Australia's Finest...falls flat....

An update on my previous one....

and I quote "1. Loving no queues, or at least small ones at the Post Office and in Government offices, less than 5 minutes on two occasions, amazing!"

Well that is what I said...but it doesn't stop them from stuffing up, consequently I have paid for a new licence with the Registrar of Motor Vehicles only finding out today that I should have paid only $15 for a re-issue (my old one was current) rather than $295 for a new one...buggers!  Refund check here you come...

and I quote "4. Cold Rock ice cream..."

whhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....I still miss Ben and Jerrys...LOTS!

and I quote "17. Getting to wear party shoes without London cobblestones ruining them"

hummm, well now that I don't go out...don't even shop, seriously I haven't purchased a single, shoe (that alone would be daft anyway), top, dress, bra, so much even as a sock...for 7 weeks.  That would be correct you heard me S E V E N weeks.  Get me! No shopping!

Off the topic there though, basically I don't go out, I go out, but not OUT OUT...so no dressing up. Sob.

and I quote "19. Traffic jams only take 10 minutes to get through...maybe 15 if you are super unlucky"

Seriously don't get me started.  Mark and I are doing a road trip everymorning, leaving at slightly different times, taking various different roads to try and avoid dreaded traffic gridlock, alas its not like we are stuck for hours.  Just infuriating when you know you can get somewhere at a normal time of day in 20 minutes and it takes 40-50 minutes at peak hour.

and I quote "21. Peace and quiet, now my ears aren't the greatest, but its odd without the London hum that never stops"

This one well, please see my entry on What's my age again? and you will see that is just NOT TRUE, but on the plus side, it really would only be maybe one night a week. BUT I simply blame the lack of double glazing.

and I quote "23. Sunshine...just in case I did forget to mention it."
 
Nope that quote still stands - I love the sunshine!

Quote me...

"Every single molecule that Charis is taking into her lungs has once been part of someone else's body, of the bodies of many others, going back and back, and then past human beings, all the way to the dinosaurs, all the way to the first planktons. Not to mention vegetation. We are all a part of everybody else, she muses. We are all a part of everything."

The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

Egypt - Day 2

Mohammed Ali Mosque at the Citadel in Cairo

Mohammed Ali Mosque the courtyard

Mohammed Ali Mosque me in my sheet

Mohammed Ali Mosque inside lights

View from the Citadel over Cairo... on a clear day!

The Coptic Quarter of Old Cairo inside the Hanging Church, and this is where I put a candle for Mum

Khan-al-Khalili Bazaar, it was just manic

Outside the Egyptian Museum - no cameras were allowed inside, but there everything King Tut inside and a few Mummies

Egypt - Day 1

Mark at the "Big" Pyramid

Desert Scene with Camels

Our tour group, nice with 13 people

The camel men at the stepped pyramid

Crazy Cairo traffic, and not a chance they are gonna stop for pedestrians

Me at the Stepped pyramid

What's my age again..?

Seems I am showing my age. Not visually, as I don't look a day over 25, daaaarlings! Haha. However, the other night after tucking myself up in bed and having drifted off to sleep at a respectable 11pm on a Friday evening - what! Its been a long week!

Anyway, back to me....sleeping away, only to be blasted unceremoniously (I am a very heavy sleeper so it takes quite something to get me awake) out of my beauty preserving slumber by the neighbours teenage childrens' friends having decided right at that moment that revving the crap out of your car was a cool thing to do. I'm sorry, NOT AT 1AM IN THE FRIGGIN' MORNING it isn't!! You know the usual boy teen macho stuff, meat head, motor brain "cooor look at the wheels, mate!", pimp my ride sort of thing. Great. Just great.

However, as teenagers are rather vampirish and sleep till well beyond noon, 1am in the morning would clearly be the equivalent of, oh say you and I's 6-7pm in the evening. A much more respectable time to be showing your mates that you know how to step on the accelerator of your car really hard, repetitively without actually moving said vehicle.  Yippee, lets clap, the boy can use the accelerator.

I was mere seconds from dragging myself out of the bed and launching myself out the front door to scream at the nearest car occupant. I would have been a sight with my cleavage revealing nighty, scruffy bedhead, and makeup less. I reckon I could have had them screaming for the hills within seconds.  All I can say is they are lucky they stopped and also, if they had continued, lucky also for them that I decided to actually wear any bedroom attire that evening at all.  Scary it would have been for them indeed!

I did however take a bleary eyed peek out the front window (the reason for my problem in the first place - Australians appear to deem double glazing not only unnecessary but ridiculously expensive) to notice that the neighbours house had become a regular rave joint.  I felt I was suddenly living and looking out onto Hindley street (a Camden High street on a Sat night equivalent) with the cars lined up down the street with little Miss Hotties getting out cars and taxis, then sashaying in their clunge revealing skirts up the path into the house.  I was surprised not to see bouncers at the front door.

Now technically I should have been disappointed that I wasn't actually invited to what appears to be the newest Adelaide "it" Saturday night club.  However *sings* "what's my age again? what's my age again?", aggravation at lack of sleep got the better of me, I crawled back to bed, a grumpy grumbly old woman and finally fell back to sleep, grumbling further briefly when at 3am they all piled back into cars to their dens before the sun came up.

Indeed "what's my age again?", obvioulsy old enough to know that I prefer sleep to clubbing. Sigh.

BBQ Days

Some of our close friends decided that a quiet low key BBQ was in order for Easter Monday. So we divided up the duties and on the day headed to our local park (about 2 minutes from our house) to fire up the BBQ and enjoy drink and catch up chats, you guessed it, in the sunshine. Delightful.

Mark cooking the snags

Friends - Matt Emma and Scott

The Boys at the BBQ

The Food - Yum

Sunshine

Just to let you know we still get plenty of it here in Australia.  Just today it was 30 degrees and amazingly bright and beautiful. I found myself wanting to go outside because I was afraid the sunshine would not last. 

It has not clicked in my head that for the last 6 weeks we have had about 3 days where the sun refused to shine, or rather shone tepidly through misty high soft clouds, and only one, just one day, where it wasn't playing peekaboo behind the clouds for most of that time.  That and my sunglasses are permanently perched on my head.  So its probably safe to say the sun is not in a hurry to go away...yet.

However, as I sit in my little chair at my little desk behind my little laptop tapping away I am continuously thinking, "oh my goodness, will I miss out, what if the sunshine stops and its grey" before dragging myself outside just for a little while. You know just in case.

Though thinking about it, about one week back I stopped to notice, whilst in a car park of all places, that the sky is high in Australia.  Sky High.  I just felt naturally small and that the world was so big the sky so wide, open and clean.  I had never realised before how lucky we are that Australia is so large and welcoming, the sky is one of the things that makes it so. 

London I remember feeling small and squashed, it felt like the clouds were ever perched just above my head, close enough to reach.  Though if I could have touched them I would have grabbed the grey grumpy sodden things and stuffed the darn things in the nearest rubbish bin.  England has low lying dense cotton wool like clouds that float past very fast and I spent plenty of time watching them do just that, where as Australian clouds are high floaty wispy that drift lightly and slowly across the sky.  Laid back clouds...laid back peoples, with London being fast and furious, just like the clouds.

No I haven't had anything to drink I really just felt like talking about clouds, and for those who have not been to Australia, I wanted to give a small insight to Australia that you, or rather Australians tend not to notice or take for granted. Just something that makes Australia what it is.  I will endeavour to think of more little things, its the little things of course that make it so wonderful, to share with you.

I am still in love with Glee

Easter Goody...googy Egg!

He is rather edible! This is my 10 month old nephew Eli and he was super excited about Easter!

An Evil Plan

Not really evil, but a plan none the less and it sounded exciting writing it down like that.  I am going to be a photographer on the weekend from now on and maybe one day even more.  Far into the future its....20??...envision a red carpet, blazing lights, a bedazzled and bewitched audience, a black tied announcer, "...and the winner is....Lisa Luyten...Photographer extrordinaire,...Lisa Luyten...."Photographer on the Weekend".  Sigh.

My plans to become a photographer will definitely not eventuate easily, its a long term goal, with a long term vision, and as a great many persons have said before, but even the longest journey begins with the smallest step.  I am but a planner, super organiser and this is how I do things.

My small steps, given that you're only as good as your last photo (and believe me its not a great one) will have to entail me getting the camera out and taken at least 5 photos a day, now that I am not travelling the need to get the camera out (the urge is there, the subject material is not...yet anyway) has slightly deminished.

Right having just written that down, how to make sure I do it and get started with that small goal, and continue properly so I don't feel so lost?  In fact I have other goals that I need to undertake also in regards to the "Photography", but again, how to monitor, what are the goals, how do I start? Oh all the questions... head ...but ...is spinning....

Firstly, lets think of the goals. Goals so far....

1. Take 5 photos a day, but not just anything I need to be testing things, like different lighting, affects of changing the aperture, flash effects, still life, movement, etc

2.  Record the shots and what I was trying to achieve

3.  Read something about photography everyday, one of my magazines maybe, they seem to be gathering dust at the moment, as are my many photography books.

4.  Once a week check out the DVDs that have come with said magazines, to learn about Photoshop - so that is one new Photoshop skill per week, just one tiny thing at a time.

5. Update the filing of my photos and back it all up properly

6. Utilise Lightroom, I have heard good things but fail to use it

7. Understand in my head that my hobbies cannot be paper tole, French, Spanish, reading, writing, and gardening, cake making, following the Amazing Race, as well as Photography (my first love...aside from Mark) - there are not enough hours in the day for even just Photography, so some of those will just have to fade away (for now)

8. Go through and finish up editing my photos from France, Ireland and Egypt - the last holidays whilst living in London.

9. Review photos for those to be printed from the 4 years we spent overseas. Unfortunately this will be a rather massive personal project for which I really will have to go into baby steps mode. Its far to daunting to even think about...might go eat some Fruchocs...oh sorry where was I...

10. Put paid to my promises of family and friends childrens portraits and actually do them - I think Sundays will be portrait days

11. Save up the pennies for a Canon EOS 5D, or even a 7D, as its clear that the move is back away from full format with the much anticipated release of the Canon EOS 1D IV, having reverted to being non-full format (ie not like a 35mm SLR camera), there is no need for me to aim so high.

12. Update photos on both Flickr (for your viewing pleasure) and RedBubble (for your purchasing pleasure)

13. Set up my own photography website (to cover both above eventually).

14. Join Model Mayhem and start doing professional model shoots, but still this will be on Sundays

15. Undertake further training in Photography - Photoshop course or even join just join a group of enthusiasts (who, I am sure will make me feel inadequate, but as I am so competitive, it will give me more drive to be better).

Whew, well its all out there now, I just got it down as fast as I could think of it all, so its a lot and some are long term goals and some are short term, i.e. "can do today" goals. 

Next step, organising these goals into long and short term and getting the long term ones into manageable chunks.  

I feel better that its all out now, and hopefully one day you will here of Lisa "David Bailey" Luyten, but as I progress I will update on here...so add a new goal and that will be to update on here how the former "Tourist on the Weekend" is progressing into becoming "Photographer on the Weekend!"

And oh how well the Cosmos will go down - Sex in the City 2

Me and the girls will celebrate when we go to a private GOLD class screening on its released in late May!

Amazing BB

And what she made me, check out the link.  I love my Lavender bags! Thanks BB

http://www.makemeonebernieb.com/2010/04/for-the-smell-of-it/

Never tell a 3 year old he is not... A Single Lady