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Monthly Archives: March 2012

its been nice being back in our old neighbourhood again. we bump into familiar faces daily, and i’ve enjoyed seeing how much each kings cross kid has grown in the three months we have been gone.

our new friend this time around is sugar, the cat we are taking care of. in fact, sugar is the whole reason why we are house sitting for hugh and lissa in the first place. sugar was a bit shy for the first few days but now he loves to hang out with us. he is by far the fluffiest cat i have ever seen.

today it was rainy so i took nayou and his friend ollie to the australian museum. ollie is a super mellow, funny kid and nayou gets along tremendously with him. it was so funny watching them interact. being able to communicate in-depth allowed nayou to role play and organise/compromise/discuss a lot (as opposed to bali where verbal communication doesn’t work as well). i basically followed them around with a camera all day filming their antics.

 

so here we are, back in sydney again after an amazing three months in bali. we bid farewell to our ubud family on wednesday night and took a very stress free flight back to australia. there was some last minute drama in ubud over this gorgeous piece of land that we were trying to get a 30 year lease on. buying or leasing land in bali can be tricky and potentially disastrous, but we had an excellent broker and things were going very smoothly. we had our contract in hand and were pretty much ready to go, but decided to get a lawyer to do due diligence before taking the plunge. unfortunately something happened when the lawyer went to visit the land owner and he ended up calling off the deal. apparently lawyers only ever visit you when there are serious problems and i guess the owner got scared… or something like that. we got two different stories from our broker and our lawyer so who knows? in any case the deal is off, although i am still holding out hope that once the dust settles the owner will change his mind. we shall see. in the meantime, here is a video of us checking out the land… its in the middle of ubud, but it feels like you’re in the middle of the jungle. and its huge – 32,000 square meters (345,000 square feet)!

we arrived back to the cold and rain that has apparently defined summer in sydney this year. we lucked out with accommodations because we are house sitting for some friends right in the heart of kings cross while they are in thailand. so in some ways its like we never left! its been nice to reconnect with old friends and go to our favourite hang out spots.

we have also been catching up on sleep…. in any place that seems comfortable.

the day after we arrived we hit up bondi junction to get some new shoes and clothes for nayou. we left his flip flops in a taxi in bali so he made the entire trip over here in a pair of socks! ghetto fabulous. he is making up for it all with a new pair of styley converse taxi shoes.

we got him some spiffy new pajamas as well. lord knows he needed them – his only surviving pair of pants were really threadbare!

we are in our friends’ house until the 24th. after that we have another month before we leave for africa. because the shoot got pushed by six weeks, the production company is frantically trying to save money by pushing crew start dates and asking people to take time off. i am still slated to start work on the 12th, but it looks like i may have to take not one but two weeks off in april. which is more or less as much as i can take because this family needs some cashflow and being unemplyed in sydney is expen$ive! lets hope they can work things out with their budget!