The secret of a good kick
Ahhh, Minicolts. The best entertainment of the day. At halftime in the A Grade game, the Under 10’s take to the field. Whoever turns up gets divvied into 2 equal teams - one Blue (Eagles - our old club colours) and the other Black (Tigers - our new club colours). For the little kids (5 & 6 year olds), about the only way for them to get a kick is to be given a free kick by the umpire - otherwise the 9 and 10 year olds just dominate the ball.
C6 got a freekick in his last game. And in the spirit of recording everything, I took this photo.
It wasn’t until I was editing the photo that I discovered this:
So now, recorded for all prosterity, is the secret to a good kick. You have to hold your tongue just right…..
The Birds
I went to Whyalla for a meeting yesterday. This means that I have to travel through Iron Knob. A once thriving community, but now little more than a ghost town. There are a few people still living there and there is a pub, but not much else. There is a sign in Iron Knob, warning people of Emus crossing the road. Never seen them. I thought it was a bit of a joke until yesterday, when I saw these guys on the side of the road.
They look pretty young. Altogether, there were 5 of them in the area. The best thing about Emus is that the female lays the eggs and then nicks off and leaves the babies to the males…
A bit further down the road there were some Wedge Tailed Eagles riding the thermals and then there were these two, just taking their time…
And then they were gone.
Wet Wet Wet
The weather wasn’t very kind to us today. As we left the hotel this morning, it started raining. I thought that I’d seen rain before - I did live in Queensland as a child - but this was spectacularly wet rain. We have decided that the Singaporeans must be waterproof. Here we were drenched to the skin, despite umbrellas, and they were just wandering about seemingly dry. The rain let up several hours later - sometime after lunch, but by then the damage had been done and my sandshoes were squelching with wetness and our clothes were sticking to us in all kinds of places. At least you don’t get cold when you are wet in Singapore.
After circling the block a couple of times in the pouring rain, we finally found Raffles Hotel. The man had a local Tiger Beer and I woosed out and had a Virgin Sling. It is really beautiful - but watch the hip pocket. The bill for those 2 drinks was nearly $35. But the atmosphere was good and we got to dry off a little.
Since it was still raining, we headed indoors to the shopping centres. We did manage to get most of our shopping done despite the traders and hawkers distracting us by physically dragging us into their shops to try and sell us something. After a while we developed a “don’t make eye contact” rule, but I felt so rude - they are only trying to make a buck.
In the evening, we headed down to Marina Bay to catch the Singapore Flyer. At 165m, it is 30m taller than the London Eye. This was one of the photos that I took from top, pretty isnt it? The views were pretty spectacular.
It appears that I am having problems uploading my photos to Flickr, so those of you who are waiting for the pics will have to wait a bit longer.
Wet
I think we’re still officially in drought, and I know that it takes more than a couple of days of rain to break the drought, but it rained most of Saturday and now it’s raining again today - since midnight even!
It was cold yesterday and by the time I got home the clothes on the line were nearly dry. You know, that can’t quite tell if they’re wet or just cold? So I left them. The forecast for today was 25C, so I figured they get dry today and I would have them inside by lunchtime. Then it started to rain at midnight. By the time you hear it, it’s too late. So I still have wet clothes.
Its hard to photograph rain. First you need a dark background (finally found one by the fence) and then you have to get down really low. So while the perspective of this photo looks a bit weird - it’s the best I could do.
