Bhutan national dress

HPIM0114
Originally uploaded by Robubble

Here I am modelling a half kira, wonju (blouse) and toego (open jacket-like garment) for only the second time. I bought them in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu near the end of our trekking trip to the country in April 2003. The other photo of me in it at our hotel in Paro has been viewed a number of times on Geocities so I thought I would revive it. The fabric is very comfortable being silk and cotton but I haven't tried to move extensively in it. A majority of Bhutanese women wear it daily since it was introduced as the national dress in the 17th century to give the Bhutanese a distinctive identity. It and the male equivalent, the gho, is required wear for Bhutanese at all formal occasions and visits to government and religious buildings. Smaller versions form the school uniforms.

HPIM0114

Booderee National Park

Check out the Flickr photos of us at Booderee NP in the ACT bit of the south coast. It was lovely warm weather so we even managed a short swim (good for May). Ryan had a ball at our campsite at Bristol Point (5 mins walk from Greenpatch). We felt relatively childless with the group of 6 dads from Sydney with their tribe of 15? kids nextdoor plus two other groups with children nearby. Their plan was to run them ragged, put them to bed early and then party. Unfortunately for me their partying on the second night and Ryan's very early wakeup added up to no sleep for me. The first morning we had an infant wake us up at 5.30am. On the second morning the kookaburras let rip at 6am whereupon Ryan stood up from his bed and said "Funny bird". Also rather unfortunate was the birds and animals habituated to feeding from kids. We lost a sausage that I was saving for Ryan and a kookaburra took a cheese sandwich right out of Bob's hand as he was eating it.

Toppy

I've been enjoying my Topfield TF5000PVRt (SD digital set top with twin tuners and 250GB hard drive) for 6 months now. It's great except for some glitches where it misses a recording (we lost several episodes of the West Wing). It means that Ryan can have his fix of Bananas in Pyjamas and Thomas the Tank Engine at any time. Usually he sleeps through the afternoon when they're on.
The best thing is watching while its still recording and cutting out the interference on analogue reception from the neighbours' plasma TV, which seems to be on 24/7.
I just updated the software applications you can add functionality to Toppy with:
ProgressBarKeys (a must according to topfield.com.au forum users)
mcgCYRResumeV1.0 (for resuming play after the machine dumps you out when the recording finishes)
Archive1.0
Automove1.8
We're still working through what they've changed.

Almost 2 years

Ryan turns 2 on Easter Sunday. He has a remarkable number of clear words now - it must be close to 200. He now tells us what to do! "Mummy sit", "Daddy drive", "open fridge", "over the bridge"

It seems from some web trawling that my old boss has severed his ties with ANU. I wonder how the newer personnel are working out. Seems most of the women have left! I don't really miss that place apart from them.

I've been uploading some photos from France. It's been good to look at some of the trips and walks we did again. Pat may go to Sophia and Brest in June but I don't think I fancy flying 24 hours with Ryan.

End of NZ holiday

Yes, we're back after 5 weeks (not 4, due to a flight booking stuff up).
All went well. Did lots of camping, some tramping and some tram riding, all in the South Island between Christchurch and Nelson. Ryan enjoyed most things except going in the carrypack after the freedom of walking on his own. He is now in a bit of sleep debt and has happily gone back to long daytime naps (time for me to catch up on some Toppy recorded TV).

I think Sydney had more rain while we were away than NZ did - we had only about 6 days with some rain and only 2 days rain while tramping. My plants survived the hot days. We have to replace the jacaranda and eucalypt that the neighbours removed while we were gone. They think the jacaranda had got into the drains. Now we have a lot more hot sun in in the morning.

Tonight we're getting our monthly DSL dwonload before the end of the month ten minutes ago!