Vintage Buses

It's the Queen's Birthday holiday.

I had to report for work.

I chanced upon an unusual sight.

I wondered if my eyes were deceiving me.

This was not the usual bus on the streets of Sydney.

It doesn't accept Opal cards, of course.

Trees for Trains

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.” 
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

They are building the train station here at our suburb in the site of the old Arthur Whitling Park.  The Anzac Day Dawn Service was held at the park on 25 April 2012 for the last time.  Last year, they began the demolition work that started off with the removal of the Anzac Memorial ... then they removed the trees. 

On 07 November 2013, I saw that the small trees had been removed.

I knew that these trees would be next.

There was one last tree on 08 November

 

I knew it would be gone by 09 November

You can still see the last tree ...

... it's gone now.

We attended our first ever Anzac Day Dawn Service in 2009

at the Arthur Whitling Park

when we first landed in Australia.

That site is forever lost.

'I' Before 'E' Except After 'C'

'I' before 'E' except after 'C'?

Not according to some ancient species found in sufficient number in a science society.  They would claim to be among the exceptions.

Plus, a weird Keith out there would either have a counterfeit seizure at some foreign leisure resort or stand at full height just to prove that 'C' is not an integral part of the rule.

What brought all this about?

Well, everyday, we have transactions with Qantas and I learned something new when I asked around.

All the while I thought maybe they forgot the rule that 'Q' and 'U' go together or that maybe 'qantas' was one of those words that Australians liked to spell differently from the rest of the world.

Did you know that QANTAS is the acronym for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services"?

Well, before I arrived in Australia, I surely didn't know that. 

Yes, I know, I should have known since PAL stands for Philippine Airlines and JAL stands for Japan Airlines.  I suppose it is because QANTAS is not usually in all caps.  It is often seen as 'Qantas' thus the assumption that it is a word rather than an acronym.

Another interesting fact I learned is that aside from the fact that the choice of a kangaroo as the Qantas logo was not only because kangaroos are only found in primarily in Australia but also because kangaroos cannot walk or move backwards (due to the unusual shape of its legs and its bulky tail) thus the 'keep moving forward' implication. 


Interesting!  


You learn something new everyday.

80 Years and Counting

Eighty years ago, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened.

We see this Google doodle in Google today.

What do you see in Google in your side of the world?

Bridging the Gap

RD and MyGirl (25 January 2011)

Amazing Clock

It is a bank holiday today so ... I had to go to work. (?!!)

You see, I was able to stay home the past few public holidays (Easter Monday - 5 April; Anzac Day holiday - 26 April; Queen's birthday - 14 June) so today was my turn to go to office. Previously, my other officemates had to 'man the shop.'

Fortunately, we are only supposed to report for half a day and they are not very strict about what time you arrive, as long as you are able to complete the work to be done. So although I was at Sydney before 9am, I decided to hang around the Queen Victoria Building and enjoy the sights and sounds there.

I waited for the Royal Clock to strike 9. I was hoping to see the moving display but unfortunately there wasn't any. (I still hope to catch it another time.)

As you can see in the picture above, it is exactly 9:00 am,

Monday the 2nd of the month.

Check out the ship located about on the lower left side of the photo below the number 31.

The ship is the clock's "second hand" and it takes a minute for it to go around the clock.

It is now 9:01 am. The ship has moved after a couple of seconds.

It is now between the numbers 2 and 3.

In spite the 'no show' of the clock display, I still feel that the visit to QVB was worth it.

I was able to see the dioramas around the clock. I was able to hear the bells ring nine times. I was able to see the discs around the clock rotate slowly. But most of all, I was able to see the ship that 'sailed' around the clock and completed its rotation in one minute's time.

Below are the first five of the fifteen dioramas. I have yet to find the other ten.

1/15 -- Aborigines before White settlement.

2/15 -- Captain Cook's landing 1770

3/15 -- Second Fleet Landing 1790

4/15 -- Crossing of the Blue Mountains 1813

5/15 -- The Taking of the Children

Think Big

At the back of St. Bernadette's is a social hall. Painted on the driveway of the social hall is an eight-by-eight square grid which I assume is a giant chess board. When we saw the squares one evening after mass, I told GI about the giant chess board I'd seen at Hyde Park in Sydney.

"There is a giant chess board in Sydney," I said. "I saw the giant chess pieces because there were people playing. The pieces were big, almost as tall as your sister."

GI didn't seem as impressed as I was but he couldn't resist saying, "Oh, I guess they have to THINK BIG."

St. Mary's Cathedral

A beautiful cathedral in the middle of Sydney.

This is the front.

This is the back.

Here are more shots of the church.

And of course, the story about the statue of Our Lady.

Quickie Sightseeing

Across the street from my office is the Queen Victoria Building. The QVB, as it is commonly called, fills an entire city block bound by George, Market, York and Druitt Streets.

On my way to work, the bus stops at right before the QVB along York. On the way home, the bus stop is at the QVB itself along George.

Normally in the morning, I would walk along the sides of the QVB after getting off the bus. First along Market Street then along George Street before crossing George where our office is located at the corner of George and Park Streets. However, since the temperature has dropped to a chilly cold, one day I decided to modify my route and go THROUGH the QVB instead of AROUND it.

It was nice to walk inside the building which now houses several high-end shops. So aside from getting some protection from the cold, I am able to do some window shopping as well.

Once I happened to pass by once at about 8:30 am and I heard a clock chime. I looked up and lo and behold, I saw this huge clock hanging from the ceiling.

This is among the many things one can find in the QVB.

The ROYAL CLOCK was installed in 1986. It is a Royal Automated clock that chimes on the hour daily between 9am - 9pm. Once this hanging clock has finished chiming, it then displays a series of mechanically moving figures of British kings and queens every hour on the hour.

(I have yet to catch that.)

There is another clock suspended from the ceiling on the other side of the building.


I usually just walk quickly through the corridors since I am either rushing to get to the office or rushing to catch the bus to get home. However, there are days that I just wish I could sit down and admire the building, and especially the stained glass windows.

World Cup Fever

While the whole world is busy watching the FIFA World Cup currently being held in South Africa, we caught up with a different set of World Cup games.

Our World Cup match was held about fifteen years ago ... it was rugby, not football ... and had Matt Damon as the South African team captain.

Yup, you guessed it! We watched the DVD of the movie Invictus.

Good movie. Very interesting.

(Oh, unfortunately, the Australian team lost in the movie, too.)

Northern Views

This is the townhouse complex where we live.

That is our town house, unit 2. Ours is the first unit on the left as you enter the driveway.

It has a kitchen, dining and lounge area downstairs (plus the laundry room with a toilet). Upstairs there are three bedrooms and 2 toilet & bath. From the picture you can see the windows to the kids' rooms upstairs, the windows of the lounge, the front door, and the garage (good for one car)

We are right beside the common bin area ...

... and right across the mailboxes.

For the moment, this is home.

Toe-may-toe Toe-mah-toe

Sister-in-law Mumoffive works at Borders bookstore now. Recently, she told us that someone came up and asked her if they had "Dee-Jon" available. She sought clarification on the request. "Dijon, as in mustard?" she asked. "No, Dear John, as in letter," the person replied.

I am still getting used to the difference in the way things are pronounced here in Australia. I am assuming the Philippines has its own set of phonetic rules and has managed to create its distinct way of speaking English. (When we had gone to pick up some items from a FreeCycler, one of the homeowners asked if I was Filipino. I asked how he could tell. He said it was from the way I spoke. I must have the 'Filipino English' accent, whatever that is.)

In general, words ending in -er are not pronounced with the R sound and end up sounding like they end with an A. In fact there is a huge shopping centre chain here called SupaCenta. Many other R's are left unspoken if they are found at the end of the word like our, far, factor, motor, more and more. In fact even if they are not at the end of a word, they may be unheard -- warm, tarnish, etc.

The silent R's are not lost, mind you. They end up in places where we don't normally use them. For instance, they would say 'idear' instead of idea. Don't ask me why. I just call it like I hear it.

Just so it is clear, although it is toe-may-toe toe-mah-toe, it is not poe-tay-toe poe-tah-toe. So far, aside from tomato (having a short 'a') here, the other words I've heard pronounced differently are fillet and often (where the 't' is not silent), zebra (with a short 'e'), the letters Z (as 'zed' versus 'zee') and H (as 'heych' versus 'eych'). Did you know that scones are pronounced with a soft O in spite the E at the end and apricots are pronounced with a hard A? (I didn't know that until MyGirl corrected me.)

There is a certain twang in their accent which makes the pronunciation different. It sounds nice and it just takes getting used to.

In general, I believe we can get away with the spoken English, pronouncing words differently and all. However when it comes to written English, most especially for the kids, it would be a whole different ballgame. We would have to learn how words are spelled here and be more conscious.

Australians have somehow figured out how to make their essays longer by adding letters to some of their words. Most common are the words ending in -or become -our such as colour, humour, flavour, neighbour, labour. But there are other words like jewelry back in the home country gets extra embellishment here to become jewellery; it is more than just aluminum, it is aluminium. Perhaps they want more things to be vogue here because we have dialogue, analogue and catalogue. Through all these added letters, I can't quite figure out why it is enrollment in Manila but enrolment here.

Sometimes it is a matter of swapping the positions of letters. This is true for many words ending in -er. These are spelled with -re instead. They have centre, litre, lustre, spectre, theatre, calibre, fibre, sabre, sombre, etc.

Other times it is a matter of replacing letters. Z's become S's while S's become C's. Words ending in -yze become -yse or those ending in -ize become -ise; words ending in -se become -ce. So here if you commit an offence, you better have your driver's licence or else there goes your defence. (I have yet to figure out whether they adopt the same rule for advise whereby advise is the verb and advice is the noun.) People organise, recognise, patronise, realise and analyse here. Their cars have tyres, not tires. I wonder if I will morph from Mom to Mum in the coming years.

I know that I will get accustomed to these peculiarities. Since England, HongKong and Ireland seem to be using the same dictionaries as Australia, perhaps LondonEye, Sister Deer and Mindy can send other related tips and oddities we should watch out for.

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!

When someone shouts, "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!"

The expected response is "Oi! Oi! Oi!"

So ... Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

Happy Australia Day!

Along Coolong

MacGyver passed his driving test yesterday so when the kids wanted to go to the park, he proudly announced that he could drive us there.

We went to the nearby Coolong Reserve. The place has netball courts, a very large grassed area, some picnic tables, a place for barbecues, concrete pathways, children's play areas which include swings, slides, monkey bars and a big climbing web.

This is one of my favorite views of the WEB at the park.

Can you see the diamond patterns?

We usually climb the web when we go to the park.

Here is MyGirl within the diamond patterns ...

... and RD within the hexagons.

That was yesterday.

We went back to the park today and I was able to get a picture of MyGirl within the square patterns.

Our main purpose for today's park visit was to log some biking minutes for RD. Prior to today, RD had a total of zero minutes on the bike here in Australia and possibly less than an hour of biking over all. And I desperately wanted him to learn how to ride a bike.

We were fortunate enough to get a good bike from his first cousin's first cousin and borrow a helmet from one of his cousins. The hitch to biking in Coolong is that we would have to walk to the park because the bike doesn't fit in the trunk.

So walk to the park we did.

When we got there, MacGyver patiently coached RD on how to ride a bike, how to press on the hand brakes, how to break his fall, etc. They went along the concrete walkways taking advantage of the available downhill paths. MyGirl rolled around on her scooter for a while before deciding to climb the spider web. While we were on the web, we watched RD from afar as he balanced himself and manoeuvred his bike.

I was amazed at his progress. He was actually riding a bike.

No major falls, no minor scratches, no tears. (No aching back for MacGyver.)

(RD and MacGyver are the tiny images in the background of this picture, right above the horizontal bar. This was RD's second run on the bike along the path.)

I was so happy for him.

As you can see, he was happy too.

Time to head back home.

I would say this will be one of the more memorable trips to Coolong, especially for RD.