Easter in Melbourne

I'm currently sitting at home, still in my PJ's at 3pm, sick from work with my most annoying souvenir from Melbourne - a cold :( Despite the sneezing it was an otherwise awesome holiday jam packed with things I'll never forget.

Tutankhamun Exhibit and Melbourne Museum

Our first adventure was seeing the amazing Tutankhamun exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. After a 4h red eye flight from Perth we managed to sneak in a few hours of sleep at Adam's house before heading out. Even with the Berocca and Nodoze we were still having a bit of trouble staying awake, but the exhibit was wonderful. My favourite thing was one of the treasures pulled from Tutankhamun's tomb - a beaded bracelet with a scarab beetle closing mechanism. I was really hoping they'd have a replica in the gift shop, and they did! However it was $500 so I gave it a miss :(

After lunch we hung around the Melbourne Museum for a bit and saw their fabulous collection of taxidermed animals, rocks and minerals, and bugs. I wasn't expecting it, but to my pleasant surprise it was more of a natural history museum. We even found a bug similar to the one we'd found on our driveway!

To finish off a busy first day, we ended the night with some amateur live comedy for the Melbourne Comedy festival. We entered the "comedy club" (which was actually the 2nd floor living of the first floor bar's owner) dead tired, but Josh Makinda woke us right up with a super funny and intimate show.

Melbourne Zoo

This was the highlight of my trip. The zoo itself was fairly ordinary, but Pooja had organised for us to have a giraffe encounter, which involved getting up close to the elegant animals with a group of 6 friends. We were allowed to feed the giraffes carrots, but we weren't allowed to touch them. They're quite timid animals, and they pull their heads away if you make any sudden movements or try and touch their faces.

I managed to sneak in a quick pat while one of them was trying to pry a carrot piece from my hand with it's long grey tongue. I never thought I'd be so close to such a large and gentle animal!

The Great Ocean Road

We hired a car and spend a couple of days on the road driving to Port Campbell and the 12 Apostles. On the way we saw some awesome sights, like the lighthouse from Around the Twist, and we even had a midnight stroll in the forrest to see some glow worms, which were almost impossible to photograph. I was actually a bit scared about seeing the glow worms - trekking through a forrest in the day is scary enough, but at night surely I would never make it out alive! However it was tourist season so we were accompanied by gaggles of torch wielding forrest explorers, so I felt a little more at ease. The glow worms were very pretty, like little blue fairy lights hung randomly on rocks and ferns.

The 12 Apostles were lovely, but extremely packed with tourists, so we didn't stay too long.

On the way back we stopped to do a tree top walk which made me realise that I have a slight fear of heights! At this point in the trip a few of us had started coming down with a cold so the tree top walk was spotted with bouts of tree top sitting down. My favourite part was looking down on the fields of ferns which looked like big green fireworks.

Melbourne

Back in Melbourne we spent our last day shopping and hanging out at restaurants and cafes. The food in Melbourne was lovely! My food highlight was Dalmatino's, a Croatian restuarant. I ordered the chicken soup with polenta (soothed my cold right down) and a shot of slivovita (plum brandy, also good for my cold). My dessert highlight was the Lindt factory where I had a beautiful hot chocolate and a couple of delicious macrons.

This break was one of those holidays you need a holiday from, but I really enjoyed it. It was lovely to travel with my uni friends, with whom I'd never travelled for some reason, and we packed in a lot of sights so I feel like we definitely got the most out of our trip.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

George has been a Busy Bunny

With Easter coming up, George has had a lot to do!

Charlie Meets George
A couple of days ago, Amy and I executed project Charlie Meets George. Charlie is Amy's King Charles terrier, and George is my pet dwarf lop bunny. We were sure they'd be best of friends!

We let them have a sniff of each other while we each held on to them. George didn't seem too fussed, but Charlie was a little too interested, and was going a bit wide eyed, so we could see that it wasn't going to be the match made in heaven we had hoped for. We let George down, and he hopped away, but didn't seem frightened at all, probably just not too keen on the idea. None the less they both had a good time being fussed over by everyone. I love it when friendship crosses inter-species boundaries!

Mr. Puffington Goes to Work
At my workplace we have a yearly Easter Lunch Celebration where everyone gathers to have lunch and eat way too much chocolate. This year George was the special guest star! I brought George's cage into work with me and he hung out in my cubicle until his big moment. At lunch time I brought him to the meeting room... everyone loved him! George had a very good time, but was very tired from all the treats and pats he was getting.



Happy Easter everyone!

Phoenix at Good Vibrations

The Good Vibrations festival hit Perth last Sunday, with an all round mediocre lineup apart from the almighty Phoenix. We decided to go even though they were really the only act we were keen to see, and I'm so glad we did! If you ever get a chance to see Phoenix, my god take it. I've seen them twice now, and they're my absolute favourite live act to see.

The set list was very similar to their performance last year at Belvoir, with lots of focus on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and a couple thrown in from older albums. The crowd was really great, and you could tell everyone was a fellow Phoenix fanatic since they sung along to all the songs, not only the new ones. My highlights were 1901 and Too Young, and Armistice due to the fact that this is the song Thomas decided to do his famous jump into the crowd thing.

I didn't get to touch him on his first run into the crowd, but he decided to actually crowd surf this time and... I HELD HIS HAND as he surfed on past! He even looked at me and smiled! Even Matt got all giggly because he got to touch Thomas' arm. No one can resist Thomas' charms, sigh.

That Some Crazy Runner's Logic

I just bought an awesome set of PJ's from a site that sells this label:
http://www.steviedaniels.com.au/

I decided to look at the label's about page and was surprised and confused:
http://www.steviedaniels.com.au/about.php

How is this a logical career progression Stevie?!?

Matt's take - "Hi, I am Daniel Milland and professional writing is not something I did. As my great grandfather Bill had a moustache, my pants fit well."

Stevie, you make a mean set of PJ's, but you're messin with my mind man.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Australia!

We spent Australia Day enjoying a sausage sizzle and pool party at Elissa and James's house. Elissa and James don't actually have a pool, so the pool part of "pool party" was fulfilled by having a couple of kiddie pools and a giant slip-n-slide fashioned by James out of a bunch of tarpaulins.

The slip-n-slide was... interesting. The boys had a great time sliding and trying to launch over one of the paddle pools, while the girls had a great time making fools of themselves while trying to do the same.

It was extremely frustrating! It was much harder than it looks, even with two bottles of detergent and shampoo poured over the tarpaulin to make it super slippery.

Despite the injuries it was a fun day of relaxing by the "pool".

What's that Bug?

Last weekend Matt found an awesome bug on our driveway that we almost ran over when we got back from the shops. It was a very fancy cockroach looking thing, with a super shiny head and a grooved shiny body.

He could obviously fly since you can see the wings peeking through, but when I touched him he didn't react. I don't think he was doing so well, but regardless I didn't want us to run him over so I put him on my key and relocated him in the garden.

I tried looking up pictures of shiny beetles but couldn't find anything similar, but then I finally came across an awesome website called What's That Bug. I submitted a picture of our bug and got a prompt answer:

"Hi Jess,

You rescued a Metallic Borer Beetle in the family Buprestidae. Because of their often beautiful coloration and metallic markings they are called Jewel Beetles and they are highly prized by collectors. We believe your individual is in the genus Castiarina and of the numerous individuals pictured on the Coleoptera Buprestidae of Australia webpage, it most resembles Castiarina castelnaudi, though many other species are also quite similar. We verified that by comparing your image to a specimen of Castiarina castelnaudi on the Entomology section of the Agriculture of Western Australia website."

Thanks, What's That Bug! It was so cool to actually find out what the little guy was instead of being curious forever.

Meet George!

Our new pet bunny, George. I've wanted a bunny for as long as I can remember, and George was my (early) Christmas present from Matt.

George is a 9 week old dwarf lop bunny. He's the first bunny I've ever taken care of so I'm still getting used to how to pick him up and cuddle him just right.

I love you George, welcome to our home!

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2010 (updated)

My Votes:

• The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio (#31)
  
• The National - Sorrow (nope)
  
• The National - Lemonworld (nope)
  
• Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (#58)
  
• Tame Impala - Solitude Is Bliss (#33)
  
• Yeasayer - Ambling Alp (#51)
  
• Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun (#55)
  
• Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - Dance The Way I Feel (#3)
  
• Underworld - Scribble (nope)
  
• Chiddy Bang - Opposite Of Adults (#36)
  

Would have loved to fit in:

• Miike Snow - Billie Holiday (nope)
  
• Caribou - Odessa (nope)
  
• Darwin Deez - Radar Detector (#28)
  
• M.I.A - XXXO (nope)
  
• Angus And Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane (#1)
  
• Cee Lo Green - Fuck You (#7)

(Update) There were some surprises! I was positive that Cee Lo Green would take out #1, and all in all I was a bit disappointed with the top 10. However good on Australia for giving The National, Arcade Fire, Tame Impala and Yeasayer so many entries! And thank GOD that stupid Magic Fountain song was low this year (I'm still sore about Parlez Vous Francaise getting #2 last year).

I (or my family) am (are) the Goddess(s) of Death

All hail Jess Manea, Goddess of Death... Rawrrrr

Toyota Hiace Cake

This weekend I made a Hiace cake (with Matt's help) for Cam and Jean's going away dinner. They're still in Perth for another couple of weeks, and then they're off on a trek around Australia in their decked out Hiace van.

For the cake part, I made a rainbow cake using a square cake tin. I cut the square cake in half and stacked the halves to make the general rectangular prism shape of the van.


Next I cut off a section from the top of the cake to make the slanty part of the front windscreen. To do this I used an un-serrated knife and cut very slowly at a 45 degree angle aiming to finish at the join between the two halves.


The body paint of the van is (very thick) butter icing. I find that adding a small amount of milk (about a tablespoon for 50gm of butter and 3 cups of icing sugar) to the mixture makes the colour a lot whiter which was appropriate since the Hiace is white. The icing is a lot thicker than usual so that it got into all the cracks and hid the two layers of cake. I used a large spatula to try and get the surface as smooth as possible, but still ended up with quite a lot of icing streaks.


The windows were done using the same butter icing made blue with a few drops of food colouring. I also added some strawberry essence just to make it different to the white icing taste. Applying the blue over the white icing is quite fiddly. I found that the most effective way was to put a dollop of icing (about half a teaspoon) in the center of where you want the window to be, and then spread it out radially with a knife. You need to push gently so that you don't go through to the white, but if you do it's no big deal, you can just hide it with more blue icing. After the shape is correct, run the knife horizontally very gently along the blue icing so that the streaks go all in one direction.


For the bumper and all the other details I used chocolate butter icing (same as the regular butter icing but with two tablespoons of cocoa powder). I made quite a large batch (30gm of butter and 1 cup of icing sugar) because the details require a piping bag which always takes up a lot of icing. Adding the bumpers is not as hard as adding the windows, but the technique is similar. The hardest bit is getting the icing all the way to the bottom of the cake because you need to use the tip of the knife to push it down. I also added large chocolate buttons for the wheels.


I used the smallest circular nozzle on my piping bag to add rims around the windows, the stripe around the van, and the handles and window wipers. My advice is to spend some money on a good piping bag since I bought a cheapo one that broke half way through (grrrr). This part is quite easy if you have a small nozzle, and it's one of those things that turns out better the less you try! When I was concentrating really hard I went too slowly and the lines turned out wonky. The lines looked smoother when there was a thick stream of fast icing.


For the lights and number plates I used sections of yellow, orange, and red jelly snakes cut to size with scissors. If you press the parts of the snake that have been cut they stick together so the lights are nice and sturdy. I think they give a nice effect because they look sort of see-through :) I really like how the back lights turned out.


For the front head lights I used white chocolate chips. At first I tried using a section of yellow jelly snake but it just didn't look right. Hiace lights aren't actually round, but this was the best I could get it to look. For the side mirrors I used milk chocolate chips with the flat bit pointing toward the "driver".

And there you have it! A Toyota Hiace Camper Van.


Bon voyage Cam and Jean :)