Well after all the preparation and the shopping the night finally came. It was time to get all togged up and to head off in our pumpkin coach to the charity ball. The ball was in aid of the Feline Friends charity that I volunteer for. We attended the ball with our usual suspects of Rod and Jess and a couple of new friends Linda and Mary. A great night was had by all. The Ball was at the Dusit which is literally just across the way from our apartment building. However fate had another surprise in store for me as [View Full Entry]

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I just had to put these pictures up. I volunteer for a charity over here called Feline Friends. They have a ball coming up on Friday night so I went along the other night to help wrap up the prizes for the raffle. The people who live in the villa that we went to foster cats and they just had the most beautiful group of cats there. They had a little group of kittens that were so cute and small. They were so playful. Everytime we tried to do something like cut the cellphane or put a bow on something a [View Full Entry]

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Whilst still in Chicago Chelle managed to see the coolest exhibition. Red Bull had staged a competition for people to create art out of used Red Bull cans. It was really neat (and very sustainable :) First place was won by the dragon sculpture - which obviously appealed to Chelle as they are her favourite animals. The exhibition was close to Navy Pier, so after visiting that Chelle made her way down to the Pier to have a look around. This is basically one of those really long piers that sticks out into the lake that used to be used as [View Full Entry]

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Chelle wagged from her conference today and took the day off to have a good look at Chicago. Given that she has been waking up at 3:30am most morning (jet lag is a nightmare) she was up and about early in the morning. The weather here is freezing! So walking all around the city was a little brisk. First stop in the morning was a little visit to the Field Musuem to take a look at the Map exhibition. As Chelle loves maps she was right in her element. They even had a book of maps by Piri Reis, a very [View Full Entry]

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Day 2 of the Greenbuild conference saw Chelle wag the luncheon that was put on to run away and visit the Sears Tower instead. The Greenbuild conference over here has been terribly badly organised. There are queues for everything, everywhere and it just isn't worth it. The queue to get into the lunch was just so long that it wasn't even worth thinking about to get lunch there. However the visit to Sears tower was quite successful. The view was really quite cool. Although one does have to say that the Chicago skyline isn't the coolest view in the world. While [View Full Entry]

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The Green Build conference started on November 7th. Bill Clinton gave the opening address at the Greenbuild conference today. it was quite interesting although he didn't really say anything new and exciting. For some reason the Americas are rather fixated on Carbon. Everything they talk about is to do with carbon emissions and global warming. For a country that didn't sign Kyoto that are rather interested in it now. Actually to the detriment of other matters, which is more than a little scary. In true American form they have fixated only on one part of the problem and are ignoring everything [View Full Entry]

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Well, the long anticipated trip to Chicago has happened. Chelle was most excited as the first part of the trip involved a long trip in business class on a lovely Emirates plane. Business class was super on the plane. They have the full lie-down beds. And as much champange as you can handle. However I must say that the food was rather average. I took full advantage of the movie selection watching Pirates of the Carribbean 3 (really good), Shrek 3 (OK), High Society (old movie with Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby), and The Princess Diaries (old but ok). The [View Full Entry]

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IT RAINED TODAY!!! That's right. IT RAINED. Chelle was going out to the doctors and so she put the roof down on the car and drove out of the carpark building, only to look up in great puzzlement when she felt something tapping her on the head. The taps turned out to be rain drops. Which greatly confused her for a little while. [View Full Entry]

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Chelle has just returned from having the most distinct pleasure of a trip to the CRAZY capital of Egypt, Cairo. The place is just nuts. She had to go there for work to attend a kick off workshop for a project that Bovis Lend Lease are running on the coast of the red sea. Cairo is just a crazy place. Chelle certainly didn't remember it being quite that crazy the last time that she was there. The traffic was just soo insane. There was one car that had obviously tried to get through an intersection but hadn't made it in time [View Full Entry]

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Chelle's usual partner in crime Jessie (Leanne was in NZ for work) and herself decided to pay a visit to the Willow Stream Spa at the Fairmont Hotel to check out one of their spa treatments. The boys were off on a desert driving course (which apparently went very well- there may even be some photos somewhere) so the girls decided to treat themselves. The spa was very lovely, although not quite as lovely as the Burj Al Arab - however I don't suppose that it really could be. The fairmont is only 5 stars compared to the Burj's 7 stars. [View Full Entry]

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