Pete and Dot organised a gathering of all of the descendants of Pete's grandfather John Frederick Banks Smith at their house in Kalamunda for afternoon tea. It was a fun day with plenty of photos. To see higher resolution photos, just click on the image.

2009 saw Jill returning to New York and starting a new business, Generator Pictures. Leigh's contract with IRCAM in Paris continues until at least March 2010. We were fortunate enough to meet in the spring in New York and Puerto Rico, in the summer in Greece, and this winter in Paris--when we also took a weekend trip to Brugges, Belgium. We have photos of these adventures and more in our photo gallery. Hope you have a sensational holiday and a very happy New Year!

Love Jill & Leigh

These are some photos of my experiences in Paris, Toulouse and Amsterdam over the last couple of months. I caught the fireworks from the Eiffel Tower for Bastille Day, along with thousands of other Parisians. For the second year, I visited with Juan Jose the Nuit Blanche, an all night exhibition of many galleries and museums in Paris. I also caught a public performance in Toulouse, while there for a meeting of the Quaero project. I was also in Amsterdam to attend Olivia's PhD thesis, meet up with my UvA buddies and play some tunes for the party afterwards.

With some vacation I had to take, my mate Christie from New York joined me while her boyfriend was working in Frankfurt to visit Prague, Vienna and then Croatia. Before Christie arrived in Prague, I met up with a couple of folks I knew in Prague, Jiri and his friend Susanna, meeting a few of their friends, Glen and Heddi, on mutual friends Honza and Lekka's houseboat. Christie also had a friend in Prague, Adam, who very kindly showed us some of the city sights for a few days.

We then took the train to Vienna, for a short stay. It was quite wet and Christie had some work to attend to, so I checked out a couple of museums. These included a museum of musical instruments and arms and armour, and one devoted to the Austrian modern composer Arnold Schoenberg.

I popped over to London for a lovely summer weekend, catching up with a couple of friends, Peter, and another lab-mate from UWA, Bernard and his family. In between, I visited the Imperial War Museum, which including a substantial collection of hardware, has a very affecting exhibition on the Holocaust.

I joined Jill in Athens in the middle of July and after the mandatory visit to the Acropolis (I'm a classical history buff), we took the overnight ferry with Debbie to Crete for some relaxing days travelling to different towns, camping and swimming.

Matt McDonald, my lab-mate from UWA, was recently able to get over from the UK to hit Paris for the weekend. It was a great chance to see a couple of sites of Paris I hadn't seen, including the Catacombes and visiting the big cemetery of Pere Lachaise.

As the weather has improved I've done a couple of outings. I visited an exhibition and performances of the British socialist composer Cornelius Cardew at the CAC Bretigny outside of Paris. Since I work underground at IRCAM, I've also been spending some weekends in some of the beautiful parks in Paris.

I flew into New York for a few days and then with Jill down to Puerto Rico for our dear friends Anja & Tetsu's committment ceremony in Puerto Rico. More photos in our gallery.

Also finally up are some photos from my trip to Japan to present at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.