Quick sum up of my previous post – I’m in Sydney this week and getting ready for my AUSOUG “snoitatneserp” next week. (Note that I wrote it in Sydney last week and only now managed to get the photos sorted out — sorry for the delay).

Thursday evening I was honored with a visit to Noons’ house. We had done a very nice walk around his place through Warriewood Wetlands. It was one of the most amazing walks I had –- a walking path via jungle style swamp (heh… they call it wetlands).

I saw many bird species but couldn’t remember the names – sorry Nuno, I know you tried your best. Actually, I think I do remember at least one – Kukubara Kookaburra (thanks Nuno!). Birds were beautiful and some fellows you can see here courtesy of Noons. I also saw few iguanas “water dragons” lizards (thanks Sarah) on the way and they ran away quickly as soon as they realized that I’m watching them.

It’s amazing that such a magical place can be so close to Sydney –- it took us only 40 minutes by car to get there from Sydney CBD but we had to leave early to get ahead of the traffic and not everyone drives as aggressive as Portuguese do.

Finally, I had a pleasure to meet SQL*Puss:

Pretty lazy cat I should say but he does make him looking very important. I think laziness is natural for cats. He must be good DBA’s. Eh?

Two other friends are Zig and Sheena if I spelled their names right:

They are very active dogs and, in their 9’s, are very cheerful and playful. By the way, Zig’s got his name after the way he runs -– never a straight line. I had a pleasure to observe that another day but more on that some time later.

For the dinner, we had Tai menu from the new Tai restaurant in the neighborhood. I’m sorry but I can’t remember the name let alone the location –- I’ve been a passenger for the whole evening.

The best part started after the dinner — Noons digged up his reserves of port wines and, starting from local Australian port, we moved to the real stuff –- 20 years old vintage port wine that was actually stored another 20+ years. That was something very special and I had to really keep myself away from emptying the bottle in an hour. It was an awesome evening and it was a great pleasure to meet Nuno’s family. Thanks a lot for such hospitality!

Some interesting details about my time in Sydney are still to come as well as report on what I’ve been doing on Saturday. If I uncover that before I’m back home, my darling will kill me on the distance whereas if I share it later — I could at least see my death. You know, it’s been snowing like hell last week in Ottawa.