More pleasant westerra photos.

That's my other suggestion for a name for WA. Westerra. Classier than wawaland. Means west land.

More photos!

WA wa land.

The first touristy thing we did was watch the sunset over the ocean. It was nice. And had pizzas for dinner at a marina. See photos below. I can't spread photos through text on my iPad. I'll fix it when I'm back on a computer.

Perth is like Canberra by the sea and some big rivers. Well mown grass, smooth driving, modern buildings. Fremantle is old though. We did a tunnel tour of the prison which is expensive but more interesting than seeing cells, if you have already seen other gaols, because you go underground in safety gear and wade in flooded tunnels and row boats under ground.

The markets are indoor markets like haymarket but smaller and perhaps nicer. There are heaps of restaurants. Then we went to kings park which is very handsome and has amazingly fine smooth grass and very good views of the rivers and the cbd. Then we went to church. And we were super tired, it was extremely hard to keep awake after a long day plus the 2 hour time difference.

On Monday we drove with Heather down to busselton where Julia lives. We took her horse for a walk, taking turns to ride, and did some farmy horsy things. And then we went to the jetty and walked along it as it got dark... Too cloudy for a sunset. But cold sea breezes, and it's the longest jetty you'll see.

Tuesday, we all went driving around the Margaret river area. It's a lot like the hunter valley, but with more sheep and dairy cows and a lot more rain, and more convenient to drive around, you can drive past an interesting cottage industry or winery every half a km. we bought something at every place we stopped! We went to one winery for tasting, woody nook, which was very friendly. We went to a maze and solved it. We went to a small chocolate factory and tasted cocoa bean and different darkness of chocolate and had home made ice creams. We went to an olive oil factory that makes soaps and oil things. We went to "cow town". We had lunch at a bakery at Margaret River, and I bought a coat at a vintage clothes shop next door. We went to one of the caves, the lake cave. And then we went home and bought Chinese takeaway for dinner. So I highly recommend the Margaret river for an excellent density of interesting things to do all in just one day.

Heather went back to Perth for work the next day, so we got up early with her, and went back to the jetty and watched the sunrise. The very exciting thing that happened was that I discovered that my camera has a setting for tilt shift effect! I started taking miniaturised photos like mad.

Spent the day just wandering around busselton. D caught a bus in the evening, up to meet a new friend she had met at church and arranged to visit the pinnacles district with on Thursday and Friday. I stayed with Julia for another day and met some of her best friends, the Johnson family. We all did a few more things in Margaret river: the bigger chocolate factory, a silk worm farm and silk shop, an ice cream factory, and a cheese factory. All of these factories are basically shops that make things and tell tourists how they are made. Then we did sing star at the Johnson's house, had dinner, and I drew portraits of the girls.

On Friday morning I caught an early bus up to Perth. It took 3 and a bit hours. I got to the bus station at 11am, and couldn't make head or tale of the transport system and also i had runout of cash because i didnt know my PIN, so decided that at least I knew how to read a map and walk, so I walked to the hotel which took about 30 minutes. Dumped my suitcase with the concierge and walked to the river to eat snacks from my backpack. Woohoo! Realised the Perth mint was very close, so I went there and did tour and saw a lot of gold. Shiny liquid gold and lots of bars.

Then I realised that there are free buses called cats that circle the cbd. Possibly all the buses are free in the cbd also. So I went full circle on the red cat bus, which took an hour and was pleasant. Then I got off in the mall and posted Heather's birthday card, found a cafe to have late lunch and wrote this blog post up until this point. I had heard a lot about WAs expensive eating, but we only did one gourmet meal that was $30 each. We ate a lot of meals $8-15. It's bright and sunny and not cold at all, and is similar but different to Sydney. I'm sitting opposite the old cba and gpo, and they are exactly the same model as the buildings in Martin place, but in bright yellow sandstone instead of greyish sandstone or granite style. Fewer Asians, more Africans. Quite prosperous, but in a suburban way rather than a city way. A lot of personalised number plates, like maybe a third of them.

Be Still my Soul.

If you like modern covers of hymns, investigate Jadon Lavik. Sometimes his constant tweaking with the melody or timing is a bit off-putting, but they are really nice.

My political highlight from last week.

I caught the end of Insiders on Sunday morning, this was most amusing. I feel like Mr Albanese is a kindred spirit when it comes to waiting around for people.

Hood.

I've decided to crochet a hood. I've got a few balls of grey wool left over from my granny rug. When I've got a bit of a headache I find the lights at work uncomfortable. And a hood can keep my head warm without giving me hat hair. This will be a nice craft to take with me to WA on my holiday next week. Waawaa-land I call it.

I'm aiming for something like this. http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=349864.0#axzz2XwPyhyyg

This is what I currently do when the light burns us, precious. Ridiculous but true.

Endeavour.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-04-14/endeavour-roger-allam---di-fred-thursday-is-morses-surrogate-father

Endeavour is the Inspector Morse prequel series. Well constructed mysteries, just the right length, nice writing, 60s decor and fashion, with lots of beautiful Oxford.

Inspector Thursday, on the roof of a college, calmly smoking his pipe, facing down the psychopathic serial killer:

"I've looked into the eyes of worse than you. People who've done real atrocities. And they were sane. Next to them, you're nothing more than a second-rate freak show."

Classy. Loving it.

Parking gets harder.

I just carsit sometimes, so I don't have a resident's permit. There are about 15 all-day permit-free car spots near my house. There are a lot more than 15 cars fighting for those spots now. It has become a lot busier since I moved here. There are so many flats without car spots and more people with cars must have moved in, the fools. Used to have half a chance of finding a park within 200m of the door, now I have about 5% of a chance. So I started using a street behind my street that connects via a lane so it's not far to walk. Last night, bam. Shiny new 2-hour-parking signs along that street. Back through the streets to the street on the other side of my block, where thankfully there is a school and no blocks of flats, so it's easy to park there at night. When that street goes, no more carsitting. Which is a shame, because carsitting is the best thing. I drop someone at the airport, I get a couple of weeks of having a car to do errands, go buy the big thing I can't carry on the bus, drive around the suburbs at night, etc etc etc, then back to normal. It's the best of both worlds.

Little jobs.

You have to make a mess to improve things. I had a long list of annoying jobs this weekend. I went at it with all my might. This is my kitchen table in the midst of my morning tea break.

I'm proud of a long pocket thing I made to organise tapestry yarn. This counts as craft! It's more about problem solving than creativity but it's very satisfying.

I also replaced a pocket in my bag that has been torn for a year, and thing fall into the lining. Cut the old pocket out, sewed a new pocket, and hand sewed it in. This is also immensely satisfying.

I also moved things around in the living room...  Getting stuff ready to go to the clothing bin. Taking things TOO the clothing bin. Cleaning my keyboard and mouse to give away and packing up my computer to get rid of it. This was where I kept my computer. Behind a couch. Pull the couch out and spin it around to use my computer. Pretty ingenious space-saving, but still, I haven't used the computer in the last year so I have emptied it and it's getting evicted.

I also saw the Great Gatsby movie. I don't like the story that much but I thought the movie was great. I have no nitpicks, it was really good.

What's going on?

Not much. Or if it is I have nothing to say about it and haven't been taking pictures. Oh, up in Maitland on Saturday Mum and I went to my favourite picture framing place and chose frames for my 10 year bike cross stitch. So much cheaper than Sydney. Visit Cunningham's in Raymond Terrace next time you need framing. Benita is fantastic, she has a really good eye. And I bought a bunch of ready-made frames for $2 each! So that's something.

Elastics.

I have a new set of elastics as well as robot wires this week. The robot wires have been painful to get used to. But the elastics are ridiculous. From back lower molars to lower canines to upper canines, in a triangle shape. I can hardly open my mouth, and when I do, there are elastics right at the front. I think this is to pull my lower teeth forward so that my teeth meet at the front. I've never had teeth that meet at the front, not that I cared. I heard somewhere that teeth that meet at the front evolved away when we got cutlery and stopped chewing meat off the bone, and most people have a slight overbite now.


http://www.orthonj.com/patient_forms/Elastics_Instructions.pdf

"For the average person, it takes 6-10 hours of pressure for the bone moving cells to start allowing the teeth to move. If you stop wearing them for even an hour or so, it takes another 6-10 hours for the teeth to start moving again. So anything less than full time wear is doing nothing to make the teeth move."

One of those up and down weeks.

I was really enjoying my life for a while there. Winter was mild, I was enjoying walking to work, had lots of energy, everything was running smoothly. This week has been colder, tireder, and sorer in the teeth. I broke an ATM and lost my only card inside it, which is an inconvenience of forced frugality for 7-10 days. I got my robot wires yesterday and I can feel significant discomfort even through ibuprofen, eating ANYTHING is a torture today. However, I have still enjoyed Bible study, a free ticket to a Discover Chopin concert, midweek dessert night with Bec, and I'm looking forward to a weekend in Maitland with George. Next jelssievision episode makes me happy too. It's even better than the first one. Here are 3 unflattering stills. lol.

Finally: I love legwarmers.

Start with soup.

I'm pretty proud of this. I had leftover pumpkin soup in the fridge, but also wanted to eat red meat because I need iron. But how to eat both? That's just weird. I found some frozen naan bread and was inspired. Cooked steak, cut it up, heated soup in microwave, added curry powder and steak chunks, and voila. Beef and pumpkin curry, with naan to dip. It was actually delicious.

Disenchantment.

I found this article very interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/why-the-west-loves-sci-fi-and-fantasy-a-cultural-explanation/276816/

Long weekend long post.

On Saturday I had a sleep in, did jillian, baked brownies, and spent the afternoon drawing. I drew 3 pictures for a silent auction at year 13 trivia fundraiser, and I had 3 things already done to donate as well. 4 sold which was great, and I gave the remaining two to some of the winners so I didn't have to take them home. It was awesome to turn skill into money for a good cause. The ones I did on Saturday were all ink line drawings. One was Emily from the rag doll book, which looked pretty cool and I wish I had a picture of it. One was gumleaves, it didn't sell, and one was a line of swallows. A nice design, but so simple it only took about 6 minutes. It was really tiny, you had to go up close to it to see it wasn't just a blobby line.

I bid on 2 things and won them: a dinner voucher at a Barzura at Coogee and a box of Nutrimetics stuff which was apparently good value. Mmmm fancy hand cream and stuff. Unfortunately I squirted handcream onto my phone and now the listening part is blocked so I can't hear people talking to me.

I joked with people before hand that I was going to build a trivia superteam. And then I did. The secret with trivia is a diverse team. So we had nerds in different fields and different ages. I guessed arty things like the Fibonacci sequence, and the IKEA logo, other people covered the Simpsons quotes and the geography and the maths. And we won. The funniest thing was that during dessert I tried to keep people focused and sharp by asking random questions and one of the questions I asked was who is the host of Americas next top model, cos I was watching it before I went, and then that was a question in the next round! Go team Geneve! Raaaar!

Sunday I think I watched Cranford and walked to the shops in a tshirt to get sun vitamins on my arms and then did some unplanned sales shopping and stuff and then hid it in my bag and went to church.

On Monday a little party of us did a day-trip to Cabramatta. 3 of us went on the train (we had a train announcer who entered into the spirit of the day and made station announcements in an articulate and playful way, kind of like they do on Virgin planes), had a massive lunch, and shuffled through crowds in tiny arcades. A 4th joined us, and we did some highly profitable shopping in the many cheap shops. I bought a mop. It started raining so B and I bought cheap umbrellas, 2 for $6. We went to a cafe to rest and had interesting asian drinks. Mine was avocado and coconut. I wanted banana and coconut but I was told that avocado is nice with coconut. We bought some street food to take home.

E and me dropped in on JK cos she was sick, so we ate even more food. I was so full all day. The public holiday 370 timetable was useless so I had to go home via Central, and walking around the streets I noticed a man in some kind of orange jumpsuit behind me. I couldn't get a good look but I tried to remember his description if he mugged me. When we got to traffic lights I had a sneaky glance and it was a young man in a kangaroo suit. He was wondering why I was carrying a mop around the streets at night. That's not weird.

I was too lazy to wash my hair last night. I last washed it on Saturday. So it's on day 4!!! It does look dirty but I was very cunning. I put my hair in a high pony before bed last night, slept in it, and this morning the pillow had slightly fluffed up my hair so it looks less dirty. I tucked in a few loose bits, voila! Day 4! And my hair-washing cycle is back on track.

Today I received a shirt in the mail. I ordered it last week after about 2 weeks angsting. And I'm going to put the breaks on clothes shopping again. Until at least Summer. And now we are all caught up on my life.

TV land.

Thursday night is pretty good.

The Mindy Project: A dumb show that's on way too late, but I quite like it. Mindy is an OBGYN who wants to live in a rom com. Last night she was on a date with a goofy cute academic, on valentine's day, on the empire state building, and she convinced him that he was in love with his best friend—not her. Silly and I enjoy it.

Little Paris Kitchen: a cooking show. On SBS on Thursday night. French food by Rachel Koo, a cute designy Eurasian with an English accent. Her Paris kitchen is possibly smaller than mine, I like that she doesn't have a kitchenaid and everything. And it's pretty. And she talks French. And she used to be a graphic designer so there is stuff like the title screens between each recipe are written and illustrated by her.

Last night wasn't a TV night. I went to a fancy dinner. The meat was sooo tender. There is a lot of difference in chewyness and flavour between the cheap meat I buy and cook just to force my iron up, and whatever that was. I shared my tip about bread roll consumption (tear it up with your fingers, don't make a sandwich out of it), and learned the correct way for men and women to place their hands in their laps when they are not eating. Men, interlock the fingers, women, place right hand over left as though lightly cupping a fly. I love learning that stuff. It makes interesting small talk.

Vivid 2013 doctor who.

I gave blood last week and my iron was low, the exact minimum allowed. Which is good because I still got to give blood, but I think it explains the nausea I've had, esp in the afternoon, esp on the bus. Google said it was either pregnancy or iron deficiency or something else, so I was guessing the iron thing and trying to eat more beef and take a multi vitamin, and the blood test seems to have confirmed it. So now I'm eating beef every day. It's so annoying to chew.

I went to the Doctor Who night at Vivid. Here are photos. The Doctor Who display was only on that one night, and it was raining. And it's only on once an hour and lasts 5 minutes. Plus a 5 minute countdown. Stingy. Why not every night once an hour? or every 15 minutes on the Saturday? So much effort and so cold and wet.

The lighting was very pretty though, as usual. In fact, water makes everything more reflective and pretty, and umbrellas add pleasing silhouettes. I'm glad I saw the Doctor Who thing anyway, and there was some cute costumes: saw a tardis ball gown, a Matt smith, a Tom baker, and a Dalek. It seems Matt Smith is retiring from being the Doctor, which is sad. I hope they get another unknown.

On Sunday I was way tired. Didn't even brush my hair. Went to the shops and then church.

Finally, you may have missed the video Bec made of Elsie and I having brunch. It's on http://jelssie.blogspot.com.au/. I really want to do it again soon.