This was yesterday’s new headlines in the local Manly Daily yesterday after the terrible event on Monday. It seems that the Northern Beaches is fast becoming as unsafe a place to live as the rest of the world.

Dee Why is very local to us and we have a fair few friends living there so we were all a bit shocked to hear the news. Fortunately no innocent parties lost their lives.

The armed robber was shot dead by a guard when he tried to rob an armoured van outside Dee Why RSL. He has not yet been identified. There was one innocent bystander injured by a shot in the foot but luckily no one else was injured.

For the full story go here.

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She chose the 4 Pines in Manly for a relaxing Sunday afternoon lunch and sample of the beer; the 4 Pines is also a brewery and have a fine selection of their own beers. Mat and I had given Ruth, Henry and Cam a lift so they could drink and we met up with Wayland & Kirstie and Phil & Teri there. It worked out quite well as Manly is a good middle point for all of us and I had assumed this was the reason behind the choice in venue, though apparently it wasn’t; Ruth wasn’t as thoughtful as she appeared and had picked it simply because she had gone there the week before and liked it (I mean to say, how selfish lol)!

It was a beautifully sunny day but not quite warm enough to sit outside. The inside of the place was very nice though and they sold the beer in pints which made a refreshing change from the usual Aussie scooners. The beer wasn’t particularly cheap at around $9 a pint but the general consensus was that it was very good beer and worth the extra money for something a bit different and a pleasant atmosphere.

The food was exceedingly good and very reasonable averaging at $20 for a main course. There was a good selection ranging from the enormous mega burger, to fish & chips and Mushroom risotto. I chose the chicken pie and was not disappointed. In fact everyone reckoned mine was the best. There was heaps of chunky moist breast and pieces of bacon accompanying the vegetables topped with a lovely puff pastry lid. It was a good size and if I’d wondered whether I should have ordered chips to go with it I was very glad I hadn’t afterwards.

Henry surprised us all (apart from Ruth who has to cater for his bottomless pit on a daily basis) by ordering a mega burger and a main course dish of mussels and managing to eat them both but this was by no means a sign that the dishes were on the small size; they weren’t. Mat had the mussels as well and found them to be most satisfying, though I think he did pinch a few of Ruth’s chips!

Going round the table from the left: Phil, Teri, Ruth, Henry, Cam, Kirstie, Wayland, Mat and me.

After food we all went for a wander in the sun and I made myself incredibly sick by having an ice cream and large coffee. All in all it was a lovely day and great to catch up with everyone; Phil and Teri had just come back from two weeks home in the UK and we just don’t see Wayland and Kirstie as often as we would like because they live all the way out in the city (yes, we are very lazy – they don’t call Avalon the Insular Peninsular for nothing)!

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WOOH HOO!!! We both did a little woop and a skip and then re-read the email to make sure we were correct. Yes, as of the 13th May we are both now permanent residents of Australia! Grats to us! Who says the 13th is unlucky?

I like to add pictures to my posts so here are Mat and I in the Australian bush, Abercrombie National Park, back in March. We were camping at the Sink Campsite whilst on an off-roading trip with our friends Wayland and Kirstie and my brother – very Australian

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What is Project 365? Well, if you are frequentor of Flickr.com you may be familiar with it as it is very popular among photographers. It’s basically a commitment that one makes to take a photograph for every day of the year (and then upload it to Flickr if that’s your choice of platform). I think if you are doing it seriously then there are other rules but I’m just going to do it for me so that’s as far as I’m going.

My main aim is to improve my composition and eye for an interesting photo by regular practice. As I only have a basic point and shoot I’m not expecting brilliant photography but I figure the science behind it is something I can learn at a later date when I get a manual SLR or the like. There is no point in being able to take a physically brilliant photo if my composition is shit. A good photo is a piece of art, in my opinion anyway.

So, you can find my photostream here for now and with any luck I will be able to add a Flickr feed to this blog later so that any new photos appear in the sidebar. Shown below are my photos for Tuesday, Wednesday and today:

The Ibis regards the somewhat jaded grafitti and is of the definite opinion that it is in need of an overhaul.

The first photo is already explained. Yesterday’s shows my brother’s amazing and wonderfully colourful piece of grafitti art that he did for Mat and I on his visit. I wasn’t sure whether to do a closeup or include all the surrounding rubbish. I opted for including some of the rubbish as I figured it depicted our “Life” which goes with the word “Life” on the art board.

This morning, as I was finishing tidying the kitchen I heard next door’s dog, Sparky, barking in the garden. I grabbed my camera and took the opportunity to snap some pics through the chain link fence and amazingly this one came out okay. He is the cutest little terrier (not sure what type) with the biggest sticky up ears I have ever seen

Our life surrounding Life

Come and play with me, please please please...

Consequently the theme for this blog has reverted to it’s standard look and I will have to spend a little time changing the colours back. I hope to do this today, however, as I didn’t write down the hex codes for the exact colours I used previously it might not look exactly like it did before. Well “a change is as good as a rest” so say!

I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to my awesome blog fairy for toiling away for hours to fix it, especially as he also has his own blog, a baby blog fairy to look after and many other sites to contend with.
Thank you, thank you, thank you

The last month has been fantastic and it was with a heavy heart that me and Mat had to drop Rich at the airport yesterday. I will miss having him here very much but I have also gained a lot from our long chats and have much to think about. I vow to be more positive; positivity breeds content

I shall, in time, get around to posting some pictures from our many adventures but for now this shows me and Rich at Avalon Beach on Monday just before we went for a refreshing swim.

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Hint to anyone travelling here to visit relatives from their home country: Don’t take them any credit cards in their name; post them instead. After waiting over an hour for my brother a customs guy finally came out asking me for ID before handing me my Lloyds credit card that my brother had brought out for me from the UK. He stated that if anyone brings cards into the country that aren’t in their own name it becomes a matter for the federal police. They had kept my brother aside for ages, interrogating him and only finally believed his story when I tried to ring his mobile to find out where the hell he was. Apparently they wouldn’t let him answer it but were persuaded that it was me and came out to find me so I could validate his story!

Finally we got back to Avalon and had a relax before Mat went to bed as he had to work today. I stayed up with my brother and we were chatting away at our table outside when Rich suddenly started making noises to something under the table and said that a cat had just appeared.

“A cat?” I said. “We don’t get cats round here.” I looked down to see a brush tailed possum boldly sniffing Richie’s hand. He pulled it away quickly and then we both went to grab our cameras.

We get possum visits regularly in our garden if we’re outside late at night but this one was extra inquisitive and bold as brass. It was as if she had decided to give my brother a proper Aussie welcome and he was chuffed to bits. His first encounter with Australian wildlife couldn’t have been better.

Anyway, I thought I would take an opportunity to post some more dreadie pictures but this time it’s Mat’s turn!

Yes, he decided his hair length was getting too annoying and instead of cutting it off (something he kept threatening me with when I annoyed him as he knows I like it long) he decided to try dreadlocks too

So last Sunday we went back to New Town. Henry and Ruth joined us at Wayland and Kirstie’s house and we all went for a quick drink at the pub before Mat took the plunge. He went back to Sharon at In Visible Light as she did such a fab job with mine – for anyone looking to get dreadlocks in the Sydney area I would definitely recommend it.

Me, Kirstie and Ruth accompanied Mat and stayed with him while he got started:

There is only so much dreading one can watch before it gets monotonous so I left Mat to it (as he did when I got mine done) and accompanied the girls to Kirstie’s friend’s swimming pool which she has the use of. It was an absolutley scorching day so the cool water was most welcome and we whiled away a good few hours sitting by the side of it chatting, jumping in every so often to cool off. Poor Mat was stuck in the hot, sticky shop with no air-con while the other lads were at the pub.

After a while we began to get hungry so thought we’d pop in and see how Mat was getting on before getting some food. He was about two thirds of the way through the dreading process and then would have to have the perming solution put on.

After Mat declined the offer of some food we went to find the others. They were still at the pub and pretty enebriated by this stage; Henry was positively “maggot”! We took their order for Thai and once we’d collected it said we’d see them back at Wayland and Kirstie’s after they’d finished their beers.

A yummy Thai meal and a fair few more beers later (except for Ruth who was driving and me for some reason, even though Mat wouldn’t have had any drinks so could drive back) Mat finally arrived around 8pm after seven hours of hair pulling, sporting his new style:

He was very happy with his dreads and still is, now the nasty ammonia smell has finally gone. He reckons they are much more managable at work when he’s up trees and wearing a helmet. So far I’ve only had to pull one big piece of twig out from a couple of dreads that it had lodged into. I’m sure there will be more though

So now we are a proper dready couple. At first I thought it would be a bit wierd with both of us having dreadlocks but now I reckon it’s cool. After all, as someone pointed out, if one person likes dreads then chances are they will be attracted to someone else with dreads so couples that both have them isn’t completely uncommon.

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I first started looking into dreads seriousy this time last year and after doing a fair bit of research online and getting quotes I decided to go with In Visible Light in Newtown on the outskirts of Sydney, Newtown being Sydney’s centre of alternativeness. It had been recommended on a local forum I had read and after visiting a couple of other “specialists” it was the one I trusted the most; afterall, I’m looking at dreadlocks as a good ten year committment and when my hair is the length it is (past my bum now) the last thing I want is for someone to fuck it up, to put it bluntly.

There are various trains of thought on dreadlocks; one being (from my good friend Seb who had dreadies for a long time) that they should be free cos you should get a mate to do them. Alas, I would have liked to have gone down this path as it would have made them more special but I do not have any friends out here that have done it before and therefore would have my trust – sorry. Aside from flying Seb out here to do it, which I strongly considered for a while as it would have only been fracionally more expensive than the first quote I had, I decided there was no other option than to go professional.

So anyway, the Sunday after boxing day we arrived at In Visible Light around 11.30am and by 11.45 Sharon, the owner, had got stuck in to the lengthy task. She obviously has had a lot of experience because when she predicted the process would take approximately twelve hours she was spot on; it was completed at exactly 11.45pm! Here are the pictures before I go into a more lengthy explanation:

Mat hung around for the first hour or so before leaving me with the car and catching a train into Sydney. Sharon had one girl helping her in the shop and another friend there stayed around for a few hours to get us coffees and lunch in return for a cupcake from next door which he has an addiction to! Everyone was very friendly and talkative and the time flew by. The shop itself is not actually a hair salon but sells alternative clothing and fetish gear. Sharon just specializes in doing dreadlocks, hair extensions and various types of braiding which all go along with the alternative scene.

The process:
Sharon uses a slightly different technique to most people. Instead of using wax which stays in the hair, clogs it up and requires constant replenishing in the early days of the dreads she uses cotton. After back combing and rubbing the hair into the dreadlock strands she then binds them in place with biodegradeable cotton sewn all the way down the length. After the whole head is complete an ammonia perming solution is then put on the hair for an hour and a half to help fix it in place. The end result is not unlike braids as from a distance they look similar, although I did opt for quite thin dreads compared to the normal thick ones you see. After a couple of weeks they should fluff up a bit more and the cotton should start to recede into the centre of the dread.

The bonus with this method is that there is minimal after care, though I think it will still take up to six months for them to look like proper dreads!

I was going to link to Sharon’s my space page but on looking at it there doesn’t appear to be much on there apart from the shop address. I’ll have to ask about that next time I visit as she said there was a load of pictures of hair on there.

It’s nearly two weeks on now and a few strands have started to come loose in places but on the whole it’s looking good and I’m really happy with it. It’s the sort of hairstyle that gets better with time. One of the massive bonuses and the thing that really spurred me to get it done in the first place is that I no longer have to brush my hair – yippee – a task I detested every day. It means I can go swimming whenever I like and not worry about getting my hair wet – a major issue every summer for me as salt water in hair means washing, drying and brushing rigmarole each time – a major pain in the arse when I live on the Northern Beaches and Summer = Swimming in Sea! And it takes less time to dry too. Mat has started calling me Wooly Back cos it feels just like wool; kind of spikey

So love dreads or hate them I’m not regretting it and quite frankly I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Australia seems to be a lot more open-minded than the UK and nobody at work mentioned it apart from a couple of people who said it looked nice.

P.s. One last thing I have to mention is that most people seems to think dreads smell cos you don’t wash them – this is bollocks!
You don’t have to wash them if you don’t want to but it’s no different to normal hair and I will be continuing my normal weekly washing routine.

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After leaving a little late and then queuing for half an hour to buy t-shirts we missed the support band, Jet, unfortunately. I then queued for another fifteen minutes to buy chips and pies as we hadn’t had any food before leaving and were both pretty hungry. However, it was all timed really well because as we were just finishing the last chips the lights dimmed and the crowd errupted.

The first thing I noticed was, even though the tickets said no photography or filming equipment allowed, there were camera flashes going off left right and centre. I’m glad I had decided to take my camera anyway and I took a few shots and video clips here and there to capture the moment. We had pretty good seats; although they were right at the side of the stage, so the acoustics weren’t as good as they would have been in the centre, we were at the front of the first level above ground so got a really good view of everything.

The whole concert was absolutely fantastic. Billie Joe was a real showman and kept the crowd constantly hyped. They played a lot of songs off their new album, 21st Century Breakdown, at least the same again from American Idiot and a whole heap of other classic old school Green Day tracks. They also did parts of some random covers including ACDC and The Beatles.

As well as the music Billie Joe kept picking random audience members to come up on stage. A couple of them were just got up for the experience, needless to say Billie Joe looked like he was half strangled by one chick who was a bit over enthusiastic (well who wouldn’t be?). Then he got a kiddie up on stage for one of the new songs, East Jesus Nowhere, which envolved absolving him of his sins and ended in big pyrotechnic explosion. I took a video of this but I still haven’t managed to find a way of converting my mov files to avi small enough to upload to youtube without the quality dropping to shit so I’ve pinched someone elses:

He got a couple of people on stage to squirt water from super soakers at the mosh pit and then continued squirting the crowd intermittantly throughout the rest of the night from a hose. He also had a rather funky contraption that had a bog roll and some sort of air gun attachment which launched toilet paper into the crowd in long streams. Then he had a t-shirt gun, like a spud gun but which fired rolled up t-shirts into the audience; about ten lucky people managed to bag one of those. He had a couple of people up on stage to sing with him after making them promise faithfully that they knew all the words. The first guy was bloody good and did the whole dancing about the stage thing at the same time. There was countless numbers of explosions and fire jets that never ceased to make me jump every time. When a couple of the people left the stage he got them to launch themselves into the mosh pit which was pretty cool; it always amazes me how they seem to float along over everybody’s heads without seeming to hurt anyone, especially when they first land.

Here’s one from the beginning of the night “Know Your Enemy”, again, I’ve pinched it from a lovely person that must have been sat somewhere near where we were as the angle is the same:

At one point in between songs Bille Joe left the stage and went out into the middle of the audience to greet random fans (see picture three). The list goes on and on. They didn’t disappoint at the end either; the whole band came back on for several songs after their initial departure and then Billie Joe came back on again after that and finished with some glorious acoustic classics. Here’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”:

All up Green Day played for a solid two and half hours and it was definitely up there at the top with my all time favourite gigs. It took nearly two days for my ears to go back to normal afterwards!

Fantastic night! Thank you Green Day

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