Hi There Wisewomen,
Wow it is cold down here in Oz but luckily for us in Sydney, Mothers Day was bright and sunny for all those barbequing dads!
So Happy Mothers Day to all of you and I hope you had a beautiful day.
NEW GRANDCHILD ARRIVES…IT’S A BOY
A week overdue and with anxious and excited waiting, we welcomed our second grandchild. One grandchild is spectacular but two is like the empire has begun! It is amazing.
On Mothers Day this little treasure arrived at my house on his very first visit.
Beautiful and the Pot’s great big bouncing boy weighed in at 9lb 6oz.
I have no idea where Beautiful tucked him as she was as neat as a pin. He is so gorgeous and with parents like his, he will be a stunner that's for sure.
Well done kids, your lives have just begun and ours have been made all the more richer!!!!
FEATHERDALE PARK
Miss C with a kangaroos dream - ice cream cone with grass!
We minded grandchild No 1. Miss C for the weekend and Mr G had his heart set on going to Featherdale Park in Western Sydney.
Featherdale is choc-a-block full of Australian animals. Kangaroos, wallabies, emus, kookaburras etc are up close and personal and it is ‘hands on’ as you get to feed and pat them. And we did. We patted hundreds of kangaroos and even I didn’t know there were so many varieties. Miss C and I threw wet slimy fish to the pelicans. We even stroked a koala, so cuddly and adorable.
Now who is that cuddly little girl in pink - should I pat her?
This park is designed with children in mind as everything is accessible, close together and childproof. Tourists come in their droves too because all Australian animals can be viewed in just a few hours.
So if you are Sydney and want a few intensive hours of Australia animal download – you can’t go past Featherdale Park!
MORGAN’S RUN
It is thrilling to be talking about an exciting new musical – Morgan’s Run.
The book and libretto were written by Colleen McCullough and Gavin Lockley has composed the music. I am excited to be attending this event on the 28 May so I will let you know what I think!
If you live in Sydney and would like to attend, you’ll have to take a drive up to the Blue Mountains where this musical will have its world premier on the 21st May, 2011.
Pop onto the website to buy tickets: www.gavin@gavinlockley.com and you can also hear Gavin singing one of the beautiful songs.
I know it will be another brilliant work by this young composer. There aren’t too many people around composing musicals and orchestral masterpieces these days so he is certainly one to watch.
Read my interview with Gavin a few years ago when Symphony of Australia had just been released
KEEP FIT
The word 'trying' figures highly in my exercise program!
It has been a while since I wrote about ‘keeping fit’, but I hope you are still clinging onto your regime like me and determined to keep fitness part of your life. Sometimes you fall off the track or time prohibits you, but that is not failure! Oh No! That is not the end of it. You simply pick yourself up and start again.
I was sick with a bug the week before we went on holidays and then we were away for three weeks. Back home, there was so much on and the baby came and there were nights of visiting etc. Of course, I have been managing at least twice a week at the gym since we got back - but it’s the food!!!! I can only loose weight if I watch what I am eating and I have to be strict!!! I said to Mr G – ‘On Monday we are on a diet. All food will be accounted for.'
Monday night - Mr G brought home three-quarters of the largest and the most divine Tiramisu cake you have ever seen. It was his work birthday cake and he brought home the left overs. Thanks Caroline! Darn it, darn it, darn it!!! You do not, not eat such a thing! There went the diet on day one. I am not showing much will power, am I, if I am instantly lured by luscious cakes!!!
Oh well, back on track and more trips to the gym and hopefully some good results will have me sticking to my guns.
Yes, we are all juggling food, exercise, willpower and lack of control.
Keep the smile on thy face ladies……happiness is the key to staying and feeling young so no matter how much effort you put into exercise – enjoy your living experience none the less.
NOW I THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE A BIT OF MY CHINA HOLIDAY BLOG WITH YOU...
So here are some of my cute dogs of Yunnan Province
So boring and this bar is decidedly uncomfortable!
Innocent me, but wait til they're not looking!
Love me in my new pink Dog Socks!
"Am I a person or a dog!"
I wanted to take this little guy home!
CHINA EPIC
Well, I am getting there with the epic tale. It is along process and there has been a lot on recently!!! So I shall give you a little taste ….
Mr G decided that China/Tibet was our destination of choice this year and so we landed in another world!
KUNMING
We were in Yunnan Province, south-west corner of China, the most beautiful of all China they say.
The old and new - a mish mash of cultural architecture
We landed in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, on the start of our 2 week adventure tour. We met the other person on our adventure trip. Gail is from Western Australia and was travelling without her husband. Ma, our guide, took us on a couple of guided tours.
YUANTONG TEMPLE
Yuantong Temple and Goldfish paradise
A short trip from our Hotel, we arrived at Yuantong Temple. It is more than 1200 years old and the largest temple in Kunming. It is a destination for pilgrims from all over the world. The Temple precinct is an unusual design as it sits on a declining slope and not an ascending one which is typical of Chinese Buddhist temples.
Ma amongst the thick of it.
We went to a temple the day a festival and were catapulted into a frenzy of celebration! Ma said it was Buddha’s birthday but whatever it was, the place was throbbing with people. We walked off the busy road and down a pretty pathway to an open area where a choir, orchestra and dance troops were entertaining the crowds.
Then we made our way to the main temple where a huge pool - like a moat around a small temple. The pool is reserved for releasing captive fish and we stood and watched as many devotees spilled the contents of their plastic bags into the water.
Many happy gold fish live there and relieved sinners walk free.
Hot cauldrons of fire and as the devoted take aim.
This area was also massed with people lighting candles to place on large timber altars. They also lit great bundles of incense and threw them onto huge piping hot caldrons. I decided to give it ago. So with incense lit, I bowed in all directions naming my loved ones. Then, with much hustling and bustling I tried to get near the mass of smoke to fling my incense sticks. Off they flew onto the top of the pile!
The heat from the caldron was positively terrifying though. One deft shove from the throng would have had me in the burns unit for years.
BAMBOO TEMPLE
The beautiful courtyard of Qiongzhu Temple rendered un-beautiful for a second as a Chinese woman cut her toenails while sitting on one of those little seats.
We visited 15th century Qiongzhu Temple was first built in the Tang Dynasty (618–907).
Ma told us the main temple, after a huge festival, was burnt to the ground, Apparently the incense, decorations and paper money notes ignited in the middle of the night and caused a huge fire.
Having just visited the other temple I could see exactly how this could have happened.
A new Temple has been now been erected out of concrete!!! Smart move. The clever Chinese have made sure it still looks the real McCoy with huge 'timber' beams and exquisite paintings!
A sneaky look at the Arhats sitting in the window
Qiongzhu Temple is best known for something really different. There are 500 life size, surrealistic, coloured clay sculptures of Erhats, Arhats or lohans.
These are Buddha images and animals, made in the 19th century by a Chinese Sculptor Li Guangxio and 4 of his students. They are crammed on three tiers of three smaller temples in the surrounding grounds. It was quite eerie being surrounded by this looming figures. All I can say is it must have been such fun creating these masterpieces! Each of the figures is unique: some happy, angry, sad, funny and so on. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside!
Ma said we should choose an Arhat that we were particularly drawn to and then start counting clockwise the number of years old we were. Whoever we landed on, then that would forever be our special Arhat and ‘our life’! Wow! Got to be in it I thought. I started counting and landed on a saintly looking (too good to be true) kindly, happy and sweet monk who looked entirely content. Well what can I say!!!!
Mr G decided to bypass the counting business and just chose a very serious chap with a long wispy beard (well that works for me) and Gail chose a fiery and crazy looking monk who was flaying a book!! (Obviously that spoke to her!)
The bearded one and his kindly saint!
We saw many wonderful things in this lovely city, the beautiful Green Lake Park, the museum, old town and so much more. We started our journey of the tastes of China there too. The food was fantastic but I could see that noodles would be the order of the day!!!
OVERNIGHT SLEEPER TRAIN
Ha! What a scream!
We left Kunming on the overnight sleeper train destined for Dali. Ma dropped us off late at night where we were left to the mercy of the Chinese Railway system, a ticket that we could not read and a platform full of people who could not speak English.
We managed to work out the number of the ‘Gate’ the train was departing only because we knew what time it was supposed to leave!
When the time was right, the passengers, including us, raced down the stairs like a herd of elephants hauling our heavy baggage. We had no idea what we were doing? And we were hoping the train was actually ours! I have never seen such a long train. How on earth would we know which carriage was ours!
Ma had kindly written us a note in Chinese which said
'Please help these Australian passengers who can only speak English. Help them to their carriage please?’
Oh yes were working with ‘high tech’ here! …………..to be continued
Were we on the right train, did we find our sleeper bed or did we wake up from our bad dream!!! You will have to wait until next time dear reader!!!
VODAPHONE NIGHTMARE
I can feel you cringe as you read the line above.
You've been there too haven’t you! You know what it is like to get unbelievably frustrated! I wasted 2 precious hours of my life talking on the phone to someone in India. To cap that off I spent another 2 hours trying in person trying to sort out an issue that should never have been an issue!!!!
I ended up with an account for a service I do not have and explaining that to someone in India was laughable – in a hysterical sort of way!!!!
I am still alive as they didn’t actually cause me to ‘stoke’ during the call, but I came near to it let me tell you!
Afterwards, I went into a shop to buy some slippers and I said to the young girl serving me,
‘I have just spent all morning trying to sort out a mess with Vodaphone and spent two hours on the phone to India’
She stepped back and looked horrified “Oh my god, are you alright? I know exactly how you feel. I spent 4 hours talking to someone in Thailand over my computer the other day and I was crying at the end of the conversation. It took me a week to get over it!”
I said to her “I told them I would slit my wrists if they didn’t fix my problem” (this is because they wanted me to pay a cancellation fee for the account which did not exist). "But" I said "they probably tally up the ticked boxes at the end of the day. Did anyone have slammed phones, irate customers, a suicide threat - they would probably get top marks for that one!”
I am absolutely sure it is a sport because they don’t actually help you, do they! They leave you for 10 or 15 minutes hanging on the line while they see ‘their supervisor’ so when they return, your fuming anger must be steam at their end of the phone! Probably a few more points there too. Honestly, it is an absolute joke!!!
Why don’t these phone companies get it in their head that we would much prefer to talk to someone in our own country and not some clown in a far off land?
For the life of me I cannot understand the logic and farming off our ‘support’ systems to people have no idea what they are talking about.
I thought the world should be getting smarter about these things, not dumbing down!
THERE WAS ‘MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING’
Mr G decided the night of the Royal Wedding was a great evening to see the Shakespearean play ‘Much Ado about Nothing’.
‘I got great last minute seats’ he said. Durrrgh! That’s because everyone wanted to stay at home and watch the wedding!!
Weeks and weeks ago when he was talking about seeing this play, I said ‘don’t pick the Royal Wedding night.’ Well, you know, you just want to be included in this world occasion, don’t you. It’s a womanly thing.
Anyhow, tickets were already bought and I grumbled and carried on for days and Mr G arrived home the night before with a recorder. Hurray!!! What a guy!
So off we went, and even though the theatre had a TV screen showing the wedding at interval, Mr G said “we’re recording it, let’s go outside and get some fresh air’.
Bells Shakespeare is always brilliant and this was no exception. But the man in front of me needed to be slaughtered in true Shakespearean style.
What a rotter he was coming to the theatre with full blown whooping cough!!! Well, that is what is sounded like. He was seated in the second row almost in the middle and that man just did not stop coughing.
He was sitting with his arm around his partner and when he coughed he would cough into her neck, thus turning sideways to allow his stinking germs to spray towards me and Mr. G.
Look I know everyone has to cough once or twice, but to sit through the entire performance and cough continuously was downright rude if you ask me.
How he could have heard or enjoyed any of it while he was spluttering away was even more annoying - he should have left.
I would forgive him only if he had lung cancer, and if that was so, then the last play he ever saw was a good one! It was only meditative relaxation techniques and complete concentration that had me tuned in over his bobbing head onto a brilliant cast and a very funny story.
Anyhow, as soon as we got home I leapt to the television and with excited anticipation of watching the Royal Wedding.
Do you want to know what!
The sad, sad story is, Mr G, with his new piece of electronic equipment, had set it to time one hour!!!! That’s all I got. One miserable hour of boring lead up stuff! I didn’t even get to see Kate in her wedding dress for heaven’s sake.
Realising the problem, Mr G had safely skulked off to bed. I couldn't work out which of the thousands of hand controls we have to get if off record and back onto the TV. I raced to my computer. Well, I had to see ‘the dress’ at least. My computer wireless had dropped out and I had no reception. I turned on my husband’s computer and I couldn’t use the mouse had run out of battery. I tried attaching mine but that didn’t work either.
For heavens sake, surely I could at least see something. I went to my husbands Ipad, but I didn’t even know how to switch that on. My Galaxy mobile was my last resort and I got onto Google….yaaahee. I saw the dress – how divine. But when I tried to down load the page for more information it said the page could not be located.
Well, I gave up there and then. What a great big disappointment.
It made the coughing man scenario look like peanuts to how I felt at that moment!
So what does all of this tell you! At the end of the day none of this really matters, does it!! I fortunately didn't get a horrible bug from the coughing man, and I've seen many photos and clips of the wedding since then. Irritations and disappointments litter life, so you just get on with it.
But I still haven’t seen the whole wedding. Somewhere down the track when it comes out on DVD I might just get myself a copy!
LANA’S WISE WEEK
Check out Lana’s Wise Week and see what she has been up to.
QUOTATION
With the birth of my new grandson, a have a couple of lovely quotes:
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. Elizabeth Stone
AND
Babies are such a nice way to start people. Don Herrold
The joy a new baby brings to the family is profound as we are completely swept up in love and care for this little soul.
It has been an interesting month for me and you can see by my blog I have had some incredible joys and a few annoying situations. The bad I do take with reasonable stride.
I learn the value of patience, empathy and not to say things that will hurt other people even though my tongue may be shredded to bits in my mouth.
For all of you as you go on the ups and downs of life, remember to keep your ‘shine’ shiny and bright - and remember - meditative relaxation and concentration might help when things are not going your way!!!
Love
