From HK to Melbourne

Hello,

I'm now in Melbourne with Kate, Obi and Thea. I'm not sure how much I'll write, but I at least thought I'd put a few pictures up of things (a market in Hong Kong, Thea looking cute, St Kilda beach - yup, sun and palm trees!, me chilling by some palm trees). I've uploaded the pictures, so now I've got a little time to make some content!

My flight from Hong Kong to Melbourne was OK, although the timing of it and the time they woke us up meant I only got a few hours sleep. For the first time I used a 'downtown check in' service. This was really straightforward and meant I could go on the train with just my hand baggage and go straight to security at the airport. Unfortunately at one stage on the train to the airport I panicked because I thought I'd lost a bag, but then I remembered about having checked in - doh!

It's really wonderful to be with the Australian branch of the family. Thea is the cutest thing imaginable. It's really great to be with Kate, a year is a very long time not to see a sister!

Melbourne, is just as I remember it, a fun cosmopolitan city. The weather is great - warm and sunny. There are some beaches in St Kilda, and that's where we went today. There are palm trees, which are always my metric of how warm a place is. If it's warm enough for big palm trees it's warm enough for me. Got to go, Thea needs to sleep in the room with the computer in. Plus I should be packing as tomorrow morning it's up at 5AM for our departure to Kangaroo Island - I think my body is getting very confused by all these time zone changes.

Cheers,


Ali

Hong Kong

Hi,

Only a few minutes for this post, and no time to check spelling etc.! In Hong Kong and fly on to Oz tonight. It's been great fun to be back here, although it's been cloudy/rainy and not nearly as sunny as last time I was here. We are staying with my godmother's son who works out here, and has a lovely place on the west of HK island.

I've just been doing the usual touristy stuff, wondering around, and ate LOTS of really good Chinese food yesterday. Food is definitely one of my favourite things when travelling in Asia. Oh dear, it's just started to rain again.

Hopefully I'll have internet access in Melbourne and can write a bit more.

Cheers,

Ali

Phonetic Alphabets of the World

During a lull in the lab we ended up looking up checking what the x and z were in the Italian phonetic alphabet (Xilofono and Zara for those who are interested). Anyway, we found this site which is kind of cool as it lists many different phonetic alphabets, not just different countries but from different armed services and such.

A lot of the lists try to use words from the same group. Italian, for example mainly uses place names, whereas France uses people's names (and are saved by the likes of Xavier and Zoe). Esperanto, meanwhile, gets around the whole problem by not having the letter z.

Anyway, when I'm not looking at phonetic alphabets whilst waiting for my code to execute, I'm preparing for my imminent departure. On Friday morning I fly to Hong Kong, then on Monday on from Hong Kong to Melbourne. From Melbourne there will be excursions to Kangaroo Island, and New Zealand. I'm coming back via Hong Kong and I may pop over to mainland China as I've got about five days there. I'm very excited to meet my niece and to see Kate and Obi

I'll endeavor to keep my blog posted with my travels as usual.

Cheers,


Ali

PS For some ridiculous reason the www.blogger.com spell cheker doesn't have 'blog'!