Tulip Cheeks

Good on MOONPIG...

Thats fast work! Current affairs greetings - very clever. Check out their great cards at www.moonpig.com - but then buy my friends at Tigerprint's handy work for Marks and Spencer 

Its a year today since I left my lovely Yorkshire....

and when I asked Mr TC "apart from family and friends - what do you miss about Yorkshire?" his first reply was 'The nookie-ness of it" and I knew exactly what he ment.

I miss the option of running through fields and woods with the knowledge that nothing was gonna kill me through a bite or getting lost and dehydrated.

I miss the niceties that Yorkshire (and probably all shires of GB) pass on "hello love, how are ya?" How ist the diddeling?"  "By Hec, thyst looking well!"  I like small talk and I miss banter of the loveliest kind.

I miss familiar faces and having history with people - Id say this is probably top of the list. I love my past, I love my present, and I dont half miss familiarity.

I miss being able to place people better. By this I mean judging people (which i know I shouldnt do) but I do love imagining peoples houses, what car they drive and what they are thinking, right that very second. I dont feel like I have the authority to do that here, I just CANT imagine what people are?

I miss Christmas ALOT. I just watched christmas day on Albert Square tonight (thats where we are up to) and I felt more Christmassy watching that than I did this Christmas in Australia.

I miss UK car registration plates - they are so chunky and bold.

I miss  'KEEP LEFT UNLESS OVER-TAKING'  I miss that alot.

I miss the very solid and definite plug action the triple pin in the UK has.

Super markets - there just arnt the choices here.

I miss cheapness of antiques oh and magazines - especially 'Look' magazine. Australian journalism is worded different.

UK radio - esp Radio 2. I like the formality of it, I like the routine. Here they do the traffic first, then the weather, then the news. Then, in the same tone of voice, they finish off with an advert.

I miss not having to acknowledge im not from here every day. Today I got introduced as 'This is TC, shes English" I didnt know whether to do a little dance?

I really miss having in depth conversations. Although Our Wendy is pretty good.

I miss taking a price at face value, and not having to convert it into pounds everytime.

I miss the light. The natural light. It somehow makes things not look as good here. For-instance, I have never bought a single thing at Camberwell outside market - explain that! No really, the light is just not the same as the uk.

Theres a few other things, but i wont bore you with them. They whirl round my head quite often and then then float out as soon as they arrived. I am truly happy here and I still maintain - this is where we are ment to be right now. I love Australia and cant wait to do a run-down of what I LOVE ABOUT AUSTRALIA TOMORROW - A YEAR SINCE WE ARRIVED......

My Hong Kong adventures

It was lovely to come back to Hong Kong again. Even though id been here only 6 weeks before, I was only here for 24 hours, this time I would be here a week.

My main priority was helping finish off picking and designing Christmas decorations for this year (yes, afraid so - things do have to happen way in advance of things being in the shops - scary thought!) but part of my trip ended up meeting our new team of designers over in the Hong Kong office - a part of the job I LOVE. Meeting other creative people, chatting about their work and looking at where their skills can be maximised the most in the future. i just LOVE it.

So, in work i had a good time - I got to meet lots of great people, got to know my way around the office a bit better, and outside of work I got chance to explore this facinating city - unlike no other. or should that be A-like no other? Im confused?

My picture above shows I got the famous Star ferry across to Hong Kong island, where as you can see - the staff, like me, have a pon-schon for Sailor suits :

I was over this side of the water to visit 'The Peak' which id heard lots about, but it still remained a mystery what it actually was? It was Sunday, and the streets were heaving with Phillipino people who apparently every sunday congregate on the streets of Hong Kong and had a good catch up with friends and family.

Id been to the Peak before, as an 11 yearold. I couldnt remember a jot. not a jot about it, and even getting there, and getting on the tram, I STILL couldnt remember (it must have been later in the same day that I had the sunstroke and Bloody Lovely damn near choked me to death by holding my hair out of the sink and grabbed my neclace too - IMPOSSIBLE to let her know without physical force.)

The Tram was good. Very steep, infact I stood up to take a picture and some neck muscles came into play I didnt even know I had.

 

As you can see here - it unfortunatly wasnt a very clear night, but my collegue and I did have  an  exceptionally lovely meal at the Deco restaurant.  I feel very fortunate that my job allows me to travel. I feel even more fortunate that I work with some really lovely people. The two go hand in hand to make  what could be a very lonely time; a very nice time. 

 

And just to lower the tone - when talking to Mi Papa  (whom I will now refer to with his righful name of BOB - Brain Of Britian , named by Bloody lovely and myself many years ago, on behalf of him knowing practically everything, and if he doesnt - it aint worth knowing; so he will answer you in a riddle, giving him more air time and leave you even more perplexed than you already might have been) yeah, so Im telling Bob about my adventure and he goes "did you go past the building of a thousand arse-holes?"  I think hes referring to the above.

Such an AMASIAN DAY!

Who'd have thought after setting off to such a bad start... a fall out about where to park, blisters appearing sooner than expected, a change of top; that this day would have turned into something very magical.

One of our bes-test friends of which there are few (you know who you are) has a job which most males would kill for. Hes a race engineer for Formula 1. He gets to play with a full size scaletrixs every day if he wants and some days when he doesnt want. Back in class 6, when I, yes I was better at Maths than he and we were kinda childhood sweethearts who got married on the school field but then divorced soon after because he tripped me up during a rather vicious game of British Bull-dogs and i did a rolly-polly in mid air (much to the whole schools amusement) I am, like I am all my best-friends - very proud of what  has been achieved.  

Enough of the formalities - look how close knowing him got us!

We couldn't believe it. I even slurped the champagne off my arm! And so close to my all time hero - JOHN TRAVOLTA or as Mr TC and I like to call him - Jip. (dont know why?) I have two framed pictures of Jip in my house - one in my bedroom and one in my laundry. They keep me going. 

So, who else did you see I hear you ask - well, we saw THAT many F1 drivers it wasn't funny, Mr TC got a picture with Ms Danni Minogue, a Brian McFadden and oh, a Holly Vallance - who had a fat back. Her backless dress showed off a bit too much flesh in the way her ripples cascaded down her sides. Not a good look Holly - it brought me nicely to a chuckle when I remembered the advert she did in the UK for reverse charges - shame she hadn't seen her R.E.V.E.R.S.E sooner than the rest of us.

So this is where the driver sits. Looked pretty uncomfortable to me. Good job they are tiny. Our friend is the main communication for the driver. He has to make sure the car goes as fast as it can, as safely as possible and get the driver to finish super fast - in a nut shell. He did such a good job for this Melbourne race that his driver finished 2nd. Thats our friends first podium finish since he has taken up this prestigious role and WE were there to see it and share the excitement. And boy, what excitement.

After sitting very comfortably in the paddock area, and being looked after extremely well by the Renault team we watched most of the race on a screen with them, and with 2 laps to go we were ushered with them to run into the pits where we waited with all the engineers to hear the final result. We knew anything could happen and although our friend was in 2nd place when we left the comfort of the paddock, anything could happen. As there was no screen in the vasinity everyone had their heads tilted down and their ears - literally 'pricked' up. Then, without much warning everyone RAN. And we ran, and we didn't know where we were running to. We stopped. There we were....at the edge of the pit lane - no fence, no barrier, and along came Jensen Button on his winning car, closely followed by our guy - Kubica. Then we ran again. I stopped, wanting to get a glimpse of our friends face. I really didnt know where to go, as it felt like - what am I doing here?! Un-be-known to me all this was being watched from above by one of my bosses at my new job. Seeing him the next day he told me he was watching all the engineers running after the cars and then remarked 'THATS TC!" on seeing me trotting down the pit lane in high heels, stopping, looking back and then capturing my thoughts brilliantly by telling me " you looked like you were thinking "shit, where do I go now!!!" haha.

We gave our friend the biggest hug. He looked in shock for the rest of the time we saw him. People were hugging him, shaking his hand - there were high-fives galore. We were, are, always were/are SO proud of our Rennie.

So then the rest is like a dream. Well, it is now anyway. We left after sharing a paper cup of bubbly with him, we gave the passes back to him at the gate and off we floated into the mass of general admission.