By Dina, on July 28th, 2010  The first time I went to Canada, I thought the yellow street signs with a deer picture on it, warning you that a deer might cross the road, were very cute. Coming from Indonesia, I’d never seen street sign bearing an animal picture before.
To most people, kangaroos and penguins are not everyday sights. Unless you live in Australia and New Zealand the chance to meet them in the wild is slim to none (maybe if one escapes from the zoo?) In the past few months as we’ve traveled around Australia and New Zealand, I’ve been very excited [read more...]
By Dina, on July 23rd, 2010 
When I think about a mother kangaroo and her baby joey, I always think of a cute head poking out neatly out from the mommy’s pouch. But as I’ve learned, the truth is not always as pretty as that. This one seems to have stuffed itself in headfirst, and decided that it was cozy enough that way, with the head inside and feet and tail poking out. And this is pretty common among the kangaroos and wallabies we’ve seen.
We were wondering whether the joey was going to stay upside down or somehow flip itself over but it [read more...]
By Dina, on April 28th, 2010  When I’m in a big city, sometimes I get overwhelmed by the city’s skyscrapers, activity and routine. When those moments come, I need an escape. For me, my escape is the beauty of nature, and city gardens are usually do it for me. In Sydney, that place is the city’s botanical garden. Beyond the obvious beauty of any botanical garden in the world, these are some special reasons why I love this place: It’s a cockatoo paradise The first time I heard from Sydneysiders that cockatoos fly free in the suburbs around Sydney, I was astonished. I was invited [read more...]
By Dina, on April 15th, 2010  How do you celebrate Easter? When I was small, I went to Easter egg hunting events for kids. The eggs were real-but-bright-red hard boiled eggs. The same kind of eggs with the ones I saw in kids’ birthday parties. That was back when I still lived in Java. Later on after I moved to Canada, these Easter eggs were not bright red hard boiled anymore, but they transformed into chocolate eggs with various different fillings, wrapped in colorful packages. But this year in Sydney, we went to an Easter celebration that is not themed around eggs. The event size [read more...]
By Dina, on April 2nd, 2010  Welcome to our new weekly feature: the Friday Photo! A couple days ago when I was strolling down the Hyde Park in the centre of Sydney, and I found this most beautiful and elaborate drinking fountain that I’ve seen so far! The fountain itself is looking quite usual, but it’s sitting inside an ornate gazebo especially made for it! Being cheap backpackers like us, we as far as possible we rely on the free drinking sources to satisfy our thirst. We fill whatever drinking bottle that we happen to have with tap water in the morning (of course [read more...]
By Dina, on March 3rd, 2010  After 3 weeks of amazing trip in the North Island, New Zealand (stories coming, I promise), we were back in Sydney last Sunday, February the 28th. Today my friend told me I just missed 2 big events in Sydney. The first one was the Mardi Gras parade and fireworks on Saturday, just right a day before we came. I thought previously it was going to be on Sunday, so I actually was excited the whole day to see how things would be going, since I’ve never been in a Mardi Gras event before. However I saw nothing and later [read more...]
By Dina, on February 11th, 2010  One of my new hobby is to take night scene pictures. I just knew that my tiny waterproof and shockproof camera could handle it, given I could manage the camera to stay still. It could be challenging sometimes since we are too lazy to carry around a tripod with us. So I usually use stones, brochures, wallet, or anything I can find that can give the right angle of the scene to my camera and let it stay still. Here are the highlights of my Sydney night shots. These first few were taken during the Australian Idol finale. They [read more...]
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I helped  people get clean water
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