Jordandchan

A small snippet from our trip to Mogo Zoo a few weeks back.

If you recall, we headed off on holidays a little while back.

Well we are back now. In fact we have been back for about a week, just slack about letting you know about it.
We had a lovely week in Port Macquare and we did almost nothing. We did so little, in fact, that there is not really anything to tell you. It was a fantastically relaxing time.

One thing (well two actually) we did do was to see a lot of animals. We visited Billabong (near Wauchope) and made a trip to the Pet Porpoise Pool (in Coffs Harbour). Check out the photos!

Keep reading…

We’re off on holidays, and I have more books to read than I will be able to fit in.

I’ve narrowed it down to the following list (in no particular order, except dimension.…)

• Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris
• Smithereens -  Shaun Micallef
• iPod, Therefore I Am - Dylan Jones
• Songbook - Nick Hornby
• The Laws of Simplicity - John Maeda
• The Vertical Self - Mark Sayers
• The World Top Photographer’s Workshops: Fashion and Advertising - Magdalene Keaney
• Pioneers of Modern Graphic Design - Jeremy Ainsley

That should keep me busy…

Our Christmas tradition for the last few years has been to share a bottle of wine and some nice cheeses.

This year we had to forego our usual tradition, sharing lovely meals with both of our families. In leu of our usual plans, Chan arranged for us to spend a day up in the hunter visiting some wineries and cheese shop.

We hopped on a bus from Central along with a few others and were driven up to Cessnock by our friendly driver Shane. We stopped of at the first winery and tried a few nice (and a few not as nice) glasses before heading off to the second winery. We were met at the Iron Gate Estate winery by the owner, a kindly older british gentleman. He came from a chemisty background and was explaining to us how it impacted his work. We had a great an interesting time there, and tasted some lovely and unique wines.

We had a brief stop for lunch before moving on to the Smelly Cheese Shop. Mmmmmm cheese. Needless to say, this was one of the highlights, trying some nice fettas and buying some other lovely cheeses.

Our final winery was a jovial affair, with many bad jokes, and more wine. Once we were done it was time to load back into the minibus and have a snooze on the way home.

It may be that we were spoilt by Waipara and Malborough, or the fact that neither of us are great red wine drinkers - but on the whole we weren’t that impressed by the wines. We tasted a few nice ones, but on the whole were a little disappointed.

That being said, we had a good fun day - I would thoroughly recommend it. (You can see some photos here if you want).

i spent the weekend in qld and all i got was this lousy sunburn

thats not true - we actually had quite a good time despite only having a couple of days away.

our flight saw us leave sydney at 10.05pm on Friday and we flew in last night (Sunday) at 9.20pm so it was a very quick and whirlwind trip… but it was great to see family and old friends and spend time celebrating Renee’s birthday. Everyone dressed up which made it even better.

we’re glad to be home though and looking forward to picking up the cat tonight after work…

back to place we got engaged - almost the same carriage - the ferris wheel at luna park - an enchanted evening…

on saturday night jordan treated me to a very special night out - after a gorgeous picnic with friends we headed off on the train to a secret location (well a secret to me), a quick change of transport and trying to not get recognised from people of my past - we made it to luna park. Keep reading…

Just to let you know where we are and how we are going…

We’re spending tonight up at Tauranga (towards the middle top of the North Island) in the Bay of Plenty. We’ve had some fabulous weather in the past few days but sadly today has been miserable, pouring with rain and blowing a gale.

We brought our wireless internet on the trip with us, but sadly their coverage doesn’t include much of the North Island, so we have been disconnected the last couple of days. I managed to get some more photos uploaded today. I won’t get a chance to name or label them, but feel free to have a look.

We’re on the road again tomorrow and working our way to Gisborne for New Years where we hope to be some of the first people in the world to see in 2009. Then working our way back towards Wellington to fly back to Christchurch.

Its been a while since we went to see it (on the 23rd actually), but we finally got to see my photographs in the exhibition at Te Papa (the National Museum of New Zealand).

We went into the Ourspace exhibition and the first thing we were met with was a map of New Zealand on the floor.

Keep reading…

Well here we are in Wellington. We had a lovely beautiful day for our trip North on the train and ferry, and another gorgeous day yesterday. Sadly today has been miserable, but a lovely day to bunker down and relax in the hotel room.

We’re here tomorrow, and then hitting the road on Boxing day and heading North. We’re going round the North Island in a clockwise direction before returning to wellington then flying back to Christchurch.

That’s right, as of 2pm yesterday afternoon we are now the above. The upside of which is that we don’t have to pay rent anymore, the downside being we no longer have somewhere to keep all of our stuff.

We’re writing from our hotel in Christchurch. It feels kind of weird to be in a hotel when everything is so familiar, but kinda cool. We’re up at 6 tomorrow morning to begin our holiday. A train North to Picton, and then the InterIslander Ferry across to Wellington where we will be spending the next couple of days.

To Catch a Thief

We’ll taking LOTS of photos and trying to get some of them posted here as well as some information about what we have been up to. So stay tuned…