Out from the darkness

Hi World,

I'm back. Ironic that my last post was titled living under a rock because that is how I have felt for the past two months.

You see, my computer was forced to take an unfortunate hiatus after it's power pack died and no power pack meant no charged battery. So I have been completely cut off, except for the Internet access on my iPod Touch and the computer at work, oh and the laptop that Susan's brother lets me borrow. Apart from that, completely cut off.

So after many an ebay search I was able to find a replacement power pack, order it and after a month of waiting, the joy of having it arrive, or so I thought. Unfortunately I had failed to read the connector size details on the page and had ordered the wrong part. So after a little bit of back and forth between the seller and I (there was a language barrier at play) and another month of waiting, it finally arrived and I'm back.

Living Under a Rock.

About two weekends ago my girlfriend and I started the labored task of building a new garden in our backyard which was no small feat.

Our house had three pre-existing boulder lined gardens which had become barren due to a lack of attention by our house's previous owners. The gardens now were merely mounds of grass that I had to awkwardly mow every week and so we decided that it would be best to remove these and form a new garden.

Our first task was to dig out and move about 20 boulders of varying size and then level the three gardens. Once we had a clean slate to start with we were able to re-lay the boulders in a new formation to make the gardens new shape.

As we were laying the boulders I dropped one near its soon to be new home and on impact a large piece broke off. To my amazement the piece that broke off contained what looks to be a fossil of a plant.

I have absolutely no idea what sort of plant this is, how old it might be or if it's even a real fossil but either way it absolutely made my day.

¡FUERZA PARA CHILE!

As I'm sure you've heard, on Saturday,  27th February Chile was rocked by a massive earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale (the 7th largest in history).  The earthquake was followed by 128 aftershocks measuring up to 6.0 and a Tsunami wave which claimed about 350 people. The death toll currently stands at 708.


I was born in Chile and have a large number of family members still there. The news on Friday night (Brisbane time) hit me like a train. I was very worried for my family and desperately trying to find more information on the internet. On television the news covered the story briefly but with the small amount of information coming out of Chile (due to communication problems I imagine) the story was forced to focus on the Tsunami warning that had been issued for the east coast of Australia.


In the morning more news had come to hand and the full extent of the damage was being realised. The Chilean President Michelle Bachelet had announced that there had not been contact with the town of Concepción which was closest to the epicenter. Footage of the destruction showed collapsed highways, buildings and houses; it looked like Chile had gone to war.


Throughout the morning I spent my time glued to Facebook hoping that my Cousins would respond and calling my parents who were trying to reach the rellies on the phone. Hours went past and finally we received word (both via Facebook and phone) that everyone was safe. The family had gone on holidays together and was on the last day of their trip at the beach; they were far enough away from the quake to not have been injured or worse.


The country now lays in shambles and has been declared a state of catastrophe. In the affected areas water and electric systems are not functioning and communication is limited. In the worse hit areas hospitals are not functioning leaving people to wait until the government can open field hospitals. Thousands of people are still missing and the death toll is expected to continue to rise; my cousin informs me that people are still very much scared.


If you can spare a few dollars please donate here or via any other channels.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I've been spending a few weeks at home and have had some great quality time with our kids (they're of the four legged variety). Over the last few weeks our pups have become really big sooks, probably from a mixture of extra time with me and the weather.

Our Pups, Mustard and Bella, have a careless life of which i'm envious. Their days are occupied mostly by sleep with small interruptions of hyper activity and hunger.  The past few weeks has made me realise how structured their days are.

The morning is spent buzzing around the dinner table begging for scraps (Mustard more than Bella), then it's off for a nap (who could blame them, they've only slept 8 hours) until lunch time. Lunch is spent in much the same way that breakfast was and then back to sleep. Finally they wake up around four (the time of day when i'm feeling less energetic) and want to play and rough-house. The day is finally finished with dinner and sleep; it's a hard life.

Night Time Photography

On Thursday I stayed up late to try my hand a shooting some night shots. In particular, I was interested in trying to capture Star Trails, an effect that I had seen on the Internet.

The awesome effect is created by leaving the shutter open for a long period from a few minutes to a few hours capturing the movement of the stars as they travel across the night sky. An excellent example is this shot created by Josch Hambsch.

After attempting for a while and not succeeding, I decided that there was too much light from the moon so I would have to wait for a moonless night.

Instead I turned my attention to the moon (that little attention seeker) and got these two shots that I'm pretty happy with.

Not a wasted night after all :)

Torta Mil Hoja - Nom nom nom!

Torta Mil Hoja
Originally uploaded by Pancho_00

For my birthday last week my girlfriend Susan surprised me with a Torta Mil Hoja (Cake of a thousand sheets).

The Torta Mil Hoja consists of 20 or so individually bake sheets with thick Manjar filling (caramel made from boiled cans of condensed milk) between each sheet, then topped with coconut.

This delicious treat not only brings back fond memories of childhood, it also provides the sheer enjoyment of its sweet flavour and when  I say sweet, I mean sweet.This cake is not for the faint hearted, you MUST have a sweet tooth because in Chile, we don't believe that anything can be "too sweet".

Hi World

i don't think there's any question here | day 363
Originally uploaded by TeeRish

Welcome to my blog,

I thought it was only fitting to start my blog with a bit of humour in the form of a fart joke or a fart photo rather.

I stumbled across this little gem whilst browsing flickr (yes, i searched for the term fart).

Fart jokes aside, this really is a great shot. Not only is it hilarious but ridiculously complicated to pull off. Can you imagine how many outtakes they would have had to get this right! Anyway if you're interested in seeing some outtakes and other great shots head on over to TeeRish's Flickr page.