaping out of the sea), and it reminded me of an
experience that I had in Hawaii when I was around 16. I had just finished the
last dive of my training for PADI Open Water Diver qualification, which allows
me to go scuba diving, and we were just getting out of the sea. As I clambered
onto the beach in the decreasing light of dusk, one of the women who was on
the training squealed with excitement and pointed towards the setting sun. There,
only about 150 metres away from us, was a humpback whale leaping out of the
water. The whole body of the huge mammal was out of the sea before it started
crashing back into the water. And then a few seconds later, another whale leaped
out, and then a small calf appeared, not leaping as high, but having a good
try. The whole family were all leaping around at the same time, whilst the sun
was setting in the distance.
We were diving in that spot because it was an old harbour. It was a relatively
easy shore dive, which then sloped down sharply in a sandy seabed towards a
very deep area and a black coral reef. It was a pity that we had not seen the
whales whilst we were underwater, but in some respects we saw a lot more of
them when we were on the shore.
One of the best parts of the dive up previous to the whales was what we saw
on the sandy bed of the harbour. Occasionally there were dark blocks on the
otherwise bright yellow sand, and on closer inspection they turned out to be
boxes of bullets. When the battleships who were in the harbour were under attack,
the first thing that they would do is drop all the bullets over the side of
the ship, as they can be very sensitive to heat or fire. So these bullets had
been there since the Second World War, and the metal cases had rusted away,
just leaving the lead and brass bullets piled up neatly. When we wafter a hand
over the bullets, they fell apart and just became a heap.
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I had a day stuffed full of meetings today, and Ann had a day full of appointments. I had a couple of meetings, which went well.
We have no solid news about the finance for the house yet. The latest news is that they now want us to put down a bigger deposit - which is now more than my entire annual pre-tax salary.
This evening we had a wonderful meal at Liam and Shirley's. It was really wonderful to have the hospitality of family, and an opportunity to tell all my stories again. Back in England, we hardly ever had the opportunity to just have a simple dinner with family, as they were all so far away and it was a major event, but here everyone (and everything) is so close.
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