The worst phone call in the world

Well that was a kick in the stomach to say the least!  Just had a phone call from Ash to tell me that our last grandparent (my nan) has just passed away in her sleep (05:15) this morning.  I'm actually quite glad to hear it as although I've not been there to see her, I've heard some awful stories about how she was and the amount of pain she's been in and just wanted it to be over for her.

The worst thing about it is that my parents are visiting me and some of our relatives in New Zealand and left the UK last night so are currently en-route to Australia, somewhere between Dubai and Sydney.  The last time one of our grandparents died (Pop - on my dad's side) I had the unenviable task of informing dad that Pop was first looking extremely close to death and then actually telling him that he had died whilst dad was on a cruise holiday, and was something I didn't ever want to have to do again.  This time I have to do it for my mum (although hopefully she'll be pre-warned as Ash has sent a text which they may get if dad switches his phone on when they land) but it'll still be a pretty awful thing to have to do.

I currently have no idea whether they are going to cut short their holiday, or if they're going to go back, and if they do, whether I'm going to go back with them.  I really want to, so I might switch my holiday back home that I was planning for August to now if I can make the funeral.  Will have to discuss this more with the parents when they arrive and let it settle in.

Hopefully the rest of the week will get a bit better.

Skype - bloody great!

Since I bought a new laptop a couple of weeks ago I've been coming back into the modern world with things it can do that my old one couldn't - or was too slow to do.  One of those is Skyping.

We stuck it on the mac last week and had the first chat with people back home yesterday - Em's ma and Giles, plus the odd appearance by one of the cats as they wandered by, or should that be "one of the cats as they were captured and brought to the screen"!?  Think Em was well chuffed to have seen as well as spoken to them - is a great way of feeling like you really are talking to someone.

If anyone wants to say hello, we are now running on the skype name of:

terrigal_towers

It'll be great to hear from you all!

balcony blocade

I figured it was about time to show you our adopted pet.  Well I say pet, more like pest, but as none of us is brave enough to remove her we figure we'll just have to live together.  She is a real man-eater as we have witnessed a few weeks ago when she devoured her mate and then left him hanging until the rain washed him away.  She currently has built her home across most of our balcony so we no longer go out there :-(

Is that a shark?!?!?

Spent this morning recovering from our night out for Izzy's birthday.  Went to Terrigal Thai for food and had a bizarre woman serving us - we'd booked a table for 5 but Alex couldn't make it for the main meal but was turning up a bit later for dessert.  When we told the waitress that she'd be there later she said "yeah, right!" and took the place setting away.  We couldn't fathom this as first, if we were lying that there was a fifth person coming, what would we have booked a table for 5 for, and secondly if you were a waitress and the table said somewone else would be coming, don't you think you'd want to make sure that even if there was the slightest chance of that person coming that you'd want to keep them sweet so that they spent more money with you??

Anyway, Alex did turn up as we were finishing our main course, but we decided against a dessert and instead headed off to the Lord Ashley in the Crown Plaza for cocktails, which for the girls was basically pudding in a glass!  Came home and watched the video for Soulja Boy's Crank That which has become somewhat of a house thing lately and then played a few games on the console before heading off to bed at around 1.30am.

Got up around midday and had a fry-up, mainly because there was no milk in the fridge and the bacon was out of date in a couple of days.  Sat playing with macs with Izzy - found out how we can share our music across the wireless network which is pretty fancy, and set up bluetooth filesharing which is dead useful when trying to get photos from one machine to the other.

Went off for a run this afternoon with Iz and after making it to the end of the beach in one hit (a first for Izzy) we sat down and chatted for a bit before I spotted a few fins in the water and initially thought, is that a shark!??!?  I then realised that it was a pod of dolphins making their way up the coast.  They even put on a display for us as they reached us, surfing the waves towards the shore and jumping around in the waves.  We could even see them swimming through the waves as the water is so clear here.  It was really cool to watch!!  We are both unsure as to how we'd have reacted if we'd seen them whilst out surfing; do you piss yourself and run for the beach because you've seen a fin, or go play with them and tell people that you've swum with dolphins.  I'd want to say the latter, but I reckon in the heat of the moment we'd have run for the beach!

Birthdays and Surfdays

It was Izzy's birthday today and me and Em had planned a good day for her seeing as we are all away from our families and that it would just be the three of us around for the day.

Last night Iz and I finally turned in to bed at 1.30am and then began my mammoth ballon inflation session.  50 ballons and a good three quarters of an hour later I'd blown them all up and then I just had to set out the house for the morning.  Banners and a plethora of Winnie the Pooh birthday goodies were laid out and I finally went to bed at 3am.

Got up at half 8 for the first part of our surprise day we'd got installed.  Iz got up at 9 and was amazed by the house.  birthday horns were blown and she opened her mum and dad's present followed by us telling her we'd bought her a surf lesson which started at 10 at the next beach down the road.  So we hastily got changed (I'd decided to tag along for the lesson) into our wetsuits and jumped in the car.  Em had just got off nights and was going to laze on the beach taking piccies of us while we had fun.

Shane was our instructor, a former pro world tour surfer.  He was a good laugh and a great teacher and got me standing on my first wave and Iz on about her second or third.  We stayed out there for 2 hours (he gave us some extra time as it was her birthday) and caught loads of waves ... as well as being dumped by just as many, but hey - that's half the fun isn't it?!

We headed back to the flat after the lesson and Iz opened our presents and then we headed out to the Crown Plaza hotel for some lunch followed by an ice cream on the beach.  I forgot to say that it was dead sunny and warm today (a good 21 degrees).

We then took Iz to part 2 of her surprise - an hour long massage at an aromatheraphy/reiki/sports therapy massage parlour.  She loved it which was cool as she'd never had one before.

When she got back we then cut the cake - a chocolate marble cake which she normally has for her birthday - her ma's recipe - accompanied with Tasmanian Jansz champagne.

Just about to go out for food now, so will write more later!

I'm a Mac

After much deliberation I've gone and bought myself an Apple Macbook.  I've been pondering whether to buy one for a month or more, and decided that the pros out-weighed the cons.  After growing up with Windows and Microsoft, it may take some time to get fully used to the new system, so I hope that it doesn't mean that I screw anything up as there's no brother to call on for help!

Surf's up!

This week a few of the UK doctors left to go back home after spending up to 8 months out here working at the same hospital as Em and Izzy.  Chrissy was trying to find a home for her surfboard and Iz was interested so we went round there to have a look-see.

We've started to realise that although our house is amazing, it isn't quite up to the same level as a lot of the other housing around here.  Chrissy's house was a 3 level affair with an enourmous living area on the top floor the size of the entire top floor of our house.  They even had a swimming pool!!  Any-hoo, after much ogling of their place and a cuppa later, we went back down to the garage and bought the board.  It is a mal (7'6" epoxy board) with a rather fetching pink frangipan design which Iz fell in love with.  

Went out on Wednesday to buy a wetsuit for Iz, and for me to have a look at the boards and see if I want to get one.  Half an hour of Iz trying on wetsuits gave me ample time to decide to buy both a suit and board, basically the men's version of Izzy's (blue stripes instead of flowers!!).  Spent a good three hours in the water on Weds, leaving only when it started going dark and I realised I had to get food ready before Em went to work that night.  Managed to kneel up and half stand in between being thrown off the board, sharing waves with fish and Iz being licked to death by a passing dog when she got washed up to shore on a really big wave.

Plan to go do more this week - will see if I can get Em to come along and take some piccies to show you all.  (Yes I suddenly realised today when Dad said it had been a month or so since the last blog that I've not added anything since Tasmania!)

Decided?? .... yeah right!

Well that decision didn't stay as it was for long!!

Em got her rotations back through from Jersey and we spent a bit more time researching living on the island and found that it really is pretty bad if you want to get work there and aren't born and bred jersey.  With the fact that I wouldn't be able to earn much well and truly confirmed from this research and asking a couple of questions of the helpful ladies at the Jersey NHS recruitment office; plus the information from Jersey that Emma hadn't got her favoured rotation of Anaesthetics made us realise that if she had stayed here in Australia we would have been far better off.

Queue grovelling email to the Wessex Deanery and an anxious two week long wait to see what came of it.  Finally it came and it was good news.  They had agreed that we were in an exceptional situation and that Jersey is a very specific set of conditions which would have caused us to potentially struggle next year.

So suffice to say we are dead chuffed that we are now staying down under for another year!  We are going to be coming back to the UK in July to use the return tickets that we bought and spend a week or more with the parents and visiting friends.