oh…the young….

i have had to stay a few extra days in Brisbane and still counting….. due to my employers still sorting out work related issues….so I have moved hotel and about to move hotels again tomorrow due to busy hotel bookings and hopefully all this will get sorted out tomorrow……and i should be able to fly out on thursday…….:-)

so with the extra days i have spent a fair amount of time just catching up on sleep, junk food, and television….yep, i am a tv junkie…..but i have also spent a good amount of time just walking around the city and the mall….and what a sight….

the academic year for 2010 has started and i am amused by the young…well those in their late teens and in their twenties….i smile as i remember what it was like at that age, oh the world was my playground and i played hard….and i do not regret a moment of it….sure i am suffering some of the consequences now but i have no regrets…well maybe some…like if i had probably made some good academic choices….but ahhh……….i shall not worry, everything turned out alright….but it was nice to see the young as they go about being a student…..the hard life of being a student…yeah right!….:-)))

experience is also relative….

i am sitting in front of the TV watching a cooking show and I am sooo..amused at how the show is making a big deal out of the simple coconut……..the name of the show is Poh’s Kitchen and the way the acclaimed thai food chef cut open the coconut and grated and squeezed out the milk is to frankly speak, very stupid….after all he is an acclaimed thai chef, although he is Australian…..if he is an acclaimed Thai chef, the way he cracked and cut that coconut was to me an example of how people can just make life look difficult when it really is simple…………i am a little insulted with the way the coconut is being treated but then again each to their own and if he likes to extract coconut milk the ‘silly’ way he has demonstrated then yay for him….but for me, extracting coconut milk, will always be…..cracking the nut along the line where it splits open easily, sitting on the scraper and scraping the nut, then adding a little water the scraped nut, kneading the water and the scraped nut, then filling the flesh into my two hands and giving it a good squeeze….voila! coconut milk………………………..

loving brisbane….

well apart from the severe thunderstorm this afternoon that is limiting my activities to indoors, I am just loving every moment since i arrived in Brisbane.  On arrival at the airport and because i had a lot of time before i could check into my hotel, i had a cup of tea and a curry pie at the airport…yummo……….

and still with a lot of time on my hands i went to the supermarket next door to the hotel to pick a few things and my jaw just dropped, oh, it is so nice to be in a supermarket with lots of options to choose from and to see those fruits that cost an arm and a leg back home (because they have to be imported)….i just had a ball at the supermarket….imagine a bag of seedless grapes for 2 bucks….that is luxury for me…..the service from the hotel is so great that the manager came to me in the supermarket to let me know that my room was ready…talk about service, top notch indeed…

soooo…except for the rain, i am so enjoying brisbane……………….

one more sleep…..

as Ashleigh used to say when she was in pre-school and was counting down to an event….she would count the days as sleeps….so here i am, one more sleep before I embark on this new chapter in my life and embrace living in PNG.  It is less than 12 hours to my departure and i have not even packed.  Well, I am only taking a bag of clothes and thats it, plus some papers and books…the others will follow via freight when i am settled into my flat.

today has been quite busy with the last minute running around and it did not help that the weather was just totally wet, i spent most of the day soaked from the rain and can feel the beginnings of the common cold ……achoo, hope it stays away….so anyway, my next post will definitely be from another country….and till then it is laters from my trusty old desk here at home…..nana…………

the first thing i see…

when i wake up in the morning if it is a fine sunny day at my beach shack is this stunning sunrise…….yep, when i roll over and open my eyes and look outside, this is what i see…..from my bed…..woohooo………..a  million dollar view telling of the fine day ahead………….

putting it here….today…..

i am stating here on this blog today, a few days before my departure for my new life…that I plan to work hard for the next 10 years at least, spend most of that time working and earning overseas then returning home to farm….yes, food security is so important…..my dream is to work hard overseas, save the required money for investing into my farm and have a simple papaya, pineapple, watermelon, eggplant, tomatoes, chillie peppers, mango trees, orange trees, cabbage, lettuce and herbs farm….yep, and an organic one at that………………this dream of farming has been with me like forever and while I was tempted to start it last year, I am glad i held off……a few more years and I should be right…………..for the past 2 months, all my Saturday trips to the fresh market reinforce the need to plant for our own food security.  My tomato and bean plants here at home have not disappointed, the pineapples are growing but i am looking forward to tasting how sweet or not they are……………but cheers to dreams of farms for the future………..:-))))

yay, it is negative…..

part of the myriad of tests and vaccines for my relocation to PNG is a HIV test…..not that i am promiscuous or anything like that…..but it was a relief to get the results of my HIV test as NEGATIVE……….woot, woot…………….woohoo…………..