leftyblog

The 2010 World Cup is here and Brisbane is watching! Dutch Brisbane has changed the Balcony 153 cafe on Elizabeth street in to the Holland Soccer House!

The second match Netherlands – Japan we watched at the Holland Soccer House and it was really great! Great to have such a large group of Dutch (and some other nationalities shouting for Holland) together and the Dutch Brisbane team turned the place Orange, and served kroketten and frikandellen during the break! Joeri and Monique were there was well but unfortunately Jan and Nicole could not be there.

After the Netherlands game we stopped at Redcliffe place, where Optus has set up a HUGE screen and all the socceroos fans had come to gether to watch Australia play Ghana. We watched the beginning of the game and saw the socceroos score!! Unfortunately it was pretty cold, and we decided to go home, by the time we got home Harry Kewell was sent off the field with a red card and Ghana scored the equalizer..

Offcourse we are backing Netherlands and Italy, and we like to see the Socceroos do well. So far, the Netherlands are the only ones (of these teams) that lived up to the expectations. Italy still has a fair chance, but need to win the next game and the socceroos must not only win, but need a lot of luck too..

We have been at Allegro Apartments for over 3 years and found it was time for a change of venue.. after quite a bit of looking around we found a new place at SL8.

We are moving less than 2 kms in North East direction, the same post-code but a different suburb; West End. The new place is closer to the river (around the corner), close to West End markets (across the street) and close to the West End shops and restaurants. It is probably a little bit further from the city and a little bit less easy to use public transport.

Moving house is always a stressful task, a lot of things need to be arranged and offcourse there is the moving itself. Even though we are moving out of a furnished apartment, there is still a bit of stuff to pack and move.

In any case we are excited about moving into a new place, we’re moving in on the 1st of July so still a bit of a wait.. Contact us for our new address!

Elena’s birthday was coming up and I noticed that they advertised a ‘barista course’ as part of Italian Week 2010 – on Elena’s birthday! The Di Bella coffee company only started 8 years ago and is now one of the most famous, and certainly one of the best, coffee brands in Brisbane. Di Bella was started by Phil Di Bella of Italian heritage, so that explains the link to Italian week.

The ‘barista course’ started of with a factory tour where they explain that Di Bella company really tries to establish good working relationships with coffee farmers (source) and café’s al the way to their customers (destination). This is the way they can ensure a good quality product. Next it is time to taste, the tour guide made us a few different espressos to explain the difference in taste, a good coffee flows through in 20-25 seconds, any less and there won’t be much taste, any more and the coffee will be bitter.

Then we went to the Di Bella drive-in where it was time to put our knowledge to the test.. making flat white and cappuccinos!! I got my try as one of the last, but the tour guide rated mine as the best of the day! hmm.. maybe I should consider a change of career!! )

If you like your coffee, the barista course @ Di Bella coffee is a really great experience. If you have your own (fancy) coffee machine you can take it with you and they will learn you how to make great coffee on your own machine. What was really good is the willingness of the people at Di Bella to share their coffee knowledge, the only thing we weren’t told is Phil’s secret roasting mix

After a great afternoon we received a little gift containing a book with the Di Bella story, some coffee (offcourse!) and chocolate coated coffee beans, yum!

Then it was time to go back home for Elena’s birthday dinner! Joeri, Monique and Emma came by to help celebrate and we had a great evening to top off the day!

Davis Cup tennis comes to Queensland!! Group1, Asia/Oceania 2010, 2nd Round Australia vs Japan is played at Pat Rafter Arena at Queensland Tennis Centre.

For this occasion, a temporary clay court is created in the Pat Rafter Arena, basically they cover the hard court with plastic ground sheets (jokingly called the ‘plastic court’ for a short while) and then put in a layer of clay (crushed house-bricks from Melbourne). With the Davis Cup, the hosting country has the right to choose the courts’ surface and with Roland Garros coming up, clay seemed to be a good idea. The other reason for choosing clay is that the track record of Australia on clay is considered better than the Japanese..

Day 1 (Friday) are the singles. The first game was played between Lleyton Hewitt vs Tatsuma Ito. Hewitt was the beter player, winning in straight sets 6-3, 6-3, 6-2. Ito had its moments of brilliance, taking the upper-hand at times, but Hewitt came back (calling out his trademark “c’mon”) and won on points.

The second game was Carsten Ball vs Yuichi Sugita. This game seemed to be played at a different pace, Ball has a mean (very hard!) serve but you may expect that from a 1m96 tall person. Sugita had a lot of speed in him too, and there we saw some excellent rallies! Although this game looked a lot closer, Ball took most of the games and won in straight sets 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.

After day 1 Australia leads Japan 2-0, only one more point to win this round and go through to the World Group play-offs!

The scores are posted to daviscup.com, and you can follow the action online at tennis.com.au.

In Queensland and Northern Territory, Labour Day is the first Monday in May so we get another long weekend! Labour Day celebrates economic and social achievement of workers, and the introduction of the 8 hour work day. However as far as I know for most people its more of an excuse to have a long weekend and enjoy yourselves

Offcourse Friday was Koninginnedag in Holland so we planned on a barbeque celebration with the Dutchies, unfortunately Monique got ill so the plans for the weekend changed a bit..

On Saturday we did some shopping and went to see Beneath Hill 60. I wanted to go see this movie on ANZAC day, it is set in World War I so it would have been the ‘right’ day to go see it, but unfortunately we didn’t get around to it. Beneath Hill 60 is a very impressive movie about civilian miners that are recruited for the war effort. They have little to none training a soldiers, but when they do what they do best (tunnelling and blowing up things) they make a big difference in the outcome of the war. The movie was filmed near Townsville in Queensland and is very impressive, a must see!

On Monday we were invited by Kate and Craig and Joeri for a barbeque to celebrate their birthdays. We had a picnic on the foreshore of Lote Esplanade with some of Kate and Craig’s family and some friends. The Dutchies were there too, Monique felt better and was able to come, Jan and Nicole were there too. This was the first occasion for us to meet Saffron, Kate and Craig’s little girl. Saffron is 8 weeks on the day and she is very cute!

For the occasion I baked some wholemeal rolls and a damper. I used the recipe that we got from Willie Creek pearl farm when we visited WA, but substituted soda water for beer (at Elena’s request). The damper turned out really nice, the rolls were nice too, but maybe a bit filling (one would be enough!)

After a nice lunch we played a bit of soccer, interestingly some of the older kids weren’t too interested in the ‘round ball’ and played rugby instead.

After a nice lunch and a great day at the park we went back home, had a small dinner and went to our coaching sessions at the Queensland tennis centre. This night my group had to play along different lengths of the court to try to land the ball inside the lines and we had some practice in concentration, play the shot and then rotate around, this was really difficult at first, but when you focus on playing the shot it went better.

Emergency baby-sitting today, as our friend Monique was not feeling well and had to rush into the hospital. Luckily we live close to the Mater hospital so we could take care of Emma for a few hours. Monique ended up spending a few days in the hospital with a nasty infection of the Campylobacter bacteria. She probably got this from eating prawns on ANZAC day but luckily she is recovering well.

This meant we got to spent some time with Emma, who was in great spirits. Elena picked her up from the hospital and went for a walk around Southbank and by the time I got home, Emma was happily playing with her Dutch (orange lion) and Italian (Dolomiti bear) friends.

We played a little more until it was time for a bottle and bed, but Emma didn’t want to lay down.. Joeri explained a later; Emma has recently found out she can sit and the world looks a lot nicer from that perspective, so she doesn’t like to lay down anymore.. this can be challenging when she needs to sleep…

By the time Joeri arrived Emma was sitting on the bed, playing with Elena. Joeri then tried to get her to sleep using his ‘magical dad powers’ (or maybe Emma was just more tired by then!).

Joeri didn’t have dinner yet, but brought some take-away. We spend some time on the balcony catching-up on todays events..

This weekend (25 April) is Anzac day (sort of the Australian equivalent to bevrijdingsdag) and because Anzac day falls on a Sunday this year, the public holiday is moved to Monday and we get a long weekend!

Anzac day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) during the First World War. It is one of the most important national occasions of both Australia and New Zealand, and a rare instance of two sovereign countries sharing the same remembrance day, and referencing both countries in its name.

We had a quiet weekend at home, you sometimes deserve to have a bit of relax We did play some tennis on Sunday morning on the courts of the Brisbane State High School.

On Monday it was time for our coaching sessions at the Queensland tennis centre. We had booked a court an hour before the lesson, but only 2 of my group showed up, for the coaching session we were with only 3 people, the others must be enjoying their day off too much . It was good to be in a small group, because you can fit more play in, it is also exhausting especially after you have been running around the court for 2 hours! Still great fun though!

The Sinterklaas Barbeque is starting to be an annual event for us Dutchies in Brisbane; this year on 6 December we met up at our place with Joeri, Monique and little Emma, Jan and Nicole.

Offcourse we started with pepernoten, then chucked some meat on the barbie and enjoyed it with a couple of drinks. All in all a nice relaxing day to catch up with friends!

Sinterklaas brought a present for Emma as well! Looks like Emma enjoys her Baby Neptune Ocean Adventure gym!

As part of the recent office refurbishments, the building owner organized a challenge to get some artwork in the meeting rooms. The team we work with came up with a surfboard theme for the ‘coast’ room to win the challenge. The price was a few bottles of Van Gogh flavoured vodka, so we had to have a party to try them out!

The party was at a colleagues’ place in Redland Bay, a beautiful two level house with a pool room and pool downstairs, and a huge deck with a view of Straddie upstairs. Almost all of the Brisbane based colleagues made it to the party, some brought their partners or kids as well.

The account team did shopping and downloaded recipes of the internet; one of the favourite cocktails involved strawberries and vanilla vodka, but the most popular was Oreos, Dutch chocolate vodka, Kahlua and milk…

Later some steaks were put on the barbeque and a lot more beautiful food appeared on the kitchen bench. For dessert there was pavlova, cassata and caramel cheesecake and there was enough for seconds (thirds for who wanted).

Great party and it was a good nights out.. thanks a lot for having us!