O Hai, I haz Auzi LOLHymn for Straya Day

Palm Beach, Sydney January 2009

Happy Australia Day!

This is the day we celebrate sand in our bathers, vegemite on toast and the correct pronunciation of Australia - STRAYA.

In the celebration of the young, hip nation that we are I present you with something I wrote for fun some time back in another blog - our national anthem in LOLcat (what's this? nb: it's different from sms/texting shorthand).

Auzi Hym

All Auzi cmon hav fun

Coz we yung an we can has wot we want

We can has gud home and can has dollarz if wrk hard

Auzi home does has watr all round

Auzi home does has much gud stuff

We iz lucky

Invisible Histry guru wud sai

Go Auzi Go Auzi

Cmon sing loud

Go Auzi Go Auzi

Under cool starz

We can do hrd wrk and thnk gud thingz

An mak r home

Well known all over

Fur visible guys want come from other landz

We can has sharing wiv u

So be brav an come, an sing

Go Auzi Go Auzi

Cmon sing

Go Auzi Go Auzi

For a translation click here *

Kthxbye!

PS. I've translated the 1st and 3rd verses as are traditionally sung

Pool's empty but nobody cares

I truly believe I am slowly melting here in Sydney at the moment. Summer has finally hit and the humidity has arrived.

My resolve to shun (ie. not install) air-conditioning is tested on days like this. Luckily we are 10 mins walk from a free local pool.

This is what our local harbour pool looks like on a normal January day. It's a magnet for the locals and has great views.

This is what it looked like today.

Once a week this pool, which is fed by filtered harbour water, is cleaned and re-filled. It's the cleanest day of the week to swim here.

The kids love playing in the water as the pool slowly re-fills. Today we took down the surf mats and the kids skidded from the shallow to the deep end.

Bliss.

What shall I knit?

A lovely friend gave me these two gorgeous skeins of Noro Gisha yarn in colour 108 as a New Year gift.

The question is, what am I going to knit with it? I'm hoping you clever crafty knitting people out there might be able to make a suggestion.

Cycling in Parramatta

Parramatta Regional Park is National Heritage Listed and contains Australia's oldest surviving Government house. The park, formerly known as Governor's Domain, was laid out in the late 1700s not long after European settlement.

The park has a 3.5km bike track and was the location of this weekend's family bike ride.

We rode past Old Government House (built 1799) but declined the $18 family fee to look through. The kids weren't interested.

We rode past the site of Parramatta's first ever European building.

And we walked our bikes over the Parramatta River.

I took heed of Fairlie's excellent information about the colour accent feature of my camera and gave it a go. The idea is you choose one colour and the rest of the picture will be in B&W. I chose to highlight red. I see that it not only picked up the bright red shades but also the ochre ones as well.

An unexpected trip to Perth

My grandmother, known to us as Carnie, died on Wed 7th January. She was 91 years old and one of the lucky ones to die simply and of old age. So while we were saddened to lose a lady who meant so much to us I was happy that I was at a funeral that really was a celebration of a life.

My 5 yo nephew certainly lightened up the proceedings when he looked in the window of the hearse then turned around and announced to us all:

"Carnie's in a box!"

Being Western Australian by birth, the kids and I flew back for a week to attend the funeral and catch up with family. While there for the funeral we were not going to let the opportunity pass to bask in the sunshine.

We noted that the ban on climbing the pylon at Cottesloe is now official.

We had fun playing with our cousins and even more fun discovering that we had many more cousins (second, once-removed, etc) - such is the nature of family funerals.

And of course we couldn't let the week pass without eating a burnt Hawaiian Chelsea Pizza (it's sent through the oven twice) washed down with a glass of Mann Champagne while sitting with friends at the Dinosaur Park (in Kings Park).