Our place and Russia

So first things first, we have a place in Beijing - a serviced apartment near the 2nd ring road. For those unfamiliar, Beijing is laid out in concentric roads around the forbidden city. There are a total of 7 and the smaller the number, the close to the forbidden city.

Our place is small but still has a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. The building caters to expats and locals alike which is a bit reassuring as our Mandarin skills are virtually non-existent.



We've very fortunate in that daily maid service is included with our place. Aside from washing some dishes, everything else is taken care of by our team of not one, but three Ayis. On the dishes part, we must have the smallest dishwasher in the world (yes, one bowl takes up 1/4 of the machine).

From Beijing

The service is wonderful but I'm afraid that we'll get too used to this type of service.

For unknown reasons, we've been put up in the Russian district of Beijing. Nearly every nearby building has Russian lettering and most of our neighbors are Russian. It's quite funny as outside our building, people are more likely to speak to us in Russian rather than English or Mandarin. A block or two away houses what must be the biggest fur coat mall in the world - definitely targeted to Russians. The bottom level of our building even houses a Russian bar, sure to serve up lots of Vodka.

Oh, and every night we get a call asking "you want message?" If I answer, a girl asks, and if Noel answers, a guy asks...there is always a slight delay for them to figure out who should talk. They promise to be very cheap, but I don't think we'll ever take up the offer.

China

So, if you're visiting this blog, you'll notice that we really slacked off the last few months in Australia. Work, fun and the ease of facebook.com got to us.

No more...because we're in Beijing China!

Again we visited the question, "why?" The simple answer is, China is next big thing and before it completely changes, we want to know it as a growing, changing nation. Our time here is limited - the commitment is only six months - but we hope in that time, we'll learn something about the way PRC works and plays. We picked Beijing because it's managed to retain much of the Chinese tradition, while also providing us enough work opportunity to make ourselves useful.

We arrived on September 24 and began work the following day. The first few days were full-on with establishing our residence and obtaining forwarded luggage. Fortunately, (and quite unexpectedly) we arrived just before the big national holiday and what's known as 'Golden Week'. Basically, we worked the weekend and got an entire week off in return. National day and Golden Week is akin to the US 4th of July and people from all the remote provinces make there way to the capital city, Beijing. To put things into perspective, some 380,000 foreigners came to Beijing to see the Olympics in August. During national week, an estimated 7 million came to Beijing.

Our first thoughts is that this place is huge and busy. Beijing is home to an estimated 20 million people (officially only 15 million reside) and it's by far the largest city I have ever lived in. People are out all day and night, traffic never really stops and most businesses are open late (10pm or midnight) while some never close. English is much more prevalent than I expected but that may be a result of the recent Olympics.

Check back soon for more updates.

Backlog catch-up #2 - April 2007 (Easter) - Tasmania - by Pete

Tassie Baby!

As a farewell to fall and warm weather, we recently visited the island state of Tasmania. Many people told us Tasmania was an odd yet enchanting place to visit; we certainly weren’t disappointed.

Tasmania is just south of Victoria, about an hour by plane or eight by boat. I’m not one for choppy water so we choose the flight on Qantas. We arrived in the second largest Tasie city of Launceston; yes it’s that crazy city that first bred seahorses in captivity (seriously). Aside from Cataract Gorge, we didn’t find much to see or do in Launceston.

That night we drove out to Cradle Valley, our home for the next four days. The drive itself was a little never racking as we encountered numerous Wombats and Wallabies along the road. Apparently, these critters are most active right at dusk. What was a 90-mile drive took almost 4 hours. A big thing in Australia is to check the pouch of marsupials if hit on the road.

The drive was well worth it. Cradle Valley and Cradle Mountain are absolutely beautiful and are not unlike the Sierras in northern California or the Rockies. Cradle Mountain marks the beginning of the Overland Track, a semi famous 80K bush walk. Pictured in the background is Cradle Mountain, standing tall at 5,069 feet. We were extremely fortunate in that all four days were perfect – no strong wind, no rain and no fog which are typical of the region.

We set out on our first full day hike around Dove lake, pictured in the foreground. Unbeknownst to us, our camera battery was nearly dead and the charger was left at home. Don’t mind if we borrow a few pictures from the Internet (all very accurate representations of what we saw though, as the weather was lovely). All of the tracks were well defined yet several somewhat steep for casual day walkers. The views were well worth our effort.

That night we set out on a wildlife outing. It’s amazing to see all the marsupials set out around dusk. Not far from our Hotel, we found literally hundreds of Wombats and Wallabies. We also made a stop by Devils@cradle www.devilsatcradle.com for an after dark feeding of Tasmanian Devils. I always wondered why they were called devils, but after hearing their screeches and howling, it became apparent those little buggers are viscous. Even so, we got to pet a two year old devil that was brought up in captivity. More and more devils are being brought up in captivity as a deadly facial tumour disease threatens to kill-off the species.

The next day we embarked on an eight-hour hike that included a scramble to the summit of Cradle Mountain. Noel got a little scared of the height and stayed back part way up.

After a few days of hiking and climbing, we headed out of Cradle Valley to Hobart on the south side of Tasmania. Along the way, we made several stops for local Raspberries, scones and Cheese…mumm tasty.

In Hobart, we did a mad dash to all the famous sights – Cadburry, Cascade Brewery, MontAlto winery, Larke Distillery, Fish and Chips and Mt. Wellington.

Starting early, we visited the gigantic Cadburry factory where their dairy milk chocolates are made. After that, we headed over to Montalto winery where equally fine wine is produced. A short dash to Lark distillery, the only whisky distillery in Australia, and we were on to lunch. Perhaps the best fish and chips, bar none, can be found at Fish Frenzy in Hobart. I’ve never tasted such good fish - it was as if the fish was just pulled from the sea.

Cascade beer is one of the best in Australia. So it was no surprise that Pete was excited to see the production facilities.

Uluru

Hello Friends & Family! So sorry it's been awhile. We're going to try to catch-up the blog and then keep up with it from now on. Unfortunately, the blog enforces integrity and I can't back-date it, so we'll just pop the month and year at the top ... it may go a bit out of order as well, but we'll get up to date!


June 2007 - Uluru (Ayers Rock)

Our first night in the middle of the country we went on a camel-ride to sunset. Upon arriving at the camel centre we read up on the history of camels in Australia. They arrived in numbers for the building of the railroads. Once complete, their handlers were ordered to destroy them, but they couldn't bring themselves to - so, they were released into the wild. Today Australia has the largest population of wild camels of anywhere in the world. In fact, exporting tamed camels is quite big business! Of course, there had to be a first camel, and we've posted the story below:
If the resolution of that isn't clear, I'll sum it up. The lone camel accompanied an exploratory mission. Unfortunately, the camel was put down due to his 'alleged' involvement in the death of the leader.

We thought perhaps this was a misprint, so we asked our tour leader who explained that, in fact, the camel was blamed for the gun going off and the dying man's last words were "the camel did it" ... or something like that.

Anyway, on to the ride!


That night we went to a 'bbq it yourself' place:



The next morning, we got up REALLY early to see the sunrise over Uluru. It was chilly as well, around 3C.


When the sun came up it was worth it.

From there, we went to the Aboriginal cultural centre where we met with our guide, Elsie, and our translator, James. We leaned about life in the bush and spiritual teachings.

After our lessons, we took off on our own to walk around the base of the rock. It's a long 9km around, but there are so many interesting bits to see, and it looks really different up close. This 1/2 'tunnel' is in the base of the rock - and it's HUGE!

Later that night we had what would be one of our most memorable dinners in Australia. It was called the sounds of silence dinner and as you can tell, it was outdoors under the stars. The food was great, the temp a bit cold but the dining room made up for that. The dinner was capped with an astronomy lesson featuring the southern sky. Using a giant spotlight, we were able to identify that elusive southern cross.

The next day we headed out to the Olgas - another rock formation some 70k away. After our short car ride, we made for a day long hike within the Olgas. While the nights were cold, the days were anything but. By early afternoon, we were quite exhausted.

Some friends told us not to miss another feature in the middle of nowhere. We headed our car into the outback brush and after a three hour drive through absolutely nothing, we arrived in Kings Canyon. The canyon, unlike Uluru, is made of sandstone. Over many thousands of years, the sands shifted, settled and created these huge rock formations. Water eroded some of those formations leaving behind deep canyons. We did a day hike over and through the canyons on the lookout for roos and other local wildlife.
I never would have expected the middle of the outback - the middle of nothing - to be so interesting, so beautiful and so memorable.

Summer and Fall

G'Day!

Wow, since I've last written we've been so busy - so, here we go ...

First up, our culinary adventures continued with another birthday gift of Noel's (the gifts that kept on giving) - a chocolate making course!!

We both helped out in the demo sessions



Then we really got into it - yum!



Yep - we got to take all of those home, but times 2 (since we were both students) ... we shared a few 'chocs' with our friends. It was super fun, educational and TASTY!


Next up - Pete swam, biked and ran a triathlon!
Go Pete!!
and, just in case you were concerned that people wouldn't know who the sponsor was when viewing him from behind (note the corporate logos on all sides)...
Here's our group's team - overall there were about 30 KPMG participants, and over 5000 racers total!

Here's the KPMG tent, where Noel spent her time, eating barbecue and enjoying some 'cold ones' ;)



Grand Prix - fast cars and ... not much else actually ...

This was a bit unnerving...


Oh, yeah, this guy - who proves that F1 is NOT that far off from NASCAR

(by the way - 'piss' means alcohol)

After the race there was a concert by Evermore (NZ band w/ one or two big hits - they were pretty good). It was a great end of summer afternoon!


Then, we threw a Cuban Party!
Mostly because you can't really get Cuban food here and also because Summer was ending.

Hola amigos!



Whilst some chowed-down, the muchacos took to the balcony for some cigars.


Hola Kristy - we miss you - hope all is well in London!!

Pedro says buenos noches.





Shortly after that we attended a Greek cooking class - very interesting! We learned how to make hummos, taziki, dolomades, pita, musaka, etc

Isn't it odd how much these 2 look alike!


I made dolomades!



After that - our biggest adventure so far this year - going to Tassie (but Pete's writing that one up).

Also, in between all of these 'photo worthy' events we've been busy exploring. We recently discovered the amazing botanical gardens right here in the city of Melbourne. Also, earlier today, we took the train out to the Dandenong ranges, a National Park, where we had lunch in a little mountain town (at 'Noel's Cafe' no less!) and hiked through the forest. So, we're having fun, and keeping busy :)

Until next time - we miss you all a WHOLE LOT!! I also really hope someone will come visit us - this is such an amazing place, and we really want to share that with our friends and family ... plus, we miss you!!

Much love,
Noel