New Scandies

Another 3 Scandinavians arrived on Friday. 2 of them are staying at my place while looking for a flat of their own.
Since they arrived they have been asked at several occasions if they are playing in a band. I guess because most people here are dressing very bland, looking like they are buying all their clothes at Åhlens, Kappahl and Dressman (Sweden), Gap, NEXT (UK). And the second thing is, that Aussies rarely dress in black and white.
Just to add to the impression Rajdarn set up a photo shoot in my living room.
This is the result:

Online

Finally I'm online after 2 months, so now I hope to keep this blog more up to date, and be on line for a chat or two.

A tropical adventre

Late Thursday evening I got back from my second adventure. There is so much to say about it, but I will try to keep it short. I arrived in Cairns late at night Friday the 7th of November. A good 3 hour flight north of Sydney. Had booked a 5 day Diving course. The first 2 days was theory and practice in a pool at the diving school, the next 2 nights and 3 days I was going to spend out on the great barrier reef. While on the trip I extended my basic open water 18m certificate to an adventure certificate allowing me to go down to 30m. We saw sharks, cuttle fish giant sea turtles, lion fish. Doing night dives, surounded by glowing flourecent plankton. It was just like swimming around in an aquarium (or being inside a Future Sound of London music video, or being inside Metroid on 8bit Nintendo). There was fish everywhere, in every shape, size and color you could possibly imagine. It was often hard to tell if it was a plant or an animal. Im afraid the pictures cant justify any of this, but they can give a hint of what it was like. I was doing the dive together with Kamil, another Hyper island guy living in Sydney. We rented an underwater camera and you can see the result as follows, some photos are taken by me and some taken by Kamil. I want to tell you more, but I will do it in person sometime.































Sea Squirt, some very very basic organism filtering water through its body, to capture plankton.




















A very poisonous Lion fish I found on my deep water dive
















































Not sure if this is an animal or a plant.




















































A lot of the plants and animals had really crazy florescent colors.
















A pinaple sea cucumber. These things are big, it was at least 1 meter long.































Kamil and his dive buddy got the opportunity to swim with a turtle for about 5 minutes.





















Giant clam, this one was dead.





















































































The boat we where staying on. 35 passengers and 6 crew.















Fish around the boat waiting for food left overs.




























The reef














Kamil















Cairns, it was extreamly touristy there.















On our way back to the main land.





















Huge bats, called flying foxes they where sleeping like this during the day. At night they where flying around making alot of noise.



























One of the trees the bats where haning in.

The fish market and some birds

Havn't had a chance to write in ages. Still no internet at home. So much hassle. But to day I ran over to the Hotel next door and bought 24 hour access to their wireless network.

Work was crazy all the way till the end of my contract. I must admit I'm very glad its over. It has been quite hectic for the last few months, late nights and early mornings. So I was very much looking forward to a nice holiday. But before I write to you about my holiday I would like to post a few pictures from Sydney.

Its great to have birds like this in town. Its quite a lot of them, they are big, pretty but sounds awful.


























I few sundays ago we went to the fish market to have lunch. They had alot of weird creatures for sale. It was great.











































And finally, my herbs are showing up in my pot on the balcony.