Pejorative Prerogative

Dan O's Bucks

2009-10-14T20:33:00.002+11:00

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

2009-10-14T20:30:00.003+11:00

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

2009-08-17T21:22:00.007+10:00

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!

2009-03-15T00:18:00.016+11:00

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

2008-10-11T12:40:00.003+11:00

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!

2008-10-11T12:23:00.008+11:00

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

2008-10-11T12:13:00.008+11:00

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

2008-10-11T12:07:00.001+11:00

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

2008-10-11T11:44:00.008+11:00

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!

Melbourne Trip 1

2008-10-11T11:29:00.002+11:00

In June Amanda surprised me with a trip to Melbourne for my birthday. It was great fun, I got to catch up with the Melbourne Massive and she got to meet everyone.

It was a long weekend so we had three days to play with. We spent two of them in and around Melbourne city, going out to Brunswick on the first night. The next days we took James' car (thanks mate!) and headed down to Lorne which is a small seaside town a bit over an hour south of Melbourne.

We stayed in a beautiful apartment room there with a view of the beach. There was a massive spa bath which we made full use of, and a number of little boutique shops littered around the place where we got some local cheese and champagne and had a night in. The next morning we had a casual breakfast at a funky little cafe/antiques shop at the north end of town then headed back off to Melbourne to rush to the airport and get back to Sydney.

The whole trip was fantastic and the best birthday present I've ever had.

Bon Voyage Jen

2008-04-25T17:00:00.003+10:00

The day has come and Jen has left for the USA. I trekked out to the airport to say a painful goodbye to her- maybe forever.

She's starting off with a week in Hawai'i then meeting up with her old school friend Rog in San Fran then doing a trip around California, Utah and the surrounding states before flying to New York then finally to Canada. After that she'll assess the situation and decide where she wants to live.

Man she's got balls. We always talked about doing a trip like that and I'd love to be doing it with her but couldn't. I really hope she has a great time and safe flights and all that. I'll miss her heaps.

Brisbane

2008-04-25T16:39:00.003+10:00

Went up to Brisbane a couple of weeks back to check the place out. Amanda's moving up to QLD later this year and wanted to have a look around to suss the place out. We stayed at Wellington Point House which was a beautiful big "Queenslander" house (just learnt that term) bed and breakfast. The room was really nice and the breakfast was outstanding. It is run by an older couple and they were nice but the guy was kinda weird, like he wasn't all there or something.

Anyway, we went to Dreamworld which was awesome. We did all the major rides, like the Giant Drop and the Tower of Terror which blew me away. It's been ages since I've been to a fun park like that and I forgot how frightening the rides really are. Sitting at the top of the Giant Drop waiting for the fall was gut wrenching, as was the acceleration on the Tower of Terror. We also checked out the animal area which had a kangaroo enclosure you could walk through and pet the kangaroos. I didn't know such a thing existed considering kangaroos could kick your ass when angry but these ones seemed quite tame.

We went to White Water World as well which I've been to before but it was just as fun this time. Thankfully it started raining heavily while we were in Dreamworld then stopped so there were hardly any people and we got to go on all the good rides a few times each. It started bucketing down again while we were at White Water World but it didn't matter, obviously.

I got in contact with Blake and coincidentally Jess was there at the time so we went out for dinner with them one night in Surfers then met up with them along with one of Amanda's old school friends at a place in Brisbane the next night. It was good to see Blake again, he's thinking of moving down to Melbourne and Jess is already down there now. Seems everyone's down there now so it must be time for a visit again.

New New New New Zealand

2008-04-25T16:19:00.003+10:00

Went back to New Zealand over the Easter break just for the four days of the long weekend. The heavens must have aligned or something because heaps of people came from all over NZ for the same period so it was like a mini reunion. Mock came from Dunedin, Ronan and Deej came from Auckland, Jess from Wellington and me from Sydney, plus all the natives who were around. Managed to catch up with heaps of people I haven't seen in ages and get blind drunk - literally - two nights in a row.

Also, I saw my family who are all doing really well. Ben and Jess have been doing some work on their house, laying lawn, extending the driveway and installing an auto sprinkler system for the garden. What busy little bees. Mum's doing good although she has a sore shoulder which has gotten worse recently and is affecting her tennis game. That's a real shame but hopefully she can get more anti-inflammatory injections to loosen it up a bit.

Dad's in his last year of uni doing law and funnily enough it turns out he's in the same year as my mate Rupert which is kinda weird. Dad and Mum are living together which is nice. Musta been a big house to take care of for Mum when she was there alone.

Saw Aunty Lorna and Uncle Russell as well. They're doing alright although Russell has a bit of a heart condition which he's going to get surgery for. He gets a really rapid heartbeat every so often which requires a trip to the hospital for some sort of drug injection. Hope the surgery goes ok.

I went over on the Thursday night and arrived just after midnight. Mum picked me up and I went straight home to her place to sleep. The Friday I hung out with the family a bit then hooked up with Gerard, John and Mock. We started at John's family's place having a few drinks then moved on to Andy V's place which we manned out. Then we moved on to Bede and Clive's place (Clive was away) and got maggot. We managed to finish all three litres of spirits I brought over duty-free. Jee-sus.

The next night we stayed at Bede's place and the others played risk while I watched. Everyone got completely trashed again, which was awesome. Haven't been that pissed in ages.

Sunday night a bunch of us invaded Rupert and Laura's place and totally forgot you can't buy liquor on easter weekend. Stupid old-fashioned laws. So needless to say we were down at the 2-4 at midnight on the dot to buy a doz. Me and Bede stayed up drinking while the others piked.

Dad picked me up in the morning and went out to Lorna and Russell's with Mum to say hi. Next stop was the airport and my trip was over :-( It was several weeks later that I remembered I didn't even go to Dimitri's or Honeypot- two of my favourite eateries in chch.

Canberra/Jack Johnson

2008-03-17T21:49:00.002+11:00

Me and Amanda went to Canberra on a whim on Friday night to catch a concert by The Beautiful Girls and Roger That at the Canberra Uni bar. I'd never really heard of either of them but they were great entertainment. We stayed at a backpackers in the city and left after breakfast on Saturday.

As soon as we got back we had to take a cab into the city (Sydney) to see Jack Johnson at a concert in Centennial Park. That was fucken awesome- a really nice day, a good position in the crowd and sweet, sweet live music. The supporting acts were really good as well. That's about all I have to say and if you don't like Jack Johnson you can suck a fat one.

Wedding

2008-03-09T17:09:00.003+11:00

Went to Mark Goodenough and Cathy Santleben's wedding yesterday in a church in Coogee (where me and Jen used to live for a few months). I was a groomsman so had to attend the rehearsal on the Friday. The wedding was beautiful and went off pretty much without a hitch. Mark was really stressed out beforehand but seemed calm as a hindu cow during the actual ceremony which was great.

After the wedding we took stretch limos to the north point of Coogee Beach to take some photos of us all dressed up, then back to the Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach (where we used to live!) for the reception. All in all it was a fun day and I'm really happy for the both of them. I ducked out a bit early because I was driving and somebody was taking a trip to Mark and Cathy's place where my car was parked so I caught a lift and went home to spend some alone time with Amanda.

Buck's Party

2008-03-09T16:59:00.005+11:00

Last Friday we went out for [Redacted] [Redacted]'s (a friend from work's) buck's party. Me and Eric went and met up with [Redacted], Graeme (best man), Ivan and Johnno who are all groomsmen. We started off at The Comedy Store in Entertainment Quarter which was a blast. The first act was a bit average but when the headliner guy came on he tore the place up. We were in absolute stitches.

Next we went to the Bavarian Bier Cafe for a couple of tall beers before moving on to another bar in Entertainment Quarter. Everyone else got in but I wasn't because I 'stumbled' coming up the (singular) step to the door or something like that. More likely because I had to finish the cigarette I was smoking so hung back while the rest of the group went in. That's happened to me a couple of times recently. I must be much drunker than I realise but I'd rate myself only in the 'cheerful' category when it happens. Who knows.

Anyway, so we went to the Cross where they'll let anyone in so long as they can pull their wallet out of their pocket. In the Cross we went to Empire first, had quite a few bourbon/whiskeys, then moved on to a strip club. God knows what happened in there but I remember buying a bunch of fake money and giving it to [Redacted] and him getting plenty of attention from the ladies after that. We had a few drinks and watched some shows then

[scene missing]

I wake up at 3pm on the Saturday afternoon in my (Amanda's) bed. A quick check of my bank account says I must had spent about $500-$600 so I'm living skint till next payday but that's alright cos it was great fun.

Soundwave

2008-03-09T16:41:00.003+11:00

Turns out Amanda's quite into rock music as well, so we went to a big rock/metal festival in Sydney Park together a few weeks ago. I've been growing my hair out for a few months now and Chris mentioned he had some spare black hair dye so I nicked it off him and Amanda helped me dye my hair black on the morning of the festival. I could have left it in a little longer to get it totally black but I rinsed it out early so it's slightly lighter. Either way I think it looks great and having longer hair is much more fun.

The festival itself kicked ass. It started at 10am but we slept in and got there very late- about 4pm I think. We only knew a few of the bands going apart from the headlining acts Offspring and Incubus who were on much later that night. Whoever organised that festival mustn't have ever done it before. There were no maps or timetables for free or for sale anywhere and we turned up without either so we ended up wandering around getting our bearings for the first hour or so, then parked up at what were obviously the main stages for a couple of hours. Eventually they started running out of booze, premix spirits went first, then the full strength beers, then the midstrength. By the end of it it was light beer or nothing, so we were just getting two each at a a time and sculling them. Food ran out about 5 o'clock as well I think.

Anyway- the organisation was shit but the bands rocked the fuck out. We saw Alexisonfire, Incubus, several rock bands I didn't catch the name of, some of Killswitch Engage, then finally stayed for most of a set by The Matches. These guys were really entertaining with great energy and enthusiasm. I don't know how to put it but they were just brilliant to watch and their music is pretty good if not a bit pop-rock-y.

Afterwards we went out to a bar that Amanda used to go to when she lived in the area and had a few drinks then went home. Fucken sweet day all up! Better than BDO. Oh, and Dan Maher's a bastard because we were supposed to meet him and a group of his friends there but his phone 'ran out of battery' and we couldn't contact him the whole day.

Big Changes

2008-03-09T16:31:00.003+11:00

I've started seeing my flatmate Amanda. You don't need to tell me that it's the cardinal sin of flatting but I don't give a fuck- we get on incredibly well and that's all that matters.

Amanda

Initially we had to conceal it from Chris (her brother and my other flatmate) because we weren't sure how he'd take it but now he knows he's cool with it and that's a big weight off my back. Could have been really awkward if he took it the wrong way...

We have been spending a lot of time together lately. We decided to have Valentine's Day two days before the actual day because Amanda was working on the 14th and we knew it'd be impossible to book dinner anywhere nice for that night. So on the 12th we went out to a very nice restaurant in Palm Beach (where they shoot Home & Away) called Barrenjoey House. Dinner was spectacular then we had a walk and a sit on the beach across the road for a while looking at the stars until it got chilly and we took off. We went to Dee Why Beach where there's a little nightspot to have a couple of beers and listen to some relaxed live music.

That was the best night I've had in a long time. Amanda looked gorgeous in the new dress she bought just for the occasion and I looked pretty swanky if I do say so myself ;-)

BDO

2008-03-09T16:15:00.003+11:00

I've left this blog in terrible neglect so I'll cram in a few posts now before I forget the last month or so.

Big Day Out in Melbourne was awesome. Me and Jen stayed at the Crowne Plaza on the Yarra river, right across the road from the (unrelated) Crown Casino. Didn't bother going to the casino cos neither of us are really into gambling.

The first night we were there, we met up with Duncan and Peti, Meriam and L'il Phil and had a ball. We went to a place on the Yarra for dinner then moved into a bar in the city that was supposedly a Kiwi bar. It was cool and chilled out and we stayed till closing time then went back to Meriam and LP's place for some cocktails. Once we'd had quite a few Phil decided it'd be a good idea to go inside the Crowne Plaza (where he works), grab the master keys and go up onto the roof where there's no public access. That was sweet- we had the best view of the city from up there. After that me and Jen retired to our hotel room.

BDO itself was great. We got there a bit late but that was no problem as the bands we really wanted to see started later anyway. We caught some of Josh Pyke, Arcade Fire and numerous hard rock/metal bands. We got to see all of Spoon, Mammal, Silverchair and, of course, Rage Against The Machine. Rage went off as expected, Silverchair were really good live as well. One standout act was Mammal, a local Melbourne hard rock band who were playing in a small tent but really kicked ass. We only had a couple of drinks each the whole day which was odd considering how we're usually both raving alcoholics. It was good to see live music and actually be able to remember it the day after though....

The next day we got in touch with Duncan, Cat and Ju and met up with them at the place where Ju was working in the CBD. A pity we couldn't have a night out with the whole lot of them but it was a last minute trip and we weren't there for long enough I guess. Will definitely see them next time. Duncan is living off his savings and doing fuck all like a usual bludging Kiwi, Cat just scored a job while we were there, so she's getting established which is great. They're all living in separate places at the moment so there's no flat to go and stay at but we'll see what happens now that nRt and James are down there.

On the way to the airport we talked about Jen moving to America and what that meant to us. Until then I'd been entertaining the idea of a month-long holiday to the states at the start of her trip but looking at the cost, timing and the fact that I'm not that excited about the USA, I decided against it and told her. Also a contributing factor was that I'd been getting much closer to my flatmate Amanda and wanted to see how that was going to pan out. Stay tuned!

Boat Party

2008-01-27T12:51:00.000+11:00

Yesterday was australia day so everyone was flying aussie flags from their cars and wearing green and gold like proper patriots. My flatmates and their friends took me on a party cruise on the harbour to celebrate. It's kinda like those party busses we have back in christchurch except there's three levels (each with different music), two bars, and your on frickin' Sydney harbour with the opera house and bridge and that.

We took the ferry from Manly to Circular Quay and walked to where we were embarking at the steps of the opera house. After a sobering wait of about half an hour, we boarded and got under way. The top level was the place to be for the first couple of hours, enjoying the sun and the funk/soul music. Their friends are cool. Most of them were chicks, some aussies, some UKians and some Irish. They snuck flasks of booze on board which was a good idea in hindsight, as the beers were ~$9 a pop. The boat went around the harbour, up to Taronga Zoo then back under the bridge. We had a good time, drinking, dancing, then around nine o'clock we muscled our way upstairs for a good view of the fireworks. They were a bit late in starting but they were incredible. Not as huge as the new years' ones, but they had lots of green and gold explosions mixed in there.

An hour or so later they turned the lights on on the dance floor cos we were back at the opera house where we left from. Me and Amanda managed to lose track of everyone, but we had intended to go home after anyway because she had to work the next day and I have to fly to Melbourne for BDO.

I don't have a camera but I'm sure pictures of the day/night will be forthcoming.

I'm really glad I only got slightly sunburnt. Sunburn sucks, especially when I have to spend the whole day outside at BDO tomorrow.

Cowboy Party

2008-01-27T12:12:00.000+11:00

It was Mel's birthday party a couple of weeks back, and she has a reputation for throwing out of control dressup parties. This year it was wild west themed, so we went all out with our costumes:

Me and Alex getting ready in my room. Stop looking at my crotch.

Dan Maher blowing his own shotgun

Me and Eric, my boss. He had a whip which he took to work the day before the party and was threatening co-workers with it. He's crazy.

Me looking my best

Mexican standoff with Dan Maher and Eric.

An awesome night was had by all, and a big thanks to Mel cos she rocks and throws wild parties!

Update

2008-01-27T12:00:00.000+11:00

The blog has been falling into disrepair so I'll update it with the going's on since Christmas while my memory is still patchy.

Christmas
Went up to Jen's place for a nice roast dinner and to hang out. It was fun- haven't had roast chicken in ages so that was a treat.

New Years Eve
This was a sweet event. We started at Dan and Dinx's place in Dee Why for pre-pre drinks for a couple of hours.

Next took cars to Ben and Reggie's place in Mosman which has a great overlook of the harbour and the fireworks. There were quite a few people there and we all piled onto the balcony to watch the fireworks at nine o'clock.

They were spectacular- several sites around the city including the opera house and bridge let off synchronised displays.

Then we all piled into cars and headed to a big house party in Manly. This place was going off, with a big sound system and about fifty people all having a great time. At one point some breakers started pulling out moves on the concrete dancefloor and they were awesome. Midnight hit and we all shot party poppers and partied till the sun started coming up. The people that were left at this point decided it'd be a great idea to go down to Manly beach. I was pretty smashed and Dinx managed to convince me to go for a dip with her, even though she just put her ankles in then wussed out. I stripped down to my underwear and went for a proper swim which was just as refreshing as I had imagined.

When everyone ran out of steam, we went back to Dan and Dinx's place and sniffed *something* which kept us up for a couple more hours

before passing out.

I was basically woken by everyone getting up and going across the road to the DY RSL so I tagged along, feeling a bit under the weather. We had drinks and snacks there then went up on the headland at Long Reef and flew radio controlled planes. The guys who owned them really knew what they were doing. I had a couple of goes but divebombed so gave up.

Anyway, that was it. Work the next day was absolutely unbearable.

LBC Xmas Party

2007-12-12T22:53:00.000+11:00

Sunday I awoke at 12:30 just before remembering I was supposed to be at a party starting at 12 noon. Luckily my ride was late so there was time for a shower. We started off at D's folks' place with a BBQ, XBox and watching the boxing on TV. Then we decided it would be a good idea for everyone to follow Fletch's example and shotgun cans of beer.

We taxied to Kings Cross about 8pm pretty sloshed, and went for dinner at Juju's, a nice Japanese restaurant with the whole take-your-shoes-off and sit-on-the-floor action. The meal was fantastic, and later on they busted out the karaoke. Once we got kicked out of there, we went to another bar, took some zing then proceeded on to ShowGirls, a strip club. We got a private dance which consisted of about eight of us cramming into a tiny room with a smoking hot stripper where boners were cracked and fun was had.

Then some of the crew decided it was home time, so me, Fletch and D troopered on until we got kicked out of the next bar, and then there were cops everywhere and we decided to pack it in as well.

Man that was an epic day, and a kickass weekend on the whole. Now I'm looking forward to this weekend where Saturday entails my ex-flatmate's birthday BBQ and my work pre-drinks and xmas party, and Sunday is Dan O and Dinx's (and Kellie, Dan's sister) xmas party at their place in Dee Why. Full on.

New New Flat Flat Flat

2007-12-12T22:39:00.000+11:00

Oh, on the flat front, I got the one with the brother and sister (Chris and Amanda). God, I've moved four times in the roughly eighteen months I've been living here. If you've just read the post below about my exploits in Gold Coast, know that I landed back in Sydney, taxied to my old flat (the taxi to the airport cost more, and took longer, than the flight to Gold Coast, incidentally), packed all my shit in the back of my car and drove to my new place in Balgowlah where it took all of about fifteen minutes to get my stuff set up. That night I had some quiets with my flatmates and two of their friends.

Saturday was a different story. I lazed around all day, and eventually cracked out some bourbons with Chris. Later on, Amanda called and said we should go meet her and some friends in Manly which was a great idea. We went to the Steyne, which was packed and going off with live music. Got pretty trashed in the garden bar then staggered to the night club upstairs and danced for an indeterminate amount of time. Once we were totally maggot, me and Chris exited gracefully then grabbed a kebab from across the road then started to walk. In hindsight it's quite a long way home from Manly, and it's uphill the whole way. Thankfully Amanda called to say she was in a taxi and picked us up on the way. Once we got home we chatted and drank and Amanda basically passed out. A sweet first night out with the flatties.

Gold Coast Redux

2007-12-12T22:16:00.000+11:00

My trip to Gold Coast last week was everything I'd hoped for. I flew down Friday evening and got picked up by Blake and Ju. We went back to the nine-oh (James' flat) and had a few drinks with James, Eneti, Duncan, Cat and Peti (Eneti's sister).

Saturday night we (everyone mentioned plus Rina) had drinks at James', then went out to Surfers for dinner. The place we had in mind was full so we walked to a nearby Italian place which was BYO. Plenty of bottles of wine later, we headed to a couple of different bars then I went back to James' with a group of peeps. Me and Duncan stayed up drinking until the girls came back about 7am singing and dancing and absolutely off their chops. We stayed up with them until it was proper daylight outside then hit the hay. We had been taking MDMA but it wasn't that strong this time- just enough to have a smile on my dial the whole time.

I forget what days or order the next few things happened in, but I assure you they did happen:

- We went to Pacific Fair for shopping

- We went to Corey and Damo's place for dinner. Damo cooked us up a mad feed, what a champion!

- We snorkeled

- We drank

- We went to Byron Bay on a day trip for shopping/beach/chilling out

- We went to White Water World which is a new water park and a part of DreamWorld. It was much more fun than I thought it was going to be. A freak rainstorm cleared out half of the patrons in the afternoon so we got a few rides in without having to line up.

James was away from the Monday, traveling around the country selling people bullshit they don't need, so we had his place and car to ourselves which was very generous of him. Blake was around a fair bit and it was really good to see him again. He's still working at the sleep clinic so they have him on crazy hours stuffing tubes down peoples throats like a porn star.

Eneti was working all week but that didn't stop him from staying up with us and getting hammered on QLD beer every night. It was his last week working at the bank so he didn't really care but it didn't stop him complaining about it all the time. He's off to live with Pep for a couple of weeks, hurriedly saving up money for his trip to Switzerland where it sounds like he's going to become either a swiss watch maker or a frozen mummified corpse on the streets of Basel.

On Thursday we moped around then dropped Cat, Ju and Duncan off at the train station so they could catch their flight at Brisbane airport. A few hours later Blake dropped me off at Coolangatta and I flew back to Sydney.

I don't know how Cat, Ju and Duncan are getting along because I left my cellphone charger in GC and my phone's dead but hopefully they aren't. It will be interesting to see them find their footing in a foreign land, especially Duncan who I never thought would live outside of Christchurch. I will email them right after this post, actually. When they have a flat set up, I'll go down and see them in Melbourne and spew on their couch.

That's Why They Call Me Tim Shady

2007-11-24T23:40:00.000+11:00

I've been visiting houses over the last week or so to find a new place to live. I think I've found the right place after visiting it today. Tomorrow I'll get the call to find out whether or not I've got the room. Just between you and me, I made quite a good impression so I think it's in the bag but we'll see.

Shopping for flats always makes me feel dirty because I have to play a bunch of people like I want to move in with them. When it comes down to it I have to call several people and tell them I liked their place but it's not the one for me. They always sound so dejected and I want to apologise but that's how the game's played.

Hope I get the one tomorrow. The current occupants are Chris and Amanda (brother and sister), 21 and 23 respectively, and they seem well balanced so I can't wait to screw them up. There's a japanese student living there at the moment and it's her room I'll be taking. The room's fully furnished so I don't need to buy a bunch of furniture and don't need to sleep on an airbed again (my back says "yaayyyyyy!")

Look up the song chocolate rain by Tay Zonday. It's totally worth it even if it doesn't make any sense.

Later.z.

Peace.

Up and Down

2007-11-12T20:45:00.000+11:00

Do you want the good news or the bad news? Bad news is that it's official- it's over between me and Jen. It's been brewing for some time so I'm not that shattered but sometimes I find myself reflecting on it thinking what I could have done differently. I think it's time to pick myself up by my bootstraps and start living.

The good news is that the Capoeira batizado in the city on the weekend was great fun! Friday night I couldn't make it to the class because I worked late but Saturday I was right on time even though it took me half an hour of driving around and cursing for me to actually find the place. Saturday was a workshop with some teaches from other schools around the country and Sunday was the actual grading. I had to play against everyone else that was receiving the same belt as me (white) and then play against the teachers, who whooped my ass. There's a really big bruise on my lower shin which I can only attribute to said ass whooping, but I don't remember it hurting at the time.

There were about 40 capoeiristas (players) there and a bunch of friends/family of members watching so when everyone was singing and clapping it was amazingly loud and the energy was really good- especially toward the end where the higher up students were getting their belts and asses whooped. Some of the teachers were incredible, doing all manner of crazy acrobatics and takedowns.

Hopefully someone will have photos which I can post up here or facebook or both.

Wrist Strong!

Movement

2007-11-04T17:30:00.000+11:00

Two major things to report, loyal viewers. Firstly I have to move again within the next three weeks. At the moment the room I'm staying in used to be occupied by one of my flatmates' sisters. She's coming back to Sydney in three weeks and wants the room back. Fair enough- it's been a nice six to eight months but time to move on.

Secondly I've got a big capoeira festival sorta thing next weekend. It's called a Batizado (baptism) and it's like a grading in other martial arts except it's all weekend long. Friday we do some workshops in the city with a visiting teacher, saturday we do a public workshop and performance in a park in the city and sunday is the actual grading where people get their cordao (belt) if they've earned it. That oughta be fun cos there's more than a hundred people in the school and everyone's supposed to be there even if they're not being graded. Oh, and I get a t-shirt. Awesome.

Hot

2007-10-01T12:24:00.000+10:00

Manly lost to the Melbourne Storm last night. Gutted. It was an alright game to begin with but the second half Melbourne just shat down Manly's throat. I'm assuming there was a rash of suicides and homicides last night as a result.

Oh boy it's starting to get hot over here. This whole long weekend it's been about 28 degrees every day. I've been lounging outside reading my book 'The God Delusion' by Stephen Dawkins but I can only stand it for about half a hour before I start to cook.

The God Delusion is a really interesting read. I'm most of the way through it and it really appeals to me. Basically it's Stephen Dawkins - a world renowned British scientist currently a professor at Oxford University - going on about how it's very unlikely that God exists, that raising children into religion is a form of child abuse and that evolution naysayers are completely full of shit when you look at the mountain of evidence against them.

This goes beyond being atheist- he's a firm antitheist, believing that all religion should be eradicated because it's intellectually dishonest, dangerous and poisonous. He rails against the societal belief that someone's faith is something you shouldn't question which I've alway found strange myself. If your religion is well founded and reasonable then why shouldn't you be able to defend it completely? Religious people are just afraid that you'll uncover their embarrassing logical fallacies and tremendous ignorance.

Okay I'll stop ranting now, but try to get a copy of The God Delusion or The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, or at the very least look up Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens on YouTube and hear what they have to say. Very interesting individuals. There is a hope for us non-believers yet!

Long, Lonely Weekend

2007-09-29T20:20:00.000+10:00

It's labour day on Monday so it's a long weekend this weekend, sweet! The down side is that things aren't so great between me and Jen (again). I haven't seen her in more than three weeks because she didn't want to come down and see me on her days off during the week. She said it's because she's sick of the drive, but now I have a long weekend I suggested I come up to see her on her day off on Monday but she declined.

That really came as a blow to me because I thought we were okay, but that she didn't want to drive the two hours to get down to Sydney which is fair enough, but now it's obvious she actually doesn't want to see me. We still talk on the phone almost every day and she says that's fine but I don't know where this is leading. I really thought we were going well recently and I don't know what has changed.

It's kinda exhausting getting excited about seeing her week after week, only to have her turn me down. This Monday I was hoping I'd go up to see her and we could have a nice day together but she dashed my hopes this morning. Who knows what's going to happen? I really hope we don't break up because I wouldn't know what to do without her, but she seems to be distancing herself from me.

On a lighter note, it's the NRL (League) Grand Final this weekend and my local team, Manly, are in it for the first time in ages. I don't know much about league but the whole area is excited- people are flying Manly flags from their cars and decorating trees in front of their houses with streamers in Manly colours. I'll probably end up a) tagging along with my flatmates to a BBQ and watching the game or b) sitting at home feeling sorry for myself and watching the game.

Either way- long weekend! Woohoo!

I Can Has Beer?

2007-09-15T14:09:00.000+10:00

If you haven't already, go to icanhascheezburger.com. Cats are funny, especially with hilariously misspelled captions.

I'm going to some sort of european beer fest thing today. Any excuse to have beers in the sun (it's like 25 deg here today!). Summer is on the way and I can't wait, bitches.

Manly

2007-08-22T19:51:00.000+10:00

This weekend just gone I had a bit of a biggy, if financial loss is your yardstick. A girl from work that was well liked left last week, Mel. It was sad to see her go as she's always been good times but she had a better job lined up so I can't blame her.

Friday we went down for drinks to a pub in Manly (which is the happening area of where I live, Northern Beaches) to see her off. There are lots of kiwis living in Manly so I wore an All Blacks shirt- taking the gamble that I'd either get beaten up or talked to by randoms. Luckily it was the latter. Live music, pool, beer, $100- seeing normally reserved people from work getting sloshed... priceless. We didn't stay out that late and I got a ride home from the our designated driver (Jess) around 1am. As an aside: The manager of one of the teams at work came to me monday and apologised for calling me a cocksucker all night, of which I have no recollection at all.

Saturday was pretty similar. Pre-drinks at a dude Dan from work's place, then to a chick from work Alex's place for her 21st birthday party! This one was slightly less wild than the drug induced one from last weekend but great fun nonetheless. Lots of Alex's family there so the atmosphere was a bit more formal but that didn't stop one of Alex's aunties from getting roaring drunk and trying to make out with one of my workmates several times. Bleccch! Later that night we got taken to Manly which probably wasn't a good idea in retrospect. After getting inside The Steyne, a multi-storey pub with a bunch of different bars in it, I promptly lost everyone I was with and ended up wandering around in a drunken stupor until finding one of them. Several beers later the unconsciousness was creeping up on us so we decided to pack it in and get a pie and a taxi back to his place where I couched for the night. Forensic evidence places the bedtime at around five or six a.m.

Pics for this post and the last one are forthcoming- at the moment I've used up all my internet bandwidth for the month so on the 1st of september I'll upload the photos. Bate your breath until then (I hate it when people say "with baited breath" as if they're leaving some cheese in their mouth and waiting for an unsuspecting mouse or something. Use a fucken dictionary).

Gold Coast

2007-08-22T19:41:00.000+10:00

It was two weeks ago now. I can still feel my heart racing and that look he gave me which said "here's your MDMA cap, bro". Actually it wasn't a look, it was James saying it to me. Friday the 17th I flew up to GC for Rina's 21st birthday partaaaaay. The night started gently with me touching down at 8:30 and getting picked up by blake and nRt and whisked back to the flat where hard liquor and beer bongs were already in full swing. After getting back acquainted with everyone we proceeded to drop some MDMA and everything went from good... to great!

Over the course of the next hour, materials that were harsh and abrasive became soft as your first teddy bear. Negative thoughts disappeared and waves of fun-ness swept through me. Not that it's possible to describe the full impact of drugs through text, but it was a wicked night. We eventually made our way down to another flat on the waterfront where we drank whiskey and played chess until (I think?) about 7 in the morning.

Catching up with the mancrew blake, james and nRt and also the goldcrew rina, damo, jimmy, sam and that was great. The saturday was spent feeling sorry for ourselves and watching movies. Sunday everyone had just enough energy to crawl down to surfers for a couple of hours of arcade games, mini-golf and dodgems. Shortly after I was on my way back to Sydney with fond memories and a mild feeling of unease.

Little did I know this trip would repeat itself sometime in the near future.

Nothing Special

2007-08-09T18:46:00.000+10:00

Ain't being doing much since I got back from NZ but working and trying to save money to pay off my car. Only a couple of grand remaining on that sucker so should be in the positive balance soon.

Tomorrow I'm flying up to Gold Coast to see James, Rina, nRt and Blake and the rest of those crazy peeps up there. Coming back down sunday evening so I should have some stories to blog by then.

Luke Fife's in Sydney this weekend which is terrible timing but hopefully he'll give me a ring when he touches down tomorrow and we can get together for a coffee or something!

Oh and it's Jen's birthday next weekend. We plan to go skydiving up on the central coast where we used to live. We've never done it before and it sounds like a right scare-the-fucking-shit-out-of-us.

Costume Party

2007-07-02T22:26:00.000+10:00

Not sure if I mentioned this but I went to a costume party with some peeps from work a couple of months ago:

That's me dressed as a magician and Muz in a monkey suit. He drove us to the party with the head on which was scary.

Mel and Warin from work. Damn some of the girls there were wearing next to nothing. If you forgot how great I looked in the last ten seconds here's me again

Gold Coast

2007-07-01T13:28:00.000+10:00

This is a photo-less escapade because what Gold's on Coast, Stays on Coast. Actually my camera ran out of batteries and I didn't have a charger so no photos.

I went to Gold Coast to see James and nRt and catch a Che Fu concert James organised. It was a whirlwind one night affair and I had such a good time. The concert was in Byron Bay, about an hour south of Gold Coast. We headed out there early afternoon so they could set up all the equipment and sound check and whatever else. The venue was the Northerner which is a bar slash backpackers and we had free rooms upstairs. The concert kicked large amounts of ass. The were some of the older songs like Machine Talk and then some newer ones I didn't know but were also fantastic. nRt got asked at the last minute to perform as a warm up act to the main performance and he laid it down. I didn't think his style would go down so well with a hip hop crowd but Byron's a bit of a hippy paradise and everyone really got into it. Well done mate!

nRt's doing well for himself mooching off James' flatmates and living in the garage. All of James' mates seem to be musicians so E will really be in his element there.

After the concert we (there were about twenty people in our crew) stayed up all night drinking much to the annoyance of the security personnel. The next morning was hectic- packing up tons of sound gear then having a leisurely breakfast at a cafe followed by realising what the time is and fucken gunning it back to Gold Coast for my suitcase then to Brisbane which the next's night's gig was and also where my flight was leaving from. I made it to the check in with 30 minutes to go before launch which is cutting it pretty fucking close if I do say so myself. No dramas on the flight to Sydney, slept like a baby.

I'm really amazed that I planned out a trip that involved flying both nationally and internationally mixed in with wild parties and that I made all of the flights and nothing went wrong. Oh and it turns out you're not allowed more than 100 mls of marmite on board an international flight anymore. I never knew marmite was considered an offensive weapon.

New New Zealand

2007-07-01T12:02:00.000+10:00

Busted out a trip back to christchurch last week which was awesome! It was great to see my family again after a six month hiatus. My brother Ben bought a house with his girlfriend Jess which I saw last time I was there but now they've moved in and decked the place the fuck out.

Exhibit A:
That's the second lounge, and here's the master lounge:

Booyah. That TV is basically the biggest you can get, I think. The rest of the trip was fantastic, hanging out with all the locals. Sadly John and Julia broke up just moments before my plane landed it seems. I was shocked at the news as they've been together as long as I've known them and then some. So I consoled John in the only way I know how- overstaying my welcome at his place and smoking all his pot and playing his playstation. He seemed to be taking it quite well but I'm sure on the inside it's different.

Hung out with Bede a lot too. Tried to convince him to quit his dead end job in chch and come over to sydney where the beaches are sandy and the money grows on trees. He was 90% convinced I think but needs something to push him over here.

It seems that large sections of the mancrew have itchy feet now that eneti's moved. Cat and Gerard mentioned wanting to come over here- probably to Melbourne though. I won't believe them until I see their one way tickets though. Also Julia's keen to move over and question mark about John but knowing him he'll want to stay around in chch.

Some things have changed in christchurch since I was there last. Soul Square opened up which is a bunch of bars and classy clothing shops all crammed into the area that used to be the where the kids from YCD sniffed glue out the back. It's a good idea and it was pumping while I was there but people were saying it used to be cool and is now passe` and just another hangout for the fags and sluts from the strip. Okay, I took some liberties with that paraphrasing. Either way, there was a bar where you can drink crate bottles which is a funny idea.

The boys were in full swing that night. It was good to see Mock with his new Back To The Future-mobile. One night I had dinner with Laura and Rupert which was great fun. They (mostly Laura) made a guiness and beef pie which was great! Beer and meat pie- together at last.

Friday (22nd) was my birthday so I woke up after sleeping on the floor at Bede's place and we got the fuck outta there because the landlord was coming around for an inspection at nine AM. So we went for a big breakfast at Drexel's in town which was the bomb. That night I enjoyed dinner with my family then wild drinking at Cat's place and caught up with some peeps I hadn't seen yet like Sefton, Blake, Cat, and Ju. It was getting late and I had to be at the airport at four AM so I just drank until then, grabbed my bags and went to the airport. Didn't get more than a couple of winks sleep on the plane so I was feeling shabby when I landed back in Sydney, just in time to throw down a bourbon at the domestic terminal bar and almost miss my flight to Gold Coast. I actually got a frown of disapproval from the airline staff when I told her I was late for my flight because I had to finish my bourbon. They were just about to call my name over the PA.

Gold Coast is another story entirely so I'll put that in another post.

P.S. How does Duncan manage to look retarded in every one of the photos I took. I can say that safely because he doesn't even know what the internet is so there's no chance of him ever reading this.

When It Rains, It Pours

2007-06-10T16:05:00.000+10:00

Most rain Sydney has seen in thirty years. Hardcore. Newcastle saw half it's annual rainfall come down in one day- 400mm! Flooding everywhere, flashfloods on the freeway washed several cars over the edge to their deaths. I've never seen anything like it.

On the upside, I've been having a great time this long weekend (monday is queen's birthday over here). Friday night I drank most of a litre of bourbon and snorted coke for the first time. Great stuff, not what I was expecting really but it kept me very awake until 5:30 in the morning. Woke up saturday about 12:30 feeling alright, had some breakfast and then got picked up by a workmate (Dan O) and bussed to the city for an entire day of drinking beer with a crew of about fifteen peeps. Originally we were going to go to the BeerFest in Darling Harbour which is in the city, right next to the harbour bridge, but it was so wet we decided to have our own damn BeerFest.

We went to a bunch of different pubs and got pretty wasted. There was a pit stop for karaoke somewhere in there which was mint. Don't remember how the night ended up but I woke up in my own bed so everything must have gone alright. I guess I'll get the full story at work on tuesday.

Long weekends ROCK. Long live The Queen.

Camera Dump

2007-05-15T22:02:00.000+10:00

A few photos I've taken recently:

The chick on the left is one of the girls I used to live with in Narrabeen (Tash).

Here's the view from the plateau I live on top of. This is down the end of our street. That's the sea on the right and the lagoon on the left which you can swim in but it's not recommended.

Here's the aforementioned huntsman spider that hangs about our house.

This is two of my current flatmates- Chad on the left and Spaz (Karen) on the right. They're a couple and she's british and hilarious.

This is a big church on Cathedral St in the City. Which came first, the church or the street?? I don't recommend trying to take photos which driving around the city centre. Very perilous.

Happy Snapping

Positivity

2007-05-13T20:43:00.000+10:00

Several good news:

1. I misconstrued Jen's texts earlier this week and it turns out we're still together but just taking it easy and only seeing each other once a week or fortnight. As you can tell by my last post I was pretty stressed out about that but so I'm feeling much better now, thank you.

2. Eneti's moving over to aussie to stay with James for an indeterminate amount of time. I'm gonna book a flight up to see the both of them as soon as they're all settled.

3. It's Mothers' Day! I called up mum and said hi and everything. She's doing well and liking her new(ish) position as general surgery nurse so she gets to see plenty of abdominal surgery which sounds horrific but she's loving it.

4. There are bats living in the trees in our back yard. They make scary screeching noises but it turns out if you wave a torch around the trees for a second they all shut the hell up which is just how I like my bats.

5. I can't find our house spider so maybe he's out killing and eating small birds and children. Maybe I'll call him bitey.

6. I'm gonna book flights this week to go back to christchurch for a week. My birthday's on the 22nd June so I might book it for then so you can all shower me in presents and praise.

Fragility

2007-05-10T22:43:00.000+10:00

Thanks to those of you who have emailed me saying don't worry about the whole Jen situation and "buck up" sorta comments- they have been helpful. It's good to know you people are still out there in the ether and that you're not all figments of my imagination. I responded to emails by saying it's okay because me and Jen are building bridges and basically back together (having meals, seeing movies together etc.) and I was quietly confident this would just blow over and we'd be back to normal lickity split. But alas.

A brief text interchange with Jen today confirmed that she doesn't want to get back together. That came as a real surprise to me considering she's been down to visit me three times in the past three weeks and we've been getting along well. We were even chatting about maybe moving country again next year to Canada or The States. To me that seemed like the road to recovery but I must have been getting my signals mixed.

Most of you know me for my pragmatism and as soon as I realised it might not be all rainbows and lollipops that side of my brain that's constantly overthinking was already tallying up the stuff of mine that's still at her place and the cost of the bed and sofa we bought together that I can hopefully reclaim. What a cold, callous thing to think about at the possible end of an amazing four year relationship. For all the good it's done me, sometimes it sucks to have that side of my brain when it really is quite an emotional situation. I got a bit down today after realising that and smoked like a train as I usually do when I have to mull something over.

We will see how things progress and I really hope we can heal old wounds and remain a couple as we've been together so long it'd be like losing a limb.

And on the lighter side there's a huntsman spider that lives in our house which is about the size of a golf ball at the moment. It stays on the walls up near the roof so you don't really notice it. I hear they grow to about the size of your outstretched palm which is terrifying but they're very tame and only attack when cornered or provoked. Will try to take a photo of him in the morning if I have time. Got any suggestions for names?

New Flat!!

2007-05-02T21:15:00.000+10:00

Moved into a new flat last monday which is really exciting. In usual me fashion I left it until the very last week to get properly into looking for a room and continuing in me fashion I found one on exactly the day I was supposed to move out and moved in straight away. Thankfully I only have a bootload of stuff over here and the new place is only ten minutes from the old so it was a largely hassle-free affair. Hooray for no furniture and an inflatable bed!

The new place is cool, I'm living with a couple of which the chick is bri'ish and the guy is aussie and another aussie chick as well. The couple are both older than me but the aussie chick is about the same age. All of them love a good drink so I'm fitting in nicely.

My room has a double bed in it and a chest of drawers, all donated from the girl who just moved out (the bri'ish chick's sister) but the downside is that it's pimped out all winnie the pooh styles. I was gonna describe it further but a picture paints a thousand blog posts:

So there's three thousand blog posts for y'all. And no Michael Jackson jokes thank you very much.

More James

2007-05-02T21:13:00.000+10:00

Than you can throw a stick at! Jimmy came down for one day for work so I caught up with him in Darling Harbour where we had a few quiet beers and some nice dinner from a turkish place on the harbour. He's in the early stages of putting together a concert/festival up in goldy which is going to hopefully feature such big name acts as fat freddy's, katchafire and maybe crowded house. Badass.

Big dreams, big dreams.

Explosive Diarrhea

2007-05-02T21:09:00.000+10:00

Not nearly as humorous as South Park would have you believe.

Had a case of the tummy bug on friday which is a mild way of saying 28 hours of running to the toilet every 30 minutes and feeling generally craphouse the rest of the time. It happened on a friday meaning I skipped work which was a bonus but it killed the rest of my weekend because saturday I was still recovering with a headache from the dehydration and sunday was spent washing all my clothes and bedsheets as it's the first sunny day we've had all week.

I'm glad it's over and don't want it to happen again any time soon.

Trial separation

2007-04-07T13:35:00.000+10:00

Last night I went up to Jen's place to spend the night as I usually do in the weekends. Took me just over three hours to get there and I was very keen to see Jen. When I arrived there she was solemn looking and basically told me she wants us to take a break from our relationship for an indeterminate period of time. This came as a shock to me and we talked about it for quite a while but she wouldn't budge on it.

The crux of the issue is that we were at each others throats for the last few weeks we were living together in the place in Kariong because I was having a hard time dealing with the prospect of living apart after sharing a place for so long and was being temperamental. Since we've found our own places I thought things had got much better with each of us really eager to see each other on the few occasions we could. Another part of the problem is that ever since we moved out I've been asking (nagging) Jen to find a job in Sydney and move down so we can live together again. She seems to have taken offense to this as she's really enjoying her life in Cessnock at the moment, going out with workmates and having a grand old time.

This is a real blow for me as she's a big part of my life over here. The only friends I have are workmates and my flatmates so I'm often contacting Jen just to chat and asking when I can see her which must have been too clingy. She says that in Christchurch she basically had to fight for my attention because I was always hanging out with mates and doing stuff but over here I have few friends and no hobbies and we're in such constant contact I guess I was smothering her.

The remedy to the situation is for me to get a big group of friends over here to hang out with so I'm not thinking of Jen all the time and she has some room to breathe. Option one is having masked men smuggle key mancrew members over to Australia causing a landslide migration of the rest of the crew and we all have a big party. Option two of course is much cheaper and more sensible and it's just finding some mates over here for myself. The first place to look is to go along to capoeira class (I still haven't gone after months of saying I will) to find some likeminded people. For some reason the capoeira crew in christchurch seemed to attract really alternative people with long hair and vegetarian diets. While these people were good to see and play capoeira with, that's not really my lifestyle so I couldn't get to be really good friends with any of them. Hopefully the capoeiristas over here will be much more normal people if that's the right word.

Finding a flat with the right people will also be key to this friend finding endeavour. My flatmates at the moment are cool and I've already met quite a few of their friends who live in the area who are also interesting. It would be great if I could stay on at this flat but when their boyfriends get back it'll be five people in a two bedroom place so I don't like the odds of getting a hot shower in the morning. The challenge will be finding the right flat and flatmates. Of the ads I've seen that have caught my eye on the net there always seems to be a catch- either it's too expensive or too far away from work or the place is great but the only other flatmate will be a 42 y.o. guy :(. It's tough but I'm sure I'll find a place that meets my strict requirements.

It's been raining cats and dogs for the last couple of days which kinda fits my sombre mood today and is a good excuse to sit at home and get drunk and feel sorry for myself. I think I have a real problem with alcohol considering how much time I've spent recently getting drunk by myself and watching movies or playing computer games. It really isn't healthy. Another thing that isn't healthy is my flatmates are away at sydney olympic park where there a festival on called The Great Escape going yesterday today and tomorrow (easter fri, sat, sun). While Steve McQueen won't be making a cameo appearance at the festival this year, you can bet that mud will be. Tens of thousands of people all moshing around in the two hardest days of rain I've seen since I've been here is a recipe for fun.

Accommodation

2007-04-07T13:27:00.000+10:00

Okay so after the car affair I also needed to find a place to live as two weeks after the car crash our lease in Kariong expired so we had to go crazy cleaning the place, getting the lawns mowed etc.

Jen's already moved into her new place in Cessnock so I needed to find somewhere close to work to live. Turns out there are plenty of sites on the net specifically for finding places to stay in flats so that was good. I spent a while chopping down the options and sending off emails and the first place that emailed back saying that a short term stay was fine I jumped on and said I'd move in asap. Turns out the place is quite nice even though I'm sleeping on an air mattress in one half of the lounge which has been designated 'my room' and is sorta separated from the rest of the lounge.

The place is in Narrabeen just two blocks from the beach and my flatmates are two chicks Jodi (20) and Tash (22) who are very nice. They both have boyfriends who are away overseas making a snowboarding video at the moment so they need an extra person to make the rent. The boys will be back in four to six weeks from when I moved in which is about two weeks from now so I'm back to searching for a place again- this time I'll go for a six month lease so there should be many more options. Also a guy from work is looking at moving really soon as well so that might be an angle to work as well. The reason I'm looking for a more permanent place now will be explained in the next post.

Totalled my car

2007-04-07T13:15:00.000+10:00

I crashed my car on the freeway heading to work on monday the 5th of March at 6:45am. Coincidentally that's also my brother Ben's birthday. It was totally my fault as I was auto-pilot driving and didn't realise the traffic in front of me was backed up and not moving. I slammed on the brakes and slid a long way then *smash* into the car in front. Minor damage was done to her car but my one had the front all smashed up. We exchanged details and the tow truck guy turned up to pick up my wreck which was still running and actually driveable.

He took me to a smash repair place in Gosford to drop it off then took me home. Called in to work to say I'd be working from home for the foreseeable future until I could get a new set of wheels. The punchline to this is that I only had 3rd party car insurance so this one cost me a lot of money. Long story short the repair guy said it's a wreck and he'll take it off my hands for $500 (I bought it for $7000 six months earlier). In hindsight he probably totally shafted me considering the damage didn't look that severe and the thing was still running- I assumed that they'd just have to replace the radiator and the panelling.

I rented a car for a few days so I could get to work and back while simultaneously organising a bank loan for ten grand to get a new car. So on the weekend Jen and I did the mad dash to a handful or caryards then found one I liked and said "I'll take it". Easiest sale that guy ever made but I didn't have time to piss around haggling- I needed the car pronto. So I picked it up on the monday and drove to work and immediately changed my insurance to comprehensive this this fucking mess won't happen again.

So here's the financials:
Lancer bought for $7000
Lancer sold for $500
Net loss -$6500

Bummer.

No Comment

2007-04-07T13:13:00.000+10:00

I've just found out I can blog from work so I'll fill everyone in on what's been happening in my life but I'll split it up into several posts so it's nice and organised. You'd better take a seat for this one....

The Times They Are A'Changin'

2007-02-25T10:28:00.000+11:00

Time to move flat again. First an update. We got the lawn mowed by a professional place and they did a wonderful job. Large sections of the lawn are brown and dead because they haven't seen sunlight in months. What a load off my back. When Jen called the rental agency to say we were leaving the agent said she was just about to write us a(nother) letter complaining about the lawn. Whoops! Shi'ite happens!

Last night was another spectacular thunderstorm. This one was really close so I stood outside in the absolutely pouring rain and smoked a cigarette and watched the show. I hope they have these down in Sydney as well because it's super impressive.

So me and Jen are both completely sick of driving. For some reason the traffic has gotten worse over the last couple of weeks and it now routinely takes me an hour and a half to get to work and the same home. Three hours people! Takes Jen about the same amount of time except she's been working up to twelve hours a day recently and is having trouble staying awake on the drive home sometimes. So to minimise the chances of either of us having a high speed collision of some sort we've decided to move closer to our respective work. She's moving to Cessnock (hicksville) and I'm moving down close to work- maybe Forestville or Dee Why which is on the North Shore close to Manly. We've given notice so we have three weeks to clear out. Jen's wasted no time and has already applied for and been accepted at a villa in Cessnock which has just been built and literally hasn't been lived in before for $220 a week. Conversely I've looked at a few places on the net and the one bedroom roachfest "studio-apartments" (think coffin) near work are $260-$300. I'll look for flatmate wanted ads in the manly daily this week and go see some places. It'll be good to mix in with the locals for a few months at least.

This just in: car rego and warrant over here is excessively expensive! My rego is up in a month or so and I need a thirty dollar warrant and a five hundred dollar 'green slip' which is personal insurance sorta like ACC in NZ. If I'm involved in a car crash this insurance doesn't cover a cent- it's entirely for if I hit a pedestrian or something it'll pay for their hospital bill. So I have to get my own property insurance above and beyond that and I'm right in that 18-25 y.o. male sweet spot that means insurance companies have me over a barrel. In NZ I didn't bother with insurance because I figured I'd just drive carefully instead of forking over the cash. That worked fine and I never had an incident but over here is a different story altogether. When you combine the feverish driving of rush hour with the multi-hundred-thousand dollar BMW and Mercedeses that are everywhere then you have a recipe for bankruptcy. Seriously if I ding one of those social status trophies I'm paying for it for the next twenty five years to life.

Oh also before I go I've found a Capoeira school nearby and I'm going for my first time tomorrow. I haven't played in almost a year so I hope I can remember the basics. Wish me luck!!

Oh yeah

2007-02-17T19:44:00.000+11:00

and the grass out the back of our place is getting really

long. We can't decide between buy a mower or calling a garden keeping place to do it for us. I'm lazy so it'll probably be the latter. The neighbours have already complained to the landlord about the length of our lawn out the front of the house but, quite frankly, fuck'em. Dot com.

Seriously

2007-02-17T19:29:00.000+11:00

The bugs over here are harding me out:

Can't get enough of them:

This was splattered on Jen's car when she got home. If you've seen Starship Troopers you'll know how gross this thing was.

Annnnnnnyway. Mormons stopped by today and I was 1) naked and 2) drunk. I just managed to pull on some shorts when they knocked at the door the third time and stepped outside to talk to them. I'm not one to slam the door in anyone's face so the conversation worked back and forth for about forty five minutes at which point they thought they were spending too much time on one house and had slammed doors to get back to. They gave me the Book of Mormon which I'll read at some point and went on their merry way. I warned them against visiting the house across the road from us as they have wild sinful parties every weekend and worship satan.

Think I was joking???:

Jon Stewart

2007-02-08T21:52:00.000+11:00

If you haven't seen Jon Stewart's The Daily Show or The Colbert Report then jump on comedycentral.com and watch some of their videos. They're both hilarious- political and journalistic satire at it's best!

Also last night there was an amazing lighting storm that hit sydney. On the drive home the flashing signs they have on the freeway and highway that usually say "WEAR YOUR SEATBELT" or something similarly banal were all displaying "SEVERE STORM WARNING" which freaked me out. Turns out two of my workmates had a game of golf planned in the evening and a little thing like a SEVERE STORM wasn't going to stop them. I queried their desire to go out on a wide expanse of terrain during a thunderstorm holding nothing but a lightning rod but they said that the golf course's lightning sirens hadn't gone off so they played four holes until it was too wet too continue. I have to admit I didn't know golf courses had lightning sirens. Is this a common thing?

Anyway the storm was fantastic. Like a natural fireworks show.

The Low Down Under

2007-02-08T21:24:00.000+11:00

Recently popped back to christchurch for Jen's brother (Simon)'s wedding to Rebecca. I have to admit only having met her once and she was on the phone so could only manage a mouthed "Hi" and partial wave. That aside I've met Simon plenty of times and he's a good guy. The wedding was on the friday which was also luckily Australia Day (Australia's version of Waitangi Day except no-one celebrates the raw deal that the Aborigines got) so I didn't have to beg for the friday off. Sadly the airport couldn't really be farther from where we live as it's right in the south of Sydney whereas we live an hour north of the northernmost part of Sydney. I drove down there after work on the thursday and made my flight in plenty of time. Jen was picking me up so I let rip on the bourbons on the way over there. After two bourbons at one time (I'm not mucking around here) the cart came back and I offloaded the empties and requested two more. Not so! The hostess blubbered that I'd got her in trouble last time for giving me two at once so we settled on the agreement that I'd pay for both of them now but she'd hold onto the other until I'd finished the first. Assuming she'd just drink the thing herself I chugged the first one down and appeared at the little hostess quarters much to her dismay. Bourbon was the winner on the day and Jen was there to pick my drunk ass up at 12:30 AM as requested.

Having only been to two weddings in my life (the one I'm describing here was my second) I don't really have much of a comparison to draw. The ceremony was at a little chapel across the road from the old women's hospital on colombo street that now appears to have been taken over by glue sniffers and other various miscreants. The wedding was nice and informal with a couple of friends and family speaking along with a bit of a talk from the priest. Kudos to Simon that he had Nothing Else Matters (Acoustic) by Metallica played while they were signing the register and grimacing for photos etc.

Jen had got them a suite at the crowne plaza in victoria square for cheap through her work connections for the night so just after the ceremony we ducked out to grab a nice bottle of french champagne then down to the crowne to procure an ice bucket and access to their room for long enough to plant it and a two glasses on the table in there. As a nice touch the hotel staff had a plate with some chocolatey things on it with a message written in chocolate sauce saying Congratulations. I hear they loved it.

That night I we got trashed. After the reception at the restaurant/bar on Carlton Corner where I consumed many bourbons, Jen and I taxiied around to Duncan's place where it was apparently going off. Lots of my mates were around there and quite a night was had. It's always fun being the only dressed up person at a party.

Woke up on Duncans floor and realised it was morning and Jen was there as well. Sick of this whole not having a car situation I called a number of rental car places and finally found one stupid enough to rent me a mitsubishi diamante. John had left his car and, luckily, keys round at Duncans place and wanted both returned post haste so I obliged even though I would probably still have failed a breath test at that time of the morning. For returning John's car we demanded he take us to the car rental place in town. After ten minutes of signing forms and trying to act sober the keys were handed over and Jen and myself made a quick getaway as she'd just spewed on the front stoop of the rental car place.

Later that night (saturday) we found ourselves around at John and Julia's place where SingStar was in full effect. The surprise at the lack of neighbours shouting at the racket we were making was soon bourboned away as we rocked out The Beatles, Midnight Oil, Motown and such. Just then the police arrived. Quick thinking led to hiding anything illegal we were doing but what a relief- they weren't there to complain about our terrible singing but instead it turns out a bunch of guys had beat up a taxi driver just down the road so they were leading police dogs around the property and generally disrespecting us. They were just jealous that they had to work while we were karaokiing to Jimmy Barnes and Nirvana.

That night Jen and I stayed at the aforementioned Crowne Plaza for the aforementioned reduces rates which was nice. Nothing makes you feel sixteen again like coming home drunk from a party and having to tiptoe around your parents house trying to get to bed without waking them up.

Flew out on the sunday and did the same 'drive two hours home and coma on the bed before getting up for work' trick mentioned in my earlier post about seeing James in QLD.

That's a (w)rap.

Trip to Ch'ch'ch

2007-01-13T17:00:00.000+11:00

Spent the xmas/new years break back home in christchurch catching up with the whanau and friends. Great times, great times. Two weeks is just long enough that I don't feel I've spreading myself too thin among my friends, everyone got plenty of TimTime.

Highlights:

Seeing my Nana
Haven't seen her since her husband (not actually my granddad but still very close) died just a couple of months after we migrated to Oz. She is still pretty down in the dumps and was a bit hard to deal with but she's been through a lot and it was nice to see her and check out her nice new house.

Seeing old friends
Caught up with high school mates Ben and Matt while I was there which was great. It was interesting to hear about who from highschool was already dead, who was performing handjobs for crack and who had actually made it. These guys were both deputy head prefects at Shirley Boys' in my seventh form year and are both at the and of uni and embarking on ambitious careers. Ben is moving to Melbourne after studying Civil Engineering at Canty to help construct the new freeway running the length of the city. Matt has finished a BA at Canty as well and is moving to Wellington after securing a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a view to moving into diplomacy. Good luck guys!

Crazy New Years' Party
Went out to Clive's place in Sumner for New Years which was awesome. They have a place up on the hill with a great view and thankfully the wind wasn't too fierce so we could sit out on the balcony and enjoy it. I packed a big puffer jacket for my trip to chch but had no idea it was going to be that cold. Now I remember why I left the place ;-). The party was fun and I had a few drinks and rang in the new year with sparklers and rum then Chris Mock told us his crazy rich mate had called and said there was a limo on the way to pick a bunch of us up and take us into town. Well it turns out his rich mate was v. chopped but instead of a limo this guy turned up in two holden statesman executive cabs. We were chauffered to Foam in town at about four in the morning where this rich dude let us out and gave us a $1500NZD bar tab card for the Holy Grail and proceeded to get back in his cars and take off. Needless to say none of us were keen for the Grail so we ordered a couple of bottle of french champagne at Foam instead and drank until the sun came up and they kicked us out. There were maybe fifteen of us and most of the group had dropped some of that pure BZP stuff (the active ingredient in herbals) earlier in the night so no-one was feeling like heading home to bed. So instead we walked to Jess and Gerard's flat on Geraldine street just over Bealey and continued to drink and smoke joints well into the morning. As far as I can remember I passed out around 10:30 AM which was a decent innings considering I hadn't taken any of the BZP so was running on booze alone. I awoke several hours later and only Jess and Mock were there so we gorged on fish and chips then headed round to Luke Fife's place who had just returned from Phat '07 which is basically a two day drugs and dance music festival on the west coast. He was totally jaded from the party so we chilled out at his place and smoked weed and drank vodka and chatted and stuff which was fun.

Other Interesting Anecdotes
I'd love to continue this post but I'm getting sick of typing and Jen's bugging me to finish up so we can go down to the supermarket and get ingredients for tacos which we will construct soon after returning home. Tacos are yum. Promise to finish off this post soon!

Trip to QLD

2007-01-13T16:24:00.000+11:00

Okay I've been very slack on the postings recently some I'm going to make up for it by posting several entries right now while I've got the time.

Several months ago now I went to visit James in Gold Coast for the weekend. Fly up after work on friday then return late sunday night and drive home. He picked me up from the airport right on time and we went back to his new flat for some beers with his flatmates. He lives with a couple of kiwis and they all play guitar so the jamming sessions were wicked even though I was relegated to bongo drums. They had five or six guitars and a bass between the three of them

Woke up feeling not so good as did James so we busted down to a cafe in Miami (yes, it's hilarious that there's a suburb called Miami in Gold Coast) for some lunch. It was tough to find a park and even tougher when we found one but there appeared to be a dickhead standing in the park talking on his cellphone. Literally standing right in the centre of the only park available on the whole street. He barely acknowledged us and I can only presume that he was talking to someone that was only moments away in a vehicle and needed that particular park. And I thought the people in Sydney were assholes (I don't really). So after yelling abuse at this guy we found a park round the corner and proceeded to attempt some sort of lunch while feeling awful. Sadly the cafe` only sold trendy new age food such as eggplant souffle` so we forced down some fruit juice and something to eat then went back to the flat.

As I've mentioned it was their new flat, as in just moved in earlier that week so we were well due for a flat warming. So in pile about twenty five maori, islanders and a couple of token aussies at around eight o'clock. Long story short I met a whole bunch of people who were very friendly and we drank and drank and chatted and stuff until the small hours of the morning. Then once they'd all passed out it was down to me and Rina, James' girlfriend.

I have to say here that there's nothing quite like being able to drink all night wearing nothing but shorts and a singlet and still being too hot.

I'd never met Rina before but first impressions last. We drank until the sun came up at which point she suggested we take the two bikes that had been left at the flat by the previous tenants down to the beach which is nearby no matter where in Gold Coast you are. Now these were no mountain bikes- in fact they were crap enough bikes that the owners had decided to just dump them instead of selling them which says a lot. Fortunately for us there was a petrol station across the road so we carried the bikes over and pumped up the tires before commencing a mad drunken bike ride to the beach. At this time of the morning the only people that are up are fitness afficionados having their morning power walk and old people- neither of which groups were impressed with our erratic cycling or loud boisterous conversation.

Once we got to the beach we realised the fatal flaw in our plan. Togs. Didn't have any. So I stripped down to my boxers which is sort-of socially acceptable and lent my shorts to Rina as the underwear she was wearing wasn't. After a refreshing dip and several awkward looks from fellow early morning bathers we returned to the flat wet and sandy.

Having not slept the whole night my flight home consisted simply of unconsciousness. Moments after takeoff I was sound asleep and only woke up when the captain rudely annouced we were about to land. You have no idea how arduous a 1.5 hour drive home from the airport is after only one hours plane-sleep. Needless to say I arrived home, hugged Jen and collapsed on the bed, rising eight hours later to go to work.

True story.

It's the liiiiiiiitle things

2006-11-25T11:45:00.000+11:00

that really matter. Hi folks. It's strange the things you miss from back home. By you I mean me but I don't have the guts to directly say I miss something. You miss the usual- friends, family, pets, booze ups but something else hit me today. You miss the food. Let me hit you with the list you thought up this morning:

- Costa's
- Dimitri's
- Ziya's
- That fish n chips place on stanmore and gloucester with the metal slug game

If you live in christchurch, go to one of these places for your next meal or god help me I'll fly over there and have it myself.

Another thing you've realised is that you never feel patriotic inside your own country (americans exempted) because nobody's challenging your nationalism. When you're in NZ everybody's a kiwi so it's just ignored. Get somewhere else, however, and you'll have the piss taken out of you for being a kiwi so you have to learn to defend your country. This makes you think more about where you're from and get prouder of it until you love the fucken place. Some proverb about being away from something and loving it more because of that fact.

Anyway this morning bourbon isn't drinking itself.

Oh okay, one more rant then. I've been listening to some podcasts (audio on the net which you download and chuck on your iPod and listen to on the drive to work) about technology and programming and shit. That's all well and good but I've run out of things to listen to- these podcasts are only produced once a week so after tuesday I've pretty much listened to it all so I started searching around and found a cool website from the York University, N.Y.. This uni just records all it's lectures and puts them on the net. Good shit! So I've been busting out some 1st year philosophy lectures with some dude with an american accent and I have to say I can barely understand what he's talking about. Doesn't help that I busted in halfway through the semester but yeah, it's tough to grasp. Especially while navigating traffic at ridiculous speeds mind you. At the moment they're analysing a book/essay by Hume (sp?) of which the teacher reads one sentence then spends half an hour explaining what the author meant by that. Jeez it's like a bible class or something. The more I listen the more I'm getting into it but the barrier to entry is pretty high so I'm glad I've persevered and started to grasp it. Anyway time to go because this post is getting too long and for fuck's sake man you use the internet all week stop using it in your spare time! But I can only blog from home because work has it's firewall .... I DIDN'T ASK FOR YOUR OPINION GET BACK IN YOUR CAGE.

Can't wait to see the chch crew back home at xmas- only 31 more sleeps!! Badass

That Sealy Posturepedic Feeling

2006-11-13T06:16:00.000+11:00

Haven't got long so I'll make it quick. Here's the update on what's been going on over the last few weeks:
- Bought a bed
Yay we're finally not sleeping on the air mattress on the floor anymore! Although these first few sleeps have left me with quite a sore back and shoulders. Hoping that'll fix itself pretty soon.

- Going to see James
Booked my flights to see jimbo this friday then coming back on the sunday so that's two nights to invade gold coast and have some fun away from the mrs.

- Rupert's and Laura visiting
Some time in december rupert and laura are coming to sydney for a weekend so I'll have to think of some shit to do- or just take them to a couple of nice beaches. Hope it's sunny when they come over but it'll be mid-summer by then so chances are yes.

- Mexican food
Found a great little mexican restaurant just down the road in Woy Woy which kicks ass. Little family place with the guy out the front and the woman in the back cooking. Just like god intended it ;-). Anyway it was a really nice place; very friendly, personal service great food and quite reasonably priced.

- My car's a bastard
So far I've have to replace three tires, the oil, two front brake discs and pads and currently the front brakes are squealing again even though they were replaced just a couple weeks ago plus one of my back brake lights doesn't work and it's not a simple bulb change I'll have to go to an auto electrician! Whoah. I guess that's what you get when you take a little car that was only ever designed for driving around the suburban areas of Japan and thrust it onto the freeway at 130km/h for six hours a week. Shit's bound to go wrong.

- Podcasting is great
I've totally gotten in to listening to podcasts. So much better than listening to music for two hours a day on my drive is listening to the news and technology podcasts of several different shows. It's like the radio but there's so much to choose from you can listen to exactly what you want. Oh, if you don't know what podcasting is it's just some idiots somewhere in the world recording whatever they want then publishing it on the internet and I download it and listen to it on my iPod in the car. The car bit's optional but that's the basics of it. Anybody, anywhere can publish this audio so it's kinda like blogging except it's a bit more expensive so only the popular shows really stay afloat.

- Time to go to work
Work is something I have to do five days a week when I'd rather be hanging out at the beach but somebody's gotta do it and that somebody's me and that somewhen's now.

Layta

Much Better Thank You

2006-10-29T11:41:00.000+11:00

Haven't posted in a good few weeks as nothing much has happened and I've been feeling a little bit down in the dumps with no friends and getting drunk pretty much every night of the week. Drowning my sorrows indeed. I don't know what was getting me down but I think it was a combination of factors such as my negative financial balance and putting on a bit of weight. Well I'm happy to say that I've turned around a bit and feeling much better this weekend.

At the moment Jen has friday and saturday nights off but has to work mad early sunday morning. This is a pretty good setup meaning we can have a great time friday nights and get smashed and dance around our lounge to loud music (don't tell her I told you that) or whatever we want. Then we get all saturday together except she has to go to bed around 7-8pm so then I crack into the jim beam and play some computer games and sleep on the couch so I don't wake her up coming to bed in the early morning hours. This has been the case for the past few weeks without too much hassle but I'm alway feeling a little worse for wear on the saturday morning but Jen insists we do the weeks' shopping then as it's the only time we both really have to do it. As I'm not fond of crowds or lights after a heavy night on the piss (they call that 'getting maggot' over here which is a wonderful expression) I'm not very co-operative and we general end up getting very short with each other have a bit of a verbal exchange which always ends up with Jen saying 'why do you have to be like this on the weekends' and me reaching for my glass of jim beam.

Something was different this weekend though because the friday was the same as usual - getting maggot and watching movies with Jen but the saturday I was feeling great and was mr co-operative and helpful and nice. The day proceeded well and we had a pleasant time. A whole weekend has gone by without even so much as a cross word so we're both very happy.

There's a combination of factors I believe. Firstly I got paid my fortnightly pay on friday along with my tax return ($750 woo hoo!!) so I'm well into the black now which has really eased my mind. For some reason I just hate to be in debt and beat myself up internally about it even though there's nothing I can do and short of losing my job I know it'll be paid off within a few weeks anyway. Secondly I'm happy about my weight for the first time in ages. It sounds very girly but I've been exercising sporadically at best since we've been here and the diet of greasy restaurant food and room service for three months at the hotel had me around 85kg which is very heavy for my size. There was nothing really I could do as there were zero cooking facilities in the hotel so it was a tossup between getting free fatty food at Jen's work every night or getting takeaways which would be even worse. Now that I've been watching what I've been eating (Jen has too) I'm really getting there.

I didn't know how hard it was to lose weight without exercise! In the past if I've wanted to drop a couple of kilos I'd just eat a little less and focus more on cardio with whatever exercise I'm doing and hey presto I'd lose them. Without exercise those kilos are *much* harder to shed making infomercials make so much more sense to me now. I couldn't previously believe that people had tried 'every diet under the sun' and needed to call up the infomercial hotline to get fiscally raped by another unscrupulous fly-by-night company but now I can see how hard it is to lose. I've been eating two sandwiches for lunch (tuna, cheese and mustard) and just a small serving of dinner for maybe six weeks now and I can't get my weight any lower. Removing any more from my diet makes me feel hunger pangs during the day indicating I'm starving which isn't healthy so I'm up against a weight loss brick wall at just over 80kg. My goal weight is around 76-78 so there's a little ways to go yet then I'm gonna sign up to the gym in Gosford and bulk up a bit for summer. Either that or just get drunk and say I did.

Man every day that I wake up and it's like 25+ degrees I'm so glad we came over to this country. If some of the chch crew was here it'd be perfect.

Second mouse gets the cheese.
Peace.

Sofa so good!

2006-09-23T14:27:00.000+10:00

Last weekend we bought ourselves a sofa which is absolutely fantastic. If your butt could sigh then mine would be right now. After a month of sitting on nothing but plastic warehouse chairs (no so comfy when watching a 2 hour movie..) it's great! We've got our own little entertainment room now with the sofa facing the computer which has a newly purchased surround sound speaker system. Watching downloaded movies in style!

That aside, there's another piece of news for this week- nearly died on the freeway friday morning when my car's rear tyre blew out at 130 km/h! I had a feeling something was wrong with it for the couple of days prior as it steering wheel was very shaky at high speeds and I could feel one of the tyres was kinda off balance. A mechanic guy at work told me to rotate my tyres which I did and the very next day one blew out. Anyway I pulled over to the side of the freeway into an emergency bay for just this situation and changed the tyre over. Luckily, having taken all my wheels off and rotated them round the night before I was very fluent in tyre changing procedure and had that sucker done in ten minutes flat. Considering myself fucken lucky at the moment I have to say...

So today (saturday) we drove out to terrigal which is this picturesque beach about 20 minutes drive from our place 'cos it's a really nice sunny day. The primary intention was to get two new tyres for my car so they also wouldn't blow up at high speed but we couldn't find the tyre place I'd looked up earlier in the morning. We stopped to get a drink at a service station and there was a mechanic shop attached to it so I wandered in and asked them if they had time to change my tyres. They said yes so Jen and me got subway around the road and came back twenty minutes later and it was all done. What great luck. Now my car's all ship shape and hopefully won't seriously endanger my life (any more than usual) any time in the near future.

That's all I've got to say for now - pretty exciting shit huh? Me and Jen were discussing this morning that there's nothing we regret about the move to aussie apart from not having our mates' here. I mean today is just a brilliant day that you get once or twice in a summer in christchurch but this has been almost every day in the last two weeks. It's supposed to get even hotter than this so I'm sure I'll be complaining it's *too* hot in future posts but for now it's just fantastic - singlet and jandals weather. This is what we moved over here for\\.

L8rz

No Time For Snappy Reparte

2006-09-15T08:15:00.000+10:00

Only got time to post some photos I took yesterday of my new car:

(that's our new place in the background)
and also a shot of me

so you can all remember how awesome I look at 7:30 in the morning. Time for doing nothing on friday at work.

For We Are Young And Free*

2006-09-11T08:03:00.000+10:00

The water in Kariong is appalling. Smells bad, tastes bad and kinda has a brown tinge to it, blech. That's my bitch of the morning because it's eight o'clock AM monday and I don't feel like going to work. Wish I had some chch water over here rather than a five litre tank sitting in the fridge staring back at me mocking me. I think in my last post I mentioned that it had rained really hard some time last week-well I hadn't seen anything yet. Friday and Saturday nights it was twice as bad as that. Good reason to stay inside all weekend and get drunk with Jen and play computer games and watch movies. Two movies we saw this weekend of note were Octane which was a David Lynch style what-the-fuck's-going-on-here movie where by the end you like "wow that was an interesting first half of the movie let's put in the other disc and see how it all wraps up nicely with a happy ending" before noticing that that's the only disc in the case and the credits rolling at the end shoulda given you a hint. I'm not gonna tell you anything about it other than to watch it in true Tim fashion by knowing nothing about it apart from the title by the time you hit play.

The second movie was Freedomland which aside from the name isn't a flag waving american wankfest but instead a pseudo-psychological emotional tour de force with samuel jackson in it. You know he doesn't pick crap movies so it's got to be good just because he's in it (completely disregard Snakes On A Place for this sentence- haven't seen it, don't intend to, and wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy) so give it a watch. It was good to have a couple of not so hollywood movies this weekend as recently we've just been watching blockbusters which are okay for a quick watch but leave you feeling dirty and betrayed like a fast food feed.

In other news, downloading stuff off the internet is great! We've got a whole bunch of shit since we got a high speed broadband connection and in fact burned through the month's 25GB limit in only nine days :-( so we've been throttled back to dialup speed until the end of the month. No more streaming Rockstar Supernova for Jen :-(. Rockstar has actually grown on me- Jen loves the show and I didn't like it at the start but now it's down to the last few they're really digging deep and each giving fantastic performances every time especially since this time round (compare to the INXS one) they're not playing so much 'classic' rock but more contemporary stuff like The Killers, Radiohead, Stone Temple Pilots etc which is nice because I actually know the tracks.

Looks like I'll be cruising up to QLD to hang out with Jimmy in a few weeks' time cos there's a long weekend coming up so may as well make the most of it eh?

We've got a bit of furniture now to furnish our freezing brick house. Don't know if I posted this in the last post but we've got a couple of pieces of make-it-yourself Warehouse bullshit but we also went out this weekend and bought a couch which they are delivering next weekend YAY! We've been sitting on those generic stackable plastic bullshit Warehouse chairs this whole time and I can't say watching a two hour movie in them is comfortable. So yeah this couch was $600 and looks great. In true Tim and Jen fashion we looked the place up on the internet, went in and had bought a couch within about ten minutes. Both hungover, neither of us wanted to be there for long or talk to the exceedingly white trash woman working the floor so we tried every couch in the place once then had a heads together, narrowed it down to two but one was a hideous bright red and it woulda taken four to six weeks to have it re-materialled so it was a shoe-in for the winner. No contest at all.

I've been meaning to get photos of my car and house for ages now- I've been waiting for a nice sunny day so the photos come out well but there hasn't been a bright sunny day for like a week now! It's really killing me but I get the feeling it's gonna be scorching hot up here in the summer so I should be careful of what I wish for...

Oh and just for the record I've been smoking like a train over here since I started work and don't look like stopping any time soon. And I've put on a few pounds with all that gourmet hotel food even though I was exercising regularly. Now we actually have to cook our own food I'm eating less and smoking more. Lovin' it!

*Under arrest

Late For Work

2006-09-07T08:53:00.000+10:00

Why am I typing this when I should've left for work ten minutes ago?? We now have a flat, I've got the aforementioned lancer and we just picked up some furniture from the warehouse in the weekend. The place is starting to come together.

The storms last night were amazing. Haven't seen it rain up here on the central coast until now and boy does it know how to rain! Torrential is the only word for it. The accompanying lightning storms were like watching natural fireworks.

I think a wasp-like creature is building a nest on the north wall of our flat...

Late for work gotta go!!

Lanced by Fate

2006-08-20T15:47:00.000+10:00

We were destined to be. Me and the car I've just bought for seven thousand australian dollars. It's a mitsubishi lancer and is very economical. Needless to say I won't be picking up any chicks with this certified grandma-mobile but hey I'm gonna be putting some serious Km's into it so better cheap than flashy. It also brings my total bank balance to a stunning zero which I haven't experienced in a while.

I can't believe what a moron I am sometimes. Yesterday I went to look at a couple of cars I'd seen on the net. The first place I found quite easily and only took me 25ish minutes to get to. Ten minutes late at that one. The second was way the fuck down near cronulla which is to coogee (where I live) what ashburton is to christchurch distance-wise. On the highway all the way it should have taken me about 45 minutes to get there but lo and behold if I didn't arive there after driving for more than an hour and a half! I got so lost I didn't know which way was up. One hour late for that one. It's all a learning experience I guess- I learnt that I shouldn't play the game james introduced me to which is to not use a map when driving around an unfamiliar city.

Saw my mum and dad today at the airport as they were stopping off in sydney on their way for a holiday up north near cairns. Funny to see the two of them in the same place as they've been seperated for a very long time now but appear to be getting back together to which I have mixed emotions. Great to catch up with them anyway and made me a little homesick..

Me and Jen are going to the circus in about a month! I love Cirque Du Soleil- saw them once in christchurch and it's just incredible! I fully wasn't expecting to be as enraptured as I was and I recommend going to their shows if you ever have the chance.

Anyway now I'm just babbling and Jen's just finished work so time to GO PICK UP MY NEW CAR :D :D

Promise there'll be photos in the next post.

Back Once Again For The Renegade Master

2006-07-25T20:37:00.000+10:00

Power to the people.

Almost a month since I've posted and something noteworthy's finally happened in my life so I thought you all might like to know about it. James came down to sydney for the DJ Shadow/Mos Def concert this weekend just gone so we hung out saturday night/sunday day and went to the concert Sunday night. Even though we arrive just as Mos Def was saying goodnight (started at 7:30pm and we wrongly assumed there'd by warmup acts) we caught the entire of DJ Shadow's set which was a little short but still kickass. We managed to get right up the front and my got I couldn't hear for the next couple of days after that. Afterwards James went along to the afterparty where Mos Def was supposed to be turning up (don't think he did) and I went home to bed with a smile and a work in the morning.

I'll have some photos of the night in question once I recover Jen's camera that James left at the place he was staying - Gary's (of Greg + Garry fame) for those of you who know him. Another random event was my ex-mentor guy Matt gave me a text toward the end of last week saying he'd be in sydney on monday having job interviews and could he stay at my place (?!). Put him up on the luxurious double bed fold out couch thing in our new room so he was happy. On a whim he's just decided to uproot and come over here to live and work leaving behind a girlfriend and a software business. He had interviews yesterday and today (mon+tues) and I expect he'd be home by now packing his shit because it sounds like he did pretty well. What a random dude.

Tonight I got home and went to the gym. Finished my stretches and shower about five minutes ago so time for something to EAT!! I'm effin' ravenous. Catch yizz later.

All my photos are of signs... Arrgh!

2006-07-02T10:18:00.000+10:00

Didn't really notice that but it seems the bulk of my photos are of road signs. Well that's going to change right now. I'm going to post some nice ones of nature 'n' shit. Here we go:

North Sydney skyscrapers as you emerge from the harbour tunnel. Well not you personally but, in fact, me.

This is what the highway looks like going north out of sydney toward the central coast and our old flat in gosford. It's like they just carved the road directly through the centre of a big ol' rock. Cool!

Okay so I had to have one road sign in here - the only sign I've ever seen that points out something that's behind you....

Few more photos for ya

2006-07-02T10:08:00.000+10:00

This is the entrace to the harbour tunnel, M1 Toll road. Did you catch everything on those signs? There'll be a test afterwards. [polite laughter]

Me so Hornsby. Had to be said, really.

Hayche TML

2006-06-25T11:37:00.000+10:00

Why the fuck do they say Hayche over here when enunciating the letter H? Sure it seems that letters should logically start in their pronunciation with themselves, for example "ay", "bee", "dee", but that's basically where it ends. Did someone only look four letters into the alphabet and go "well it seems three-quarters of the alphabet's pronunciation starts with the letter itself so H should start with an H - now that decision's finalised, let's go and have anal sex with kangaroos.".

Ridiculous. Oh - also the point of this post was to stick up some photos of driving around on the massive highways they have over here like Pacific Highway which stretches almost the length of the east coast and is three or four lanes on each side the whole way.

Gerard - how do you get the pictures to go wherever you want them? I added the one at the top but I can't move it round. I want to intersperse them with the text but it won't budge. Help me out?

Everyone else - I'll post the photos I took with hilarious commentry when I figure out (gerard tells me) how to do it..

btw the photo at the top is on a lamppost on the main street in the suburb we're living in - coogee. This area is full of backpackers and people from all over the world so it's a great mixing pot of international angst.

Pinhole in your firewall

2006-06-25T11:32:00.000+10:00

The reason I haven't been posting entries lately is that for some reason this MF blogging site doesn't allow updates from my work computer(s). It's probably the other way around - work doesn't let us update blogs - but I don't know what the difference is between a blog site and, say, GMail which works fine from work. I'm sure there's an in-depth computer-based reason why but for now lets just put it down to witches and the illuminati conspiring in a far reaching mission to stop me blogging which iplicates certain sensitive global operations. YOU KNOW YOU ARE - STOP THIS MADNESS!!

Lonesome Birthday

2006-06-25T11:31:00.000+10:00

Jen's gone over to chch for four days (five?) to see off her old flatmate Kelly whom is travelling to switzerland to do an au pair thing for a year or so (so jealous!) and to see family, friends etc. This means she'll be missing my birthday tomorrow (22nd June) so I'll be having a bottle of jim beam to celebrate by myself in the dark with. The big ol' 23.

Oooh, a semi-interesting development is that I've had a couple of cigarettes over the last two weeks...
Having quit cold turkey from a regular habit about nine months ago it was weird smoking again. I bummed them off my workmate who I take to and from work (Mark) 'cos he lives on the same block as us. Imagine that - in a city of howevermany million people that two people starting at the same company on the same day would live on the same block. What's even further out is that we both live ages away from work, 45 minutes drive so the chances of that are close to zilch.

I've finally got the drive to work down pat. Autopilot. This mightn't seem to be the most amazing thing but I drive what must be about 35km to work which takes me through the harbour tunnel and kinda close to manly. During this drive there are heaps of exits and offramps and shit that if you find yourself accidentally in the wrong lane and get off the freeway you'll spend half an hour or more circling round and getting back on. I've done this several times so I'm excited now that I can navigate the six lane freeways with ease - selecting the right lane and confidently driving through the toll stations.

One thing that puzzles me to this day and no sydneyite can answer me is why does it cost $4.50 at the toll booth for the harbour bridge/tunnel when going from the south shore to the north, but only $3.00 in the reverse direction?? Do they want to discourage you from leaving the city or something?? Can't figure that shit out. Don't you dare go and use google to find out, I'd rather not know.

Anyways everybody send me your warm regards as I celebrate my birthday alone in my hotel room. Actually I'm not that cut up about it - every birthday since my 21st has been less to do with the years I've lived and more about how much less time I have left. Does anyone else get that? That's a situation I personally don't think is worth celebrating but you have to have a reason to drink alone and that's my one for tomorrow. What a sadass.

Later

Seek.com.au and you will find ...

2006-06-01T12:22:00.000+10:00

Exciting news for anyone that's still reading this thing and hasn't heard me shouting it from the rooftops but I've finally found a job here in Sydney. The place is called Infomedia and it's located in French's Forest on the north shore.

Hoorayy!! So I start 12th of June or thereabouts so I'll have money coming in rather than constantly just going out. Will probably have to buy myself a car to get over there each morning so in typical aussie fashion it'll be a holden.

Well that's all that's changed since my last post so keep safe and sound ma' peeps.

Job Interviews Suck

2006-05-26T09:53:00.000+10:00

And they suck even more when:
- it's a group interview
- in front of a panel
- you turn up and realise you're the only candidate not wearing a suit jacket
- " " " " " " " a white shirt
- most of the other interviewees don't speak fluent english (actually that's a bonus for my chances, but it's embarassing to hear them interpret the question the entirely wrong way and go off on a tangent rant about how great they are in broken english)
- you get there five minutes late because of the roadworks on the gore hill freeway

So yeah - didn't go that badly to tell you the truth. It's the first interview I've had and word on the street is that I'm basically in. Most of the work was done getting to the interview, so it was merely a formality of verbally wanking off both myself and the company I was pleading for a job to.

By the way it's called Infomedia and I won't bore you with the details but the people interviewing us seemed cool and I've got to the stage of them checking my references which means I'm in so long as my referees don't spill the beans about my whole serial killer thing. That would be very bad news. For both of us. And you too, loyal readers. Mwahahahaha.

This is the level of post to expect when I wake up at 8:30 and start drinking beer, okay? It's your own damn fault for surfing to my page. In fact, where the fuck does that word come from?
'surf' the www? Is that some obscure reference to the fact that (water) surfers use surfboards and internet dickheads use keyboards? I really don't get the parallel they're reaching for with that phrase...

Oh well, I'll know either today or monday whether I've got the job expect my next post to be either elated or suicidal.

If you've got the time, don't bother going to visit rupert's "Hilarious" (Jim Schmitt, People Magazine) counter-blog where he takes mine and gerards respective blogs apart piece by piece. He hasn't posted about mine yet in his sardonic fashion so I'll perform a pre-emptive strike against his blog:

Oh and when's your wedding, mate?

One last thing is that our apartment in Gosford is currently unoccupied so if anyone feels like a silly jaunt over to aussie there's a free apartment here with all the mod cons all you have to do is get over to sydney and we can take you up to G-Town. Offer's on the table!*

* Limit one per customer per day. Offer expires 1/7/2006. Dramatisation may not have happened.

Long time no http://www.blogspot.com

2006-05-19T18:30:00.000+10:00

Hey all, exciting news! I've been shortlisted for a job with a company called InfoMedia on the north shore in Sydney. While I won't bore you with the details it's a very successful company supplying software to the automotive industry worldwide - offices all over aussie and also UK, US, Mexico and some other places. Sounds like a hookup if I want to move at least within australia.

I have a group interview with a bunch of other candidates for various positions in a couple of weeks' time. Little bit nervous about that as I haven't done a group interview before so I will have to come out of my shell a bit and pipe up all the time which is a drag. Having said that I.T. isn't exactly the most extroverted industry so hopefully the other candidates will all be shrivelled nerds.

The NSW State of Origin team are staying in the hotel and are using the conference rooms across the hall from us all the time for meetings, meals and massage sessions. I don't know anything about rugby league so I don't recognise them I just knew they were somebody special because they are all giants and Jen filled in the gaps for me.

Don't know if you're getting it over there but anthony mundine has won another boxing match and subsequently basically declared himself the second coming of jesus. Can't wait until he meets a real match and gets his block knocked off because his arrogance reminds me of Mike Tyson in his heyday.

I'm checking out the NZ weather every day and all I can do is shake my head in disbelief. Getting down almost to the single digits and family back in chch tell me it's been raining like a bitch and freezing. Keep your heads up peeps, the worst is yet to come! Sydney isn't exactly tropical but it's still shorts weather during the day most days but the nights are just starting to get below t-shirt temperature so might have to invest in a light jacket of some sort.

We have now watched seasons 1 through 4 of 24 on DVD - completed the fourth one yesterday. I like it so much I'm going to have to break the law and download the season that's screening in the U.S. (season 5) because it won't be on TV or DVD in Aussie for a good long while and I just CAN'T WAIT!!

Love and 'spect everyone.
Tim

Unformation

2006-04-24T12:06:00.000+10:00

Two scraps of information you already wish you weren't about to read:

1. Over easter no shops were open so Jen and I watched the entire first season of 24 consecutively. Man that's the way it was supposed to be watched - none of this waiting a week in between episodes bullshit. We literally watched them until we fell asleep then woke up and started where we left off. Great way to spent a couple of days with an injection of Kiefer Sutherland.

2. You may or may not already know this but it came as a shock to me to find out that MacGyver's first name is Angus. For shame. I was assuming it was something like Steve or Jake considering how badass he is. What would the Phoenix Foundation say if they found out. Or Murdoch for that matter.

Back To The Past

2006-04-17T11:23:00.000+10:00

We're going back to Sydney tomorrow for around two months staying at the luxurious Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach. Supposedly everyone's heard of Coogee Beach as it's really famous but to tell you the truth I haven't.

You can check it out here:

http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/cp/160/en/hpt/SYDCB/2/pt?ptLink=hd

I'll be greasing some palms trying to get myself a job while I'm there - hopefully something in North Sydney which is a bit closer to our apartment in Gosford.

We've managed to find an internet cafe here in Gosford located in a massive mall that no-one told us existed. It's about three or four times the size of Eastgate mall and has it's own ice skating rink and gym. Insane.

Hope everyone's having a good time in christchurch, insulating your respective flats for the big chilldown heading your way. Me? Well I'm in a singlet, shorts and jandals and we might head off to the beach when I'm done on this computer. It's good to be the king!

Finding our beerings

2006-04-11T10:42:00.000+10:00

Woohoo! We've found an apartment in an australian version of Rangiora called Gosford. The only positive thing about Gosford is that it's on the Northern (train) Line, so it's quick to get out of and back to the reassuringly cold, unforgiving concrete jungle of Sydney.

The apartment is really nice - it has a lake view (sorta), two bedrooms and bathrooms and a gym and heated pool, spa and sauna within the complex. All this for just $280 a week! Sale of the fucken century.

Since we've been here I've been basically drinking beer and lying in the sun where possible. Considering even local aussie beer is exhorbitantly overpriced, I've just about run out of money. It's not just the drink that's driving me to financial ruin, it's also the fact that bond was 4 weeks rent plus two weeks rent in advance. Also not having a job is pretty bad for the ol' pocketbook. Don't worry though, loyal fans, I've got a windfall coming some time this week in the form of the retirement fund I've been paying into for the five years I've been working. That should be quite a handsome sum and facilitate more lying in the sun drinking beer for weeks to come!

I've got $60 to my name at the moment and I'll have to put some gas in Jen's new car before I go back to pick her up from work in Cessnock. You know what really grinds my gears? The names of the towns over here. Seriously: Wooloomooloo is not a name. Neither is The Entrance or The Letter A (I kid you not). The aboriginal names are hilarious but some of the english names are just plain stupid.

Jen's working from the start of this week and may yet be posted to a hotel in Sydney's luxurious Coogee Beach for a month while the hotel in Hunter Valley is being built. We're both pretty annoyed at her bosses as they gave us the strong impression she'd be working at the building site of the Hunter Valley hotel doing odd jobs until it was finished so we settled in and found an apartment etc. Now they want us to relocate at their whim to sydney for up to two months while still paying $280 a week for an empty apartment in Godford. Of course they're putting us up at the Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach for free and I'm demanding unlimited broadband internet straight to our room...

It's disconcerting travelling up and down the coast with everything we own in three suitcases never knowing when it's time to actually settle in somewhere. Hopefully today we'll be told whether we're going to sydney or not for the next month which will dictate whether we should be bothered getting phone, internet, and appliances for the apartment or not.

Hopefully we'll know more in the next few days and either way I'll be on the internet full time at the worst from the start of next week so there'll be much more posting to this web log.

Too soon

2006-04-07T13:44:00.000+10:00

I've just started the damn blog and you expect me to already have posted something? How wrong you were!