Ach! I moost a furgotten that I 'ave maself a wee blog!

Hi everyone from Paris!

Well despite the fact that I have not posted in nearly five months, good 'ol sitemeter tells me that people are still checking Blogdownunder.

So I thought I might put in a small post for the hell of it and show y'all some travel pics while I'm at it...

Finnish girls


Reichstag dome, Berlin


My Paris digs!


Hope you enjoy them. You never know, I may return again... :D

Hey y'all

Only two weeks to go until I finish work.

Only 20 days until I jet off to Hong Kong-London.

Only 21 days until I spend my first night in London.

Starting to get excited now :)

Hiatus

Good morning all!

As I will be embarking on my European trip in just a few weeks, I have decided that Blogdownunder will come to an end. I intend to replace it with a travelog that follows my exploits in the northern hemisphere.

Thank you all for visiting. I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog over the last year as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

I will post a link to my new travelog here in the next couple of weeks.

Cheers!

Definition of nervous

Imagine the anxiety of a father who takes his newly L-plated son out for a drive in the family car for the first time.

Now multiply that by 400 and that might give an indication of how the Airbus A380 engineers were feeling last night...



Imagine the relief when this 421 tonne monster lifted off the tarmac cleanly and crisply. What an achievement!

Congrats all

Notice

Today I told the GM at work that I'm resigning to go to Europe. He took it well and expressed frustration at having his own travelling plans thwarted by the fact that he has a busy job, gets paid $300k a year etc. As you can imagine I was very sympathetic!

Also been handing out these vouchers that give the holder 50% off at Oroton and 30% off at Marcs, Morrissey and Polo Ralph Lauren. I'm a very popular person at the moment :)

The vouchers are a "Family and Friends" promotion by the Oroton Group and fortunately I know the right people...

Now here's a random classic for you. Why? Why not I say!

'59 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. Verrrryyyy nice.

Looking forward to my trip

Tomorrow it will be only five weeks till I jet away from Australia for at least five months!

I've been a bit concerned about the money situation lately and have really shut myself down in the spending department, so I hope to have perhaps $500-$1000 more by the time I leave than I've predicted in my budgeting.

Opened an eBay seller's account today so soon I'll be trying my hand at flogging off stuff that would otherwise be costing me money or favours by being stored for five months. Someone already wants my DVD player, I'll be selling my TV, perhaps a chest of drawers, maybe my bike, the brand new laptop hard drive I never installed and a few other bits and bobs. There's nothing like killing two birds with one stone - extra cash and fewer bits to find a storage place for. That's my kind of deal.

Full on weekend

A 6.4 metre boat with a 225 horsepower V6 Yamaha motor goes rather fast.

And it did. On Saturday.




On Sunday it didn't want to go. Why? Fucked if I know! There I was standing waist deep in Lake Macquarie on the Central Coast, pulling the spark plugs out of the biggest outboard motor I've ever seen, finding that they were all covered in oil. We felt sure that it would go once the plugs were clean again, but it f%*^ing didn't!!

Taking the piss out of 90s album covers

Another Night - Real McCoy (circa 1994)

"We're too cool to smile. Got it?"

Walthamstow - East 17

"Yo, we be livin' in da 90s and we're hard core white homies... everybody in a house o' love... peace out"

Barbie Girl - Aqua

Enough colour to bring on an epileptic fit. As for the music, well they've got good drugs in Denmark. What's with the bloke in the green jacket and white pants? Is it Elastiman?

Jump - Kriss Kross

"Yo G, if I grow like, four feet taller, I won't even need to buy noo pants, know what I'm sayin'?"

Savage

I am planning to go travel from London to Athens in late June, so I looked up a flight on Easyjet. 58 pounds all up, sounds great to me. Have to wait until tomorrow when I'm paid to book it though.

So keep an eye this week, the price has gone up to 75 pounds. Hmm, bit of a shame but nothing too disastrous.

This morning I looked again. The price was 84 pounds. Bloody hell, I thought, I wish I could have bought it a couple of days ago.

And the latest? 135 pounds total. Fuck me! Scratch that idea! What a bastard.

New plan. Fly Ryanair from London to Bari, Italy (only 29 pounds). Ferries travel from Bari to Patras in Greece on an overnight trip (about the same length as the Spirit of Tasmania on the Sydney-Devonport run). Grab that, arrive in Patras, four hour train ride to Athens. Mission accomplished along with a nice cruise and a saving of 60 odd pounds.

Funny thing is that the ferry trip is with a company called Superfast and guess where the three Spirit of Tasmania ferries were purchased from? :)

Family ties

Favours may very well be the glue that holds a family together, long after all of the kids have moved out. One day a couple of weeks ago I received requests for favours from all three of my siblings. Usually it would probably take a month to hear from all of them so this was a very unusual occurrence.

My older sister asked me to check over a uni assignment.

My younger sister wanted me to lend her $50.

My older brother requested that I check out a 6 metre boat for him in Sydney.

I get on well with all of my siblings, and I managed (after a colossal effort, I might add) to honour all three requests.

I'm glad we've got these sort of things going on, after all I have full trust in my siblings (and my mum of course). I help them, they help me.

So this weekend my brother is coming up to buy his boat (not the one I checked out, it's in Newcastle) and the flipside of that is that I get a boating weekend!

My sister has just emailed her friend (and my former lawyer) in London to let him know I'm coming and subtly requesting a spot for me to rest my head. This line is a direct quote from her email:

I'd be most greatful if you could catch up with him at least the first time he's there just so he knows someone. He is my baby brother after all.

Since my father passed away in 1997 my family has had a few hiccups and I hope all of this cooperation is ironing those out. It's probably a healthy thing that we don't all live in Tasmania (in fact only my mum, younger sister and brother do) as I think that although they're all great people, everything should be done in moderation!

OK, enough warm and fuzzys, I promise I'll slam someone again soon :)

Boat Hunt, Part 2

My bro called yesterday to say he's booked on the Spirit of Tasmania to Sydney on Thursday.

Why? The boat hunt is over. On Saturday we are going to pick up the 6.2 metre Haines Hunter half cab from Newcastle. The long distance meant I was off the hook for looking at this one. We'll be taking it down to Gosford where his sister in law lives (her husband checked it out for him).

So it's a boating weekend ahead. Let's hope the weather is as good as the last two weekends, because I think I can talk him into taking a few mates out on the harbour on Sunday :)

A valuable contribution

Anthony Albanese, Labor's environment spokesman, has put out an article aiming to preserve Federal Labor's forestry policy (released in the final days of last year's Federal Election campaign).

In an unemotional, well though out article, Albanese has made some valuable points and calls for forestry to be centred around more value adding activities. He makes the very important (yet obvious) point that woodchipping is a ridiculous waste of our forest assets.

What a shame that Labor usually passes over leadership candidates from the Left faction? Albanese appears to be an intelligent thinker who knows how to put his point across and can handle criticism. Hopefully he will play a leading part in a future ALP government.

Spooky, magical, prehistoric, frozen in time

Courtesy of Blue Tier

The heroism of the unfortunate

Some may consider what I have to say to be sacrilege, but I think it needs to be said.

This is the front of Sydney's Daily Telegraph today.


"Our fallen heroes to be honoured by grateful nation".

The hyperbolic headlines of Murdoch papers seem to be bordering on patronising the dead. They were just doing their jobs. Unfortunately in the process their work claimed their lives.

The Daily Telegraph has decided that those killed in Indonesia are heroes. How so?

They've helped many people affected by a natural disaster, yes.
They died in the service of their country.
They were unfortunate to end up on that fateful mission.

But, do these things make someone a hero? No one called them heroes before their deaths, so why are they now?

This sort of sensationalist crap just serves to trivialise the efforts of all of the Australian Defence Force personnel who haven't been killed in the service of their country. A sort of "you're not a hero unless you get killed, regardless of your efforts" idea.

Having said this I have the deepest respect for these people and hope that they will all rest in peace. My thoughts are with their families.

I welcome comments on this topic, whether you agree with me or not.