I'm back!

First post in absolutely forever. Much has changed, but the major thing is that we've bought a house in the middle of nowhere inland from Gold Coast. Ten acres of nothing but cicadas and kangaroos.

Amanda's Mum is living with us and that has been relatively hassle-free. She has put a decent chunk of change toward the house so our mortgage repayments are actually $50 less per week than the rent was at our old place in Southport.

We're getting solar panels installed next week and have plans to demolish the water tank we have (the house is run entirely off tank water) and build a couple of new ones further away from the house. I've had to become familiar with a whipper snipper (weed whacker) and will be investing in a chainsaw in the near future to deal with some of the heavy brush on the property.

The gym is set up in the garage with proper 30mm interlocking rubber padding on the floor with a full complement of powder-coated hand weights, dumbells, a barbell and a bench press slash squat deck/rack. Pretty badass.

I'm still working from home so it's pretty surreal to be coding away while looking out the front window and seeing wallabies jumping along the driveway. Next stop is to get a 4WD, a trail bike and some guns. Yee-haw!

Dan O's Bucks

I was in Sydney all last week, partially for work and mostly for Dan O'Shea's bucks party on Saturday. I can't say much about what went on but needless to say it was orgiastic! We had a bar in the city hired out with a poker tournament, Nintendos setup on big screens and live entertainment.

I have some photos from the party but I think that's against the rules. What goes on tour and all that. Awesome fun though!

Sounds of Spring

Went along to Sounds of Spring festival in Brisbane with Amanda, her mate Anja and some of Anja's flatmates. It was pretty sweet, caught The Beautiful Girls, Salmonella Dub, Shihad and some other randoms.

It was a good time but drinks were $9 and everything was mid-strength. I guess it was to keep people from being too rowdy and drunk and that but it was a bit of a joke. After nailing down four mid-strength bourbons in ten minutes and feeling like I had heartburn I decided to give it up and go sober.

Gerard and Jess Visit

We had a week long visit from Gerard and Jess recently which was fantastic. I took three days off work so we could hang out and Gerard could show me around my own town ;-)

We headed down to Byron for a day trip which was really cool. Headed up to the lighthouse at the most western point of the Australian mainland. Pretty loose claim to fame if you ask me. Awesome view though.
After that we headed to Nimbin which was, interesting.

We had some other adventures like going up Q1 building to see Gold Coast from above:

The last night they were here we headed into Swinging Safari, a classy cocktail bar/restaurant near Surfers for dinner and drinks. Afterwards we headed out to Surfers for a couple of drinks but they were a bit tired after hitting Dreamworld and White Water World during the day.

The next day we dropped them off in Brizzy and it's all over for a while. There were plenty of opportunities for Manlove, however.
Great to see you guys! See you again at Christmas!

Nihon ga daisuki desu!

As usual it's been ages since I've blogged. Most recently I've done two major things in my life:

1. Japan
I went to Japan on a snowboarding trip for two-and-a-half weeks with Amanda and eight other friends. It was absolutely unbelievable. The snow was so thick and constant it's like nothing I've ever seen before. It was snowing almost every day and by the time it took you to have lunch there was already 10cm of new snow on the ground.

Strangely there was an Irish pub in Japan.

The powder was like shaving cream, flying everywhere as I rode through it. We were in a small town called Niseko on Hokkaido island (the northernmost island of Japan) which is right at the base of the skifields. I literally snowboarded home most nights.


The first several days me and Amanda were still pulling ourselves together doing the Family Run (absolute beginners) and trying not to injure ourselves as we fell over. After that we took up the more challenging intermediate runs which turned out to be not that bad. It seems that when you're going 30 km/h on a snowboard your body somehow instinctively keeps you upright as a kind of emergency response.

By the end of the trip I'd managed to come down a couple of times from the top of the mountain and Amanda had come down from about 3/4 of the way up. We are both now professional level snowboarders and you can expect to see us in halfpipe comps in the near future.


After the snow we had three days in Tokyo to party and try to come to terms with the impending flight home in a couple of days. It was cold and forbidding in Tokyo but we still managed to make it to some temples and shopping areas.

2. Gold Coast
I've finally moved up to Gold Coast after all the talk. My work has created a Gold Coast office so I can continue to work for them (woohoo!) up here. Two days after coming back from Japan Amanda and I drove up from Sydney to Gold Coast over two days. It's an 11 hour drive all up and there's no way I could've handled that in one go.

Gold Coast is fun and everything's much slower paced than Sydney even though I lived in probably the most relaxed part of Sydney.

So the moral of the story is: come visit me in Gold Coast because we have a spare room with a bed and it only costs $100 to come over from NZ (or so I heard?)

Oh and I've got long hair now for those that didn't know.

Out.

Bundaberg

After the snow trip, we thawed out in Bundaberg in Queensland staying with Amanda's mum and auntie. It was relaxing hanging around the small town playing with their dog Sarge and enjoying the sun. We went to the Bundaberg Rum factory to pick up some liqeurs you can only get there and some souvenirs to send home to the family to say thanks for having us and to Jess for lending Amanda all of her snow gear. Didn't take any photos there unfortunately so you'll have to use your imagination.

Queenstown Snow Trip!

In August Amanda and I took a trip to NZ to go snowboarding and see the friends and family in Christchurch. We flew in to Christchurch and stayed at mum and dad's place for two nights. Caught up with most of the crew (Luke, Bede, Rupert et al.) both nights and got pretty rowdy.

We were supposed to fly down to Queenstown but the flight was canceled and we took a coach instead. Eight hours later (!) we got to Q-town and taxied to meet Clints and Sabby at the place they rented. It was sheer co-incidence that Clints was there for a web tech conference and had hired a brand new luxury townhouse with a couple of spare bedrooms. The place was amazing and the view was magnificent.



We got three days boarding in- twice at Remarkables and once at Coronet Peak. Sabby struggled a bit but Amanda and I were a bit more confident having each snowboarded before.


We went out every night to eat and get smashed. Luckily Mock was in the area so we met up for two of the days boarding. He's heaps better than us but I came down the mountain a few times with him and he gave me some pointers so that was good.

and here's some gratuitous scenery shots just to make you jealous

and the cute doggy from next door!

after Queenstown we bussed back up to Christchurch, stayed there for one night and flew back to Sydney for the second part of our trip: Bundaberg, QLD.

Fletch's 30th

My mate Fletcher turned 30 the other day and had a massive birthday party.

It started out as dinner at an Italian place

... then turned into a club

..which morphed into Fletch and Pammy's place at five in the morning


then me, DanMaher, Fletch and Amanda went to hunt down some booze at Fletchs mate's place

we passed a Ferrari store somewhere in the night


and by the time we got back to Fletch and Pammy's with the booze, Dan O was wearing lipstick.


Awesome night.

Anniversary

For our sixth month anniversary I got Amanda some nice flowers and we went out to dinner at a semi-fancy seafood restaurant in Narrabeen

Sydney/Melbourne Manvasion

In August some of the Chch boys came over to see me and check out Sydney. Mock came over first and stayed a couple of days then John and Gerard came over and manned out place out. I'm surprised they all managed to fit in our apartment but it actually wasn't that bad. I took them to see the Opera House and Harbour Bridge then we went for a couple of beers in The Rocks. Next we walked to Darling Harbour and had a bit of a look around there.

Then I had to leave them to their own devices for a couple of days so showed them how to use the ferries and get around and it sounds like they had fun exploring Sydney. On Wednesday they packed up and went to Melbourne for the second leg of their visit.

Friday night I cabbed to the airport and flew to Melbourne straight after work. It was a bit hectic because from Melbourne airport I had to cab to James and Eneti's place, drop off my bags (and say a quick hi/bye to James' mum) then cab straight to Cat and Duncan's place then cab with them to The Esplanade in St Kilda for a Lyrics Born gig.


That absolutely rocked! One of the best concerts I've been to because most of my good friends were there and we managed to get pretty much front row positions. LB kicks ass!

Saturday night everyone was feeling a bit under the weather so we went out to this weird chinese restaurant that seems to cater exclusively to trashed white people. The place was packed and everything looked like it was covered with a sheet of plastic so they could hose the vomit and blood off the seats when they close each night. There was random weird pop music (and a chinese adaptation of "Happy Birthday" every twenty minutes for some reason)


After that, tired peeps went home and me, Mock and Ju stayed out so Ju could show us some sweet Melbourne bars. There also happened to be the most graphitti'ed alleyway in the world:


On Sunday John and Gerard took off back to NZ and me and Mock flew back to Sydney. He stayed at our place a couple more days then headed back to NZ as well. He's finishing up his job currently and going on a nationwide trip of NZ with help from various mates at various stages. What a moocher!