Macau is a curious place, once a Portuguese colony it was handed back to China like Hong Kong in the late 90's.
Now it may as well be a colony of Las Vegas with 28 casinos that make it the highest-volume gambling centre in the world.
We went there to escape Hong Kong and to live it up 5star style with a cheap deal at the Sofitel.
Not being gamblers we only ventured into 2 casinos. One being the obligatory one in our hotel, a very dull affair with none of the hilarity of Star City, Sydney.
The other we stumbled into was the MGM Grand, the most exciting part of the complex for me was the Dale Chihuly Gallery. Dale Chihuly is a renowned glass artist that i first saw at the Sydney Bienannle about 9yrs ago where he had installed giant luminous onions around the botanic gardens.

I've been quite enamoured with his luscious bold glass pieces that are often on a huge scale filling atriums with thousands of glass tendrils.

There was a gallery shop that could sell you a piece to take home for a tens of thousands of dollars, shipping included.

I was content to gasp at the collection they had in a quite hall at the casino.

I've been noticing these pieces popping up around here, round, red, lines. All different, no tag so i don't know who it might be...
I find them pleasing and hope they don't get painted over.
Corner of Shepherd and Wilson St....

I am a weather geek and proud of it.
I check the OzWeather morning and night. My link bar always has Radar and Observations.
Recently the BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) opened a new radar station at Terrey Hills with add dopplar wind readings. I'm not going to go into the technical aspect to this (because I'm not that knowledgeable) but it does give a cool new view of wind around Sydney and with the crazy weather we've been having this week there is a lot to see.
Here is a snapshot of the wind right now in the Sydney region.
Most of the time winds in Sydney would be around the light blue/yellow range at best so to see this much dark blue/red.
The thunderstorm that came through Wednesday night was also pretty intense in so far as the localised rainfall.
This is certainly the coldest October i can recall in sometime and a shock to the system after the hot humid weather in Hong Kong.

with the most awesome aunt treen from Canberra, her bff from nz and mr blue eyes crashing some kids party and showing them how to shake it.

seen up the street from me, just near shepherd St.
so did they steal the milk crates? is it a reference to the stolen generation? or did they steal the idea?
if you're visiting the carriageworks for the markets etc then stroll east along Wilson and check it out.
it reminds me of the crate man seen around Melbourne.

After 3 days of rambling in Kowloon and the islands we hit Macau. We scored a sweet deal at the 5star Sofitel at AUD$140 per night and put our feet up. From the TV in the bath to the L'Occitane toiletries with was fun to live it up a little. We caught up on the Sydney duststorms via BBC World/CCN/Australia TV. The view from our 20th floor room over the old quarter to the dazzling, gaudy casinos was astonishing (proper pix of that and more of Macau to come).

Poolside we were brought plush towels, chilled hand towels for our face and bottles of water.

The place was mostly empty with any other guests no doubt in the smoked filled casino. Macau is the only place where one can legally gamble in China and the casino industry there has exploded. We didn't go there for that, for us it was to explore the Portuguese colonial influences, the custard tarts and the cuisine.