Aquarium in Tromsø
The weather turned to poo in Tromsø, so Harriet and I headed to the local aquarium to entertain ourselves for the afternoon.
Posted on 2012-05-06 by
Bob Skywalker
We have a new member of our office. His name is Bob Skywalker.
Bob Skywalker hanging out with Harry Ponsonby
Posted on 2012-04-27 by
Birdies in the snow
Apparently snow is edible! These pigeons were pulling out all sorts of edible delights from within the snow pack. And here I was thinking it was nothing but water!
And a bonus photo of a duck 
Posted on 2012-01-31 by
Shingon Buddhist temple
During our stopover in Japan, Vicki and I headed to the Shingon Buddhist temple in Narita city. This is a pretty incredible experience, and you can really see the age and stunning façade of the buildings all around you. Japanese religious architecture is some of the most famous in East Asia, and it’s easy to see why. The harmonious design of the gardens that often surround them, the distinctly Japanese take on pagoda design and some amazing mythological sculptures make them incredible places to visit.
So if you’re looking at www.fly.com and wondering what part of Japan to visit, let me persuade you – Tokyo isn’t the only destination if you want a good handle on Japanese culture. Their temples – and Buddhism, for that matter – are very important to them, and their maintenance of these locations demonstrates this very well. But some of the temples seem mysterious at first, so it’s important to do some research to fully enjoy their majesty.
According to Wikipedia:
This temple is one of the most well known in the Kant region of Japan and is only surpassed in visitors during the O-shogatsu period (lit: New year period) by the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. The temple grounds are composed of a main gate, a steep stairwell and the main buildings (including a couple of five-story pagodas), and a garden area with large pond. A very small zoo is also within the temple grounds.
One of the many temples at the Shingon Buddhist temple.
Cute turtle. There were hundreds of these all over the place.
Garden area at the Shingon Buddhist temple
Statues at the Shingon Buddhist temple
Nice view from behind one of the temples
Posted on 2009-04-12 by
Leiden sunset
Vicki Argyle and I experienced this awesome sunset while in Leiden in the Netherlands.
Posted on 2009-03-29 by
German cows
Ya know how in the movies the cows in Germany have bells on them? Well apparently those crazy Germans actually do attach bells to the poor cows! I have no idea why they do this. Imagine how insane you would go if some dork attached a bell around your neck! Every time you moved you would hear an irritating bell sound.
I took the photos in the Black Forest in south western Germany.
Posted on 2009-03-15 by
Penguins on a mission
Continuing my trend of writing blog posts totally out of sync, here are some photos from a recent trip to the Otago Peninsula. I acted as tour guide for visiting student Meghan Dunn during her visit here. My previous attempts to find penguins for tourists has always failed. I usually the find the pesky little birds when I least expect it, but never when I’m trying to! So to avoid that frustration we headed to Penguin Place, a little sanctuary about 30 mins drive from my place.
Penguin Place is on a small piece of land on the coast. If you zoom in, you can see the constructions in the sand hills designed for tourists to watch the birds.
The birds aren’t caged, they’re allowed to come and go as they please, but are provided with warm, man made shelters which they seem to quite like living in. Before heading down to the main Yellow Eyed penguin area, we stopped to see some Baby Blue penguins which also lived there, you can see one sitting in it’s little hut in the photo below.
We watched the birds surfing in on the waves after a hard days work catching fish. This little dude took his time and sat out in the waves enjoying the scenery for a while.
But he eventually waddled his way out of the surf …
and then met up with his little buddy who waddled back over the sandhill with him …
but his friend treated it as a race …
So he decided to lean back and have a stretch instead. All that fishing must have taken it’s toll!
He even posed for me
Posted on 2008-09-05 by
Bode Cave
Our uber awesome, wonderful and truly incredible professional ice hockey coach Jenel Bode is leaving 
Hopefully she’ll be back next year though
Rhyan McMillan and our uber awesome coach Jenel Bode
For her goodbye bash, she organised a goodbye party in a cave at Longbeach. It sounded boring, getting stuck in a cave all evening on a cold, wet, rainy day Luckilly Sarah was heading out to take Jane so I hitched a ride along so I could make an appearance and bail home early with Sarah. Darn glad I went though, coz it was totally awesome. The cave was wicked, the fire kept us all cosy warm, everyone had fun and there was loads of entertainment provided by my teammates who provided firebreathing, guitar and flame throwing demonstrations for us all. There were even baby blue penguins in the back of the cave hanging out with us!
Neil Dudley and Rob Owens demonstrating how much effort it takes to burn human skin Continue reading
Posted on 2007-10-01 by
Penguin
I was dressed in a Yellow Eyed Penguin suit as the mascot for the World Friendship Ice Hockey Games. There were teams from USA, Canada, Australia, Korea and New Zealand. The suit was ridiculously hot inside and skating became more of a sliding waddle 
The kids seemed to enjoy it though and none of them kicked me in the balls I wore a cup just in case though
The games were actually in May this year, but I didn’t get these photos till just now. Thanks for the photos Daria
Posted on 2007-08-15 by
