A jail cell at the Justice and Police museum. Scaaary!

Shehz relaxes with a local centaur. You can tell Shehz just told one of his better jokes, as goat-boy has a serious smirk on his face. Shehz seemed to have enjoyed it even more though: typical!

It's hard to tell what's going on here. You'll see up near the top of the tree a bunch of... cone-looking things. In fact they are bats. This tree is covered in bats. Flying foxes, to be more accurate. They're big. And they hang upside-down. Awesome!

The Royal Botanical Gardens. You can't blame me for taking flower pictures at THIS place...

Jamila.

Hyde Park statue.

The boys indulge in some walking chess at this oversized chess board. The pieces were, unfortunately, nowhere to be found. Luckily Al took control, made himself a queen (big surprise), and then instructed Jamila, Shehz, and Myself to attempt to destroy him given the illustrious positions of Pawn, Rook, and Bishop respectively. He won. Didn't see that one comin'.

Hyde Park in all its glory.

Sydney Tower + Tree. Look how much taller the tree is! How can you even call that a Tower? Pssh. Stupid.

Hyde Park in Sydney. They were taking down all these rotting trees at the time so they had random fencing everywhere. I took advantage.

What a cute couple! Yesss, I totally got it right this time.

Wee! I could claim that it's me in there. It's not.

See those little black dots? Those are people. See all that giant white stuff? That's waves.

What a cute couple! ... Oops!

Al. That's it. It's him in a nutshell. Al. I've captured his essence. Al.

Bondi Beach cove area.

Bondi Beach -- A Sydney institute! The waves were huuuge when we went. I sure wasn't gonna try surfing!!!

We had to pay a visit to the oldest pub in Sydney! (There are actually two that BOTH claim the title, but this one had sentimental value)

See? I'm experimenting with angle shots. Shehz likes his scarves these days too.

Opera House at Night. Mildly entertaining if not blurry. And yes, I meant for it to be on an angle!

... I'll just call it "Staircase" I guess...

Sydney Harbour Bridge. This isn't exactly the picture that most people take of it.

Opera House tips.

Our Opera House tour guide. Can you tell I wasn't paying attention?

The Opera House, as seen from the Concert Hall. Note that when I say Sydney Opera House I can mean either the entire facility (which is actually five major theatres), or the building which shows the operas WITHIN the facility. In this case, we're talking about number two. Not THAT number two... you get the point.

The group on the steps of the Opera House.

The Sydney Opera House from afar.

The foyer of the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House.

And now in front of the Opera House!

Shehz at Sydney Harbour.

Shehz at the second hand store trying on a nice MC Hammer jacket. He looks incredible, doesn't he ladies?

The eye of a Napoleon Maori Wrasse. The orientation is all wrong, but it doesn't really matter.

A puffer fish. What a cute little poisonous thing.

Oh wait, it was a trick! We were just in these giant underwater Aquarium tubes. I got you good!

Shehzad already learned to breathe underwater before we even took our diving course!

This used to be a jellyfish. Until I tried to take its picture...

Kelp at the Aquarium!

Soft coral at the Sydney Harbour Aquarium.

It's either really bright or Al isn't liking me at this moment.

The base of a big statue for "Sydney 2000" (i.e. the Olympics).

Birdies along Sydney Harbour.

Some pictures are just impossible to caption. I'll let you come up with your own and post it as a comment. The winner will receive a free hat.

... And done!

And more...

More black and white Chinese Gardens action.

An Ibis at the Chinese Gardens.

Chinese Garden Bamboo.

Al and Jamila at the Sydney Chinese Gardens.

I'm just not gonna comment on these anymore!

cairns quickie

yaooo,

our extended group (myself, shehz, al, and jamila) find ourselves here at the asylum backpacker in cairns. you may be able to judge from the name that this place is pretty crazy! as a matter of fact, our extendedgroup find ourselves here at the asylum backpacker donning "inmate" shirts that we wore last night to "mad monday". what a great night out! you can probably see the pictures online somewhere, and we'll be sure to put some up on the site.

shehz and i are now open water certified divers, and we've been out on the great barrier reef for the past 3 days.

everybody is yelling at me to get to the beach, however, so i've really gotta run!

bye for now,

> ian

the hallowe'en that almost wasn't

hello children,

i just received back my memory card from lexar! i shipped it away shortly after arriving in australia because it went bung halfway through my travels. much as i hated the pre-RMA process at lexar, they did manage to rescue almost all of my images off the card and give me a brand new one in return! i'm not sure how confident i'll be using the card seeing as it cocked up so badly the first time, but we'll see what happens. i can always use it in a pinch.

point of the story being, i am now in posession of about 50 photos that i took that i thought were lost to the ages! but in fact they were not, so now i shall treat both you (and myself) to a little slideshow of some favourites i took in kuala lumpur and singapore with this ridiculous lexar card.

enjoy...

A statue in the backyard of the oldest church in Singapore. I thought it was beautiful!