We started a new blog !

So, the last entry was in 2009, it's 2011 now. So much has happened in two years. Nothing negative, only positive. Tizz and Scamp are both very well, they're extremely happy here in Australia ( especially since we moved to a rural property not long ago ! ).

Kim and me are still together and very happy together. We are meant to happily live together the rest of our lives, of this I am sure.

I just wanted to post on our blog one final time to let anyone and everyone know that we have started a new blog today for family, friends and anyone else interested enough to read about our lives.

We have recently moved to a rural property not far away from Brisbane.

Edit 13 Sept 2013 : The new blog has been removed as I now update friends and family via Facebook. I might post sometimes on this blog once and a while again, who knows ! :)

Our very last post

It's time to say goodbye to this blog : It is about Kim and Lex moving to Australia and we've been in Australia for a few months now. In the last month it has been getting busier on the Sunshine Coast ( due to summer holidays ) but it's nowhere as busy as in Holland. The beaches are now populated with 10-20 people instead of 1-2, there are a few more cars rolling around town, but no traffic jams or anything nasty. We are thoroughly enjoying beachlife and if we can make and maintain a living I think this might well be a spot where we will stay for quite a while. We're in the middle of starting up a company which should make us a reasonable living, but ofcourse we'll need a little luck to make it all happen. All we can do now is work hard and get things going, while at the same time not forget to keep living outdoors and doing sports like wake-boarding and kite-surfing to keep us fit.

Kim, Lex, Tizz and Scamp - Over and out

Next week it's Christmas

It doesn't feel like Christmas with all these sunny, warm days. It's like we're in the middle of the summer holidays ( which we are, just not the European one ! ). I think this is going to be a strange Christmas, however New Year is going to be a lot better, partying on the beach into the warm nightly hours : It's definately something that we can live with. We sent out all the Xmas cards, let's hope they arrive in time at all the peeps around the world ( South Africa / Europe / Australia ). We brewed 44 litres of beer and all our bottles are filled up and waiting to be drunk : It's going to be one hell of a new year ! ( we bought a bottle of champagne too , just in case )

We're going to have a quiet Christmas, like we have done for the past years : It's the way we like it. No people to take care of, no big meals to cook, no people being disappointed that this Christmas wasn't better than last years, no fights between family members and no expectations : Just Kim, Me, Puss and Puppy.

We bought some Christmas presents for ourselves too : Two Kite Surfing Kites including two boards and two harnesses ! Yep, we're pretty serious about getting back in shape. Since we left Europe we already lost a lot of pounds just walking on the beach and eating better quality food : We're getting closer to our ideal weight now, and the kites will hopefully get us there. We're really looking forward to getting them in : It will take about 3-6 weeks before the kites are in. The boards should be in next week. That means we can start doing some wake-boarding while we wait for our boards to practice our board-skills.

We wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year 2010 !
Kim + Lex + Tizz + Scamp

Australian Pale Ale Part 2

Last week we started our own Australian Pale Ale brew, and this week it was bottling time ! Cleaning the bottles out took about 1 hour and was definately the most work. After we cleaned all the bottles and the bottle-caps, we opened the beer-tap. We knew straight away that our beer was good : It smelled fantastic, like fresh beer. It's hard to describe what "fresh beer" smells like, but you can compare it with having a bread from the supermarket, as opposed to just having created your first dough. The dough smells really good, you can smell the yeast and the freshness of your creation : The same applies to beer. We bottled the beer using Coopers "carbonization drops" which are like little sweets ( they are sugar-based ) and came out with 30 BIG ( 700ml ) bottles. So that's about 21 litres of fresh beer ! Not bad, the other two litres were "wasted" because we didn't want to bottle the bottom part of the tank where all the buildup and residue is : We want these first beers to succeed !

Now the big job is done, we can sit back and relax while we wait for our carbonization drops to perform the second part of the beer-magic : the bubbles.

We'll let you know in two weeks if our beer succeeded.

ps : Lex just cleaned the tank and tomorrow we're brewing Corona beer, yummmmmmy !

We went Wake Boarding !

Well, yesterday we had a planned electricity outage. Energex replaced a big transformator here in the neighborhood and electricity was planned to be down the whole morning + afternoon, so we took a day off and decided to go wake-boarding ! We thought that since we want to go kite-surfing, and part of kite-surfing is wake-boarding, we'd get some wake-board experience. We didn't know pro-wakeboarders from all around the world came to practice at the cable park just around the corner here in Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast, but it was fun to see them do the jumps and get their advice and tips. In fact, I was positively impressed by the brotherhood-feeling and the nice people that didn't laugh at newcomers but enthousiastically helped them and gave advice and spurred them on to try again until they finally did it. The same was true for Kim and I. It can be a bit overwhelming to be standing in front of the queue with these pro-wakeboarders and then ask "Ok, so what do I do now?". Generally speaking , this was the advice :
- Try and keep your knees bent
- Put more weight on your back leg than on your front leg
- at "launch" ( this is where you start ), make sure you don't try and steer, just let the board do the work for you
- at "launch" make sure you keep your elbows in and pull the rope all the way towards your belly and don't let it be pulled away from there.

So, first in line was now Lex, with Kim just behind. Wakeboard slightly angled, rope all the way down to his belly, knees bent. "Ok, you ready mate?". What are you going to say really ? "No, I'm not ready?" ... so "yes" and off the yellow line went. As you see the yellow line go you know that your near future has only two outcomes : Either you get out of the water or you will get face-down towed through the water. Guess what ? Lex got his sinuses cleared.

So after Lex crashed, Kim had a go. Kim cheated and went for the kneeboard first. She got the rope in her hands, and off she went, no nosedive, just off cruising. On my second attempt the guys told me that I had to hold the rope tighter "Don't let it pull your arms out", which is easier said than done, these things remind me of a ski-lift, and since they not only have to pull 10-20 full grown men but also at speed, the power of the rope is not to be underestimated. My arms got pulled, I went forwards, water got under the top of my wake-board ( a clear "crash imminent" warning ) and that was it , nosedive number two.

Kim by then had done a lap on her kneeboard and decided she'd join the big boys and got a wake-board also. Nosedive ! After two more tries I finally realized what I was doing wrong : I held the rope all the way down with stretched arms, and ofcourse you have no strength that way, so this time I decided to hold the rope higher up with my elbows and I had a big more success : I got out of the water and then fell on my back end : Next time I would get it !
Kim went just before me and I saw her get out of the water, and do at least 30 meters, cheering with 1 arm in the air and eventually falling off. But she did it ! Next try , I too got out of the water, and forgot to actually steer and landed about the same spot as Kim did. Kim called it for the day and I had one more go : I had all the knowledge now, and I knew that I would be able to get to the first bend if I just kept trying. So my last try I got not only to the first bend, I actually made half a lap ( 3 corners ) ! I was pretty tired and my muscles hurt all over, but I was very satisfied with our achievements. Next morning : Our muscles hurt even more !

Australian Pale Ale

We met a German couple a few weeks ago. Amongst other things, Germans like to talk about beer. The discussion we had with the Germans was getting particularly interesting when they mentioned the words "Home brewing". Apparently, the Australian climate is perfect for fermenting beer, and our German friends lost no time in buying their own beer brewing set to make their own beer. "Beer hier ist immer so expensive !". And they are right, a sixpack of normal beer in the shops will cost you anything from 15 dollars to 30 dollars ( Corona beer is especially expensive around here ). The price of beer leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, but we now had the answer : Brew beer yourself for 1 dollar per litre. Now we're talking !

The Germans were months away from leaving Australia ( due to visa restrictions ) and had their complete set including bottles and all the extra's for sale for a mere 40 dollars. So we bought it from them. Yesterday I decided it was time to start brewing our Christmas beers, so I read the instruction book carefully again ( second time ). The Germans gave us some good advice about brewing beer. "The only thing that can go wrong is if you don't clean your stuff before you brew". Sounds easy, so we made sure everything was disinfected ( using Coopers beer kit cleaner ) and left our kit to clean overnight. Today we rinsed it off and created our "wort" which is the base of beers. It looks like sirup and to be honest I love the smell of it, but then again I love the smell of kerosine and diesel too, so that might not be much help.

We finally found a use for our second bathroom :)

Our beer set is being cleaned for the night :


The beer set is filled up with beer Wort ( "wurt" ) and is fermenting ( hopefully ) :

Oh shit ! a snake !

Today we were working on our new company website when we heard a scuttle and saw a running puss come by the window. Normally our Tizz-Puss ain't all that fast and he likes to bake in the sun rather than walk around, so this strange behaviour prompted me to go and take a look at the front door where Tizz was running to. When I opened the front door I was standing face to face with a 1.5 meter olive green snake that our dear Tizz had cornered. Somehow it didn't come to mind, as later advised by Kim, to note all the details about his head-shape, eye color and general identification marks in case we got bitten and needed anti-venom, I just thought "Oh shit! a snake!". By that time the snake found a way out of his predicament, luckily not inside the house but outside onto the grass, with a Puss on it's tail. I tell you, that snake was fast ! I told Kim "Oh shit! a snake!" and she ran outside blindly rescueing her pussy cat by picking up a 10cm twig and running after the snake. Now this is commonly discouraged around these parts in Australia. I don't believe I ever saw a sign saying "Pick up the nearest and smallest twig you can find and wave it menacingly at the snake while you run after it". I came out with a bread knife which wasn't much bigger than Kim's twig, but Kim and her twig already chased the snake away. We made sure that Tizz wasn't bitten anywhere and luckily he wasn't.

Tizz will stay inside the house the rest of the day.