Bear's Blog -- A Little Princess

Hi guys! It’s been a while since my last blog post (:-). But now I’ve got lots of stuff to talk about! I’ll start posting more frequently.

I’ve been accepted in to a show called A Little Princess. This show isn’t like the movie. Sara’s father doesn’t come back. It’s almost exactly like the book. I’m Nora Carmichael. The eldest of the Carmichael children.

The show is 4th of December to the 13th of December. Going to rehearsals is really tiring. There are some that happen 2 days in a row. I think it will turn out good though. We’re doing our first performance on Friday (28th of December) I’m a little scared. We will be doing in front of 300 students. It’s a school show. We go and perform at schools. This is our first full audience. It should be really fun to see how it turns out. After 3 months of rehearsals. Break a leg!

Bear's Blog -- Camp Report

Yes!!! I survived 4days, 3 nights on Tung Lung Chau! It was awesome! In case you haven’t realised I just came back from camp. It was soooo cool (except for some parts but I’ll get to that later)! As I said, it was awesome!

I’ll start with the not-so-awesome parts. My least favourite thing would have to have been the toilets. They were squats. They smelled so bad!!!! We didn’t even have porcelain! It was just a hole with yellow construction stuff around the outside. But that wasn’t enough to scare off The Sarah!! All though for some kids it worked. My second least favourite thing would be washing up. Our group got the worst meal to wash up. Mashed potatoes and gravy! All we got was 2 buckets filled with water. By the end our water was black! My third thing is that there was no running water on the island. No showers! You should have smelled us 5th graders when we got off the bus. My fourth least favourite thing was the wind. It was really windy at night. The wind was coming off the sea. The wind flap on our tent flap was broken so the wind kept blowing in. Enough of the bad stuff - Now for the fun stuff.

Getting to Tung Lung Chau was pretty fun. We used a bus, a boat, and our feet. On the bus and boat we sang “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall!” all the way down to one.

As soon as we got to camp we got divided into groups. We had to name our groups. My group was called “The Rebel Cobras”. Cool name huh? The other groups were named “The Terrible Tigers” and “The Mosquito Brigade”. Then we set up tents. In my tent there were three girls.

The first activity we did was Tyroleaning. You get strapped onto a rope and push yourself across the line. When we did it our line was across the ocean. Our second activity was Abseiling. You walk down a cliff. I went first. It was really scary. The instructors kept telling you “Lean Back, Relax, Baby steps.” Who is going to “Relax” when they are leaning into a 50 metre cliff? When you abseil sometimes you need to lower yourself down. That happened to us. If you let the rope slide really fast it felt kind of like when you slide down the metal pole at the playground. Our third activity was Rock climbing. It was fun. We climbed on volcanic rock. It really tore up your fingers. There were three courses. One was easy, one was medium, and one was hard. Each was about 35 metres. I climbed all three.

Our biggest activity was the Star Challenge. All three teams competed against each other. The Rebel Cobras got divided into groups. Every group got sent to different activities and had to do them. When you got it right you got a token. The team with the most tokens won. The Rebel Cobras got the most. So we won!!!!

On the last day we hiked up to BaggPuss. It was a mountain. The view was ok. There wasn’t really that much to see. It was still fun.

When we finally got back home everyone had a nice pee in a not-squatty-potty and fell asleep in their nice soft beds.

CAMP WAS THE MOST AWESOME THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tiger Talk & Monkey Madness -- First Tuesday in November

We have seen some media reports that there is an election on somewhere today -- strange to have it on a Tuesday! Anyway, those of us in the know realise that, as the song plays, "the first Tuesday in November, they run the Melbourne Cup." For those not in the know, the Melbourne Cup is a horse race first run in 1861, and is one of the premier distance handicap races in the world.

Until the last decade or so it has been a race for Aussie and Kiwi horses, but with prize money of A$5.5 million it now attracts the best horses from Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and the US. So why is this the topic for a blog article? Well downunder we build our social calendar around sporting events and the Melbourne Cup is literally the "race that stops a nation" where Melbourne takes a holiday and the rest of the country has a flutter (bet) and stops to watch what happens in this highly unpredictable race.

Aussies don't stop watching when they head overseas and so today we found ourselves at the Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong with many like-minded Aussies at the largest Melbourne Cup event outside of Australia. The Australian Association of Hong Kong runs a wonderful event, albeit a little early to match the three hour time difference to Australia.

Before we get to the race itself, it is a tradition at Flemington that those attending dress in their best and the organisers run a Fashions On The Field where they pick members of the public to step onto the stage and be judged on their finery. Well the same occurs in Hong Kong, and our very own Tony was selected to strut the catwalk. According to Melissa, the judges then get it all wrong and selected the another bloke as the winner, but at least she got to go home with a happy finalist.

The Melbourne Cup is notoriously difficult to pick, as the length (3200 metres), the large field (up to 24 horses) and the handicap weights mean that a favourite is still often at 5-1 odds and almost any horse can win if it has the right run. Today was evidence of that as 40-1 horse Viewed got up over a quality field, but by the closest possible margin (as the picture shows).

The great news for Melissa was the betting system in Hong Kong brackets horses so that some of the long shot horses are under the same betting number. So she picked four horses and her roughie was Alessandro Volta (picked for our very own Alexander) and it was bracketed with Viewed. HK$2000 later Melissa walks away a winner while some of Tony's horses have not yet finished.

The great feel-good story of the day was that the 80 year old master of Australian racing, Bart Cummings, trained Viewed to his twelth Melbourne Cup. A wonderful result for a gentleman of the sport.

So that's our Tuesday done. Now it's over the US for the election that the other 6 billion folks wish they could have a vote in. Let's hope they get it right -- whatever that means.