My Outing With Grandpa

Well, most of you would know that Grandpa has made a visit to South Australia to catch up with the family. He arrived on Friday and was put straight to work, helping out with the extension. The Petrusma family sure do know how to make someone feel welcome and at home... :-P
So Grandpa has painted doors, varnished architraves, helped Dad paint, and generally been a great help. He's also checked out my new room, and is trying out my new bed. It is so great having a room that is organised, clean and not full of Sarah's mess!
Today after church Grandpa and I had a fantastic trip out to the Barossa Valley. We had lunch at Peter Lehmann Winery, a very tasty platter, and of course very tasty wine. It was great to talk, especially about all the places in the world Grandpa has seen, I have seen, I want to see, and that Grandpa wants to see. We're both a little nuts about the world... :-)
Then we went to Maggy Beer's, where we had coffee outside near the duck pond. We didn't plan it, but we were also there in time to watch the Maggy Beer cooking demonstration. Maggy herself wasn't there, but there was a great chef called Andrew cooking for us, and it was in the kitchen from the actual TV show on the ABC. Andrew cooked mushrooms, and they were SO TASTY!!! Yum! Grandpa was inspired for his own cooking. Here are a couple of photos:


Andrew and Grandpa in the kitchen


So inspired, he's already gotten going with the cooking

After that we decided to take the very scenic route home, through Angaston, and to Mengley look-out with great views over the valley and a sculpture garden from 1988 (a very good year, if I do say so myself).


Grandpa got a good close-up look of the sculptures

It was a very good day, and so great to catch-up. But tomorrow I am off! To Melbourne for a week with my friends, which will also be great! Tonight we've also decided to give those mushrooms a go with dinner. :-) So TASTY!

MUSE!!!!!

Well, after months of waiting I finally got to see Muse live in concert... again! All the way from Merry Old England, touring all around Australia.
They're just my favorite band ever!! And I was so surprised they came to Adelaide, but they did, and it was an amazing concert! Sophia, Phil and I went last night, and we were in the mosh pit right up close to the front. Needless to say we got a little squished when Muse came out, you should of heard the screams! It was a good mosh pit, typical jumping up and down, singing, and it moved back and forth like a real wave on the ocean. Lots of exersize! :-P Plus they had the light shows, jets of super-cold spray shooting up into the air, huge confetti beach balls, smoke and massive screens with some pretty cool edited movies playing in time to the music. There were times when they turned off all the lights and just left the crowd standing in complete darkness, which was cool.
They played all of my favorite songs - new and old - and played their own instrumental solos between each piece. The lead singer and guitarist, Mathew Bellamy, also plays the piano and he has fingers like lightening, I get goosebumps every time I see him play. It sounds amazing! The other members are Dominic Howard on drums and Morgan Nicholls on bass.
Needless to say the atmosphere was great, always is at a concert! Everyone was just as excited (if not more so) than me and we were all there for the same thing.
Anyway, as you probably aren't as interested in Muse as me, I'll just stick up a few of the photos Sophia managed to take with her phone. :-)


This is a picture from when they were playing 'Super Massive Blackhole', Sophia's favorite :-)


This is a pic of Mathew Bellamy playing piano. His piano was pretty cool too! It had lights on it that came up when he played and a screen behind him that made it look like stars were shooting out of his piano


This is a pic from when they were playing their encore, Knights of Cydonia, crowd was going mad. It's one of their more popular songs


This was the best close-up pic Sophia could take of Mathew Bellamy. It's always cool seeing them in real life.

So there are a few pics. Muse must have been good luck too, because my exam today went really well. Might have had something to do with all the study too... :-P When I booked the ticket I didn't realise I had an exam the next day of course... but it worked out ok and I could answer every question in the exam.
Anyway, that movie below is their song 'Super Massive Black Hole'. It's from their live concert in France, but it was pretty similar to the one they gave in Adelaide. Anyway... have a look if you like :-) Don't know if you'll like it, Grandpa :-)

York University

Just thought I'd put up some info on York University, where I hope to go on exchange for 6 months, early in 2009.
I would be at Glendon campus, which is a multi-lingual campus (English and French), but don't worry, I don't have to speak French! :-P Their International Studies Course is world renowned, and it's very exciting because I can study diplomacy, something not on offer in Australia but, practically, is obviously very useful!
Anyway, here are some pics from the Glendon Campus virtual tour:


Some of the campus's classrooms, function rooms, the pub, admin, etc, are located in an old Italian Mansion renovated in 2004.Class-ey!


The campus prides itself on its natural surroundings; parks, a river, a forest, rose garden... it's pretty cool!


The campus is apparently really close to Toronto! Hopefully my eagerness to sight-see, eat Chinese Food like Nat suggested, or go shopping won't interfere with my studies...


This is the main building. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be studying in the manor too often... :-P


And, if I do eat too much Chinese food, at least there's a fully outfitted gym. I just hope the pool is heated!

Anyway, I'm not getting my hopes up too high, but I'm saving, looking at finance and I have to apply before June. I'll keep you updated. :-)

If you are bored and have nothing better to do you could also always visit their website:
http://www.glendon.yorku.ca/english/futurestudents/programs/international.html
or
http://www.yorku.ca/web/index.htm

What is Rudd's Favourite Food For Thought?

Check out this video from youtube to see what snacks Kevin Rudd prepares for question time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ipvdBnU8F8&eurl=http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2007/11/01/politician-eats-earwax/

The End is Near!

Well, the end of uni is fast approaching - hooray! I only have two more exams to go.
BUT, it's still busy. Hence, no posts for the last however many weeks. :-P
This semester I was studying international relations, development studies, Asian studies and American studies. I'm doing pretty well :-P So I'm not too worried about my exams.

Not much has happened this term apart from study, work, study and a bit of social time. Oh.. and of course we're extending our house so I'm currently sleeping on the floor in the lounge room, and there is dust everywhere, and insulation, wood and tools all over the place. All the framework and most of the panneling is up, and the spa went in today! I won't make you jealous by describing how awesome the spa is :-)
Here's a couple of pics:

This is the new outside of our house, the room on the left will be the study, and the huge room on the right will be Sarah's bedroom. She gets the bigger room cos she has ten times more stuff than me...

This is the view from the study, looking through the new bathroom into Sarah's new bedroom. You can sort of make out the general layout.

Had a couple of lectures from the head of DFAT, Jean Michell, and Grandpa you will be interested to know that he used to be High Commissioner of Papua New Guinea. So that was interesting. Sophia and I also went to a forum with guest speaker, Alexander Downer, but I recommend steering clear from him if you can!

Apart from that not much more to update on. Sophia, Elycia and I are all talking about going on exchange to Canada early 2009 and then traveling around parts of Canada, the U.S., and probably to Mexico for a day or something. I'll just have to live like a hermit while I'm saving to go. I'd love to study at York University in Toronto, the University of Political Science. Right up my alley.

I'm attempting to write a book for James for Christmas! It's the first time I've tried to write a children's book so I'll see how I go. Everything about it is a bit cliche... including the title which still hurts my ears: Power Quest. All that matters is that James will like it though... I'm hoping...
I've also tried some illustrations but that's not working too well, so Sarah's "volunteered" to do the illustrations for me.

Well. That is all for now! Hopefully my next post will arrive in less than a couple of months :-)

First Edit

Since I'm on holidays and have a little more time to burn I thought I'd sit down and work on my novel. And low and behold, I managed to finish the first edit!
It's the fourth novel I've written and it's about time I finally got to this stage as I've been writing it since I was 15!

My first three books, a trilogy called 'Over the End of the World,' I started writing when I was 12 and finished writing when I was 15. I had the chance to send the first book to a publisher for editing almost 6 years ago but because of certain circumstances never did... I wrote it when I was so young I won't even try to publish it now.

But this novel, 'Shades of Grey', which is a stand alone I'm going to work really hard to get on the shelves! It's a bit of a mutt, being a combination of science fiction, fantasy and mystery (but not too much of any genre).
I've been planning out another couple of novels too. I think the next one on my list to write will be 'Umbrae', which is Latin for complete darkness. And I wonder why people call me morbid...?

Anyway! I was excited!
Don't ask me too much about the plot as I'm one of those secretive authors who never reveals anything. It'll probably never get published cos I'm not really a professional or anything but wish me luck finding an agent!

Look What I Found

While going through my old blog I found something pretty special :-)
At least... I think it was. A comment from Grandma about living in PNG, after reading Grandpa's blog on his most recent trip I though it might be nice to share it:

Jess you have reminded me of a couple of things about Rabaul. All the sand there was black from the volcano, too, and my feet used to get filthy! Grandpa used to ride around in the back of a Landrover - most comfortable when he developed boils on both butoocks!!!!!!!Luv Grandma
ps. How's the Bislama?

:-) Great images :-P Thankfully, I never got boils while I was riding in the back of Vanuatu's utes. It's great to share a common memory.

Hello...

Looking at my old blog, www.paama-trees.blogspot.com and the blog all my friends made for me, www.we-miss-you-jess.blogspot.com, from when I went to Vanuatu I thought it'd be a good idea to try and blog again! :0) Especially for my Grandpa, who I've been promising regular blogs for a while...
It may be boring some times and there may be weeks or more likely months betweens posts but I'll give it my best try!