Was sagst du? 樣樣都德

The end of the year has been a particularly busy time, but fortunately I had a good reason to take a breather as I’ve booked some flights to visit Sydney with dad quite some time ago. This trip was full of surprises although we’ve both visited that city quite a few times. 年尾不知為甚麼特別忙，但上週末全因一早和家父訂了機票往悉尼而可忙裡偷閑，總算可以輕鬆一下。雖然從前到悉尼去好幾次了，但這個行程很多方面都令我們意想不到。 Sydney Fish Market 悉尼漁市場 Not long after we stepped off the plane, we were stung by the hefty Sydney public transport fares! I was aware of a surcharge for going through the airport railway station (called the Station Access Fee), but the public transport website would not say expressly how much the fee is. I figured out from the difference between single full-fare and half-fare tickets that the Station Access Fee should be A$5, but for a day ticket (called the Daytripper) the Fee turned out to be A$11.8! The Daytripper itself costs A$17 (HK$120, 11.5 euros, US$15.5), which is pretty steep already without slapping on this additional Station Ac...

My colleagues usually bring their own lunch to work and we gather in the tea room for lunch every day. When I have lunch together with the Chinese group, we all like to peek into each other’s lunch boxes, sing praises of each other’s food and exchange a few cooking tips. But when I sit with the locals, we hardly pay attention to, let alone comment on, other people’s food (although I still carry the bad habit over from the Chinese group!) I guess that’s partly because there isn’t so much to talk about on sandwiches or the standard fare from the hospital canteen, and partly because it’s probably only kids who are so nosy about other people’s food! One of my colleagues is a mother of two and both children are attending primary school. In their school, pupils are only allowed to have lunch in classrooms under supervision so that they won’t be able to swap food and eat something wrong in so doing (especially food that triggers allergy or other undesirable reactions). With so many people cro...

I mentioned in the previous blog post that the yield for honey wasn’t looking too promising this year and that the bees had better work harder from now on. Even then it’s probably a bit too late. This spring has made its way out for summer too quickly. Since last week the maximum temperature in Melbourne has stayed above 30 degrees and this week will see more of the same in the second half. It wasn’t so long ago that we seemed to have gone back to winter back in late September to early October, but six weeks since we’re experiencing some consistently warm to hot weather that a standard Melbourne summer may not even offer! (Melbourne’s summer goes through a series of cool to extremely hot days, but it is rare to see more than four hot days in a row with maximum temperatures above 30. It is even not so unusual to have one or two weeks staying on the cool side, disappointing those craving for some summer action. So this kind of a heat spell is not even typical for the summer here.) The f...

Yesterday when I had a short break at 16:00, I looked out to the backyard and discovered a swarm of bees hovering around the bushes! It was dazzling to see a whole lot of brown little bombers flying randomly and making a noise that was more like a humming engine than the normal buzz. 昨天下午四點休息時，望出後花園，但見一群蜜蜂在樹叢中漫天飛舞，咖啡色一點點的，轟轟作響，彷如一堆小型轟作機籠罩着置花園的草坪和花草，看得人眼花瞭亂。 After some time, the bees settled on a bush, forming a swollen mass of moving bodies on one of the branches. 過了不久，那群蜜蜂逐漸聚在一棵樹上，遠看好像是樹枝結了一塊厚厚的疤。 An hour or so has passed when everything seemed to have quietened down, but out of the blue the bees started moving again and resettled on a chunky branch of another bush. It was to be their resting place for a while yet. 就這樣靜止了個多小時，那群蜂突然全體搬遷，飛到另一株樹再次聚集，依付在一條較粗的樹枝，形成新據點。 As one of our neighbours keeps bees, we naturally thought that the bees were his and hoped that he would help us deal with the problem. I looked for him before dinner without success, and tried again after dinner. He told me...