Red-Faced Canadians

Beetroot Worries

2012-01-29T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, things are ticking along smoothly for Team Jardine in Saskatoon. The weather has been lovely for getting out to the park and sliding and having fun outside, 2 out of 3 of our furniture shipments have arrived, we're cooking real food again and we're just very content with life these days. We're slowly meeting people and turns out there are a lot of swell people here. But really, for myself I feel like enjoying time with the girls and Tim is the most satisfying company these days, as enjoying each other's company stress-free has been a long time coming for our family...This puts us in a bit of a hermit mode, but we're pretty ok with that given our situation, and because our kids are awesome.

We've been enjoying our reunion with our record player and vinyl collection and Tim is very happy having daily doses of Bruce Springsteen back in our lives. One such dose has become a pre-bedtime ritual of a Dancing in the Dark dance-off with Celia and Edie, at their (well, Edie's) request.

Bruce aside, there are a lot of records that we've missed that are now at our fingertips. One such record I popped in the other day was a Kate (late) and Anna McGarrigle album, Pronto Monto. I'd listened to the album many times back in my younger childless days, but the song Bundle of Sorrow, Bundle of Joy hit me in a new way when I first heard it again this week. It's a song about the birth of Anna and Louden Wainwright's new boy (Rufus).

In middle fall when northern winds blow the clouds every which way
And the temperature is variable in the course of a shortened day
The ghost of summer lingers on in the dyin' rays of the sun
and winter waits to heap its snow upon us by the ton

I jam a log into the stove and hasten to shut the door
In the room upstairs sleeps a baby boy who wasn't there before

I love my kid
My baby, my boy
Bundle of sorrow, bundle of joy
Bundle of sorrow, bundle of joy

Who knows what this year will bring, for us just what's in store
While the whistlepegs are bedded down beneath the woodshed floor
How many pounds the child will gain, the inches that he grows
Will depend upon the measure of the love that we show

Chainsaws whine out in the woods, the geese have taken flight
And the daytime sounds of birds give way to coyotes in the night

I love my kid
My baby, my boy
Bundle of sorrow, bundle of joy
Bundle of sorrow, bundle of joy

Once there were just two of us, now there's another mouth to feed
And when he's taken from the breast, can we meet his every need?
We filled our home with toys and clothes to suit his every whim
And he's filled our hearts with wondrous love that flows right back to him

The young grass grows up through the old, the lilac lives again
Upon a painted lattice-work a little rose ascends

It's a beautiful portrait of a) rural Canadian winter and b) the wonder of those early days when you can't believe that there's a new person in your life that is actually part you. Of course, on the same album is the song 'Dead Weight' which I believe Anna wrote in a tribute to Louden whom she divorced that same year. It paints a much bleaker picture with such lines as "you're like a sore spot that never would heal", and "your charm's wearing thin and your voice rings like tin" and of course the chorus "you're a dead weight and I can't wait to see the back of you". I love all of it and I'm glad to have McGarrigle albums back in our lives.

One last story before pictures...This would be a long one if I were telling you in person, but I'll try to keep it somewhat shorter in writing...My mom pickled beetroot from her garden this past summer and our girls love beetroot. So when our Nova Scotia furniture, etc. shipment was being sent in late December, we carefully packed a couple of jars of beets into the mix so we'd have them in Saskatoon. Little did we know that our shipment would be packed into a truck for a 3+ week truck across the country. It was cold and the beet jars became unsealed upon freezing. When we got our shipment we let the jars thaw and cleaned up the juice, and because the jars had become unsealed we thought that they should be eaten quickly. Needless to say the girls have eaten a lot of beetroot in a short time.

On Thursday night we took Edie to the doctor because her wee was brown. Gone were our worry-free days while visions of kidney problems danced around our heads. Turns out it was just too much beetroot. Hilarious in retrospect.

We hope that you are all doing well. Enjoy the pictures.

Jan 30, 2012

Bring on the new!

2012-01-14T18:49:00.000-08:00

Well folks, it's a new year and a new start for Team Jardine. No longer the victims!

Since we last wrote we've pulled off a move across the planet with two children successfully, have enjoyed a great holiday season with friends and family, have bought and moved into a house in Saskatoon, and even relaxed a bit if you can imagine. Yes indeed, things are feeling pretty peachy in our household. We are waiting for our shipments from Brisbane, Fredericton and Coldbrook to arrive within the next two weeks, so until then we're getting by without our typical conveniences like measuring cups and can openers and proper beds, but it's nice that this is our biggest complaint.

So Tim left for his first day of work on Monday to catch his bus in the dark. In January in Saskatoon it doesn't get light out until 9:00am which is definitely taking some getting used to for the team who are generally up between 5 and 6. I had a good chuckle as he prepared to leave though, with a pink lunch bag (the only one we have at the moment), a dora watch (his watch is MIA) and a tinkerbell key on his keychain (it was given to us with our housekeys, apparently the previous owners were persuaded to get a tinkerbell key as a replicate by their 3 year old- we totally understand). It was funny because anyone who has children and happened to meet Tim on Monday would definitely know who's calling the shots around here. His day (and week) went well, the bus system seems promising and ya, it was good news all around.

We have bought a 2007 Subaru Forrester to cart ourselves around the city in. It's red and I like it. I hope it likes us.

Well apparently this winter is unlike any that Saskatonians (yes, it's what they're really called) have seen in recent decades. It is actually pretty warm...warm being a relative term...It's not -20 or -30, which is typical for this time of year. The temperature has been hovering between -5 and 5 for the most part, which is so manageable! We count this a huge blessing as it is torture to get Edie to even wear a jacket, pants or socks even in this 'cold'. Hopefully layering will get easier over time.

I won't drone on for too long since there are a fair few good pictures to look at. I had the girls on my own (usually with family) for about a month (Nov 28- Dec 22) while Tim was back in Australia. Tim had the camera so I didn't have much opportunity to take pictures. If I could have, the picture I would love to have taken was of Edie and my Dad (who we lovingly refer to as Buppa Goldtooth, on account of his gold tooth) in the garden pulling up turnips. Edie had on an orange hunting touque, my mom's jean jacket and gardening boots and was loving every minute of the unpaid labour. My dad still has the uncanny ability to get work out of kids without them knowing it. Edie loves him a lot.

We got to spend time with all of the rellies over the month, and it was lovely to spend some quality time with the people we love and who have made us who we are. We're so glad to have such great people in our lives. Other highlights: spending time with Rachel in Boston, a white Christmas, and a great meet-up in Saint John on the 30th with well-missed friends.

Take care friends, and here's to a great new year.

January 14, 2012

Closing time

2011-11-18T01:23:00.000-08:00

As we get ready to depart in just 2 days, a short blog to bid farewell and keep you updated is due. Just to keep us on our toes, 10 days ago Celia managed to pull a container of near-boiling water onto her lap in her highchair. A cold shower, a short ambulance ride to the Mater Hospital and a few silver nitrate patches have done her a world of good. She's well and truly on the mend and it slowed her down for about oh, one day all told. She is soooo fiesty. Trying to do anything with her that involves her being still is like trying to hold down a juvenile kangaroo, so try to imagine dressing changes...not much fun. Tim said it well the other morning when he commented 'Dear Abby, my daughter is stronger than I am...' I have had to take her to the hospital burns unit for 2 checkup appointments since and she's been pushing her weight around the other burn victims in the waiting room. She totally flattened an 11 month old boy who was just minding his own business and didn't happen to notice her race-crawling towards him. As a bonus, she's been seeing the same surgeon that worked on Edie...Good because we know he's excellent and kind of embarassing because he's had to fix both of our kids...Either way, let's just hope that this is the last hospital visit before we leave.

Ceeley and our friend (and pastor) Michele. Michele is a great person to have around when I'm feeling like a bad mom (there have been a few moments over the years)...She has 3 boys, and always has a story to top mine. We are really going to miss her and her family. As for Celia, the bandages really make it look pretty bad, hey? It's not nearly as frightening underneath, thankfully.

One person that we've been hanging around with a lot since he moved here is Brian Fry. He's an American, a stable isotope guru, one of the 350 most cited scientists going, and happens to be one of the nicest guys on the planet. Edie in particular is quite smitten, as you can see from our photos she and Brian have lots of fun together. We are really going to miss him.

Edie and Brian, great pals working the hoola hoops.

One friend we've already had to say goodbye to is this guy.

What! A toaster? Yes. A toaster. A toaster from the 70's that has toasted our bread to perfection ever since we brought it home from the Salvos nearly 4 years ago. How many appliances over 30 years old do you have kicking around still working? Anyway, we sent it home with Chelsea and Burt, our Canadian friends living in Sydney who came up to say goodbye and to help pack up last weekend. We hope it treats them as well as it treated us- 10 out of 10 Mr. Goldair!

She's a very willing helper, she is.

She's also a very good director.

A few more pictures to end off our time down under. To our Aussie mates we say good on ya, you're a beaut. To our Canadian friends and family we say we'll be home shortly, leave the porch light on.

VEGEMITE TOAST!

This one has trouble written all over her.

Signing off from down under. Love to all.

Totally forgot this picture...

2011-11-02T01:32:00.000-07:00

Best costume of the night hands down. Not only is the costume awesome (Nicki, aka, Wednesday Addams, is a creative genius), Remi and the Hulk have a few things in common, like freakish strength.

You might think to yourself, "now that seems like a pretty good costume that isn't your standard witch or goblin", to which I would reply "they are ex-pats, check out the witch in the back, you guessed it, she's an Aussie."

Hallowhat?

2011-11-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

Ya, so it turns out that halloween isn't really a big deal down here. We've know this for a while, but are still surprised that people wouldn't take advantage of the excuse to dress up in anything they want and get candy for it. Silly really.

It is getting more popular though. Last year our friend Anjali hosted a great party on our street for the kids (Edie's famous robot outfit), this year our friends Allie and Dickie hosted one, and another great Halloween party it was. A few weeks ago while rummaging through our things to get ready for Canada I came across some scrap fabric that inspired me to dress our children as watermelons for Halloween. The costumes took a bit of work but they turned out great, and I designed and created they myself which feels pretty good. In fact, I designed them so that they will even be able to accomodate for growing kids, meaning that this stroke of creativity should get us through to high school. Awesome.

Ya, Tim and I were farmers, another popular costume from childhood due to the fact that it required very little costume prep-work, hobos and bums also being quite popular. And don't let our faces fool you, we were having a great time.

Lots of room to grow in this one.

Her eyes say it all- my parents have dressed me up as a piece of fruit and are trying to hock me.

Tim decided to ditch the sign after narrowly avoiding poking someone with his watermelon stand. I followed suit shortly, but I think that I'm looking quite relaxed with my stand, it was like having a counter to lean on in front of me all of the time- genius!

One thing we did learn about Halloween down under is that Aussies are generally still in the 'Halloween should be scary' mode, which is what I thought when I was 5 (after 5 I just wanted to be a punk rocker most years, ahhh the 80's). Now I dress my kids in watermelon suits, scary schmary...it's the dressing up and candy factor that makes it fun. So it turns out that we were the only folks not dressed up as witches or...well, witches mainly, with a devil and a skeleton or two kicking around.

The party started at 4pm and the kids entertained themselves by digging candy out of the sandpit graveyard and then cycling between eating the candy and crashing temporarily. By 6pm it was time for Celia to get to bed so we put her down in one of the spare rooms. The other kids, still hyped up on lollies, crashed in front of the TV watching scoobie doo, which we found hilarous. Tim and I decided then to head down to Dickie's bar and pretend that we didn't have kids. After about 10 minutes of relaxing someone let us know that there was a baby screaming her head off in one of the rooms, all signs pointed to Ceeley. So, at 7:00 Tim and I carried the girls back down the street accepting that our 10 minutes of peace at the bar was a good enough reason for having made the effort to get to the Halloween party- that and seeing a whole bunch of friends that we're going to miss so much when we leave.

It's not too long now before we do leave. The calendar is packed and our house is not, but we're slowly and surely getting our ducks in a row.

Ceeley is on the move and loving the incorporation of things like vegemite toast into her diet. She's also picking up on waving, which delights all of us (yes, there is a whole lot of waving going on in this house now, C's first lesson in how to make mom and dad look like idiots). Miss E is doing all that she can to prevent Ceeley from having fun, with the exception of tackling her every now and then. Life is pretty interesting these days. I can no longer assume that the chaos that erupts on a regular basis in this house is caused by Edie, Miss Celia is getting her hand in the mix now too. Also awesome.

Love to all, we'll be seeing you soon!

Laura

The Home Stretch

2011-10-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

33 more days until we head back to Canada. It's really hard to not focus totally on that, missing the awesome days that are to be had right now here in Brisbane, arguably one of the best places to live on the planet. But ya, our hearts are kind of already home.

I come from a long line of amazing ladies, and the Queen Bee on my Dad's side, his mother Eleanor, passed away on Friday after an almost 2 week struggle following 2 mini-strokes the week prior. Before it all went south I was really, really, really hoping to see her again when I got home in December. Now, I'm glad that she's not suffering anymore. Because I'm not anywhere near home I forget that people are living and ageing the same as we are down here...Gram was 96. She wore it well.

We, and a whole lot of people, will miss this amazing Lady. A bonus- I got to watch the funeral as it happened due to amazing technology (I felt like a fly on the wall)...3am as it was, but you know, I'm often up at 3am anyway and thought I might kill a few birds with one stone. Celia slept on my lap as I watched which made the experience even more memorable. I do love my family, and they did a great job celebrating my Gram's life.

It's also the end of day 2 without my very good husband. He left for a week-long work trip in Singapore on Monday. I do miss him and so do the girls. Days seem to be so much more eventful when he's not around though...Today while attempting to get Celia to go to sleep Edie succeeded in plugging the bathroom sink and letting the water run until I saw what 'happened to the sink', we got school pictures done with no small effort to get Edie to participate, and when I tucked Edie into bed tonight to send her off to lala land I clipped her nose with my elbow and she experienced her first bloody nose. Oh, and I jammed my thumb in the car door earlier in the day. Just weird stuff that doesn't happen when Tim's here.

As I finish this post on Wednesday morning I can't help but mention that Edie slept like a baby last night without any intervention, perhaps the jolt to the nose jostled some loose wiring.

I wouldn't mess with these two if I met them on a dark street corner, especially the little one with the pipes.

Love to all,

Laura

New beanies

2011-10-05T02:03:00.000-07:00

Edie was so excited to get a package in the mail for her and Ceeley today. Nana and Poppa Jardine sent along jingle beanies in anticipation of our cold move across the planet (45 days but who's counting). A pretty exciting day in the Jardine household. Thanks to Bob and Debbie.

Love to all.

2011-09-26T01:50:00.000-07:00

Celia- Keeping ladies clucky for 6 months now.

Birthdays have never been a huge deal for Tim or I. So with Edie's 3rd birthday approaching a few months ago, we were thinking that we'd keep it small. Then we found out that this would be Edie's last birthday down under, which changed a few things for us. First of all, we didn't want to give Edie something that we'd have to get rid of before December or lug back to the Great White North, and secondly we now need to fasttrack our Aussie goodbyes.

The result: a 33 person party with a princess jumping castle. Yes, we are those parents.

With thanks to Wade for the great pics.

Love to all.

Edie's 3rd

Birthday Girl

2011-09-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

It's mulberry season again, and it's Edie's birthday again. Both good things:

And to ensure adequate representation from the younger cohort (Ceeley and Joely-man):

Fun times in Oz.

Can you spot the difference?

2011-09-02T01:55:00.000-07:00

One Year On

2011-08-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

The day before yesterday, one year ago, Edie was diagnosed with Hirschprung's Disease after spending 4 miserable days in hospital undergoing treatment for what doctors thought was a blocked bowel. Yesterday, one year ago, she underwent surgery to have a colostomy put in place in order to remedy the problem. Today she's a super-healthy girl with telltale scars. The 12 week foetus that I was carrying at the time is now our beautiful Celia on the outside. It was the toughest year we've ever gotten through and it shows, but it's pretty amazing that things have turned out so well.

Rachel and Paul were with us at the time, on their own Australian mis-adventure given that their hosts were tied up at the hospital for pretty much their entire trip. At the time the topic of parenthood was a hot one for us, with Tim and I having had our eyes opened to just how much nothing else matters when the life of your child is in question. Rach and Paul were debating whether they had what it takes to do the parenting thing- we joked about this a lot. One year on, they are parents in the very sad situation of having outlived their child. What a difference a year can make. And what a shitty year. Rach and Paul, we feel your loss acutely. You guys more than anyone have what it takes to be amazing parents because that is exactly what you are.

And time marches on.

Fish, birds and butterflies

2011-08-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

Well the Jardines are finally fighting back against the strains of child-rearing. Slowly, steadily, we're gaining some sense of normalcy in our lives as Edie continues to improve following her surgery and Celia finally gets on top of her reflux/general malaise. Both are surprisingly pleasant these days, and although their sleep is still erratic, it is a million times more manageable than it was even a couple of months ago, when we were ready to cash in the chips and bail to a tropical island sans kids.

Speaking of tropical islands, we finally sucked it up and visited the Great Barrier Reef, ticking a big item off our things-you-must-do-when-you're-spending-any-amount-of-time-in-Australia list. All up it was a roaring success. The girls travelled well, we avoided seasickness despite some high winds and sea swells, and there was plenty of entertainment for us on the pontoon where we moored. It wasn't the best day to be out there, but we still got to see plenty of cool fish. The next day we drove up to Kuranda (a rainforest village) to spend the day. The highlight was a butterfly sanctuary that breeds and houses hundreds of species of tropical butterflies. A different experience to your average zoo. We also visited a koala gardens and an aviary - both were ok but no better than what you can get in Brisbane. Despite all those animal highlights, the best part of the trip for Edie was the resort where we stayed, specifically the giant jumping pillows. I'm not sure I've ever seen her so excited and entertained for as long a period as those jumping pillows provided. The best thing for her was the fact that so few of the other guests were using them, so she had them almost all to herself. Trip pics in the album below:

Cairns trip 2011

Given our pending return to Canada, we knew we had to do things like seeing the reef before setting sail for the Great White North. The longing for our homeland that we've felt in the past few years has wrestled with our dual feelings of love and frustration for our adopted home here. Despite all the perks about living here (the weather being at the top of the list), we always felt that a return to Canada was in store at some point. I came across a passage in a book recently (The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie) that I thought was very poignant. Rushdie, himself no stranger to living abroad (albeit under vastly different circumstances), writes:

"Who is he? An exile. Which must not be confused with, allowed to run into, all the other words that people throw around: emigre, refugee, immigrant,....Exile is a dream of glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St. Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air. He hangs there, frozen in time, translated into a photograph; denied motion, suspended impossibly above his native earth, he awaits the inevitable moment at which the photograph must move, and the earth reclaim its own.....His home is a rented flat. It is a waiting-room, a photograph, air.

I've jokingly referred to our time here as exile, if only because most people that move here arrive on a one-way ticket (and for good reason), but that was never our intention. We'll have mixed feelings about leaving Australia. On one hand it's been the most challenging three year period of our lives. On the other hand, we're going home with a suitcase full of great memories from this remarkable country. And that includes two little girls that were made in Australia.

Mega-blog

2011-08-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

G'day!

In poor taste, much like me complaining that my 2.3$ house renovations are not up to par, or that my hair just gets so messed up when I drive my convertible with the top off, I will be complaining about Australian winter. Check blog postings from 6 months ago and you'll find that I then complained about Australian summer...The gig is up, I'm fickle.

So, just these past few weeks Miss E and Celia have shed their colds, which have been around in some form since late May. The reason our girls have been sick for so long? a) Tim and I have no idea how to take care of children and b) We especially have no idea how to take care of children in Australia. Our rate of learning the ropes here is quite low...We still expect our house to be warm inside when it is cold outside despite the fact this has not happened in the 3.5 years we've been here. It's also been a cold winter. At any rate, the girls haven't been able to shake the bug. Edie eventually had to go on to antibiotics, Celia had to tough it out, yet they seem to have hit a [temporary] healthy patch. Oddly enough, four days after starting antibiotics, Edie woke up resembling this guy. After the doctor assured us that she was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotics and we subsequently stopped the treatment, we waited for the swelling to go down. Three days later she was looking a lot more like this guy and was for all intents and purposes, miserable. That morning as I was dressing her, I pulled a shirt down over her face and the festering postule under her top lip burst open. The poor thing. Apparently she randomly picked up an infection under her top lip that was unrelated to her cold or the antibiotics she was on. Once again, Tim and I were frustrated with Edie for being so grouchy only to find out that she was in and was tolerating a whole lot of pain. Poor girl, see comment 'a'. She was put on to a stronger antibiotic and we were advised to help her gargle with warm water and salt- my Dad's favorite antidote to anything that ails you. She's fine now, thank God.

This winter was bad enough to make me want to get back to the land where it might get 30 degrees colder in the winter, and where winter lasts a whole lot longer, but where you can turn on the heat or A/C and be comfortable in your house no matter what the weather is like outside. Probably timely as we've recently learned that Tim has landed a faculty postion at the University of Saskatchewan starting in January 2012...We'll see what tune I'm singing when I'm actually back in a real winter in Saskatoon, especially after leaving Brissy summer. We're excited, and sad to leave of course, but looking forward to a new phase. We'll get to the east coast for Christmas with our families and then head out west early in the new year. So if you were ever looking to come and visit us, you've got about 3 months before you're gonna miss out on the Sunshine State and will be looking at the City of Bridges (hmmmm, which one would you choose?)

A shout-out to Nana Midge; she made it possible for Tim to jet for Canada for his interview while Edie was still in the hospital recovering from her surgery...we really don't know how we would have swung that without a third person on the team who loved us very much. We think that pulling this off has been one of our greatest accomplishments to date.

As we are looking at leaving Oz shortly, we've had to make an effort to get out and see what we can before we go. One such trip was to Byron Bay, which is about a 2 hour drive south of Brisbane. As you'll see from the pictures, we stayed at a farmstay and had a great time. Aside from one night of poor sleeping on Celias part, it was the most relaxing thing we've done in a really long time. We need to relax more I think. We'll be flying to Cairns with the girls this weekend to check out the Great Barrier Reef, something we should have done a long time ago. We'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Byron Bay Farmstay

And finally, the annual Mount Gravatt Fair was on again a few weeks ago. It was a hit with Edie last year and we decided to try again this year. Sadly, most likely due to the general lack of good health that the girls have experienced this winter, it was a bit of a bust. A whole lot of waiting in lines to do things that Edie told us she wanted to do, only to get to the front of the line and discover that she really didn't want to do any of those things. The pictures say it all. And yes- I was that Mom taking pictures of my child in distress while trying to conceal my laughter. Comment 'a' seems applicable again.

What? Edie doesn't want to hang out with the farm animals? That's right. Ball one.

I did feel pretty bad about taking this picture, not as bad as I felt about not being able to conceal my laughter while my child screamed to get off of the ride though. Strike one.

This is as close as she got to actually getting in to the jumping castle. Strike two.

Surely the bumper cars would save the day, given that Dad could ride with her? Not so much. Strike three and we're out. No love for the fair this year.

Love to all,

Team Jardine

2011-07-08T13:54:00.001-07:00

So, on the 31st of December last year we were sitting with the Davis family on the deck of the house where we were housesitting (in Graceville, heard of it? Check this out) and we were talking about the year past and the year to come. I remember thinking that I had no resolution for the new year, thinking about resolving to do something in light of what was already planned just made me really tired. At the time we were thinking about the arrival of Celia in March, and Edie's surgery in May. As it turns out, now that we're already in July, both of these things (and a whole lot more) have come and gone better than we ever could have ever expected. I don't want to go over just how we got through, it's been a long 7 months and ya...lots accomplished. With the departure of Nana Midgie just two weeks behind us, we can safely say that her being here had a lot to do with just how well all of the hoolpa that's been going down with Team Jardine has blown over. That, and a whole lot of divine intervention.

There really is nothing as good as having your mom around when the chips are down. But I'm now a mom, and I can't get my head around how my kids could possibly feel that way someday about me. So, in an effort to be a good mother or perhaps just to procure favour from my children, Miss E gets things like this...

Awesome, hey? Edie thinks so too. But I really can't take any credit for this one, it all belongs to Medical Illustrator Lindsay of Team Davis. This was all part of a plan devised soley for the purpose of trying to get Edie to wear her pink plaid jacket by showing her that Dora also wears her pink plaid jacket. It's good to have talented friends who are also parents.

Lots of pictures to go through on this round, I hope that everyone is doing well.

June and July 2011

Love to all,

Laura on behalf of the team.

On the Mend

2011-06-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

We're happy to report that the Jardines have undergone two successful surgeries in the past month. Edie and I now have matching scars (hers is bigger) after I finally had a hernia repaired last week. I've been living with it for ten years now, going back to my weight-lifting and fishnet hauling days on the Miramichi. Of course, I don't expect any of you are tuning in for my health news. Edie is the star of this show. She handled her whole prep, operation, and recovery with a dtermination beyond her years, and is now pretty much your typical two and a half year old, barking orders, getting into all kinds of mischief, and having an occasional meltdown. We're thrilled to be done with the daily bag change and her enormous stoma. I'll spare you the details of her week in hospital - there were definite ups and downs but we pulled through with the help of Nanna Midge, who has now set her sights on getting Celia onto a proper sleeping routine. So far so good. We might just survive this Australia experience after all.

Carrot removal

2011-05-23T13:47:00.001-07:00

Well the day has finally arrived. No, not Rapture Day, Edie's surgery Day. We're off to the hospital today to get Edie ready for her operation tomorrow. She's pumped about not ever having to wear a bag again, but a little concerned that she is going to have to get a "sting". It's hard to believe that she's worn a colostomy bag (and we've had to change it everyday) for the past eight months. Time flies when you're having fun!

We're thankful to have Nanna Midgie on board for practical and moral support. She has already paid dividends as Laura and I are able to ride in the front seat of the car. Edie demands that someone be crammed into the back seat with her and Celia, and Midgie has got the call. They've been two birds of a feather since she arrived, reading plenty of books and going for walks together. But now comes the hard part, 5-10 days in the hospital while managing grumpy Celia, all with me heading off overseas at the end of this week. Here's hoping it all goes well and Edie comes out in two pieces on the other side.

May 2011

You look really tired.

2011-04-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

A comment we've been hearing fairly regularly these days, as our two lovely girls slowly drain the life force out of us. There have been some pretty long nights recently, as Miss Celia has turned out to be....wait for it...harder to settle than Edie ever was. So much for the balancing forces of one intense baby and one mild one. Ah well, at least they're cute, and this unsettled period will soon pass.

We found out the other day that Celia is officially an Australian citizen - because we were permanent residents at the time of her birth. Edie, on the other hand, will have to wait until her 10th birthday to be granted it, and then only if she has spent the majority of her life living here. So if we decide to move permanently back to Canada anytime soon, Celia will be able to lord her dual citizenship over Edie. Edie's response will no doubt be to pin Celia down and give her repeated chest pokes much like Heather used to give to Laura. Can't wait for that.

We're eagerly anticipating the arrival of Nanna Midgie, now less than a month away, to be followed by Edie's surgery. It should be interesting times with plenty of running around but also hopefully some site seeing and forest walks. And of course lots of puzzle making.

Laura has posted a few recent pics. Don't let all the smiles fool you. We're mostly mugging for the camera. Just kidding. We did have a fun Easter egg hunt with Tim, Lindsay, Joel and their friends Jen and Andy who had travelled all the way here from the states with their 10 month old twins. Now that's a journey for the ages.

All for now. Happy Easter!

The girls- April 2011

Looking for meaning...

2011-04-02T19:42:00.001-07:00

So, this is a short something that I thought was rather funny and share-worthy.

Tim is collaborating with a Lithuanian colleague on a paper. They didn't know each other before Tim was asked to join in as a co-author but have since learned a bit more about the other. So the other day this colleague sent along a word document to Tim telling him about his family and in particular his two daughters. He also described what his daughters' names meant, and they happened to be lovely and romantic meanings. Tim, thinking he'd send back information about our family did a little search to check out the meaning of Edie and Celia's names, and they are as follows:

Celia: blind
Edie: prosperous at war

So we didn't do our homework when it came to meanings of names. Guilty. I do happen to think that the meaning of Edie's name is quite apt, however. Let's just hope that 'blind' is a metaphor in Celia's case, i.e. blind to skin color (or something equally catch-phrase worthy) and not physically blind, but we'll see (Rick Cunjak, that was for you).

Some new pictures, sorry for the repetative poses on the part of Celia, like the manatee all she does is eat and sleep.

Love to all,

Laura

Little Celia rockin' the duck suit

Bouncy chair of neglect courtesy of Steph

Bathtime with big sister the excellent helper

Team Jardine in Babyland

2011-03-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

Well, it's been a week since the arrival of little Celia, and we're slowly coming around to feeling human again. We're all doing very well, Miss E is loving having Playmate home and out of Mom's belly and Tim and I are managing to keep the girls and each other somewhat happy on limited amounts of sleep.

I'll say that since the pretty low-key arrival of Miss Celia, we've realized how nice normal feels, and how not normal life has been for us since we arrived here, and especially since Edie arrived. Don't mistake us, we wouldn't trade Miss E or her troubles for the world, we consider them all part of the perfect package of Edie and part of what we love about her. However, straight out of the hatch, Miss E was scheduled in for a follow-up specialist appointment in 6 weeks time, a trend (her frequency of specialist appointments) which continues to this day and will continue for some time. When we were discharged from the hospital with Celia after 2 days and I asked when her follow-up appointment was scheduled, I got a strange look from the midwife who responded, "for what?" and when I said "you know, just to check up on her" she laughed at me and politely explained that that was what our GP was for. So you might say that my expectation of what newborn care entitles is slightly skewed towards lots and lots of hospital visits. We're glad not to be dealing with that again. And that being said, the question burning in all of your minds just has to be "does Celia poop?", (if it's not and you still care, check out our postings of the past 6 months and have fun learning all about Hirschprung's Disease and what it might mean to have a two year old diagnosed with the condition). We're happy to report that Celia's GI tract appears to be in great working order. I've never changed so many pooey nappies and she's only been around for 7 days- we might have dodged the bullet with Celia and genetic links to Hirschprung's, thank God.

As for having had a normal delivery, I can also say, "wow...we had it rough the first time around". Everything about this delivery was calm and pretty controlled compared to the last (again, thank God...and a timely epidural). Labour is no picnic as most women can attest, but not having eclampsia makes it a lot more bearable. Of course I was monitored like a hawk with every gadget that could fit in or on me going at once to ensure that nothing was out of whack, but aside from the normal pains of labour nothing else happened. We were in the hospital by 8:30 on Monday evening almost 2 days overdue, and oddly enough I had a hard time convincing myself that I was actually in labour even though I'd been having contractions 5 minutes apart or less for 2.5 hours. I think that our first birthing experience must have shattered my confidence in my abilty to self-diagnose what was happening, because even when it came time to push the baby out I questioned whether what I was feeling was actually my body telling me to push...the baby coming out surely cleared up that confusion. Regardless, I requested an epidural as soon as I got to the hospital as a part of making this delivery as easy as possible on us in the case that anything did go wrong. Though it wasn't actually put in place until 1am, Tim and I were able to handle the rotten stuff until then, although there was a point where I seriously thought that being unconscious (as in the first delivery) would be preferable to the pain that I was in- Tim did not agree. From about 1:15am through to about 1:45, the epidural gave some relief from the contractions and even let me rest up a bit before actual delivery. However by 1:45 the midwife and doctor on staff thought that I was getting a bit too much rest and that labour had slowed down too much, so they decided to put in yet another drip (syntocin) to bump up progress. Very shortly after that as Tim explained in our previous blog, the midwife left the room to get Tim a warm blanket and I felt a head pop out and screamed at Tim to get her back in the room. And then Celia was out within 4 minutes at 2:14am. Compared to the hour-long pushing session with Edie for which I am unable to remember anything from, this was a complete walk in the park. No, I don't ever want to do it again, but now I can understand why people do. Rather than be rushed off to ICU post-delivery, Tim and I enjoyed some juice and toast and our screaming baby Celia thrashing around in the bassinette beside us. A welcome upgrade.

So Celia is eating and sleeping and pooing like a newborn should, and Edie is quite taken with her new playmate so far and is a great help. We'll enjoy the euphoria that this beings as long as we can. We're also enjoying the massive amounts of help that we've been receiving from friends which has included a freezer full of prepared food with the promise of more to come, and lots and lots of baby supplies and offers to help with little things like cleaning and laundry...We are surrounded by some great people here in Oz.

With that being said, our door is still open to the great people we know from around the rest of the planet. You'll just have to be prepared for Team Jardine in babyland, a far cry from where we were when we left Canada, but a fun place to be in nonetheless.

Enjoy some new pictures.

Celia week 1

Laura

And then there were four

2011-03-22T17:34:00.001-07:00

She's here! The fourth member of Team Jardine is Celia Eleanor, born on the 22nd of March weighing 3764 g (8 pounds 5 ounces, almost identical in size to Edie at birth). This time around we're celebrating no more drama in our lives, as all went well with the delivery. We arrived at the hospital at around 8:30 pm and she was born at 2:20 am. The only minor concern happened when the midwife stepped out to get a warm blanket about 5 minutes before the birth, leading Laura to scream at me that "something was coming out, call the midwife!" Sure enough when she came back in and checked, there was a little head starting to poke out. Apparently my doctoral qualifications weren't enough to reassure a mom-to-be. And by the way, the warm blanket that the midwife had gone to fetch were for yours truly. Hey, it was chilly in there!

Laura and Celia were discharged this morning, so we're all home trying once again to adapt to the unstoppable forces of change that have been a feature of our lives since we migrated down under.

The running joke around here before Celia we born was that if it was a girl, I'd have to compensate for the feminine dominance of Team Jardine by getting a tattoo of a skull and crossbones or something. I don't foresee that happening anytime soon, but I think I will have a fair excuse when I want to step out to watch footy or partake in other manly activities.

A few pics of the new bub here. More to come in the next few days.

Celia's early days

First-round draft pick

2011-03-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

Well, the countdown is on and we're looking at T-7 days until Playmate arrives. Kind of crazy, but super exciting. This past month (so sorry for the delay...busy and exhausting days these ones have been) has been a bit of a whirlwind for us. Full of appointments, meetings and very little sleep, making team Jardine a little bit rotten, and leaving us with not a lot to write about (it's all boring, with the exception of a two night stay on South Stradbrooke Island for a Climate Change Adaptation meeting and a few surprise baby showers which caught me completely off guard).

Edie the naan maker, with her new 'fake-smile-camera-pose', looking good!

Miss E has settled back down with night sleeps and is (cross the old fingers) sleeping through most nights, giving her and Tim a break. I however have picked up some serious pregnancy insomnia which gives me every sympathy for those who suffer from insomnia without a known cause...Nighttime is definitely time for sleeps (a commonly-used phrase around here). I am looking forward to not being pregnant anymore, and although I realize that sleep will be scarce with the new bub, at least there will be a good reason for why we're up all hours of the night.

Sadly this past week we lost a great friend, Monday night gluten-free dinner buddy and free babysitter to the northern hemisphere. Auntie Steph the Canadian took a new job in Vancouver after a year and a half of living in Brisbane. She's been a big part of our lives since she moved here and we already miss her lots. We're soon going to have to find an esthetician to take over Edie's weekly 'paint-nails' session that she enjoyed with Aunt Steph. We wish her all the best and who knows, maybe she's the start of a great migration back North for all of us...We'll keep you posted on that one.

Our last night with Auntie Stephie, and note mom's new fake smile!

So with no real new news to speak of in our lives, we'll bid you farewell until we have the newest recruit to Team Jardine signed on. Love to all.

Laura

PS. Found some recent pictures that we've not posted, enjoy! Also, a big thank-you to all who took the time (or tried) to contribute to Lindsay and Tim's baby shower book caper. It means a lot!

Early 2011 random pics

Landing (Invasion) Day

2011-02-18T01:49:00.001-08:00

Hello folks,

Today marks the 3rd anniversary of our arrival on this continent. Feb 18th 2008 feels like so long ago and yet we still feel new and undecided about anything, as we did when we arrived. Funny that is, hey? As Edie would say, 'cheers big ears', here's to another action-packed three years, wherever they take us and you. Love to all.

From Drop Box

Tassie pics

2011-02-13T21:11:00.000-08:00

Tasmania 2011

Tassie adventures

2011-02-13T01:48:00.000-08:00

Good evening friends,

At about the beginning of December Miss E figured out how to highjack our evenings by postponing her bedtime by about an hour and a half. It's taken a while to figure out just how to deal with this, and I'm not sure that our solution is sustainable...But, I have finished my “bedtime book reading with Edie” segment, and Tim is now in telling stories about kitty cats, puppy dogs and fairies, if all goes as planned she should be asleep within the hour. It makes for very little Tim and Laura time in the run of a day, and we suspect that Miss E is on to the fact that she won't be the only game in town by the time the end of March rolls around so she's getting what she can while she can. This makes it sound like we haven't told her about the new bub, when in reality we talk about it all the time with her. She's very excited for a new playmate, for various reasons I think- 1) she gets to be a big sister, aka, the boss, and 2) when the new bub arrives mom will be able to do stuff for Edie again. As an example I give you an excerpt of our conversation this evening just before Tim and I swapped over on the bedtime roster-

Mom: Goodnight Edie, I love you
Edie: Can you sleep in my bed?
Mom: Mom needs to sleep in her own bed because she's too big to sleep in Edie's bed
Edie: When the new playmate comes out then you will sleep in my bed again
Mom: Ummm, yes dear...

At this point Tim has heard this exchange and we both look at each other wondering if she'll hold us to this (guaranteed, she's like an elephant and never forgets), and then how we'll work our way out of the deal when trying to deal with 2 children and bedtime. What fun to come!

We arrived back from Tasmania just over a week ago and need to give you some highlights. It was an amazing and exhausting trip and Tasmania didn't fail to completely win us over once again. We've decided that it's our get-away place: so much like home (minus the family) and a truly delightful break from Queensland life, especially the mid-summer humid and hot/flooding/cyclone prone Queensland life.

So first off, Tas is a 2.5 hour direct flight from Brisbane when you fly into Launceston, so that's what we did. Miss E is a star traveller, made a few buddies on the plane and in general was a treat to have along on the flight. She's especially keen on being helpful to the flight stewards, which made things pretty easy. Such a far cry from the flight from hell which was the Sydney-Vancouver flight back in December '08...Where Edie perhaps still holds the record for the longest tantrum by a 3 month old...Regardless, from Launceston we drove south to a town called Ross about halfway between Launceston and Hobart, where we stayed at an old cherry orchard bed and breakfast called Somercotes. It was originally a family settlement established in the 1820's and has kept its historic qualities. We stayed in a 2 bedroom stone cottage on the property and revelled in the juicy cherries (in season and off the orchard) and quaint surroundings. Edie fell in love with the giant turkeys roaming the grounds along with the sheep. She's still talking about how the turkeys would jump off the ground to try and knock apples off of the apple trees. She spent a lot of time outside there. Our sleeping situation was a little rough since Miss E had to revert back to sleeping in a single bed (yes, she sleeps in a Queen bed at home, was there ever any question?), I found her screaming and half hanging out of the bed by about 2am, needless to say it was an indication of what her sleep would be like for the rest of the trip. The next morning we had a bacon and egg breakfast and hit the road.

That day our goal was to bypass Hobart on the way down to Southport, and sample a site along the way. The sampling went well, the bypassing of Hobart wasn't so successful. Tim had decided that we would take a 4-wheel drive track over a mountain to get to where we were going rather than drive through the city of Hobart. We had a good sturdy 4-wheel drive vehicle, and it sounded like an adventure, so why not, hey? Here are 2 good reasons: 1) Pregnant wife and crazy 2 year old child are absolutely useless in any situation that involves thinking your way out of a sticky situation and 2) Pregnant wife and crazy 2 year old child can provide no physical help in getting yourself out of a sticky situation. The first couple of k's up the mountain track were not so bad, kind of scary in places but drivable, but getting worse the further up the mountain you went. At about 5k's we were seeing water-filled holes on the track that a) our vehicle could have disappeared into and b) made the track barely passable. The breaking point (i.e. turning around and giving up) was when we were stuck in a deep rut which happened to have a row of jagged boulders along-side that came within centimeters of our vehicle when Tim tried to go forward or backwards. Just what we would have done if we couldn't have gotten our vehicle unstuck, we don't know...There are a lot of reasons that would have been very bad. But Tim did get us out, and aside from a few big klunks and rattles underneath we were able to get off of the mountain relatively unscathed. On our way back down we drove past a local going up the mountain who asked us how the track was holding out after all of the rain they'd had in the past couple of weeks...Now when a local has to ask the Canadian idiots in a very muddy 4WD how the road was, (indicating that the locals weren't even using the track) there's a bad sign. Again, just glad we got out of there.

We got to Southport late that afternoon and relaxed in our beachfront cottage. Beachfront sounds lovely (and it was) but the beach was much more like a beach you'd find on the north Atlantic seaboard. Frickin' cold. That didn't stop us from maximizing our time on the shoreline. We stayed at the cottage for 3 nights, and sampled various rivers in the vicinity over that time. On the beach, Edie was especially keen on the shells and one part of the near beach which had some really big rocks that got submerged with each tide and which were covered in green algae. She actually made herself an imaginary house near these rocks. The door to her imaginary house was perpetually in need of repair and Edie was quick to use imaginary oil, an imaginary hammer and an imaginary screwdriver to fix it. We had a lot of fun there. On a spare morning we also took a drive to the southernmost tip of Australia (by vehicle, you can walk further south if you're so inclined, maybe we'll tackle it someday). It was cold and beautiful. It kind of reminded me of places I've been in Newfoundland, but it was warmer and the water was clearer. There were 'thermal springs' nearby southport which we checked out, and decided that we've acclimatized to Queensland weather seeing that these pools were roughly 28 degrees, and 28 degrees does not feel warm anymore. I bailed pretty early. We also took a hop onto the Ida Bay railway, which is a long-standing tourist attraction in the area along an old railway line which used to be used to deliver limestone and other goods. It was a nice little trip despite keeping wiggly Edie within the train seat, no small feat.

The last night in Tas we spent in the city of Hobart in an apartment suite. It was lovely but we missed the beach. We found a park nearby the next morning and Edie spent hours there just going from the teeter totter to the swings. In the time there, quite a few people came in and out of the park. When I came to retrieve them, Edie had attached herself to some older girls and was quietly bossing them around by trying to relay her commands through Tim. Hilarious. Shy but domineering, wonder who she picked that one up from. Later that morning we hit the Salamanca markets to find some good sausages for lunch and were suprised and happy to run into our old Canadian friend Peter Edwards, one of the first people we met here in Oz. That was a bit of a shocker considering we rarely see him in Brisbane.

I mentioned that we 'sampled' rivers in Tasmania. That was the underlying goal of this trip, as part of the ongoing eel project that Tim is working on in which Edie and I provide free labour. At each stream that we sampled we collected leaves, bugs, algae and water in order to pair this data up with stable isotope data from eels collected in the area, to determine what eels are feeding on in those systems. The items collected also help to determine how productive these streams and rivers are. All of this helps to answer a larger question of whether fish that migrate from sea to freshwater during their lifespans actually have a 'choice' in whether to migrate or not...i.e. Do they migrate to get to more plentiful food sources? Anyhow, this was our second field trip as a family to collect data for this project and it was a blast. Edie was so happy to be in nature for most of the week and was particularly happy helping Dad out in the streams. Since I was pretty useless when it came to navigating steep riverbanks, at some sites Tim took Edie down to the river by himself. I wasn't sure I was ok with this at first, in case something happened where Tim couldn't get to Edie quickly, but we discovered that if we sent her down with snacks she was perfectly happy to putter around safely and help Dad when he needed it. At the first site that we tried this on, Edie accidentally dropped a wrapper from her Tiny Teddy snacks into the stream. I was on the bank watching, saw Tim contemplate what he should do for about half a minute and then laughed my butt off as he charged down the stream in waders to retrieve the wrapper...Not an easy task. But he pulled it off and felt that Edie had witnessed a lesson in environmental stewardship and how important it was to not litter. In true hypocritical parenting fashion, the next day we were driving to another site while Edie was coloring in the back seat. The roads there are not straight by any means, and coming around a sharp bend she tossed her cookies- i.e. she puked. We had no option at the time but to throw vomit soaked paper towels out of the window...and are just hoping that Edie can make the distinction between biodegradable items (though vomit soaked) being ok to toss but not plastic. Ahhh parenting, a.k.a, self-justification.

I should mention that we were 'helped' on one sampling day by another capable, but out-of-commission-due-to-the-addition-of-a-new-bub researcher, Dan Warfe, and her 3 month old daughter Lexi. They live in Tasmania. We love Dan and she and Lexi were great company. Dan helped a lot with knowing/finding good sites to sample. It's funny to think though that on that day we had two bubs, two mums, and Tim for a job that really should have taken 1 person. The joy of the family vacation/work trip is not lost on us.

I mentioned in our last posting that Tim and I were set to see Sufjan Stevens at the Tivoli upon our arrival home on the 30th. We knew we'd be so tired, but were pretty excited about the show either way. We were also aware that we would be pushing our limits for time with our plane arriving in Brisbane at 6:30 that night and the show starting at 7 (we were counting on a long opening act), us having to go home to get Edie to bed and then get back into the city...So you can imagine our dismay when we got to our car at the airport and found a flat tire on the drivers side. Rather than sulk however, Tim ran to the valet station, borrowed a bike-tire pump and pumped his heart out on our front tire while onlookers laughed. It did the trick and got us home where we met the baby sitter, popped Edie into bed (popped sounds quick, it was more like an anxious hour of telling stories), called a cab to get us back to the city and walked through the door of the Tivoli as Sufjan and his band were coming on stage. It was perfect timing. And it was an amazing show. For those who know of his work, his most recent album is a bit of an electronic diversion from his former folky banjo-plucking, and the show was based around his new stuff. To quote my husband from his ramblings:

"[The music is] Quite a departure from his previous stuff, but his formidable talent comes through in a pretty wild stage show that included breakdancing (white boy style a la Chris Bowes), a balloon drop, neon space alien costumes, vocal distortion and plenty of reverb. Just about everything that should make you shudder. But of course it was absolutely spectacular."

The show was totally worth the hassle, I'm glad that we do stuff that doesn't necessarily make great sense in the present because it's always so much better than expected when it works out well. It's pretty much the story of our lives.

So we're back into the swing of things, Edie's back in daycare after a 2 month break by our carer, which means that I'm back at work and we're all getting ready for the arrival of E's new playmate in March. Everything looks good from a pregnancy perspective and based on the last ultrasound at 34 weeks, we'll have a new little bubby that resembles Mr. Potato head. Awesome! Another fun piece of news- my Mom has booked her ticket to come down in May and June to help out with the new bub and with Edie's surgery which is scheduled for the 25th of May. Also awesome!

Love to all,

Laura

Tassie!

2011-01-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

Just a quick note to let you know that we're heading off to Tasmania shortly. We'll be there until Sunday and are pretty excited. Although it's a family vacation/work trip (we're still working on the eel project which took us to Tassie last May), we're pretty excited about going back. It'll be nice and cool where we're heading which is Hobart and due south to a little town called Southport, it'll be the closest we'll ever get to Antarctica I expect. I'll say that it really hasn't been untolerably hot in Brisbane lately, it's actually been quite beautiful weather with lots of sun and lots of cool breeze. A lovely contrast to the soggy months we've just spent here in Queensland.

Edie is excited about the prospect of bush-wees in Tassie, bush-wees being what they sound like, and have been eagerly picked up from her good friend/older kid idol Eli. The lemon grass in our back yard is a great alternative to the big-girl potty in our bathroom apparently. She's also excited about the prospect of her very own seat on the plane-ride to Tassie and back. Gone are the days of free air travel for this one, but it does come with perks, the main one being that we don't have to beg people to give up their seats so we have a little bit of room (and when they don't comply, watching Edie prove to others that she needs her own seat/will get her own seat through sheer toddler willpower (or torture, whatever you want to call it)).

We'll take lots of pictures and will be in touch on our return with lots of fun stories. Oh ya, the night we get back Tim and I are off to see Sufjan Stevens at the Tivoli here in Brisbane, super exciting! I'm sure we won't be too tired to enjoy Sufjan at a standing-only venue after a week of dealing with Edie in Tasmanian nature...Might be just the break we need despite it being a late-night for us. I'm sure it will be amazing.

Love to all

Laura, on behalf of the team.

More Australian adventure for Team Jardine

2011-01-16T02:11:00.000-08:00

Good evening friends,

I write from home tonight in the suburb of Mt Gravatt east, and since we live on a mt, yes, we're high and dry and safe from the crazy flooding that has hit the city over this past week. The worst of the flooding in the city of Brisbane is over now, and most people directly affected by the flooding have been able to get back to what remains of their homes to start clean-up for the lucky ones, or to say goodbye for the unlucky who have lost their homes. At this point it's probably now safe to unofficially say that the number of people who have been directly affected in these past few weeks of flooding in Queensland is either equal or greater than the number of people who have gotten by unscathed. I guess this is what happens when it rains for two and a half months straight, and yet the extent of what we experienced in Southeast Queensland was pretty unexpected. Even so, there are other parts of Queensland who have been hit repeatedly over the past few weeks, and I can't imagine the frustration which those folks muct be experiencing. But the reality is that a) Australia is a pretty volatile place and b) that this summer is predicted to be a wet one, and therefore the chance of more flooding to come is quite real. Just think: when Tim and I arrived in Feb of 2008, Brisbane was just coming out of a roughly 7 year drought with a dam capacity of barely 15% volume for the main water supply to the city, this week that same dam reached over 200% capacity. Things seem so much more at the mercy of mother nature here then what we experienced back home, it's hard to get our heads around.

So, despite reporting that we're safe and dry now, in true Team Jardine Australian adventure fashion, we got stuck in the very wrong place at the very wrong time over this past week. If you check out which of the 35 inundated suburbs in Brisbane were hit the hardest, Graceville comes up as a big one. We were on the tail-end of house-sitting for our friends in Graceville when this flooding hit. They were in Vietnam on two weeks holiday and we were at their house on two weeks holiday because their house is a) much nicer than ours and b) has a pool and a dog. The pool was kind of a bust because it rained pretty much the whole time we were there, but the dog and nice house were a big hit with all of us. As the day approached for our friends to return I was thinking that it had to be the easiest and most non-eventful house-sitting job I'd ever had. No losses of pets, no major 2-year old damage, relatively little to clean up after ourselves...

However, watching the evening news last Monday the commentators made an announcement during the middle of the show saying that anyone in the Lockyer Valley should evacuate immediately as their was a 7m wall of water heading towards the area. That was shocking, but I didn't realize how close the area was or that the water that flowed through that area would end up at the mouth of the Brisbane River eventually...Things a Canadian who is house-sitting in a low-lying flood-plain in the same catchment should know. As most have heard, the Lockyer Valley was devestated. By Tuesday morning, it was basically understood that the Brisbane river would flood, but the extent was unknown. So Tim and I decided to move a few things
that we knew were valuable to the upper floor of the house and then went on with the day. When Tim went to work the news reports and emergency warnings became more urgent, and I got freaked out, I'll admit it. By noon Tim had decided to come back to the house given that the warnings were getting worse and I was getting panicked. My worst fear was being stranded at the house without Tim trying to manage an Edie, Ella (the dog) and a very nice house that might potentially be underwater in the near future.

By Tuesday night it was pretty clear that the house that we were in would probably be flooded based on what experts were calling for and on the past history of the house, which was flooded in the devestating flood of '74. We were in touch with the house owners and were instructed to start moving things from the ground floor to the top floor, which we did with help from the neighbours. By 10:30 that night, Tim and I were in hot debate about whether to stay at the house in case flooding (which was predicted to hit our area by the next day) was minimal, or to leave in the event that it was as bad as predicted or in the event that we couldn't get back to our own home in Mt Gravatt east. We had two things working well against us: 1) that Edie was already asleep and we were not keen on getting her back up to pack our things and move at that hour and b) navigating potentially flooded roads in the dark was not up our alley either. So, whether it was smart or not, We 'collectively' decided that we would wait things out overnight and get out quickly in the morning. Between anticipation of this natural disaster and a 2-year old with crazy sleeping patterns, there was not a whole lot of sleep had that night. At 5am we were up, got our things together and packed up the dog to head to the higher ground of Mt Gravatt. Unfortunately overnight, Graceville flooded enough that most roads out of the suburb were underwater, and we couldn't find a way out where we wouldn't have to drive through water up to our headlights or higher to get back home. So with our tails between our legs and a few tears in our eyes, back to the house we went to prepare for sticking the flood out.

Thankfully the house was well stocked and had plenty of supplies in it to handle a few days of no electricity, as long as the water didn't rise above the second level we thought we'd be safe. We called our parents and broke the news that we were stranded. Not the first call we've made to our parents to break the news that we were seriously in a bad way...more like the 5th since we've arrived on this crazy island, so maybe they're getting used to it. To keep ourselves sane, we kept on working on getting ourselves prepared (moving the cars to higher ground, etc) while watching the flood-water backed up in the storm drains creep up our street. By mid-morning Fran (the homeowner) was texting us to tell us to get out of there, and the neighbors were of the same mindset. We weren't sure what to do (since we knew none of the layout of the suburb nor anyone on higher ground where we could crash, nor what one should do in a flood anyway), but when someone told us that the toilets would back up with the flooding, we decided to take their advice and find somewhere higher to crash until we could get out of the suburb. By this point we'd lost electricity as well.

So Fran texted a friend of hers in a non-flooding area a few streets over and we made our way there. This house was a hive of activity with scads of stuff being dropped off by people who had nowhere else to take their things. Someone there who recognized the signs of a horribly exhausted and ragged ex-pat family offered us a bed and Edie and I took advantage while Tim continued to help others move stuff, and to check on Fran's place as well which was just starting to flood. I should also mention that Wednesday (the day this was all happening) was the first beautiful non-rainy day that we'd had in weeks...It was eerie I tell you, not the typical picture one would have in mind when thinking of what a flooding city might look like.

When Edie and I got up from our nap, the family who owned the house we were in were eating Subway. I don't know if it's just me, I suspect not, but Subway is one of the foods I crave the most as a pregnant lady. I rarely eat it otherwise, but there is something about it when incubating a foetus that I can't pass up. So you might say that I was drooling a little bit, Tim was in the house by this point and could read my mind, so he asked where they'd gotten it (since we couldn't find a way out of the suburb that morning and no businesses in the area would have been operating at that point). The guy said that earlier in the day he'd taken a run to Forest Lake, a suburb about 35 minutes away that wasn't flooded. Also the suburb where our Canadian friend Steph lives! That did it for Tim. He insisted on taking a solo-run to see if he could get us there for the night, because the potential for electricity and no flooding was too appealing to the husband with a very pregnant wife and child with a medical condition to pass up. I balked at the idea because I really didn't want him to go alone, or leave us behind, and certainly didn't want to risk us getting ourselves into deeper problems by trying to flee a drowning suburb as a family. But Tim won out and scouted things out. He came back about an hour later and had found a dry route that would get us there. So we packed up our things for the third time that day and took off for Forest Lake, leaving Ella behind with the neighbours who'd agreed to take care of her.

We got to Stephs in time for supper, had Subway (of course) and crashed hard as a family by about 7pm. Roughly 11 hours later we awoke from our coma and felt rested for the first time in days. Fran and her family arrived home later in the morning, to a house in about 1m of water, which was much less that predicted, and an upstairs that contained all of their items from downstairs as well. All in all, they had very little damage to their house or possessions, which we're all thankful for given the extent of damages to other people within that same suburb and certainly across the state. They are still without power (it's Sunday now) and probably won't have it for another week, but they have been able to get a good start on the clean-up process. Many other people fared much, much worse, but I won't go into detail because it's readily available through the good old information highway (by the
way, if as North Americans you want a reliable source for what's happened/ is happening here in terms of flooding, check abc.net.au).

All-in-all, it was undoubtedly the worst house-sitting job I've experienced based on our last 3 days there. Trying to figure out what is important enough to salvage when dealing with threats to your own possessions is hard enough, and I don't recommend trying to do it for someone else. On the other hand, we now have a much better idea of what to do in the event of a flood, and Edie became very very good at puddle jumping.

We're safe and sound, unscathed and tired, and wishing that we now could be more help to those who have been affected. Logistics prevent doing this in a tangible way for us at the moment, so when things settle down a bit more we'll see what we can do. Parts of Victoria are now experiencing flooding from an unrelated system, which is scary. And to be honest, most everyone knows that we probably haven't seen the worst to come yet for the summer. Our dams are still at almost 190% capacity, the ground is saturated with water and there is a lot more rain predicted to come. I think this is part of life in Australia, and most Australians have come to accept it...Not something that was brought to our attention when lured here originally.

We've got a few pictures, but ran out of batteries/became insanely busy before long to really record what was happening through pictures. I imagine that there are lots that can be found online, I haven't bothered to look at them because I saw it happening and don't really want to remember what it was like. We'll post a few in the next few days.

Through this we've been exposed to the 'best-side of Australians', and I'd agree that in a pinch like this, you won't find better mates. Again, good on ya Australia.

Signing off for the night,

Laura

Tennis anyone?

2011-01-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year all! The wet weather from late 2010 has carried on into 2011, with no let up in sight. The country north and west of us is pretty much submerged or slowly drying out, as most of you would be aware given the amount of news coverage it seems to be getting globally. Unfortunately this is just part of life in Australia, the land of drought and flood. Hopefully some good will come of it, with agricultural yields likely to be high once full recovery sets in. The recovery, however, will probably take several years. Thankfully we haven't been affected in Brisbane thus far, with the only side effects being higher fruit and vegetable prices.

Despite the rain Laura and I were able to make it out to see some top-tier tennis at the Brisbane International this week. The venue is walking distance from where we are housesitting, so we thought, why not? The first match featured former world number 1 (current world number 8) Andy Roddick. This was significant in that, for Laura, it increased the number of live performances she has seen by men who have dated Mandy Moore to two, the other of course being her trip to Portland a few years back to see Ryan Adams. Now she only needs to see Wilber Valderrama and Zach Braff to round things out.

The tennis was good (we also saw Jelena Dokic) but Steph had a rough night with Edie, who has thrown some pretty serious tantrums lately and still keeps us guessing with her sleeping habits. Otherwise she is doing well, doing lots of colouring in, splashing in the many puddles in the backyard, and playing with the Wii. Her favorite part of staying here though is hanging out with Ella, the dog. Of course, Edie's love for Ella is put to the test each morning when Ella tries to steal her vegiemite toast.

Our Tassie trip is only a couple of weeks away. This will be our last crack at a family adventure before Team Jardine expands yet again in late March and we have to hunker down for a few months. Just to make things interesting, we've bought tickets to see Sufjan Stevens the night we return to Brisbane. Sufjan is someone who was on our "go see if you get the chance regardless of your circumstances, financial or otherwise" list. So we're going for it. He's been playing mostly from his new album, which leans towards techno hip hop (as opposed to the eclectic folk of his past) so it might not suit us, but the reviews have been good and he rarely tours. We figured this might our only chance. We'll catch up with y'all in early Feb.

Chrissy in Brissy!

2010-12-23T21:42:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

Chrissy 2010

Though silence in the blogosphere (from our end) has had ominous indication this year at times, we're glad to report that our slack behaviour in not reporting on our everyday mundane activities lately is because we're enjoying a period of non-craziness. Touch wood, as our Aussie counterparts would say...Translation: let's not jinx ourselves by talking about how great things are. It also might be because we bought a second-hand leather lounge suite for our living room recently and now are making up for almost 3 years of not having a comfortable place to sit in our house by sitting and relaxing in good company. Not too much exciting has happened over the past month, which has been a nice break.

However, one bigger news item is that our car took it's last trip in its 20 year run right on to the back of a tow-truck bound for the junk-yard, and was replaced with a car that I'm happy to report I'm proud of driving. It's a 2002 Corolla wagon, a great little car in great shape. We actually now feel bad for those folks who had to suffer through trips in our former vehicle when visiting, although that car got us through quite reliably for the most part (with the exception of our trip to the airport with the Beaver Clan...Sorry guys!) It was the last servicing that put 'er under, with a repair quote of over $2000, and a direct quote from our mechanic saying "well, you can drive it home, but if you start to feel anything funny with the brakes, pull over as fast as you can"...

We've also been having a blast getting ready for Christmas this year. It's been a fun month, and what Christmas season in Oz is complete without our annual yuletide lesson? Last years lesson: don't use a potted plant as your Christmas tree if it must sit on your kitchen table and be watered for a month...Mould thrived beneath the pot and we only discovered it when we took the tree down. That table is still waiting to be put out to the curb with the next curb-side pick-up. This years lesson: Don't put food on your tree, or leave it out overnight uncovered at this time of year. As much as I loved having a string of popcorn on our tree and how homey it felt (and which consequently took almost a day to string together), I didn't love the bugs it attracted. The cockroaches won once again, and I took the popcorn down after one night. The plans for cookies on the tree were shelved after that episode as well. Someday I'll have this living in Australia thing figured out.

I did stretch my homemaker legs this season and sewed stockings for the family to put out on Christmas eve (tonight!). They're made from material that was given to us before we left Canada from Anne (Tim's co-worker) who bought it from our friend Owen who bought it when he was living in Malawi. So they're not your typical Christmas stockings, but it was a lot of fun to make them and we have good memories associated with where they come from. My friend Betty let me use her sewing machine and taught me a whole lot about how to make life easier when sewing. I had a few flashbacks to home-ec classes and the frustration I used to experience on a weekly basis there, but all in all, it was a fun Christmas thing to do.

We had our annual Orphan Christmas dinner last night in true Australian fashion- seafood! Or as you might better recognize it, shrimp on the barby! We made it a goal not to use our oven, as that just adds to the already too hot temperatures we experience in our household, and we opted for seafood dishes, contributed by everyone. We had some of our ex-pat friends over and we ate extremely delicious food, had lovely Christmas drinks and complained about the weather and Australian idiosyncrasies that we still can't get our heads around. All in all, a success! I hadn't explored much of Aussie seafood prior to last night other than farmed salmon and a few species of whitefish, but I think I can safely say that the shellfish held its own. Good on ya Australia, you continue to win me over.

Over the holidays We're entertaining our friends Chelsea and Brett (who E affectionately refers to as Burt), up from Sydney where they've just moved, but originally friends from back home in Fredericton. It's been a blast to have them here and we're looking forward to a few more days of enjoying their company. Edie's quite taken with them, which means that Tim and I are experiencing low rankings on the I-want-to-hang-around-you chart. Not bothered at all, and Chelsea will never want to do another puzzle again in her life.

It's been raining like mad here, breaking records left right and centre for rainfall and low temperatures for the month of December in Queensland and all along the east coast of Australia. Though it has been trouble for a lot of folk (i.e. flooding, crop failure, etc), I have been as happy as a clam to have only experienced two or three days of over-the-top humidity and heat this summer, indirectly I think Tim must be happy about this as well. Pregnant hot lady is no fun to be around. As a matter of fact, it's now Christmas eve and it's raining buckets, not something I'm completely unfamiliar with given that I grew up in Yarmouth, but it's a whole lot greener here, and we had Edie out for a swim outside this morning...Ya, just different enough.

To our friends and family back home, the Chrissy cards haven't made it out yet, but I'm working on it. And thanks to those who have been more on top of their game than we've been, it's awesome to get snail-mail and phone-calls from those we love and miss. Our camera has been sitting idle this month unfortunately so we'll post some Christmas pictures in the next few days.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Santa's on his way

2010-12-01T00:08:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to let you know that rainy Brisbane is treating us well these days. The wet weather has meant the usual scorching heat hasn't yet hit us, although summer only officially began today (Dec. 1st). We're getting ready for our first full Christmas here, after our trip home in '08 and a sojourn north to Maryborough last year. We'll be housesitting for our friends in a nearby suburb while they vacation in Europe, and their house has air conditioning and a pool, much to the delight of Laura and Edie. It'll be as though we took a vacation ourselves - all we have to do is feed the dog.

Edie's been enjoying baking and decorating with her mom, getting ready for the holidays. She has been calling her snowman Ho-Ho, so perhaps she hasn't quite figured out the details yet. Her next surgery isn't likely to happen until May or June, but her spirits are high so we're happy to manage things as they are for the moment.

Bub number two is also incubating nicely. I would share our ultrasound photo but our scanner is broken and let's face it, a blurry image of an unborn child really only means something to parents and perhaps grandparents, especially when it's the 2nd child and the novelty has worn off from the 1st. Someday he or she might read this post, further contributing to his/her 2nd child syndrome characterized by lack of attention and general neglect. But hey, I'm a 2nd child, I can say those things out loud right? After all, there's no way Edie will hog all the attention in our household, will she? Hmmm.

All for now. Enjoy the photos.

December 2010

Sunny, sunny November

2010-11-08T01:36:00.000-08:00

Hello folks,

It's been a while we know. These are some pretty hectic days for us and in a short time we'll write a proper posting giving a better idea of what's going on in our adventure down under. In the meantime, we thought that some pictures would quell the storm of anger that is surely brewing in our vast expanse of readership. Enjoy and we'll catch up soon.

Laura

More Fall 2010

Ahhh beautiful October

2010-10-08T02:16:00.000-07:00

G'day friends,

It's a rainy Friday night in Brissy, no better time to write a blog posting.

Speaking of rain, there's been a lot of it lately. Roughly the past 3 weeks have been more rainy than not, but we'll take it! Everything is becoming lush and green again, and the Jacaranda trees are back in bloom. Their flowering is a reminder of how long we've been here, this being our third season...Time is flying, hey? The rain of course brings out the mossies and sandflies, and the humidity that goes along with the rain also brings out the creepy crawlies...namely our friends the house ants. The first year that we were here I did all that I could to keep them out of the house (pre-Edie, of course, when I had time to worry about such things), last year they bothered me, but we became more tolerant of each other's presence...This year I'm pointing out where the crumbs on the floor are so I don't have to pick them up myself (Good work guys! You're doing a fabulous job!). So that's not really true, in great numbers the ants creep me out, but the scouts I don't mind so much anymore. All part of living here I gather, and it's not that rough a bargain. As with any hot and humid climate, cockroaches thrive here as well. These guys I have a harder time dealing with. I was pretty excited the other day when Tim got rid of one from the bathroom, the only one in our house for sure I thought, until a few days later when I turned on the light and opened the closet and saw/heard the telltale scuttling. I try to give the roaches fair warning so that they can at least hide while I'm around, and so far, it seems to be working (whatever 'working' means in this context...blissful ignorance?) Again, a bit more difficult to toleate, but doable, especially considering they're only around for part of the year.

Fall or Spring...Depends on who you talk to or how we're feeling

Enough of that talk. We're looking forward to a good Thanksgiving dinner here on Sunday night. Our friends Steph and Allison will be representing the Canadians, and we couldn't miss out on inviting our American friends the Davis clan (Tim, Lindsay and Baby Joel) and Edie's mexican uncle Domino from southern California...It's going to be fun. Tim and I both agree that Thanksgiving is the holiday that we miss the most in the Canadian calendar year, it's like Christmas minus the crazy. Family,food,cool nights,sunny days, what more could you ask for in a holiday? So this is our attempt to recreate the goodness. Much like using a yule log video to create a cozy Christmas atmosphere in our house last year, I'm sure this dinner will feel like a bit of a sham, but you know, we're getting used to the feeling. And our friends here become more like family to us the longer we're here, and we're thankful for this, so it's a good reason to celebrate. No?

Life it settling into a new kind of normal for us here with Edie on the mend. Seems to us that when we left the hospital, we were under the impression that things would be normal (as they were before) once Edie was on the rebound. It's not proving to be the case. As Tim mentioned in the last post, she's doing well. She is putting on weight and looking better and better, but we've realized that having part of her belly on the outside will be a bit of a hindrance to her until things are properly fixed, and because she'll be in surgery again in a few short months, our expectations in terms of recovery-timelines have had to change. She gets pretty uncomfortable by the end of the average day, and it's made much worse if she's had a big day or has missed sleep, etc. So our daily lives as they were, are proving to be too much for Miss E. So we've had to cut things back, and as a result Edie and I spend a lot more time together at home and both look very forward to our daily nap. Can't say that I mind this at all. We are trying/being forced to take things a day at a time, and re-evaluating along the way. This parenting thing...

And finally, speaking of parenting, it's almost time for 19 week ultrasound of bubby #2. How fast is this pregnancy going, hey? I've had some pretty positive midwife and obstetrician appointments where we've heard a heartbeat, which is always exciting. They're also watching me like a hawk and taking extra precautions heading into the second half of pregnancy given our exciting delivery of Miss Edie. Tim and I definitely appreciate the precautionary approach, even though it means a busy schedule. Whatever it takes to get the deed done, we're up for it.

And I'll leave you with that. It's past our usual bedtime of 8pm, and as a very wise grade 12 valedictorian once offered in his Tips from the Top, going to bed early will get you places.

Love to all,

Laura

Avian Aggro

2010-10-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

Well it's that time of year again. Yep, nesting season for the various agressive birds here in Brisbane. And that means it's time to break out the cable ties and giant eye stickers for your bike helmet so you don't get muscled out of the territory of some testosterone-fueled male or overprotective female. Both Laura and I have learned this the hard way, as each of us has been swooped recently by a butcher bird up the street. This of course brings to four the total number of bird species that have gotten up close and personal with me since moving here, a list that includes butchers, noisy miners, a masked plover and that fiesty crow that Laura wrote about a while back that was terrorizing me every morning. And we haven't even dealt yet with the most notorious of all the swoopers - magpies - who are known to draw blood and blacken eyes when they make contact with intruders. It's only a matter of time. The only bird encounters I can remember from all my time in Canada was the occasional swoop by a swallow in our backyard, and of course my infamous encounter with a partridge in the backwoods of central New Brunswick back in '99.

All of these bird terrors here make for an interesting ride to work on my bike every day. The aforementioned butcher bird has set up a territory on our street at the top of the hill, so every day I have to come racing past to avoid getting chased. If he spots me he'll close in, only stopping when I'm looking directly at him. This means that I have to turn around and shake my fist or point at him while speeding down the hill to our house, not exactly stellar road safety. And the birds aren't my only concern, as I nearly got run over by a woman driving a big SUV on a rainy day last week. She entered a roundabout without seeing me and got right up on my back wheel, bending my kickstand in the process but fortunately not making actual contact with any vulnerabe body parts.

Despite all this, I must say that riding to work year round is one of the best things about living in Brisbane. It gets a little hot in the summer but it's definitely the most efficient way for me to get exercise. And I'm glad that my only animal encounters have happened in suburbia and not during my field work in North Queensland where the animals can do more than just give you a scare.

For those of you wondering how Edie is doing, well she's doing all right. She gets a little uncomfortable towards the end of each day but otherwise she's firing on all cylinders. She's been getting plenty of time with Baby Joel (aka Joel Davis, son of Tim and Lindsay) and hopefully getting used to having another bub to share the attention. As of March, she won't be the only game in town.

Just a little one

2010-09-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

This is one of Edie's favorite lines. We'll let you figure out what it might be in relation to based on our new adventures of late. This picture was too fun to leave to a later post.

From Little Princess

Also, we forgot to tell you about our fun day at the fair back in July. Our friends Lindsay and Tim weren't so forgetful and posted about the fun family outing on their blog. There are some good pics of Miss Edie, so feel free to check it out too.

Love to all!

Laura

Gosh

2010-09-12T02:13:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

While it's hard to relay all of the good and bad reasons that we've not posted in a while...whatever. Man! How many different ways can I start a blog with the same message- Sorry! We'd love it if sitting down to write about our lives came more easily, but it just isn't in real life. But you know, we wish we could keep in better touch regarding our adventures, we really do miss our folks and friends back home like mad. It's actually kind of crazy that this is our primary mode of communication, don't you think? Regardless...We've had a few adventures since our last post, and I'll tell you about a few of them.

First off, we're in Springtime here in Australia. It's gorgeous! Actually, I didn't mind winter at all here this year, not because it was any warmer, but more likely because I actually sucked it up and bought 2 sweaters that brought me through many a chilly spell. Up until this year I was in denial about the need for warm clothes here, but my purchases really made this winter pretty comfortable and enjoyable. Amazing. However, I do have a bone to pick with being environmentally conscious and surviving winter in Australia. Last Fall, our landlords took advantage of a government scheme (one of many, we certainly do have a scheming government) which subsidized homeowners for the installation of solar panels for hot water systems. Not only would it save you money, solar energy is the way of the future, blah blah blah. Now, one would think that in sunny Queensland, the abundance of sun would provide more energy for solar storage than one could ever need. This may be true in some cases (especially inland), and I'm aware of people that have gone totally off of the grid with the installation of solar panels to provide all of their household electicity who save oodles of cash in electricity savings (some even make money by selling electricity back into the grid), and have experienced no inconvenience at all. But brother, I tell you, we had many a cold shower this winter. So, the problem. It's not always sunny in the winter. It may be warm, but it's often cloudy or raining. Which means no water gets heated by our 'abundant' solar energy. Our system does have a booster, which in theory will provide hot water in the absence of sun, but it takes (I'll say, on average) 1-2 hours to give us anything near hot, and you can't use the booster in 'peak' time (peak time is an arbitrary time of day chosen by the electricity provider where due to high usage, energy becomes more expensive to use and, they may just decide that you can't use it...for real). At times, we seriously ended up boiling water on the stove to give us enough warm water to bathe Edie in. I think the problem here is that if you're going to go solar, heating your water is probably the last thing that you should count on solar energy for. If you just heated your water with propane gas and relied on solar panels for everything else, you'd be laughing (which our friends who have made the switch are). I'm guessing that solar panels for heating water are the cheaper alternative in 'going green', and like most cheap things, you get what you pay for. In our case, our landlords also switched their hot water heating over to solar panels last fall, so at least we experienced the thrill of going green via a cold shower in the freezing winter in good company (in separate showers).

Back in July, on another environmental mission, we helped our friends plant trees on their new property which they'd recently purchased. Apparently the council in that area is keen on revegetating land that was once used for horse paddocks, and so provide grants to new homeowners to undertake revegetating with native plants. Great deal, hey? Of course, we provided very cheap labour (a good down home bacon and egg breaky was all it took), and we also had a blast. Miss Edie is such a funny little girl. We knew that she'd love this kind of thing, and she had a great time as we expected. Basically, if you give her a job, she's as pleased as punch to be doing whatever you ask of her. In this instance, she was our 'tree runner'. There were trays of big trees and little trees which we alternated around the property, and she'd bring over which ever size we'd request while Tim would dig the hole and I would plant the tree. It was great fun. We kind of hope we can do it again.

So our friends Rachel and Paul (who currently live in Portland, ME) arrived for a visit August 23rd, and left a week ago. We miss them a lot. They actually arrived at a crazy time for us. About a week preceeding their visit Miss Edie was sick with a cold, and by the Monday that they'd arrived, we felt the need to get her to our doctor for various reasons, but the major one being that her belly was just growing and growing. So basically, I picked up Rach and Paul at 7:20am from the airport, and by 10am had Miss Edie at the doctors office. From there they sent us to the hospital, and the next week and a half, we spent in hospital with Edie. During that week and a half, it was discovered that she's got Hirschprung's Disease, a congenital disease more common in boys than girls, and typically detected in the first week following birth, where there's a part of the lower intestine (a very short part in Edie) where there are no nerve cells present to move things along. The doctor's don't know how she's made it so long without serious hospitalization, but we're glad she has. And we're more than ecstatic to have worked out a plan with doctors to correct the problem within the next year. She had an operation to help things along in the mean time (an ostomy was put in place), and she's a very happy little girl these days. She's recovered like a champ and continues to surprise and impress us with her resilience. All told, when we got out of hospital, we had 3 days remaining with Rachel and Paul, which were fun-filled and packed. They did a great job of entertaining themselves and discovering while we were tied up at hospital, and in the end it was just so great to have them here despite the crazy time. Only one of us (Tim or I) were allowed to stay with Edie overnight in hospital, so on our home shifts we were just so thrilled to have such great company at home to get our minds off of our troubles. They also visited us in hospital as well, but it was really just having them around in general that made things so much easier. So we miss them a lot. And of course, in times like these we miss our families and friends back home so much. But in reality, we're in a pretty good situation where our doctors have known Edie since birth and the hospital we deal with is second to none in terms of treatment and care for both Edie and us. We can't say enough about how 'easy' this hard time has been because of this. We, as always, are very well taken care of.

And in other news, Tim and I are expecting another baby. Yahoo! And I can safely say, that in the 14 weeks that I've been pregnant so far, the demands that the new one is placing on me are far less than the demands of our first. Yahoo! So, all told, we've got a big year coming up. Our new wee one is due March 20, and Miss Edie is expecting to be fixed up sometime following that...We'll know more regarding a real timeline for Miss E after a specialist appointment on Wednesday of this week.

And so those are some of the things that have been happening. I wish there were a way to convey the little things that make us so happy on a daily basis, but I'd be writing for ages. Thanks to those who've been in the loop who've been praying for us and thinking of us, and to those who weren't, don't worry if you think you've missed out on an opportunity, there's a long road ahead.

We miss you,

Laura (on behalf of Team Jardine)

PS. Tim will be posting new pictures in the next day or two. Enjoy!

Spring 2010

Follow the action live (sort of)

2010-08-07T13:09:00.000-07:00

Post 5 - Aug. 15th
This will be my last post for this trip. I'm enjoying my 2nd 8 hour layover at LAX in a week; this time I thought I would make a quick trip to In & Out Burger, a Californian institution. The closest one is a free shuttle ride away from the terminal (if you pretend you're going to a hotel or picking up a parked car), and the planes come zooming in for their landing almost right next door, so it makes for a pretty cool experience. In & Out Burger, of course, was referenced in one of our favorite movies, "The Big Lebowski", and is known as the fast food chain that isn't like other fast food chains, because it uses fresh ingredients and doesn't pay its employees the absolute minimum required by law. It's a noble idea, but let's face it, fast food is fast food - I'll rate the taste as o.k. but not great, but I'm glad to have finally experienced it.

Post 4 - Aug. 14th

Well the meeting wrapped up last night with a banquet on board the Riverboat Discovery, a replica paddlewheeler. We cruised the Chena River for three hours, enjoyed some nice hors d'oeuvres, listened to some reasonable Alaskan bluegrass music, and had a couple of drinks. It's all over - time to get back to Brissy!
Oh yeah, and they grow 'em big in Alaska! Cabbages that is.

Post 3 - Aug. 13th

We spent yesterday in beautiful Denali National Park. It's a real tourist hotspot, with plenty of buses moving around and the usual tourist traps (restaurants, giftshops, etc.). The highlight of the day was a hike to the top of Mount Healy. The views were spectacular, as the photos attest, and we saw some small but interesting wildlife, including Arctic ground squirrels and a hoary marmot.

Earlier in the day we stopped for lunch at the Savage River, a classic glacier fed system (sparse vegetation, clear water), and I managed to get up close to a pair of ptarmigan ("famous for being dumb" according to bird expert Keith Hobson) with fledglings.

So we didn't see any of the "charismatic megafauna" of the park (bears, wolves, caribou) but it was a great trip nonetheless. We returned tired and happy to our accommodation and got a few precious hours of sleep.

Post 2 - Aug. 11th
Well I made it into Fairbanks on Saturday, sans luggage but in good spirits after inhaling the fresh Alaskan air, which was particularly fresh after 29 hours of travel. My bags were delivered to me first thing in the morning so thankfully I didn't have to give my presentation in my travel clothes (as happened several years ago in New Zealand).

Alaska is beautiful and the people are very friendly. We're having a good time and I'm reminded of home often, most notably from the sound of Canada geese honking away at a wildlife refuge not very far from campus.

The state fair is in town so I stopped in for a peek. All the classic treats were there in great excess - lots of t-shirts with semi-funny slogans, cotton candy, nachos, and deep fried just about anything (halibut and pb and jelly sandwiches being prime examples). And the now-obligatory talent show "Fairbanks has talent" was also on. Good to see the local talent on display.

Last night we hired a cab to take us out to a great joint called the Turtle Club where we had a great feed of seafood. As a tribute to "The Deadliest Catch", I had the king crab, a local favorite, and it was deliciously proteinaceous.

That's all for now; tomorrow I'm off to Denali National Park, home of bears, caribou and North America's highest peak.

Post 1 - Aug. 7th
I'm en route to Alaska for a conference, currently in LAX airport. Thought I would pass along a few shots of Santa Monica pier - freeway by the beach anyone? I took the shots while I was killing a few of the eight hours before my next flight to Seattle. Santa Monica really isn't bad for a one dollar bus ride from the airport. It was a smoggy morning and the sun has just come out (at 1:00 pm), but nevertheless I enjoyed my lunch of clams n' fries and watermelon juice. Two other minor highlights - someone landed a stingray on a line while I was there, and a busker did an excellent version of Paul Simon's "Under African Skies"

I've decided that LA is just like Brisbane, except bigger, dirtier, concretier, and has a wider gap in socioeconomic status (the richest of the rich, the poorest of the poor). So let's say we won't be visiting here as a family anytime soon. I've also decided that I am now officially conditioned to subtropical life. Witnessing people swimming this morning when it was a bone chilling 18 degrees made me think they were crazy. I've gone soft.

Next update will be from the land of the midnight sun!

Another winter in the Land of Oz

2010-07-12T01:46:00.000-07:00

As we shiver away in our drafty house here in Brissy, we thought we would bring you up to date on the latest in our lives. Things have settled down considerably after a wild few months of travel. I wrapped up the last of the field work for my current projects with a trip to Cooktown and Kowanyama in early June, which means plenty of data to analyze and papers to write, but more importantly more time at home with Laura and Edie. Outside of our Tassie trip, this last trip may have been the best of the lot. We worked in rainforest streams along the coast between Cairns and Cooktown. Absolutely beautiful countryside, and looks the same way it probably did many thousands of years ago. Of course, crocs are particularly threatening in those waters because, due to the Great Dividing Range running so close to the coast, you are never far from the sea, so we had to be on our guard at all times. We managed to get up close and personal with a cassowary that came wandering into the grounds of the motel where we were staying. These impressive birds are under threat from human activity, most notably vehicle strikes, which has led to the strange phenomenon of speed bumps in the rainforest.

I also made a brief clandestine trip back to Canada in June - I was interviewing for a faculty position at Acadia University in Wolfville. There were only three people interviewed so I had a decent shot, but it wasn't meant to be. I found out last week that they had given it to someone else. Although it was a pretty awful trip (only 3.5 days home, 2 days in the air) and it was disappointing to come so close to a great job so close to home, it was a good experience, and hopefully I'll get the next one that comes up. My original goal was just to get an interview, considering it was a pretty high profile position (tenure track, Canada Research Chair), so it bodes well for future applications.

The chilly weather here has slowed down our hiking schedule but we've still managed to do plenty of fun things, including a visit to the Science Center (yes, dinosaurs are cool), lots of market days, baking, and our now-weekly get-togethers with our friend Steph. When we tell Edie that Steph is coming over she immediately says "party!" - it's fair to say that Steph is a fan favorite. We've also started going for night walks. Since it gets dark here just before 6 pm we can take Edie out for a walk before she goes to bed. She loves getting bundled up in her stroller and holding her flashlight to look for possums and echidnas (which we would never see this time of year, but that shouldn't stop her!).

Edie's rapidly expanding vocabulary continues to impress. She greeted the moon the other morning when I opened the curtains after she woke up at 5:30 am, and she's taken to piling plenty of toys and other trinkets into her bed before she goes to sleep. Just when we think she can't get any cuter, she surprises us again.

It's also election campaign time here, with Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard (recently annointed after dumping formerly unstoppable Kevin Rudd with an overnight party insider coup) going against opposition leader Tony Abbott. They present very polarized viewpoints, so it should be a good race. Of course, both are promising a tougher stance on asylum seekers that regularly arrive on Australia's shores, mostly from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Even though these "boat people" represent a small fraction of the number of illegal immigrants in the country - the vast majority are people who came legally and overstayed their visas - they are an easy target for any politician that wishes to cater to a fraction of the population that has mild xenophobia. Undoubtedly it's a difficult issue, but unfortunately it's one that pokes at our base emotions.

That's all for now. We'll enjoy these cool days....it won't be long before we're sweating it out again. Enjoy the pics.

Winter 2010

The Rainbow Room

2010-06-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

I took Edie to Southbank today. The Luminarium art exhibit was on, a huge blow-up maze with colored windows. Edie and I both loved it, despite the fact that we had to wait an hour and some in line waiting to get in (she threw her Ernie doll to keep occupied). Brisbane is great for this kind of stuff, we definitely need to get out more often!

Luminarium

What a month...and what a chronologically confusing post

2010-06-09T03:05:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Last Thursday morning I woke up so happy. Tim’d been up north all week so it was kind of unusual for me to be feeling so great upon waking up alone…Usually when he’s out of town I’m trying my hardest to stay in bed for as long as I can…Either way, I thought I’d take advantage of my mood, slipped on my runners, popped a granola bar into Edie’s hand and took her for a run in the jogging pram. It was a great run. We saw her friend Bingo (a beagle pup), and Edie was ecstatic to find that Bingo wanted to eat her granola bar and then had a great time saying “Bingo, NO!” We also saw some Lorikeets in the neighbor’s tree. Lorikeets are very common here but Edie still gets really excited when she sees them. All in all, it was a great start to a great morning for us. We got back to the house, I put on a pot of oatmeal and we enjoyed breakfast together. As I mentioned before, feeling this good is kind of unusual when Tim is gone…For some reason, the worst luck typically accompanies Tim’s absence, and thus when Tim and I talk while he’s away, he usually gets bad news. But on Thursday morning, things were going so well that I thought that I’d give Tim a call and surprise him with a cheery good morning. I dialed Tim’s mobile and he didn’t pick up, so I prepared to leave an upbeat message. However, just when the beep signaled to leave a message, Edie projectile vomited her oatmeal all over the kitchen table. I hadn’t even had the chance to say “hello”, let alone “we’re doing great here!” I just stuttered into the phone “uhhhh…you didn’t just hear that or your daughter crying, uhhh, ummm, that wasn’t the sound of her vomiting…we’re actually doing great here! Gotta go!” So my good intentions were foiled again, and my good news conversation turned into the more familiar “what do I do? I don’t know what I’m doing here!” Poor Tim. Edie, it turns out, was nursing a stomach bug. It actually turned out to be a rather rough day, given the upbeat start. Thankfully, the bug was short lived with the worst being over by the time she went to bed that night. She did have a great time the next day pointing to her belly and saying “Go AWAY bug!” She’s sleeping now, and is hopefully sleeping all of that bad sickness off. I haven’t yet been hit with the bug, and I’m crossing my fingers that I won’t but I know that my chances at a clean bill of health in the next week are probably quite slim. Tim gets back on Thursday, and we should all be right as rain by then.

So, just before Edie went to sleep this morning (a week later) we made cookies together. It was a whole lot of fun. Zucchini chocolate chip. They’re fabulous and if you want the recipe, just let me know.

I got back from Viet Nam at the beginning of last week (just go with me on the timing thing, it's not important...I was in VN from the 10th to the 18th of May). It was a great trip, and maybe the relaxation factor from that trip has carried over into the relative ease at which I’m handling Tim’s absence this week, given the circumstances. I took notes in order to recount the adventure and hopefully the pictures do it some justice. I should start by saying that the freedom and lack of stress involved with traveling by myself was shocking. I’ve reflected many times since Edie has been born about how much of a stress-case I’ve become, but I can truly say that I left it all behind when I set foot on the plane to Darwin (I traveled Brisbane-Darwin-Ho Chi Min city-Hanoi). Not having to worry about whether there was an empty seat next to me on the plane for Edie to occupy was just the beginning of things that I didn’t have to worry about on this trip.
So I flew to Darwin and then on to Ho Chi Min city (formerly known as Saigon) where I stayed the night. I’m not sure if my relative familiarity with Viet Nam (having been there the year before) or the fact that I didn’t have anyone else to worry about , made my entry into the country pretty non-descript. It seems that last year when we stepped out of the airport into the sea of Vietnamese-speaking people, it was a lot more intimidating. I was able to grab a taxi very easily and didn’t care a lick that I was being ripped off for the ride into the city. I distinctly remember being super-peeved last year when we paid 20$ USD to get to our hotel, because all of the travel books had told us that we should pay no more than 10$...I suspected that I would have to pay 20$ on this trip being a white, female, english-speaking tourist, and I was right. But you know, I got to the hotel safe and sound and the 10$ extra probably would have been wasted anyway. I did chuckle when the taxi that took me back to the airport in the morning charged 7$, I gave the guy 10$ just because I thought it was funny. He looked like I had just handed him a gold nugget, which maybe isn’t that far off. The VND was trading at 1 USD=19,000 VND that day, and 19,000 VND could buy enough food to last almost a week, potentially.

Getting to Hanoi, again, was incredibly simple. I was met at that airport by Sebastien, the only white guy in the joint, and our friend Van Anh’s French-Canadian fiancée. In May, Sebastien and Van Anh were making their pre-wedding rounds in Hanoi prior to their wedding being held in Fredericton in June. Sebastien had spent the 2 weeks prior to my arrival totally immersed in Vietnamese life, and I think it’s safe to say that he was happy to see me. That being said, I’m not sure that it’s just Van Anh’s family, or whether it’s a cultural thing, but in Hanoi people come right up to you, say stuff in Vietnamese and expect you to reply back…it’s really awkward until you realize that it happens all of the time and people don’t seem to be too jilted by your inability to reply. But it’s kind of draining just not being able to communicate with words. It’s one of the only times in my life where I’ve been in a minority group, and I’ve come away thinking that everyone should be at least once in their lives. It’s a very eye-opening experience. In our situation we always had Van Anh to translate for us, so we were lucky. We could use public transport, eat local food, etc., without worrying about how to ask for it. We were also able to know what people were saying about us and in a number of cases, it was not very nice! In one situation a bus driver made the comment that if we wanted to sight-see, that we should get a taxi like all of the other backpacking tourists. Given that one pays the equivalent of 7 cents a busride to anywhere in Hanoi, maybe he had a point, and perhaps he was friends with a taxi-driver who wouldn’t get a chance to rip us off because we were riding a bus. But you know, there’s a reason it’s so cheap. It’s hot, crowded and pickpockets are everywhere. The seats are always taken which means that there are loads of people standing, holding onto the hand loops dangling from the ceiling, and did I mention it’s hot? You can imagine the smell of a hot, crowded bus where most people are riding with their arms above their heads. I couldn’t even stand my own smell! And those are just the busses in the city.

We did decide to take an overnight trip out to Halong Bay, which meant 6 hours in a bus on day one and the same on return. These busses we were actually able to sit in, but they’re rough. Traffic in Viet Nam is incredible, and indescribable…You have to experience it to believe it. No stop signs, no centre lines, no pavement in some cases and pretty much anything goes. Van Anh’s family are friends with a family who live near Halong Bay, and so the father of that family was our tourguide. He actually was in Hanoi when we were, so he traveled by bus with us to get out to Halong Bay. The funny part of this story is that he was getting picked up by our bus at another station the morning we left, and he missed the bus. He apparently didn’t see the bus stop. So he called Van Anh’s mom (who was traveling with us on the bus), while jumping on the back of a motorbike with some guy that he didn’t know, to chase our bus. Apparently he’d been chasing our bus for ½ an hour when he finally caught up, jumped off of the bike and onto our bus as it was still rolling along. He was still in conversation with Van Anh’s mom on his mobile phone as he jumped onto our bus.

Halong Bay was beautiful and I was really glad that we were staying with locals there (the family friends of Van Anh’s family put us up for the night in Van Don). We got to see a lot of local sites that aren’t on the beaten path and really got to rough it a bit. We slept on grass mats under mosquito nets in the sweltering heat, and I couldn’t have been happier. I tried fresh squid for breakfast that next morning…interesting. The fleshy part was good but crunching through the head was a little bit harder to stomach. On the drive to and from Halong Bay I was able to observe in peace, which I love doing. There were so many neat things to take in. Like the fact that most houses open up right on to the main road, and therefore are typically made into little shops where people wheel their stuff out in the day and take it back in at night. These houses are built very skinny, with tall ceilings for cooling, and the higher the building the better. As street-front real-estate is very expensive, most buildings have a shop on their ground floor and family space upstairs. And there are SO many barber shops. Almost every house I was in had a barber chair on the ground floor. I actually witnessed a child (probably 7 or 8 years old) who sat in one of these barber chairs for 3 hours getting his hair cut by an apprentice. What patience! And to think he’d have to get it cut again in a few weeks (Vietnamese hair is a bit wiley, it grows thick, fast and straight, so for men with short cuts, it’s tough to keep it from looking like a chia pet after a few weeks). That’s a huge amount of time for a youngster to invest in getting his locks chopped. I would have given the apprentice two thumbs up for the good job on the lad, but two thumbs down for the insane amount of time it took. Let’s hope he gets better.

Most properties also have walls surrounding them as well. These walls are typically topped with broken glass, which is really interesting in itself. Where does the glass come from? Who spent all the time putting it there? I spent a lot of time thinking of how I could overcome this kind of security system as well. Thick gloves, thick shoes, a bat to break off the sharp bits, seems too easy…So I came to the conclusion that perhaps the glass wasn’t only meant for security purposes. Vietnamese people have a lot of beliefs surrounding spirits and how to ward the bad ones off. A lot of houses have at least one mirror on the front to keep spirits away, maybe glass around property perimeter is another. But I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

I stayed the remainder of my trip in Hanoi with Van Anh’s family. They have a 5 storey house and I stayed on the rooftop floor by myself and loved it. Matresses are a bad idea in a place where humidity is greater than 80% for the entire year, so I got used to sleeping on grass or wooden mats. I also got used to cold showers and wet bathroom floors, and carrying toilet paper and soap everywhere. These two things don’t turn up very much in public bathrooms. The hospitality shown to me was second to none, and I can’t wait to go back. Viet Nam has grown on me.

Since starting this blog, Tim has been home from his trip up north and left again, I turned 30, and our friends Tim and Lindsay have had a baby- Welcome Baby Joel! Tim and Lindsay also had a birthday party for me on June 2nd (my Tim was still up north, and Baby Joel hadn’t joined us on the outside yet). I think it was the most thoughtful birthday party that I’ve had since my Smurfs themed party when I turned 2 or 3…My memory is a little foggy on that one. Anyway, we had homemade popcorn (which Edie pigged out on), stuffed fish and the most amazing cake that I’ve ever eaten, made from my favorite fair trade chocolate and fair trade peppermint tea. Unfortunately Miss Edie pulled the regular kid-at-a-birthday-party stunt, ate too much, and then tossed her cookies. I had taken 3 bites of the amazing cake when this all happened and it saddened me greatly to have to strip her down, clean her up and leave without my cake. Thankfully, Tim and Lindsay didn’t get sick, and also the rest of the cake was returned to us a few days later. It was just as delicious as I’d remembered from when before Edie yacked. Tim (of Team Jardine) called me on the morning of my birthday and told me to look in our picnic basket where I found a lovely note and two tickets to see Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf) for the end of the month. He won points there. After he got back from the trip up north we also took a Sunday night to dine out sans Edie, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. So the start to my 4th decade was an interesting, but good one.

Miss Edie had her first haircut on the Saturday past. She was surprisingly good, given that her frequency of tantrums has increased seemingly exponentially in the last 2 weeks. And who knew that the modern bob would be a better look than that Hulk Hogan mullet that she’d been sporting these past 6 months? She’s so very cute and funny and we love her to death.

Sorry for the long delay…And given that I’m on my own again I’ll be adding pictures bit by bit.

May-June 2010

Love to all,

Laura

friends, beaches, radios

2010-05-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

Howdy all.

There’s not too much to say this week. Things are humming along well in the Jardine household, we’re getting to the end of the second long-weekend in a row (Anzac day last weekend followed by Labour day this weekend). Since the weather is so nice it’s been easy to get out and hike or beach-walk, hang out in the park or go for a good bike ride.

We welcomed Sarah and Justin last weekend, and bid them farewell on Thursday for their road-trip up the eastern coast. It’s great to know that they’re having a great time, but it’s maddening to know that they’re in Australia and we’re not hanging out with them! We’ll reunite later this week before they head home. We may take in an AFL game in the city, but we’re not sure. We’ve been here for over 2 years and still don’t understand that game- and this says a lot considering who I’m married to. We’ve found that sporting events in Brisbane are generally fun to attend though, so we’ll probably give it a go.

I actually will be leaving Brisbane when Sarah and Justin head out. Yep, I’m off to Vietnam for a quick visit with our friend Van Anh and her fiancée who will be in Hanoi visiting with her family prior to their wedding back in Canada. It’ll only be me on this trip, which is kind of exciting and kind of frightening. I’m sure it will be great, and I’m stoked to be going while knowing what to expect (having visited last year at this time). I’m looking forward to Pho, and the yummy pork porridge and sticky rice balls that Van Anh got us for breakfast when we were there last time. I’ll admit that I’m relieved that I don’t have to stress about Edie traveling either...however, Tim probably feels quite differently than I do about this. He’ll be the one tending to Edie for 8 days without mum. He’ll be fine I’m sure, and he’s got access to lots of help here. He doesn’t think he’ll need it, but brother, unless he’s got some magic up his sleeve, he will. Edie + everyday life is a big, big job. She knows ‘no’ now and knows how to use it well. She’s so darn funny. So if you’re around and can lend a hand, don’t let Tim fool you into brushing help aside.

We made a trip out to Bribie Island last weekend for a beachside walk and it was amazing. We took along Sarah and Justin, Steph (our favorite Canadian physiotherapist living in Brisbane and regular Monday night guest) and our friends originally from Michigan, Tim and Lindsay. It’s weird that living in Queensland where beaches are plentiful and amazing, that we generally don’t go to them very often. I think the same can actually be said for lots of Queenslanders. Perhaps because of this, whenever we actually find ourselves at beaches here, we’re usually impressed. But Bribie was so much better than average. It was pretty much deserted (which gets huge points in our books) and so untouched by the development that lines the coast further south and somewhat further north. The whole skyscraper on the beach thing just makes me sad, so a nice clean, untouched, and long stretch of coastline was pure happiness for me. I wish we could have stayed longer.

Our bird sighting list has now reached 116 which is pretty fun. We’ve had a recent surge in sightings because of our trip to Tassie but also because we can actually get out and see birds now without dying of heatstroke. Yay for Fall in Queensland!

Tim will end this post. Enjoy the pictures!

I got to experience my fifteen minutes of fame this week when a media release was sent out about our research. This led to half a dozen radio interviews – most of which went well but ended up being turned into one-sentence sound bytes that you typically hear on the news. These usually offer very little additional insight into what the news broadcaster has already said and are pretty much pointless. They also publish a summary of the story online, which you can see here

However in addition to the shorter clips that go out, there are also the rare “feature” interviews, where you get your time to shine. These are longer and more focused. In fact, while most of the news clip interviews are recorded and edited down to that one sentence, once in a while you get the dreaded, gulp, live interview. My big media day was to end with a live-to-air interview with ABC Far North Queensland (based in Cairns). At around noon the producer told me they would be calling me at 5:20 that afternoon for the interview. Considering our hungry stomachs cause us to eat supper at 5:00 I decided to have them call me at home. You might say that was a mistake. At 4:30 the phone rang and I foolishly picked it up thinking that it was way too early for them to be calling. Laura had just run down to the post office and I was home alone with Edie. Sure enough, it was ABC Radio – “can you do the interview now? We’ll put you on hold and you’ll be on in a moment.” Now anyone who has had a phone conversation with me or Laura while Edie is in the room will tell you that her presence creates an environment that is a) noisy and b) difficult to concentrate on answering questions. So here I am on hold about to go on air and Edie is demanding that I read her a book or push her around on her horsie. Starting to sweat, I quickly grabbed her felts (a zoo scene that she likes to play with where she adds animals and dresses up people), hoping that she could play quietly. Nope. She did the whole “shake the bag while screaming no, no, no” thing.

Time was ticking, I could hear the DJ winding down a spiel about Robert Plant, about to change the subject to fish and my impending nightmare. Just then Laura appeared around the corner, I furiously waved my arms (silently of course) to get her attention, and she raced over just in time for me to sneak out the door and conduct the interview in the relative quiet of our driveway (with motorbikes racing past in the background). It was a fair trade for the possible child abuse charges I could have faced if I had had to resort to locking Edie inside the house and having her screams broadcast over all of North Queensland. Anyway, the interview went well, I’m sure it won’t be the last time I have to juggle Miss E and work. The lesson is – while it’s fun to take your child to work, don’t take work to your child. And also, if you’re ever listening to an interview and you hear a child crying in the background, have sympathy, the poor guy/girl probably just wanted to be home in time for supper.

Bribie and more

Tasmanian adventures

2010-04-20T03:49:00.000-07:00

Howdy doo.

Well, it’s been another week of fun in Australia. This time in Tasmania. For those of you who are on the fence about traveling here, Tasmania is a reason in itself to come. Of course, this is the opinion of two homesick Canadians, and I guess that should be taken into consideration as you’ll find out in the remainder of this blog. On a side note, family and friends, if we never return home you’ll find us in Tasmania.

I should begin by explaining that the wife and child are a strong magnet for poor researching Tim…He really could be accomplishing so much more in the field were it not for Edie and I who seem to find so many things to go wrong while he’s away. Unfortunately this leaves him stressing out not only over the fact that he might be eaten by a crocodile today, but that Edie doesn’t poo anymore (this really happened). So, to ease his mind, and also to get our family out to see more of what Australia has to offer, Tim suggested that for this most recent field trip to Tasmania that Edie and I would be welcome company. This would solve the long-distance marriage/family dilemma and as a bonus, I’m pretty handy in the field. Tim is also a good friend to many. And I think it might have been a combination of good-will and fear of having our family out alone in the Tasmanian wilderness that drove him to offer our friend Dominic the opportunity to join us on this trip, just in case we needed a hand. Dominic (who Edie refers to as Domino, and I will too from here on in) is a good American friend of Mexican descent who also happens to be great field worker/scientist and needed to kill a few weeks of overtime work. So he decided to come with us, and actually is staying in Tassie for the next few weeks.

So, what exactly were we doing on this field-trip? Well, the short answer is that we were collecting bugs, water, algae, leaves and long-finned eels. These samples will be used to determine what the eels are eating and where that food comes from. The reason that Tim is looking at eels in particular is because the same species of eel is found in both temperate Tasmania and tropical North Queensland, and everywhere in between along the east coast of the continent. What this information will contribute to is the question of why some fish eat in the ocean while others (perhaps of the same species, as in the case of the long-fined eel) get their food in freshwater. The real underlying question is whether fish actually have the ability or desire to remain in the same place (eating the same stuff) for the duration of their lives, or whether they migrate (eating lots of different stuff) to potentially richer feeding grounds. Not that much different than humans when you think about it. Pardon me as I now push up my nerdy science glasses.

So basically, our plan was for us to travel to the 12 planned sites over 4 days and enjoy our time ‘collecting’ samples. For Domino and I, that meant fishing for eels. What a life, hey? For Tim, it meant collecting everything else (it sounds like he got the short end of the stick but he was the only one getting paid on this trip…and I should mention that Edie did relieve the burden of leaf collection by undertaking this at every site). I definitely thought I had the eel fishing in the bag given my history of eel catching. Growing up, it seemed that for every trout caught, probably 5 eels were also caught. Just ask my dad who always ended up having to unwrap mucous-ridden eels tangled up in a ball at the end of my line, or who had to cut the eel out of the fishing net that I had unwittingly placed the eel that I didn’t want to touch into. Seriously, all I ever needed was a worm and a hook. The eels just came. However, the last time that I had a fishing pole in my hand, I was probably 15. And apparently I’ve lost my knack in my 15 year hiatus. It’s like the eels knew that I was fishing for them this time, and purposefully avoided my line. I caught no eels and the only thing I did catch was a trout fingerling (a huge 10cm). That’s not to say that there were no opportunities…the eel that I almost had (out of the water, hanging off of my beef-cube bait twice) was a real whopper, but he/she got away. It was with great grinding of teeth that I left that site, especially when I had to throw my beef-cube bait into the stream knowing that Mr/Ms eel was going to be able to finish off their lunch without my hook in it. I relearned a lot over the 4 days of fishing. One big lesson being the same that my Dad will always remind me of (it was how I caught my first fish)- patience. Cast your line in and walk away, or sit on a bucket and contemplate life. That is how you catch a fish. So, that’s what I did after 2 days of impatiently casting at every site, and certainly that’s when the eels started biting. I just needed a few more days to hone in on my technique and I’m sure I would have been bringing those eels in. But alas, I got nothing. The only redeeming thing for competitive me was the fact that Domino got nothing also. So poor Tim has no eels, which perhaps means another trip??? All the locals couldn’t believe that we hadn’t caught any eels. Apparently they are quite plentiful. Just embarrassing.

So what was so great about Tasmania? Well, it had all the features of home that we just didn’t realize we miss so much. The placed that we rented for the first two nights was a 2 room house located in a pasture, less than a 10 minute walk to the beach. It had a chimney (which most houses do there), so for the first time in a long time Tim and I enjoyed the heat of a wood stove, which was very necessary. The temperature at night there gets down into the single digits. The blanket on the bed felt like the weight of 5 when you got down under it…Oh how I miss blankets! And nice people. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of nice people that we know in Brissy, but that’s just it. They’re people we know. Generally people we don’t know aren’t go-out-of-their-way friendly to us, and some (more than we’d like to admit) are downright rude. The people we ran in to in Tassie were just really, really, down-home friendly and they really had no reason to be, although you could argue that they were earning out tourist dollars. The general friendliness more than anything, really reminded us of home. And all of the yards with old cars rusting out in them – good ol’ economic depravity…That was a little taste of eastern Canada as well. We really were a bit sad to return to Brisbane after the trip, which says a lot considering how livable this city really is. Perhaps city slicking is just not our cuppa. I think that’s safe to say.

Edie traveled really, really well which also puts a positive spin on any of our travel destinations. We made the tactical move of renting cottages or apartments with 2 rooms rather than sticking to the hotel circuit. This was golden. We were able to set up a room with a single bed just like hers at home (mattress on the floor with lots of pillows to romp around in, complete with dollies which we brought from home), and basically leave her there for the night as if it were any normal night. She bought this hook-line and sinker. It wasn’t quite as smooth as going to bed at home is, but it was SO much better than our hotel room stay in Melbourne (see 2 posts ago for that adventure). Domino unfortunately had to sleep in the living room of each of the places that we stayed, but he didn’t seem to mind. As for driving, Miss E has a rocky history with traveling by car…Ask my sisters about it someday if you have the chance. I believe they may have experienced the worst of the worst when Edie and I met them in Maine in August last year and had to drive 2 hours to get to New Brunswick after having traveled across the planet earlier that day. Top of the lungs screaming the entire ride. I cringe at that memory. Regardless, she was really great on this trip. It probably had something to do with the hearts she had in her eyes for Domino, whenever he was around she was quite pleasant, including in the car.

We’re super excited to welcome Little Says back on Sunday. Our first repeat visitor!

Enjoy the pictures!

Love to all,

Laura

Tassie

We've been everywhere, man.

2010-04-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

Hello all and Happy Belated Easter. It was a big four-day weekend for us (one of the advantages of the Australian life) so we managed a couple of rainforest hikes. Edie once again missed out on Purling Brook Falls, one of the nicest walks in southeast Queensland. She spent most of it fast asleep on my back even as we passed under the waterfall and got a little wet.

I've been on the move a lot in the past two months, with trips to the Flinders River (north Queensland), Mitchell River (ditto), and the Gippsland region (Victoria) for various sampling events. Victoria reminded me a little of home, with some nice clear water streams with gravel bottoms that had trout and eels, very unlike what I've become used to up north. It was also nice to be able to splash around in the water without worrying about a hungry reptile making a meal out of me.

This Wednesday we (and by we, this time I mean the whole family) are traveling to Tasmania to do some more sampling. Laura has kindly offered to come along to try and catch eels with a rod and reel so I can take samples. Apparently she has a bit of experience fishing them from her days on the Chegoggin River. And of course Edie will pitch in by variously collecting leaves and picking up stones. I think she plans on bringing her binoculars. Either way, it's going to be a great combined work trip/vacation, and we're pumped about seeing Tassie for the first time.

After our return from Tassie we'll be once again welcoming sister Sarah for her second vacation down under. She and Justin fly into Sydney on April 21st. No doubt we'll find plenty of things to do while they are here. But the fun doesn't end there. Laura is heading back to Vietnam in early May to see Van Anh and celebrate her pending marriage. That means Dad is staying home for a week with Miss Edie. We'll keep that a secret from little ears for the moment, as it could get ugly.

All for now, enjoy the pics!

Easter

Some new pictures to reattract readers

2010-03-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

Summer Fun Down Under

Boy are our faces red...

2010-03-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

Ummmm…(shuffle, shuffle) so ya. Sorry for the unintended 2 month break. It wasn’t you, it was me! Yadiyadaa.

Unfortunately for Team Jardine in Australia, this time of year always kicks our butts. The bulk of Tim’s fieldwork falls in these first 4 months which means that he’s gone more often than he’s here, leaving a cranky wife and bubby to hold the fort down. I’ll say that this year has been easier than last in that a) Edie is in daycare most days so that I can get to work or catch a zzz or two if necessary and b) Edie poos now. That’s not to say that she’s been easy to deal with on my own. In fact, for the last month and a half I’ve had the dickens of a time trying to get her to stay asleep at night. Almost every night she’d make her way to our room, end up kicking Tim out to the couch (if he was home) or I’d end up having to sleep with her in her bed. And sleeping with Edie is no picnic. I equate it to the honeymoon sleep: Edie’s always looking for something to hold and I’m spending the night trying to devise ways of discretely avoiding contact. So, there hasn’t been a whole lot of sleeping going on in this house over the past few months, which hopefully excuses our absence in the blogosphere.

Given the amount of time that it’s been since we’ve last posted, I’m in a bit of a quandary as to what to even write about...I’m rarely at a loss for words for very long though.

Tim, Edie and I did take a family weekend trip to Melbourne in between two of his fieldtrips. We think that Melbourne is a lot like Montreal, and we were very happy to wander through the streets and along the river for the two days that we spent in the city. The weather was gorgeous and it’s very easy to find great spots to eat while out and about. It was really enjoyable to spend the days there. The nights, however, were a bit of a living nightmare (for Team Jardine who thrives on good sleep). Edie hasn’t been sleeping well at home, and she certainly didn’t sleep very well in a strange hotel room. We’d rented a portable crib which she outright refused to use, meaning that Tim slept on the floor for 2 nights and I slept next to sprawling, crawling, restless Edie (who also managed to fall out of the bed). If you could have been a fly on the wall in our bathroom on our first night, you would have had a good chuckle. Tim and I stood in the bathroom for an hour that night waiting for Edie to settle down in the crib. You could cut the tension in that room with a knife by the time we finally gave in and went back out into the main room. I’m sure Edie thought it was all in a good nights work. Ahhh parenting. In the end, the best way to settle Miss E back down into some form of sleep, was to list off the names of her friends and to talk about how they were sleeping and how we should be sleeping too, I’ve used this tactic a lot since then. The things you learn on the fly as a parent…I should write a book. Oh yes, following this trip I walked away with a huge coldsore, and Tim had a situation on his right eyebrow which pretty much half-shut that eye…Stress doesn’t look very good on either of us.

We’re excited by the prospect of some visitors shortly. My sister Sarah and her (insert whatever word you would use for significant other here) will be hitting this lovely island paradise up in late April. We’re really looking forward to their visit. Our friends the Beavers have also confirmed a trip in late August, with the potential for more Bishop’s University alumni to join them on the trip. I’m sooooo excited for this!

It’s a new footy season here in Brisbane and we’re starting things off in fine style by taking in a game on Sunday afternoon. Home games are always so much fun, whether the Broncos are on a winning or a losing streak, they always manage to pull off big wins at home. Being a non-lover of violence, I surprise myself every time I’m at one of these games by booing, or cheering with the best of them…Picture the woman who yells “the chair! Hit him with the chair!” at a wrestling match, and you’d have an idea of what I turn in to. I blame this behavior, like most everything else, on my mom. She used to ring her cowbell like it was going out of style at my brother’s hockey games. I used to be embarrassed, but now I’m kind of proud of her.

Well, summer is finally gone and the change in weather here could be likened to what it’s like to go from April to May in Canada, with some obvious differences. You all of a sudden feel much happier and can’t put your finger on just why, until you realize that (and here’s one difference) you’re not covered in sweat at 5am (as opposed to having realized that you haven’t seen the sun for the last 4 months). It’s just such a more tolerable temperature here right now. I’m excited that I don’t have to change my clothes 5 times a day because I was so stinking hot. Of course, we’ll be complaining about the cold in a few short months, but for now I am reminded of why living in Queensland is so good. Too stinking far away from home, but a good place to be otherwise.

Miss E is growing up fast. She’s taken to reciting pretty much anything she hears, including the alphabet, which is really fun. She’s in LOVE with reading, all day long she just wants books. I guess nerdiness may be genetically linked, and if this is the case, she’s doomed with the pair of us for parents. She’s really into Dr. Suess and every now and then she’ll be making sounds that we can’t quite figure out, and then realize that it’s a Suess rhyme…Today she was talking about Nixie Knox (see X in Dr Suess’s ABC).

Love to everyone, we’ll get this blog thing back on track now that Tim is home for a bit of a stretch. Thanks to all who’ve been shaking your fingers at us for not posting.

Laura

PS. Congratulations to Shona and Ryan on the addition of lovely Lydia to their growing family. And to Tim and Lindsay for qualifying for Australian Medicare- Go North American researchers with pregnant spouses who irresponsibly move to Australia!

2010-01-30T18:17:00.001-08:00

Season of Cuteness

January Goodness

2010-01-30T01:42:00.000-08:00

Hello folks,

Laura here. Happy belated Australia Day. It’s an amazing time to be down under- the worst of the summer humidity is over (touch wood, as the say down here), lots of great produce is at peak season and we’ve got ~4 months of great fall-like weather to look forward to. The thing that would just put us over the top in terms of happiness would be a nice visit from family/friends, preferably both. Any takers? 2009 was a great year for visitors here, I hope we see lots more this year.

To celebrate Australia Day (though there are those who choose not to celebrate, for good reason), Australians generally eat lots of meat. I have yet to find out why this is the case (there are a few theories floating out there, one involving a polish prince who had a soft spot for sausages…the details are vague), but we decided to join in on the action with a backyard BBQ on the 26th. Our friend Steph the Canadian attended our celebrations as our special and only guest, and because she is gluten intolerant, carbs were scarce to be found on the menu. Oddly enough, Tim and I have been really good at not eating meat for the past few months…Ya. Broke that streak. On the morning of Aus day we went to a family carnival with a petting zoo, pony rides and lots of fun stuff. Unfortunately Miss E was a bit under the weather so it wasn’t as well enjoyed as it could have been. She did have fun watching the ponies though.

So there is a crow that hangs out on the corner of a street near us that harasses Tim every morning and evening as he rides by on his bike. Sometimes it just makes its presence known by making a large swoop above him an casting a shadow, other days it’s a full on attack where Tim has almost been in numerous accidents from having to swipe at it while whizzing by. I tell you this as a) a concerned wife but also as b) someone who has a hard time not laughing at others’ misfortune (not real misfortune, like starving people, more like at that guy who unfortunately just slipped on a banana peel). I’ll admit it. I laugh to myself every time I picture Tim swiping at this crow, even though he could be seriously hurt someday. I’m not proud of this, but I think I might come by it quite innocently…I’ll explain with a story…The other day I was pushing Edie on her swing and bent over to pick something up. When I came up, I miscalculated her speed and she hit me square in the hip. I doubled over in pain but couldn’t help but laugh as I heard the biggest giggle I’ve ever heard come out of the Edester. She laughed so long and hard over that one. Which left me with two conclusions to choose from: 1) I’ve laughed at others’ misfortune enough times in front of Edie that she thinks it’s ok to do it herself (yikes) or 2) That she’s genetically predisposed to doing so. Given the pranksters in my family, I’m going to go heavy on the genetic influence on this one.

If I do say so myself, our lasagna garden is looking good these days.
Miss E is a big fan of being outside, so we spend a good chunk of time everyday watering, weeding, trimming or just looking at it. I’ve already had to trim everything back numerous times, but everything just keeps coming back healthier and greener every time. After suffering from a black thumb in Australian gardening for so long, our herb garden has brought back my plant-growing confidence. It has also supplied us with more herbs than I know what to do with. We do have a second garden that we started shortly after the first in which we hopefully planted two tomato plants and a cilantro plant. After about a month in a half of no growth and painfully slow discoloration, I finally pulled the tomato plants. I also made the decision to live and let die everything else that popped up, since I’ve been fertilizing the garden with compost. Good old natural selection at work.
It has been about a month since I stopped pulling up the ‘weeds’, and the lucky dip garden is thriving. A couple of tomato plants have shown up, a few unidentified melon plants (or pumpkin/zuccini…can’t tell for sure), and an avocado tree…and my cilantro is still hanging on. Lots of blossoms but no fruit yet…We’ve got a beautiful tree in our backyard that’s in full bloom right now as well, it’s called the Pride of India, and has provided countless hours of beautiful shade during these warm days where it’s just way too hot to be in the house. It begs the question- is it really January?

So, I’m currently working for the man. Quite literally my man. After receiving the bad news in December that I didn’t get the scholarship to start a PhD at Griffith this year, we’d made plans for me to be going back to work as a research assistant in January. It turns out that Tim needed some sample processing done ASAP…So I’m cutting fish for 5 hours a day at the moment with intention to be starting up with my old supervisor in a few weeks. How do I feel about this? Pretty good. Tim’s not such a bad boss and it‘s nice to leave work at work and not have to think about it otherwise. Edie’s been happy to be spending time at the family-based daycare that we’ve got her enrolled in. We get a daily write-up of all of the fun stuff that she gets into there, trampoline, sandpit, swingset, painting station, etc., and get artwork on a daily basis. It feels so good to know that she’s in good hands everyday.

We’ve been hooked on tennis these past two weeks. The Australian Open is happening in Melbourne, and the action is good. Sadly, this means that reading has taken a backseat, and we’re feeling like couch potatoes every night…We make ourselves feel better by exercising earlier in the day, and remembering that it’ll all be over by this weekend. Then instead of feeling fat and lumpy from sitting in front of the TV every night we’ll feel great about having worked up a mental sweat by reading on the couch.

I must tell about some new friends that we’ve made here. We have been pleasantly surprised by the arrival of Tim and Lindsay from the US who have an eerily similar story to ours. They arrived here late in the year last year, ~3 months pregnant, Tim working for the same institute as Tim on a 3 year contract, and quite overwhelmed at what it’s like to move from North America to Australia knowing that there is a bun in the oven. We’ve been spending lots of time with them because we like them and also because it makes us feel good to actually be able to help someone else out when we’ve been receiving so much help from others since we arrived back in 2008. The last three weekends we’ve been hiking together on Saturday mornings and Lindsay, Edie and I have been doing lots of hanging out during the week since they arrived. We are really glad that they are here as it helps us to have them here as well. Case in point- Our camera broke just before Christmas, they happened to have a spare and handed it over gladly. So you can thank them (and Steph the Canadian who’s always got a camera in her hand) for the few, but lovely photos we’ve posted over the past few months.

Love to all,

Laura

New Beginnings

2010-01-16T00:47:00.000-08:00

Hey folks!

2010 is well underway and life is good under the Team Jardine roof. I'm enjoying the sweltering heat (>30 everyday) and I can't say I miss the snow and wind chill on offer back home. Laura of course, misses our snowshoes but I think will begrudgingly miss the summer heat once we're shivering at night in June.

Not a lot to report since we rang in the new year, except for our first ever family camping trip. Ok so it was only one night and we went with our neighbors who had all the necessary gear, but it still counts right? Edie had her borrowed port-a-cot set up inside a three man tent from work and she got the best sleep out of all of us. In fact, in the middle of the day there was a downpour that happened to coincide with her nap, so she happily snoozed while we frantically tried to divert the mass of water that was accumulating in the middle of our campsite. Serves us right for building on a floodplain! We were all soaked to the bone but happy. It isn't a proper camping trip without a little discomfort. That night I shared the tent with Edie and her port-a-cot, and since the tent was only big enough to stretch out an average-sized adult diagonally, and her cot was taking up half the space, I spent the night in the fetal position and woke up with leg cramps. Hooray for camping! All told it was a lot of fun, especially since we were camped on the edge of shallow salty lake with a sand bottom, which made for some good splashing with Edie. One thing we learned is that Aussies sure know how to camp. I don't think I've met a single person here who didn't spend at least part of their summers camping while they were growing up. And some of the setups they had, you would swear they were squatters with no plans to ever return to civilization.

From there we stopped in with our friends Mike and Lisa (plus their three kids and Lisa's parents) in Coolum Beach to celebrate Mike's 40th birthday. The area actually reminds us a lot of the south shore of Bermuda, with long sandy beaches interspersed with rocky cliffs, beautiful blue water and rock walls on the roads. We stayed for two days and it was a blast. We had the entire downstairs of a rented house to ourselves, and the house had a pool with plenty of toys and was a 10 minute walk to the beach. We pigged out on curries and barbequed burgers, sausages and swordfish, swam three or four times a day, and generally forgot about all the stress of life for awhile. However the last night was punctuated by one of those "what's the point of our jobs and careers" conversations, aided of course by the combination of sparkling wine, beer and cider in which we were indulging. It was hard to drag ourselves back to work after that weekend!

Since I can't properly keep up with the NHL, NFL playoffs, or winter olympics buildup, I'm settling for the season of tennis that got underway this month with Australian Open warmup tournaments. Andy Roddick won the tourney here in Brissy, but the favorites for Melbourne are last year's champ Nadal and of course Federer. Regardless of who wins, we can look forward to high-performance athletes wilting in the Melbourne summer heat. All I can say is, it's hard enough to walk a hundred meters this time of year, let alone run back and forth swinging a tennis racket for four hours straight.

Laura starts back to work tomorrow, 5 days a week for 5 hours a day, so Miss Edie is headed to day care. A new phase for the Jardine clan, we'll keep you posted how it all turns out. Until then we'll keep enjoying the Aussie summer with friends both old and new.

PS - sorry about the lack of pics with this post - we'll get that sorted soon.

He looks at her, she looks at him, "we survived" they quietly wisper in unison

2010-01-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

And this, folks, was what you would have witnessed on the deck of our friends' home at the stroke of midnight 2010, just after having released firecrackers, sparklers and a few silent prayers that Edie, who was sleeping in the room next to the very loud deck, would remain asleep through the hullabaloo. If you're wondering what exactly it was that we survived, I'd suggest that there's some great reading material in our archives from 2009...You can find all of the wonderful details there. I'm going to keep this very short as it's jolly hot here in front of the computer.

We spent our first holiday season in Aus this year, and it was good! Certainly one of the things that has made it so great is the fact that we've been sharing a lot of the holidays with our friend Steph from Canada. Just having another Canuck around that appreciates the same things that we do in this season had been amazing. We cooked a full-on holiday meal together (gluten free, which we weren't sure was possible) just before we left for Maryborough (4 hours north), and it was just what the doctor ordered. Our stay in Maryborough was wonderful and relaxing...we've got some great friends up there who took great care of us and gave us the grand tour of the town which was built heavily around the train industry in Australia. Model trains feature a lot in all of the Chrissy Decos (Aussie-speak for Christmas decorations) in Maryborough. Edie enjoyed all of the festivities and slept really well, making things really easy on mom and dad. We've been meeting with friends over the break for lots of good food and socializing, and we spent New Years up the street with neighbours from all over. I can say with all honesty that this New Years Eve was the best I've experienced yet. I don't know if it was sheer relief that 2009 was finished and we really had survived, or because most of the friends there were new parents too and our kids were all asleep, or because we were just able to relax in good company, or because I've rarely made it to midnight on New Years Eve, but I will look back on this one with fondness.

On behalf of Team Jardine, here's to you and yours with hopes for a great new year.

Laura

Missing.....

2009-12-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

In honour of our first official overseas Christmas (after making it home in time last year), we present a top ten countdown of our favorite things about the Christmas season in Canada.

10 – Snow and cold weather are still “quaint”. It’s easy for us now to see footage of a frozen landscape and feel nostalgic about the onset of winter. But let’s face it, most of winter just plain sucks (note, this is Tim writing, Laura loves winter). However we can all agree that prior to Christmas, everyone is in good spirits and the harsh reality of another four months of winter hasn’t yet set in. The warm looking Christmas lights adorning people’s homes add to the charm. Of course, those same lights are often still up in May, but who cares, it’s Christmas!

9 – Real fireplaces. In the absence of any need for a fireplace in this part of Australia, ever, we miss the coma-inducing heat kicked off of by the blazing hearths back in Canada at this time of year. There is nothing like waking up too early on Christmas morning after no sleep that night, overindulging on chocolate and turkey during the day and passing out in front of the fireplace for an afternoon siesta. We find ourselves slightly embarrassed by the fact that a DVD of a burning yule log with cheesy Christmas music in the background has got us through a number of evenings here over these past weeks.

8 – Tim again. Saturday NHL hockey, Sunday football, World Junior hockey. I’ve tried to watch North American sports on my computer, using some handy internet links, but it just isn’t the same. I really miss wasting a whole day on the couch with the NFL, especially dozing off around 4:00 (usually late in the third quarter of the early games), then summoning the energy to go and have supper, overeat and then return to the tv for the late games.

7 – Christmas movies. Not sure what it is about Aussie TV networks, but they don’t feel the need to bombard us with the Christmas classics until Christmas day. They seem to be more in favour of the Christmas day marathon, rather than the November/December marathon that we enjoyed back home. So, in vain we’ve been searching the TV guide practically every night trying to find a good Christmas movie to drown our homesickness with, to no avail. So, despite our broke-ness, we’ve gone for the rentals. We’re currently enjoying watching John Candy and his polka band as they drive Kevin Mcallister’s mom back to NY to find Kevin. Ahhh, Home Alone. Christmas goodness. Last week it was Elf. I will say that both of these movies evoke more emotion than they ever have…There’s a lot of eye sweating going on around here.

6 – The collective decision by society to shut things down for a week or so. This doesn’t happen often enough. After all the eye-opening realizations of the global financial crisis, particularly that we’re married to our jobs and don’t spend enough down time with family, shouldn’t this become even more important?

5 – Christmas plays. Given our infant situation, we miss out on the school play scene, and because Edie’s typically asleep by 6:30, pretty much any other family Christmas gathering is off. I’m guessing we’ll get our fill of Christmas plays in the years to come, though I think that Edie’s a bit sad that she didn’t get invited to be baby Jesus this year. She thought she was a shoe-in for the role, though apparently Jesus didn’t cry (see "Away in a Manger") and well...we don’t promote lying on the resume.

4 – Work Christmas parties – most notably the Canadian Rivers Institute annual party and the UNB Biology party. Both were always memorable, including good food, bad karaoke, excess alcohol, and even the occasional violation of the Christmas tree.

3 – “Silent Night” at the end of the Christmas Eve church service. Gets me every time. Although we may get this one here as well. We'll know in a couple of days.

2 – The food! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, chocolate, potato chips, egg nog (Laura only, Tim hasn't forgiven egg nog since an "incident" at Terry Leggatt's a few years back). All the things we routinely deny ourselves during the year, we turn loose in late December. Today we had cinnamon rolls and After Eight mints for breakfast.

1 – Family and friends, of course. Regardless of how you feel about Christmas, there's no denying the power of loved ones at this time of year. It's the reason people fight their way through crowded airports, drive on icy roads, and endure all the other frustrating elements of late December to share the moments with people you care about. And you really start to appreciate it when you're away from it. So enjoy it while you have it. Merry Christmas everyone!

Miss E, Dad and Mr. Dylan

2009-12-15T00:50:00.000-08:00

So sorry for the sideways orientation...I can't seem to figure out how to change it, but I think you can get the idea. WE LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

2009-12-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

It’s our 92nd week of living in Australia and it’s also the first day of summer down here. The 92 weeks have been good and have passed very quickly, the first day of summer brings with it the sad anticipation of 80%+ humidity and 30-35°C temperatures for the next 6 weeks at least. We spent the month of December in Canada last year so we had it easy, December being the BEST winter month in Canada and being the WORST summer month in Australia. Already I’m willing to admit that I’m unreasonably cranky these days due to the temperature, and this is only the beginning. We do have air conditioning in the house, thank goodness, and I’m at least aware enough to recognize that our family life is a lot better when we just turn the darn thing on, energy costs aside. Another factor that makes family life better is being able to cook on the barbeque. Anything that requires an oven to cook these days needs to be done first thing in the morning unless we’re going to be out of the house that day, it’s just too hot otherwise. We’ve discovered grilled veggies kebabs (pronounced kee-baabs in Aussie speak) over the past few months and just last night were exclaiming to each other about how crazy it was that we’re both extremely happy to mow down on a plate full of veggies for supper…our past carnivorous and/or very picky eating habits certainly wouldn’t have led us to believe it possible.

The Jacaranda trees have shed their purple flowers and have started to bud leaves, meanwhile everything else has come into full bloom. Especially lovely are the Poinciana trees right now, with incredibly vibrant red flowers. Our neighborhood has a few nice ones. The birds are all back in full force now as well, making for many early mornings in the Jardine household. It’s quite a chorus at 4:30am…Edie likes to join in too. Christmas lights are also starting to make an appearance, but I’m just not sure that I can get too into it. I’ve had way too many Christmas lead-ups where the main thing that I wished for was a white Christmas, I’m an old dog and new tricks are rough on me. Every ounce of Christmas Laura wants to have snow. I guess I should count my blessings in that I won’t shovel snow for the following 4 months though. Once we get around to putting up a Christmas tree (i.e. dragging our potted plant from the backyard into the house) we’ll start to get in to the decorating thing. Also notably absent from our Christmas in Australia is our Christmas music, most of it being stashed away in our various storage places back in Canada. I don’t think Tim minds as much as I do, since I would have had it playing since oh, probably October, and he’s more of a December only kind of guy. I shouldn’t say that Christmas music isn’t available here, but a) we’re broke and b) I think we’d have a tough time finding what I miss the most- the Sufjan Stevens Christmas Box Set…If anyone has a spare and wants to send it our way…do it quick!

I’ve been getting Miss E out in the jogging stroller more and more these days. There was a long period where she didn’t want anything to do with strollers other than to push them along so we did most of our transporting with the backpack carrier. Now that she’s ~20 pounds (yup, she’s a small fry) it’s not so much fun to tote her around that way. Actually, last week I ended up having to run ~800m with her in the backpack during the middle of the day after carrying her around all morning. While she absolutely loved it, my body did not. I spent the next two days thinking that I was either pregnant or had Dengue fever because I was so tired (I have neither of those afflictions, just to reassure you). Either way, the early morning runs with the stroller have been good. Miss Edie just loves, loves, loves to go fast and to get a glimpse of all of the early morning traffic. She especially loves to wave at all of the busses and trucks as they pass by.

November, other than being the month where lots of men grew creepy ‘staches, was Australian music month. The radio station that we’re tuned into was playing all Aussie music all month and I’m happy to say that it was enjoyable! Making things especially easy on the ears was the fact that there was a big tribute weekend for Paul Kelly on the 13th and 14th of the month. I heard/read a number of interviews with Mr. Kelly (most humble musician out there I think) and there were rave reviews of the show and they’ve played scads of his stuff all month. He’s been making music here for 30 years here and has quite a back catalogue. If you haven’t given him a listen, we highly recommend it.

Tim came back from the Australian Rivers Institute annual forum telling me of a conversation that he’d had at the forum party about how every parent thinks that their infant is a genius. It’s funny, hey? Such simple things like being able to point to a ball and say “ball” make Tim and I go nuts with how smart and clever we think our little gal is (and she is clever and smart!). It’s always shocking to me when I see another child who exhibits the same traits as Edie, I somehow have them pegged as specific to our special little girl. The reality is that children develop at very predictable and similar rates and in theory we know this, but we still think that our child is somehow unique and special in the things that she accomplishes (like walking…how many adults do you know who never learned how to walk? Or teething for that matter). I find it fascinating to think about this effect, as if it’s somehow ingrained into parents when that baby pops down the chute. It’s probably very good for children that we do feel this way. We’re still just so insanely proud of Edie. I can’t wait until we can share her with the rest of you back home.

Her new tricks of the day- spitting (I’m talking projectile) and biting her toys and screaming at them when they don’t do what she wants them to (most notably her sesame street vacuum cleaner). If anyone has any tips on how to nip these habits in the bud, we’re all ears. In the meantime, I'll be quietly repenting of all of the biting and spitting I did as a child. Sorry mom.

I’ll leave things there. Have a great week and maybe some nog on our behalf.

Love,

Laura

Things that go "oink" in the night

2009-11-20T01:42:00.000-08:00

No, it's not Edie, it's those pesky wild pigs that have invaded outback Australia.

I was up in Kowanyama last month working on a new project we're developing in collaboration with the Ranger Office there. It is an attempt to determine just how badly the pigs, cattle and horses are mucking up the waterholes at this time of year, when they are the only remaining water sources in a very dry land.

To do this, we've set up a dozen cameras, some on time lapse, others on motion detect. These cameras take pictures of all the animal activity around the waterholes, including pelicans, corellas, brolgas and more. Note some of the temperatures recorded in the photos and you'll get a sense of the conditions we work in up there.

We then make measurements to see if the places that get visited most are the ones that are in the worst shape. This will help the community to decide if they should continue to invest money and time into placing fences around some these of sites to keep the animals out.

The waterholes are places of great cultural significance for the community and they also serve as seasonal sources of food (for example, one of the sites is called "Crayfish Hole" for obvious reasons). Before the introduction of pigs, cattle and horses, it is believed that the waterholes had clear, drinkable water and were covered with lilies. Now many of them are turned into glorified mud puddles. The community's vision is to see things returned to the way they used to be, so our job is to find out what is natural and what is caused by large foreign mammals. It's nice to know that our research is actually having an impact on the on-ground management of these special places. Too often we scientists bury ourselves in our self-directed research that may result in a journal article or two but has no real relevance to the community at-large.

So not long after I got back from that trip up north I was able to get in touch with an old friend - the pride of Sudbury Mr. Russell Vance. Turns out Russ and his fiance TL have moved to Brisbane. The great southern migration continues! There's plenty of room for more of you! Either way, it was great to see him again and catch up on our movements over the past five years. To sum up, he is youthful and stress-free as ever, and I have less hair and a child that wakes up at 5:00 am every morning. And let's not forget a loving wife of course.

Oh and before I go, here's a good story for you. I haven't written about Australia's slim water pickings in this space in awhile, and that's partly because of the good rains (at least in southeast Queensland) in the last year that have taken the pressure off the government to secure more water for a growing population. This has led to a bizarro scenario in which the following happened: 1) My boss wrote a report that was commissioned by the federal government; the report determined that a proposed dam on the Mary River (about 3 hours north of Brisbane) that was planned by the State government would have unacceptable consequences for some threatened native species of fish and amphibians, including the Australian lungfish. This was after the state government had already spent millions of dollars buying up land and paying consultants to plan the dam. 2) Based largely on the report, the Federal government used its sweeping powers to squash the dam proposal, which will presumably lead to higher water and power rates for us in the future. But here's the kicker - 3) The federal environment minister that made the decision? None other than former Midnight Oil lead singer Peter Garrett! You've gotta love Australia.

Edie takes a spin

2009-11-13T17:11:00.000-08:00

Not too much to say. Enjoy the video!

Cold November Rain

2009-11-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

Howdy Doo everyone.

Pardon the month-long hiatus, (insert whatever excuse will make you happy here). Given that blogging has been a good way to keep our friends that we don’t get to talk with very often up to date with our lives, and a number of you keep reminding us of that (thank you so much), and on the whole we’re writing about living in a place that’s pretty foreign to most of you, we’ll try better to keep up.

Tim is back from a week spent in Northern Queensland. Overall, I think he had fun, but he’ll have to tell more about it when he gets his butt in gear and actually writes a post. From my perspective, his being away is getting easier to manage. For one thing, he’s rarely gone for more than a week at a time anymore (no more 3-4 week stints) and secondly, Edie is a whole lot more entertaining to hang out with 24 hours a day. She’s also way more social so we can go out with other kids and she’s pretty happy to play with them rather than hang off of my hand or hip. There are three of us (‘us’ being new (relatively speaking) moms) living on our street, our kids are all under the age of 2 and we can now rotate shifts of watching 2 or 3 kids so that one or two of us moms can take a break while husbands are at work/away/whatever. That’s a big help when Tim is gone. So, while Tim is away the missing Tim factor is still quite high, but it’s more because I just really like him and his company rather than because I’m going to scratch my eyes out in frustration due to too much mom overtime.

Well, it’s coming on summer here in Australia, and despite the fact that we’ve been here for almost 2 years, it still feels weird to think that we’re in November right now. It’s just not right. Thankfully we’ve only had a few scorchers so far, but they’re getting more and more frequent. Soon we’ll have to start implementing the 30 degree factor again; when the day’s temperature is predicted to climb over 30 degrees, Tim goes to work between 5 and 6 am so that he can get home mid-afternoon and we can get out to the coast to cool off. A nice attribute of the summer coming on however, is the abundance of rain that comes with it. Our 5000L raintank which we use only for laundry and watering plants was empty as of a month ago (ummmm, we do a whole lot of laundry around here). It’s already half-way full once again. The best part about all of the rain is that the majority has been falling at night, with Mr. Sun out nice and smiley during the day. The best of all worlds!

And speaking of watering plants, I’m sure the question that is burning in all of your minds is this- how is that lasagna garden coming along? And I am so happy to report that it is thriving! We planted basil, cilantro, oregano, dill, and lemongrass seedlings and took in a refugee garlic plant from a plant-propagation lab at the university. Unfortunately the cilantro couldn’t handle the heat, it croaked, but the rest took very well and they are now quite happy at home in our garden. I did have an incident with something attacking my dill plant overnight while Tim was away. Every morning Edie and I would go out to take a look and all of the branches would be broken off. I’m not sure why it stopped happening, but it has, and the plant seems to be recovering well. So I’m finally getting my green thumb back, all it took was planting stuff in a pile of poo and rotten food (honestly, if this experiment hadn’t worked I would have really started to question what I’ve learned (learnt, in Aussie-spell) in my mazillion years of schooling). So, Miss Edie and I put on our gardening shoes (my flip-flops, her pink rubber boots) every morning and late afternoon to go and give the garden a drink. Edie likes to carry the empty buckets back and hook them over the faucet. She is SOOOOO cute. She also likes to pull of Basil leaves, which is not as cute.

Oh yes. I almost forgot. Given that we were in Canada last Christmas, we’re rather wondering what to expect this year, it being our first yuletide season spent in Oz. We’ll keep you updated as the season progresses but the weird thing that we’ve already noticed is that if you go into a shopping mall right now, you’d never know if you were in Australia or North America. It’s the exact same! Did someone say Christmas decorations? Yep, the same. Santa’s workshop? Check-check; the same. Crowds of nitwits? Heck ya. The same. Outside, of course, you’re sweating buckets, but as soon as you enter a mall it’s like you’ve walked into this alternate universe this is attached to no specific hunk of ground or climate. Oddly enough, it seems that Christmas in Australia draws the same imagery as it does in North America, and lots of it is associated with snow and evergreens. Is this weird to anyone else? I’m certain that given too much time in malls here at Christmas time (something I hope we don’t actually experience), we’d forget where we were. It’s a weird, creepy and altogether unsettling feeling. Bah humbug.

To counteract our grizzlies over malls at Christmas, sadness about not being home and general malaise in dealing with commercialization of this holiday (Linus said it so well), we’ve decided to decorate a potted plant for our tree this year with homemade decorations that Edie has promised to help us out with. We’re looking forward to building some new family traditions into our new family this year. We’ll keep you all posted on those...We've also been invited to spend the actual holiday with friends about 4 hours north of us, we've accepted and are excited to spend Christmas with people we really like.

I’m going to keep this post shortish and catch you up on some pictures. Enjoy! I hope that you’re all doing well. And congratulations to Jen and hubby on the arrival of your new boy Marko! Welcome to the other side. You’ll never look at a screaming infant the same way.

Love,

Laura

PS. We don't have any way of showing how many times each book on our reading list is read by us. I would just like to point out that these days Miss Edie is requesting Bud The Spud at least 4 times a day, in our best Stompin' Tom voice to be sure.

Turkey lurkey

2009-10-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

G’day friends.

Well, I hope that this post finds you well. It’s been over a week since Sarah (my younger sister) left for Canada and Tim got back from his trip to Alice Springs last Friday night. You might say that we’ve been busy trying to sort our lives back out this week since everything has been up in the air since Edie and I left for Canada at the beginning of August. As fun as all of the adventure has been, I guess I’m enjoying a little low-key routine again. I sure do miss Says though. And the rest of the family (cough cough).

Other than a good cleaning day last Saturday there really hasn’t been too much adventure to speak of. And when I suggest that Saturday’s cleaning was an adventure, I really mean that it wasn’t an adventure as much as a whole heck of a lot of work. We never did post about the dust storms that passed through southeast Queensland about two weeks ago but we should have...Never in my life did I ever envision living in a climate where dust would actually be in great enough quantities that it could become the precipitation part of a storm. There were reports that 16,000 tonnes of dust were being dumped over Sydney (hit the hardest) every hour of the storm, and of course, there hasn’t been a storm like it in over 30 years. The morning of the first storm the sky just seemed a little hazy but as the day went on it got hazier. In the sunshine state (Queensland), haze is pretty much unheard of, so it seemed unusual. I checked it out online and it seemed that the dust storm that had slammed Sydney that morning was being blown up the coast. At this time of year, winds can be quite strong coming across the interior (outback), and if they’re strong enough and long-lasting winds, they can carry the dusty topsoil/sand over hundreds of kilometers from the outback to the coast. So, all we could do (all anyone can do) is close up all of the windows and doors while crossing fingers for minimal damage. After the first storm blew through everything in our house was covered with red dirt. After the second one blew through three days later, our house was disgusting. You couldn’t walk across the floor without leaving a trail. Given that we hadn’t really given the house a proper clean since before Edie and I left for Canada, I declared last Saturday to be a cleaning day. And it was. We still haven’t got around to all of the dirt, but at least we’ve made a dent. The rest we can chip away at a little at a time. All a part of life in Australia, I gather.

So, back in August, I had the chance to speak with one of my favorite aunties who I hadn’t caught up with since well before Tim and I exchanged snow storms for dust storms in Feb of 2008. We got talking about Edie and the fact that she’s been suffering from chronic constipation, and Auntie Eve suggested I cut dairy out of my diet as her newest grandchild had suffered the same kind of symptoms that Edie does, and it turned out that dairy was the culprit. I had earlier tried to stop eating/drinking dairy for the same reasons, but made it only half a day before I gave into the cheese craving. I decided after talking to Auntie Eve that I should give it a real go since it really could have made things a lot easier for Edie if it really were the problem. Having grown up on a dairy farm I have all sorts of reasons why I think that cutting dairy out of a diet is not an idea that I’m comfortable with. Alas, I was trying to think of Edie and the potential benefits that she might have gained from my going dairy-free. So, gone was my nightly glass of milk with supper, any hint of cheese and pretty much all good baked goods. Dairy is such a huge part of food! I was sure that I would spend this whole period just miserable for lack of being able to consume any milk product. But you know, it really hasn’t been bad at all. Sure, there have been moments where I’ve wished that I could tackle a kid in the park to steal their ice cream, but for the most part, I’ve really, really been enjoying the non-dairy alternative…Well two of them at least. Big number 1: there is a lady at the west end market who sells homemade vegan cupcakes (also gluten free), they are absolutely the best cupcakes that I have ever tasted. I will continue to buy them and eat them whenever I can (unfortunately I can only get them on Saturdays when the market is running…I've already put in a request to the baker to change this). Also big number 2: We’ve discovered a dairy-free brownie recipe of which the resulting brownies smushed into chocolate soy-scream taste like a million buckazoids. The rest of our diet kind of looks like lots of fruit and veggies and no cheese. I took Miss E to a pediatrician appointment last week and was told that if I hadn’t seen any changes in Edie over the six weeks that I was dairy-free, that it probably wasn’t the problem. The doctor also mentioned that Edie and I should go back on dairy and earned a few points in my books for doing so. We’re back on the moo, though not likely to the extent that we were before. There are a lot of nice alternatives to dairy out there. Oh, and if you’re looking for that brownie recipe (it’s vegan too), just let me know and I’ll send it your way.

A few weeks ago I picked up a book at the Salvos (Sally Anne) for twenty cents. It’s called lasagna gardening and explains a form of sheet composting, using different layers of compost/mulch to create an above-ground garden bed. I spoke to my landlord about building this garden and he was all for it, especially because he’s got heaps of compost that he doesn’t know what to do with, and so do we for that matter. So, Tim and I without really stating the fact, decided that it would be a good challenge to build this garden with the materials that we had kicking around the house (i.e. no excessive purchases of commercial gardening mulches, kits, etc.). So over these past few weeks I’ve been collecting information and materials to get this garden going and one evening last week Tim and I put Edie to bed and the tackled putting this garden together under the cloak of darkness. It was really fun. We had all of our materials held in our garage and our compost was still in the bin in the yard next door. So, with shovels and buckets in hand, in complete darkness, we set on collecting compost from the bin…It’s a rotary composter so the really juicy stuff is on bottom…Our shovel was a bit too big, and did I mention it was dark? I got slimed on and Tim commented that he felt like a grave robber. Regardless, we got what we needed and went back to put the garden together. Problem number two; how to contain the garden. The book never really explained how the garden that you build actually stays together (i.e. in the event of a rainstorm…or duststorm…it’s just layers of dirt really). We didn’t have a solution to the problem until we started rooting through the garage and found a low and flat cardboard box. We cut the bottom out and voila, we had our garden-innards-stabilizer. We filled in the box with all of our layers and were finished. It looks like we have a big cardboard box full of dirt/compost/poo/grass clippings in our backyard, and we do. I covered it in plastic to retain heat and moisture throughout the days this week until we pick up some plants on Sunday at the market to get things started. We’re excited! If all goes well, we’ll have a few more of these gardens as the year goes on. I think the real fun was taking on an outdoor project together again, all while the Edester was fast asleep. She does like to dig around the cardboard box full of dirt and I’m excited for when she can help us out (free labour anyone?)

This Friday will be our first attempt at daycare for Miss Edie. We’ve found a Somalian lady who lives nearby that runs a program from out of her home. We visited with her last week to get an idea of how comfortable we were with leaving Edie there (only every Friday for 6 hours to start)…We’re quite sure that she will love it. In the meantime, I’ll be getting back into the research assistant job I held prior to Edie and also will be preparing to start a PhD (part-time for now) in January. I’ll tell more once I get into it, at the moment I’m hammering out a proposal with my new supervisor. Exciting days ahead.

And I should say that Miss Edie is changing so much so quickly! She’s taking much more confident steps on her own and I discovered this week (to my delight) that she would prefer walking alongside me rather than being carried in the backpack. On our nature walks she likes to hold on to my finger with one hand and leave the other hand available to pick stuff up with. The other day over the span of our walk she had a piece of bark, then a stick, then a dead butterfly, then another piece of bark and then a large rock which she liked to pretend was a telephone to talk on. She’s so funny. These days she’s keen on pointing to herself and saying ‘dee dee’, on calling herself a good girl and making many animal noises (most notably the snake, lion and best of all, the puppy complete with panting…and today she figured out the cow noise). She’s also figuring out ‘no’ and willful defiance…Funny right now, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sunny Days

2009-09-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

G’day friends.

Yep, Edie and I are back in Brisbane and very, very happy to be reunited with great produce, beautiful days and most of all Tim, a.k.a. Dad, some refer to him as Dr…He can’t tell you what that growth is but if you want to know anything at all about foodweb ecology, he’s your guy!

So we had an excellent trip back to Canada during the month of August. Edie was an A-1 traveler and I wasn’t so bad myself. Traveling alone with an infant for such a long distance forced me to accept help from strangers, and you know what? Strangers aren’t so bad. I actually met a lot of really great people. They ranged from a nun who lives and works in Paupa New Guinea who had the pleasure of flying for 14 hours with Edie’s bassinette in her face (forcing her at times to crawl under the bassinette to the isle so that she could get to the washroom) to a lovely Asian woman who had to guard her food during meals so that Edie didn’t snatch anything off her plate, to a geologist who wouldn’t stop talking about the amazing properties of fault-lines. The geologist being the worst that I had to deal with made travelling on this trip easy, easy, easy. Unfortunately, Edie didn’t quite adjust to the time difference and unfamiliar surroundings in Canada, so it was a bit of a tough month sleep-wise for me and the family I was visiting once we finally got to Canada. Thankfully everyone we stayed with was able to get used to Edie’s pre-sleep and middle of the night scream-fests, and I can’t say for sure, but I think that maybe Nanny and Poppy J along with my family kind of miss those scream-fests. They somehow breathe life into a place. Oh, I got my first taste of flying first class for a short leg of the trip over (LA to Phillie), what another planet first-class is. Best $200 I’ve ever spent, definitely made the overall trip a gazillion times easier.

We basically visited friends and family in NB and NS for the month, and on the whole, it was a very relaxed trip. I’m glad we did it. A great highlight for us was a minivan road-trip that we took with my brother and his family from the Valley to Yarmouth, NS to visit our grandparents. Three kids in three car seats and three adults made for cramped quarters, but it was SO MUCH FUN. At one point I looked back at Edie and noticed that she had orange all over her face and chocolate all over her hands…Cousin Maddie was being a good girl and sharing her smarties with Edie. Given that Edie had never tried orange dye number 245, I was a little wary, but it was so darn cute to see those two interacting. It will be nice to be living closer to all of our family someday for those kinds of moments.

So, my sister Sarah came back with me to Australia. She’s here until the end of the month and it’s been amazing having her around. We’ve been doing lots of interesting stuff together, but the coolest thing so far was surfing. She really wanted to try it and I’d been looking for an excuse to do it, so last Monday we packed up the car and drove 2 hours north to Noosa. Tim took Edie for the afternoon and Sarah and I took surf lessons. It was awesome. There are no words to describe how cool it feels to ride a wave, nor words to describe how much harder it is than it looks. Neither of us could move the next morning but we both now understand how all surfers are cut (i.e. the epitome of fitness). The hardest work was getting out to the waves to actually surf, that alone left us exhausted, but then you had to get up on your board and try to ride. I can’t wait to take another crack at it, and I think that we might try our hand one more time before Sarah leaves. I might be hooked and I think I now have my carrot to dangle in front of Sarah’s face in order to lure her back (that is if we let her leave!).

Tonight we’re all going to a Broncos playoff game. What a life hey? The 6th seeded Broncos play the 1st place Dragons (who consequentially lost to the 8th seeded Eels last weekend) but what makes this a real nail-biter is that the new head-coach of the Dragons was the head-coach of the Broncos for the past 17 years and won 3 Championships during that time…For a lot of Bronco players it’ll be like playing against their dad, or maybe grandfather even. A very fun game to be attending I’m sure. Again, what a life!

Edie turned 1 on Sept 6th. We’ve basically been celebrating her birthday since the end of August and officially stopped celebrating last Sunday (the 13th) with a big backyard BBQ with our friends. It’s been fun. Edie’s been around for a year! That’s hard to get the head around. She’s now taking steps on her own and loves to repeat sounds that we’re making. The other day at the doctors office she said ‘doctor’ after I told her that’s who the man at the desk was (he even heard it and was impressed), she’s like a little parrot. She also likes to pick up the phone and pretend she’s talking on it (with one hand on her hip), stack blocks, and is quite keen on running her comb through her hair. She’s so much fun to be around and we just love her so much! She got a lot of books, blocks and dolls for her birthday and she’s having fun with all of them.

I also came home (Aussie home) in September to find that our soccer team (who just eeked our way into the playoffs in 4th place) had beat the 3rd placed team while I was gone, and the day after I got back from Canada was the semi-final game. We won that game as well (I played and paid dearly for it with crazy jetlag over the next couple of days). The finals were last Saturday against Beaudesert, the 1st placed team that lost only one of their regular season games. We lost 2-0 in probably the best game we’ve played all season. It was pretty exciting for all of us to play so well in the playoffs. The season starts up again in February and I’ll be playing in a 6-on-a-side league for the interim with a few of my teammates. I’m so happy to be back into competitive sports again.

And finally, it’s mulberry season here. Our landlord has a mulberry tree on his property that I’ve been raiding over the past two weeks. They are so good! The juiciest berry that I’ve ever tasted, also making them the messiest. Edie loves them but we pretty much have to give her a bath every time she gets into them by herself though we don’t really mind too much...It turns the bath water blue. We gorged on blueberries while in Canada because they just aren’t as good here, so having mulberries now is a nice compliment to the blueberry fest we had back home. Life is good.

With that, I’ll bid you a good day. Love to all.

Laura

Oh ya, in the spirit of lovin’ that this summer was, two good friends of ours got hitched in August (unfortunately we weren’t there to witness either event, but that seems to be the norm lately)- Congrats to Suz and Jason and Sally and Cheex! Long may your big jibs draw...together...

PS. It's now Sunday, the Broncos game was last night, the Broncos won 24-10 and it was AWESOME! It's a lot of fun to be in a crowd (50,225 strong) where the majority have a common and generally peaceful goal of seeing the hometown underdogs win.

And......we're back!

2009-08-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

The circle is once again unbroken, as all the Jardines (and one Sweeney) are under one roof. Laura, Edie and Sarah made the long trip from Bangor without incident, arriving on Friday. Since then we've been catching up on sleep and trying to get Edie back in the groove. Laura will bring you up to date on her trip to Canada before too long, but for now, I'll give you an update on my travels.

I spent three weeks in the bush during August, starting with ten days in Kowanyama and finishing in some new country for me, the Flinders River in northwest Queensland. The Kowanyama trip was great. We stayed at a guest house that is owned by the local council which meant we didn't have to camp. Camping is fun but it has its downside (for example, lack of showers and no electricity to power freezers that keep our samples from getting ruined). Plus by staying in town we were able to spend time with Viv (the manager of the Kowanyama natural resource office) and his wife, so we got plenty of fish and crocodile stories. Viv also took us to one of his favorite spots close to town, a waterhole where he camped when he first arrived in the community 30 years ago. We sat at this waterhole for almost two hours watching birds. There was a slight breeze blowing and the coolness of the late day was setting in, which made it a very comfortable (and its fair to say almost spiritual) experience. Definitely one of the nicest places I've seen in Australia.

At the site, we were treated to an aerial display by some rainbow bee eaters, one of Australia's most brilliantly colored birds. They do loop de loops as they chase after insects over the water. Even though I am the worst wildlife photographer of all time, I was still able to get a decent shot.

Later on in the trip we came across a bower. These are structures built by male bower birds. They consist of a nest-like assemblage of sticks and twigs with an avenue of eye catching items out front. The birds basically explore the forest looking for shiny or brightly colored items with which to attract the ladies.

The result is modern art - some might say it looks like a trash heap. This one had mostly aluminium foil and bottle caps. A colleague of mine recently lost an ocular lens (a small magnifying glass) while he was out in the field and a few months later it turned up in a bower! Yet another of Australia's interesting creatures.

From Kowanyama it was off to Normanton to meet Steve and Dominic to do work on the Flinders. Normanton is home of the statue of Krys, the largest crocodile ever measured (8.63 meters, shot in 1957). The statue is apparently estimated from Krys' actual dimensions. But many of us are skeptical (and frightened) that a croc could get this big. Judge it for yourself - the 2nd photo has my boot included for scale.

The Flinders flows through true savannah country, with very few trees except those that grow close to the river. The River itself is brown and muddy with steep banks, so it is not the most pleasant place to work.

However, there were plenty of interesting creatures turning up in our nets, including a small freshwater crocodile (pictured below).

This guy was not happy about being in the net. He was about a meter long and not too dangerous. Nevertheless, we happily released him without any handling and he dashed off into the water. This species of croc is very timid, it's rare to get that close to them.

We also managed to catch a sawfish in our nets. In the spirit of the unusual hybrid species of Australia, this one takes the cake. It's basically a ray with a big saw for a nose. It slashes back and forth to wound its prey and then goes back and collects it. We took some video of us releasing it back to the water but unfortunately I don't have access to it at the moment. You'll see it in due time.

On the way back to Brisbane we stopped at a few outback towns, including Winton, the home of the Waltzing Matilda museum.
Apparently the song (which is now Australia's unofficial national anthem) was first performed at a local pub in the town. Winton is also in dinosaur country, as evidenced by the rubbish bins.

All in all it was a fun trip, and I returned to Brisbane in plenty of time to get things ready at home for the arrival of my girls. It's good to have everyone back together again.

Oh and congratulations to brother Jay and new sister-in-law Michelle, who recently tied the knot in Hawaii!

And the cheese stands alone

2009-08-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

The cheese would be me, as Laura and Edie left today for their journey to Canada. And in case you're wondering, being alone here ain't all it's cracked up to be. So much for the return to bachelorhood. The house feels empty, there's no giggling baby, and I made too much for supper tonight without the other 1.5 appetites to help out. And it's only been 8 hours.

We parted ways at the new international terminal at Brisbane airport, as she and Edie were flying to LA with Qantas. Departing travelers leave their families at the top of a set of stairs and walk down to clear customs and go through security. The people who have seen them off can then get another glimpse of them from the upper floor through large windows overlooking the departure gates (same as Moncton airport if you've been there). So after saying our goodbyes, rather than leave straightaway I decided to check if I could see them going. So I hustled over to the window but realized I may have missed them go by since people traveling with infants often get sent to the front of the queue.

Ten minutes passed and no sign of them. I was convinced that I had missed them but since the plane was boarding in 15 minutes I figured I would wait until it left, just to be sure there were no delays or anything. Another 15 minutes of scanning for them and by now boarding had begun. I tried to imagine what they were up to, perhaps already on the plane, readying for the 14 hour flight. Yet a small part of me was thinking that maybe they still weren't there. After all, the Sweeney genes code for lateness - not outright lateness - but more like cut-it-closeness like no Jardine possesses. And sure enough, with about 10 minutes left to board, she appeared, a bag slung over each shoulder and Edie strapped into the Baby Bjorn on her front. They were in enough of a hurry that they didn't look up and see me there.

Watching her walk away today reminded me that she is my hero. Ever since she fought through that difficult labor, almost a year ago now, and pushed Edie out like a champion, I've been in complete admiration of her. And it doesn't stop there. There's the way she's given up her short-term career goals to stay home and raise Edie, and doing it so far away from her family who she cares about so much. And now this crazy cross-planet journey with a squirmy 11-month old. Right now, they are somewhere over the Pacific, hopefully catching some zzz's after a good supper. They still have 16 hours to go (via Philadelphia and Bangor), so if you're the praying type, send one up for her and Miss Edie. If you're the wishing type, we'll take all the shooting stars, birthday candles, and wishbones that you've got.

The payoff? A month at home with two eager sets of grandparents and other family members and friends. That's followed by Edie's Aunt Sarah making the return trip with them and staying here for a month. More visitors! It should be great.

In the meantime I've got three weeks of field work scheduled up north. I'm trying to get as much done as I can while I they're away. It'll be fun and it'll be warm, but I'll still be looking forward to the return of my girls.

We like Australia this week

2009-07-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

G’day friends!

My how my tune has changed since last week. I kind of came to a realization lately that since we're here now and since it's a very cool thing to be living where we are, I'm going to try to be more positive about it all. Jenn's comment about Austrian bacon last week was helpful. Thanks!

Not too much action this week to speak of. It’s still cold and we’re still happy and healthy. We’re getting lots and lots of hiking in, which is so incredibly cool. The more we’re out the more I think that if you don’t come and visit us while we’re here, you’re missing out on so much! For one, Edie is just changing everyday and she’s such a funny child, and for two, nature here is just so very different than what we were used to at home. For instance, the other day I had Edie on my back on a hike in yet another koala sanctuary and was keeping my head up to see if I could spot any sleepy koalas when I heard a thump-thump-thump sound. I looked up to see a wallaby (very similar to a kangaroo, about my height) speeding towards us obviously unaware that we were in its path. It stopped short about 10m away and froze. The wallaby and I both stood frozen for probably 5 minutes and then I quietly kept on the trail. I can now tell my grandkids that I stared down a wallaby! Unfortunately Edie was asleep on my back at that point so she didn’t get to enjoy the action, so she can’t boast the same. She’s already enjoyed many a wallaby encounter though…We’re so glad that she has and I think that she’s quite happy too.

We were ambitious this week. It’s the middle of strawberry season here and they’re cheap, cheap, cheap, so we bought a huge box of them at the market in order to freeze some and also to make our own jam. I vaguely remember jam making at our home when I was a kid, and also at my grandmothers. My memories are far more pleasant than what we experienced. It wasn’t all bad, we have ended up with some lovely jam, the bad was more like the boiling pot of sticky sweetness splattering all over the kitchen, the multiple burns I incurred and the fear that it’ll all be spoiled if we did it incorrectly, oh, and the infant at our feet taking it all in. It was a whole lot of work! In the end, we’ve now got lots of yummy jam but aren’t quite sure that buying homemade jam at the market for 2.50 a bottle isn’t a better deal. I’m a big, big fan of making our own food from scratch, Edie and Tim accommodate this very well. I like knowing what went in to what we’re eating, I love to cook and bake, and I like to know that actual hands prepared the food we eat and not a machine, so the idea of making our own jam was promising…After our jam making episode though, I think that I can settle with trusting someone else to do the work for us for now. We’ve got 6 more jars to get through anyway, so it’ll be some time before we have to cross the jam buying bridge. Maybe it’s like labour, when mothers forget the agony and end up churning out more and more kids (where we would churn out more and more jam, if you follow)…We’ll see I guess*.

Tomorrow arvo (Aussie-speak for afternoon) we are going to take in the Street Soccer National Championships being held here in Brisbane. We’ve talked about this program before, when the world championships were being held in Melbourne last year. To refresh, the street soccer program is based on using sport to change people’s lives, the particular target group being the homeless and marginalized in Australia (the program is also run in scads of other countries). So, the street soccer program here is run by the Big Issue Australia, and they organize weekly training, camps, tournaments, national championships and the annual international championships. For a lot of the target group, street soccer has become a needed stability in otherwise very unstable lives. We’re pumped to check out the action tomorrow. We’ll tell you all about it next week.

So…It’s now Monday morning and I haven’t posted this blog yet. Works out well because now I can give you the lowdown on the street soccer which we saw yesterday. First off, our idea of what street soccer looked like was way off. We were imagining people from the streets playing soccer on a pitch like regular soccer is played on. This isn’t the case. Street soccer is to regular soccer what 3-on-3 basketball is to regular basketball, it’s a cut down, more intense version of the more standard game, probably made more cool by the fact that you can play it anywhere (hence, the street). If we’d really thought long and hard about it, if you were really playing soccer in the streets, you’d have a lot less room than if you were playing on an open field. Right.

Either way. The courts were set up on an open field in Southbank, which is the main sports and recreational area within the city of Brisbane. You’ll see them in the pictures, but in order to provide walls which you can play off of (like you would encounter if you were playing soccer in an enclosed urban area), they had air-castle like enclosures. It was a pretty interesting set-up. The teams played 3 people plus a goalie on each side and the games consisted of two 15 minute halves. Both men and women played together. I absolutely loved watching the games. First off, the Queensland team was fun to watch anyway, they were skilled AND they were nice. And it was so fun to listen to the banter from the sidelines…Lots of trash talking from the guy standing next to us who was rooting for Western Australia (WA). It was also fun to see people’s quirks come out in their playing (the same could probably be said for what it’s like to watch me play soccer). I loved that the goalie from WA wore a bike helmet.
All in all for me, it was an awesome event to encounter. I hid it well, but I got really emotional watching (I can’t really explain why, it just happens sometimes…). Much to my dismay, ever since I became a mother the tear ducts have become much more leaky. My mom cries when she hears marching bands or sees horses in a parade, I think I’ve come by my unexplained tears quite honestly.

Yesterday also became the first day that Edie resisted all sleep…That’s not entirely true, but jolly close enough…She had a 30 minute nap while eating at 5pm and that’s it. Not cool. It’s getting near impossible to get her to shut her eyes during the day. Rather scary for her parents who would like to shut their eyes more. She’s also got her top teeth coming through, poor darling. At the very least, she’s pleasant even though she’s had no sleep, let’s cross our fingers that this never changes. For the most part it’s a blast having her awake. Edie also made me chase her for the first time today. She loves picking up leaves off of the lawn and eating them, I usually can just pull them out of her mouth when I catch her and we move on. Today when I noticed that she had a leaf in her hand, she met my eye and then turned and bolted (as fast as a crawling infant can bolt). The cheeky little thing! I think we've crossed a big threshold today. Yikes!

It’s two weeks before Edie and I get home. I can hardly believe it. If you want to catch up with us let me know in advance and we’ll see what we can work out. As for now, the plan is to be in NB for most of the month with my family, with a week or so in NS. Sounds nice and simple. Problem is that I want to see EVERYBODY! A month is such a short time really…

Enjoy the catch-up on pictures. Love to all. Laura

*Please note, this is NOT an indication that there’s another baby for us in the near future. Don’t read into it too much, it was just an appropriate analogy. If it helps you to get a timeline in your head of our family progress, I’ll be making jam way before I’ll be popping out another wee one (hopefully I won’t be eating my words on this one).

Bacon and beavers

2009-07-08T02:00:00.000-07:00

Blog time again!

I hope this entry finds you all happy and healthy and soaking up the rays in the northern hemisphere. It’s jolly cold down here. As Joy can attest, it’s unbelievably cold for the weather that we generally associate with Australia. It beats the stifling humidity of summer here though, and so I won’t complain much more. Speaking of Joy, she was a great guest and we miss her lots! Edie picked up a particular fondness for Joy while she was here. She often gazes into the guest room longingly and also points at the empty space at the dinner table where Joy used to sit. I also miss Joys fondness for homemade soup…Tim’s getting tired of my soup offerings. I argue that it’s such a good time for soup, it’s the best warmer-upper there is! But alas, we move back to the more solid meals that the rest of our seasons are full of. And speaking of seasons and food, when we first arrived in Brisbane, Tim’s parents had an order of organic (and seasonal) produce shipped to our house from an online company here in Australia. We’ve finally got our act together and have been ordering our groceries from the same company for the past few months. Not to be a salesperson here, but the food just tastes so darn good! And delivered? I can’t tell you how much easier that makes our lives. So once again I’ll say “here here! Australia, you have lovely produce and that you deliver it to our door??? We will miss you greatly when we go back to our less tropical homeland”.

And this brings me to something that’s been on my mind for quite some time. So, if one were to search back through our archives, they’d find that we’ve definitely had our ups and downs with this whole move across the planet. We’re happy, we sad, we’re grateful, we’re complaining…The whole spectrum has been covered I think. Way back in the early days of our arrival in Brisbane, we were invited to morning tea with our neighbor. Her daughter-in-law and granddaughter had spent a year in Fredericton on an exchange a year or two prior, and they wanted to reminisce with us about their memories of Canada. It was a fun meal. We, insanely enough, had friends in common, and it was nice to hear things from their perspective. But I distinctly remember feeling that the longer we talked with these two, the more negative their descriptions of Canada and Canadians became. In the end, I remember feeling a bit defensive about things that they were describing as ‘weird’ (the way we pronounced ‘house’ for example). It certainly didn’t turn into a brawl or anything, but I remember coming away from that gathering wondering if they really had enjoyed their time in Canada. I can distinctly remember the lady telling us that the one thing that Canada had up on Australia was our bacon (and it well should…Australian bacon is a sloppy mess compared to Canada’s crispy goodness). But ya. I just remember thinking to myself that their enjoyment in Canada was hampered by the fact that things were different than Australia, and that was sad…I’m always inclined to being rather harsh on people who see things differently than I do, and I’ll admit that I felt that they had a narrow outlook on things. A year and a half later, I’m finding myself in the same seemingly narrow boat as they were.

Tim describes it as bizarro world, a place where things are just different enough from what we’re used to that it’s extremely noticeable. I’ll give you one example. ‘Cream soda’ is called ‘creaming soda’ here. The fact that if I were speaking in the past tense I would say “I spelled the word incorrectly”, here, the proper thing to say would be “I spelt the word incorrectly”. You wouldn’t think that these things are anything to make a fuss about, but I tell you, when little things like that are in your face all of the time, agitation creeps up. Such small, dumb things have a tendency to grate on a person. Or maybe just people like me. So I now find myself comparing things like Canadian and Australian bacon and feeling like the fact that Canadian bacon is more crispy makes Canada a more livable place. And I wonder if this patriotism runs as deep in others as it does me. The general feeling I get is that it does. All of the ex-pats that we know here in Brisbane (and we know a lot) seem to have their little gripes as well, despite the fact that we all like living here and choose to do it! I’m reminded of a Stompin’ Tom song about patriotism which went something like “if you don’t believe your country should come before yourself, you can better serve your country by living somewhere else.” Such wise words from Stompin’ Tom. So, since we actively decided to leave our homeland, maybe we should just shut up about how different things are in this different land (the phrase no-duuuhhhh (popular in my teenage years) comes to mind). It all comes down to this for me, I’m quite sure that no matter where we lived on the planet, if it wasn’t our home (i.e. our Canadian home), we wouldn’t be ‘at home’ there. So yes, we should just shut our yaps about the things that are different that drive us crazy every now and then…Or move back home…where I’m sure that we’d find lots more to complain about.

Speaking of Stompin’ Tom, his Australian equivalent has been found. Slim Dusty is his name and he was a true-blue Aussie who traveled the land singing songs of the folks he met and the places he saw. His most popular song here is called “A pub with no beer” but he’s had many other hits such as “G’day G’day” and “Cunnamulla fella”..y’heard ‘em? He passed away recently and was given a state funeral. Quite a big deal. Tim brought home a greatest hits CD the other day and I must say, it evokes the same sentiment in me that Stompin’ Tom does…somewhere between ‘turn that off!’ and ‘oh! The good ol’ hockey game, is the best game you can name…’ Ya. Makes me feel warm inside. Just like warm homemade soup on a cold day.

Well, Edie and I are preparing to head back to Canada for the month of August. I’ll say that I’m looking forward to being home, but am not at all looking forward to the trip to get there and back. I’m so wishing that a supersonic jet or warp-speed travel were real options (that is, if they bore no ill side-effects). It’s going to be tough, but worth it. Miss Edie is a very well-traveled gal!

Miss Edie is also keeping us well entertained these days with her new favorite pastime of pulling everything out of where it should be. Drawers, laundry baskets, coffee table, toybox, wallets, etc. It’s a very fun time. Both Edie and I are over our respective colds, and things are a lot happier around here. She and I have been getting out quite a bit for hikes lately and we’re having a blast spotting lots of wildlife, including wallaby and our very first koala in the wild. It’s pretty awesome! Enjoy the new pictures, I’ve got lots more on the way.

Love to everyone,

Laura

PS. A big shout-out to Team Beaver! Our great friend Rach G. Parker got hitched this past week to a great baritone named Paul (Beaver, hence, Team Beaver). We're bummed that we missed that party, but we'll make it up somehow quite creatively. Congratulations! We love you lots!

Miss Edie takes a stroll

2009-06-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

Made in China

2009-06-27T16:46:00.001-07:00

Well there’s a lot to catch you up on, given that we’ve been slacking in our posting lately. The whirlwind travel we’ve been taking has finally caught up to us, with Edie coming down with her first cold and Laura following to the sick ward soon after.

So what have we been up to? After our Vietnam experience we laid low for about a month, after which I left for China to attend the 9th Internat. Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant. And it truly was an international event, with attendees from over 40 countries, including many that are often poorly represented at these types of meetings such as eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and southern Africa.

It was easy to be impressed with the Chinese eagerness to please their international visitors, as this conference could be considered a microcosm of the spectacle that was the Beijing Olympics. We attended banquets and rock concerts, dances and acrobatics shows.
Near the conference venue, every door was opened for us by smiling staff, when it was raining we were escorted under umbrellas across the parking lot, and our hotel rooms were cleaned every time we left them (not just the standard once a day). The Chinese certainly do possess people power.

After the confidence we gained from our Vietnam trip, I ate most of my meals on the street.
Typical cost was about 5-10 yuan (1-2 Australian dollars) for excellent food that included fried rice, pancakes, fried dough and of course the ubiquitous and delicious dumplings. Coincidentally, one meal I had was a kebab in a small market of Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, the same ethnic group that was recently in the news after Bermuda accepted former Uighur prisoners that were moved from Guantanamo Bay.

The best part of each day was early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when the throngs of schoolchildren would be on their way to and from their day’s lessons. Often accompanied by grandmothers, they appeared very cheery and in general are very adorable.

English is spoken very little in that part of China, but every so often I would hear someone call “Hullo!” and turn around to see giggling youngsters. It was all very endearing.

So my impression of China probably sounds pretty positive, and it’s fair to say that it was. However there were a couple of things that I must note to give a more balanced view. First of all, I was unable to access certain websites while I was there – namely this blog that you are reading. It was a gentle reminder that the Say Anything culture that we take for granted has not yet caught up to China, and information does not flow as freely as we hope that it would there and in other parts of the globe, a point driven home by recent events in Iran. No doubt there are ways around it, mobile phone cameras being one of them, but the authorities make you work for it, and there are risks involved in defying Big Brother.

The 2nd low point came from my visit to a park that contained a zoo.
The park was fascinating, mainly because it was less National Park and more Amusement Park. There was a Chinese rock band singing Bon Jovi on stage, and I got to see a macacque running wild, the first time I’ve seen a primate outside of captivity.
However, the zoo portion was depressing, with sad looking animals in bare concrete cages. Although my prejudice towards zoos was tempered after reading “Life of Pi” a few years ago, this was clearly an example of animals being used solely for the amusement of humans. Because I remain a meat eater, I have a very tenuous position when it comes to promoting animal welfare; I am aware of the hypocrisy of simultaneously being an animal lover and a carnivore. However, eating is at least a little more necessary than entertainment, and we try our best to buy meat from animals that were raised in humanitarian conditions. The Chinese have a very utilitarian view of animals, as noted repeatedly in Theroux’s book “Riding the Iron Rooster” and will cage and eat just about any animal, including the small and the rare. Is it cruelty? Perhaps. Certainly PETA would have more to work on there than they do in North America, where a President swatting a fly draws their ire.

Guizhou Province, where the conference was held, has the lowest GDP per capita of the 32 Chinese provinces, with a value (around $1,500) that places it on par with the African country of Djibouti. Yet there was plenty of evidence of wealth in the city. The main mode of transportation was the car (unlike the thousands of motorbikes we saw in Hanoi).
On the main strip downtown there were plenty of malls selling expensive Western goods – many of them made in China of course! And the hotels and higher-end restaurants have prices that are typical of Western cities ($100 per night, $10 for breakfast, etc.). So to balance out all this wealth, there is clearly a large number of Chinese that remain very poor in this province and elsewhere in the country. In the case of Guizhou Province, this would be the large number of gold and mercury miners – the reason we were here for the conference in the first place. In some instances the waste from these mines is used to irrigate rice crops and serves as a route of exposure to mercury, which in turn can cause health defects. In fact, small-scale gold mining is one of the major sources of mercury toxicity in humans worldwide (mercury is used to amalgamate the gold from the extracted ore and then burned off in gold shops), and gold mining areas are typically found in the poorest places – China, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and rural Brazil to name a few. With China’s growing wealth comes the challenge of maintaining a healthy environment, something North America and Europe overlooked during their own rapid development stages. You only need to spend time in a few Asian cities and experience the smog to realize that human health may be compromised by industrial development. In China’s case, the more prosperous areas are on the threshold of being wealthy enough to exercise some pollution control, and are often seeking the advice of foreigners, including my supervisor here in Australia, to achieve these goals.

On the topic of Chinese development, my favourite picture from the trip is below.
It’s a WalMart superstore that’s built in an old bomb shelter – completely underground. If you look closely to the right, you can see a statue of the well-known communist leader Mao Zedong in the background. Nothing captures the tumultuous history of modern China than this photo, the conflict between the desire to maintain old Chinese ideals of isolationism and the emerging need to connect with the Western world. No doubt Mao is turning over in his grave right now. If communism/socialism is what it says it is, then as China continues to develop it should become a shining example of how a prosperous nation can effectively distribute wealth across the entire spectrum of its population. Somehow I doubt this will happen, as already an economic class structure is apparent. Those who are well connected are likely becoming fabulously wealthy, while the miners and peasants continue to toil.

The Lune in June is a Big Balloon

2009-06-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,

Soccer training was canceled for the evening, little Edie is asleep, so I feel the need to at least let those who only know that we’re alive (doing well, etc., etc.) through our blog, know that we’re alive, doing well, etc., etc. This one will be short, there’s not a whole lot of energy to spare these days in the Jardine household.

It’s been a busy, busy month. At the last posting, Tim was just leaving for China. Since then, he’s been to China, dropped by for a little visit home for a night and then left again for fieldwork up north, from which he returns next week some time. Edie and I are missing that guy something awful. However, in the meantime Joy (old Newfie friend from undergrad) has been here visiting. So despite missing Tim, I’ve been having a blast catching up with Joy again and playing tourguide. We’ve done more sightseeing in a week and a half than Tim and I have done since we arrived…It’s been kind of exhausting, but so cool. Australia sure has a lot of amazing stuff going on. Edie’s loving it all too, especially because she gets to ride in the backpack carrier for most of it. She squeals like a little piggy when she’s happy, and that’s all we hear when she’s in the carrier. Sadly, the carseat has the opposite effect, so we’ve heard our share of wailing as well.

The most fun thing that I think we’ve done so far is a trip to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. If you remember back when Edie was still an embryo, Tim and I took a trip there thinking that we would see Koalas in the wild (which is not the case, it’s a glorified zoo…I remember being kind of disappointed). My mind was totally changed by taking Edie there as an infant. She LOVED it (and thus, so did I). She just wanted to touch every animal we saw, especially the kangaroos. Her squeal factor multiplied the closer we got to them. I’ll be posting pictures soon (I have to pinch them off of Joy’s camera in the next few days). Other than that trip, we’ve mostly been hiking. I’ve got to say, I will miss Australia’s many, many parks, rainforest walks and hiking trails when we get back to Canada. If you haven’t been convinced to come to Australia for any other reason, you’re missing out big-time on the nature on this end of the globe. Especially in Queensland. Pictures just don’t do it justice.

I haven’t heard from Tim directly since he arrived in Cairnes on Monday, but got word today through the program coordinator that everyone is ok and things are going well. Joy, Edie and I will be meeting up with Tim and his workmate in the Whitsunday Islands (Airlie Beach) next week. For Tim and Dominic, it will be halfway home on the long drive back from up north. For Edie, Joy and I, it will be a nice trip up the coast before Joy has to leave. Joy’s going to be getting some snorkeling in on the Great Barrier Reef, Edie and I will be content to splash around the many beaches up that way.

Tim and I will both catch up with you once things settle down around here. We’ve got lots of pictures and stories to fill your heads with. My favorite Edie trait of the moment is getting her ready for her bath in the nursery (i.e. stripping her down), leaving her there so that I can go fill the tub in the bathroom, and hearing the pitter-patter of a naked little bubby finding her way to the bathroom to join me. Then I get the big Edie smile when she discovers that she found me and the tub (her favorite area these days). She is priceless.

Lots of love,

Laura

Stay tuned.....

2009-06-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

Don't touch that dial, we'll be back with a good solid and informative post in a few weeks. It's been a little hectic in the Jardine household these past couple of weeks, and there's more to come, including my pending trip to China (I leave tomorrow morning) and some more field work in North Queensland that culminates in a rendezvous with Laura in Airlie Beach. And our great friend Joy arrives on Wednesday! All this and the usual Edie adventures make for busy times.

I got myself psyched for China by reading another Paul Theroux travel classic - "Riding the Iron Rooster" - that chronicles his journey across the country by rail. I'll be in Guiyang, a "small" southern city of around 3 million people. At the thought of spending time in another large city (after our Hanoi experience), I had a look the other day at the world's most populous cities and came to realize that I have only visited six of the top 100 (not counting airport stopovers). I think I'll try to keep it that way. Small cities and large towns are fine with me.

A Big Hello From Uncle Ho

2009-05-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

Well we’ve been back from our Vietnamese adventure for about four days now so it’s time for a recap (Tim to start, Laura below). In just eight days on the trip we learned several lessons, most importantly about ourselves.

Lesson #1 Vietnamese people love babies, especially little white ones

We read about this phenomenon prior to heading over but no matter what you read it cannot prepare you for the its magnitude. Edie was an absolute rock star from the moment we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Everywhere we went she was showered with attention by complete strangers, with this attention ranging from pointing and giggling to friendly requests to hold her. We actually let many people carry her off (in confined places like the airport of course), which is a very disarming experience for a parent, but obviously something that happens all the time there. Luckily no one dashed off with her, but I had my running shoes on just in case. And of course Edie soaked up all the attention. Not sure where she inherited her love for the spotlight, it certainly doesn’t come from either of us.

Lesson #2 Vietnamese food is excellent but it helps to have someone order it for you

Luckily we had our friend Van Anh with us for most of the trip, so she was able to communicate with street vendors, tour operators, etc. She also knew all the best spots to get amazing dishes from vendors on the street where she grew up. Porridge, sweet dough balls and donuts, barbequed pork, and of course the famous pho (noodle soup) – we had it all. On the other hand, when Van Anh wasn’t with us, we made a few pathetic attempts at foraging, in one instance walking away from a vendor after she appeared more interested in Edie than serving us food, and another case where the host ended up bringing an extra main course instead of the mango drink we had ordered. Communication breakdown!

Lesson #3 Traffic and air quality are the least attractive attributes of Vietnamese cities

When we arrived in Ho Chi Minh we first thought that people wore surgical masks in the street due to fears about swine flu, since hysteria about it had just peaked. Instead, this is a common occurrence due to the poor air quality and the exposure one gets from spending any time outside, especially while riding on scooters. Of course, this problem is not unique to cities in developing countries, you need only look as far as Toronto to find a smoggy city in Canada. The severity of the problem, however, must be far greater given the population densities and the number of vehicles on the road.

That brings us to the traffic. It is absolutely legendary in Hanoi. Crossing the street is a life-risking experience. You slowly inch out into the street as scooters and the occasional taxi zoom around you. You have to have faith that all these drivers know what they are doing and aren’t going to slam into you at full speed. Add to the fact that I was carrying a baby on the front of me like a kangaroo with a joey and you’ll get a sense of the stress associated with this simple act. Strangely though, after awhile, you almost stop caring. It’s as if you enter this strange Zen-like state where you are at one with the traffic. Or maybe you just get high from the exhaust fumes.

Lesson #4 The term “developing country” may be a misnomer in this case

For all you EWBers out there, we had a glimpse into life in an Asian city that makes for an interesting case study of development. Everywhere you look there is a buzz of activity – people selling, fixing, hammering, welding, etc. Road construction was ubiquitous. But I’m not sure this would be considered “development”. There doesn’t seem to be any progression towards something. Rather it appears as though all the work is being done merely to keep things from falling backwards. The best analogy I could think of is from Fraggle Rock. Do you remember how the Fraggles used to eat the buildings made by the Doozers (the little green construction men)? Well this meant that the Doozers were constantly working but they just couldn’t get those buildings finished because the Fraggles kept eating them. In the case of Hanoi, the people would be the Doozers (highly industrious) whereas the humid subtropical decay would be the Fraggles, wearing down all new constructions so that constant activity is required simply to keep pace. I think it is fair to say that climate very much dictates the likelihood of rapid, western-style development. Australia is one of the few “hot” countries where wealth is on par with the cold countries of North America and Europe, and even here the wealthiest, most developed places are in the southeast – the tropical north is relatively untouched. In Vietnam, I don’t believe the people could work any harder, and they certainly don’t lack the brain power to find solutions, yet I wouldn’t predict a Chinese-style surge in GDP anytime soon. But hey, I study fishes, not economics, so who knows?

Lesson #5 Vietnamese people also forget to take down their Christmas decorations

In more than one place, including the Hanoi airport, there were Christmas decorations still up and operational. I don’t know whether this represents laziness (a la Canadian suburbia, which could be excused by freakishly cold weather post-Christmas in Canada), forgetfulness, or a misguided Vietnamese view of “Western culture”. I’m going with the latter because Vietnamese people are far from lazy, and they obviously haven’t forgotten because they still turn on the little blinking lights.

Lesson #6 While Vietnam has great food and wonderful people, our grand plans for someday living there were perhaps ill-conceived.

There was a time when we had grand designs for perhaps living and working in Vietnam. The allure of the people, the landscape, and the interesting ecological and development work that we could potentially do there partly prompted this recent trip. We wanted to scope out the country, and get a glimpse of how we might cope if we lived there, particularly with a young child in tow. I think it is fair to say that although we spent almost all of our short time in a single city, and thereby have a limited view of life in the country, the thought of trying to live there is unfathomable. A combination of the difficulty in communication and our total “foreignness” (if that’s a word) would make for such a steep learning curve that we just can’t afford to have. That’s not to say it is totally off our radar screen. Maybe someday we’ll make it back for a longer visit. For now, Australia is exotic enough for us.

I think that Tim has summed up the major learnings of our trip quite well, I’m going to take a hack at the not-so-easily summed up stuff.

First off, Edie is a champion traveller. She loves planes and loves the proximity to people in planes. As Tim stated earlier, we’re not sure where she gets it from, but Edie is a little social butterfly. On the 5 hour flight from Brisbane to Darwin (our first flight of the trip), she spent most of her time looking over the seat behind us to see what the people back there were doing. Literally, head between the seats, non-ashamedly gawking at the couple behind us, much to their amusement (see photo in slideshow). Later on in our journey, she enjoyed examining an older Asian lady’s face at close range, all the while checking out what was happening in front of us and behind us of course. The only problem with such a curious traveller is the fact that with so much going on, Little Edie doesn’t want to miss a beat by boring old sleep. So it’s pretty much a constant battle to keep her out of the frantic-overtired zone. It’s rather funny that most babies are cranky when they wake up…With Edie, it’s the opposite. She just LOVES being awake so most of the time when she wakes from sleep while travelling (no matter how long or short it actually was), we’re greeted by “let-me-at-the-crowd Edie”. It’s at the least, much better than a screaming baby and at the most, very amusing.

So, when we arrived in Ho Chi Min city, it was late at night. I think that any city is more intimidating at night and this was no exception. The shock of being greeted by so many people that wanted to touch or hold Edie was a titch overwhelming and then we had to haggle with the cab driver to get us into the city to our hotel (quite unsuccessfully…we’re terrible at haggling). All I really recall of that long car-ride was that a) the cab driver made a mint off of us, b) the city was just so dirty and c) there was no rhyme or reason to how traffic flowed at all. There would be construction in the middle of a two lane street which would go on for blocks, and it seemed that people haphazardly chose which side of the construction to go around. Nothing like I’d ever experienced. We stayed at a great hotel that night and were somewhat rested when we got up in the morning. I’ll say that daylight makes a huge difference on outlook, so we were feeling a bit less antsy than the night before. We left the hotel at 5am I think, and were surprised on the way to see that the parks were full of people, exercising, talking, making out, you name it. It’s such an interesting place.

Our first stay in Hanoi was at a guest house, chosen for us due to the proximity to Van Anh’s family’s place. It had the bare essentials, which was fine with us. It was also located in non-tourist Hanoi, which we also liked. So there was no hiding the struggle-for-survival mode that is truly a part of this city. As Tim mentioned, people are very industrious and will try to sell anything they can to make a living. This means that there are oodles and oodles of street vendors who wanted our attention. We ate food from a lot of different vendors but got pretty good at saying no thanks to the constant slew of requests to buy. For the first couple of mornings there, Tim and Van Anh would find breakfast and bring it back to the guest house…Those breakfasts I will never forget. Vietnamese can do anything with sticky rice and mung beans…If you ever have the chance to try the more traditional fare there, do it. It’s amazing stuff. I forgot to mention as well, many of our meals on the way to Vietnam and in Vietnam were eaten in the hallway outside of our hotel room with little Edie sleeping in the room. I tell you, she’s got us so wrapped around her little fingers.

Sadly, with the location of the guest house (as real-city-life as it was), there were some real disadvantages to staying there. For one, the fact that we were the only white people in those parts was taxing after a while, especially when Edie attracted so much attention. It was an isolating feeling. The language barrier was also tricky. For example, if Van Anh wasn’t around to help us out, we didn’t eat (or ate quite poorly). Our first meals there consisted of bread and water. But perhaps the worst aspect of it all was the karaoke bar located not too far down the street. On the third night that we were there Tim and I woke to Vietnamese karaoke which sounded like it was being sung on our deck, and later were reawoken by a thunder storm which blew our door open. That mingled with the fact that Edie was already waking up multiple times during the night, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That next morning we called it quits and moved our operations to the tourist-friendly Old Quarter. In the Old Quarter we got well-needed sleep in a great little inn on the 5th floor. Lots of Vietnamese speak English there and we were able to relax a bit more and explore a whole lot. We also found a French bakery from where we sampled many baked goods on Mother’s day. I hope I never forget how lovely my first mother’s day was.

As you’ll see in our photos, we did take a tour to a location about an hour south of Hanoi. It basically took us through the old capital of Vietnam and on a river-boat tour to the locations of three caves which were quite interesting. Since you can see it all in photos, I won’t say much more BUT, I have to mention what kind of adventure it was travelling on the highways to and from the tour. As Tim said, there is nothing like traffic in Vietnam. There are always at least three lanes of traffic (even on two way streets) and let’s just say that everything I learned in driver’s Ed, was thrown out of the window. It wasn’t so bad for us on the way down as we were sitting in the back of the bus and didn’t get to see traffic coming at us. On the way back we sat at the front and at least 5 times I had to close my eyes and not watch what was going on ahead of us. Most of the time it was when our bus would try to pass other vehicles when there was oncoming traffic, something that happens all the time there. I should also mention that no matter where we were, it was never quiet (except on the river). There was always the sound of honking horns no matter where we went. Like Bermuda, people drive with one hand on the wheel and the other on the horn. Also like Bermuda, horn honking is not necessarily a result of someone being angry, it’s more of a form of acknowledgement. For example, when a person crosses the street bikers will honk their horns to let the pedestrians know that they’re going to get hit if they don’t move. It’s all very friendly.

Despite what you might think based on the small stature of Vietnamese adults, Vietnamese babies are huge. Most people seeing Edie thought she was younger than 8 months, and one person thought she was 2 months. That was probably one of those miscommunication things…I hope?

To add to Tim’s thoughts about us living in Vietnam someday, it’s really having an infant that makes it seem like a bad idea to attempt right now. One week of having Edie in a developing country was enough for us. I think we were on adrenaline pretty much the entire time we were there, and it was super taxing. I’ll say we’re nowhere near recovered from this trip, but we’re so glad to have done it. As I anticipated!

So, our typically non-adventurous lifestyle was injected with enough adventure in the last week to last us a little while. We’ll keep you posted. Love to all.

I forgot to mention...If you look closely at the picture of me on the motorbike with Van Anh's mother, it would appear that I have the largest hand to arm ratio on the planet. They're huge.

Edie coming into your living room!

2009-04-25T15:44:00.000-07:00

The non-adventure continues!

2009-04-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

Well hello,

Sorry it’s been so long. There’s a lot that has been sapping our energy these days and the moments when I, in particular (it’s been my week to write for a while) have had a chance to sit down for a second without remembering something else that needed to get done, are very few and far between (I’m in denial about what’s waiting to get done until I finish this post!). Miss Edie has taken to sleeping less and less during the day and getting into more and more mischief. I’m sure it’s not terribly different from any other 7.5 month old but it certainly is a lot of work! And we love it!

There really hasn’t been too much to catch anyone up on either. It’s been raining quite a bit since Tim’s last post meaning that although the Southeast Queensland dams have topped 60% of their capacity bringing Brisbane out of drought for real, there hasn’t been a lot of thrill seeking adventure on our part. The last real attempt was over Easter weekend, which in Australia means a 4 day weekend. By the Monday of Easter weekend we hadn’t yet left the house for anything other than a grocery run due to the rain and were feeling quite cabin-feverish. Tim really wanted to check out the Boondall wetlands, a protected area which lies just outside of the city, he’d been trying to get us out there all weekend. So, when we saw a break in the weather on Monday we made the trip out only to race back to our car after 5 minutes of walking along the trails in the park. The mozzies were ravenous, and plentiful after so much wet weather. And they’re huge. I have a picture of one, but I think I’ll hold off on posting it as I feel like all we’ve shown lately is how nasty the nasties are here. I wouldn’t want to give anyone an excuse not to come and visit! Just think of it this way- we’re doing the learning for you. We definitely won’t be taking any visitors through a rainforest after a rain (remember those fun leeches) nor will we be taking anyone through the wetlands after a rain, as for the biting ants, they’re good for character building. In the end we checked out a park on the coast which was much easier on the blood supply.

I just got back from the doctor’s office where I had my vaccinations brought up to date. At the beginning of May, Tim, Edie and I will be taking a trip to Vietnam. Our friend Van Anh (who we met in Canada and who still lives there) will be visiting her family in Hanoi at the same time, so we thought it’d be a good time to go. Tim is super excited, I’m excited, but a little apprehensive…It’s the lioness mom thing I think. I have no specific reason to be anxious about it but I guess when it all comes down to it I’d probably prefer to never have to alter our daily schedule in which we spend most of our time at home or not too far from it. And Edie prefers to be naked most of the time. I just can’t see me feeling ok about her being naked all the time in Vietnam. It’s another one of those things (like this whole move to Australia) where I’m sure I’ll be glad that we did what we did, but it’ll be a task and a half getting through it. We’ll post lots of pictures and will have lots of stories for you once we get back.

Speaking of Edie, I’ve got lots to tell. So if you’re really not that interested in things like baby poo or teething, etc., you can just skip this part. I spend 99% of my time with the little critter so I feel somewhat a) lost for other topics and b) deserving of the right to divulge this kind of stuff.

So, Miss Edie’s got one tooth through on the bottom and another on the way just next to it. She’s had wingey days but it hasn’t been nearly as bad as others have made it out to be. She’s still been sleeping through the nights for the most part, although less during the day, but we think we’re doing ok in that respect. The tooth that’s through had doubled her cuteness factor and is pretty solid. She’s putting a dent in her nightly carrot-stick and in many other things already, including myself. It’s amazing how proud we are of accomplishments that Edie has nothing to do with, like teething. What can we say- she’s got us hooked.

Now, the issue of poo. Well, for those who don’t know, we’re trying to help Edie poo. She doesn’t seem to go at all if we’re not diligent with treatment, which includes a daily shot of lactulose (essentially sugar-water) and prune juice and other nastier measures if the first one doesn’t work. We’ve been treating her like this since mid-February and she absolutely hates it so it’s been kind of rough on all of us…It’s also not really showing any sign of improving things. A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine suggested early potty-training as a means to get her sorted out without having to resort to the medical treatments that we’d been giving her. This friend had read a book about diaper-free babies and in it a woman had written about how getting off of nappies had improved the regularity with which her daughter pooed. So, I went and borrowed the book from our library and have been working on this diaper-free method for about 2 weeks now. What it essentially boils down to is that children are apparently born with the instinct not to soil themselves which is quickly muffled by us conveniently wrapping them up in diapers pretty much as soon as they’re born. Just think about how cool it would feel to have to use the bathroom in your underwear…Ya. The book suggests ways of reading the babies cues for when they need to go (so we can then pop her on to the potty) and also suggests ways of getting them to become more aware of the fact that they are ‘going’ in order to relearn their natural instincts in not soiling themselves. So, it might be that Edie just doesn’t feel comfortable going in her nappy (which I think is quite justifiable). Right away I can see that she loves being without a nappy. She now cries violently when I put a nappy on her actually. Reading cues is getting easier, but it requires a LOT of attention on our part and we still have to clean up lots of messes. But she seems to be pooing more regularly (and in a potty which means I don’t have to clean it off of nappies), is hungrier and generally more happy we think. So we’re going to keep up with this in the hopes that this will settle things. It’s really hard work, but we hope it will be worth it.

The potty training can be thrown off by a number of things however, teething being one of them and injury being another (of many). Sadly, Edie had her first spill this week. Everyone says that all babies will fall at some point, but I think the people that say that are mostly the ones who have never had their child fall off of anything but don’t want the other mothers to feel bad. I think this because I used to do it myself. But alas, on Tuesday after having put Edie to sleep on our bed and gone to fetch my own breakfast, I heard an awful crash and screeching wail. I should have known she was getting too mobile for sleep on our bed but since it’s the place that she prefers to go to sleep, it was easy to rationalize (she just won’t do the crib for daytime sleeps). Anyhow, I found her on all fours on the floor with an obvious bump on her nose. The poor thing. She cried for about 10 minutes and then proceeded to play with her barnyard so I knew she was fine, but oh. My heart was broken. We’ve been catering to her every whim since, even more so than usual. But she’s some kind of trooper. We now have a blanket set up on the floor for sleeping on. She seems to be good with it, but when she wakes up now, it’s not a matter of falling off of things that is the problem, it’s her getting into everything surrounding her. So baby proofing time is here. So ya, the whole bump has thrown a bit of a wrench into the potty training but I think she’s back on track now.

We discovered the family section of our local video store, thank goodness! Edie and I watched the Jungle Book all last week and are currently enjoying The Adventures of Milo and Otis. Ahhh, good old family movies, I’d been missing them so much. I’ve got my eye on Mary Poppins for our next feature film.

And I’ll leave you having learned lots of trivial information about our daily lives down under, wishing that we could be nearer and sharing this in real-life.

Supple, eh?

2009-04-07T02:06:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that I've had a bit of wrist problem over the years, some annoying pain, probably the result of too much mouse clicking - who knows, maybe it was the Napster heydays that did it. Well I finally made an appointment with an Orthopaedic surgeon to have it checked out, and it turns out I have "supple" wrists. Yes, supple. Apparently quite common in ladies, but rare in blokes (as he put it). So I left feeling quite emasculated but happy that there is no obvious major damage to the tendons and ligaments in there. And I decided to check out the actual meaning of supple. It's actually not so bad. Besides, I play footy, drive 4WDs and work around crocodiles, I'm confident in my manhood.....I think.

Laura is at soccer practice at the moment and Edie is asleep. She's been grumpy today because of her impending new teeth (Edie that is, not Laura). She (Edie again) has started giving us fake smiles that are slowly morphing into grimaces, likely the result of a little pain around the gums. A little bit of whisky rubbed in should do the trick. She's also ever so close to crawling, and enjoys being upside down.

It's been plenty wet here recently, with enough rain to boost the dams to over 50% capacity. That means that there is enough supply to last the city over 3 years without rain. And of course, as a result the water restrictions have been eased, up to a target of 200 litres per person per day (from a low of 140 when we first arrived, recently it has been 170). So no doubt consumption will slowly creep back up again. At least people have proven that when necessary, they can reduce their use considerably. And we're still not allowed to clean driveways with a hose - a little bit of common sense in there.

All the rain means the lawns are nice and green again. Over the weekend we decided we would avoid getting trapped indoors and took a day trip down to Mount Tamborine. It is less than an hour away from us so it's a bit touristy, but has plenty of pristine rainforest walks. We got about 20 minutes into one of these walks before realizing that rainforests are not meant to be walked in on wet days. Why you might ask? Because of the leeches. Leeches that live on the ground and thrive under wet conditions. Once we noticed them crawling on our shoes and socks we decided to turn tail and get out of there. But not before we saw plenty of nice paddymelons (wallabies) bouncing around under the leaves. Laura even saw one with a joey! So I guess we aren't the real adventurers we pretend to be, if a few little bloodsuckers are going to keep us away. We shall be back (on a drier day), and the canopy walk is next on our to-do list. We just need visitors so we can take them there.

Mount Tamborine rainforest - Taken just before discovering the bloodsuckers

All for now, take care and Happy Easter everybody!

2009-03-30T01:25:00.000-07:00

G’day!

I hope this post finds everyone well. We’ve made it through another week or so and are happy to say that for the most part, it’s been a non-eventful stretch. Tim is home, Edie seems to be processing food at a reasonable rate and I’m still kicking. All in all, we’re making it I think. It’s an amazing time of year to be in Queensland right now as the scorching heat of the summer months is over but we’re still enjoying 25-28°C days, the nights are cool now as well. It’s kind of like the perfect September days that we get in Canada where everyone just wants to be outside, but unfortunately are supposed to be in class...I also associate this weather with playing soccer as it was always a fall sport for us…It’s a lovely time of year. We don’t get the fall colours here though, I suppose it doesn’t get cool enough in QLD. They do enjoy a change of colour in the leaves further south though.

Having been through our first full summer in Brisbane (aside from December, when we were in Canada) I must say that I think it’s probably my least favorite season here. It’s pretty dang hot, but that’s not the worst thing. It’s the ants. Yes. Ants. When we first looked at this house to live in back in February ’08, I remember asking the landlord if ants were common in all houses. I come from Canada. Ants should be outside, not inside. In fact (and this might be why I dislike ants so much), when I was younger, the wood providing the foundation for the front sunporch in our house became infested with carpenter ants. You couldn’t tell by looking at the surface, but when we started tearing out the walls the beams were all bored out and there were (I’m sure) thousands of ants just going about their daily business of destroying. Hughhhh, it gives me the willies just thinking about it.

I understand that not all ants make homes in posts and beams, but it’s hard to shake that image of teeming ants just everywhere. In fact, in the summer of 2007, Tim and I noticed (what we thought were) carpenter ants in our kitchen on Wesbett St in Fredericton. There might have been one or two ants/day that we saw there. I was so nervous that they were eating away at the structure of our house that we called an exterminator and paid almost $400 to get rid of them. It turns out that the treatment was not that effective, but removing the kitty treats that had been pushed under the fridge by Tictac our kitty, was. So they weren’t after wood at all, just seafood medley kitty treats. I wish I could get that $400 back. I actually think that had I lived in Australia before living on Wesbett St, I wouldn’t have been so nervous about a couple of ants in the kitchen. There have been hundreds of ants in this house almost everyday this summer, with no way of getting rid of them. The ants we see in our house aren’t carpenter ants though, they’re actually called black house ants (Iridomyrmex glaber) and they’re much smaller. They will clean anything up so if we’ve left any kind of food scraps/crumbs/drippings at all, there will be a long line of ants marching to it by the end of the day if we’re not on top of it. They also will go for the laundry basket if they happen to scout out food on clothing, hence, doing the laundry is a big part of my day. If I happen to find the hole that they entered the house in from (there are lots of holes in Aussie houses) and plug it up, guaranteed they will find a new way in within a day. Actually, I used to be quite diligent in trying to keep them at bay…I’ve now realized that there are many more of them than me and they will find a way no matter how hard I try to keep them out of our stuff. So now we do what we can to keep them out of the important things (like laundry and the pantry) and co-exist with the ones that want to hang out in less important areas. There is actually a group of them who are working on a piece of foam which is located within the strap of a bookbag we brought from Canada. Go to it ants.

So the house ants have become a part of our daily lives, and we more or less co-exist happily. It’s the nasty greenhead ants (Rhytidoponera metallica) that get my goat. They lurk in grass and gardens and they inflict a nasty bite that, I kid you not, can keep you in extreme pain for over an hour. They suck the fun out of being outside pretty quick. I’ve gotten bitten on my feet a number of times and I’ll say that it’s nothing like being stung by a bee…It’s a hundred times worse. And when the pain stops, you get a nice welt that itches like the worst mossie (aussie-speak for mosquito) bite you’ve ever had for 3-4 days non-stop. Greenhead ants have no redeeming qualities in my books. Last week I was bit on the knees 3 times and I’m just getting over the itchy welts (see picture, mind the knobby knees). Grrr. After reading up on greenhead ants, I’ve learned that it’s not their bite that is so painful, it’s the stuff they spray onto the wound from their abdomen after biting. Not cool. Try to avoid them when you come and visit us!

So, our Saturdays of late have been spent at various soccer pitches (which the Aussies call ovals) for my league games. Edie and Tim have been faithful followers despite our teams’ poor standing (we’re 2 and 4 now). I’m working on making games more fun to come to by winning. Here’s hoping. Our season lasts until the end of September, so we’ve got lots of time to turn on the jets. Our major hurdle is the fact that the team itself has moved into a higher division this season, where for years prior we were on top of the division two standings, we’re now at the bottom of division one due to this move. It’s quite a mixed bag of girls, probably the most unique group I’ve ever met, but it’s fun. Overall though, women’s sport in Australia is sadly unsupported. My first taste was going to buy cleats at a sports megastore. The store carried probably 60 different styles/brands of men’s cleats and 4 women’s, and only 2 of those women’s came in my size. I’m not that much of an anomaly, I’ve got big feet I know, but I know lots of girls that play soccer who’ve got bigger feet than me. It seems that despite the fact that lots of girls do play sports, there really isn’t a big push for stores to carry women’s gear. I didn’t realize that we’d had it so good in Canada. It may speak to a larger phenomenon of general chauvinism here in Australia, but I’m not equipped to support my niggling suspicions with empirical data so I’ll leave that one alone for now.

Edie’s turned a corner on the sleep thing, cross our fingers…Tim and I have been holding our breath because she’s actually slept through the entire night for 6 of the past 7 nights. We find ourselves waking up during the night just out of habit, which is a bit weird, but Edie doesn’t seem to be stirring. She’s sure to change things up again soon, but I must say it’s been a nice week. We feel, dare I say, almost normal. And she’s got the crawling thing almost down pat. Just today she’s been working hard on the pike. Now all she has to do is be able to lift those legs at the same time as moving her arms. She gets around either way. Rolling can be quite effective I’ve learned.

We picked up a 2nd hand jogging pram and a new mobile phone for Edie this week. Both will make life easier around here! Oh, and Edie’s new favorite thing is a carrot stick. She loves them. Her former favorite thing, Sophie, has been seen crying giraffe tears ever since carrot entered the scene.

And I’ll leave you with that for this week. Enjoy the pictures and keep in touch.

Mission Accomplished

2009-03-19T02:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry to bore you all with yet another work-related post, but I'm happy to report that our second attempt at sampling the Mitchell River floodplain was a (insert Borat voice here) "great success." Eight of us flew into the community of Pormpuraaw and met our new charter boat, the Eclipse.

She was a real beaut, offering accommodation for up to ten people. Big roomy cabin with air conditioning and an upstairs sitting area for meals - which were cooked up by someone other than us. The time and energy savings of not having to set up and tear down a campsite everyday and cook our own meals were huge, allowing us more work and discussion time. We sampled a variety of plants and animals from four locations on the floodplain, gathering pretty much everything we could get our hands on, from algae and mangrove leaves to crabs and spiders to catfish and sharks. It was all fair game.

We'll bring these tissue samples back to the lab where they'll be dried, ground, and run through a special piece of equipment that will spit out numbers that tell us something about who is eating who out there. Interestingly, there were lots of marine fish species that had come up into freshwater to feed and reproduce. But otherwise, the floodplain was far less productive than we expected, with fewer plants, insects, and birds compared to other tropical floodplains in northern Australia and South America. All told, I'm happy to have a successful trip under my belt.

It was really neat to be in a place where few others dare to venture. For the first four days we did not encounter a single other person on the river, and later in the trip the only people we saw were the renegade barramundi fishermen that I mentioned in my last post. Overall it is quite beautiful up there, as the pictures attest.

Perhaps the best thing about working up there was the chance to spend time "on country" with our friends Anzac and Raven from the community of Kowanyama. They have traditional ownership over the country where we were working, so they eagerly accepted our invitation to join us for the week. I think they had a good time with us, we certainly enjoyed their company. Anzac (pictured on a lovely grassland on his country below) and I had some down time while waiting for the others one day, and I learned that he is a fan of Rugby League, and roots for the Broncos. So there we were, two men from worlds away, talking sports. Anzac will also be travelling to Alaska in April to attend a conference on Indigenous perspectives on climate change. I've teased him plenty about the cold weather he'll get there, considering he has spent his entire life in Kowanyama and was shivering from the air conditioning on board the charter boat.

Oh and we saw a few crocodiles, including a 4 metre monster that came charging into the river one morning near our mother ship mooring site. He was big enough to create a wake in front of him and the slide he left behind in the mud, later inspected by the guys, was about the width of a car tire diameter. Not one to be trifled with. No snake sightings though.

Meanwhile back at the homebase, Laura and Edie were staking out territory on the battleground. Edie's willpower continues to impress. She regularly resists sleep during the day and pretty much has us working around her schedule.

Of course, she is a source of great joy in our lives, and she is sleeping better through the night. Also, I am not due back in the field until late May, so Edie will have her father around for awhile, and Laura will get a much needed break every so often, when I'm not busy watching cricket and footy.

Happy Anniversary!

2009-03-02T18:10:00.000-08:00

Yup, it’s been a whole year since we arrived in this sun-scorched land, and what a year. I’m not going to pull any “let’s rehash the year” stuff on you, as it’s all in our archives anyway and rehash episodes are lame. Could I sum up how we feel after 1 year? Hmmm. Still new (does that feeling ever go away?)…tired? Kinda broke. Loving the weather and fresh, cheap produce, not loving being as far away as we possibly could be from our families and closest friends. So happy about the great new people that we’ve met here, we’d be lost without them.

The real question is would we do it again if we knew what we know now…The answer to that one is still up in the air but leaning much closer to heck no (pardon my French, as they say in Canada). Will we look back on this and think “I’m glad we did that- we were so cool once”? I think we will. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve known for a long time that I would be spending significant amounts of my adult life in far off places. I know that I’d be stir crazy if we were living comfortably somewhere close to home having never really ventured, so really I have no grounds for complaint. I think that Tim is on the same page with me there. Tim and I have also known that our chosen occupations were not going to be huge money makers, and after a year of living on a minimal budget (that seems to get smaller and smaller), we know that we can hack just about anything. I think that we can safely say that it’s been good to get this out of our systems at this point. Perhaps the time is right to be where we are and doing what we’re doing. We’re hoping that the time to settle down in Canada feeling will be as apparent when we decide to do that.

So what’s been happening in Australia? Well, bushfires and flooding are still major problems in the north and south of Australia. Everywhere you turn there are appeals for both of these tragedies…Sadly the fires are still raging and floodwaters are still a problem. Actually, there is a fire warning out today for parts of Melbourne as a shift in high winds, 3 more weeks of dryness and 4 ongoing fires may combine in a nasty way. Thankfully, people are aware that they might be in danger this time. It seems that 3 weeks ago people had no idea that they were in the path of such fast moving fire. In terms of flooding, well, lots of people are still in trouble and the major impact that we see here is that fruit is definitely becoming more expensive. Tim left for attempt number 2 at wet season fieldwork (see last blog entry for details) this morning. This means that floodwaters have receeded enough for the vessel skip to be able to supply 9 days of food for the 8 person crew who will be carrying out this fieldwork (the flood-levels during the last trip meant that before the work could start, the vessel would have to sail 16 hours out of the way in order to be able to get food enough for the crew, due to supply shortages in surrounding communities from where they were supposed to be sailing out). So that’s hopeful. I think overall both the fire and rain situations are getting better, but there are a lot of people who have lost absolutely everything. I was reading an article in a Salvation Army publication this week about George Orwell’s take on poverty and what it would be if he were in Australia today…In the article, Sydney writer Jane Richards was quoted as stating:

“Today’s poor are no better off than the poor in the past if they feel poor and they see their situation as helpless”

I wonder how many people coming out of these tragic bushfires and floodings will now be ‘poor’ by that definition. Unfortunately, this is the kind of stuff (along with a number of other afflictions, of course) that can make people poor. Rough times.

On a happier note, Edie is doing much better than she was the last time that Tim left for the north. For those who didn’t know, 3 weeks ago the Edester was admitted to hospital to undergo treatment for releasing about 2 months worth of poo that she couldn’t pass on her own (she’s gonna hate me someday when she stumbles across this blog). Having been told all along that breastfed babies may not poo very often, and not seeing any signs of distress until maybe a week before she was hospitalized, we were crossing our fingers that our baby had a great metabolism. The night of the day that Tim left for the last fieldtrip I woke up to a screaming Edie and decided to call the health-line. When the nurse asked me how long it had been since we’d seen a significant poo, I was embarrassed to tell her that it had been during the month of December while we were in Canada. Yikes. So I took her to emergency and ya…She was chockers (Aussie-speak for full). The doctor had ordered an x-ray and I just wanted to cry when I saw the picture of her little bowels so packed up. Even the doctors couldn’t believe that she was so content and happy when she was so obviously full of poo. They decided to keep her in the hospital for 3 days to give her a naso-gastral treatment of stool-softener, and laxative suppositories from the other end (i.e. the bumbo). So Edie and I hung out at the hospital for those days in a room with two other babies who were much sicker than she was. Neither Edie nor I slept very much, and Tim was up north which made things quite stressful. Oh ya. And Edie decided that she didn’t want to be held by anyone else and let us all know. There were a few disappointed volunteer cuddlers who couldn’t settle her down, one telling me “I’ve never met a baby that I couldn’t get to sleep until now”. What a handful! When Edie allowed, I made a point of having a story time with the three babies together, it was quite fun. Honestly, I could read books to babies for the rest of my life and be quite happy doing only that. At the end of 2 days, the doctors released Edie simply because we weren’t getting any sleep and I could treat her at home more easily. We jumped all over that. So, the first week we were home Edie pretty much made up for the 5 months where we’d seen maybe 1 poo in 2-3 weeks, if we were lucky. On about the 4th day of treatment she pooed 14 times. Given that she’s only awake for 14 hours a day, it wasn’t a really productive day otherwise. She had a follow-up appointment early last week and seems fine. Hooray for that.

That whole episode was tough on us. Edie was waking up all hours of the night for about a month and, well, it just wasn’t pretty. We’re finally getting back to normal around here and it feels so good.

I mentioned in a previous posting that I’ve been playing soccer for the past couple of weeks too. Man, is it ever amazing to get back out onto the field. I don’t know if it’s because I’m recovering from having a wee one or not, but it just feels SO GOOD to be able to play again. Actually, I think that I do feel differently than when I wasn’t a mom. I’ve always taken playing any sport seriously, but now, maybe because time is so precious I feel super-compelled to work my butt off for that hour and a half practice or game. I feel like I need to squeeze whatever workout I can get for the free time that I have. So it’s nice to go to practice and know that Tim can handle Edie and that I can just focus totally on soccer for that time. And there are some great people on our team. All in all, I’m loving it (you can substitute ‘not being pregnant’ for ‘it’ in that sentence).

It’s autumn here now and the weather is cooling off thankfully. We’re now into the best time of year because we’re still getting all of the good produce but not sweating buckets everyday. Speaking of sweating buckets, Edie, me, the neighbor Nikki and her boy Remi have been going for swims in the local public pool over the past month or so. It’s great! It’s a heated pool and the kids love it. Edie likes to be held on her belly so that she can hang her tongue out and lap up the pool water (she does the same in her bathtub, kinda gross) and she likes to put her head under and kick her legs too. I think we have a little fish on our hands. Remi is 4 months older than Edie and likes to splash a lot, I think that Edie can’t wait until she has control enough to splash him back.

I hope that you’re all doing well. If you’re actually reading this, you’re most likely the people we miss so much. Take care and enjoy some new pictures!

Love to all,

Laura

A Failed Mission in a Hostile Land

2009-02-20T17:23:00.000-08:00

Australia has been in the news a fair bit in recent weeks, with the usual smattering of shark attacks and crocodile deaths on top of the massive bushfire tragedy in Victoria. The issue in this country, however, that became more relevant for me recently is the flooding in North Queensland that Laura spoke of in her last post.

Our research team was headed into the heart of the flooded areas since, after all, our job is to study the importance of the flood water to all the animals that live there. And this was a big flood, reportedly the biggest many of the residents of these communities have ever seen. This meant that all of Cape York (the land in the map below these posts) was cut off by road. Even Cairns, a city of 100,000 people, had empty shelves at the grocery store when I was there overnight. The irony is that this part of the country is a major tropical fruit producer, so you had bananas destined for southeast Australia rotting in warehouses while locals lacked access to fresh fruit because theirs is sourced from the south.

Our original plan was to fly into the community of Normanton, drive or boat down to Karumba and board a charter boat that would sail north in the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Mitchell River (about halfway between Karumba and Weipa on the map) where we would anchor in the river channel and spend about one week using smaller boats to explore and sample the massive floodplain. We were doing this because there is little dry ground to speak of on which to camp, and reportedly the only dry ground available is occupied by other inhabitants of the creep crawly variety.

In short, the mission was doomed from the start. Our problems started when unusually large floods struck the Normanton/Karumba area, effectively cutting off the community by land for six weeks (and counting). In a normal year it is cut off for about one week. This meant that we couldn't get our gear shipped there and fresh food was limited. So our charter boat opted to sail up to Weipa (about a 28 hour trip) in the hope that it would be better supplied, given that it has a larger population (about 3000) and is a purpose built town for the largest Bauxite mine in the world.

The decision ended up being the wrong one, as it just so happened that at the time the northern gulf was experiencing strong winds and high seas, thus making progress slow. By the time the skipper was within reach of Weipa, we were already one day behind schedule. That's when things really went astray.

While I was in Cairns and scheduled to fly out the next day, I was awakened from sleep by a phone call from the skipper, who informed me that he had struck a stray fishing net and as a result the engine was disabled. He would require a tow into port at Weipa. Check out the picture of the mess. This is what happens when fishermen forget their nets or purposefully leave them to drift. If they do that to a big boat, imagine what they do to fish and other marine creatures. But I digress....

Despite all this, we carried on with the expectation that by the time we got on board the boat we would be about 2-3 days behind schedule. Not the best situation but we had already sunk significant resources into getting this far (including flying three people across the country from Perth), so we weren't about to quit just yet. Two of us flew in a small charter plane with our gear into Pormpuraaw, a remote community of about one thousand inhabitants, primarily Aboriginal, on the Gulf coast, just north of the Mitchell River. The boat was to pick us up there when it was ready.

As further evidence that our little field trip was cursed from the outset, we had just set down our bags in the guest house in Pormpuraaw when there arose a wailing outside. A young man (24 years old) had just been found out in the bush. He had hanged himself the night before. The community responded with great grief, and the harsh reality of remoteness, isolation and disenchantment came crashing down. As with other New World countries, Indigenous suicide rates are far higher than those for non-Indigenous people. I was reminded of the situation in Big Cove, NB in the early 90's.

Despite the young man's death and another pending funeral in the community, the Rangers there were very kind towards us and took us around (at their insistence) to a few locations for us to sample while we waited for our boat. At one of these sites I saw my first salt water crocodile. Luckily for me it was behind a purpose-built fence that keeps the crocs and their nests in a wetland away from the road that leads down to the river. Of course, there is no fence at the river itself and plenty of crocodiles, so we had to be on our guard.

After three days in Pormpuraaw and regular updates on our skipper's progress, we finally learned that the boat's generator was non-functional. Since we could not get a replacement sent up for several weeks (because of the floods), we were forced to finally give up on the mission and fly back to Brisbane to lick our wounds. The only bonus of that was I was able to get back early to a distressed wife and daughter.

Oh, and just in case you thought we weren't dealing with enough hazards (crocs, cyclones, snakes) while doing this ridiculous work, you can add Dengue Fever, Dysentery, and even organized crime to the mix. Quite a change from my earlier work, taking day trips to sample little streams in New Brunswick where the blackflies are the biggest hazard.

We'll be heading back up north to try again later this week or early next. Hopefully, as with this last trip, the only incidents will be mechanical!

I've seen fire and I've seen rain

2009-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

I'm sure you've all heard at least something about the tragedy that has struck southern Australia. Fortunately for us, we're nowhere near the bushfires (it's like something happening in Toronto for someone living in Nova Scotia if that puts it into perspective) but a lot of people have died and a whole lot of people have lost everything in these bushfires which started over the weekend and are still blazing in some places.

Check out this link if you're interested.

Unfortunately there is also tragedy in the north with cyclone hits in Northern Queensland that have caused massive flooding...It seems oddly fitting that one end of Australia is battling fire while the other is battling water. Nature can be very harsh here and I'm sure the insurance companies are just sweating bullets.

2009-02-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

G’day mates.

She’s a real beaut outside today. 27°C and sunny. Nice cool breeze coming in from the northeast as well. Is anyone ready to pack their bags and visit yet? As my brother, who had a short stint in sales, says, “now, now, now is the time to buy, buy, buy!”. We also just purchased a second bed, it’s a queen sized dream, so now we’ve even got a comfortable place for people to sleep. COME ON DOWN!

Well, this week has been like most of our weeks have been lately, filled with hot days and trips to the coast. It really is a great time to be here. And, we have come to admit, life is so much better with a car. We should have bought one long ago. The best part about having the car being that Tim can get to work by 6ish and be home for 2ish so that we can go adventure searching most afternoons. So not only do we have a car, we use it all the time…I’ve come to accept the fact that we’ve become what we didn’t want to be in Australia, reliant on a car. Laa-dee-freakin-daa. On the down-side of having a car, I hate driving. Hate it. I did way too much of it over the last years that we were in Canada and I’d prefer that someone else take the wheel any day. I had to go to a meeting across the city on Monday afternoon and am quite sure that I broke at least 4 traffic laws, and it would have been 5 if a sign-holder hadn’t yelled at me when I took a wrong turn down a one-way street. On that note, Tim has finally got us hooked up with car insurance. I believe he was prompted when I came home with that story.

To give you a better idea of where we’re talking about when we tell you that we’re going to the coast, follow this link to a map of Southeast Queensland. You’ve probably heard of the Gold Coast (includes Surfer’s Paradise), this area is big for tourists and surfers. We don’t like going there too often as the beaches are never empty and the waves are huge (Edie only likes small waves). We’ve discovered through trial and error that the Moreton Bay area is much more fun to visit with Edie. Moreton Island and North Stradbroke Island shelter the inner coastline from the huge wave action coming off of the Pacific, but it’s always breezy and there are a lot of areas that aren’t too populated. Redcliffe Beach has been our favorite beach to go to so far. The Manly/Wynnum area is also a great place to go to for a breezy stroll.

On Tuesday night of this week, Tim and I had our first date sans Edie. We have a friend here in Brisbane who is also a child-care worker, so we hired her for the night to watch over the wee one while Tim and I went to see Leonard Cohen in concert. What an amazing show. What an amazing night. We just weren’t sure what to expect from Edie’s end of the deal, but she fell asleep at bedtime and didn’t wake up again until 3, after we were already home. So our babysitter had it pretty easy, which is just what we wanted. That way she’ll maybe do it again!

So Leonard Cohen is just one of the few men left on this planet who is a true gentleman, I think. Or so it appears. Surely enough, he put on a show where the audience felt that he genuinely appreciated us being there. I don’t know as I’ve ever been to a show where that was the overall vibe (and I’ve been to too many which have been exactly the opposite- Ryan Adams is a great case in point). There’s just so much to say about how cool it was to be there. First off, Leonard sported his usual Armani suit and fedora, which he pulls off so well…oozing sexuality as our counterpart pointed out. There was lots of theatrical kneeling and he skipped off and on the stage every time we left or entered, he came back for an encore 3 times and the band was just so tight and together on every single note. It was such a treat to be there. Of course, it was a ~15,000 person crowd that we were in…that being a downfall for sure when we considered that we could have seen him at his world-tour opening show at the Playhouse in Fredericton if he’d showed up 2 days earlier (we’d just left for Australia when he kicked off this world tour). Even so, it was worth every penny to be there. We’d taken our car into the city and parked, and then jumped on the train to get us to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the traffic after the show. That was a great move on our part. One of the people that we met up with at the show was looking for a ride home after so we offered. On the way home it was casually mentioned that Leonard Cohen was her God-father. Apparently her mom and dad lived in Greece when they had her and used to hang out in Leonard’s crowd. The last time he would have seen her she was probably a month old so it’s not a tight connection or anything. But she had considered writing him a letter, and didn’t. I felt kind of cool that Leonard Cohen’s God-daughter was in our car either way.

So, going to see Leonard Cohen in concert brought up so many good memories for me. I definitely have to say “good on you” to my mom, who despite our protests, used to listen to his music all of the time. Of course we thought it wasn’t cool enough at the time, but I definitely learned to appreciate it. I remember specifically one night ‘studying’ for a social studies test in grade 9 with big headphones on listening to The Future album and singing along in my Leonard voice…I aced that test. I also remember that in grade 9 english, our teacher, Mr. Drew, was big into breaking poetry apart to determine the author’s true meaning, etc. On one assignment, I can remember looking through my mom’s copy of Stranger Music to see if I could find a poem in there that I could use…Can you imagine the confusion in my innocent grade 9 mind when trying to figure out what most of his poetry was about? I never did stick with that book. I think I had no clue what any of it meant…definitely some adult themes that I probably still wouldn’t be able to get my brain around. It’s so funny to picture that now. And it’s also ironic that we weren’t allowed to watch Video Hits (Samantha Fox, anyone?) or listen to AC/DC because of…adult content? Yeesh. Either way, thanks mom!

Last Saturday we took Edie over to our friends’ place to watch them harvest honey from their bee boxes. For a long time I’ve dreamed of having my own bees someday. It doesn’t look so hard. Next time that they harvest I’m hoping I get a call to come and help. It’s delicious honey and now whenever we pass a bush where we can hear bees we wonder if they’re Jo and Steve’s. Following honey harvesting we took a trip up the road and signed me up onto a women’s soccer team. The Salisbury Scorpions- Feel the Sting! Our first game is in March and I’m working on whipping myself into shape prior to that. Having a baby really does a number on…everything. I miss muscle tone. I’m glad to be getting back into normal Laura stuff.

Tim takes off on Tuesday for 9 days up north. They’re doing wet-season sampling now on the Mitchell River which means that areas where they would have camped out at before, they’ll now be sailing over in a big boat. Yup, water in Australia is weird! In fact, Tim and I were looking at water levels over the last few weeks in one section of the river and the water has risen from 4m deep to over 12m. Picture that. Like always, I’m going to miss him while he’s gone, little Edie will too. She might just have her bags packed by the time he gets back, ready to go find dad on her own. Speaking of which, she’s been a crankpot these past few days. Tim thinks that she’s acting like a teenager. It’s weird for her. We think that there’s either a little tooth trying to poke its way through her gums, or she needs to poo and can’t. Both are legitimate reasons for being cranky, and we hope to get to the bottom of things soon.

Well, to wrap things up, I thought I’d mention that we’re fans of a few other blog-writers out there. We’ll be adding links in over time. What they write about and their opinions are all over the map, but we like all of them even if we don’t necessarily agree with what they say. I’ll note that coming soon, we’ll have Owen Scott’s blog link posted. Owen is a good friend of ours from Engineers Without Borders in Canada, his blog will be a recap of his adventures and learnings while he’s overseas in Africa on a long-term placement for the next year or more. He’s the kind of person that thinks hard before saying anything, a quality I wish that I could be proud of in myself. Either way, it should be good reading.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the pictures!

Laura

Greetings

2009-01-24T00:31:00.000-08:00

Happy Australia Day everyone!

Flag waving and fireworks for the Aussies, and a long weekend for us. And boy is it hot. Not so much hot, but sticky gross humid. I know, we can't complain when it's in the minus twenties in Fredericton, so I won't. Just know that we are now forced to go to the beach regularly. Okay, that was unfair. But think of Edie, who gets to show off her new hot pink bikini bottoms. She allows about four waves to crash around her before she gets upset; the controlled environment of her bathtub is much more to her liking.

I've been watching a fair bit of cricket lately, it being mid-season and all. The Aussies are engaged in a series with South Africa, and I must admit, it is a bit intriguing. Plenty of strategy involved that kind of makes up for the lack of excitement. I'm sure Laura is thrilled to know that I've adopted yet another sport.

So the title of this post is actually the subject as well. I have always been a bit of an obsessive about on-the-street greetings. Growing up in a small town (Miramichi), we learned that it was impolite to pass someone on the street without saying hello. Since then I've lived in Halifax, Fredericton, and Brisbane, and you might be surprised, but the largest city (Brisbane at >1 million) has people that are more likely to say hello to you than Halifax or Fredericton, the latter city having a deserved reputation as being a bit snooty.

To me it's also not only the frequency with which people greet others on the street, but also how they do it. Miramichiers and folks from other small Atlantic Canadian communities (Fredericton excepted) give the short nod in a downward direction, often accompanied by a "how's she goin'?" (to which a Miramichier would reply "the very best!"). While living in Halifax during my undergrad days amongst people from "away" (i.e. southern Ontario), I learned that Upper Canadians do not nod at you the way Maritimers do. Instead they give an upward thrust to the head, in a way that always came across to me as a bit arrogant. Where the Maritimer gives a downward nod that speaks of humility, perhaps mixed with a bit of shame at our collective poverty, the Upper Canadian's nod speaks of pride and confidence. Who knows, maybe with Ontario becoming a have-not province, the frequency of upward head nods will decrease.

Of course, it is likely that these head movements as greetings are borrowed and altered from other cultures. In the 1000 page epic novel "Shantaram" (highly recommended by the way), author Gregory David Roberts, an Australian hiding from the law in Bombay, writes about the Indian head wiggle:

"No discovery pleased me more, on that first excursion from the city, than the full translation of the famous Indian head wiggle...........What I learned, on the train, was that a universal message attached to the gesture, when it was used as a greeting, which made it uniquely useful........Gradually, I realised that the wiggle of the head was a signal to others that carried an amiable and disarming message: I'm a peaceful man. I don't mean any harm."

So there you have it. The subtleties of human behaviour. No doubt wherever you are reading this there are unique body movements that carry social messages. That brings us to Australia. Just when I thought there were no other ways to move your head in greeting, I began noticing that Aussies do yet another variation, a sideways jerk of the head. Not up, not down, but sideways. The message it sends is reminiscent of the stereotypical Aussie persona, carefree and bold.

So when you see someone on the street, give them a hello (or in Bermuda, a "y'all right?") and a head nod, preferably one in the downward direction.