Crazy Times!

Melbourne, Mackay, Adelaide - that's the weekend before last, last weekend and this weekend. CRAZY!

Since Di's finished uni (WOOHOO!) and is (relatively) free, we decided that she could accompany me on a couple of short work trips - both lengthened to take in the weekends.

A few of the highlights:

Melbourne

• Being extras in a Bollywood movie and seeing the star - Sharuhk Khan (our hero, and only the most famous dude in bollywood cinema!). We were asked to return for a smaller shoot on the Tuesday night but they couldn't afford us... (plus it was from 8pm to 4am and I was working both days...)
• Seeing Daz on Sat night with Markie and Rachel and friends
• Experiencing Melbourne's coldest November day ever(?). Including a memorable walk in the hail in thongs by Di
• Kulcha
• Visiting my university
  
• Kylie!! (And friends, and gelati)

Mackay

• BELLA! (And Mel...)
• Paddling in the water and THEN finding the 'beware of crocodiles' sign
• Uri - our little yellow hire-car
• 
• Platypus at Eungella
• Pinnacle Pies
  
• Eimeo Pub

That's about it for now... off to Adelaide!

What I do during the day

Operation: Save The Fish - UPDATE

Two days later and all is well!

Nimbus Ride #1

So I got this unicycle for my birthday from Di... I thought I might provide a little entertainment for everyone by showing off my progress (or lack of) over the next few weeks/months/years/decades as I try to ride this thing.

Any unicycle riding advice welcome!

Operation: SAVE THE FISH

9:00am - Picked up a rental van
10:00am - Ben runs music at church, Brad packs van
11:30am - We leave for Yamba - 3.5 hours away, directed by 'Yoda' on my GPS software
3:00pm - Arrive at Yamba and inspect the 6 foot tank of cichlids at Ben's cousin Dave's's Optometry clinic. He's moving office and doesn't want them any more. We're here to save them and the tank setup!

6:30pm - After 3 hours of catching fish, syphoning water, moving heavy things and eating a well-deserved sub, we're heading back to Brissy.
10:00pm - Arrive, Woolloongabba, start unpacking
10:30pm - Matt Jantezki, our handy-man saviour arrives to help move the tank cause it is HEAVY
11:30pm - The tank is in our new downstairs hangout room
12:20am - The tank is full of water and filtration system up and running
2:00am - Tank almost full of fish and cleanup begins - Only two casualties (out of around 50 fish!) Di is happy below because she's setting the last fish free!

3:17am and the operation is complete! Success! Sleep...

b-rad-o

Erin put this together for me on my birthday... I LOVE it! I hope you don't think I'm too odd after watching it.

That Erin sure has a talent for these things...

The last house standing...

I came home on Monday and there were three less houses in our street. The North South Bypass Tunnel is going ahead, and life in Gibbon St will never be the same. Not that it ever WAS the same... I mean, ever since we moved here it has been in a state of flux. But now ours is actually the only numbered house left in Gibbon St.

Opposition to the tunnel is out there, but at this point, I think it's probably too late. Someone graffitied the worksite fence, calling the council 'terrorists' for destroying communities. Although terrorist is a bit of an exageration, I found that strangely affirming that someone else cared that the community we had in this street is now almost gone. Now it's just us, Ben and Sarah, Colin, and the Red Paintings next door...

Birthdays, Footy and Coopers

We're in Adelaide for a few days, primarily for Julie's (Di's sis) 30th birthday - celebrated by a fine Thai dinner last night and a champagne and pancake breaky this morning at the Zwars place.

A sad day for Adelaide however as the Crows lost the prelim final. A happy day for Loz though as she both started her very own blog and is a supporter of West Coast.

Crying cockles and mussels alive a-live O!

Joseph (in the picture) from the company I'm doing training for over here took me to a few Hawker Centres today - they're the best thing about Singapore methinks. Before he took me to this one to try the famous Cockles Curry dish, he made sure to check whether I was up to date on my hepatitis shots... as sometimes they aren't cooked completely.

I'll let you know if they weren't.

 

Haircut in Singapore

Singapore for 4 days! Delivering some technology to a transit company here. Shouldn't be too crazy a trip - presuming all the technology works...

One of my tasks this morning was to get a haircut. Found a little place in Little India that did a $10 job. It was a little scary, as every time I tried to tell the guy what I wanted, he berated me. So I was reduced to squinting at the mirror (since I had taken my glasses off) trying to work out what evils he was committing to my hair. It didn't turn out too bad. I should have just trusted him all along...

 

Plaza Singapura

Sometimes Singapore seems to be nothing but these types of places...

(This was put together from 10 randomly taken photos using 'autostitch' (a free program from Univeristy of British Columbia)) 

Bridge to Brizzie!

I never thought I would run 12km in my whole life, let alone all in one go... but I must admit, I actually enjoyed it. If you care about the figures... I came 4128th in a time of 1hr 7 mins 39.783sec. I was actually shooting for 0.002 of a second better than that...

And as a postscript - below is a happy snap from Ben's camera at the Soccer World Cup celebrations - Christel and I enjoying some German ale.

Purchase of the Week

Sometimes you really like something, and then you see a whole heap of it for sale for a cheap price, so you buy lots. Then pretty soon you realise you don't actually like that thing so much anymore...

Well I hope that won't happen with the 2 kg of Haloumi cheese I just bought from the famous fruit shop at Stones Corner. Mmmm Haloumi with bread, with sweet chilli sauce, with ice cream, with coffee...

YAY!

Last weekend Di/me and Ben/Sarah drove south to the TEAR conference at Stanwell Tops just south of Sydney.

Had a fun time and it was interesting/motivating hearing from people working with poor people in various places.

Krispy Kreme donuts were a bonus too.

The photo is near the conference centre, Mark (Ben's Bro-in-law), Jo (Ben's sis), Di, me, Sarah, Chris Martin (AKA Ben)

This one had to be included...

 

See Ya Ev and Mel!!

I went out to Cecil on the weekend to have a final catchup with Ev and Mel Rohde (and Kai, Braithe and their 4 huskis) who are moving up to Atherton in a couple of weeks. Nice to have a bit of a 'mountain biker reunion' too (minus the Canadian Breezo unfortunately). I must say that there are two things that Rohdes do better than anyone - Hungis and Bonfires. We had both on saturday night. All the best Ev, Mel and Family!

Ev 'The Master' Rohde in the front with Jaydy, Gregory, Bradley, Daniel and Screndells along the back.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

'Inmates' being Engineers like me, and 'The Asylum' being the world.

I like whacking a quick review of some of the books I read on my blog. This one definitely falls under the 'nerd' category. However it's the type of book that if more engineers (mainly software engineers) read, would potentially make life a little better for most people!

It basically rips apart the usability of technology and puts together a case for having 'interaction experts' in any organisation that develops technology. This is so that Engineers stop having to be the ones that design interfaces that normal people have to use. the classic example is (of course) how unnecessarily hard it is to program a video recorder.

It was a little demoralising at times, but overall I think good stuff for me as an Engineer to read!

A Canadian Blonde

The brewers are back. We brewed a Coopers 'Canadian Blonde' and named it 'Bunny' after our favourite Woolloongabbian Canadian!

Shown in the piccy is our dedicated brewing headquarters. Or the 'Situation Room' as I like to call it.

Home again

Back in Bris Vegas! The trip home wasn't too bad. Flew from Vancouver to Los Angeles - which was spectacular, the highlight being Mt St Helens (see the photo). It was truly massive and beautiful!


Los Angeles is truly massive as well, and I guess beautiful in it's own way (as Ben Lee would say 'living proof that people need to be together...'). I visited a customer for work, and then did a little shopping and also drove aimlessly around downtown for a while since I had never really done that before. Amazing how one avenue changes from being swanky downtown office blocks to a block with hundreds of homeless people on it in only a mile. The scale of homelessness in some parts of LA is really shocking.

The other major story of the day for me was that I ate donuts from both Tim Hortons (in Canada) and Krispy Kreme (in LA) in the same day. A feat worthy of note methinks.

More Wedding Photos Here!

HERE!