Australian holidays – August 2017

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Two weeks back at work, and I’m in danger of forgetting my two weeks holiday in Australia.

I arrived in Launceston for a change, as Elle and boys were visiting an ill family member. The next day was already arranged for the boys and I to go zipline-ing at Treetops in Hollybank forest.  It was a wonderful experience.  I really don’t know what age group had the most fun.

We had only another two days with family in Tasmania, before we flew up to Brisbane.

The next day we were “Show And Tell” at my nephew’s class when we surprised him at school.

We became quite odd objects for his classmates to ask some interesting questions. They were most interested in how far away is Dubai. How do you get to Dubai. How many minutes is that? How long does it take to get there. Then again, how many minutes is that??

It wasn’t until we mentioned the flight took enough time to watch eight movies back-to-back that the questioning moved on.

Then perhaps the last question was the most interesting to them, when they learned that I work at a theme park with LEGOLAND!  Lesson learned. I really should have led with that one.

Back in Brisbane, thanks to my parents we saw the Brisbane Broncos play at home against the Parramatta Eels.  The boys were super excited. It was the first live NRL match for Lewis & Owen. Well, for Lewis. Owen fell into a deep sleep soon after we arrived in the stadium.  Even with all the extremely loud cheering, he didn’t stir.

Sadly, most of the cheering from 12 seconds on, was for Parra.  Bronco Adam Blair thought it was a good idea on the first kick return, to pass it aimlessly to an opposition player to score the fastest try recorded in NRL history. I think Blair’s been in need of a Head Impact Assessment for all of his life.

Broncos eventually scored some points in response.  They even began dominating, until silly mistakes undid all the good work. The final score was 54-34.

The boys and I still came out victorious, thanks to a McDonald’s promotion.  The Broncos scored more than 19 points, so each spectator could take their match ticket into a McDonald’s restaurant and pick up a free Broncos Burger. Myles had already devoured one of those in our travels and was a huge fan. When we visited the city the next day, we got three … and then another, and another. Free food really sparked Myles’s imagination. We wondered how we could print and redeem the other 29,000 tickets from the game.

That day we visited the Gallery of Modern Art.  It happened to be hosting an Avengers exhibit.  They had lots of costumes and props from the movies. And we got to design and share our own super heroes (I wonder if my Library Woman character will ever hit the big screen). The most fun was certainly the BRILLIANT interactive character exhibit that mimicked whatever moves the boys would make. The boys (and I) could have stayed there for hours, dabbing and kung fu kicking as Iron Man, HULK, and Guardian of the Galaxy characters tried to keep up on the big screen in front.

On the Sunshine Coast we stayed with my brother and family. It coincided with the Caloundra Power Boat Club’s “Take a kid fishing” Day.  We had a trial run on the day before and caught a few fish each, which was promising for the competition.  On the day that mattered though, we caught almost nothing.  The boys were more than pleased to just catch a few toad fish. Three out of our four boys still won a rod & reel combo regardless.

Our nephew’s Poppy opened up his arms wide and asked Owen how big was the fish he caught.  Owen felt compelled to correct him, “It wasn’t nearly that big!”  Quite an honest boy, but not a real fisherman. Yet.

We tested out the rods a few days later. Again with very little success, except for a couple of toad fish.  Myles was so proud that he was able to catch one with his bare hands.  It might be the only thing worse than catching a toad fish with a fishing rod.

Then our time in cool Australia was over.

It was an enjoyable, relaxing time.

For our flight home I saved almost two thousand dollars and flew China Southern Airlines, via Ghanzhou.  Apart from a few minor peculiarities (like people’s carry-on luggage being a 12kg box of peeled garlic), I thought it was pretty cool. Their premium economy seats were better than any other I can recall. I thought we found a wonderful alternative, until at the baggage belt in Dubai one of our bags was missing. We learned that it was safe and sound, but still in China.  Perhaps it’s an indication that you get what you pay for.

On the plus side, it was nice to have a good excuse for not shaving on my first day back at work.

Staying in Emirates Park Zoo – 5-7 April 2017

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We had anything but a proper vacation for this Spring Break. Lewis had chicken pox for the first week.  Then on the weekend, Owen was hospitalised with pneumonia. My work was also busy, so with just a few days remaining of the boy’s holiday, we opted for a Staycation.

We decided to stay at Emirates Park Zoo & Resort.
The boys could clearly benefit from a greater appreciation for wildlife:

 

We arrived and I wondered if this was the right place to bring the kids when Owen loudly announced that the place smelled like poo.

We were shown to our adjoining rooms and realised what a cool place this was.

Outside our door was a sandy enclosure with seven deer. Owen didn’t know who painstakingly painted the white dots on them.

And through a window on the other side of the enclosure we could see lions staring back at us. Or they were probably staring at all that sweet venison they’re unable to get at.

The zoo sold bunches of green leafy grass to feed the animals. We fed monkeys, farmyard animals, tortoises, camels. Having turtles for pets made the boys spend mossssssssst of the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime feeding the tortoises. Which actually weren’t as slow as I had expected. Some of the animals like camels and donkeys were able to reach quite far beyond the fence. This actually looked dangerous with their huge heads and massive teeth. There were signs warning people of the risk. The boys appreciated this and made a disturbing song to the tune of Frozen, “Do you want your nose bit offfff?”

Some time after seeing all sorts of exotic animals, we came across our compatriot kangaroos. Myles naturally started a normal Australian conversation with them, “G’day mate. Have you been drinking any XXXX lately?” The zoo also had kookaburras, and sulphur-crested cockatoos.  I seemed to spend more time with them than any other birds – just like when you’re at a party and you find someone you went to school with.

We attended just one of the scheduled shows, which was mostly an educational segment. What we learned was that one of their South American birds awkwardly wasn’t in the mood to perform. All “Tookie” had to do was hop across the four poles that the two people from the crowd were holding. That evening at the buffet I asked Myles if he also thought the meat in our biriyani looked anything like Tookie.

Myles compared the variety of animals on display to what he saw on his recent African trip. One observation was the goats here looked less like horses on drugs. And Ugandan giraffe were much taller.

I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night, not to the sound of noisy neighbours or construction site activities, but to the roar of lions and nature. From the safety of a locked hotel room, this was brilliant.

For quite some time, each shriek or noise got our attention and led to a “What was that!?” Some sounds were quite clear. Others were contested. For instance, we couldn’t agree if one particular recurring noise we heard was an elephant or a chair moving.

The next morning it was apparent the folks next door had no zoo food to feed the animals.  Instead they improvised and gave our deers something resembling red chutney for breakfast. Thankfully the parents stopped the daughter before she gave them cocoapops for a second course.

The other kind of food you could purchase at the zoo was bags of nuts for the monkeys. We purchased these on the second day. The zoo’s monkeys though got hardly any, while my two big monkeys tuckered in.

The monkeys were overall very interesting to my boys. They loved seeing the monkey’s human-like hands reaching out from their cage to get the food. I had to correct Myles when he said they looked just like humans. They looked just like humans in jail. And some of their jail cells seemed small.

Myles spotted the Reptile House, and was quite accurate that for me it was like a Haunted House. In the enclosure for the anaconda, it was quite interesting/worrying to see no anaconda, yet a surgical mask was left laying on the ground. I wondered if this was perhaps evidence alluding to a horrifying story.

We thoroughly enjoyed the experience at the Emirates Park Zoo & Resort. It’s not far from the Yas area of Abu Dhabi – before you reach the city.

I highly recommend staying for a couple of nights, if you prefer to take more time watching and interacting with the animals, and not worrying about missing any exhibits.

I did notice they had some room for improvement. Their so-called “Mammal Cave” had no lazy guy on a couch watching TV with remote control in hand.

Umm Al Quwain Marine Club “Camping” – 11-13 April 2014

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Elle and the boys had two weeks holiday for Easter. So last weekend we headed up to UAQ Marine Club to go “camping” with some friends for a couple of nights.

We weren’t the only ones with a strange concept of camping.  There were kids there with remote-controlled cars.  Our friends mentioned, that form is better known as “glam-ping” – combining glamour with camping.

It’s not the kind of camping I remember.

In fact, I can’t even comprehend the advent of people bringing their own jet skis.  Why do people go away to enjoy nature by powering along the top of the water as fast and noisy as possible?

Later there were other scenes more like what I was used to.  An example was fathers passing a rugby ball to each other – trying to show they still have it. It may be the only reason why rugby balls get packed on holidays.

I really can’t judge people for attempting to relive their youth.  I knee-boarded one day, water skied the next.
It was the first time I had tried skiing, and it was such a surprise to stand up on my third attempt.  I was fortunate to get good advice, don’t think too much – which I found quite natural to do.

All the boys, except land-bound Owen, enjoyed the lovely warm water.  Lewis particularly took to it on this trip. He even wanted to give kneeboarding a try, though decided against it after a few failed warm-ups along the beach. He was OK to miss it, there was more than enough fun riding on the boat, sitting on the donut being towed behind, having a fish, or just swimming.

Myles tried his hand at fishing, as he regularly does. Though he may be a bit hesitant to try it again.  He was sitting on the back of the boat, feet in the water, casting the line out into the sea.  Unbeknownst to him I had quietly slipped into the water from the front of the boat, and snuck around under the water beneath where he was sitting. Then I quickly pulled myself up onto the landing deck right in front of him and screamed.  As he jumped about a foot in height, I’ve never seen his face so terrified.  It would have been a different story if I happened to get a hook in my face, which I willingly risked.

It wasn’t the only fun we had on the water.  All six of the big boys went out on kayaks one day.  I was with Lewis, and out in the open water we spotted a few pieces of rubbish. It was a good opportunity to teach Lewis about doing our bit for the environment and fishing them out to put into the bin later. It was a little disconcerting though, when we made it to a secluded beach to take a rest, that there was a rubbish tip spewing hundreds of bottles into the ocean. It seemed to make our two pieces of litter we collected seem quite pointless.  We sadly didn’t take any photos of Lewis & I out in the double kayak.  Though just try to imagine me kayaking against the current, and five year old slacker in the front holding his oar horizontally the entire time.

Our two evenings were quite enjoyable – often playing hide & seek tag with the boys, despite an apocalypse of mosquitos or sand flies taking a real fancy with me in the dark.  It’s a bit of a “sore” point. My wife is usually the one who gets eaten alive by insects and they leave me alone. I joke that it’s the reason I married her.  This time however, unbeknownst to me, she cheated and applied repellent. So I was getting eaten for a change.  When I shared this story at work, my Egyptian colleague could relate to it while staying there, though he had a far more interesting description, saying the bites caused him to truly hate his life.

It’s a lovely place to stay for a couple of nights. We happened to be there at the same time last year.  Perhaps we’ll be there at the same time in 2015 also.

Maybe we’ll see our compatriot Keith Urban:

Pet Holidays

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Ramadan has been and gone for another year.

It went relatively quickly for me.  My family returned home for four weeks – as the great majority of expats tend to do, to avoid Dubai’s summer assault. It was a smart move, the temperature was quite intense. I heard that Dubai had one day over the 50 degree mark.

Because of the standard need to have an extended holiday period, we’ve not bought any pets while here – apart from regularly replaceable gold fish.   We don’t like the idea of having to inconvenience and rely on others to feed them while away.

This doesn’t bother many people though. I was asked on a Thursday to feed a neighbor’s birds as he was leaving that evening. And the reason he suddenly became a pet owner without our knowledge is that his friend became a proud owner of a monkey (yes, monkey). The monkey-owner could no longer have other pets. So this Ramadan, we joined a bit of a domino effect of pet minding.

Once I agreed to feed the birds, I learned there were also two tanks of fish.

It sounded simple enough though. So I happily agreed.

And everything went well for a day or two. And then. The two angel fish died.

Oh no.

If that’s not bad enough, I think in that same tank one of the big gold fish looks a bit unwell.

I gave the two dead fish a proper burial, and sent them to the great toilet cistern in the sky.

The question now arises though. What do I do?

I was put in charge. I was entrusted to look after these fish. Killing them was not part of the deal!

My first thought was honesty is the best policy. I’ll wait for them to get back, then come clean that I killed their most beautiful of fish.

And then I had another idea, more around self-preservation and bad sit-com gag. Yes, angel fish look generic enough. Perhaps I could buy some new ones from the pet store around the corner. No one would notice the difference. Altho it sort of makes me wish I paid more attention to any identifying traits as they were laying in the bowl pre-flush.

The fish were dark brown. I have an inkling now they may have had light stripes also.

Either way, this kind of farce is not me.

Tonight’s the final night of animal feeding. The family return in the morning.

The body count so far is just two dead, once impressive, angel fish. Providing the two birds remain unscathed I think it’s an ok record. I fed them all as instructed. I’m hoping it’s not my fault. Although, the title of animal murderer is something that could be quite easily bandied about.

Providing there are no more casualties, I’ve decided I’ll write and leave a note from the angel fish. It’ll share that Ryan fed them perfectly well, they just decided to run away, and maybe join the circus. Or, as they’re called ‘angel fish’ perhaps they had a more heavenly calling – and Ryan wasn’t a killer, more of a facilitator.

Eid Mubarak.

And special celebrations to all the volunteer pet-sitters helping others while they’re off on holidays.

Hopefully tomorrow I won’t suffer a fate similar to the unfortunate angel fish.

Tassie winter roadtrip

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The weather wasn’t great for the start of our family campervan trip down the East coast, to the South of Tasmania. We’ve been to Tas plenty of times, yet the kids have never seen these areas. Our first stop for the kids to stretch their legs was Avoca – home to perhaps the worlds smallest police station. I’ll share the photo later, the office looked less than 3 metre square. The highlight for Myles and I was being able to warm our bums with the public restroom’s hand dryer. The rain had started, and the temperature was already cold.

On the next stretch of road we saw lots of colours, but they were mostly shades of grey.

People in charge of roads in Dubai should come to Tasmania to learn a thing or two about dealing with water on roads. Altho UAE only deals a week or so of rain each year, the roads flood terribly from a few mils, and it doesn’t disperse for weeks. Here in Tassie we’re experiencing >20 mils and there are seemingly swimming pools and swimming pools of water all over the land. Yet the road seems almost waterproof.

We stopped for pancakes at the famous Mount Elephant Pancake Barn. We risked the $2.20 surcharge for rowdy children they have up on the chalk board. Lady asked where we were headed as the police had called her to advise they were closing the road going back the way we had just gone through. Perhaps the Tassie roads aren’t magical afterall,

Went thru Elephant Pass Rainforest. When I saw a couple of kookaburras fly away I did my best imitation of their famous laughing call. It mustn’t have been good, Myles let me know there are no monkeys in the forest. Although I’m sure my impersonation could be improved, the fact is the boys may not really know about this iconic Australian bird. Lewis even struggles to say it properly, now when we ask what kind of bird it is, he calls it “kookabugger” – which is much funnier.

Day 2 we left for further down the coast.
We spent some time at a kids park at Coles Bay. It had swings and activities which I haven’t seen since 1981. Elle had been going there as a kid – probably since 1981 – and informed me they have all been there unchanged since then.

We went to the jetty where a dog did a wee on our tyre. I think it was showing off, it was so chilly I couldn’t imagine weeing anything but ice.

For a change we had lunch in a pub, the Iluka Tavern. We were one of 6 people in the entire establishment. Their chicken parmy was superb. Loved their sign on the way out, “We encourage people to drink in moderation, PARTICULARLY if you are driving”. Hopefully that kind of encouragement is enough.

We stayed the evening of 09th of August, 2011 in the Mayfield Beach Conservation Park. I mention the date cause it’s significant, it’s the night of the 2011 Australian Census. Although we’ve been living overseas for more than two years, we’ll coincidentally be counted and archived into Australian history. I think it’s sort of interesting that in 100 years, people can learn that we were staying in such a “dwelling” as this campervan at a tiny place on the East coast of Tassie. As a former forms designer I must say I was disappointed with the census form. Ours is completed and sealed, but I remember it didn’t cater for work location for people working overseas, nor did it allow for non-salary workers being on a holiday for Elle. And if I’m being really pedantic, their use of followup questions and not applicability was inconsistent and inefficient. And I’m no authority, but I hadn’t heard of Salvation Army as a religion before Regardless of such issues, we’re recorded though. And it was a bit if fun for Myles. He was quite proud when I told him I recorded the task he performs daily in his job is to talk about gross stuff.

We had the luxury at our camp to make a camp fire. As a Queensland boy, this is a very unexpected activity, it almost felt like something stuck in the days of my childhood. It may also be part of the reason why I struggled. Things were all resolved once we figured out it’s simpler to use almost an entire box of fire lighters rather than the few scraps of kindling we could muster.

The next morning when we woke it was surprising to see the cut up apple we left was untouched, yet Lewis’s spilt satay beef and basmati rice was devoured. I wonder if Mayfield’s possums have been run out of town at the hands of some Asian critters.

Today we saw a few nice natural sights. When walking through the bush at Archers Knob or Devils Kitchen, Lewis was helping Elle in the search for wombats in the little tracks just off the path into the bush. He had no luck – the boys inadvertently made enough noise to make sure of that. However as we were coming to the end of the path, he suggested to Elle that maybe we have a wombat in our van, then even more curiously added – and I quote – “maybe there’s a box of them”. So perhaps Lewis had something other than a wombat in mind.

After a while Lewis tired of nature, saying I don’t like these trees.

We stayed the night at the well-eqipped Port Arthur. The park has always been a popular place – maybe even more popular given the museums raised profile due to the atrocity in 1996.
The manger informed me in the summer the park gets up to 600 guests staying. Now in winter there’s only about 10-15 of us scattered around the campervan area. The manager only took over the place less than 12 months ago, and he said this has been the areas coldest recorded winter since 1968. He didn’t have to explain that to us it was freezing!

Place was scattered with potteroos, wallabies, and many friendly rosellas. The place was seemingly infested with small hopping animals. The manager said there’d be enough wallabies to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools – which provides an interesting visual. The kids liked the animals, although Lewis was selective with the potteroos. He only wanted to feed the ones he decided weren’t bad. He warmed to them all by the end, even sharing his Milo with one of them. This sadly ended with Lewis trying to be helpful by throwing the cup at the poor animal. Once he noticed they were interested in the cup, I had to intervene as Lewis thought it would be a good way to catch one.

All in all, a great trip. Now we just have to go through our few 1000 pix across four cameras. And there could be more tales to share.

R.I.P. HH Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan

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This evening I learned that His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has been confirmed dead, regrettably too early at the young age of 42.  For the uninitiated, Bin (or occasionally “Ibn”) means son of – so from his name alone you can tell he was the son of the founding father of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed; and the last name, Al Nahyan is Abu Dhabi’s ruling family’s surname. It turns out he was the younger brother of Abu Dhabi’s current ruler, and President of UAE, Sheikh Khalifa. 

Sheikh Ahmed’s body was missing for 3-4 days after his glider crashed in Morocco, so it was pretty clear the story was not going to end well.  I figured out that news had broke of his body being found as soon as I got in the car this evening and turned on the radio.  All of the English stations were playing morbid classical music, and all other stations had Arabic prayers being sung.  Within the UAE they routinely do this out of respect to the family. Depending on how closely they were related to the ruler, this mourning period can go for days.

Earlier this year one of the elder Al Nahyan family members passed away, which took all modern music off the radio for a couple of days. We kept the radio turned off to avoid falling asleep when driving. And after waiting for a while, I thought I’d just switch the radio on just for a second to see if the mourning period had ended, the moment I switched it on Lady Gaga sang “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick”, so yep, it had finished.  Although, the music was no improvement.

The question now arises, will we get days off.  Apparently it’s quite common for public holidays to be issued when a royal family member passes away. And again the number of days off depends on how closely related  the deceased was within the royal ranks.

One of the minor things we looked at when we were sussing out Dubai and our potential move, was the comparison of holidays between Dubai and our home city of Brisbane.  At first glance it seemed they were very close in number. UAE misses Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas, but they have many single days off for Muslim occasions.  And when you add the days off that happen when people die, it seems Dubai’s working days per year could be quite less than Brisbane.

An Australian holiday – Oct 2009

Reading Time: 4 minutes

After eight months living abroad we finally took our first holiday. On October 17 We headed home to Australia for four full weeks.  Work had been quite hectic leading up to this. My manager is still unsure how I managed to get her approval for this amount of leave.  It was quite simple really, quietly mumble the request while she was distracted talking to someone else, and just take any of her body language as a positive response.

The flight from Dubai to Australia is a long one – wind-assisted and direct it’s still 14 hours.  I scored some big brownie points and let Elle take the business class seat, while I had the kids in economy. The plane was so full we had no choice, despite us deciding to forego our contractual business class seat to sit altogether.

On my own it was a little worrying to think of the large number of hours for a five year old and a baby to fly, but it really did go quite quickly. Myles and Lewis were an absolute dream. Lewis, our baby beefcake, is now 12kgs which means he’s too heavy to go in the bassinet to sleep, but not light enough to want him sitting on your lap for almost a whole day.  It started with some humour. Myles always took a lot of interest in the safety card of each aeroplane.  He’d study it for 10-15 minutes, each side, and ask lots of questions if there’s something he didn’t completely understand. Well, this time it was Lewis’s turn. To keep him occupied, I handed him a few different cards from the seat pocket, and Lewis started reading the safety card intently. Myles noticed this, and gave some classic 5 year old big brother advice, “Lewis, that’s a sad, sad, story”.

I managed to get a lovely neighbour from the UK named Pam who was very helpful when things got too busy. She didn’t have to do too much, but it was great at times such as when Myles decided to go to the toilet more often than normal. The novelty of the small toilets was too much for him.  He also suggested he needed to brush his teeth numerous times after they gave him a tiny toiletry set.

The cabin crew were really good to Myles, and they clearly enjoyed his company. This was despite Myles earlier showing no loyalty to our beautiful Emirates airline, and buying an Aer Lingus airport set. This is the second time he’s done this. When they flew to Dubai he came proudly displaying the same airport set with QANTAS insignia.

Elle did a stint in economy, which allowed me to at least get some business class tucker and watch a movie.

And before I knew it, we were in Brisbane to start our holiday.  My brother picked us up in our X-Trail, and we had a go at driving on the other side of the road again. Funnily, it’s harder to change back from left-side drive to right-side drive, than it was to originally change over. We had to modify our driving considerably from how we’ve learned to drive Dubai for fear of getting locked up by Queensland Police.

We got to my parent’s place where a huge Welcome home banner got our immediate attention.

We deliberately made very few concrete plans in case any of us suffered badly with the effects of jetlag. In the end there was nothing major,the kids adapted particularly well. Before we left, Lewis was napping four times a day, and eating at every other opportunity. The six hour time difference just means meal #3 lines up with maybe meal #1, which he has had no complaints about.

The only thing scheduled for our trip was my graduation ceremony on the 22nd of October at Monash University in Melbourne. This left us about a week of hanging around Burpengary to relax into holiday mode. Which did take a little while.  One thing that helped though was trying to complete a cryptic crossword for the first time. They really a nonsensical form of torture. Their baffling effect focuses all your thinking on just how unintelligent you are – a great way to forget the stresses of work.  Eventually I probably got a quarter of the clues, and that’s where it was left.

Myles (and Corey) with one of his bream
Myles (and Corey) with one of his bream

We were quite fortunate to have my brother take Myles & I out fishing in his boat on his day off.  The location was Scarborough, and with Corey living less than 2 minutes from the boat ramp I correctly assumed he had sufficient local knowledge to make it a successful trip.

Myles & I talked it up in the car about who was going to catch the most number of fish.  Obviously I supported his totally unrealistic goal to catch the most number of fish, but put little actual thought into it coming true.  It didn’t take long to learn that Myles was a superior fisherman to me, with is probably not too surprising.  But landing more fish than Corey – the keen angler – and LARGER fish as well was quite unexpected although a great result for any five year old.  The results were Ryan 1 fish, too small. Corey 3 fish, all too small. And Myles 5 fish, 4 of them HUGE enough to eat. Which we did that evening. Thanks Corey!

And after a day and night in Melbourne the travel plans were to spend two weeks in Tasmania, then one final week in Queenland before flying back to Dubai on the 12th of November, which is approaching at the speed of light.