Bastiaan en Lily's blog

Well got some bad bad news this morning. Optus called us up to cancel our installation appointment due to network troubles and postponed it to 2 weeks from now! Thats another two weeks without proper internet at home!
We took a lot of pictures over the weekend that I wanted to start uploading once I got home. I don''t want to update this blog during work hours to much.. I''ll the pictures up tomorrow or the day after if I have a moment to spare.
We had a very busy weekend. Linsey has gotten her first haircut!! She was a real trooper loving the attention she was getting. The haircut was a simple one as we want her hair to grow long, but it was getting in front of her eyes.
Both me and Lily got a new haircut too. Lily had a real change that took her a lot of getting used to but it looks so good on her. Our new barber is also a sponsored immigrant and a real friendly person, I can really recommend him.
Other then that, we went to the Queen Victoria Building in central Sydney, walked through China Town and Hyde park (which is starting to fill with people due to World Youth Day) and saw the popes arrival on TV. Also finally made it to the opera house. It is going to be complete madness over the next week so I think we''ll avoid Sydney centre for a few days.
Owh and our ship with moving boxes is delayed but that was to be expected.. Should be in port by the end of the week, so hopefully we''ll have our stuff by the end of the month...

Well these past few days have been completely mad. We got our keys to our new apartment last week so we decided to move in over the weekend.
Some friends of ours are moving from Australia back to America and had some furniture left over that we could use so on Saturday me and David rented a truck and we spend a whole day moving stuff. It didn''t take long to get the things into our place but since we had the truck for a whole day, we used it to drive around the whole northern part of Sydney moving stuff around :) Needless to say we were pretty beat by the end of the day but there would be no rest yet.
Sunday we went back to Ikea to choose the things we actually needed now that we had a better idea of the room we had available. Originally we thought of using the bed we got from Victor and Monica as a guestbed but it actually looked really good in the master bedroom. Its an old handmade bed including a couple of cupboards that has its origins in Peru :) That meant just getting a mattress and blankets and such (all our stuff is still being shipped from NL). We also got a big clothing whatever its called in matching color and mirror doors. Unfortunately the mirror doors where cracked on delivery and we''re waiting for IKEA to get us replacements :(
We also had to buy a bed and mattress for Linsey. The normal cot was out of stock so we got her a cot that you can later on transform into a normal bed by taking the top and sides off. It looks pretty weird in her room as there is very little else in there at the moment...
Finally we got ourselves a new sofa that we are really pleased with.
We basically moved in on Tuesday. Not without problems though. Our apartment is old, don''t know for sure how old but I''m guessing 60''ies or 70''ies built. Some of the windows are stuck closed probably because they have just been painted. Our kitchen looks very dated. The bathrooms as well but the style is actually nice and it looks relatively good taking its age into account. All the rooms have been repainted and new carpets put in so they look nice and clean.
The biggest problem we''ve been working at the whole week is that some of the drains are partly blocked and that is giving us some nasty surprises. Nothing that I''m sure can''t be fixed but these things do take their time and as a result, their toll :)
I really need to put some pictures online of the apartment but its hard to make some good ones that really show the apartment off. I''ll probably upload a video at some point but making that will have to wait till the weekend.
So for now here is a description. We''re in a unit block with a number of 2 and 3 room apartments. Ours is way in the back one flight of stairs down which is really lovely as we have hardly any noise. The apartment block is literally 6 houses down from the main shopping area in Lane Cove. Lily was very pleased to find both a child care center and community center almost next door to us, and I can''t wait to try out the big public pool just down the street from us. Location couldn''t have been more ideal for a starting family like us.
Once you enter the building and walk all the way to the back and down some stairs you end up at our apartment. You enter the main living and dining room right away. Not as big as we had in Hoofddorp but definitely far from small. On the far side we have double glass doors that open to a small balkony that is bathed in sunlight almost the whole day. I''m sure that one will make my mom pretty jealous :P
The kitchen is right next to that and is relatively large. It is rather outdated but in fairly good condition. I do think a lot of space is waisted and a lot could be done to turn this into a much more useful kitchen, possibly with the ability to sit down for breakfast and/or small meals, but alas, we''re renting so no chance for changing that :D
At the other side of the living room a door leads to a small L shaped hallway that bring us to the other rooms of the house. All the bedrooms are similarly sized and definitely spacey. On the left we have a bedroom that is now Linsey''s room and apart from a small electric heater and her cot, pretty empty. We''ll need to work on that.
To the right we find the second bedroom that we''ll use as a study/guestroom though it currently doubles as a room to store all the empty furniture boxes we still need to get rid off.
Down the other leg of the hallway we find a small laundry room on one side, and the master bathroom on the other side. The master bathroom has a toilet, shower and bath but this is the bathroom plagued with problems at the moment so we aren''t using it yet.
At the end of the hallway we find our master bedroom which has its own small private bathroom with toilet and shower.
So all in all, a darn good find especially once we get some of the problems fixed (and a darn bad find if we don''t). It could use a makeover to bring it up to more modern standards but since we''re renting, I''m not complaining at all.
I hope to get some pictures online soon...

As promised I''d upload some pictures from our trip to the zoo :)
While walking around there was an opportunity to take some pictures with some dangerous small animals :D

Thats not me forcing her to touch them but stopping her to really grab those poor little animals. Linsey was loving it:)
We spend about 2 hours or so walking around, its pretty tiring because Taronga zoo is far from flat:)

Also we picked up the keys to our new apartment yesterday:) I''ll post some pictures once we have some furniture in there:)

Sorry for the infrequent updates but its been a busy week. Also the memory card on the camera filled up a bit to quickly and I couldn''t empty it until this weekend. I still have to upload the latest pictures.
For now we''ve been very busy house hunting. The market in Sydney is such that there are more people interested then houses available so its proven difficult to find something. Hopefully we''ll get some good news today or tomorrow on the properties we''ve put applications out to.
Sunday it was great weather so we decided to head out to Taronga Zoo during the day. Last time we went there in January it was very rain but aside from the chilly weather yesterday was great. It is also amazing to see the difference in Linsey. In January she hardly realized what she was seeing, now she just pointed and shouted out to the animals she saw and you could see how much she enjoys it. I''ll post up pictures of the day later in the week :)
At night we had a great night out as we visited David''s place and were treated to a great home cooked dinner. Needless to say we were dead tired by the time we got home.

Well its the 14th today! So Linsey is now one year old!! Wheeeeeeh.
It was a bit strange having her first birthday in Sydney and since we''ve just moved here we do not know to many people with kids yet. So we just ended up doing loads of shopping in the nearby shopping mall and buying Linsey loads of presents:) We made some new friends there aswell so that was cool. We got Linsey a nice birthday cake too :)

Don''t get us wrong though, it was far from a lonely day because not only Linsey had her birthday. Daniel became 60 on the day we arrived and was giving his birthday party tonight. We headed out that way early so we would have some time to catch up. Faez had already arrived and he mentioned he had been cooking for the last 2 days getting all the snacks ready. Boy boy boy, Faez can cook!!! (Daniel and Faez are both collegues of mine) Then again, Faez''s cooking has become fairly famous amongst the group of friends.
It didn''t take to long until Daniels house was filled with people (and it isn''t a small house) and Linsey had loads of attention from so many people.
I''ve now finished my first full week at Instinct Systems and have had a great time. Lily also is having the time of her life so far starting to get her bearings around Sydney. It really helps starting out from the same apartement building we were in in January.
I''m also thrilled about learning to work with Mac OS X and my new macbook is really a great laptop!
The weather has changed for the better, though it is still very cold it hasn''t rained much these days. The weather report has been threatening with rain and thunderstorms over the last 3 days but they haven''t arrived just yet. Just look at these sunset pictures:

Yeah we made it to Sydney! Actually we''ve been here 2 days already but I started work today and finally have access to a PC, uhm, no, a Mac actually:) A pretty cool Mac too, very chuffed :) Gottah get back to work, I''ll write some more later!

Quick update,
Today we got word that everything went OK yesterday with the transfer of our old house in the Netherlands. We''re officially homeless now :) Our new residence for the time being in Sydney is all ready now. We''ll be in the same building we stayed earlier in the year but a different apartment. We won''t move in until next week though. Still enjoying our little vacation in HK.
Well, enjoying.. It''s been raining like crazy for the last few days and today we even seem to have gotten some sort of storm warning.. Luckely you can get nearly everywhere worth going in HK without ever stepping outside. Here in Ma On Shan we can get directly from our apartment into the shopping malls and from there directly into the KCR/MTR system and go to other shopping malls all over HK:)

It''s been a long and busy week so I''ve hardly had time to update the website. So much we''ve done, I don''t remember half of it :)
A couple of the more memorable things where going to Shatin meeting up with a number of Lily''s family member including just over 1 year old son of a nephew of Lily. Linsey was very thrilled though the little boy didn''t really know what to do about the whole situation :)

In Shatin we also went to Snoopy world, it had really changed since the first time I went there. When I first met Lily its one of the places we visited. It''s a tiny park right outside the big shopping mall with all snoopy figures, great for kids.
One thing I''m likely not to forget for a while is going out with Fiona and Stephanie to a luxurious Japanese restaurant. I''m not much for fish nor uncooked food but I enjoyed Japanese food in Sydney. This restaurant had some great food but what I wasn''t fully expecting was a half alive lobster or something being served. Now living seafood in restaurants waiting to be picked out by hungry clients is one thing, but this shook me up a bit. I''m not vegetarian by a long shot, but this is not my cup of tea either. Still we had a great time, but I''ll be a bit more careful next time going into a Japanese restaurant :)
Loads more we did though but we didn''t take many pictures during the week. Many pictures were taken by others so I''m sure they will be on a blog or facebook:) We went out with Onkei and her boyfriend at some point, Lily met up with some other friends aswell. We went out with Ronald and Stephanie, and yesterday myself and Ronald went for a swim in the outdoor swimming pool here in Ma On Shan. Really enjoyed that, its a great pool with slides and everything, very large aswell.

Yesterday as I mentioned we had another yam cha. We met up with Lily''s father side of the family in a fancy restaurant in Mong Kok. Alot of pictures where taken but alas, not by us:) There were 15 to 20 people there and it all started around 11am which for Linsey normally is nap time. Being tired and handed around with all those people sure took some toll. Linsey loved it though allthough around 12 she had enough and took a small nap on my shoulders. Linsey was a big hit with the family though, everyone just loved her. We did pay the price later in the day because Linsey really didn''t get enough rest during the day. She really became a handful later in the day so we ended up not doing to much.
We dropped by a mall with Ronald and Stephanie but they were having a sale and it was packed with people.
I also saw the new Indiana jones movie, a bit predictable at times and it seemed some of the traps where to easily solved using the same trick multiple times. Still it was very enjoyable, just seeing Harrison Ford in action as indie again was worth the watch. He is undoubtably one of my favorite actors.
Today we took an easy day, only in the afternoon we had Lily''s old friends visit us so she really enjoyed the day. Linsey offcourse was the centre of attention once again....

Well it''s been a busy start of the weekend for us for sure, today promisses to be another busy day :)
I have to say about Hong Kong, you go to the right restaurant here, and 4 people can have a wonderful large meal and it will set you back 10 euros (no not per person, the whole meal for 4!). You get into public transport, and you can get anywhere in the city for less then 1 or 2 euro''s (the cheapest ticket in Holland costs more and doesn''t get you anywhere noteworthy). You really can live on a small budget if you go here on vacation without compromising. Not bad for a country that otherwise has pretty steep living costs (housing, fuel, etc. all just as or more expensive then Holland). Tax is nice here though...
Friday at the end of the day we went to Lily''s aunt. They had a wonderfull little playground where Linsey could play with all sorts of toys and other kids. With my parents in law, my aunt, her mother and some other people around it did get a little crowded :) We also had a wonderful dinner with them, it unfortunately did take up to 10 o''clock before we headed home. That was a wonderful busride for Linsey who had a wonderful view being in a double decker bus, but all in all, it was a too tiring day for her and we paid the price on Saterday.

Saterday was a hecktic start, Linsey slept too little and was constantly in a fit. We had a late start of the day. Linsey''s brother Ronald came round with his wife Stephanie early in the afternoon. When they were over on thursday we had agreed to go out today but before we could do that, we had the mandatory yam cha with the family :) I didn''t eat this time though, I am way to afraid that this constant stream of yam cha will undo all the hard work over the past two years.
Ronald drove us to Tai Po where they had a wonderful little park. It was the first time in days we could finally relax and take it easy. It was great to see Ronald play with Linsey, he will really make a good dad I think.
At night we dropped Linsey off at home so she could take a bath and get some food. She was way to tired from the past few days and already started to fall asleep while drinking but not before waking everyone else up protesting and screaming, she really had enough so we put her to bed early.
We also went to see Iron Man, owh boy I really can recommend that to anyone. That is one heck of a cool picture! We went to a cinema called the Grand or something. Man that is one cool theatre! The sound was a little load but you could feel everything that happened on the screen. It really made the movie come out alive.
This morning Linsey woke up bright as can be, you can really tell she''s enjoyed yesterday and just needed some rest. We''ll be heading out for ANOTHER yam cha today:)

Not that much happening today, I won''t be doing a day by day report anyways. Just chilling a little and trying to get our bearings. Francis dropped by with her camera and made some really nice shots:) Also brother Ronald and his wife Stephanie should come round later this night.

We''ve finally arrived in HK for our little break. The flight over was exhausting. We had alot of luck with checkin, I have to hand it to Cathay Pacific, their service is more then excelent. With Linsey in combination with moving to Australia we had alot off additional luggage, baby trolly, baby bed, clothes for 2 months, etc. A bit of shifting around and they more the accomodated us even though we stretched the allowed limits a little. Even better, since it wasn''t a full flight they had moved our seats around so by the time we were allowed to board, we had gotten two seats in a row of 4 with the other two seats empty. That really was a life saver.
Once on the flight Linsey really became a busy body. For her it was the middle of the day far far away from her nap or bedtime, so sitting in a confined space, she really hated it. First time we flew she was little enough to sleep most of the day, but this time.. owh boy, I feel sorry for the people around us. After more then 6 hours of flying Linsey finally got tired of throwing a tantrum and started to fall asleep, eventually so did we...

Once we arrived at the airport checking out and waiting for our bags was a breeze, it really wasn''t a busy day, I guess people avoid HK around this time of year cause its hot. Or maybe it has to do with the earthquake:( Lily''s parents met us at the airport but we did take a bus back home. They were thrilled to finally get to hold little Linsey, the last time they saw her was right after birth. This was always the hardest part for Lily about living abroad, I''m sure I''ll be facing similar emotions soon with my own parents whom I won''t be seeing for awhile...
After getting far to little much needed rest we all went out to get some chinese food Yamcha style! Even Linsey joined in and had some cha chiu pau :-)
On the way back home grandpa Chan couldn''t resist taking his first granddaughter for a strawl...

Just saying hi from the hotel. We managed to clear the house yesterday, ready to be transferred. I hope we didn''t overlook anything, we got short on time in the end. But I think it all went very nicely.
I hope the new owners will be as happy in our old house as we were. It was a good place to live!
Just little over 3 hours before we fly to HK... :)

These past two weeks have been full of stress, loads of last minute things to take care off, loads of unclarity about when we could leave, and what other things to do. But everything is finally finding its place.
Last Friday was my last day at FIQAS, I''m taking with me 11 years of memories and experience and leaving behind many colleagues whom I consider friends. But alas, nothing lasts for ever and we''ve got an amazing time ahead of us!
Tomorrow our belongings will be picked up to be shipped to Australia and on Tuesday we fly out to Hong Kong already! The 8th we should arrive in Sydney :)
Just look at all those boxes:
Linsey is making leaps forward right now, its amazing seeing her grow up. She is almost walking now, holding my hands or a chair she already walks throughout our house. She loves going to our bedroom where we have a full size mirror, just look at her enthusiasm:

As you can see we''re also very busy packing :D I hope it all fits on the plane :)

Well its been a long while since I had a chance to post here, but alot has happened inbetween. This page may still look the same as it has since Linsey was born and I first build this version of the site, but it isn''t the same site at all.
I have taken down the album but will be enhancing the ability to post things on the site and include photos in the distant future. Not all posts from the old site have been put on the new site and you can see the dates do not match up.
The reason for this change had little to do with the site however. Yes I finally made something so Lily can post as well, but I could have done that with the old site too.
The reason is that I had to move server and didn''t want to take up all the space that a full album does. I was also starting to question the need to be so public. Yes our family doesn''t live close, but we exchange photo''s anyway.
It is however the reason for moving server that is what this is all about. I''ve been hosting our site at home through our 24x7 internet connection. It won''t be long however and we won''t live here anymore, and thus the internet connection is lost.
Now I could set up my server at my new home, the problem is, my new home is literally on the other side of the planet!
If all goes as planned, we''re moving to Sydney Australia!
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