Claire and I became parents for the second time on Tuesday 18th May at approximately 11:40AM, when we welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world named Evie Charlotte Lattimore.
Evie weighed in at 3.6Kg or 7 lb 15oz in the old scale and was 49cm long. According to the Queensland Health growth charts, she is right on the average for length and between 50th and 75th percentile for weight.
Claire and Evie are both doing really well and we’re overjoyed to have a little girl in the family.
I was in Sydney between 21-23 April, where I attended my first ‘marketing’ conference since moving from the Mantra Group IT Department at the beginning of 2009. The conference in question is called Search Marketing Expo or SMX for short and is held in numerous locations around the world, where the top minds in their respective fields are invited to present on their chosen specialty.
I packed my bag the night before and was up at sparrow fart on Wednesday morning. On my way down to Coolangatta Airport, I made a detour into Southport to pick up Stephen. The drive to the airport was hassle free, however I couldn’t believe how many cars were in the long term parking – it was all but overflowing with cars parked up on the edges of grass. The flight down to Sydney was delayed for some reason but it was good to hear regular updates over the speaker of the progress of the delay. Stephen has recently returned from a few weeks in Japan and has been regaling everyone of his fantastic time over there. A few things that have come to light in his travels, which have subsequently become crystal clear to me – we do a spectacularly poor job of catering for non-English language people.
After arriving in Sydney, we took a cab to Sydney city. Being used to Brisbane and Gold Coast airports being quite a distance away from the central business district, I was expecting a lengthy drive and a cab fare to match but was really surprised by the close proximity of the airport to the city. Stephen & I spent what time was available on Wednesday inspecting a couple of the Mantra Group hotels. It’s always nice to be able to walk around a hotel, find out what it is near from the point of view of a guest – it highlights a lot of things that you don’t get a sense of until you’ve actually been there. From an employee or company stand point, it was also great to see how well we’re doing with consistency of presentation and services at the hotels – yet another thing that is hard to judge until you’ve been there in person.
Stephen & I stayed at one of our Sydney hotels, Mantra on Kent which is located on Kent Street and is only a block away from Darling Harbour. Not because we’d organised it, however we ended up in 1 Bedroom Deluxe apartments on the 27th floor. There was plenty of room, the bed was comfortable, had a flat screen TV, a great bathroom with good views over the Sydney city. We enjoyed a full buffet breakfast each morning as well, which was really delicious.
After inspecting a couple hotels, we walked down George Street towards Circular Quay and The Rocks. Of course, having not been to Sydney before – I had no idea where I was going and was relying and Stephen and the magic that is Google Maps on an iPhone. As we approached Circular Quay, we came across a large grassed area with a heap of people just relaxing, chatting and eating their lunch. I wasn’t expecting it at but was great to see people taking advantage of such a great space. A few moments later and suddenly I could see the tips of the Sydney Opera House. I think every Australian has seen the Sydney Opera House countless times on TV but seeing it in person, even at a distance was remarkable. Another five minutes of walking and we were down at The Rocks and the Sydney Harbour Bridge was our back drop. While I’d always known that the Sydney Harbour Bridge was big, seeing it on TV or engulfed in fireworks really doesn’t give you any appreciation for just how large and visually spectacular it is – it really is impressive.
I managed to sample a couple different foods and restaurants while in Sydney, all in the city centre. The first was a Mexican take away restaurant named Guzman Y Gomez and it was possibly the single tastiest take away food I’ve ever eaten – I really wish we had one on the Gold Coast. For dinner, Kingsleys Australian Steakhouse was on the agenda as Stephen had eaten there before. When I read the menu, I actually joked with Stephen whether or not it was pretty much going to be a great piece of meat and potato and he confirmed my suspicions – that was fine by me! The second evening, we were taken out to a restaurant sitting behind a nightclub, though I can’t remember the name. The food was great and for dessert I had my first chocolate fondant – that was something I could eat regularly! We were our really late that night, not that we realised at the time – I don’t think we really finished eating until around 11PM and didn’t make it to bed until circa 2AM.
The Sydney CBD is a really nice area, lots of great looking buildings – plenty of older classically styled, mixed with new modern design. Probably the most surprising thing for me was, the apparent lack of people within Sydney city. For some reason, I had it in my mind that the city centre was going to be absolutely abuzz with activity – however it wasn’t any busier than Brisbane – in fact I think it was probably less busy. On our way back to the airport, we left early to make sure we could find taxi rank and actually make it to the airport on time. That turned out the be the best decision we’d made, as it turned out there was traffic pandimonium on the Friday evening leading into a long weekend. The taxi driver we had was great, an absolute ninja behind the wheel and was tearing through the traffic and he highlighted numerous times that he is intimately aware of the spacial requirements for that car to fit between other objects – wow.
Overall, I’m really impressed with what I saw of Sydney. While horribly brief from a sight seeing standpoint, its certainly somewhere I want to visit again with Claire & Hugo at a less frantic pace so we can get out of the city centre and really take in the beauty that is Sydney.
Last week our family took the next logical step in preparing for the arrival of our second child toward the end of May – we bought a family car.
Claire bought her 2003 Mazda 323 SP20 in 2004 with less than 10,000km on the clock when the original owner decided that she wanted a Mazda 6 instead. In that time, Claire and I have clocked up about 120,000km on the Mazda and it hasn’t missed a beat.
The downside of the Mazda 323 hatchback from a family standpoint is that the mount point for the child restraints are at the rear of the boot, just in front of the latch for the hatch boot lid. The engineers who designed that component clearly don’t have kids, as for the life of me I have no idea why a car manufacturer would put a child restraint point in that position as the straps severely interfere with the storage space in the boot. It’d have made much more sense to me to have them on the back of the rear seats, that way the boot space in the hatchback is maintained.
Claire and I toyed with the idea of keeping the Mazda for a little while longer but after more discussion amongst ourselves and with family, it seemed as though it was really going to be a major pain – especially once we added in a second set of restraints.
With that in mind, we went on the hunt for a replacement vehicle in the fourth quarter of 2009 but were unable to find something we were interested in at the time. Fortunately we weren’t in any particular rush at the time, so were happy to bide our time to wait for something to pop up and as they say, patience is a virtue.
Claire stumbled onto a 2004 Ford Falcon XR6 on Car Sales and thought it looked fantastic, even with the little rear spoiler! We submitted an inquiry to the Car Sales web site to get in contact with the dealership and when I drove down to Hinterland Toyota at Burleigh to have a look at the car and was completely impressed. The exterior of the car was absolutely pristine, hadn’t been in an accident, no dints, no marks and only a few light grazes on one of the mag wheels. The interior of the car was the same, no wear anywhere in the car or pulled threads in the fabric – it was if the car hadn’t really been used in the last six years. On top of that, with about 95,000km on the odometre – it really hasn’t seen a lot of driving for a car of that age either.
Dealing with Hinterland Toyota was a very easy experience as well, the sales staff were happy, polite, efficient and weren’t pressuring me into a decision. It took about two hours to have Claire’s car valued, which they were happy to do without any real notice when I arrived and were transparent with costs as well which I think is great too. An added bonus of Hinterland Toyota which I didn’t expect was that they offer 175,000km warranty on their vehicles, fixed price servicing in either their Nerang or Burleigh locations and their service centres are open until 11:30PM!
After everything was sorted, handover of the vehicles took less than 30 minutes and I was on my way in our new family car. I provided our personal particulars the day before we took delivery, which meant all of the paper work was ready for me when I arrived – simple but great time saver. I was really surprised it was such a short change over process, I recall spending literally hours at Eagers Mazda in Brisbane when we bought Claire’s car initially – so this was a welcome change.
Claire and I are really happy with our new family car. Claire couldn’t believe it had a slight burble, I think I mentioned it was a happy coincidence. Of course, Claire being the motor head that she is, proudly exclaimed to the world that she now feels like the typical Australian bogan mother – awesome!
I have to thank our parents for their continued advice, help and support over the years. I think if Claire and I can provide as much guidance to our children when they grow up as ours have to us – we’ll be very very proud as it has meant a tremendous amount to the both of us.
Today Avinash Kaushik, a web analytics advocate tweeted about some incredible macro insect photos.
After looking through them, while some of them are quite scary and odd looking – they are spectacularly beautiful at the same time.
The super close up shots of the eyes are incredible, the colours on some of the spiders and flies, coupled with the detail in their anatomy.
If you’re not squeamish, I recommend you explore Thomas Shahan macro insect photos on Flickr.
Claire, Hugo and I recently had a weekend escape to Kingscliff on the Tweed Coast in Northern New South Wales. It takes between 30 and 40 minutes to get to Salt Village from the Gold Coast. Claire and I had been to Salt Village outside Kingscliff previously, however it’d been quite some time ago. We figured we could find our way there by nose, which mostly worked but we weren’t sure which road to take out of Kingscliff to get back to Salt Village.
We were booked into stay at Mantra on Salt Beach, one of three accommodation options available at Salt Village – the other two being Peppers Salt Resort & Spa and Peppers Bale Salt. When we arrived at the reception, we were also greeted by a friendly porter. I don’t recall a porter when we stayed at Peppers Salt Resort & Spa last time, however it was great to have one available at Mantra on Salt Beach on this stay. The best thing was he took care of the luggage, which meant it was no hassle for Claire & Hugo. The other benefit I liked was he was able to direct me where to park in the secure underground car park to be close to the lifts that were servicing the section of Mantra on Salt Beach we’d be staying in – nothing worst than going up a lift into the wrong section of a building.
The room we had booked was a two bedroom ocean view apartment and we’d requested a portable cot for Hugo to sleep in as well. I was happy to find out when we arrived that the cot was already set up and it even came with a complete set of toiletries and linen – not bad for a little fella! It was setup in the master bedroom but Claire and I thought we’d move it into the second room. That proved a little harder than first thought as it didn’t fit through the doorways easily and I couldn’t manage to unpack it. A call to the reception and another staff member came up, unpacked, moved and set it up again in the other room in about 2 minutes flat – very efficient!
Hugo had his first real encounter with the beach, which was fantastic to watch unfold. Claire took Hugo down to the water to let the small waves roll over his legs and feet, which he took delight in – kicking and stamping in the water. It would have been great if the beach water wasn’t quite so cool, I think he would have really enjoyed the waves. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do in all the sand, so we put him down onto the firm sand to start with – which went without a hiccup and proceeded to move him into the soft, loose sand. He was fascinated by it, waving his hands furiously over the sand, hitting and knocking it everywhere and had an all round great time. After he had finished playing with the sand, he realised there was a big blue thing in front of him and took off towards it!
When Claire and I stayed at Peppers Salt Resort & Spa last time, we ventured into Kingscliff to have a mooch around and were happy to discover some great cafes and shops. The cafe we remembered had changed hands in that time, I tried a barramundi burger but I now realise that the error of my ways and will remember not to betray the beef gods next time. One shop we were excited to see was still operating was Boardwalk Books, a small book shop with good mix of mainstream reading and a fabulous range of eclectic books that you don’t see in other book shops. We couldn’t help ourselves and picked up a children’s book named Everybody Poos and a book by Ben Mezrich named Bringing Down The House – the true story behind the recent “21” movie featuring Kevin Spacey.
You can’t help but fall in love with Kingscliff, its small, quaint and is absolute beachside living. I think the Kingscliff Beach & Lawn Bowls Club must have the single greatest location of any bowls club in Australia – their backyard is the pristine Kingscliff beach. I imagine Kingscliff now is what the Gold Coast must have felt like back when it was still a tiny town growing up. Salt Village is also a really relaxing place to be, with the majority of the shops you’ll need to simply remove yourself from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to unwind.
I don’t know when we’ll be back to Kingscliff & Salt Village again next but I’m quite sure I’m going to enjoy it.