Last week Eilish (17) and Breandan (15) visited from Adelaide. This was their second visit to Perth and first since 2009.

Prior to coming, I asked them to each give me a list of 5 activities they would like to do. I’m happy to write that we did almost all of them.

I have rarely lived in the same place at the same time as Eilish and Breandan so it was a great pleasure to spend time with them. Following are photos from the wonderful week.

At Jump About Trampoline Park (note Breandan jumping off the pyramid trampoline)

Ellington Jazz Club

Breandan achieved a personal best ten pin bowling score at Rosemount Bowl and won two of the three games. I won the first game with 160.

Eilish enjoying home-made pizza

Araluen Botanic Park. At Araluen we saw a number of birds including blue wrens, red tailed black cockatoos and silver eyes.

Another Araluen photo

Canning Dam. Currently we all stand at similar heights. Breandan is 2-3 shoe sizes larger than me so I don’t think we will be at similar heights for much longer.

Out the front of Bjoern and Ola’s place

At Bjoern and Ola’s

Eilish standing in front of the BHP tower, Perth CBD

In Fremantle’s old quarter. This photo was taken by Julie, an American naval architecture academic in town for a conference who joined us on the cruise to Fremantle.

Breandan leaping from shipping container to shipping container, Fremantle

At Coventry Village, Morley. The anime and gaming shops were the main time consumers here.

Breandan in front of the SuperCars Perth Lamborghini he rode in around the RAC race track. No prizes for guessing his highlight of the trip.

Farewell SUPA IGA Dianella

The only independent supermarket within 5 kilometres of my house with reasonable prices and a wide variety of stock closed at 6pm tonight: SUPA IGA Dianella. All the other independents in my area of Perth either had the prices or the variety but not both.

SUPA IGA Dianella was quite eclectic with a decent international section and I am sad to see it go. Even sadder is that it is being replaced with another generic Coles supermarket.

A new Coles supermarket is just what I wanted. If I were to consider shopping at Coles and the closest Coles Inglewood store didn’t have what I required then I wouldn’t bother visiting the Coles in Maylands or the Coles in Morley or the soon to be Coles in Dianella because they would not have it either.

Coles (like Woolworths) is all about maximising profit per centimetre of shelving space. Considerations like supplier sustainability, sourcing locally and providing real choice within product segments have fallen by the wayside.

The oligopoly powers that the two major supermarket chains have in Australia are not good for Australian growers, not good for Australian suppliers and not good for Australian consumers. If the major supermarket chains were broken up, Australia would be a better place.

Yesterday, on a beautiful, mild overcast day I sold a heap of carpets for Carpets for Communities at the very well organised Mosman Park EcoFair.

Last night I went clubbing at Gold Bar for Malvi’s birthday and rediscovered Dirty Black Russians.

This morning I ran for an hour to the Mount Yokine Reservoir and back.

And, now, I’ve just cooked and eaten this:

Bacon, free range eggs with their yolks broken and spread, green capsicum freshly picked from my courtyard, feta, chilli flakes, extra virgin olive oil and ground black pepper.

The omelette from the first photo in a toasted ciabatta roll with avocado and Mum’s home made tomato sauce 🙂

A few photos from a hot day at the cricket.

The scoreboard in the changeover in innings after Australia was bowled out. Note the 180 (Warner’s score).

A massive beer cup snake in the Inverarity Stand.

There were lots of seagulls on the oval.

I rediscovered the following magnet and sticker last year in my possessions Mum and Dad looked after for me 🙂

Don't try to frolic Release the frolic from within

PS: I forgot I also had the WANC 2000 stubbie holder:

For his birthday last month Glen held a wonderful fancy dress party. Everybody made an effort and there were some very good costumes on display. The best and most original costume was undoubtedly Tosh in his rubbish bin.

Glen, the birthday boy dressed as the Green Lantern whilst Pedro came like a ninja from Adelaide for the weekend. I was the ghost of Osama bin Laden:

To get to the party I caught 2 buses across Perth dressed up like this 🙂

On facebook, an old classmate copy-pasted a nationalistic and divisive rant based on Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country:

After stewing for a while, I came up with a response:

I love a diverse country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of fiercely fought freedom,
Of people with heart, guts and brains.
I love an inclusive society,
Of friendship, passion and free,
Our successes and achievements,
Acceptance – that is Australia’s key.