It seems everyone is moving to, visiting or wants to go to Australia. With both Gareth and Dan migrating there over Christmas, Philippe talking of moving there if Ana gets a scholarship and Marc taking a three week holiday in preparation for moving there in a years time. Anyway, I checked my mail this morning to find that Marc had been kind enough to send me one of his holiday snaps… As for myself, I’ve been having far much less fun. The road works continue. The devils drill (imaging a 5 story high black and decker drill) has returned and…
Yes, it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally finished writing the gallery for this site (there are plenty of ready made galleries out there, but I much prefer to write my own, tailoring it to my needs and keeping active with php programming). At the moment there are not many photos up. In fact there is only one gallery, and that is from Christmas Eve 2004. Yup, the pics are over a year old, but Berry, Natash and Phil were harrasing me for these. The gallery will grow in the forth coming months. I aim to include photos…
I booked Friday off work and headed up to the sierra north of Madrid for a day on the slopes. The Valdesqui resort is small but perfect for a days skiing or snowboarding for beginners and intermediates. At the weekend it is so packed that you have to queue for every lift, the slopes are packed and collisions are common, hence going on a weekday. (Take a close look at the Where Is Andy header image above. Look at the left hand side below the “Where” and you can see several lines linking down to a central point. That is…
Espe and I had the pleasure of being invited to the opening and prize ceremony of the Medico del Mundo annual photo exhibition at La Casa Encendida. We both love photography so an opportunity to check out another exhibition was not to be missed, but we were pleasantly surprised by the food and drink we were served while wandering about. The photos, as expected, were amazing but at the same time quite disturbing. They served to illustrate some of the pain and suffering seen over the last year. Unsurprisingly the Tsunami and genocide in Sudan featured strongly. We stayed for…
An excellent series all about American paratroopers role in World War 2. I got this for Christmas after a recommendation from Niel while out in Poland. Very well made, based on many true facts, characters and stories from survivors. Although hard hitting its been really entertaining until the penultimate episode where the truth suddenly hit home when they stumbled across a concentration camp. I must admit to being hit harder by the reality of what happened, than by actually walking around Auschwitz. The most striking part of this was seeing and sharing the feelings with the soldiers who walked into…
Even if I do say so myself, I cooked another excellent dinner last night… Despite having done a huge shop a few days previous we were a little short on substantial ingredients. Looking over a few cook books Nigel Slater, once again, came up trumps… 90 minutes later I’d prepared an incredibly simple, yet very tasty dish: Ingredients 3 Potatoes 1 Onion Handful of Mushrooms 4 rashers of streaky bacon 2 Garlic Cloves 2 tbsp Olive oil 50g butter Shed load of Thyme 100g Cheese (the softer the better) First off I sliced up the potatoes and then fried the…
I’ve had quiet weekend / week, with the exception of meeting up with Ros and Carlos for Dinner on Saturday evening. Then, as always, two invites came up at once. Espe and I were invited to two birthday meals last night. Initially we popped along to see Klaar. Nice to catch up with her and her friends. Nico bought her a really funky Buddist ornament, that when used correcly emits a soothing humming sound. Reminded me of one of the temples we visited I Mongolia. Got to get myself one of those. Its a real shame we weren’t able to…
Check this out: What happened on the 2005 Mongol Rally. Cool! So what’s next? The Rickshaw Run maybe?