Sunday, September 30, 2007

6 months later...

Well. Im procrastinating. whats new?

Thought id post some photos... I know noone will eva see em, but ah well!


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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Long awaited update! (or not?)

Well.. now that i have the internet on my own computer FINALLY i can make a new post!

well.. on the second week of uni i was hit with 3 major assignments. havnt finished any yet, but theyre pretty much all done. i got another case study today (fluffy is a 7 yr old australian silky terrier with cancer, how do you tell the owners its gonna die? etc etc etc) so yeah. this case study is gonna be so easy compared to the first one; about acidosis in cattle. yeah. great. lol. i know NOTHING about cattle! but now i know a bit more i spose!

so yeah. every weekend/every second weekend i go to pallaranda, which is a beach nth of the strand up here in townsville. its a really nice place cause you can see magnetic island and its really nice, and theres always jetskis, etc out there to watch. and, most of all, theres a stack of GORGEOUS red tailed black cockatoo! theres literally hundreds of these cockatoos here!

well.. heres some photos!

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and ma new bike. had lots of dilemas with it up here. id never put a bike together before, so took me a while to put this thing together. then i had problems with the handlebars; they were lose and kept turning around, sliding through their holder thingy, etc. fixed that. then the brake cable snapped when i tried to stop when a car was parking in front of me; i had to use my feet as a brake and i almost hit the car. then i got it to a bike shop (in my little car; had to take the front tyre off and put it in the back seat) to get the cable replaced. but all is good now, so im happy!
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thats all folks!

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Update, update, update!

Ahh that lovely scent of overheating printer and ink...

Im currently printing out another 214 or so pages of lecture notes, ones that i missed from the 400 or so that ive already printed. fun fun. yesterday i found out that i have TWO practical classes late at night; one on monday from 6pm-9pm and the other on wednesday, 7pm till 9pm. GREAT. ill explain more in my next update, which will hopefully be made from my own computer instead of the colleges computers. then i'll be able to upload photos for you...

uni's been alright so far. im actually starting to really miss my family, pets, and of course, you guys. ive literally got noone to talk to up here everynight, and im always looking forward to when mum calls me everynight cause then i have someone to talk to. yeah..

the red tailed black cockatoos up here are AWESOME! i went to a beach north of the strand on the last two weekends, on teh first i noticed the cockatoos, the second i actually went and sat amongst them while they were in the trees. they are there every weekend, and probably every day during the week as well. they eat these really big green nuts that are about the size of my palm, literally. i quickly found out it wasnt sucha good idea to sit under the trees that the cockatoos were in cause those nuts hurt if they hit you... i got some pretty sweet photos of them flying, so thats pretty good i spose, considering my aim is to get good photos of every animal i see.. yes, i also took some scenery pictures for mum. i tell you the beaches up here arnt NEARLY as great. darker browny kinda sand, thats courser(sp?) than the stuff down south... and the water dosn't look great and ill never go swimming there cause of all the dangerous jellyfish.. fancy that; im afraid of my favourite dessert- jelly.

so yeah. im still waiting for these things to finish printing. ill mention more about townsville later, as i said, when i have my own computer and can upload a few photos for those of you who are actually interested. ok, adios, i got too much stuff to do! (besides waiting for this really slow printer..)

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

I'm Leaving!

Well, literally, I am leaving. on the 14th of February (wed) mum and I will start our drive to townsville with all my gear. I was offered a place there yesterday afternoon (the 5th of feb) to study veterinary science, which as you know, is the course ive always wanted. The course is for 5 years, and i obviously wont be around much. I will miss all of my pets, as well as my family (ESPECIALLY) and all of you guys tonnes. I dontwant to leave, but it will save me thousands of dollars and years of time. Least there arnt water restrictions there! If i could, i'd arrange a going away thingy, but i dunno what. I was going to go to wet 'n' wild and say goodbye, but thats on the 17th.. (i was going to go to wet n wild and fly up the next morning) so yeah... you get rid of me real soon!

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Back from mogo!

WARNING! VERY LONG THREAD!! WARNING!! (im not kidding..)

well, alive, back, and with over 400 photos between mums camera and mine. We flew to sydney, picked up the beaut little peugeot 407 (man that car was so COOL! comfy, TONNES of features) and got lost at first trying to get on the road to wollengong or whatever it was. and it was hilarious, cause as you may know, peugeots are european cars, and apparently (the nice guy that dropped the car off for us) the europeans like the indicators on the left side of the steering wheel and the wipers on the right. of course, this is obviously the opposite to most aussie cars, so for ages dad kept turning the wipers on instead of the indicator. bwahahaha. then mum drove later on, and did the same. then carl. then me. i only did it once though lmao. to those of you who have your licence, you know how automatic it is to just hit the indicator, so youll understand how weird it was. you had to move the stick UP to indicate right, and down for left. ah well. heres a picture of the car, before it got dirty...

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oh yeah. the plane;
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we eventually (after a 5hr or something drive) ended up at Batemans bay (which, for some reason, i cant pronounce properly and keep saying "batesmans bay" and become tongue-tied) we dropped our stuff and went for a drive around the place to investigate random stuffs. the coast line along there was beautiful, and out accomodation was right next to the water, and there was a carnival thingy set up across the other side of the road (they had this cool game there. theres a big round table with lots of little squares, saying "40", "60", "80" and "1.00" and you'd throw a 20cent coin on the table and try to get it to land completly within the square, then youd win however much the square said (ie, 40c,60c,80c or $1.00) and yeah. we were there for ages and just kept winning lol. but yeah.. we eventually left it :p

on the second day, we of course went to the zoo. parked at about 9:30 am or something, and went to go in. as we were giving our names and explaining who we were (i was told to do this to get in free of charge) the zoo owner came through and welcomed us, then suggested what order we looked around the zoo. so we went in, and the first animals we saw were servals. tonnes of people have no idea what they are, but theyre a bit bigger than the average domesticated cat, a sandy colour with black/dark spots, really big ears, a very short black tipped tail and they are VERY lanky. we were watching them and they seemed to be really playful. they were so cool! then we continued, and saw these weird, little primates. apparently theyre the smallest primate in teh world, and they were about the size of your fist, literally. we kept walking through the reptile area, saw the meerkats, giraffes, the white lion pride on display (the two lionesses, purr and joe (first cubs.. names after peugeot if you didnt figure it out) and the large, absolutly beautiful male, Tim) and continued to see the rest of the primates. they had gibbons and two species of lemurs (which were cool!) and spider monkeys, which seemed to enjoy running backwards really really fast, with their heads between their front legs looking behind to see where they were going.. they were hilarious... and then we saw the wild dogs, giraffe, scimitar oryx, two female ostriches, and the 3 zebras. then, when we were watching the giraffe again the zoo owner, sally, turned up and said that there was a change of plan and that we could see the lion cubs earlier (it was 10:30 or close enough, and we were sposed to see tehm at 12) the cubs were kept in the zoo owners yard, so we went up to the house and were greeted by a very, very large german shephard which decided to bark. eventually mum and i went in with the cubs first (cause they said they usually only take two people in at a time) and we sat down on the fabric the zookeeper laid down (which took a while, cause the cubs kept playing with it while she was trying to put it down) and the zookeeper brought in two massive bowls of food, which she called M&M's- milk and meat, the cubs lunchtime meal. the cubs of course loved it, and once theyd finished were very affectionate and playful.

eventually, over an hour later (which was awesome, cause they let dad and carl come it at the same time, and cause they usually only let two people in for twenty minutes. it was also awesome cause the zookeeper was giving me advice with getting to be a vet and teaching me things i didnt know about the lions) we had to leave, and the zookeeper (sorry, ive forgotten her name. she was awesome though, came from Africa and has worked with tonnes of animals) told us to wait at the gate just outside the owners yard and just outside the white lion prides enclosure, and left us. then she came back with a bucket, and i guessed right; animal feed. it actually turned out to be corn, and she took us to the giraffe and started teaching us about them. it was hilarious cause the show with the white lions had just finished, so there were lots of people around and when we went under the fence towards the giraffe we got lots of jealous looks.. but yeah.. we had an audience for ages... but.. continueing.. mum, dad, carl and i were all allowed to take a handful of corn seeds and hold it up for the giraffe to eat (palm flat, exactly the same as when you feed a horse) and i tell you, those giraffes slobber a lot. cause this guy was so tall, i had to look up to watch him (he's a small giraffe in comparison to fully grown adults, though he's four years old) and just as i looked up at him, he had lots of saliva that dropped out of his mouth all over me, and i had slobber all over my hand. i rekon ive got to be one of the few teenagers that was extremly happy cause i had giraffe slobber all over myself and my hand. i tell you, they have A LOT of saliva...

after the giraffe, the zookeeper said that she'd see us around the zoo most likely, and we obviously thanked her numerous times. we then headed to the vending machine and got drinks (it was about 38 degrees celcius and we'd been in the sun for ages) and then headed up to the other part of the zoo to see the bears, tigers, snowleopards, jaguar etc. as we were at one exhibit the same zookeeper saw us and said that we had to go back to the cubs, because she'd forgotten that there was a professional photographer (at 12pm) to take photos of me (the winner of the competition) with teh cubs that i named (tamu, the male, and kito, the female) for advertising and what not for peugeot (not exactly sure why) i of course didnt complain. this time it was even cooler though, cause the zookeeper gave me a bottle to feed each cub at a time (two bottles, one for each cub) so teh photographer could get good photos, and so the cubs would then settle down. have any of you ever bottle fed a 2month old lion cub? theyre very eager and love that milk, ill tell you now. while the photographer was taking photos, i could see the milk in the bottle was running out, and said so. the zookeeper came over to take the bottle, but as soon as the cub felt the bottle move (it was the male cub at first, tamu, and he's the bigger one) he dug his claws in. even though the cubs claws had been trimmed the day before (to prevent them from hurting their human parents as much when they play) they were still sharp, and very big, and tamu decided to dig his claws into my hand to keep the bottle. i had to quickly move my hand away, and the zookeeper grabbed the bottle away really quickly. then i got to feed kito, the female in the same way, and she wasnt so bad, and i pulled the bottle away when it was empty. whats really awesome is that the photographer is going to mail a CD to me with all of the photos he took. yay!

oh, and for those who may be curious... i asked how much the cubs weighed, and to let me figure it out myself the zookeeper dragged tamu into my lap and told me to guess how much he weighed. i guessed 20Kg, and was told he infact weighed 17Kg. lol.

Tamu is the biggest of the two cubs, being the male. he's the sook of the two cubs, and is still incredibly playful. Kito is smaller, finer shaped and is affectionate but didnt at that time seem to be QUITE as playful as tamu. kito was quite content to just sit by your lap and sleep while getting rubbed.

well, ill stop typing so much, i know its a long and boring post, but im still on a high from the trip! heres lots, and lots, and lots of pictures

Pictures of Tamu, the male cub
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Pictures of Kito, the female cub
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Pictures of both Kito and Tamu. can you tell which is which? i can :p
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Mum and I with Kito
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me with kito
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me with both cubs
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dad and i with kito and tamu
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mum, dad, carl and i with the cubs
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a really nice looking stag
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gorgeous snow leopard pictures
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Red panda
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mum feeding the giraffe
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Meerkats (these guys are awesome, i love em, theyre fantastic animals to watch!)
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i know it was a really long post, but too bad :p its my blog and ill do what i want to! congratulations to anyone who read it all and whose computer didnt crash from loading so many pictures!!