Tokyo

This week I am in Tokyo for work (I know, crazy travel lately). I was lucky this time and had two free days before my meetings began to explore Tokyo. I’ve been doing lots of sewing back home, I had heard that Tokyo was the place for inexpensive yet very cool fabric. After a bit of research I found a number of different fabric stores and spent most of Sunday and Monday on and off the trains into different neighbourhoods looking for fabric. Was a great way on foot to see the city. Photo of some of the fabrics I bought.

Last night for work we also took a bus tour at night and got to see some of the amazing sights in Tokyo. This city is unlike any I’ve ever visited, full of people, neon, and tons and tons of shopping. A few more days of meetings, then one more free day and back to the boys! I hear Luca’s been rocking out to Neil Young while I’ve been gone. Can’t wait for family sing-a-long when I get home! -kel

Greetings from Shanghai!

I am in Shanghai this week for work meetings, really not that exciting. Outside of work however has been a bit more interesting…so far I’ve experienced some CRAZY and I mean CRAZY Taxi rides (by far they are the worst I’ve ever driven with), lots of people taking my colleagues and I out to very bad American food (why when in China would they think we want American food? We want Chinese!), a very cold hotel room, a frightening plane ride on China Eastern Airlines (AVOID at all possible costs), a beautiful park filled with dancing, Tai Chi and music, lots of funny looks while walking on the street and a few snapshots with random people who stopped to take our picture! Missing the boys at home tons! (photo of my colleague Talia and I on a bridge overlooking the Bund (river that runs through Shanghai) on our way to dinner last night) -kel

Welcome to town W - we're off to Forster

Sydney hosted APEC and to ensure there were less people around to demonstrate all of Sydney was given a day off - an extra public holiday and an extraordinary good tactic. The Fergusons were off up the coast to Forster on Thursday afternoon to make the most of it.

We arrived in darkness and didn't realise until the way back that all of the hairpin turns and going up and down hills were accompanied by great views of the lakes in the area. The area is known as the Lakes region of NSW but as we found out there are also awesome beaches.

Luca's godfather, Mark, provided the accomodation. A reletively new, huge condo a block from the centre of town and a block from the beach. Luca loved the condo with all of the new places to explore and the coffee table was the right height for him to stand and practice walking (he did 52 laps of the coffee table over the weekend).

Forster had many good suprises for us and Friday morning provided the first when Kelly stumbled across a fabric store that stocked some of her favourite designers at prices cheaper than they go for in Sydney - we made two visits to the store over the weekend and Kelly now has a return visit to Forster high on her priority list.

Of the suprises from the weekend the one I could have done without came while we were eating meat pies down on the jetty in Forster - I was my usual undisturbable self while eating and Kelly with a mouth full of pie suddenly started freaking out so I turned behind to see what she was looking at and came face to face with a huge pelican about two inches from my face - he/she was eyeing off my pie which if you know me and my love of the pie is a total waste of time.

Luca absolutely loved the beach - not the surf just the sand. He didn't eat the sand which we had half expected but was happy to crawl around for hours messing up any undisturbed sand he could find. While we were there Kelly spotted a dolphin playing around just off of the shore. The whole beach visit really made me look forward to getting Luca to the beach and in the water this summer.

As we usually do Kelly and I did a lot of exploring around the area and found some great spots - Bluey's beach and Seal Rocks were our favourites. From the Australian bush to China all in 24 hrs - Kel is off to Shanghai tomorrow and Milko, Robin and I will be drinking beer and eating pizza!

Cheers - M