Well we rang in the New Year in Darwin 14 hours ahead of our families. We went to the Dinah Beach sailing club and the event was held outside, that's one of the advantages of living in the tropics. There were three bands and we had an amazing dinner plate each at a great price. What I found was funny was that the band came on stage about 5 minutes before midnight then started playing their music. At some point they must have figured out that midnight had passed so they stopped playing and said "oh 3, 2, 1 Happy New Year", then we had a great fire work display. When I say work I mean single fire work flare went off. They must have had that left over from NT Day the only legal day you are allowed to have fireworks.
The bands were good, we met up with a few of L's workmates and we danced lots. It's kinda funny when you are soaking wet from sweat from just standing around and you haven't even danced yet. Plus I wore long pants which I don't normally wear. The mozzies were out as well, but all in all a great experience. We will go back again for dinner because the prices were so good and the food was excellent.
Over the holiday L had a haircut. She had about 1 foot taken off at the back, as it had been getting quite long. She decided to go short because it's just too hot here for long hair. She got a quote for $80, which is a little hard to take considering she was getting cuts for $20 in Canada. But she found a place that did it for a good price and the lady that cut her hair had a hearing impairment but could actually read lips. I think L will go back to this lady for a trim because she did such a good job. Everyone likes her hair cut and I agree that short hair does suit her. I'll try to send a before/after picture out soon for all to see the new L.
I am back at work the company I was temping for asked me back for a few more weeks, L is getting one more day off. We have had to undergo our medical tests again for our visa as the results cannot be found within the government. We're not worried they wouldn't have let us in if the first ones were bad.
We had about 1 week off and it went quickly but we relaxed and the weather was sunny, which is pretty good because this is supposed to be the wet season. We cleaned out the tadpole pond so we can actually see them now. We have had many baby frogs graduate from our experiment. We still have more than a hundred of the little critters in there.
Our fish, on the other hand, aren't doing as well. We have had many die and we can't figure out why. We have had the water tested and it was perfect. We had these leech looking things in the pot so we removed all the fish, that was fun, took all the plants out washed them and have finally returned them to the tank yesterday. Hopefully we will reduce the mortality rate a little. We also were given 7 other fish. These are orange coloured, not sure what they are, they are the same size as the guppies but the person that gave them to us said that they will probably out do the guppies and take over. Well they are smaller but they certainly have a better appetite and eat like crazy. During all of the changing of the water I guess one of the fish had babies and it was hiding in a plant that we had in the bucket, their temporary holding area, after we removed the plant the bigger fish were chasing the little guy all over, trying to eat him. We isolated Fry, his name, in a yogurt jug for a while until he gets a little bigger and then he can go back with his buddies. These types of fish actually give live birth and don't make good parents because the other fish, even the mother, will eat the babies.
Just in case we have started another pot which will populate with new fish and new plants. Last night rained so hard that it filled the pot 1/3 full of water. Now most of it came off the roof I'm sure but I figure we have about 25 liters of rain water in an 80 liter pot. We certainly do have pretty intense storms here. Luckily they don't have much wind but the rain just buckets down.
Happy New Year all here's to more stories in 2012
