Sweet Caroline

Although this will always remember me only of MY sweet Caroline.

Here is what Neil Diamond had to say about the song's origins.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Neil Diamond held onto the secret for decades, but he has finally revealed that President Kennedy's daughter was the inspiration for his smash hit "Sweet Caroline."

"I've never discussed it with anybody before - intentionally," the 66-year-old singer-songwriter told The Associated Press on Monday during a break from recording. "I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline when I met her someday."
He got his chance last week when he performed the song via satellite at Caroline Kennedy's 50th birthday party.
Diamond was a "young, broke songwriter" when a photo of the president's daughter in a news magazine caught his eye.
"It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony," Diamond recalled. "It was such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt there was a song in there."

Top Gear in Africa II

Unfortunately the previous videos on this post have been taken offline. Here is attempt no. 2
In season 10 the producers have found a great new challenge for the Top Gear crew .
Buy a used car (not four wheel drive) for not more then £1,500 and drive from Botswana's border with Zimbabwe in the east to its border with Namibia 1,000 miles away to the west .
Unfortunately the full version is not available yet so here it is in 8 parts. But just like their Fly-drive challenge USA I will post the full version as soon as I have found it.
Enjoy.



Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Instead of making a whole new post I edited this one. (attempt no.3 this is 08/01/08)

Is Anyone Out There?

Is anyone out there Creature Comforts by Aardman productions.

Steve Irwin Day

It has been over a year since his tragic accident and today is the first Steve Irwin Day in his remembrance. It's a day to celebrate his life and support the causes he stood for.

Prime Minister John Howard paid tribute to Irwin in a pre-recorded video message at the zoo's Crocoseum, saying the Crocodile Hunter had left an "indelible mark" on Australia.

"We all miss Steve," Mr Howard said.

"He was a larger-than-life individual who gave all of us a special and new way of thinking about the environment and all creatures great and small."

Steve Irwin on this blog

Rogue

A must see for anyone who is visiting to the Northern Territory.
It's about a croc/wildlife cruise that goes horribly wrong when a saltwater crocodile turns man eater and preys on the tourists.
We did a similar tour 3 years ago on the Mary River, NT in a boat that was hardly bigger then a bathtub (smaller then the boat in the movie) with the tour operators Gondwana in 2004 (an article from 2005) Mum don't read it. We managed to get stuck in the reeds when a 15-17 ft croc slid in the water in as many feet away from us and we had to use our paddles to push us out in what must have been knee deep water and no sight of that massive beast except for a few fish that jumped out of the water near the boat (fleeing?).
We loved it .....after we were safely on dry land again.

Taken moments before we got stuck

The VB Orchestra

The 90 men strong Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performs on nothing but VB stubbies.

Another busy weekend

Last week my Fuji F410 died on me after 9,430 photos. And because we are going on a short holiday to Noosa soon we needed a new digital camera our choice finally came to a black Panasonic Lumix TZ3 with 10x optical zoom a lot of new functions and pretty much idiot proof.
I did however went to a website called Fixya with my camera's problem, they alerted me that my Fuji may be part of a recall as a few years ago the the chips of quite a few camera brands were found to be faulty and rather then have a massive recall some companies opted to repair the fault free of charge only after a consumer has that specific fault as I read in this Wallstreet Journal article. So the camera is on its own little holiday to see if that is the case . Fingers crossed it will be back as new in a few weeks . If it's not that particular fault it is unfortunately not worth to fix and then we were better of to upgrade as we did already.
So now all I needed to do is wait for us to go out there and try out the new camera . And that came Friday when we went to Sculpture by the Sea fearing it would be really busy during the weekend. And to our delight it was relatively quiet and the weather really held up well although the forecast was showers. For anyone who is in Sydney until 18/11/07 it is certainly worthwhile to take a look.

Having been there on Friday meant we still had most of the weekend ahead of us. We then decided to go to bills Surry Hills on Saturday to have lunch at one of Bill Granger 's restaurants.

And after a great and reasonably priced lunch we just ambled through Surry Hills and visited the studio of a local artist the late Brett Whitely. Unfortunately not all his work is on display at once but rotating the studio also contains a travelling exhibitions . So hopefully in a few months some of his other art will be on display again. Don't get me wrong it was all still nice.

Oh, and we also went to Kings Cross during daylight a first for us. We hardly recognised it and we finished our day out with another fine meal, dinner this time in a very nice Italian restaurant called Il Fagiano in Potts Point.

Sculpture by the Sea 2004

3 years ago we went to Sculpture by the Sea. And it was wonderful . I think the weather contributed to this although it was very windy. We are looking forward to going again this weekend but unfortunately this time the weather isn't that great but we will go sometime this weekend as it is only until the 18th of this month .
Here are some pictures we took 3 years ago .

These pictures don't capture all of it but it is quite nice to see all these statues on one of the world's nicest coastal walks, from Bondi to Tamarama .

Top Gear in Africa

In season 10 the producers have found a great new challenge for the Top Gear crew .
Buy a used car (not four wheel drive) for not more then £1,500 and drive from Botswana's border with Zimbabwe in the east to its border with Namibia 1,000 miles away to the west .
Unfortunately the full version is not available yet so here it is in 7 parts. But just like their Fly-drive challenge USA I will post the full version as soon as I have found it.
Enjoy.



Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7 .

Update: Unfortunately these videos have been taken offline. Please go here.

Halloween pumpkins

Unfortunately Halloween went by unnoticed for us. Chef didn't even made any of his pumpkin soup this year.

Coffee Art

Caroline and I both enjoy a cup of coffee every once in a while but we never bought a coffee machine and instant is NOT an option for me. And to buy a machine that makes a whole pot of coffee isn't either something we'd like to do especially if we have a late dinner . So we found the perfect solution in a Senseo coffee machine that only makes one or 2 cups of coffee within a minute . And it uses pods with REAL roasted coffee in it .