Happy Birthday Bro!
I hope you have a fantastic birthday Bro. Wish I could be there with you but I will be there in spirit 
Banana Bread
I’m not sure of the origin of banana bread but it is certainly very Australian in that where I might go to a coffee shop in the UK and have scones or a toasted tea cake, here I would choose hot buttered banana bead as the accompaniment to my beverage.
Mat recently procured a recipe from a friend and we tested it out at the weekend. We have both been enjoying it for breakfast since and I thought I would share it:
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon/mixed spice
1 tbs margarine/butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg lightly beaten
1/4 cup milk
2 bananas mashed
Method:
1. Coat a loaf pan with cooking spray and pre-heat oven to 200°C.
2. Combine flour and cinnamon in a bowl and rub in marg with fingertips.
3. Stir in sugar, egg, milk and banana.
4. Put mixture in the tin and bake until golden.
NB. Add anything you like to the mix, e.g. nuts.
The measurement in cups is becoming ever popular versus good old pounds and ounces, even grams, but we just threw the ingredients together in a fair approximation, doubling everything for a larger loaf, and it worked. We added some chopped pecans for a little extra something and didn’t even have a loaf tin so improvised with a large soufflé dish.
I can’t remember how long we left it in the oven but when it started to look cooked on top we stuck a skewer in it and the middle was still very sticky. We had to put it back in the bottom of the oven on a very low heat and cook for quite a while longer. The end result was delicious; in fact I would go as far to say as it was as good as any I have tried in a café. Mat seemed to think it wasn’t sweet enough and needed either more sugar or more bananas. Apparently it was supposedly a low calorie recipe but personally I would have found it too sweet with more sugar. It obviously just depends on your palate so it may take a few tries to get it just right for you.
Alex on June 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm | Filed under Aussie places/info of interest, Personal | 1 Comment »Mat hospitalised in vicious Phoenix Palm attack!
Ok, so before you panic and worry about how serious it was, Mat is fine and well. I just thought I’d sensationalise the heading a wee bit
Yesterday Mat was pruning a large Blue Gum. On finishing the job he made his usual rapid descent out of the tree and landed straight on top of a perfectly positioned bit of pheonix palm throng. Someone must have been previously pruning the palm nearby and done a bad clean up job, leaving a big chunk with the nasty spine end sticking up at the perfect level for piercing Mat’s calf.
For those of you who haven’t had the delightful experience of a Pheonix Palm they have these long palm fronds (or throngs) with pinnate leaves which metamorphose into long viscious spines near the base. They are pretty easy to spike yourself with when handling, snapping off and leaving bits embedded in your skin. Mat has had a fair few spikings whilst doing tree work in Australia but luckily they have only been small bits and haven’t festered too much, gradually working their own way out after a few weeks. If you’re unlucky the wound can go septic or cause blood poisoning, supposedly because possums like to live in the palms causing the spikes to get coated with possum piss and other nasty bacteria.
This is a picture of a pheonix palm that Mat felled a while ago at Randwick Racecourse. Normally they would have to be climbed, the throngs all cut off (for some poor groundy to carefully get rid of) and then chogged down in bits. However, the size of the racecourse meant they could be felled in one for the excavator to come and take away and dump straight into the tub grinder. You can guage the size of this palm from Mat’s ute on the right!
They are fairly harmless at this size (unless you are the unfortunate one having to climb it for dead throng removal etc). However Read the rest of this entry »
Swine Flu Fever
While Mat and I were in the UK last month the top topic on the news was Swine Flu, with outbreaks popping up all over the place. Though no one in the UK had died from it people were in varying states of panic, mostly due to, in my opinion, over reactive media and their love for blowing things out of proportion for the sake of a good story.
However, on our reintry to Australia, apart from having to hand in a medical declaration at passport control and have an infra red scan of our body temperatures as we left the plane exit, everything was relatively quiet.
I did receive a little bit of ribbing from our flat mates and work colleagues as my allergy to tree pollen was in full swing so I was fairly snotty and sneezy.
Since we’ve been back though, media attention has been growing with the first confirmed case announced last week. Yesterday morning, as I was listening to Merrick, Rosso and Kate Richie on Nova 96.9, they declared that within the next year every Australian will know of someone that has contracted or will themselves contract Swine Flu; apparently 1 in 5 will get it!
Today the news advised that there are 33 confirmed cases of Swine Flu in New South Wales and 147 in Australia.
Considering the size of Australia this doesn’t seem a lot to me and as yet, again, no one has died from it. In fact as far as I know the only deaths have occurred in Mexico where the thing originated and in America.
Chris and Irina - I would be very interested to know the state of Swine Flu in Kazakhstan - is it in the news yet and are there any confirmed cases near you?
Alex on May 29th, 2009 at 6:31 am | Filed under News Topics, Personal | 3 Comments »Cardiff Bay and Torchwood
I’m going to try and post about my holiday in the UK now that I am back in Oz and settled into the daily grind once again. It may take a while though so don’t hold your breath!
After spending a couple of days in Clydach with Chris et al, me Mat and Seb left on Thursday morning (23/5/09). We decided, as pre planned, to take a slight detour on the way home via Cardiff Bay so we could have a look at where Torchwood (off shoot from Dr Who starring the enigmatic Captain Jack Harkness as the main character) is filmed and take a load of pictures of the famous water tower.
We were a bit worried about finding the place as we didn’t have a map but we pretty much found our way straight there and then parked up in a muti-storey just down the road from the National Assembly for Wales building.
As you can see by the two pictures of Mat and me, then Seb and Mat, standing in front of the water tower on “the step”, the perception filter was clearly out of order that day, lol. Though on closer inspection Read the rest of this entry »
Alex on May 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 pm | Filed under Personal, Photography, Pictures, Videos | 1 Comment »Birthday Celebrations in Wales
After arriving safely back in England on Thusday 16th, getting over our jet lag and visiting a few people I headed over to Clydach near Swansea in Wales to catch up with my good friends, Chris, Irina and family. I drove over with mutual friend Seb leaving Mat to follow on the train later on Tuesday. After a few delays we finally arrived at around 10pm and bless Chris, he had waitied til we arrived to have his birthday cake; it was his 30th birthday!
Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Chris, happy birthday to you
On Tuesday evening I drove to Port Talbot train station to pick Mat up after a days work chopping trees. It was great to finally introduce him to some of my friends and we had an enjoyable evening and following day catching up. Wednesday afternoon we all took a trip to Port Talbot beach. It wasn’t quite like Avalon back in Australia, the wind having quite a bite to it, but it was good to get out for some fresh air and Gwen had a good run around with the other dogs on the beach.
Mat, Seb, Gwen, Irina, Anna (in pram) & Chris.
First Day of Autumn
Today is Autumn Equinox for those of us inhabiting the southern hemisphere. At 10.44pm tonight, according to Sydney Observatory, the Sun will cross from the southern hemisphere back to the northern hemisphere and will mark the beginning of Autumn and the turning towards the dark months and cold moons. It is one of two nights in the year when the Sun sets precisely in the west so is particularly useful for star gazing as directions are easy to guage. The nights will start to draw in and I will probably start to feel christmasy, even though I am no longer in the UK and christmas now occurs in the middle of Summer for me.
I will also start to look forward to the beautiful autumn colour; those reds and oranges and yellows of the autumn leaves. Though I will have to look a lot harder for them here in Australia as the majority of the native trees, gums, eucs and suchlike, drop their leaves continuously through the year and therefore do not bless us with the wonderful autumn display of colour that I am used to. I will have to go in search of rows of Liquidamber which are popular in some suburbs, as they provide a particularly magnificent display.
To those of my friends back in the UK, I wish you a very happy Vernal Equinox, my personal favourite day of the year. All that promise of longer days and the warmth of Spring and wild flowers in abundance everywhere you look. I am very much looking forward to my holiday back home in April in which I can spend my time reaquainting myself with the beautiful English countryside and all its gifts of nature.
Alex on March 20th, 2009 at 4:55 pm | Filed under Personal | Comment now »Shark Attack in Avalon
There has been a seemingly increased spate of shark attacks around Sydney’s coast this summer with big debates going as to why this might be; experts are saying it is because Sydney’s waters are cleaner and warmer and are bringing fish closer to shore, hence their predators moving in closer also. I haven’t thought that much of it, not being a surfer I don’t tend to swim in the open ocean too much, preferring to stick to the calmer rock baths or the more secluded Pittwater inlet, though I guess they are just as likely to venture into Pittwater as they are the beaches.
Anyway, early Sunday morning (1 March 2009) Mat came back from the shops with milk and bread declaring there had just been a shark attack on our local beach at Avalon. There were helicopters still scanning the area after a young lad had been bitten whilst out surfing with his dad. We now know he will be ok; the shark bit into his leg damaging his calf and thigh but it’s not too serioius so say and he is already talking about getting back out into the surf.
It has not been confirmed how big or what type of shark it was but it is the third attack in this area in less than three weeks. The media has been warning people not to swim at dawn or dusk or even to avoid the water altogether.
A navy diver lost a hand and a leg to a 2.7 metre bull shark within sight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on 11 February. The following day, a 33-year-old surfer was lucky not to lose his arm after an attack by a 2.5 metre great white shark (or white pointer as the Aussies seem to call them here) at the famous Bondi Beach.
Amongst others, there was the famous shark sighting at Long Reef on 29 December 2008. We had moved to Avalon from Long Reef just nine days previous; maybe it is following us lol. The story here was that two guys were kayaking about a kilometre off the Reef when a 4 metre great white started circling them. One of the guys actually fell out of his kayak and was lucky enough to be rescued by some fishermen out in their tinnie nearby before the shark decided to have a nibble. They tied their kayaks to the tinnie and were dragged into shore whilst the shark continued to circle them for about ten minutes. I don’t reckon the shark could have been particularly hungry or they would have been munched for sure. Apparently one of the guys, despite his near death experience, managed to capture the shark on video. I will search for this when I get home and post it here as apparently it is on Youtube.
Personally, I am not going to overly concern myself with these horror stories; as one guy keeps saying - you are more likely to get run over by a bus than get attacked by a shark, and I think this is quite true. I can’t help thinking how lucky those kayakers were to get an up-close-and-personal experience with a great white in its natural environment, capture it on video and escape unscathed. That beats paying to go cage diving to see the magnificent fish, (something that me and my brother intend on doing when he comes out for a visit) though perhaps you would not fully appreciate the situation until you were back on dry land and the adrenilin had stopped pumping nineteen to the dozen!
Alex on March 3rd, 2009 at 8:42 am | Filed under Aussie places/info of interest, Personal | Comment now »Welcome Baby Anna
Whilst I was on my seminar on Saturday I was delighted to discover, when I switched my phone back on, a text from Chris informing me that Irina had given birth at 5.10am that day. Lolyik now has a name: Anna. She weighed a healthy 8lb 7oz (3.83kg) and as far as I know all is well.
I look forward to speaking to the happy parents just as soon as they are a bit more settled. In the mean time I send them my blessings and have looked up Anna’s basic astological signs. Born on 21st February 2009 makes her sun sign Pisces and her Chinese astrological sign The Ox in the element of Earth.
Alex on February 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 pm | Filed under Personal | Comment now »Quick Update
No news on the birth of Chris and Irina’s baby yet. Though Chris’ last post on his blog was that contractions started yesterday and they were going in for an induction at the hospital about 3pm Sat UK time so things may be under way by now.
I am just about to collect my final things together to go on an all weekend intensive course/workshop: The Journey run by Brandon Bays, the pioneer of the concept herself. It should be very interesting and hopefully I will get a lot out of it, especially as I am giving up my entire weekend for the experience.
Alex on February 21st, 2009 at 6:49 am | Filed under Personal | 1 Comment »
