Here I am in Sydney, Australia! It's the 3rd day at the Cisco Proof of Concept lab and boy have we been busy. I left NZ at 7am on Monday morning and it's been pretty much go go go plus some sleeping since then. Though Monday night we did go out for some beers at the German place down at The Rocks.

I'm staying at the Park Regis hotel. It's nothing special but it's nothing terrible either. Mostly just a place to return to and go to sleep! We're here until Friday and we've got lots of work to do. We're getting there at the moment, it's mostly working though there's a few things we've noticed that aren't working properly.

Anyway, I'm busy. Poor Sarah's all by herself though I can talk to her online every now and then. Look forward to having a relax this weekend though, what a...

Bit of a stuff up last Thursday, the one task I had to ensure I did was to take Tui to the cattery. I even took the scooter to work to ensure that I could get home in time before the cattery closed. Problem was that when I got home I was so happy and impressed with our new kitchen bench that I totally forgot to take the cat to the cattery. A bit of a pisspoor excuse really. But yes, I forgot. Instead, I bottled my two beers that have been conditioning nicely, then sat down with a hamburger and a cold beer. You what's even worse? I was patting the cat on the couch and trying to feed her little bits of hamburger. It was until I was out in the shed a bit later on when I spotted the cat cage that I thought to myself "Oh...

Bought a water blaster on the weekend. Have been wanting for since about forever after I borrowed Peter's when we first moved in the clean the driveway. This time around I didn't clean the whole driveway though, it'll take me too long and it got quite dirty quite quickly last time. I did clean the porch properly though. And the gutters. And the side of the shed. And Sarah cleaned a few bits and pieces too because no matter how you look at it, water blasting is quite a lot of fun.

Have been doing a lot of running this week, with the holiday over and October looming quickly it's really time to get into the training. I ran 15.3km today which I'm mighty proud of, though my left knee is still a bit dicky and complaining a bit about it. I rubbed a bit of the magic purple stuff...

This is a video we made for Mum's 60th!

Happy 60th Sallee!

Tim

Back in Auckland and I must say it's not quite as nice as Vanuatu. However there's some excitement because our new kitchen is in progress. At the moment there's just the shells of the new cupboards, but it's quite exciting.

I'm keeping track of the progress if you want to have a look.

The downside of course is that we have no sink. Or dishwasher. Or oven. The sink we're getting around by using the laundry tub, the oven has been replaced by the BBQ and the dishwasher had been replaced with the old manual method involving suds and a scrubbing brush. Not fun!

Tui was very glad to see us, we just managed to get to the cattery a minute before they closed on Friday night after our plane had landed. She's been very needy and meowy all weekend, hopefully she'll be back to normal soon.

Saturday we...

Today it was time to pack up and leave. Sad to go of course, we've had a great holiday in what turned out to be much better weather than we expected, given the forecast. It's been sunny almost every day, there's been a few small batches of rain but that's about it, overall it's been fantastic. The rest of this is a few thoughts from our holiday, boring to anyone but me probably.

I loved how happy everyone is, always laughing and joking with each other. I imagine given the great laugh everyone's always having it's probably a bit hard to get anything done to a serious time frame, but that's part of the fun really. Stuff does happen and things get done, our tour on the Coongoola was a good example, they were about an hour late to pick us up but it still happened and was really lots...

So I started writing this story on Tuesday: Hello from Hideaway Island! We're just sitting here waiting for our lunch, though by the time you read this we'll be back where there's Internet so I can post it.

We caught a bus into town this (Tuesday) morning and then paid 1000 Vatu each for the Mele Island Express bus for the day. It's a hop on hop off type service. First stop was the Tanna coffee factory, where I must confess to buying a kilo of coffee beans ready for my new coffee machine. We also bought a couple of Flat Whites which were very tasty and fresh.

Next stop was The Summit, a lovely tropical garden up a very steep road. We walked around the garden on a guided tour for an hour or so, looking at the really beautiful gardens. I got lots of photos with my phone...

I tried to rescue this crab. It got quite crabby about the whole situation and bit me. Quite hard with its little pincer bitey thing. In the end we rescued it (stuck in the pool) with a pool cleaner. Stupid crab.

Got up nice and early this morning to a lovely sunny day, went down and had breakfast and waited for our ride to come and pick us up to go sailing! Only 45 minutes late (at least they rang to let us know they would be) the van arrived and we piled in the back, ready for a day of snorkelling and sun!

After quite a long drive we eventually arrived at the beach, piled onto a large dingy and motored out to the Coongoola. She's a pretty sturdy old wooden boat, that was "modernised" about 30 years ago. Once everyone else had arrived we motored out and they gave us a quick guide as to what to expect for the day. At least it was still beautiful and sunny, in fact it was all day.

After being under motor for a while we all jumped back into the dingy...