we have arrived back from safari, and i am a couple of shades browner (bar two triangular bits on my face which somehow escaped the attention of the african sun) feeling enlightened and somewhat sad. tomorrow afternoon our long trip will come to an end with a longer flight. anyhoo, enough of my whinging. for your reading pleasure, let me present for you shalini's top and bottom five summary of the last three months, starting with...

the top five:
number 5: spotting alan rickman on the stairs at the bbc television centre. he looked snarly, but i think that's a default expression in his case. if he'd growled at me, i think i might have fainted clean away...
number 4: wandering around venice, getting lost, and getting found again. venice was so, so marvellous that i didn't even care that the shower in our ensuite bathroom was pretty much over the toilet. eating gelati in the freezing cold was a lovely experience.
number 3: spotting the comet mcnaught on blouberg beach in capetown at twighlight one night. i actually felt a physical jolt as it came into view, and the warm-fuzzies lasted for hours afterward.
number 2: central park. in the middle of such an amazing city, an oasis of calm and beauty. the autumn leaves were poetry, and just walking around in the park was blissful.
number one: safari. all of it. even the bathrooms. but the most amazing thing was of course the animal sightings - the elephants that burst out of the bushes, ears a-flappin', and scared the crap out of us, the sleepy leopard hanging in the tree, the two dozing lions a couple of metres away, the pot-bellied zebras, and the impalas in our campsite. yes, photos to follow.

now, the bottom five...
number 5: losing money in vegas. i know. your heart bleeds, right? next!
number 4: being held back on our first stop by the (indian) passport control guy. it's not as if i wasn't paranoid enough as it was...
number 3: losing it at pisa train station when a series of delays resulted in us losing our first-class train tickets to venice. yes, there were tears, and no, i'm not proud of it.
number 2: arriving in ireland very, very tired due to delays at venice and heathrow which saw us spend seven hours more than we were meant to, inside airports.
number one: the fact that it's over. i'm looking forward to being back in melbourne and catching up with family, friends, news and gossip, but it's been nice being on holiday for such a long time. i know, i know. i'll get over it!
see you on the flipside.

Long time no blog

In this long-overdue blog, I'll list my 5 greatest highlights of the past 3 months:

Watching The Dears on-stage with James, Mikey and friend in Toronto. Oh Bijou! warmed up the audience perfectly, and The Dears rocked us and awed us.

The visit to the top of Table Mountain - a cloudless day turned into a spectacular display of "The Tablecloth" flowing over the top of the mountain, which we watched from above. It is a spectacular site, which may be unique to Capetown. After a change of wind direction and force, The Tablecloth started flowing over us, which darkened the whole area and got me thinking 'so this is what walking through the clouds is like.' The wind picked up further, and suddenly an air-raid type siren started up. It got louder and got louder still and people were frozen or ducking for cover. It got louder and then got louder still, and I was just about to put my hands to my ears when it stopped, and an announcement ordered everyone to the cable car and down the mountain, due to high wind. We jumped in the car and went to the top of Signal Hill to watch the sunset and spot the McNaught Comet.

A wild, trumpeting elephant shaking it's head and trunk to scare us off at Kruger National Park. She was protecting a young calf, and didn't appreciate us hanging around so close. Better than a fun-park!

The Annual Andy Kaufman Award Competition at Carolines in New York City. Surreal, abstract and bizarre stuff by talented young comics.

Alcohol-assisted sing-along at the O'Farrells in Dublin, St Stephen's day (which is Boxing Day to most of us) Tony O'Farrell on keyboard (Liam says 'O-oh') joined by the choir of boozy bleaters, all of us. Bohemian Rapsody must have been heard in Belfast.

The 4 greatest lowlights

Slipping down Steve's staircase, bruising the buggery out of most of my toes and, I strongly suspect, straining the ligaments in two. Turned me into a slow-walker for a week.

Flight cancellation at Einhoven airport due to fog. Probably enough said about that already.

Finding we'd left the power adapter for our laptop in another country. Quite hard to come by quickly, the ones for a Sony Viao anyway... Battery's dead now, and I'll have to find another in Melbourne.

Some Kiwi idiot at the reception of The Mount Royale in NYC, complaining that the hostel does not have a fax machine. She was ignorant, racist and embarrassing. I guess I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for lowlights, but they just don't spring to mind.

feelin' the heat in cape town

hi everybody! apologies for the delay in communication, but we've had some technology hiccups along the way. more on that later though. we are now in sunny, beautiful cape town, and have been since last wednesday. it was such a change to come from the chilly london weather to this, but it's not something i'm going to complain about! it's hot but the sea breeze is cool - we're not far from the city, and the sea is just round the corner. it's blissful.
re-cap on the last days in london - we made it to the behind-the-scenes bbc tour fifteen minutes late, but were able to join up with the group in the newsroom. the tour was great, got the old longing to to do fillum or tv writing happening again. at the end of the tour we went into an interactive studio and did a quiz show thing - i volunteered to be ine of the contestants because there were prizes on offer! they showed a clip of little britain and asked questions after. yes, i won, and was duly presented with a bbc breakfast mug (more on that also later...). anyway, in a question-and-answer session i asked which studio goodness gracious me was shot in, and one of the tour guides said he'd worked on the show. later in the gift shop (befpre i bought the full series of goodness gracious me on dvd), i cornered the tour guy and gave him some of my business cards... though i forgot to ask him for one of his! dooofus... anyway, one degree of separation now between me and meera syal. that's good enough for me (for the moment! ha ha.). after the tour we went on to the national gallery, where we had 'high tea' before wandering through looking at paintings. we managed to get lost in the labyrinthine building and spent the last fifteen minutes running around like mad people trying to find *the right cloakroom* (they had a few). we then made our way back to will's place, and went out for a drink at 'ye olde mitre tavern' (appparently queen elizabeth used to get drunk there and pick up boys), then dinner at a thai place down the road. all in all, lovely last day, and a great stay in london (though i want to go back already and stay for a while). thank you will and cam for taking us in for the week!
travel to cape town went as smoothly as can be expected, except on landing we realised that a) we let the power chord for the laptop at will's place, and b) i also seemed to have misplaced my ankles somewhere. we'll save you the trauma of photos of another pair or malfunctioning feet, but th swelling went down after a couple of days. now on the last long-haul flight between jo'berg and sydney i'll be sporting a pair of very fashionble taupe flight-tights. i think i'll wear trackies and sandals to complete the look...
anyway capetown is lovely, been meeting up with mark's extended family here, and it's been great. we've been to boulders beach and had a swim with the penguins that wander about freely there - really makes you question why people wait in the freezing cold to see the phillip island fairy penguins waddle past in the dark, really. as soon as we can sort out our iss-yews with picasa, we'll upload penguin pictures for you, and you'll understand! i have also had my hair braided in the market place - it should last a month so i will most likely be able to bring it back with me to melbourne (i like useful souveneirs!). yesterday we spent the day touring wineries, which was just scrumptious. then last night we went to the beach to see if we could spot comet mcnaught - and we did! it was amazing, larger than any of us had expected, and as the night fell its tail got longer and brighter. it was a magical thing - we got photos of that, too. so will let you have them as soon as we can.
going out dancing tonight, and out and about with cousins over the weekend. next week we are off on safari to kruger - looking forward to that! must start malaria tablets today. we'll be back on the first of feb, but will try and blog one more time before then. have fun! see you soon!

LDN

ah yes, it's been a while. apologies. i consider myself throughly told off, and am really really ashamed of myself.
righto then, moving right along... london. we have been here since wednesday last, and leave wednesday coming. which leaves us with one whole day tomorrow - but before i tell you what we have planned for that, i'll fill you in on what we did with the our other london days.
we got here on wednesday afternoon and made our way to will and cam's place in london with no complications. turns out they live two doors down from the cafe that beck's sister meg used to work at when she was living la vida london. once everyone was home we went down to to the shops and came back with supplies - we had a beer and curry night in, and caught up. on thursday mark and i braved tge underground, and began & ended our first day with london cliches - buckingham palace and a play. we wandered from buckingham palace past big ben and to the london eye, on which we went for a ride - yes it was expensive but it was a lovely clear day, blue skies and fluffy clouds, so we thought we'd make the most of it. after our slow spin on the big ferris wheel we wandered around town, and found leicester square. we bought half-price tickets to a play called 'love song' starring neve campbell and michael mckean. we had an hour or so to kill before the show so we wandered around some more, and stumbled across a place that had a really good happy hour deal on cocktails. mark reasoned that it would work out cheaper to get a jug of cocktails instead of individual glasses. i liked where he was going with this line of reasoning, so did not argue with his logic. we sipped and people-watched, then watched the play, then came home and slept like babies.
on friday we went to the national portrait gallery. the great thing about london is that all the galleries are free these days. anyway we spent some hours there looking at all the art, then decided it was time for refreshment. we grabbed some cheap food then (burger king if you must know, we had 'buy one get one free' vouchers i'd ripped out of free papers - are you proud of me or what??) we wandered around picadilly circus and found the absolut ice bar. i had heard about this place, and it was quite inmpressive - the whole bar is made of ice, even the glasses they serve your drinks in. they give you a cape and gloves and you go in, and the bar and the walls and tables are all ice, and the cocktails are all absolut vodka based. i had one made out of absolut peppar and i think i could make that my new signature beverage. pepper vodka tastes great with pineapple juice. anyway, after there we came back home to see if will had finished work and wanted to go out for a beer, but he had a hard couple of days and didn't finish till around 10 - so we got some beers and played upwords till a lot later.
saturday we decided we'd go and find the door on portobello road - the one from the movie notting hill. so we caught the tube out half way to notting hill, but there were trackworks and we had to catch a bus the rest of the way. we saw a bus labellled 'portobello road markets' and hopped on it... and realised about twenty monutes later that we'd caught it on the wrong side of the road. so we hopped off, waited in the rain for ten minutes and caught the same bus on the other side of the road... by the time we got to portobello road the markets were done, so we found a cafe and had a late lunch. wasn't alll in vain though, we found the door and took a photo of it, like the true tourists we are. we then caught a train out to wimbledon to catch up with arani and tharani, twins whom i went to primary school with in fiji. we had dinner and caught up with them which was a great laugh, and ended up crashing at their place that night. the next day we all had breakfast together and then we set off back for home. despite our difficulties finding portobello markets the day beforem, we decided to search foir brick lane on the way home. found it, wandered through it - was a lot like foster road, only more so. lots of indian restaurants and sweet shops plying hindi music out onto the street... we found the spitalfield markets and browsed a bit before coming back home to meet up with will and penny. we caught a movie and then went out for dinner and drinks - all in all an excellent sunday evening.
monday - today - we got ooff to a bit of a slow start. i went to kensington palace and saw the diana photo exhibition - the beautiful last photo shoot she had with mario testino. it was a lovely afternoon, and even though it was drizzling lightly the whole time i was walking to and from the palace, i felt as though i could live here. i would like to give that go go one of these days actually - i wonder if i will ever get to live in london *and* new york, though. ah, well. you never know. after a lovely yum-cha lunch we went on to the tate modern gallery, but we got there a little too late. they have these massive tube slides in there that go from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors down to the ground, but you have to get there early to get a ticket for them. they are free, so they go fast... we might try and go there early tomoroow morning, or maybe even wednesday before we leave. this evening mark and will and i went on a 'jack the ripper' walking tour of london which was interesting in a slightly morbid way. and i though i'd blog before goung off to bed, so i hope you're enjoying the read! tomorrow we are going on a behind-the-scenes tour at bbc tv, and i am hoping to fit in high tea at the ritz. that would be lovely.
anyway, take care all and we'll post pics soon.