The President comes to Darwin

Well if you don't know but the Barack Obama came to Darwin. His visit was short just 2 1/2 hours, L was downtown at court for work and she was not allowed to leave the city because they had the road closed. So she decided to hang around. She claims to have seen him but wasn't sure, but it was someone in a car that had really dark windows, waving. It was very exciting for everyone here in Darwin, I think he is generally well regarded. He met some relatives of a ship that was sunk in the harbour in WWII in 1942 by the Japanese. He hugged many elder people who's husbands, fathers were killed on the ship. Everyone felt that he's as compassionate man, which won him big points with the public. He also spoke to the soldiers at the RAAF base here. They were all clamouring to shake his hand.

I, on the other hand, only got to see Air Force One parked at the airport. L and I saw it take off later that evening.

Yesterday was a weird day for weather we got 34mm of rain and it was very bright outside at the time, it rained you'd figure it would be dark but it wasn't. Since all roofs here are corrugated metal when it rains it's noisy inside. Last night was actually quite cool and I was quite chilly after I got out of the shower. Currently we have a fan, the strong one that would blow you across a room, in the shower keeping it cool because it gets so humid in the shower room. Actually we have 2 rooms, 1 room that has 2 sinks a shower and a bath and another room with the toilet by itself. Not sure why they do this maybe we're supposed to huddle in the toilet during a cyclone because it's a small room and the roof can't fall in as easily in a small room. Speaking of Cyclones a guy we met the other day said that where we live, if conditions are right with a high tide and a cyclone, we could be under 1 meter of water. I think I better phone for contents insurance pretty soon. Good job we brought our scuba gear.

At work they got me a 2nd screen for my laptop, it's pretty nice 1920x1080 but they didn't give me an extension cord so it sat at my desk for a week. I brought my own cord in to hook it up. They have funny safety laws here, in an office all computer chords and extension cords have to be certified. I asked what certified meant to the certification company guy and he said "we just look at them". Mind you, you could trip over these chords as they are strewn all over the floor, but a least they'll be inspected. So I have all these great screens and my computer is slower than what I have at home.

Our tadpoles are growing bigger and we'll have to separate them into 2 buckets. Their water is getting pretty green and I read we'll have to change it quite often. In the bucket there is mosquito larva and the tadpoles don't eat them. Although we put a few snails in there and they seemed to have been eaten by something. These tadpoles right now only seem to eat vegetation which L drops in rotten bits of her water plant, which they love, we also feed them lettuce. They don't mind the fish food flakes either. All these guys do is eat so it'll be interesting to see how many become frogs. We dropped a fish in there to see if it would eat the larva but I guess going from clean water that has lots of space into green water with 100's of tadpoles stressed him. It just froze and wouldn't move so we fished him out and put him back in the fish pot. He's ok, maybe we should have put 5 in there so he would have a gang but I won't do that. So the larva are safe ... until the tadpoles get an appetite for them (evil laugh).

Speaking of eating, Ralph our lizard buddy showed up again early last night, but because of the bad weather we didn't eat outside, which was the first time in months. Since we didn't stay outside he didn't stick around long. He ate a few pieces of chicken, papaya, mango and watermelon. He quickly left after that.

Christmas is coming and I must admit I'm not really getting much spirit here. I think without our families and no younger kids around it's just not the same. People don't really put up decorations on the outside of their house or they haven't as of yet. We have been invited to a work friend of L's for Christmas day. They are fellow Canadians. If it is a nice day we'll take some pictures on the beach for something different and to say we did it.

If Santa's reading this I could do with a vacuum cleaner.

Tuesday = buffet at Skycity Darwin

Well it's Tuesday and that means 2 for the price of 1 Tuesdays at Skycity Casino. This may seem that we have a gambling problem but this is far from the truth. It's more like we have a we like to eat buffet at a good price problem. So if you have been following Luna's Facebook page (you will need an account to see her personal Facebook account) you will see that most of her pictures are of her at the a table outside in the buffet restaurant. The only problem with eating out is that Ralph, our blue tongued Skink friend (lizard see blog for pictures), will have to go hungry. A couple of days back he didn't show up for about 3 days and we were worried. Then he did show up and one of his legs was not working well. We were quite worried. Fortunately for him he could slide around on his belly and didn't really require his leg all that much. We have been feeding him well and these last few nights he's been walking on all 4's ... if you call what he does as walking on all 4's. He really just uses his feet to push his big body across the patio. Kinda like 1/2 lizard 1/2 snake. All I can say as he sure must have a well exfoliated belly. L gave him shaved beef the other day that she puts in Pho (Vietnamese soup) and he just gobbled that down. We've fed him mango and papaya and he's eats all that. Needless to say if he is she and this is the breading season ,he/she will have healthy babies. We have determined that Ralph also has a buffet issue. He is really quite fun to feed and watch and he certainly makes dinner time interesting.

Speaking of breading the other night we had a green tree frog in the back yard perched on one of the chair arms doing a brap, brap, brap sound. Well this guy can project real well he was so noisy, but he wasn't the only one there were others calling all over the place. Later his lady friend showed up so we gave them some privacy. Later we found that the female had laid eggs in our fish/plant pond/pot and some in a bucket, that L had laying around, that had a dying plant in it. Well the eggs didn't survive in the fish pond as I think they got eaten by the fish but the bucket has about 50 tadpoles in it as well as some mosquito larva. We were fishing the larva out and putting it in the fish pond and the fish would eat them. That's what I call payback to all those mosquitoes that bit me. The tadpoles we didn't put in the fish pond because they are supposed to get pretty big, according to the Internet. In 3 days they have gotten noticeably bigger. We are afraid that they may eat the baby fish as they become carnivorous (eat meat) when they get older. We'll have to see how they do in the bucket, we are putting lettuce and fish flakes (fish food) in the bucket and some eat it. I guess those will be the guys that get bigger. I have read about these guys and it's easy to say that in a while there won't be 50 left some will most likely get eaten by the others, yikes.

Hi ho hi ho it just the status quo

Well things are settling in to a dull routine with, get up, drive to work, come home, cook dinner, eat outside and see if Ralph shows up. Speaking of Ralph he's been a regular lately although if we are walking around out the backyard when he shows he just crawls off. His loss though because some other critter will eat his morsels of steak. Last night he popped by a little early and went back into the brush only to appear when we had the food out on the table. I think he's got a pretty good nose for food. Well he does actually because he always finds the steak no matter where we put it.

L has decided to change her hair color to all brown/black for a while and will get it cut shorter because it's just too hot in this weather. Lucky for her it'll probably grow back for when we come back to visit Canada in June. I'm sure the hair color change will please my dad. I'll post pictures once the transformation is completed, she just finished dying it as I write this.

It is pretty hot here, we bought a fan to put on the floor and to place outside to keep the midges away. What is a midge? Well it's smaller than a mosquito and they bite. They seem to like L more than me so when she's outside they leave me alone, that way I don't need bug spray ... which I think is a bonus but somehow she doesn't. But the fan is pretty good at blowing them away. Heck the thing sounds like a propeller plane taking off. It pretty much would blow me across the patio if we put it on high. Needless to say that we have been eating cold food due to the fact that this fan works so well.

I have been messing around with Facebook, as it's free to me, and have posted some pics on the price of things I think mum and dad will think they're good you may enjoy them too.
Picture link is below
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.214659338604214.50561.198194326917382&type=3

You can check out our other pictures too while you're there. You don't have to join Facebook. This seems mildly familiar maybe I asked people to do this last week.

Well the Facebook page is here just in case you haven't been there and want to go.
http://www.facebook.com/PerilsOfPaulAndLuna

Introducing Ralph

Well it isn't news that we have our fair share of wildlife out in our backyard. But a few days ago we had a different visitor a really big lizard with short little legs. We have fed him things like rice, mango, shrimp, eggs, steak, pork and chicken. Needless to say I would say he doesn't like veggies or carbs that much. But he sure likes meat. Usually he shows up just when we are about to go in because the mozzies are getting bad here, but tonight we got a pleasant surprise he was under L's chair with his head poking out. We fed him some chicken which of course he gobbled constantly. He even took it from my hand. This guy doesn't seem to be as scared as the other types of lizards that are around the house. He moves pretty slow and wanders around getting under the chair and table, I don't think he likes the light. We were afraid the other night because he didn't show up but he seems to be pretty regular now. He/she is a welcome site at dinner when we eat outside, which is every night. Here are some pictures we took he is pretty cute the poor guy has very little legs. You probably think that we have overfed him but he was this chubby last week. We worry about the him because he's kinda slow and their are cars just on the other side of the fence which he crawls thru to get to us. See his pics below. If you can't see the pics go to the blog (link below).


The weather is getting a lot hotter lately and the humidity is up. It has been raining and one day we got 100mm. Some people say it can rain for 2 weeks, not sure if that's constant rain of every day for 2 weeks. I guess we'll see.

We also got our power bill which works about to $100 a month and that was without aircon running, just fans and the fridge. It could be an expensive summer (our summer not your summer).

Well I'm in the 2nd week of my part-time job. They said they want me longer than the 4 weeks so that'll be good. The money I earn will be that gets us back to Canada for next June so maybe I'll be able to afford to bring L back as well (haha). I guess not many receptionists are very good at image editing, but I'm still lousy at answering the phone. But it's a lot of fun the people are pretty cool and that's what counts.

Temporarily on hold

Sorry I haven't been in touch lately I have been temping. Well my first job was a receptionist at a TV stations sales office. The phone rang all of a dozen times, it was totally boring. In the reception they had a TV which was playing their TV channel. Well I can honestly say in that one day I heard the same commercial for funeral insurance about 30 times. I eventually found the volume control and turned it down. Now that job only lasted a day so I guess as a receptionist I just didn't have the legs for it (badump bump).

Last week and this week I am at a company, at reception again. The phone ring about 4 times all day. Here I am reformatting word documents, so I've learned a bit about word. But other than that it's pretty boring. But I was smart I brought some of my own things to work on. I can't complain the pay isn't bad for what I'm doing but they get paid really good out here because of the cost of living.

 

Our replacement lily also croaked and we lost the receipt so we couldn't take it back for a replacement so L bought a different plant. We also moved it into a shadier place thinking that maybe the plant was getting too much sun. Well it was also probably too hot for the fish, during the day they would not come to the surface. Now it's moved they frolic all day, every time we walk by they think it's feeding time.

 

Since it's spring here, we are still on Canada seasons in our head, we have noticed many changes with the lizards. Some come out onto the patio at night and do some sort of sideways slithering walking. These guys are just little, about the thickness of a pencil, but it's fun to watch. We still have the geckos on the wall that I love to watch eating all the moths. I think we have another one in the house again but they seem to hide quite well some I'm not going to try to throw this one out. Although I doubt there's much to eat in our place other than sugar ants, which I don't think they eat.

 

But last 2 nights we've had a quite large lizard visit. The other night L fed it some steak and some rice which was completely eaten. Last night it got really brave and walked all around the patio even getting up close to our chairs. I mean it's not a huge lizard, about the thickness of a sausage, but we both had our feet up so it wouldn't eat our toes. Last night we were prepared and we broke up a cooked shrimp. It must have a good nose because it pretty much found them without wandering around. We also fed it mango and some more rice but it didn't eat everything we put out so I gather rice and mango are lower on it's list of favourites or we just over fed it on shrimp. Hopefully we'll see it tonight, maybe we can get a picture.

 

Things are obviously changing, we've had more rain and this morning we came to work in rain, nothing brutal like what is forecast to come but enough to slow traffic down. With the rain things are starting to get a lot greener.

 

With the on coming wet they will be closing the Mindil beach market, which is a market that runs Thursday and Sunday during the dry that has food and stands that sell or sorts of stuff. L has a place she likes to go and get earrings but we now know that the lady that runs the booth will be at some other location on Sunday mornings. If you look at our pictures you'll see some sunset pics we took at Mindil beach. In fact the background to our blog is a picture taken at Mindil (or it was as of this writing).

Holy jumping crocodiles

This past weekend us and some friends of ours, fellow Canadians from Vancouver, drove 1 hour south of Darwin to the Adelaide river to see some jumping crocs. I must admit watching them swim through the water was amazing, they are so graceful. They also are very thoughtful in what they do, which is why sometimes they just won't jump for the meat on the string. They know they won't get it so they won't try. I also got to try on some Australian fashion in a python snake (see pictures), actually snakes aren't slimy at all they don't feel all that bad really, saying that I probably won't rush out and get one to hide under L's side of the bed. Check out the video and the pictures. L got a really good one of the jumping croc.

A while back L bought a water Lilly and we put it in a pot, well after the possums eating it and being transplanted it eventually stopped growing. The other day I had a major light bulb come on, "aren't plants guaranteed ?". Well it seems they are and at Bunnings they have a lifetime guarantee, not sure who's life mine or the plants. So L got a new plant, put it in the pot and now the guppies that a friend of L's gave us, are super happy now. Hopefully it lasts, it has an beautiful flower blooming already. Not sure what killed the last one but hey lifetime guarantee if this one doesn't last they'll see us again and again.

I guess what they call the build-up is upon us, it really doesn't seem all that more humid that it would in Toronto in the dog days of summer, but maybe more is coming. Now that the wet is coming a lot of things are starting to slow or stop. Many of the markets will shut down as well as the Mindil beach market, which we really like to visit every couple of weeks.

The Christmas stuff is in the stores already, they don't really celebrate Halloween here but one store had some Halloween candies. But the price for a dozen was extortion, boy we miss Costco.

The Perils of Paul & Luna:Lizard for lunch

One of my favourite activities here is to watch the Gecko's that sit by our outside lights and eat all sorts of bugs. Now you would figure that they would eat any bug but no they are selective. I have watched them rush up to a bug and then look at it then turn around and scurry away. I figure that moths are high on their diet and if you have a hard shell then you're too hard to digest so they just leave you alone. Well it must be time for lizards to have babies cause I saw one in the house, figuring there isn't much to eat here I have been trying to figure out how to get it outside where it can eat some good. Well one day it was by the front door so I opened it and using my hands convinced him to go outside. I felt pretty good that it would be able to eat better things because really other than ants, which I don't think they eat, there isn't much to eat in here. So the other night after coming back from the garbage run (taking the garbage out), we carry a torch (flashlight) so we can see where we are going, but when we get home I usually shine it on the underside of the eves-trough to see how many of our buddies there are. On the wall I could see that one of them had a rather large moth so I went over to investigate. Well it wasn't a moth it was the little critter I rescued waist deep in one of the big ones mouths. I cursed him that large bugger after I saved this baby so I ran inside grabbed a broom and banged it in front of his head and he coughed little one up and ran away. The little one seemed stunned and looked like he was missing his tail. I don't know how he fared that night but I don't think his chances where that good there was a lot of big geckos out that night. So I felt pretty bad that I had saved him only to have him get 1/2 eaten. But 1/2 hour later who do I see a little gecko crawling around the house. Obviously that one I scared out was not the one that was in the house previously ... or we had more than one in the house. Well this guys staying put if he can find something to eat here then I'll chuck him out when he's too big.

L does a lot of reading here and she goes thru books pretty quick. The other day she said I should collect them all and take them back to the library. She liked to leave them piled on this brown leatherette box we have. It's about 2 foot square. So I pick them up and under the last one there was this huge cockroach flattened by the book. Now I think this death was accidental but he probably figured he was safe hiding on something that was the same color as him. Which is funny because I could see the ants running up to the box but I couldn't see them going anywhere else on the floor. I figured they were running under the couch somewhere. But no they had found it and they were small enough to crawl under the book to do whatever ants do to dead cockroaches.

This weekend we are going to see the jumping crocs. Hopefully they haven't figured out yet how to jump into the boat, pictures and videos to follow unless this is the weekend they figure out how to crawl into a boat. If that's the case obituary to follow.

Here is my favourite lizard whom I call Bender because I think he's always sleeping it off in the morning after a big bender.

This dude is there day and night and is sleeping because at night his eyes are black right now they are brown like his skin.