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Published: September 20th 2009
Glad to be back
Does Sheena's face look slightly green? This past weekend marked our first venture out onto the Indian Ocean - whale watching! Mike, Rita, Sheena and I headed out to Freo just after noon and boarded a sea cat bound for the area of water known as the "Humpback Highway" - a well traveled strip of water just off the coast which is a favorite passage for Humpback whales coming down from the mating grounds in Northwest Australia down to their feeding grounds around the Antarctic. After a quick bite & some photos we were off on the Rotto Express with a great tour guide who kept us in the loop about what to look for and helped us scout out the whale breaches for some great photo ops. Unfortunately for Mike, there were no other whales (i.e. the blue whale) on our venture, but we definitely got our fill of humpbacks! We ended up hanging out with a pod for a little over an hour, with the best photos and moments coming with 2 whales which were traveling together, who would breach at the same time and gave us some amazing moments. They even came right up to the boat (unfortunately we were running to see instead
Freo E-Shed
Down by the harbour of taking pictures)! Even more unfortunate was the sea conditions on the day - it was a bit rough and with 2-4 metre swells, everyone's stomach was feeling slightly queasy so we were glad when after an hour and a half on the sea we were heading back to land.
Side note from Sheena: We checked out the Freo harbour markets after, which included a special discovery...'live' entertainment in the market food court. The 'band' consisted of two guys, two guitars...for show, we don't actually think they were playing and plenty of PROPS. That's right, props. The food court was practically a ghost town aside from one cowboy in the front row who was REALLY into the music. I (Sheena) posted a video so that you can really appreciate what we experienced...this one is for you Dad!!! Note the sweet backdrop mural behind the band. My apologies for sticking the camera in Rita's face...I had to use her as a guise for catching these guys in action.
After getting our land legs back, Sheena and I invited Mike & Rita over for our first (of hopefully many) sushi nights at our place. Being somewhat of an expert in
Sushi!
Bit of Sashimi to start our meal eating sushi, and taking the class with the amazing Husky chefs, I thought we could buy the supplies from the local stores and give it a go. What was even more awesome is we have found a somewhat famous fish monger close to where we live which prepares sashimi-grade fish (salmon, tuna, and white fish) so we picked up our supplies and were good to go! We kept joking that after a day on the sea it only seemed fitting (or would it be more tempting fate?) to have sushi to finish our night!
With smiles on our faces and sticky rice all over our fingers, we were able to make a heaping helping of sashimi, rolls, and miso soup which put all of us into an immediate fish coma after dinner. I felt my eyes glossed over with omega-3 oils...awesome.
The sushi experience put us on to our next idea...the sushi competition. Rules on the sushi competition to follow.
Along with the sushi experience, we have had a few more hurrah's this week: the first, Sheena is finally baking! I know we have all talked about this for a long time and were wondering when the day would come...so,
More!
And a whole platter of rolls to help finish it off! I've bought her a loaf tin and while she's starting with small recipes (5 ingredients or less), beggars can't be choosers, and her first few attempts have come out mouth-watering...hopefully more to come!
The 2nd breakthrough we had this weekend was with Sheena's health. She's been struggling for the past few months with a bit of a stomache pain/acid problem which seems to flare up every now and again. After getting the run-around by Canadian doctors and having every test under the sun taken, we thought the issue was somewhat under control. That was, until the last few weeks when Sheena's been getting more and more uncomfortable, which has had us find a doctor here, sending us to a new specialist, where his only course of action was to have all the tests we had done in Canada repeated. Normally, we'd agree - but with no health care coverage in Australia, the thousand-dollar price tag was a bit out of our reach. Feeling defeated, some girls at work turned us on to "the local witch doctor" - who happens to be a well-known Naturopath/Kineseologo from South America who has a practice in the Perth Area. Oddly enough, this guy only
operates on walk-ins, so routinely there is a line-up at 7am for people waiting to get a number and hopefully be "cured" by Gonzales (witch doctor's name). Knowing that we might as well give it a shot, we got on the train at 6am to make it out to this guy's office to be one of the first in line, in the hopes that he might have some ideas for Sheena's chronic pains. After getting in to see the guy, he took a look into Sheena's eyes, and immediately came out with "you've been having somache pains, yea? take these 3 herbs for 6 months and you'll be fine." Sheena was absolutely blown away! After picking his brain for a bit longer, she seems to give him the OK, and we've started his herbal treatment for the ailment that has avoided western medicine for the past 8 months. So...we've been healed by the Perth witch doctor...and we'll let you know if the remedy works!
The weather today (Sunday) is rainy again, so we're just taking it easy and preparing for our first trip on the roads here down to Margaret River next weekend. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll
have a great time. Hope you enjoy the pictures & videos of the whale showing us some tail, and hope everyone back home is doing well!
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ma and pa
non-member comment
wow
Great photos and video! But you saved the best for last ... an endearing photo of our little baby COOKING! I'm not sure I'm able to convey how this makes us feel ... your mother and I are getting a little veklempt just talking about it. Eric - you're due full marks on this metamorphisis! And for the record - cooking sushi is NOT COOKING. Cooking involves boiling, baking, frying, broiling ... something more than just scooping it out of the ocean on to your plate.