I have been staying at the Nanyang Executive Centre at Nanyang Technological University during the last week. At the end of each day I usually grab dinner at one of the canteens on the campus and then walk back to the NEC. I relax a little and even watch a little of the local television. Shao Ping and I used to watch the local channels here during the years that we lived in Singapore.

It was good to catch a guest appearance by Kym Ng on the game show Deal or No Deal. She is my favourite Singaporean personality. It was hosted by Adrian Pang. I have always enjoyed watching the movie Forever Fever in which Adrian Pang played the lead. Some great footage of Singapore in that flick. Anyway, there are some photographs of the local media below for your enjoyment.

This afternoon Shao-Ping, myself and our two guests from Taiwan, Claire and Kelly, went for a drive south through the Illawarra, past my school at Albion Park and then up Macquarie Pass to the top of the Illawarra Escarpment. A new tourist attraction opened on the escarpment two weeks ago ~ The Illawarra Fly.

What is the Illawarra Fly you ask? A large insect of the order Diptera with dimensions not unlike the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour? Perhaps a massive opened zipper comparable in size to the Big Pineapple at Nambour? Well, thank goodness, the Illawarra Fly is not a kitsch piece of titanic tourist trash. It is a tree-top walk along the edge of the Illawarra escarpment.

We arrived at the ‘fly‘, bought our tickets and made our way through the temperate rainforest to the structure. It is quite high and I am not one for heights actually. Not sure why. I climbed Uluru when I was 14 and I have even been on two tandem skydives from 4000 metres but some heights still get to me. I ventured out on to the structure and began taking photographs. I will admit that I did not climb the tower. Perhaps next time.

The views north and east across the Illawarra escarpment are sensational. You can see all of the peaks conquered by my alter ego Larry as a member of the Adventurers’ Club. Mount Kembla, Mount Keira and Broker’s Nose are all there. The Illawarra looks like a nice place to live and work, eh? I car-pool with Diamond and Horse from the Adventurers’ Club.

Looking north towards Wollongong in the distance and the Illawarra Escarpment

Beneath us lay Albion Park and the Yellow Rock region. Due east is Shellharbour. The Pacific Ocean spreads out along the eastern horizon. The weather was perfect for the adventure.

Yellow Rock and Albion Park countryside

Following the tree top walk we made our way back through the forest and I took a few more photographs. I think I took 71 in all. I should create a new gallery.

A massive tree ~ I do not know the species…

Shao Ping, Claire and Kelly

After that we drove back down the mountain and through the dairy farms. Claire and Kelly jumped at the opportunity to photographs the cows in the late afternoon light.

Contented cows. They’re not thinking about joining a Diigo group.

The last few days have been flat out. On Tuesday I ran an all day a pre-conference workshop. Tools that the participants were able to explore included WordPress [doc], Swickis [doc], del.icio.us bookmarks [doc], Flickr [doc] and Twitter [doc]. It was an interesting workshop and the participants seemingly had a good time.

Web 2.0 workshop participants 

On Wednesday I gave a presentation on the read~write web and current developments in the area including mashups, Yahoo Pipes and scraping of sites througgh the use of tools such as Dapper. Some of the audience members are pictured below.

The audience 

NTU has an excellent set up and my presentation was recorded by Ian and the team pictured below.

Ian, centre, and her team of helpers 

At the conclusion of the presentations myself, Tom Reeves, Sheryl Wong, Paul Gagnon and Westley Field grabbed a few quick photographs. The Good To Great Seminar has been excellent and there has been a lot of buzz and excitement. I shall be coming back up to Singapore in April to follow up on some of the workshops and presentations of this week.

Myself, Tom, Sheryl, Paul and Westley 

One evening Tom, Westley and I went out for a drink and dinner. We had a beer by Boat Quay and then I took them both for a walk down South Bridge Road to Chinatown. I grabbed a quick photograph of Westley and Tom by Speakers’ Corner. We ate at the Tai Pei Eating House and then went for a walk around Chinatown followed by a visit to the Sri Mariamman Temple. We then walked back to the hotel, past Clarke Quay, across the river and up Victoria Street.

Westley and Tom settle a point of debate. 

Last night I caught up with Siva, Airani and Anand. We had a jolly good time. I drank four or more ice-lemon teas and consumed a healthy amount of popiah and tucked into an incredibly rich fish-head curry that just about blew my head off. It certainly cleaned out the cobwebs from system. 

Anand and myself 

Aiarani, myself and Siva

I certainly have. The rain has been my key preoccupation for a couple of months now. This week our region had record rain once again. It seems to be a regular event.

Water entered the ground floor of our split level home via an upwelling around the piers as well as from around the concrete slab upon which the ground floor rests. It is not coming in via the doorways or garage door. The water is seeping up through the clay and soil. I assume the water table has now risen following the end of several years of drought. What to do?

I was up all night on Monday through to Tuesday morning monitoring the water levels downstairs. I spent the rest of the evenings this week catching up on rest. If I was on the Internet I was probably checking in on the Bureau of Meteorology web site and its excellent radar. It is raining as I type.

The image above was captured after the previous full stop. I have not been able to make the time to blog or to sift through the posts in Google Reader this week. This morning, I managed to get some time to go through the posts. There were more than 400. I marked all of the posts from the commercial blogs as read and focused on the K-12 and other education blogs. There are only seven unread posts now. The rain is still coming down. Sigh.

One year ago we were crying out for rain. Now we need a break from the rain.

Well, I have over 200 items that remain unread in Google Reader. This is my first post in 5 days. It will not be earth shattering.

My wife and I finally finished setting up the living room. We moved about 900 books and filled three bookcases. We moved the desk upstairs. We applied these little pads to the feet and bases of all our furniture so that the freshly sanded and oiled floorboards would not be scratched. We finished all of that on Wednesday morning and we took it easy, enjoying the moment.

Yesterday we removed all the outdoor furniture and pot plants from our outside deck. I sanded back most of the flaws and water stains. I then cleaned the deck with a solution. Once that had dried we applied a coat of natural decking oil. Shao Ping did a lot of the fiddly bits and I brushed on the main coat with a lambswool applicator attached to the end of a broom handle. This morning I was up early and redid the fiddly bits with an old towel and then applied a second coat. We used 30 litres of decking oil in total. It is a big deck.

Now, yesterday fine weather was forecast. Today that has changed to chance of a shower…. please do not rain!

I managed to win a couple of old David Bowie records on eBay in between coats. Normal blogging will resume in a day or two.