Going all Penang colours.

Wild colours are the order of the day for this beauty!!!  And yes there are loads of houses this colour in Penang.  This is going to be an art house coffee shop.  Art upstairs, which Gek is going to create for me, and a coffee shop downstairs.   Again, I have gone over the top on size.  Although the house is only 15 inches wide, the three sections add to nearly 8 feet in length.  I could have made the rear section a little shorter but only by 6 inches.

Taiping.

A mini break with Chris and Ranu.  Marvelous food, lovely company.  

There hadn't  been much rain for the past 2 months, resulting in low water in the lakes.  This is not normal.

4 am.........4 am.  What was I thinking of!!!!!  T'was a great show.  Even Freddy made an appearance.

sPICE - August 2012

Clearing up after the demolition.  Less dust blowing our way now.

Book - Brave New War

Basically, interstate war is finished.  Countries depend too much on each other economically to go kicking seven bells out of one another.  That's the Good news.  Bad news is that we are moving to open sourced warfare.  You have a personal grouse,  then pay someone to go fight for you.  Internet is great at facilitating this.  Go attack a vulnerable network, oil pipe line, railway line etc.

Also, and rather scarily, Mr. Robb predicted the HSBC scandal from last week where the bank has been accused of laundering dodgy money.  He wrote this book, in a bit of a breathless way, in 2006.  He makes the point that the banks, which are operated for profit and not their customers, would not be able to resist the huge profits to be made from criminal activities.

End of globalisation?  Case not made.  In fact the reverse.

Irony.  The WW2 blitzkrieg was a German perfection of a British strategists idea. Go figure.

Esplanade.

Evening at the Esplanade.

Hanging around

Look gross, don't they?  Taste foul too.  Should stay up there.  Wonder wards aren't full of people with head injuries.

Meat

Well, don't have beef very often,  so allowed to enjoy.  China House in Beach Street, Penang, is the place.  Very nice.  Like me new braces?  Thank you Ruth and Richard for the new supply.

Penng Street Art.

 Comes in various guises. Commercial promotion.

 Making use  of what is already there.  Lithuanian artist.....

Or just leave the weather to its stuff.

New Bridge progress

Second link progressing well.  Little brother in the foreground.

Second Link Bridge.

Looking like the bridge will be finished by Sept 2013.

PISA redevelopment.

Old car park almost gone.  New hotel going to be built there.  All the trees were very carefully lifted and transported away for replanting.  Took 2 weeks to move them all.

Bukit Genting

Out third visit in 2 weeks.  This is why.

New Shophouse Model.

Finally gotten started on the modular shophouse design.  Follow http://www.davidwhitworth.me/DOLLHOUSE/Dollhouse.html for the associated web pages.  The drawings needed a little correcting in the light of the build, nothing major,  but the materials cutting list was spot on. This is house number 12.  I love design and make. 

Durian Party 2012

 Malaysia'sKing of the Fruits Festival is on. An excuse for some Singaporeans to fly into Penang for a taste. Business as usual at Ah Tu's farm.

The cool bar - coconuts on demand.

 

Quite a crowd - about 30 people - Malaysians and Singaporeans all with sticky and stinky fingers.  The Englishman stays up wind.

 This is Penang's Sunday breakfast at Gurney Drive coffee shop. Tables have to be reserved as it is a popular place.

 

Thanks to the great hospitality of a Penangite, Chong Lai.

 

And thence to Genting Hill for light refreshments. Oh and a trip down memory lane with unaccompanied karaoke.

360 development

 

All these developments, save the new bridge,  are within 1 mile of our apartment, as seen from our block's roof. To the North,  three-storey houses.

To the South East, a condo and shopping complex.

To the South South East, the second bridge linking the island to the mainland.

To the South South East,  condo, shopping mall AND business area.

 

To the South,  PISA is becoming a conference and exhibition centre,  the old car park to be an hotel.

To the South South West, not sure but likely to be shops with apartments above them.

To the South  West,  no idea what this will be

To the West, new condo and shopping centre.  Could be a place to move to in three years time?

To the North West,  a new wet market and hawker centre, touted as a break with past wet smelly wet markets.  Modeled on the Victoria Market in Melbourne, no less!!!

Book - Red Dust.

An Orwellian tramp through China.  A three year tramp.  Quite depressing.  But, history shows that a people can and do recover from State induced blues.

Gek's house.

 

Getting there!!! We recently bought 16 kg of  small marble  tiles for the ground floor rooms.  I think I will need to get stronger wheeled support soon. 

Auckland.

Sorry Auckland.  Not much to say. 

As far from natural as you can get,  an art gallery coffee shop.  Everything in this picture was crafted by machine. An end to our tour of New Zealand.

Muriwai

The last contact with the coast before Auckland.

Couple of beach strollers.

And mighty waves without a surfer.

We came to see to last of the gannets.  Most have taken off across the Tasman sea having finished parenting for the year.

Warkworth

New Zealand as it used to be.   No farting cows here!!!

This kauri tree is around 800 years old,  less than half the age it could expect to be. Pink pants?   Who could that be? Humans first arrived in New Zealand 1,200 years ago and since then have been chopping down these giants.  When the Europeans arrived en-mass in the 1800's they felled them like men possessed until the kauri was all but  extinct.

Warkworth

After nearly 50 days of being on the road,  this really was home from home.  We got bumped up from a self contained unit B&B to a full bungalow with breakfast!!!  This place had everything.  More like we were having a home swop.

Tired of reading,  enjoy the garden.

On to Coromandel

 Cathedral Cave on the way to the Coromandel Peninsular.

Our stay in the peninsular was just to the south of Coromandel town.  Fabulous location at the head of a sound.

With next to no ambient reflected town lights,  we had the Milky Way  in full view.

Tauranga

The reef stricken Rena in the Bay of Plenty.  Her captain was taking a short cut to beat the tide window  to get inside Tauranga port. 

The bay did suffer pollution and the random falling in to sea of containers,

but no major damage on the coast line here.

Tauranga coast side from Mt. Maunganui

360 deg views form the top. Looking south. Steep walk for 45 mins or more, depending on your puff or lack of it.

Looking north.  Out next heading.