The Chambers

What we get up to….

Photo taken while staying at the wonderful Sausage Tree Camp, Zambia. Here we are fishing on the banks of the Zambezi, one eye on the River on the lookout for Alligators, another on the lookout for Hippos, another on the lookout for Lions, another on the lookout for Elephants :)

Monthly Archives: January 2009

Photos from our Disney Cruise

Our 100th post! *yawn*

This weekend I’ve worked my way through another big chunk of the 2,600 or whatever photos we took and have now picked out my favs from the Disney Cruise.

Click this link to see a nice big slideshow (you know you want too!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612939854559/show/

Watch the piccies here:

Some of my favs from this lot:
Photographic evidence of Jackson having a doughnut for breakfast
The shots of Kylie and I’s toes with the Caribbean waters in the background
The price of water vs beer in the Caribbean

Photos from Kennedy Space Centre

Allo, allo! Happy Australia Day long weekend!

This morning I sorted through the photos from our time in Port Canaveral and at the Kennedy Space Centre. I’ve put them into a slideshow:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612900843609/show/

Or you can view them here, but it’s better in the bigger slide show you will see by clicking the link above

The receipt looks wierd as a photo, but it was from the restaurant we went too and they had some great items on the meal. Spicy Taters, which is fried balls of mash potato with Jalapenos through it and Fried Beer Shrimp (speaks for itself!)

The Kennedy Space Ctr is an amazing place, where the native fauna thrives under protection of a “National Park” type set up. We saw many ‘gators, some massive Eagles and vultures. The tour was great as you tripped around on bus to several stops and took in stories of the USA’s magnificent defeat of outer space (that’s how the story was told in places I thought) and of some of the tragedies of the space race. A great facility and way to spend a day!

enjoy

ps – yes, I’ve skipped over New York, photos to come soon enough….

A day out at the Brisbane International

Yesterday Mum and I went to the Brisbane International Tennis tournament at the newly opened Queensland Tennis Centre. It was the first time I had been to a live tennis match since mum and dad took us to Melbourne for the Australian Open ages ago and we saw Steffi Graf play. Bob Hawke was in the crowd that day, apparently listening to the horse races on his handheld transistor (could you see Kevin07 doing that?)

We had a great day yesterday, getting there early and being in line so that we could see the first match.

The stadium and grounds themselves are easy enough to get too. Dad dropped us off, but we had free train travel included with our tickets and caught the train after the tennis from the Yerongpilly station. That was one piece of confusion for us – how to get to and from the stadium. Everything we read said to go to Corinda and get a shuttle bus, but the Yerongpilly station is only a 10 minute walk over pretty flat ground. I’d recommend going to Yerongpilly and walking.

The main arena – the Pat Rafter arena – is very impressive. It seats 5,500 and is an intimate arena with everyone pretty close to the action. Our seats were row BB – very close – but right behind the umpires chair. We got to see the players up close as they came for a rest at the change of ends, etc. I’d suggest trying to get any seats which you access from doors 6 or 7 for a really good view, these are opposite the umpire / players, but will be unobstructed by the umpires chair / tv camera which were stationed by the umpire.

There were three matches to play during the day session and we got to see two of the matches. The stand out highlight was the women’s singles match which was first up, with Amelia Mauresmo playing Julie Coin (Prononced Kwon). That match ended up being an epic 3 hour plus match, which went the full distance of three sets and a tiebreaking third set. Coin could have won the match a couple of times, but in the end Mauresmo won out. It was a very entertaining match – both ladies would have been completely worn out by the end of it, but they put on a great match.

Today Amelie Mauresmo plays Ana Ivanovic which should be a great match.

The food situation was a little grim, with limited choice. This could be something that is worked on I think. I’d suggest some strawberries and cream, a la Wimbeldon or another signature Queensland fruit / cream dish ;)

All in all a great day out and I can highly recommend a visit to the Queensland Tennis Centre to watch a match. I’ll be gong back next year.

More info from:

Queensland’s definitive holiday web site: http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au/events/brisbane-international-austalian-open-series

or

The official Brisbane International web site http://www.brisbaneinternational.com.au

piccies

Photos from our day at Yosemite National Park

For some reason, in spite of me knowing full well Yogi was from JellyStone National Park, whenever I think of Yosemite National Park, I think of that great Yogi Bear line “Smarter than the average bear booboo….”

I can’t explain how beautiful the Yosemite National Park is. This pictures do go part the way to showing you and I’m glad we did get a couple of great shots to share.

The tour to the Yosemite NP was a long day, we were up and getting ready at about 5am and we didnt get home until about 15 hours later. But, it was worth it.

We saw waterfalls – BIG waterfalls, beautiful granite cliff faces, dense forest, hiked to huge sequioa trees, stopped at magnificent look outs and had a lovely pickernick lunch by a creek.

A top day – worth the 6 hours travel on a bud for sure!

Click this link for the big slideshow with the cqptions and descriptions:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612236645596/show/

Watch this for no captions / descriptions

A few photos from San Francisco

So, I’ve got onto a bit of a roll with the uploading and organising of our photos and managed to get our photos from in the city of San Francisco sorted. We didn’t take many in town. We were there three nights, which was two full days and one day we went to the Napa Valley and the next we went to Yosemite. So, we didn’t spend much time in town itself. Anyways, we got a few good shots in!

Same deal as the other set. Click the first link to go through to a slideshow (recommended), or if you’re lazy (or not really that interested in captions and the like) watch the slideshow below.

:)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612182587203/show/

Chris

Photos from our visit to the Napa Valley

One of my 2009 goals is to make sure that I do get the photos from our 2008 visit to the USA up onto the information super-highway and share them with family, friends and anyone else who wants to take a look-and-see.

We took 2,183 photos while we were away. Not anywhere near all of them are good, but there are some great ones. The plan is to get them all tagged in an orderly manner and sorted into sets on flickr and then post slideshows here on the blog. I’m then going to pick 42 photos (1 for each day we were away) and put them into a slideshow.

After that’s all done, I can start on 07′s trip…..

Without further delay, here’s some happy snaps from the Napa Valley!

You will get a better view and captions / descriptions if you click this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612167795221/show/

I have also set these up like a slideshow, press play to activate and then the left and right keys to scroll through the photos. But, it would be better if you clicked the link above as the slideshow below does not have captions or descriptions…..

We had a great day out there. Thanks Rick from Blue Heron Tours for his hospitality on the day.

cc

ewwww, we’re supposed to drink this forever!?

After being on the road for quite a while we returned home to a house which had not been lived in for 6 weeks. There were some things which needed tending too, as I’m sure you can imagine. The lawn had been long, but was mown by dad just before we got back (thanks dad!), the house was a bit musty but we opened up the windows and let some fresh air in and the water tasted a little off. I thought it was just that no-one had run water through the pipes for six weeks….

I think the water tastes like algae. It smells off and tastes yuck, so I’ve been boiling the water and then cooling it in the fridge!

I thought it would pass…. I was wrong!

A little bit of google searching and I came across these articles:


ABC Article

Courier Mail article

Random blog post

Blech, apparently fluoride has been added to our water while we’ve been away and it makes the water taste disgusting!

Anna Bligh had this to say

Ms Bligh says it will take some days for the fluoride to reach household taps but there will be no difference to the taste.

rubbish! it’s disgusting…

I’m sure over time we’ll get use to it, but the time being I’m off to buy some bottled water today and starting to look into water filters… In the meantime, I’m drinking water from the pool.

Havai’i wrap up

This update is being written from Row 48 of QF4 heading from Honolulu International Airport to Sydney. I’m glad to be heading home and am looking forward to unpacking all this stuff we’ve accumulated and having a week off at Casa del Chambers in downtown Wakerley before getting back to work.

I eventually got around to posting this note just now…

Hawaii was a very different kind of part of our holiday. One of the great things about such a long holiday is the many different types of places we visit and many different things we get to do. We also enjoy very different types of holidays within our holiday, in some way we had six holidays in one! Some of the Americans we met on our holiday were amazed at all the stuff we were doing. There’s a great stat about how few Americans own a passport. It’s in the single digits of percentage of the total population which own a passport. There’s a line there about them thinking that they are the centre of the world and the world doesn’t actually exist beyond their boundaries, but I won’t use it. I saw an even more interesting stat which reflected on how few Americans actually leave their own home state. If we didn’t know before, we sure realise now how lucky we are to enjoy such an amazing holiday and see such wonderful things!

As I mentioned, Hawaii was very different to the other parts of our holiday. In a laid back and warm way, it was great. We were joined in Hawaii by Kylie’s mum and dad for the six nights we were going to be there. They had been in Hawaii for a few days before we arrived, including being there for Christmas. It was great to see them.

We didn’t have an awful lot planned for Hawaii, except to have a car for three of the days we were in town and go for a drive around the island and see the sights.

On our first day we did a loop around the island, which took us to the “dole” (pineapple) plantation (think the Big Pineapple, but bigger and more Japanese), we went up to the North Shore for a walk on the beach and lunch and drove back down the coast of the island through Sunset and Waimea (sp?) Beaches.

Our second day Kylie, Big Al (Kylie’s dad) and I went for some retail therapy at a couple of the island’s biggest shopping centres. Kylie’s mum and Jackson went to the Zoo and beach. The third day we went for another drive, visiting Wal Mart, Home Depot (a hardware store like Bunnings) and Best Buy.

The other days we just hung out in the apartment and relaxed and relaxed.

We went to a Teppanyaki restaurant one night. Jackson’s been to Teppanyaki a couple of times, but it was mum and dad’s first time. It was very funny, despite Jackson being a bit tired, he sparked up once the chef started flicking knives around and smacking the hot plate with the salt shakers. Mum and dad were entertained by “Barry”, who was our chef, though Mum was very warry of the things Barry was throwing around and looked like she half expected the night to end with her having a lump on her head from a stray pepper shaker. Barry told some very corny jokes, showed great flair at the grill and generally entertained us and cooked a mean meal too.

The other highlight would have to have been “Senor Frogs, which served Mexican fare. The food wasn’t the highlight, though the Fajitas were pretty good. Big Al taking a shot of some type of alcoholic concoction from a drum banging, whistle blowing congo line of restaurant staff was very funny. I had the camera at the ready and snapped a shot of Al mid-gulp and put it straight up on to facebook.

Kylie and Jackson went to the beach a couple of times, but I didn’t set foot on the Waikiki beach once… just wasn’t in the mood for it.

We’ve got lots of photos and I plan on spending at least a little bit of the eek off in getting them all uploaded and into some slideshows and then posted to the blog. I’ll send out an email with some of the pics uploaded.

It’s been fun writing about some of the things we’ve been up too and I plan on using the momentum built up to continue writing updates here throughout the year.

Thanks for reading and happy new year!