The lazy days in Newcastle continued, with my usual long walks including one along the beaches in light rain:
I visited old friends:
And their pets:
Or, in this case, a frog living in Sue’s pond:
I (over!) ate delicious food:
Caught up with the relatives:
And – the reason I’m here of course – had the usual fun with mum and dad:
Tomorrow I’m off to Sydney for a brief stay before Tokyo! I feel like the crazy part of this trip is just about to start 🙂
Went to the Newcastle fireworks with Sue and her family, but nature had other ideas and put on a spectacular show of her own:
It’s the only rain I’ve seen so far, and only lasted a couple of hours. I was home and slept through midnight as usual. Happy New Year!
I’ve been catching up with friends a lot: a swim in the ocean baths with K, lunch with M and a scenic drive with S:
And there’s been a bit of this:
And this:
And of course this:
Hrm… what am I painting with my Crayola watercolors?
Lazy days in Newcastle then, albeit with a lot of walking in hot, hot sun. I don’t want to push myself too hard with Tokyo on the horizon 🙂
I went and saw Aquaman yesterday, at an impressively early 9:30 am screening. I momentarily baulked at the ticket price…
But then remembered that the film was going to be awesome and couldn’t throw my cash at the attendant fast enough!
The cinema was crazy big. I dutifully sat in my assigned seat (N-16) and when the projector started I was the only person in there! But then I noticed the first half hour or so were just adverts (including many social engineering PSA’s: exercise more, don’t stay in the sun, start a savings account, etc.) and sure enough the locals knowledgeable about such things shuffled in just before the main show.
Aquaman is about a fish-powered dude that fights a lot and seems to wish he was actually a professional wrestler. I’m not going to spoil the overall plot here but I’ll say it starts off strong and within minutes I was intrigued:
Aquaman’s powers are a cross between Superman and Yoda and are frankly absurd (why is he bulletproof?!?) but you won’t question them because after the crazy start the film quickly evolves into madness and then ascends into bonkers territory.
This was my face during the political scene between the aryan riding the zeuglodon and the Viking riding the dragon:
And then when they introduced a pretty redhead fish girl and the film briefly stopped being about fish and became Indiana Jones meets Jurassic Park I was slackjawed.
This was my face when the murlocs (from World of Warcraft) turned up:
But it wasn’t even close to done! When a futuristic city sequence that makes Blade Runner look like the scribblings of a child was followed by a space battle that featured not one, not 1000, not 1000000, but every fish I was just roaring at the screen with joy:
There’s much to love about the film. Its visuals and design are astonishing, its script unfettered by tradition, its actors unconstrained by expectation and it’s easily got the best depiction of cetacean armies fighting a billion crabs that have ever been printed to celluloid.
It makes you feel every emotion, from love to hate to glee and yes, to terror. It’s unfettered fun, and easily gets my highest recommendation. Best fish war film ever by a mile.
Immediately afterwards I languidly strolled over to the Game Center and found a coin-pusher machine:
I was so full of DC comics appreciation I had to win a card, and quickly targeted this Batman that was right at the edge:
As you can see it was about to drop! So close in fact that a shift of only one atom would have caused it to fall…
…
…it only cost me $25 to ‘win’ it 🙂
My trip here was the usual horrible slog. It took me 37 hours to get from Albany to my parents house and I didn’t sleep at all. I’m getting too old for this!
I’ve been here a few days now and they’ve been busy! Bernard and Lakshmi we’re here the day I arrived and we had a brief shop and then dinner. To be honest I don’t remember it with great clarity due to the jetlag! But they’re gone now although I’ll reunite with him soon in Tokyo.
On the second day I walked all around the local area doing my annual catch-up. A lot has changed even in one year, especially in the CBD! The past continues to fade…
It was very hot – about 95F – but I was well covered with sunblock and managed to avoid a burn. Still, that heat can be draining so it’s important to keep hydrated:
Yesterday I went and met this chap in an air conditioned club for some card flopping:
It was so much fun we’ll do it again next Sunday 🙂
It’s the last day of 2019 and I’m off to see Aquaman (which everyone assures me is great) before watching fireworks later tonight. Happy New Year!
Distilling a year into ten photos is never easy, but this year was particularly tough. Furthermore whilst this post tends to prioritize vacation shots, that’s only because I’ve sorted them way better than the normal day-to-day photos, so there’s probably a few gems that should have been here that aren’t.
The year began, as it usually does, in Oz:
Bernard and I went on a lengthy road trip from the Southern Ocean all the way up to Newcastle and had a blast on the way. We even ran into notorious Australian terrorist Ned Kelly at one point:
In March KLS and I went to the city for the first of three trips this year. It was cold but fun, and we lived like the urbanites we are for a few days:
Our first international vacation was to Scotland, otherwise known as the prettiest country on Earth. This was one of those dream vacations we’ll never forget, and in our little car we saw the length and breadth of the highlands and hebrides islands and enjoyed one amazing day after another, like the puffins on Staffa:
Or the standing stones on Orkney:
Or even just eating fish’n’chips at the northernmost town in Great Britain:
During the summer Bernard and Lakshmi visited! Here we are deep in a dungeon:
We went on another vacation too. After a brief stop in Portland for Florence’s wedding (insert heart emoji here) we jetted off to Hawaii for fun in the sun… and a hurricane!
The first four days were beautiful and warm and sunny and we spent a lot of time at or on the beaches. But then this happened:
And next thing you know the beaches emptied and people wrote SOS in the sand:
As you know we were lucky and the storm dissolved before reaching us. But that was certainly an interesting and memorable experience, and one I don’t want to soon repeat!
I’ll end with a shot of my lovely friend Yossie, which just shows you don’t have to go to exotic places to take photos you’ll treasure forever:
So thats the year in a nutshell. A good one; a memorable one. I hope you enjoyed the blog in 2018.
What’s next? Well in a week I’ll be in Oz once again, and mid January I’ll be flying from Sydney to Tokyo where I’ll meet Bernard for a week of otaku madness. I think it’s safe to say there’ll certainly be some photos worth seeing here in the next few weeks…