Telco dramas

It's hard to believe but we haven't had any telecommunications in this house since the afternoon of July 18.  Our landline and DSL were just restored yesterday.  That's almost 5 days.  What happened?  So, I'm on my iMac and suddenly last Wednesday afternoon my DSL line goes down. Yep, restart the router, isolation tests etc etc.  No joy.  Must be my ISP?  But there's nothing on their website to indicate a fault in my area. Yes, luckily we still have the trusty iPhone to connect via 3G.  Mmmm.  Ok, well I don't care so much so I'll switch everything off and leave it till the morning.

In the morning, nothing.  And my wireless home network is not even available.  I plug my laptop into my router via ethernet and discover my router has lost all of its settings. What?  OK, log a call with my telco.  To cut to the chase, via a process of elimination we realise our landline is suddenly a different number.  In fact, it's my neighbour's number I found out later.  So sure, the phone is working, but we don't own that phone number.....All this took days to resolve.  So then they fixed my neighbour's problem (that's also our problem) and disconnected our line altogether.  In fact they cut it - yep, cut that is, with a cutting tool.  The cable.  This had to be fixed at a junction box about 500 metres from our house!  Crikey, this has been really annoying.  So now I've had to reconfigure the router, which is finally OK and all our connections are back.  I actually backed up the router which I had never done before but highly recommend!  Now I can finally relax and get back into the real world.

During this period of non-connectivity, we used the iPhone as a personal hotspot with both the iMac and my Lenovo laptop. I'd never had to do this before and it worked a treat.  I love my iPhone.

Pastizzi, pet sheep and other doings

So, I haven't been able to blog anything for four days, and prior to that I was busy doing stuff.  We've been to all manner of places the last week and I barely took any photos because I just wasn't in the mood.  It is winter after all and I've been a bit grumpy.

Nevertheless, last week we were out and about a fair bit.  We bought some frozen Pastizzi from the famous Pastizzi Cafe in Newtown, just up the road.  My favourite are the chicken and mushroom, but they do about 12 varieties, both savoury and sweet.  12 snap frozen pastizzi cost $14.

These are delicious

After 25 minutes in the oven, they came out like this:

Awesome winter deliciousness

I spotted New Zealand Natural ice cream on the way home and had to buy a tub, because I know it's the creamiest ice cream in the world, and I've tried a lot of ice cream.

As yet unopened

That wasn't all we've done in the last week.  We also:

• Had Yum Cha at Fisherman's Wharf Seafood restaurant at the Fish Markets.
• Went for dinner at an old school friend's place in Mona Vale, on the northern beaches.  We had oysters, sashimi, fresh tuna and barramundi.
• Went for dinner at a friend's place in Marrickville.  We had slow-cooked beef stroganoff and cous-cous.  It had cooked for 8 hours.
• We had lunch with a friend at his parent's place.  They've been married 50 odd years and had 7 children, 4 boys and three girls, all now grown ups - there are 8 grandchildren.  They've traveled to the four corners of the earth and are fascinating people.  We had roast lamb shoulder.  His mother does the potatoes like this - she par-boils them, sits them under the roast and with the other vegetables in the pan, pours off half a bottle of red wine.  It was fabulous.  We had a great afternoon.  And their house is full of curiosities.
• We also had a brief visit from some friends that live in Collarenebri, about 8 hours drive away.  They have a pet sheep, Bronco, that is now becoming a ram.  Becoming a ram apparently includes ramming people with horns.  Bronco was rescued as a lamb when his mother was killed on the road.  Bronco kind of thinks he's a dog.

Baby Bronco

Bronco hangs out with some dog mates

Bronco by the campfire

Bronco with growing horns and a fleece

Bronco's dog crew

We have had some very pleasant winter sunny days here in Sydney, although the nights are cold.  Even in July, our camelia tree is blooming.

Stunning winter-blooming camelia

Bruce just finds it all very tiring.

Zzzzzzzzzz

In the garden we have loads of skinks.  I've always liked lizards.  Sometimes these little ones fight over territory, but not to the death.  Just until the bigger one wins.

A skink.  We have loads of them hanging about.

I'm not sure why this iPhone photo turned out like this, but it's quite interesting.

Life without the internet

My internet access has been down for four days.  FOUR WHOLE DAYS.  My ISP has been performing network upgrades which basically stuffed almost the whole of NSW from Thursday - Sunday.  It's been very annoying.  I can access the net via my iPhone but I haven't really been able to do anything USEFUL.  Now it's back up I just need to vent how irritating it has been.  Then I'll try and post what I would have if I could have the last four days.

Haiku and the butterfly

My friend sent me a little Haiku to ponder.

A leaf

Fell from a tree                                                       

Only to return                                                      

A Butterfly

Then there was this giant butterfly on one of our camelia trees.

This is a big butterfly.  I think it was recently un-cocooned because it stayed there a long time.

Amazing nature eh?

Some graffiti is actually art

Where we currently live in Enmore, inner west Sydney, there is a lot of graffiti. Well there is tagging, which in my view is just vandalism, but there's also quite a bit of actual artwork.  Much of the graffiti is actually done on "legal" walls and the artists have a real pride in it.  It does colour up the neighborhood.

This street mural has been around for years.  I like it that it hasn't been tagged over.

The wall below is fairly newly sprayed and just up the street from our house.  It's colourful in that graffiti kind of way.

Adds colour to an otherwise boring wall.

I don't have to go far to find street art, actually just outside my back gate.  The mural below has very recently changed, and I didn't know until today.  The Pink Panther was always there but the rest was a cartoon version of Inspector Clouseau.  Looks like somebody died spraying a train, hence the station scene and "Rest in Peace".  Sadly, it does happen.  It's just too dangerous.  So please don't try and spray trains or train tunnels.

Newly modified, slightly bleak

That's a real street sign incorporated

Train close-up

The whole wall again

This one is right next door and has also been there for ages, unchanged.  Glad it doesn't get tagged

I'm going to go in search of street art now.  However, below are two examples of what I call mindless tagging.  Especially because it was done on the walls of our old house.  It was so annoying, and expensive to get rid of.  I just think - why don't you tag your mother's house?

What a mess.  Even the footpath looks bad

This is not art, it's very ugly, especially on my house.  It cost a lot of money to get rid of this.

Bad News - but let's hear it for Dean

My partner's cousin Dean has a brain tumor.  I mentioned this the other day, but since then things have got worse.  A lot worse.  The crap thing about this is that he overcame the tumor a few years back but it has returned with a vengeance in the last year.  Now it seems he doesn't have long to live.  He's only 42 and his kids are 7 and 5. There's a few links below about Dean that highlight all he has tirelessly done for charity and kids with cancer.  Dean and his wife are both police officers.

Dean - includes video

Dean helping kids with cancer

One good turn deserves another

Dean and his family are in Wellington, New Zealand.  Sadly, it seems his fight is almost over.  We love him.  Three cheers for Dean and god bless his family.

Fish the family dish

The Sydney Fish Markets are the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. I've been eating seafood all my life as my mother was born in Townsville, QLD and had a penchant for oysters, mud crab, prawns, and of course fish.  When we were kids, because Mum wanted them, we all had them!  Lucky us. I was given an oyster knife when I was about 8.  That's right, my parents gave me a knife so I could eat the oysters straight from the rocks down the road from where I grew up in Seaforth, on Middle Harbour in Sydney.  I must have eaten thousands in my lifetime.  I also had a tomahawk, which is a small axe, but that was used to kill red-back spiders amongst other things, a different story altogether. Anyway, my partner's cousin was visiting from New Zealand and he wanted to catch up with his friend's son or something, who happened to work at De Costi, just one of the merchants at the markets.  I wasn't planning on taking any photos, but I had my iPhone and I liked the look of the Scampi, which by the way have actually been flown in from New Zealand.

They look good

Believe it or not, a group of crayfish is called a herd.

The herd

Raw and cooked sweet crabs.  You can see why they're called Blue Swimmer crabs on the left.

Someone has been buying up the Blue Swimmers

These are actually rock lobsters.  Don't ask me the difference between these and crayfish.  Google it.

Can you see the odd one out?  To the right is a bunch of Balmain Bugs

Some fish are also on offer.

Could be little Garfish in the foreground

Mmmm, trout. Unreal. See they come from Tasmania? All good cold stuff comes from Tasmania.  I like to cook trout whole wrapped in foil on the BBQ, stuffed with some simple things like onion, tomato, lemon slices or whatever.

The trout

Ocean Perch, Sand Mullet, Latchet and a hacked up swordfish

Not much Swordfish left here

Fish tails make great stock.  I like the heads too, the actual whole thing, done Japanese or Malaysian style. No disconnected heads in this shot though.  I I don't eat the eyes.  I tried one once.  It wasn't for me.  No need to go there really.

Prawns, prawns, prawns.  Peel, dip in white vinegar (that's my Mum's way) and that's it.

A few varieties of Prawn

They were about $10 a kilo cheaper when I bought them in Port Douglas straight from the trawler.  Oh well, I guess there's a middle man or two here.