Hello Kitty.

Daisy's mirrors got decorated today, so much cuter than the skulls and things many are attracted to.

Always something to fix.

The battery door on Olivia's camera had a bit of bad luck so I had a go at repairing it. Since plastics and glue seldom work for me I melted a bit of wire into where it had snapped with a soldering iron to hold it together, afterwards I put a spot of pvc cement on it, which I regret doing.
The hardest part of the job was putting the door with its spring back on her camera, I even managed to electrocute myself four times by touching the flash capacitor, but for now things are serviceable again.

International food night.

It's Maraka festival time here, an event that was created to celebrate the finish of the sugar cane crushing season, but now seems to happen in the middle of the crush, anyway it was a good excuse for us to go out, this Philippine food stall had Olivia's interest.

Myself I found this working condition FJ Holden leading a pack of display cars that seemed to be all fairly recent V8s so thus didn't interest me, but this FJ that would be older than me did, not original but no major changes to ruin it, nice.

What was surprising to me was a good choice of lively tunes that added to my already good mood. All of songs were from an age before the surf music hiatus so they were familiar to me, adding to it was the tattooed redhead had a voice, or at least one suitable for her material. It was also good to see a proper double bass, but with that bulk I can understand why those guitar looking basses are used so much now, usually by elderly men wearing long hair wigs I suppose these days.

A good crowd made even better by me not seeing a single smoker while we were there.
The Philippines food booth had a good queue all the time we were there, I'm sure it would have sold out of food, some things were gone already when Olivia grabbed a nibble.

Lunar eclipse.

It certainly isn't the right camera for the job but I've become quite fond of my Olympus SZ-16, and much to my surprise we had a clear sky tonight for this rare event, so I had to try a few shots. I suppose I would have done much better with a camera that has manual settings and a tripod but plenty of other people would have taken the effort.
This was absolutely the best lunar eclipse I've ever seen, in the past every weather god known to the universe has interfered with my view.

Going going gone.

I'll have to reassess my hair loss, I think it's thinning again so now it must be genetic.
I'm overdue for another trim which happily is a fairly easy job these days but keeping it short hides the state of my hair loss.

Ficus variegata, quite possibly at least.

Olivia was very curious about what type of tree this is, I naturally didn't have a clue but of course assumed like most things here that it would be poisonous. I took a few photos and at home noted the fruit had a fig shape, that made searching fairly easy.

It seems some birds do eat them, I might take that in mind next time I see one, I'd love to get a photo of a cassowary sometime.

A little day out.

Olivia and I took a little drive down to Jourama Falls, or at least the parkland near it. The falls involve a very rugged walk that resembles the pathway to Mt Everest and lacks a decent result when you breathlessly achieve it, so we weren't going to put in that sort of effort.
A simple stroll to the swimming hole where turtles lounge about waiting for food from punters like us would satisfy our desire for getting away for a bit, sadly for them I'd read the sign asking us not to feed them, and obeyed. Here Olivia shows me getting ready to shoot a turtle.

And here's what I shot.

Then a short drive further up the road to the gruelling walking track which has been sealed since I was last there in 2007. We would adventure about 200 metres along its flat section before deciding we'd done enough wandering for a day.

 This board was mounted about 4 metres up a tree, quite a mystery to us.

A storybook family, Dad, Mum, boy and girl child plus dog (possibly oblivious to rules forbidding pets from national parks as posted on signs here) strolled past us. It was time for us to wander back, dogs scare me.