weekend away was excellent. it was particularly gratifying seeing all the traffic backed up on the way to the yarra valley when we had already spent some quality time there and were on our way back into melbourne on friday. we had the whole place to ourselves where we stayed, which was nice (if a little weird - i felt like we were trespassing on someone else's private property). we wandered around the property, round the vineyards and gardens, and in the evenings when we would come home from dinner, we'd scare groups of little rabbits that had come in to nibble on fallen grapes. we decided they were easter bunnies, and the grapes were their easter egg equivalents. then on on sunday we went to holi celebrations at the shiva vishnu temple in carrum downs. i had gone there with mark and dipu two years ago, but this year it was so different. it was huge! there would have been at least five thousand people there. the setup was the same, with the food stalls, dvd stalls, sweets and everything, but this time there were also several rides for the kiddies (dodgems and a jumping castle and a few others), stalls selling clothes and silly string and bangles and bindis. there were even people doing mendhi designs on people's hands - an indian version of face painting, i guess. the rangoli went off as usual - i think i stayed clean for about ten minutes - i got attacked as soon as i armed myself with pouches of coloured powder. it was excellent to see so many people there - mostly indian, though it was hard to pick the non-indians by the end of it because everyone was so covered in colour they ended up looking like teletubbies. that evening, after we all washed the colour away and vegged in front of the telly, we watched on the news how people around australia had celebrated easter. i was a little put out by that - after all, the weekend meant different things to different people, and it would have been nice to have seen even a tiny mention of the holi celebrations on the six o'clock news. oh well, who knows? maybe next year there'll be a news crew - maybe i can tip them off, even. but seeing as the anz bank actually had a stall at holi, trying brazenly to tout personal loans right next to the bhangra pit, maybe i won't have to do anything about getting the word out there. disturbing, but true.