Happy Birthday to my dear daughter

Unlike last year on her 30th birthday, this year we won't be spending our daughter's birthday with her... Unfortunately we live on opposite sides of the world - we in Perth, she in Amsterdam.

My dear Karina, we wish you all the success and happiness that you deserve, you're such a hard-working and ambitious girl, close to your family and friends, down to earth and with an enormous empathy for people - young and old, as well as being a globetrotter!

May there always be a smile on your lips and a twinkle in your eyes.

Have a wonderful birthday celebrated among the love of your life and your close friends.

To all the ladies out there I wish you a wonderful "Women's day"!

Karina at 8 years of age in her school uniform

A more recent photo taken at the beach in Fremantle

2016 Sculpture by the Sea - my favourites I

As I mentioned in my previous post, on Sunday my husband and I visited this year's 12th Sculpture by the Sea exhibition at Cottesloe beach. It started on the 4th and runs until the 20th March. 

With works from 77 artists from 19 countries there's a huge variety and styles.
It was the end of the day, the sun going down made photography difficult, plus heaps of people roaming around each sculpture, kids hanging from other sculptures and others having selfies in front of the exhibits, made it quite difficult to get good photos...

But here are some of my favourites:

"Travelling Bag" from Chinese artist Yumin Jing. A massive handbag full of plants was quite striking.

From the Australian artists Suzie Bleach and Andrew Townsend,  this sculpture of a metal horse "A burden" was made of rusty metal and tins.

"Der Traktor" was very popular with kids of course - this mini bobcat dropping pink paint on to the floor was the work of Austrian Markus Hofer.

Western Australian artist Juliet Lea, presented this "Book Cave", which she made by collecting discarded books from the Fremantle libraries, area where she lives.

The kids seemed to also enjoy the cozy cave, a lovely spot to have a story read to them.

A lot of well known authors could be spotted in the book spines of the cave...

The young Australian sculptor Dale Miles, from New South Wale, won the Rio Tinto $50,000 sculpture prize with this brilliant and intriguing "Parallel thinking space".

Made of western red cedar, all the panels in this sculpture have multiple vanishing points making the viewer question what perspective really is. 

This sculpture will be donated by Rio Tinto to be exhibited somewhere in Western Australia.

The sun peeping through the sculpture

I hope you enjoyed my selection for today, I'll show you more soon.

Have a great week!

A week to remember!

As you might have read a few days ago, I celebrated my birthday on the 2nd of March. 
On the way home from the restaurant I said to my husband that I had hoped the Immigration Department had seen my date of birth and had granted us Permanent Residence (PR) as a birthday present to me! 

Well, that almost happened! Early Friday morning (4th March) just before I left for work my husband called me and said "Your present has arrived"! I asked, but what present, had you ordered something for me?
"Didn't you want PR for your birthday" he asked? It has come through, I just got an email from the agent!  Hooray!! I jumped for joy and quickly sent a couple of sms's to advise my family before driving to work!

We had been waiting for close to 7 months since we submitted our application, plus we have been in Australia for 9 years on a Business Sponsorship Visa (457), having had a few hiccups along the way, reason why the whole process as taken so long, so it was long overdue!

Time to Celebrate!!

Saturday some friends came to visit and my lovely daughter in law came over with a pink birthday cake that she iced with cats, specially for me! Isn't it so pretty? She's so talented!

Sunday we joined some friends at Clarko Reserve at Trigg's beach to celebrate their son's 1st birthday (his birthday was actually on the 2nd of March too).

Clarko reserve at Trigg Beach

When the gathering ended just after 2pm, we walked a few hundred metres ahead to check "Mettams Pool", a secluded little bay suitable for wheel-chair users and prams as it has a ramp that goes almost to the water.

Mettams Pool

Back in the car we drove south to Floreat beach where we stayed for a while watching the kite-surfers, something my adventure loving husband would love to do...
As we parked I noticed these two VW limosines that were decked out with wedding ribbons.
I think you will love them Iris!

The bridal couple with the kite-surfers in the background

From Floreat beach we drove further south to Cottesloe beach, where we managed to find a parking spot in all that mayhem of thousand of visitors to the 12th "Sculpture by the Sea exhibition" that started on the 4th of March and ends on the 20th March.

After walking for hours on the sand photographing almost all of the exhibits, when I got up this morning I had trouble walking my legs were so stiff...very unfit as you can imagine!

I'll leave you with a photo taken from the jetty over the beach where you can see the thousands of people. I'll do specific posts for the sculptures soon.

Cottesloe Beach and Indiana Teahouse and Surf Life Saving  quarters (the big building)

In front of the beach my husband found this great pink Mustang from the 60's, what a beauty!

As we left Cottesloe the sun was going down on another perfect day in Perth and we felt lucky to live here.

Hope you all had a great week and weekend. I'm enjoying a lazy Monday as it's a public holiday in Western Australia (Labour day).

Around Perth with my Parents - Kangaroos and Sunsets

On this day we were en route to have lunch with a friend who lives in the northern suburbs we stopped at the Pinnaroo Valley Memorial Park, a cemetery just 22km north of Perth's city centre. Even though it's located a stone's throw from a main freeway, it's such a quiet and restful place and certainly doesn't look like a normal cemetery.

The natural bushland park has ponds and lawns and the kangaroos and other wild life are at home there among the flat bronze plaques. No headstones are permitted here, and the deceased are commemorated with plaques along the walls of the ponds or under trees all over the park.
There's a chapel for burial services and a Cafe as well.

I think this type of cemetery certainly doesn't shock the senses as normal cemeteries, and in such a relaxed atmosphere it's no wonder that this park is also used by joggers and people walking their dogs.

Being Christmas time there was a Christmas tree balloon floating from a bunch of flowers

The bronze plaques along the walls bordering the pond

You can see the extension of the park here

 Driving around we spotted a few groups of kangaroos, here a joey was trying to hide in Mom's pouch. I wonder if he still fits in there? 

This bunch was busy eating flower petals. The cemetery prefers that people don't use fresh flowers, only plastic ones, as the kangaroos tend to eat fresh flowers.

Even though they were being naughty by eating fresh petal leaves, they are so cute...

After the lovely lunch and just before returning home we headed to the beach to see the sunset. A wonderful spectacle that I never tire of!

 

Going down, down, and gone...

My Birthday

Google was the first to congratulate me a couple of hours ahead of time I might say!

It was about 9,30pm on the 1st of March when I switched on my computer and a header with cakes and cupcakes appeared. I clicked on it to find out what it meant and: Ta Da - "Happy birthday Sami" it said!

Big Brother knows it all, but anyway it was quite funny and I even called my husband to come and check my surprise. I presume it must be something new as I had never seen it before.

Lucky for me my birthday fell on my work free day, or was it the other way around?

But's it's not really a work free day, because I use my free day to wash, iron, clean, shop, vacuum... no fun options for a birthday!

So when around lunch time my daughter in law called to say she would be leaving work soon and would I like to go out to lunch with her? But, of course! So I got ready, she picked me up and we headed to the Perth Crown Casino for a lunch at the Carver's buffet restaurant.

One of the Casino's entry

Casino from the Hotel side

The restaurant is entered via the gambling area and we both had a good laugh when one of the security guys asked Sara for her ID. Now she's 28, but very petite, so no wonder he thought she was under 18...  She says she gets that every time she goes into a bottle store too.

We got to the restaurant just 20 minutes before the buffet was closing, but it still gave us time to help ourselves to the main dishes and some dessert. Just before closing the staff were going from table to table to advise that they would be closing if we wanted to help ourselves to anything else. Very nice of them!

Back home after lunch, I chatted to my daughter on skype from South Africa where she's on a business trip.

Then I sat down and watched a bit of TV until my husband arrived home from work and got ready to take me out to dinner.
He chose "The Red Cray" seafood restaurant in Belmont, which was a really good option.
The seafood was fresh, service was friendly and efficient too.

A very hazy photo taken by the waiter at the Red Crab

Oysters done 3 different ways for our Entree

Crayfish Mornay

Chocolate tiramisu and Vanilla Panacotta

Towards the end one of the waitresses came up to me and asked if I was Sami, a friend of S.., I said yes, but how do you know it? When she said her name I remembered that she had looked familiar, but I hadn't seen her in 4 years and she had changed a bit and I didn't know she was back in Perth.

So it was a surprise to see a friendly face.

I have to thank the more than 100 people that sent me sms's, called, posted messages on Facebook and emailed me to wish me Happy Birthday!
A big thank you to all of you!! It really brightened my day.

It's good to be alive and well and have caring friends isn't it?