Exciting Things From The Field

2010

2010-01-02T20:35:00.003+11:00

Let's just hope this year is a *LOT* better than 2009. Actually, let's not hope...as it couldn't possibly be any worse.

I got through the Christmas and new year events with a minimum of fuss. I haven't really been able to enjoy much of December but Christmas day was great with all the family there.

Onwards we go into this new year though.

Been a very long time..

2009-12-15T14:55:00.006+11:00

Well it's a long time between drinks ... and sadly everything has taken a turn for the worst over the last few months. After my move back to Adelaide the job market here has pretty much dried up and I have found myself now unemployed for 6 months straight . The most frustrating thing is that this unfortunate event looks to continue into the first few months of next year too.

I've thought long and hard about alternatives to finding another chemistry related job and with all things considered I know it just isn't possible at the moment due to circumstances as they stand. Should I go back to uni and study something else? Theoretically I could, the main barrier to that is that to do this I have to forgo any type of life supporting income for the next 3 years. I just don't have the savings to do that now and would put myself under incredible financial (and therefore emotional) strain. So I am going to have to wait out this unemployment rut and hopefully emerge better for it next year. I am currently seeking any type of "part time" or such employment at anywhere I can find. My age, experience and qualifications are proving to be a major hindrance however. After 14 job interviews I keep hearing the same thing over and over "Why did you even apply for this job ?? you're WAY too qualified in Chemistry to be doing this". No one is even willing to take a chance on someone who is obviously desperate to do *anything* so as to be employed. Very Frustrating.

The other sad occurrence is the loss of Rachel as my friend. If you've been following this blog over the time i've been writing it you would know I am very fond of Rachel. Over the last 2 years I had rediscovered the friendship from 17 years ago that we had in high school and we went on to become really good "adult" friends as well. She is/was my best friend for the last few years. Unfortunately, after all the good times and fun we've had together it's gotten to the point where I just couldn't pretend I was happy with what our "relationship" had become. I am currently hopelessly in love with Rachel and unfortunately for me those feelings aren't able to be reciprocated. I am absolutely gutted that my own stupidity has left me with no option but to walk away from the most amazing person I have ever met.

I am currently trying to deal with a bevy of mixed emotions. Sadness, heartbreak, relief and regret are all doing the rounds in my head. The hardest part is always the endless "mulling over" of the details after the fact. The one thing I have learnt however through my adult life is that it's better to "Know why" than to "Assume why" things happen. So thankfully I asked Rachel for her reasons why she doesn't see our relationship ever being more than "Friends" and to her credit she told me. It was really an interesting experience to actually see the other persons side of the story but at the same time devastating to know her reasons. I won't go into details here though, suffice to say that even when you think you know someone very well you can always be surprised. I was most surprised not by the "content" of her reasons but how 2 people can see the same thing totally differently or attribute a deep "cause and effect" analysis to problems whose causes are plain as day.

So now I am trying to cope with life "After Rachel" and I won't lie and say i'm making headway and feeling better. I'm not. I miss her like i'd miss an arm or leg. The biggest shock to me has been just how integrated she'd become into my daily routine (some might say this was entirely the problem) and how hard it is to fill those activities with *Anything* else now. I'm constantly battling the feeling that I have made a horrible, horrible mistake by excluding her from my life, when for so long my life was immeasurably more enjoyable and "full" due solely to her being in it. I'm clinging to the hope that one day, maybe months from now, maybe years from now, we will be able to be friends again. It's just not possible at the moment while I love her the way I do.
Still, I am impressed with my own resolve in that I had the strength to walk away from something that was slowly (but surely) making me miserable. It was harder than losing my Father to cancer, because with death the person is gone and you have no chance to ever have them in your life ever again. That kind of ending I can deal with. Rachel is not dead, she's not going to die any time soon, she's alive and well and living her life and i'm not lucky enough to be involved anymore. THAT type of ending is far worse and much harder to accept.

So Rachel if you're reading this all I want to say is "Thank You", you made my life a joy (most of the time) and I will miss you and your wonderful kids terribly.

Quick catch up...

2009-08-19T23:45:00.006+10:00

Well, here we are nearly at the end of August. I'm about to move from Melbourne back to Adelaide. I've lived in Melbourne for the last 5 years and well...lets just say i'm glad to be going. I've had some good times in Melbourne and enjoyed myself on and off. However, ever since 2004 when I moved over here I sort of had the feeling it was a mistake but sadly at that point work dictated where I had to go and the only jobs I could accept were here. I've headed back to Adelaide pretty much every chance I got over the last 5 years as all my family and most of my long term friends are there. I'll miss all the friends I made in Melbourne for sure...but I know i'll be a lot happier in Adelaide.

In the last month I haven't really done a lot except conserve money and ride my bikes and look for a new job in Adelaide. The one exciting highlight of the last month was when I had Rachel and all 4 of her kids stay with me for a week and we *DID* Melbourne. Too much stuff to report on but we packed quite a bit into that week. We went all over Melbourne central, went to the Melbourne Meuseum, Southbank, St. Kilda, Olinda (for Pancakes), Sassafrass (and WORLDS BEST puppet store!!!) and to top it off we also went to Mt. Baw Baw and THE SNOW!!

This was the funniest thing ever too, Sophie F. and the snowball of superlative proportions.

Click picture to play

LOL :)

Let's just say that the whole week was brilliant, I really had a great time myself and I reckon (hope) Rachel and the kids did too.

Tonight I just played my last game of basketball for the team I've been playing with for the last 2 years. We won (some would say "of course" here :P) 28-16 and thus finish the season in 1st place. The guys are all a bit disappointed that I now won't play in the finals due to the move. We'll see how it goes...there may be a hasty return to Melbourne in a few weeks to play in the Grand Final..we'll cross that bridge when we get to it though.

Lot of bridges in view at the moment.

Right now I am in the middle of packing up my house up for the move this weekend and onto lifes next chapter.

Mega-super-action-packed weekend.

2009-07-21T11:51:00.012+10:00

So i'm currently into week..um...4 (???) of my "holidays". Not that you can call them holidays, it's more of a "period where I am not doing anything or going anywhere". Sure, I've been in this position numerous times before but these types of "work hiatus" differ due to the fact that on holidays you return to working at some point and get more money coming in.

Having said that I just had a great weekend jetting around the country, out-dinners, exploring, decadent spending and general caution to the wind throwingness :)

On Friday I flew to Adelaide again and packed quite a bit into the 2 days that I was there. I'm not going to mention the flight over....let's just say "It was with Tiger" and you can fill in the blanks. That airline quite simply is disgraceful. I stayed with my brother Craig on Friday night and experienced the wonder of his girlfriends spastic new puppy. Ritalin for dogs in order here...seriously. If you could somehow hook that dog up to a battery and store the energy output it generates .... energy crisis over. We snacked on Indian food for dinner. Awesome. It did however remind me that the Indian place I go to here in Melbourne is quite possibly the BEST Indian in Australia though, I will miss it when i move back to Adelaide. Was good to see my brother again after quite a few months, he seems to be going well with his new career (self employed) and I still find it weird that my "baby brother" is such a grown up :)

On Saturday I met up with my friend Ben (of Ben and Leah's Wedding fame) and we zoomed around Adelaide chatting about "Stuff" and trying to book an audience with my sister. Vicky is moving to Darwin soon and I thought it would be prudent to visit her before she goes as otherwise I probably won't see her again for months. We went to her house (soon to be "My" house :) ) but she wasn't home so a quick call and a plan was devised. Ben and I went out to Glenelg and had lunch (mmmm Glenelg pizza) and met up with my sister at the pub where her going away party was being held. While waiting for her Ben and I watched this group of people who were taking it in turns to stand in front of a camera and talk about "something". there must have been 50 people doing this. It turned out that it was a "Self-help" group that was for helping people with speech disorders (i.e. impediments, stutters, tourettes etc) and allowing them to face the fear of speaking in public to an audience. The most striking thing about this group is that you would not have known that fact just by watching them and listening to them. The coup de grace was the last guy who went before the camera and extolled the virtues of the group and was so glad he had joined and done the hard yards as he said "I otherwise wouldn't have been able to do this..". He then turned to his girlfriend and dropped to a knee, pulled out a ring and asked her to marry him. She was gob-smacked. There must have been 2 or 3 hundred people in the square watching him and the place just erupted into cheers and applause. I think she said "yes" so turned out to be a good day for that guy.

After that my sister arrived and we had a beer and chatted for about an hour before I had to go. Ben dropped me at the train station in Adelaide and I caught the train out to Gawler to go see Rachel and her kids. Much fun was had bike riding upon my arrival and then we decided upon "out dinner" as no-one could be bothered cooking after our collective days. Mine of rushing here and there and Rachels of picking a bazillion olives (+ one cabbage ... apparently). The out dinner routine usually consists of listing off every food possibility and gauging the success of the idea by the amount of scorn and derision thrown at it. The idea with the least scorn and minimal derision which is agreeable to at least 50% of children present is usually the winner. This was not the case on this day. Every child wanted something different from "somewhere" different. We settled on "The Kingsford Hotel" as the mere mention of anywhere else brought howls of disappointment and crying from the youngest child. We ordered a vast selection of food and everyone seemed to be happy. I had a steak (which I rarely have because of the monstrous prices at most restaurants) but it was quite cheap and was very tasty.

Sunday was spent being nerdy :) Working out the exact volumes of oils and height clearances for home projects that Rach had in the works. We even used a tape measure. One highlight was when wondering how to measure without a tape measure I jokingly offered to use my phone "I have a program that does it with lasers" I said. For a split second.... Rachel believed it. Then sanity prevailed :)

Out-lunch again on Sunday and then it was time to trek to the Airport for my fight home. This was sadly marred by a massive expletive laden temper tantrum by a child that will remain anonymous. Arrived at the airport and said goodbye to all and went to board the plane. Weekend in Adelaide over far too quickly again sadly.

Monday saw me driving into Melbourne central to meet up with my Mum who had come over on a tour to see the crows play. We met up at the casino where, surprise, surprise, mum was neck deep in pokies. Winning of course. We went and had lunch at a food court on southbank after "trying" to get served at P.J. Obriens pub....they seemed totally dis-interested in the only 2 customers in the whole place. So we left.

After lunch we decided to go to Greco, home of "Worlds biggest cake Fridge" for a piece of cake and a coffee. However that plan got side tracked when we strayed within visual range of the pokies again. Mum was drawn to them like a moth to flame. She played for nearly 2 hours and won about $25. This was after losing $40, then winning $20, then losing $10, then wining $60, then losing $50, then wining $70 etc etc. I personally don't see the attraction of gambling..

We ended up at Greco's and ordered from the disappointingly small array of cakes on display. I went with the ever popular Mars bar Cheesecake and mum had the Banana Cream Cake.

We then decided that seeing as the day was quite sunny and mildly warm that we would go down to St. Kilda to see the foreshore. So we went and got my car and headed down there. I was expecting the foreshore to be sunny but very windy and we weren't disappointed. There wasn't many people about (except the perennial St. Kilda drug culturalists.) so we sat out of the wind and just watched the waves and chatted some more.

It was already 4pm by this stage and I had to drive home. I dropped mum back at the Casino and headed back out to Ringwood in the peak-hour traffic. Fun.

Overall, a very full 3 days over the weekend and I am again a bit sad that it's over. However, fun is on the horizon...stay tuned.

Global Financial Crisis......sucker punches me.

2009-06-20T15:29:00.003+10:00

So on Thursday this week I was made "Redundant" from where I work. Hooray. I'm actually happy about it. I no longer have to do my "job" that I had there which is fine with me. I also managed to stay employed in the one place for 2 years which is now my personal best. The problem with being single, no kids and no mortgage is that it's very easy to discard you when companies need to save a few dollars. I think all I have to say about the matter is that I can't really believe that my skill set couldn't be put to use ANYWHERE else in the company and that the only course of action was to get rid of me entirely. Great work upper management. I'll wait the few weeks until one of my friends there tells me the *real* reason.

As always when you leave somewhere you've worked for a long time you inevitably miss the people you became friends with the most. This is the case here too. I'll miss everyone that I got to know really well over the past 2 years. I will not however miss my job. I think I can safely now say that I have never disliked a job as much as I disliked what i've been "forced" to do in order to stay employed these past 18 months. I had no interest in what I was doing for a long time and especially when any input I gave on my project or work was dissmissed anyway.

So, now I have a 2 month break from working life planned and then i'm moving back to ADELAIDE!! I'm so happy about this and while it is throwing myself to the mercy of the universe some what, I've done it before and come up trumps. I'm the eternal optimist after all.

The most important thing in life for me is to be happy and I am simply not here in Melbourne. So much of my life and the future that I want revolves around Adelaide and it continually seems ludicrous to not be there. So now i have the opportunity to go back and i'm grabbing it with both hands.

So for the next 2 months it's all about enjoying myself and hang the consequences.

The inaugural "Nina Is Sick...but still able to bark out orders!" bike ride 2009.

2009-06-14T17:41:00.018+10:00

So this morning I get up and sit at my PC to check the events of the day. When BAM. Not 2 seconds after opening facebook my friend Nina is talking with me on FB chat. She wanted to know exactly WHY I wasn't out riding my bike?

I told her I had just got up and was probably going to go later in the day, after chores and grocery shopping. She was having none of that. Apparently she is bed ridden this weekend with "Swine Flu" or some other even more deadly influenza that is doing the rounds at work (oh..we work together...did I mention that?). Anyway, as I am from South Australia and therefor possess a super-immune system, I rarely even get affected by (or notice) the trivial viruses that Melbourne encounters and which consistently lay the locals out for days. I was instructed that since Nina had been unable to go out on saturday night that she therefor had a "Energy Surplus". I would have to go out and ride the "excess" energy she had not used dancing the night away in order to stop the world exploding or dividing by zero ....or something....I wasn't quite sure why....

But...as if you ever need an excuse to ride a bike, I fortuitously also had some new biking duds which I had to try out too. I needed some "longies" (full length Lycra pants) for riding my bike in winter because it's SO FREAKISHLY COLD IN MELBOURNE. I bought some online during the week and got them yesterday.

So here we go stats for the Inaugural "Nina Is Sick...but still able to bark out orders!" bike ride 2009.

I decided to take my Scotty bike today and "Go Left" when greeted with the first major directional decision which headed up towards the Dandenong hills east of Melbourne. The plan was to beat my time and distance from the last time I went along this trail (on the Stumpy).

The weapon.

As you can see, pretty impressive biking when I reached the halfway, turn around point I had done a respectable 13.44Km with an average speed of 22.1Km/h.

I decided to stop here...

... as any further was heading into mountainous terrain and I had a bike with no shockers. That and my butt already hurt ;)

The new pants were fantastic too. It was only about 12ºC but not windy and not looking like it was going to rain but they kept my legs really warm. These Jaggad Longies are meant for riding in cold weather and have some "special stuff" inside them to act like a wet-suit and keep your legs awesomely warm. They work. 2 thumbs up. Here's a pic (right click --> save as, if you must ladies.....I know I look HOT in these duds. You're only human after all).

Phwoaaaar. Cyclist legs are so raunchy!!

So, after this I hopped back on my Scott weapon and headed back towards home. I was hoping to at least match the time I did getting to the half way point because the majority of the out-bound direction was slightly uphill. Going back was going to allow me to get some ridiculous speeds up on the bike. This was of course assuming there was not an abundence of Sunday walkers, other riders, dogs, cats, monkeys etc blocking the path at regular intervals.

I managed to get some rather impressive 40+km/h speeds up at certain places but these were cruelly "averaged" down by the inevitable appearance of all the stuff I assumed wouldn't hamper me above in the previous paragraph. Assuming is always dangerous....ask anyone...they'll confirm.

So here's the final stats:

As you can see. Stamina and consistency are my trademarks :)

The total ride distance of 26.9 Km (let's just call it 27!) with an average speed again of 22.3 Km/h and a total riding time of 1h:12m:11secs.

Not bad :)

Oh, have I mentioned previously how much this Scott bike ROCKS!!!

As a special treat for the ladies, here's another leg shot. Mmmmmm calf muscles ....

Hope I helped Nina and you feel better soon .

deforestation and stuff...

2009-06-07T15:34:00.007+10:00

My life is so exciting. Really...in Melbourne it's all the go, there is always an abundance of stuff to see or do. That is why today I am going to show you how I mowed my lawn.

So I haven't mowed my lawn since...I don't even know. It has got to be 4 or 5 months easily. I am actually praising it calling it "lawn" because it's really only about 10% grass. The rest is weeds. BIG WEEDS. I thought the whole thing may die over summer due to the water restrictions and hot weather but sadly it didn't...and now in winter it is rivaling the amazon for lush vegetation.

How ridiculous is that?? Once again I had to remove the wild animals from my lawn before attempting to mow it.

After the animals have been shooo'd away.

dwarfed by the forest. The trusty mower.

So the actual "mowing" took about 5 mins. Since it was weeds it just got destroyed by the spinning mower blades of death. A quick follow up wih the whipper snipper and it looks almost like ..... well ....almost like someone gives 2/5ths of a crap about how it looks.

mmmm freshly shaven...um...lawn.

woot.

The best part (??) about this is seeing how many "Mower Ripple Effect" points you can get. The "RME" as it will now be known is how many people within earshot of your place ALSO mow their lawns AFTER you start your mower. You know how it happens....some poor guy manages to convince his wife/partner/boyfriend that he can't possibly mow the lawn today because the weather is so shitty. Wife/partner/Boyfriend lets it slide because it IS a fairly shitty day. Then they both hear it....SOMEONE IS MOWING THEIR LAWN!!! This causes everyone within range who had put off mowing to actually HAVE to then mow their lawns also because they are getting the evil eye from their respective others.
Today I scored 3 points. Woot!!

...and the world was poorer for it.

2009-06-02T08:30:00.000+10:00

8 years ago today the world lost a great man, a wonderful father and a guiding light.

I still find it hard to believe that it's been that long since my Dad died. They say that only the good die young and that's what happened in this case. Taken from us far too soon so that he never got to see his children fully mature or get married or meet his fabulous grand kids. While he experienced so much with us while we had him here with us he misses out on some of the best stuff. I still think about him every day and even after 8 years still miss him just as much.

R.I.P Dad.

Best Weekend Ever.

2009-05-27T13:05:00.028+10:00

I know I say that a lot....but it really was possibly the best one yet.

To begin with it was 4 days long. Secondly I spent all 4 days in Radelaide and thirdly it incorporated the wedding of 2 of my best friends. Throw in some Rachel, some 5 Star hotel, pancakes, waffles, and crazy dancing and you see what I mean.

The wedding was pretty good as far as weddings go. I was actually Ben's "Best Man" which was quite the honor :) It was my first ever gig as a best man and while some of the "Pre Wedding" task I had to do were a tad difficult to accomplish from Melbourne I think I did a pretty good job and in the end the wedding was better for it ;)

The ceremony was on the Saturday and the weather held off just long enough for the 3pm service to enjoy some glorious sun. The bride and groom both appeared at the church on time and that's always a good start.

The highlight of course was the wedding reception and this was held at Ayres House in the city. The atmosphere there really was one of celebration. The food was excellent also with a choice of 2 dishes for both entrée and main course. Between us, Rachel and I got to taste the whole menu and every meal was very tasty.

I gave my "Best Man" speech after dinner and it went over very well. A lot of laughs were had during the speech and I lost count of how many people came up to me afterwards to say that they thought my speech was brilliant. I don't know...in written form it was 7 pages long and when I got up to actually give it I got horribly lost in the events chain and missed some stuff out or read it out of order. No one seemed to care though :)

After dinner the "socialising" started along with the drinking. I had booked a hotel in the city to stay the night in so Rachel and I took full advantage of the wine, beer, champagne on offer. Consequently we both had a great time I reckon. Thanks must be given to the perenial "party catalyst" Ben Lewis who manages to just take every event he's at and turn it up to 11. He's just so much fun and I think his antics help everyone around him relax and enjoy themselves too. It really was nice to see Rachel being "Rachel" and just having fun and not worrying about anythng like she usually has to. She was an active participant in all the "Crazy Dancing" that took place (as was I...I even did the "Time Warp" and knew the words??!!??!!!) and seeing her having such a blast made me more inclined to do the same. Though special mention must go to Ben Lewis again for inventing the dance move of the century...THE PASSION GRAB!!

Awesomest.Move.Ever

After the reception wound down we went for a quick visit to the Botanic Pub and got in one (or was it two) last drinks before fatigue was setting in (it was 1 am by this point). So Rachel and I headed off to the Rendezvous Allegra Hotel which was a 5 star place in the heart of Adelaide's CBD. I must say..for the price it was very luxurious. When we arrived we were greeted by the malfunctioning lift from hell (I'm sure the thing just didn't like us!) it just would not allow us to go to our floor. You had to stick in your electronic key then press your floor number. We did this several hundred times..for me it wouldn't even leave the lobby and for Rachel it would leave the lobby but only take us to the Penthouse floor and then wouldn't open the door once there??? When we went and told the concierge (<-- I spelt that right FIRST TIME!!! woo woo) he was obviously beginning to think we were incompetent fools as it was the 3rd time we'd been back with electro-key trouble. We got in the "other" lift and the key worked 1st time...BAH!

Once we got to the room it was quite late and while I started taking off the suit I had been wearing all day (no easy feat as it was drenched in sweat from all the dancing) Rachel decided to get in a pre-sleep sleep :) she laid fully clothed on the HUGE bed (Do beds come in a size bigger than "king"?) and nodded off almost instantly. I went and had a shower and when I came back she was already asleep. Poor dear :)

The morning was SURREAL. I woke at about 7am and in my semi-awake state noticed that Rachel wasn't in the bed...I thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. Upon re-waking at 8:30am I noticed that she STILL wasn't in the bed? I woke with a start and cautiously looked around the still darkish room. I checked the bathroom "area" (as it was almost as big as the rest of the suite) ..nope not there either. Then I noticed her bag was gone (it was a medium carry bag type thing) ... ??I went back over to the bed and saw that her clothes were still on the floor next to the bed ?? I honestly thought she'd been abducted in the night and sold in to white slavery!!! A bit concerned, I rang her mobile hoping to GOD that it didn't ring inside the room itself... it didn't. I was greeted by a cheerful "Good Morning :)" and informed that she couldn't sleep at about 6am so she got up and went for a walk around the city for a few hours........ I relaxed, but man was I thinking the worst for a while there :)

We then thought we'd have some Yum Cha for breakfast....but contrary to both our memories of Gouger St. We couldn't find a Yum Cha restaurant that was open. (This was met with howls of laughter back here in Melbourne when I told this to my work mates....the widely held belief here is that "Adelaide is closed on Sunday"). We there for had to settle for Pancakes :) Win. Win. We then went back to Gawler and embarked on the second once in a lifetime event (after the wedding) for the weekend. The formatting and re-installation of Rachel's computer. HOORAY! There were some slight technical hiccups but in the end we got everything working (with a bit of help from the ever dependable Raff). The speed increase was astounding but her computer is getting on in the years, so much so that some (yes, PLURAL) of her children are younger than it. Biggest disappointment (for certain children at least) is that the PC is so old that the new "Sims 3" game actually won't work and gives the error "Upgrade your PC!!" ... hehehe.

Finished off the weekend with an out-dinner of Indian :) and then on Monday morning went and saw where Sofie (Rachel's youngest) goes to kindy now. I helped her make a wig out of wool and cardboard. She let me try it on and it was good to have long flowing curly hair again after 20 years :P. Had a fantastic time once again in Radelaide.

In other Melbourne based news, yesterday the builders FINALLY came to fix the mould damage in my house. Not bad. Quite speedy service seeing it only happened in AUGUST 2008!!!!^ They didn't even finish after 5 hours either :/ and have to come back next week. Also, after 10 years..the Basketball team I play in here finally got NEW uniforms. I'll put a pic up later as they are totally swish and awesome looking. If our amazing skills on the court don't blind the other teams our funky, dripping with court cred new threads certainly will.

Old New

Still waiting to hear from SA Water too. Surgery also pending :)

Rounding them up....

2009-04-19T15:39:00.048+10:00

Last week went so quick..which was great as I almost didn't notice I was at work :) Thursday however was just brilliant. I had the most fun I think I have ever had while at any of my thousands of jobs ever. I was laughing pretty much constantly all day thanks to my (seemingly) weekly email tsunami with Rachel. We must have sent about 15 massive emails each. So much fun. You so ROCK Rach :)

I spent the previous weekend (Easter) doing the family and friends things again (Hooray) so spent 4 ish days in Radelaide. Thanks to Rachel and Ben for the free accommodation once more on this visit. The weekend as always went far too quickly but I managed to do so many things that I had a great time once again and i managed to spread myself equally over Angaston, Gawler and Adelaide city.

Sunday night was definitely the highlight. Rach and I went out for dinner at "Tonic" at Lyndoch in the Barossa. Tonic is a new restaurant that has recently won just about every award in the hospitality sphere. The food was VERY spectacular sounding and when we got the menu on arrival it was clear that this place was the ducks nuts for food. I ordered a Beef and black olive pie with some sort of mashed potato which was infused with liquid awesome and then coated with a cheesy sundried tomato sauce. Rach had Weiss noodle bolognaise which had rabbit and pork and other equally impressive stuff in it. No photo's of the actual meals sorry. Rachel also kept up her stats for choosing "Wine that Michael doesn't think tastes like dishwater" (For the uninitiated...I usually think ALL wine tastes like dishwater). She chose a 2008 Burge Family Wine Makers Shiraz Rose.

Again, I liked it!!! After the fantastic pick in January of Bethany 2002 Vintage Shiraz Cabernet this one was also quite tasty. Well done Rachel once again...2 for 2.

While we were eating, chatting and drinking some desserts were brought out for some other patrons and caught Ms. Rachels eye. Apparently...we WERE having dessert now :) Fine by me.

Rachel ordered the Lemon Posset with Vanilla Paschmak & Almond Sugar Shortbreads. Even now after reading that again...I don't really know what it was. I think it was a lemon cheesecakey type thing with fairy floss on top (see Below). The verdict..well was there ever any doubt that the two thumbs would appear?

I went for the Sticky Date, Bread and Butter Pudding with Toffee Sauce & Cream. Equally awesome.

It was mighty fine :)

This weekend, in contrast, I have had a quiet time at home watching TV and relaxing on saturday. OH!! I also watched "somebody else" clean my whole garden for me. That was so difficult to watch and not actively participate in as I LOVE Gardening^. Check out my front yard now:

Today I went for a ride in the morning. It was hard to deciede which bike to take ... the new flat-bar roadie (see last blog entry) or the dual suspension mountain bike. Both are soooo cool that I assume that what I had to do was a kin to trying to pick your favorite child (assuming you have more than 1 of course). I went with the road bike as I hadn't really given it a good ride yet despite having it 2 whole weeks. It's only done the "work run" which doesn't really count as it's only 2.8km. So I took it today for a 40km jaunt along the now familiar Eastlink bike track. All I can say is WOW. Roadbikes can be gotten up to INSANELY fast speeds if your legs are used to normally pushing around a mountain bike. I had no trouble getting this bike up to 50km/h on the flats and even faster down hills. The only bad point is thhat my butt has obviously been pampered with my mountain bikes dual suspension which swallows any bump in the track or road that you might roll over so you don't even notice them. Not so on the road bike. You feel EVERYTHING you roll over. Sticks, undulations, pot holes, gutters and each sensation is delivered with maximum force to the base of your coccyx!! I really feel like i've spent a weekend in an all male prison now. I also made a vid when I stopped at the half way point with a review of said bikes performance...enjoy.

Click picture to play (18MB and you'll need Quicktime)

tripping and falling....

2009-04-04T12:54:00.003+11:00

Many of my close friends have been having accidents this week where they are just going about their daily task and unfortunate accident befell them...

Rachel told me how she was just sorting Easter eggs and a whole white chocolate rabbit accidentally fell in her mouth and she had to eat it to stop it from choking her. Nasty stuff indeed.

This prompted another friend Michael to comment about how he was innocently looking for a healthy lettuce snack in his fridge when some beer that was also in the fridge tipped over and several of them poured directly into his mouth before he could get out of the way. He could have drowned !! Terrifying stuff.

Today, I had a similar experience.... I was calmly walking down High St. in Prahan , Melbourne. When I tripped and fell into The Melbourne Bicycle Center, when I got home I realised that I had got something wedged in my shoe... A Scott Sub 20 bike.... since it was too late to take it back I guess i'll just have to keep it and remember to be more careful in future.

So be careful everyone ... I'd hate for something as unfortunate to happen to any of you.

P.S. :)

All aboard....

2009-03-25T08:38:00.016+11:00

..the CRAZY TRAIN.

That's what it's been like for the last 3 weeks. Absolutely crazy in all aspects. There has been ups, downs, lefts, rights more ups, more downs and it really can shake your faith in people and companies. Thankfully i've got a great network of friends and family that were paramount in helping me deal with the mountains of unbelievable crap that I found myself traversing. I think as of today the worst is over for a while...at least....I hope.

If you're sick and tired of me whining about Melbourne...maybe skip down the page until you see the picture of a puppy.

As usual the thing that has taken up most of my "thinking time" is my seemingly perpetual struggle with finding my personal happiness. The last 3 weeks have firmly cemented in my mind that Melbourne is not the place for me as a place to spend and "live" my life (big surprise huh?). After living here for the last 5 years it's now completely and undeniably obvious to me (and most probably to anyone close to me) that I constantly feel I am in the wrong place. I feel even more alienated and detached from my own life with each passing week and a few friends have commented on my complete change of character before and after trips to Adelaide. It's true though, I *love* going Adelaide for many reasons and I *hate* having to come back here after every single jaunt. I'm trying my hardest, all the time to rectify this problem.

It seems like such an easy fix as the "fun" ratio of Adelaide:Melbourne is skewed WAY in favour of Adelaide.. I should just pack-up my stuff and go "home" ... However FEAR is always the mind killer. I have a job here that supplies me with money and while i've certainly done it before..throwing caution to the wind and quitting my job and going back to Adelaide to uncertain career prospects is probably foolish in the current economic climate. It's WHOLLY appealing on many other levels however but at the moment the most prudent course of action seems to be to find another job first before moving. The ultimate question is "how much is your happiness worth?"

I also had some of my longest serving friends visit Melbourne for their work these past 2 weeks and I made the effort to go catch them while they were here. I've know these guys (Matt and Ben) since..well forever it seems like. It was great to catch up with them (even though I saw them only a few weeks ago in Adelaide). We had a good night out on the town. Ben was also back here again this week for work again so on Sunday we went out again for dinner. This time to Brunswick St. and the "Little Creatures Ale House" which I didn't even know existed there. The food was pretty good and the beer was also ok too. Thanks to the Federal Government for both ;)

On my last trip to Adelaide you may recall I had some mobile phone problems, well 2 weeks ago they came to a head when my phone wouldn't connect to the phone network at all. So I had to go get another phone. I did my research and went with the Samsung Omnia (on a plan) because it was way cheaper. This phone is amazing, it is astounding what this thing can do. I have yet to find a task that I would "need" on a phone (or indeed a full computer) that this thing can't do. Let me illustrate:

(a) Makes calls (voice AND video) - "check"
(b) SMS and MMS - "check"
(c) Mobile intarwebs - "check"
(d) Plays MP3's - "check"
(e) Plays XviD movies - "check"
(f) GPS navigation - "check"
(g) Full MS Office suite - "Check"
(h) Games - "check"
(i) Ridiculously large mega-pixel camera/video - "check"
(j) Massive amount of storage space (16GB) - "check"

get the idea?

I know the term "Awesome" gets thrown around a lot these days and many say that this has devalued it as a superlative. But if there was a word which embodied all the traits of "awesome" and then took it 2 notches higher, that word* would be used -here - to describe this phone. Very happy with my purchase :)

On the work front, well....what can I say without being too negative. Not a lot :)
I *think* the project I have been working on is nearly finished, at least, we can see the end of it now...the problem is that we still don't know if the ending will be good or bad. Which I find utterly ludicrous at such a late stage. I also must say that [client] are the biggest bunch of illogical [expletive]'s that I have ever had the misfortune of working with. For that reason alone I can't wait to be off this project and hopefully rid of them.

I've been biking a fair bit lately (surprise surprise) when the weather allows it and have rapidly come to the conclusion that the Stumpjumper I bought late last year is quite possibly the best bike in the universe. It is so good that my other bike is now constantly looked on with derision and scorn. Undeserved of course because it's an excellent bike in it's own right ... it's just the Stumpy is like the biking equivalent of multi-orgasmic sex...and who doesn't like that??? The Avanti is sort of like that drunken shag on a park bench at 3am . You remember it fondly and it serves it's purpose .... but you see the Stumpy whenever you look at the Avanti and go for the guaranteed multi-orgasm nearly every time. It doesn't help the Avanti's cause that in comparison to the stumpy it is the slightly overweight girl that looked beautiful after 15 beers and a bottle of whiskey. Where as the Stumpy looks like Heather Graham when you're sober.

Just for the record..I thought that analogy was awesome :)

So the Avanti may soon be "surplus to requirements" and be looking for a new home. Like always if you would like it..let me know..any reasonable offer considered. Size XL frame by the way (which is BIG) suitable only for anyone 6'2" or over. Then I might have to see about getting a road bike (mmmm Avanti Blade 5).

Now I'm just hanging out for Easter and some time off away from Melbourne. The next 2 months are shaping up to be ok and I have some other plans in the works that I hope to be able to bring to fruition during that time too (think "decadent trips to exotic locations") so that is also a bit exciting.

Also, may I just say "logitech battery low warning pop-ups every 2 mins are ANNOYING!!" in the 2 tiered hope that some one, somewhere, some day googles that phrase and finds my blog and is exposed to the awesomeness of it. And also because that statement is true!! My keyboard here at work is wireless and has a little LCD screen built into the top that shows a picture of a battery when the batteries are low. I know from this that the batteries are low...I don't need a pop-up every 2 mins also saying "Your Batteries in your keyboard are low!!" especially when the keyboard still functions normally. I'll change the damn batteries when the keyboards ability to send it's data stops working. My experience with this "change the battery alert" is that it is a kin to the petrol warning light coming on when you still have 1/4 tank of petrol and can still drive for 250km.

In closing i'd also like to share something I heard on the weekend that really helped me with my problems (as I see them). The source is unimportant but the message is clear and insightful and may help you as it helped me.

"Everyone needs a goal, a prize, a desire to work towards in life. What that goal is only you can truly know but when you discover what it is there will be no doubt in your mind that it is right . Once you know what your goal is any effort you exert towards achieving it can only take you closer to it. Without that goal, no matter how insignificant it may seem to others, you are motionless in an infinite universe of possibilities. That is the epitome of unhappiness"

*some might say that that word does exist already and was in fact the word "Rachel" .... but I have far too much integrity to stoop to such predictability and cheap browny point scoring.

Whirlwind Birthday Visit.

2009-03-02T15:33:00.018+11:00

Well here I am now entering my 37th year of being on Earth. Scary stuff indeed, nearly 40 and not a hell of a lot to show for it :P

I flew back to Adelaide to spend my Birthday with friends and family on Friday and came back on Sunday. It was really good (as always) to go back there and see all the familiar faces again. Though 1.5 days is really far too short and i'm already back in Melbourne wondering if it actually happened? I'm already looking forward to being back there at Easter.

My trip was actually pretty hectic and it all hinged on Tiger airways being "on time" on Friday night. As you may know from previous blogs of mine they (Tiger) have a REALLY hard time achieving this. This time however I was absolutely flabbergasted by their "on timedness". I got to the Airport at 6:15pm and then waited in the carpark for the shuttle bus for 20mins!!! Panicking a bit as I got into the terminal for Tiger at 6:45pm I rushed a peak at the departure board ..."No Delays"...WHAT THE?

So I join the end of the really long queue and think "No way am I going to get checked in in time!". Just then the Tiger Airways chick asks "Anyone else for the Adelaide flight?", I raise my hand and she says "Come down to the front here please" .. WHAT THE x2!!

So I get processed get my boarding pass and head for the metal detector entrances to the departure lounge. I had a 5 min wait in line while the huge volume of people filtered through the 1 gate they had operating. When I was nearly at the metal detector my plane started boarding so that when I eventually got through the gate I was ushered straight onto the plane and within minutes we were in the air and away to Radelaide.

My brother picked me up from the airport and graciously drove me out to Rachels place. I walked in to the final prep for her big wedding-catering-job-a-polooza where she and her parents were deciding on the merits of champagne and pineapple sorbet mixed together. It tasted weird .. not weird weird, but funky weird. I couldn't stop drinking it though for some reason even though I was contorting my face with each sip...see..weird :)

Went to sleep and prepared for the imminent "woken up by excited children" event that happens each time I am there. This time I was actually asleep though and not faking it like usual ;), I subconsciously detected the presence of 2 small, blond children in close proximity and wearily opened my eyes. That's all the excuse they needed and with a flurry of nighties, hair and blankets I was being flanked on each side by a small child both giggling and laughing hysterically as they joined me in the bed. I then had to listen to the "News of the world 5 y.o. edition" followed quickly by "News of the world: 3 y.o. edition". Awesome :)

I had been pre-warned that the kids wanted to take me to "Out breakfast" at the local pancake place in Gawler and I was instructed by Rach to act surprised and pretend that I had no idea where we were going. I accomplished that mission and Hannah was quite impressed that she got me to the Java Hut (the cafe in question) without me having any clue as to what she had planned. Adults 1 children 1...every one was a winner :)

After breakfast the day was pretty much a whirlwind of activity at Rachels house as she finished preparing for her massive wedding catering job that night and Ryan (her eldest) and I battled with the Wii to try and bend it to our will .... we were unsuccessful after about 3 hours of trying. We shall be victorious in the end though MARK MY WORDS Wii!!! I then had to abruptly leave as time had really got away from me and I was due at the venue of my birthday party in just 1.5hrs and that included a 1hr train trip. I quickly said goodbyes, much to the horror of Rach's children, and dashed for the train.

One disconcerting aspect of my visit to Gawler was that my mobile phone could not get any reception while there. Seems it was a problem with the phone as my sim card worked fine in Rachels phone and got a full signal. While riding on the train to Adelaide I still could not get a signal at all and in frustration smacked the crap out of my phone and shook it like an electrified shaking machine. It suddenly got perfect reception and I quickly called my sister in law to arrange a pick up from the Adelaide train station. Serendipitously, they were actually in Elizabeth at the time and my train was just about to pull into Elizabeth...so I hoped off and met with them and enjoyed a car ride to the city and a delightful chat with my 3y.o. niece Charlotte. It's really amazing to witness the passing of time in children, I remember when Charlotte was born and now she's 3 and talking about everything and every thing. She's quite clever and has a huge vocabulary and is such a sweet little girl. She provided the biggest laugh of the weekend when we were at dinner and I introduced her to one of my friends (Cash) who is a BIG guy easily 6ft tall and probably close to 200Kg. Upon being introduced Charlotte looked at him and with the sweetest little smile said "My my, you certainly are fat!". Of course it wasn't meant in malice and i'm pretty sure Cash would have been the biggest person she'd ever seen. But there certainly isn't any truth like that "out of the mouths of babes". Cash could see the funny side of it...and we both had a pretty big laugh about it. Kids are pretty cool :)

Anyway, Dinner was at the "Tap In" pub in Kent Town and I was really pleased by the amount of my friends and family that made the effort to attend. Many travelling quite some distance to get there and thus making the evening very enjoyable. I had the beef schnitzel with pepper sauce and it was divine almost (I said almost) as good as those served at the Earl of Leicester. Many laughs were had throughout the evening, many conversations had and many drinks consumed. I'm not exactly sure when it all ended but it was late and I was extremely drunk. So it was a two thumbs up event from me :) Cheers to Ben and Leah too who let me stay at their house for the evening. That bed was sooooOoooOo comfy :)

Sunday was my actual birthday and in all honesty when I woke up I had actually forgotten that it was. Leah greeted me in the morning with a big happy birthday hug and only then did I remember that it actually WAS my birthday. Pretty soon the SMS's and phone calls started wishing me the same. Due to me not really having too much time with Rachel at her place I asked her to meet me for lunch on Sunday if she had time. Thankfully she did and we met and went to lunch at the Exciter for some tasty eats. Had a good chat with her for an hour or so before she had to leave to go pick up her kids. I really appreciate you finding the time for me though Rach, you still Rock the hardest out of everyone I know :)

After lunch Ben, Leah and I went looking for some new headphones for me as I usually listen to my iPod when travelling. I pretty much only use my iPod in Melbourne when riding my bike and use a non-standard pair of headphones that I bought. This trip however I had only the original white headphones that came with the iPod when I bought it and which I had never used. When I tried them on the flight over the left one didn't even work .... gg Apple!

So we went looking and as we passed Target at the end of Rundle street I suggested we tried looking in there. Leah was adamant that Target didn't have headphones and it would be a waste of time and when it WAS proved to be a waste of time then *I* would owe her a Wendy's thickshake. Fine, I agreed, and thankfully Target DID have headphones ... much to Leah's disgust :)

After getting some awesome sony earphones we went and got my victory thickshake and then headed back to the car. Once mobile we embarked on what can only be described as "Leah's fruitless search for a luxury ocean liner that didn't exist" to fill in the last hour that we had before I had to be at the airport. We drove all the way out to outer harbour only to find it empty of all things shippy. Not a good day for Leah ;)

So we went back to Ben and Leah's place, collected my stuff and headed to the airport. I was pretty tired by this time and was hoping the flight would be as prompt and efficient as Fridays. True to form though Tiger wasn't on time and I had 2 hrs of "extra" time in the airport waiting for them to get their shit together (Is that even possible??). I went and got a coffee and took advantage of the free intarwebs and the all powerful iPod to update my Facebook profile about how much I really didn't want to go back to Melbourne....again :). Finally boarded the plane 2.5hrs after it was scheduled and headed back to Melbourne. I slept pretty much the whole way.

I got home with no drama's. Car was still in the car park which is always good and the drive home was pleasant. Got to my house at about 8:30pm and felt the familiar THUD of another awesome SA visit "officially" being over again. I unpacked and spent the next 2 hours discussing the problems of the world with Rachel via the internet. I actually enjoyed that quite a bit. Then it was time for bed and getting ready for another action packed excitement fest at work*

*may not accurately describe my job.
**This year I also almost made it through the whole day without thinking of the girl that unceremoniously broke my heart on my birthday in 2003 and had consequently tarnished and degraded every birthday since. It's actually rather pleasing to realise that time does actually heal most wounds and undo many wrongs. So thanks go out to everyone who made me enjoy myself so much this birthday that those memories got close to zero brain time this year. Much appreciated.

Hooray For Second Hand.

2009-02-14T22:40:00.008+11:00

On Friday I did a friend of mine a big favor by buying some stuff he needed to get rid of due to moving into a new house. What I got was an absolute bargain and I can't really believe Chapper (the friend) let me fleece him so badly on such awesome stuff. So here is a little test for all you people out there who are awesome enough to read my blog :)

Can you spot the differences in these 2 photos?

Pretty sweet huh? So yeah, I bought Chappers old home theater amp and speakers for a price that would make most people question Chappers sanity or at the very least make the same people wonder exactly how many hours a day Chapper spends in the vicinity of the backs of trucks. The system as a whole is quite amazing and the sound quality is just brilliant. Chapper and I played both the Terminator 2 (DTS) and Lord of the Rings (DTS-EX) DVD's on it to test it out and it was..well...It was exactly like a movie cinema in fact.

The A/V Receiver amp is an Onkyo and is a few years old now so not "current" technology but it still pumps out the sound and can make the windows rattle.

The speakers are absolutely brilliant too and I really can't believe I got them so damn cheap either. Wharfedale Diamond 8 speakers and subwoofer. There's 2 big floor standing front speakers, a big front center, 2 rear bookshelf speakers and a HUGE floor subwoofer.

Consequently I now have a "spare" mini home theater system (DVD player/Amp, 5 speakers and subwoofer) which is superfluous to requirements...if anyone want's it, give me a yell.

It was also Valentines day today throughout the world. Not that you'd have noticed here in Michael town. I spent the day doing housework, spraying weeds (which somehow grew back through where I nuked them last time?? Round-Up, Shmound-Up!!), hanging washing out and contemplating mowing the lawn...that's right...contemplating..I didn't actually get to that...simply because it looks so awful and weed infested..plus I have to somehow get the pride of lions, 3 rhinoceroses and wilder beasts off it before I can mow it. Maybe it'll get lucky tomorrow. Tomorrow I shall get up and go for a bike jaunt I reckon before MORE domestic duties will fill my day again. Grocery shopping and vacuuming and THEN washing the floors!! Hopefully I will be able to contain myself while having all that awesome fun :(

I need another holiday already.

MY FACE!!! My beautiful FACE!!!

2009-02-11T22:38:00.005+11:00

Tonight I had basketball again and we returned to our winning ways :) The team as a whole were fantastic and awesome and brilliant (I was actually all three...again). We were so good that the other team got a bit pissed off and forgot that Basketball is a non-contact sport. At one point I got the ball and turned to shoot and....

BAM!!

..one of the other teams players full-on pounded me in the face. I threw the ball away and put my hand up to my eye because he had really got me good. I pulled my hand down to do that "Check for blood ..." thing that you instinctively do...AND THERE WAS BLOOD!!! The guy had opened up a gash just under my eye and up across the bridge of my nose.

I had to go off the court for some stupid reason...blood rule or something. Here's a photo of me and my injury.

Anyway, the moral of the story is WE F@&KING WON !!!! Suck on that other team!!

Everythings burning.

2009-02-10T19:22:00.006+11:00

What an interesting time in Victoria. The hottest daytime temperature ever recorded in a capital city (47.6ºC on saturday) coupled with the most intense and destructive fires ever seen in the history of Australia. Every TV Channel and Every Radio station is pretty much constantly bombarding the airwaves with news on this horrible event. So far 173 people are confirmed dead and they are expecting to find well over 200 bodies in total once they get back into the worst affected areas. I know it sounds horrible when I say this, but I am getting a bit sick of hearing about this on TV. Before you jump down my throat let me qualify that statement. The news and current affairs coverage here in Melbourne is just so contrived and forced that you wish they'd just shut up. The worst offenders are Sevens "Sunrise" who are set up in the CFA "Staging Area" in Whittlesea VIC and constantly cross back and forward to each of their presenters who profess they are "Shocked" and "Distraught" and feeling for the victims. Whenever they can they drop in that they are working with "Pastors and Priests to help the distressed survivors". BAH, I can't really get across in words how much I want to punch them in the face. It is so obvious that they are there for ratings and their contrived compassion and "support" is offensive.

I've helped out as best I could from metro Melbourne though, I've donated money and blood and really hope that the rest of Australia gets behind the charity drives and donate to the red cross (www.redcross.org.au) so that the money goes straight to the people who need it most. The destruction is almost biblical...whole towns destroyed, whole families killed or even worse partially killed, ashen black landscapes that wouldn't be out of place in a nuclear explosion ground zero site. Do all you can these people have lost everything except hope and we can all give them that.

Last week was quite eventful for me, I had an interview for a job back in Adelaide on Tuesday that was quite long and went fairly well. Now I have a nerve wracking 2 week wait to find out the result and i'm finding it hard to stay calm and not get too excited. The job would be very interesting and diverse and would solve so many personal problems that I have at the moment.

On Wednesday my basketball teams impressive 4 wins in a row streak came to an end with an embarrassing defeat. It was really frustrating because we didn't play bad at all. In fact we played very well it's just that we missed VERY easy shots (well, the other guys did...I didn't :P) and our opposition were just the luckiest lucksters in luck town. Our defense was so good they couldn't get near the basket to get 2 points so they just continually lobbed in 3 pointers and kept getting them IN!!!!

It's also 2 weeks (and a bit) until my Birthday and I am going back to Adelaide because it falls on a weekend this year again. I've organised a night out in a pretty nice pub and am going to see all my favorite friends and family over the weekend. It's going to be fantastic....but like always .. short. Hopefully it will be the last time I have to "plan" to visit Adelaide fr this year :)

Fingers crossed. :)

Mould 'n' Mud? Really?

2009-02-02T21:11:00.006+11:00

Went for a quick ride on Sunday because it wasn't too hot in the morning and I felt like a real sloth after doing nothing on Saturday except watch TV...and wait...and watch TV...and wait. This was due to some guy saying he was going to come and repair some of my infamous "Mould Room". Needless to say, after arranging to come at 10am on Saturday morning...he didn't. He didn't come at 11am either. Or 12 or 1 or 2 or 3!! At 3:30pm he called me to say he was in Bendigo?? He said he'd be here in about 3 hrs...he wasn't. At 5:30pm he called again to say his truck had over heated and he'd not be coming at all now until Monday.....GRAND!

So he arrived today and carefully cut up the carpet in the mold room...not all the carpet mind you...he cut up just the bits that had mold on them and said "The carpet insurance only covers what is damaged..you'll get new carpet where I've cut...but it may not be "exactly the same carpet.". I asked him if he was sure? and if he was serious? Because look at this:

Can you imagine that with a completely different carpet in the bit were now there is wood?? MADNESS. I've often said that "Insurance is for idiots!!" because ...honestly...who would agree to coverage (hehe get it? I'm so witty) that said "we replace only whats destroyed with 'maybe' the same carpet"??? I'm glad it's not my house :)

Anyway, I digress, So while out riding on the dusty trail (as Melbourne had just had 3 days in a row over 40ºC...and YES, I know Adelaide had more, Adelaide always wins over Melbourne..it's a given.. so shush.) I came across something that I thought was initially a mirage...I mean it had to be... There was no way a huge puddle of water and mud would be out in plain sight on the trail with such harsh weather recently? Would there??

Wrong.

I went screaming through a huge muddy quagmire and got completely covered in mud and water..AWESOME :)

Check out this bike, admittedly the mud had dried when I got home, but does that look like it's been across a swamp or what? :)

Filthy

oooOOoOo Mud Spray!!

White Wall Tyres Are So Retro :)

Tomorrow also sees me standing at a very important crossroad of life. So much that I have wanted to change in my life is going to be a possibility should tomorrow go well. It's making me a bit panicky because I'm very nervous about the whole thing. If all goes to plan I will have some very good reasons to be happy. I can't really go into it on here as there are people who need not know about it. Yet. The select chosen few know what's going on and I trust they can keep it to themselves for a bit longer.

See you on the other side :)

What's got 14 arms, 14 legs and 7 heads and is UNBEATABLE?

2009-01-28T20:34:00.003+11:00

The SGE Injectors Basketball team that's what!

4 wins in a row now and looking like not stopping. Again we beat a team above us in the ladder into submission. We rocked as a collective. I got a bit peeved at no fouls getting called against the people pushing, hitting and jumping into me every time I went for a shot! But hey, I got 14 points so suck it other team :P

SGE 24 - 17 Lah-Who-Sa-Hers

Australia Day 2009

2009-01-26T19:42:00.023+11:00

Hope everyone had a good Australia day today. Mine was eventful and ended up on an awesome high.

I started out the day by going to the "Community Breakfast" here in good old Ringwood. The "Breakfast" started at 11am due to the Maroondah Council not wanting their event to clash with the "Official Melbourne Australia Day Breakfast" that was in Federation square in the CBD ..... 40KM away. The Maroondah version was ok, not a lot of people but enough to make it worthwhile I think.

There was a bush band playing for the whole 3 hrs and free cordial and sausages for everyone. The sausages where a bit hard to come by as the waiting line for service was a kin to what post-war east Germany was probably like. HUNDREDS of people in a line waiting for hours just to get something to eat. See.

Bush Band

Waiting in line for some breakfast

The highlight of the event was, of course, the singing of the national anthem. Now I had been lucky enough to have Sophie Feuerherdt (3) sing me the whole National anthem last year and while that was extremely impressive, today they sang a verse I hadn't even heard before...I tried to get a video of it but I missed. I think all in all they sung 4 verses!!

After the event was over I walked back home and did house chores for a few hours because it was quite hot and I wanted it to cool down a bit before embarking on my other planned event for the day. That event was the Lysterfield Mountain Bike Trail. Lysterfield is about a 1/2 hr drive south east of Ringwood near the start of the Dandenong ranges. Now I had heard from people at work that are pretty keen mountain bikers that Lysterfield was "good", "Ok", "Better Than Nothing" and various other non-exciting adjectives. Well let me preempt this blog entry and just say that these people are not correct.
Lysterfield was the most AWESOME place I have ever ridden a bike!!!

If people rate this as merely "OK", they obviously have ridden on some absolutely orgasmic trails somewhere else!

Let me explain. This trail is a purpose built mountain bike course, it actually consists of several interconnecting trails, one of which was actually the Commonwealth games mountain biking track. The trails are HARDCORE. I wasn't expecting them to be as challenging as they were and it was obvious that there had been a LOT of thought put into the design of every trail. To be honest, the trails go up some pretty steep hills and you just don't notice because such attention has been paid to making the trails fast or at worst a steady easy/moderate climb. Here's a graphic to show you what the whole park looks like. If you go around the circumference of the park in that picture...that's pretty much what I rode.

As visible there are 9 different "trails" but they all intersect and you can do one or all of them (provided you know WHERE you are....which I didn't...I had no idea where I was most of the time).

The scenery was...well I am sure it was nice but I really didn't look at it much because I was concentrating on the trail. Partly because the trail had "obstacles" that were built into it and as this was the first time I had ridden this trail I didn't know where they were and thus how fast I could go. Mostly I was concentrating on the trail because some complete F*&$%wads had booby trapped some parts of the track. I really don't understand the logic behind this as some of the stuff they had done was really dangerous and could easily kill someone. They had placed big logs across the trail on berns and in places where it was almost impossible to see them and then stop in time. They had dug "pungee spikes" into the trail like what you would errect to stop charging cavalry. I had to clear 4 or 5 different "traps" on my travels. Idiots. Look at this:

Booby Trap: Logs placed across the trail
by dickheads trying to kill someone.
These logs are directly after a very large jump
on a very steep downhill section.

The trail had enough "planned" obstacles to kill your self on as it was, they really didn't need unplanned ones too :). Here are some of the "planned" obstacles I encountered, thankfully there was always a "wuss" option on most of these where you could simply go around it.

Big log jump 1

Big Log jump 2

The trails were also well defined while you were riding them but also very tight and thankfully I only saw one rider heading down the same trail I was on in the opposite direction when i was stopped. Here's some trail pics.

Warning: may contain language not suitable for children :P

After reaching the top of "Worlds most ridiculously steep hill" I had a pit stop and needed to effect some field repairs (hahaha .. geddit?) on my bike. I couldn't change the front gears as the derailleur just wouldn't move, I hadn't noticed because I had just ridden up the hill in 1-1. I flipped the bike over to inspect the gearing, somehow a tiny pebble had lodged itself in between the spring and the derailleur guider. One in a million that the pebble was precisely the right size to fit there too...luckily I pried it out and was good to go. Also while I was repairing the bike some other riders arrived at the pit stop point to watch me being totally MacGuyver with just a twig and a splash of water. I could tell by the way they rode off quickly that they were well impressed.

As with all good rides there was a few dramas. I managed to crash not once but 1.5 times. The first 0.5 of a crash would have looked awesome had anyone seen it but alas no one was around. I managed to ride along pretty much only on my front wheel with the back wheel up at about an 80º angle for a few meters before somehow getting the back wheel back onto the ground. There was some minor non-erotic humping of a head-stock assembly during this event. I expect that to leave a mark. The second "Full one point zero" crash was a doozy. I saw the log coming up, I was all ready to bunny hop over it (yay for clipped pedals) and when I executed the "hop" the bike struck the log with the frame and stopped DEAD. I didn't. Thankfully my shoes de-clipped and I soared like a chicken in flight to land face first a few meters down the trail. Pics or it didn't happen you say?

Glasses covered in dirt after my
unceremonious dismount at
speed followed by my 9/10 face plant.

Bike in a heap after crash. I hit that log at about 25km/h
and the bike just stopped dead. I kept going :)

Luckily there was no serious damage past a cut on my leg about 20cm long (cool..because chicks dig scars) and a slightly sore left wrist. Luckily I am right handed ;) ;).

All in all the ride was simply awesome. I'll definitely be going back there more often and Rachel you HAVE to come back here so I can take you there for a ride I guarantee you will love it.

After I finally got back to the car I was pretty exhausted but manage to give this post ordeal interview.

Warning: may contain worse language than the last video which is still not suitable for children :P

Ride Stats:
Distance: 17.8km
Time: 2h 48m
Avg. Speed: 11 km/h
Top Speed: 44 km/h
Crashes: 1.5
Rating: *****

Weekly Wrap.

2009-01-25T17:09:00.019+11:00

Well another week has gone by and that makes 2 for the year back in Melbourne and 2 back at work. So far the excitement is almost ... well ... it's almost...non-existent. I think I have made a terrible, terrible mistake over the Christmas and New Years break, that being having more fun than some (i.e. me) would say was 'Humanly Possible' during my holidays. Upon returning to my Melbourne reality the mundane nature of my existence here is thrown into sharp contrast. Oh well, all steps are being taken to change that so no use dwelling on it...again...i'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about it by now.

This week I got my car serviced for the year. I do so little driving (relatively) during each year now that I barely make it to the scheduled "X0,000km" scheduled service in any 12 month period. This was the 70,000km service and after driving to Adelaide and back over Christmas plus a whole heap of driving while there I reached 68,000 km. That's a whopping 8,000km 's total for 2008. Anyway, I organised for a loan car while my car was getting serviced and I got a brand new 2009 model, Peugeot 308 Turbo. This car was awesome and I really might have to go and get one when I deciede to get rid of my current car (2003 Peugeot 307) in about 2010.
here's some pics:

On Wednesday I played basketball again (at the ungodly hour of 10:10pm) and for the third week in a row WE WON!! We played so well it was amazing, we looked like a completely different team to the one that played last year. We moved well, we passed well, we didn't make a lot of stupid errors and we managed to capitalise on the stupid errors the other team made. So at the end of the 50 mins we had a very respectable win of 39 - 30. I was awesome as always and got a swag of baskets. I also think I have managed to get my sore foot problem under control with a elastic pressure brace. Foot doesn't hurt much at all anymore, even after playing.

Yesterday, I took the initiative and went round to my friend Dave's place in an attempt to spice up my saturday with the company of someone else in a non-work environment. I see Dave everyday at work and we both spend a large amount of the week determining how we can inject some excitement into the "Ringwood Weekends". Dave also lives in Ringwood like me and most weeks comes up with these grand plans about "Going to look at things he might want to buy". This week (on Monday at least) Dave was contemplating "A road bike", on Tuesday he was contemplating "Getting a car", Wednesday had him mulling over "ADSL and a new PC"..etc etc. You see how the pattern goes? Dave however has one flaw, he doesn't like spending money...on anything...ever. When he dies, he'll be buried in a big pile of his money because he'll still have it all. Accordingly, none of his contemplatory purchases ever progress past the "thnking about it" stage. Therefor whenever *I* go out to purchase stuff I drag him along so as (1) to get him out of his hermit hut and into the general population and (2) to show him that buying things can be fun. I arrived at his house and knocked on the door...he wasn't home. Hahaha I just find that so funny ... Dave is ALWAYS home and the one time I deciede to go there on a whim he's gone out. Anyway, a quick phone call and I discovered he was only 200m away at the shopping center near his house. Adventuring in baby steps :)

During the last few days at work there had been some full on discussions about biking and bikes in general due to about 100 different bike sale catalogs appearing in most peoples mailboxes. I got into a discussion with one of the bigger bikeheads at work about clip pedals on mountain bikes. Ever since my huge crash in Germany I have not been a fan of clipped pedals and shoes on mountain bikes because during my crash, my clips didn't release and consequently I got pulverised by the cocktail of steep hill, bike, speed and falling off. Ever since then I have been using standard BMX type pedals on my bikes because they are easier to save yourself from a nasty accident if you need to get your foot down. I've already had 1 near miss recently where the bike slipped on gravel during a turn and I was able to get my foot down to correct the skid and not crash. If that happened in clipped pedals I would have been nursing some new injuries because there was no way I could have unclipped my foot and got it down in time. Having said that, the BIG advantage of clipped pedals is that if you ever leave terra firma, say when you bunny hop a horse jump or launch yourself over a fallen tree etc you stay "Attached" to the bike (which is always a good thing when hurtling through the air) and can land safely on your wheels. Anyway, I was sort of convinced by the resident mountain bike expert at work (He "Races" most weekends on cliff faces) that clipped pedals are good and I should at least try them again. He suggested "Hybrid Pedals" which have a clip on one face of the pedal, and a normal face on the other side for when you want to ride in sneakers/runners etc.

With this in mind Dave and I headed off to look at various bike stuff at various stores. I was now keen to get some hybrid pedals and as a consequence some cleated shoes with which to use with them. Also if not cost prohibitive, a Fox Flux helmet (turn out it WAS cost prohibitive). We went to a few stores to find nothing that interested us really (Except Dave is now "Contemplating" buying a Bianchi carbon road bike worth about $4000..hahaha). One thing that did strike me (well, Us) is that the 2009 Giant mountain bikes are uuUuUuugly!! I found some really nice looking pedals at one of the stores we visited and I bought them. This store also had some Fox clothing on sale too so I also managed to get 2 biking tops for less than the price of 1!! woot. The bike store lady also gave me $10 off the total cost too :)

After getting the pedals out of the way I also had to get shoes. Having been present at some one elses bike shoe purchase recently and seeing what was available from Specialized (who made my bike) they were on top of the list for me. Unfortunately only one store in the area sells Specialized bikes (and "stuff") so if they were too expensive there I wouldn't be getting them today and would get them off the internet later. We went to the Specialized store and loked at the prices they were OK, but I had seen them cheaper on the internet. At a previous store I had tried on about 20 different pairs of shoes and rapidly come to the conclusion that sizes across brands were not conforming to any known standard. a 45 in one brand was a 43 in another and a 47 in a third brand??? This would make buying shoes over the interwebs impossible because the "correct" size would be anyones guess and brand dependant. So I tried on the Specialized shoes and found the right size. The shoes were SoOoo pretty and felt so good on. It was very apparent, very quickly that my current addidas mountain bike shoes were the wrong size for my feet now (as they HURT to wear after about 30mins of riding). With this purchase TOTALLY justified I bought them... $150 for such awesome shoes really was a no-brainer.

After dropping off Dave (who'd successfully held off and bought nothing...who'd have guessed?) I took all my loot home and proceeded to "modify" my bike to use the new pedals. A few frustrations ensued in trying to find "tools" (I knew I had some...somewhere...?) the deed was done and I eagerly awaited the morning to try the new stuff out.

So this morning I got up and got "biked up" and headed out on the bike. I decided to stick to the boring, flat, paved eastlink path for a while to get used to clipping in, clipping out and general riding with my feet stuck to the pedals. The biggest hurdle was getting "clipped in" quickly. When stopping at lights and stuff you invariably have to clip-out and when you can go again you want to be clipped in as quickly as possible because you need to pedal in order to move (der!). It was hard to gauge where the cleat actually was on the bottom of the shoe but eventually I was getting it right pretty much straight away. I felt I had re-mastered the "clip out" ankle flick pretty much straight away and wanted to try some "off road" action :)

I headed off eastlinks trail into the bushland and fire trails and tried my luck at getting some "air" between the ground and me on the bike on some of the parts of the trail that have jumps. All I can say is that clipped pedals now OFFICIALLY ROCK! I did some awesome jumps and landed them all perfect as my feet couldn't leave the pedals :)

Here's some random "out riding" shots from today:

Ride Stats -
Length: 23km
Time: 2h 34m
Avg Speed: 15.3km/hr
Max Speed: 51km/hr (Big fire trail hill)

Tomorrow I will go and ride on another trail that was the Commonwealth games mountain bike course. It's a bit of a drive away...but apparently well worth the trip. Stay tuned for that report :)

Nature 101 + Random Stuff

2009-01-18T20:09:00.011+11:00

I went for a leisurely bike ride this morning because...well...I just wanted to ride my bike. So after waking up at about 8am and not being able to sleep anymore I decided to go get bike sweaty and headed off on the Stumpy for some Adrenalin action. There were quite a few other people riding (as usual) and a lot of walkers/joggers as well, which always makes for "fun" as the trails are not that wide. I heard about the "Off the normal route" trails from some of the bike-heads at work so decided to give some a try. It was good fun but FAR too many really steep climbs that seemed to lead to more steep climbs. The saving grace was that even though these climbs were an absolute bitch and I wished the bike actually had about 5 more granny gears, the reward for reaching the top is that on the way back it's all downhill blitzing, dodging wildlife and trying to get the speedo over 45km/h without swallowing a tree. Anyway I was out for about 3.5 hours and did the respectable distance of 52km, which consisted of a lot of little tracks in the bush and some paved eastlink connector trails.

Rest Spot on the way back. I'm being sun smart and standing in the shade.

End of the offroad downhill trail which connects to the Eastlink bike trail. I came down the gravely trail from above.

Pit Stop Serenity.

Nature and high Tech bike weaponry.

Pics or it didn't happen :)
51.4Km which is 52Km in my book :P

Some other snippets I found while uploading the biking pics reminded me of some events that transpired while on holidays. These were worthy of mentioning here because one is just amazing and the other is ...well...it involves food and Rachel so it must be pretty good by first principles.

The first pic was this, on my last night in Adelaide over Christmas/new years before coming back to Melbourne I took Rachel out for dinner to say thanks for the accommodation/goodwill etc. We went to some Italian cafe/restaurant in Gawler who's name doesn't just escape me, but I think was completely wiped from my memory by this:

Bethany 2002 Vintage Shiraz Cabernet

Now, anyone that's ever talked to me about wine would know how little I know about the stuff and how I refer to all wine as 'tasting the same...like dish water....or tofu...or tofu cooked in dishwater". I grew up in the Barossa Valley and just didn't "get" what all the wine fuss is about. I never understood why people got so obsessed with this liquid when all the wines I had ever tasted reminded me of bathwater. Safe to say I was not a passenger on the wine train. However, as both of us knew little about the subtleties of wine appreciation we decided that "more expensive = better" so went with a $35 bottle and that was it. The amazing thing was that even though I was saying to myself internally "This is going to taste crap and you won't enjoy it and you'd better get a beer as well!" the wine actually tasted nice...like..REAL nice. I couldn't stop drinking it in fact ... and neither could Rachel. By the end of the meal I think we were both fairly well plastered. Both of us reckon that the waiter had spiked the bottle with vodka when we weren't watching because that one bottle nearly had us professing undying love for complete strangers and contemplating karaoke. This was a new first for me though as prior to this wine was my drink of choice usually only at weddings ....when all the other forms of alcohol had run out..... and was used exclusively as my "Ok, Mikey you've obviously had far too much to drink as you're now drinking WINE!!!! ... and chatting up the bridesmaids." drunkenness barometer.

Well, because we ordered red wine at this dinner we ordered our food to compliment it in absolutely no way what so ever. We chose seafood ... to which our waiter scoffed as "apparently" red wine and seafood don't go together....Rachel and I are however prone to pushing ideals and boundaries into the "weird and unorthodox".

(crappy pic quality due to my phone in very low light)

Our chosen meal was an Italian Seafood Platter and was, in a word, AWESOME. In several words..It was the finest meal of seafood I think i've ever had. It consisted of Prosciutto wrapped awesome Scallops, Garlic steamed awesome Mussels, Awesome Salmon fillets in Awesome sauce, Garlic Prawns with some crunchy awesome bread topping . Smoked salmon with some sort of drizzled awesome sauce on it. The meal got the "Thumbs up" from Rachel as well and as that is the only truly accurate "scale" I know of ,and trust, it was obviously a great choice for food.

Another pic that was on my phone was this one:

42 - 30

That's right...after my team finishing 2008 off with a win against the top team to go 2 - 9 for the current season. We came out all guns blazing in the first game for 2009 to CRUSH our opponents (the 2nd place team) 42-30. So now we are 3 -9. We rock. Hard to believe that we are on the bottom of the ladder?!?!?!

The Newest of Years.

2009-01-12T20:09:00.004+11:00

After not posting for a very long time I suppose I should write something about what I've been doing.

Well I just finished a very tough 3 week holiday stretch over Christmas and New Years. It was basically the only time I had had off all year save for 3 days in September 2008. My "Terminally Single" lifestyle allows me to head back to South Australia to spend it all with my family and SA friends. I also really love Adelaide and SA in general and any excuse to go back there is a good one in my book.

I divided my time there completely unequally between family and Friends :) I really had an awesome, awesome time and when the 3 weeks were up I had done so many excellent things that I really thought I had been there for months and it felt great. I went mountain biking (on real mountains), to country markets, to country brothers houses, to the city, to about 500 different out-dinners, to Christmas parties and ate worlds best baked ham, to friends houses for dinners and catch ups, water slide extravaganza's, So much Wii I lost count, biking through the city, New years with Rachel and time with my Mum, Nana, brothers and sister and their respective other halves.

Last year started off so well with work but had seriously got tiring and unenjoyable by the end of the year. The ability to leave it all behind and not think about it for 21 days was very cathartic. This year has unfortunately started off the same way, with the fall out of last year still settling but there may be light at the end of the tunnel with some new directions being planned within the company that I would actually be interested in rather than what I currently work on which I really have no interest in. We'll see.

This year I made a few resolutions and generally, as a rule, I don't normally do that. I find that making goals is all well and dandy but you shouldn't need an "occasion" to try and better yourself and it should be a constant process. I live by the ethos that "I only get one chance at this life thing" and so my resolutions are pretty much all aimed at improving my enjoyment and experiences in life. I am financially well off and money has not been a problem since I got my current job and used last year to get completely out of debt. I payed off all my car loan (2 years early) and finally committed a vast amount of money ($8K) to getting rid of my HECS debt. So now I don't owe anybody anything. If only I could afford to buy a house on my single, full time employed wage as 25% of my wage every month is spent on rent. I'd love to change that, but the thought of putting roots down in Melbourne really doesn't appeal to me. I like the fact, and feel safe in knowing, that I can leave pretty much when ever I want should the opportunity arise.

So this year is all about "progression", onwards and upwards, a completely "me" year. I resolve to change some things in my life that I have put up-with for a very long time and decided it's time to change/fix them.

I have been blessed with very good health in my life and save for a few minor accidents and one incredibly large one have had a pretty good run. In the 5 years I have been in Melbourne now I have never had to visit a doctor. However, like most people I have certain aspects of my body that I am not happy about and this year I will endeavor to fix them all, regardless of cost because I am quite simply tired of being scared to do anything about it and having to explain to everyone I meet why I look the way I do.

So here we go with the list:

Resolution 1.

Organize elective surgery to remove an "imperfection" I have been carrying for the last 20+ years. I think it's quite an ugly eyesore but as it doesn't effect my day to day living I just learnt to accept it but always play it down when people notice it and comment. Today I put this resolution into action. Doctors appointment tomorrow, referral to hospital to follow.

Resolution 2.

Look into, and if not ridiculously expensive, get my teeth fixed. After another year of explaining to countless people why my teeth look like I have been on the receiving end of a kicking I have decided that I have had enough of seeing myself in photo's and realising that I don't ever smile and that when I do I look awful. I have to constantly explain to "everyone" I befriend or meet why my teeth are so bad and that I can't afford to fix them. I was crushed when years ago I waited on the public register to get them fixed because the price to do it was $36,000, only to be told that they wouldn't be fixed because I had gotten a Ph.D. scholarship 4 whole years later. It has been a burden i've carried for about 25 years now and I think that it has affected me in a way that is not good. I've never really felt handsome or even remotely "good looking" because of it and It has probably affected my self confidence and opinion of myself. This year something will be done about this.

Resolution 3

Get "Happy" again with my lifes position. This may sound like a daunting task to some and it actually does to me too. I have had only sporadic periods of time over the last 9 years where I have felt truly happy and content. I've had to learn to live much of my adult life alone and fend for myself with little help or encouragement or support. Of course I have had the support of my family whenever I've needed it and they are always only a phonecall away. I've spent much of my adult life wishing for things to happen and waiting for the day when they finally do, but never actually actively MADE them happen. This year marks my 5th year in Melbourne and that has got to change. When I am here I wish I was elsewhere, and when I am elsewhere I don't miss my life here at all. I am kept here by a job I don't particularly care about and nothing else. I mainly miss my family and my long term friends. Everything just feels wrong here and always has...I've tried to enjoy it and make the most of it and experience all it has to offer but I really find Melbourne experience lacking in every aspect. This year by December 2009 I *will* no longer be living in Melbourne and will be living and working in Adelaide and hang the consequences.

Resolution 4.

Like many people I am "moderately" active. I would like to be more active but age is now beginning to show me that I am no longer a teenager and won't bounce back from injuries as quickly or at all as before. I will endeavor to ride to work when the weather and commitments allow it and not see riding to work as a "secondary" option. Walk more places when I want to go "window shopping" (eastland, knox etc) they're really not that far away.

Resolution 5.

I also endeavor to eat a lot healthier food (this is already a work in progress). I have eaten "conveniently" for a long time but spending time with Rachel has shown me that I don't have to eat badly to eat tasty food. That girl can whip up some mighty fine food using very basic ingredients and I will continue to make an effort to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables on a daily basis.

Resolution 6.

Again, due to the influence of Rach, i'll try and increase my "Green Rating". I'm nowhere near as green as she is but during the last year I have incorporated things into my everyday life to reduce my impact on the environment. I've stopped buying certain things and started buying others in order to accomplish this. I have also managed to go completely "bagless" again when shopping and refusing unnecessary bags when offered. This year i'll keep all these practices current and endeavor to adopt more.

So there you have it, my forthcoming year in a nutshell. Fingers crossed that I can achieve it all.

I am still alive

2008-12-03T17:56:00.001+11:00

Just in case you were wondering :)

New Bike Day 2

2008-11-09T16:26:00.002+11:00

I woke up this morning and was just itching to go for a ride. I checked the weather and it was meant to be sunny and warmish 24°C. I got straight out of bed and put on my riding clobber, grabbed the iPod and glasses and set off on the new bike. I decided to stick to the eastern trail today just in case anything went wrong with the bike and I had to walk it home. It is an absolutely brilliant bike, it is just so well made and everything works as it should while riding. Gear changes are so smooth and the bike feels so comfortable due to the dual suspension . The dual suspension really swallows every bump and bounce while riding and you instantly wonder why you put up with a hard-tail bike all the previous years. Here's some photo's from today when I gave it it's inaugural "spin".

Pausing at my usual "breather" spot

Next break by the lake.

Action cam of the trail

More of the Trail

Monster hill climb

New addition to the family.

2008-11-08T17:38:00.009+11:00

For a while now I have been considering getting another bike. While there is "technically" nothing wrong with my current bike I have had it for 5 years nearly and I started entertaining the idea of getting it a playmate.

I had my eye on a Trek Fuel EX8 and was pretty sure this was the bike I was going to get. It's top of the line in every aspect and accordingly came with a hefty price tag of $3700. There are however many different "brands" of bikes and what many people don't realize is that there is really not that much difference between brands. They all use the same componentry (Shimano, RockShox, SRAM etc) and this is even more so when you get to bikes costing thousands of dollars. They are all using the BEST components from the same manufacturer and only the bike frame really differs. Then it basically comes down to aesthetics, whether you look at the bike and go "hmmm..that's ok" or "Wow, that's nice!" or "Holy shit!!! That is like what an orgasm would look like if it had wheels and a seat!"

Today I went into the city to various bike dealers because at the moment the weak Australian dollar coupled with the credit crisis and the imminent release of 2009 series bikes across every manufacturers range means that current stock is being run-out. Also, pretty much every brands 2009 bikes would be significantly more expensive than the current years stock. I had a list of bikes that I liked the "look" of and wanted to see if any of them "did it" for me in the flesh.

One bike company has pretty much cornered the market in the "Orgasm Inducing Aesthetics" category, and if they made cars they'd be a kin to Porsche or Ferrari. That company is Specialized and they make arguably the best bikes in the world and are usually ridiculously expensive. They are so expensive that you put them in the "If I won the lottery" wish list and cast your attention realistically at Avanti, Giant, Trek etc brand bikes. Well, during my quest I went to look at Total Rush ( a dealer who only sells Specialized bikes) because they had a HUGE discount on their awesome "Stump Jumper FSR" dual-suspension mountain bike. It was $700 off!!!

I had loaded up my debit VISA card with the required moneys just in case one of the bikes I saw that day was worthy of a purchase there and then. When I got to Total Rush the place was pristine and perfect. It just oozed "quality" and the array of bikes on show were very impressive. There were mountain bikes, road bikes, bmx's etc all with prices on them that made you whistle and step away in case you accidentally broke one and then had to mortgage your house, or kidneys, or sell your kids to cover the cost. The most expensive bike there was as expensive as a new car (over $25,000). I found the Stump Jumper FSR comp bike and gave it a once over....it was absolutely amazing. I picked it up and it weighed only a few kilo's but it just looked so damn nice. I got served by a guy called Simon who was very nice and definitely knew his products. He asked me all sorts of questions about what I currently rode, were I rode and why I thought that this new bike was what I wanted. I answered his questions and he said "you've made a very good choice in the stump jumper". So I took another look at the bike and asked if I could sit on it, he said "yeah go ahead" and smiled, he had probably seen what was about to happen a million times already and was chuckling internally because he knew what was just about to transpire was inevitable.

I hopped on the bike and sat down...the bikes dual suspension adjusted under my weight and it felt like I was sitting on a cloud. I started to grin and looked at Simon and said "Oooooh, I really like this bike!!". He nodded and said "Oh I know, you won't ever regret buying it". So then we start talking options, the bike needed pedals first and foremost (as high end bikes don't come with pedals...you're meant to BYO so they match with your bike shoe clips). Simon asked what pedals I have on my Avanti and I said "clipless". He tried to persuade me to get "clipped" pedals on this bike but I said i really didn't like them and that I actually had some at home that if I ever felt the urge to try them again I could put those on. We settled on some clipless flat-pedals and moved on.

Simon rolled the bike out back to the "work Stand" and hoisted it up, he tightened and adjusted all the gearing and derailleurs, installed the pedals and then told me to follow him to the dyno-trainer. He installed the bike on the dyno and told me to get on and start pedaling. I did, and straight away the reason this bike cost $3600 was apparent. The gearing was as silky smooth as I have ever experienced, you couldn't actually feel the gears change?? That was a huge "WTF" for me. Simon measured my pedal gait and adjusted the seat height and shock absorber rebounds so they were perfect for "me". This was quite an awesome feeling to know that this bike was being made and setup for me and me alone and if anyone else was to get on and ride it the settings would be all wrong and it would ride like crap. After the dyno testing and rider measurement and tweaks I was asked if there was anything I thought was wrong with the current setup? The only thing I didn't like was that the handlebar grips were extremely thin in diameter and it really didn't feel right while holding them...BAM off they came and on went thicker ones which were better but not perfect...BAM off they came and different ones went on until they felt right. Awesome. The bike was just so god damned perfect in every way that I just had to buy it....what was weird (and encouraging) was that no mention had been made up until that point that I would *actually* buy the bike. They obviously just knew that once you'd sat on it and had a pedal and experienced just how perfect the whole thing was....how could anyone say no??

Needless to say, I left the store this day with that bike :)

So now I am the very excited (and proud) owner of a Specialized mountain bike :) It's like a dream come true and hopefully the first of many that I have in the pipeline at the moment. It's such a shame that it's raining here in Melbourne (who'd have thought??) or i'd be out riding this thing like .... well ..... I'm sure you can come up with your own suitable metaphor ;)

Here is the new baby in all it's glory.

And here is a picture to give you an accurate idea of just how brilliant, awesome and SEXY this bike is!!

Two weeks of nothing much happening....that I can talk about ;)

2008-10-23T16:10:00.007+11:00

Wow, just saw I haven't done a blog for almost 2 weeks. So what's been happening? Not a hell of a lot really.....work is just being retarded like ...well...unfortunately that's becoming normal..so it's being retarded like normal. Lots of work planned but it is not hard work and just constant and unmotivatingly boring usually. Plus the Mass Spectrometer No.1 has died again and i'm still trying to fix it. As of today I think I have won and it "Should" now work with a bit (lot) of luck.

Foolishly bid on another mountain bike on Ebay. It had no reserve and no bids so I put a dollar on it, it's currently sitting at $167 which is 10% of it's retail price (my Max bid is $250). We'll see how I go....not fussed at all if I don't win. Been out riding most weekends now as the weather gets better and last weekend I went somewhere i'd never been before on the bike and I was so glad I did. It was possibly the best trail I've ever been on...very reminiscent of Germany. It was very "rollercoastery" and again I got overly enthusiastic and nearly repeated my crash that put me in Hospital for 6 months. Luckily I held it and nothing happened.

Today also is 4.00 weeks until I am in Adelaide again. I always look forward to trips to Adelaide for various reasons. However, this time i've actually worked myself into a frenzy of excitement (with a LOT of help from certain friends). It will be so awesome that I really can't wait for the time to arrive. Still way too far away for actual plans to be un-vagued .. but i'll be in Adelaide so that's already a brilliant start. I'll certainly be "doing" a lot that weekend :)

The new season of my Basketball has also been running for 6 weeks now and so far our team is 0 - 6. That's 0 wins 6 losses ..... not pathetic, but frustrating. We are losing mostly by 1 or 2 points so the teams are very evenly matched in this division for once. If we lose next week..then EVERYONE on the ladder has beaten us and we'll pretty much have an un-losable grasp on last place. Here's the ladder HERE My Team is SPAP (feel free to decode that anagram to describe us!). I've been playing well and am in danger of being our best player as I have really been brilliant lately. I've got pretty much 80% of our score every week, not because the rest of the team sucks ;) but because I get good passing and make it hard for the other team to stop me.

Alright...home time. This blog was brought to you by SGE :)

More biking around

2008-10-11T20:04:00.011+11:00

After a hefty sleep-in today I finally dragged myself out of bed at about 11am and decided that rather than go straight into the shower I would go and get sweaty. I grabbed my riding gear, bike iPod and water and set out on the bike once again.

Today I was going to see how quickly I could repeat the journey of a few weeks ago on the Eastlink bike path...but this time I was going to take the Dandenong Creek gravel path for the ultra-hardcore :)

I got to my turn around point from the last ride in about 25 mins...No shit. I couldn't believe that I got there that quickly but I kept going towards the "off-road" portion of the trail. Once I arrived I found out pretty quick that I wouldn't be able to take many photo's .. the trail was insane :) There were a few skinny little paths through the trees and some of the biggest hills I have ever seen. I even had to go down to the "1-1 Granny Gears" on the bike to get up a couple of them.

These photo's are just random ones I found on the internet....because I didn't really have time to take any photo's while riding through the undergrowth and over rocks, logs, mountain cats and bears etc. They do give an idea of the terrain I encountered while riding though. I would have said the terrain and hills I went up, through, over and around were 5 or 6 times steeper... :P

I did manage to take some at a rest stop though after I eventually found my way out of the wilderness ... these ones are real, but nowhere near as exciting :)

All up I was on the bike for a little under 4 hours and I was quite surprised how energetic I still felt at the end considering the completely "non-flat" nature of the trail.

Just Crazy.

2008-10-06T12:52:00.004+11:00

I got into work this morning and sat at my desk. As you can see my "Filing System" is well implemented.

Then because I had spent the majority of the weekend cleaning stuff......before I could stop myself...THIS happened.

CRAZYNESS!!

How will I find anything now???

Bike Porn.

2008-10-04T16:53:00.012+10:00

A while ago someone mentioned to me that they didn't think it was weird that they wanted to sleep with a new bike they had bought because it was so damn sexy. Well, I thought at the time that it, in actual fact, WAS a bit weird :)

Today, My friend Dave and I went looking at bikes in the several hundred bike stores around us out here in outer eastern Melbourne and now I TOTALLY understand the "Sex with bikes" way of thinking. :)

I have had my eye on this bike for a few weeks now. It's a 2009 Trek Fuel EX 8 full suspension Mountain Bike which retails around $4000.

During the week Dave and I researched where we could see one in the flesh and in a true piece of serendipity the BIGGEST Trek dealer in Melbourne is actually in Croydon VIC which is one suburb from where I live :).

We went in and they had 3 Fuel EX8's on display and my GOD were they nice looking bikes, like REAL GOOD LOOKING!! Two had Black frames with red highlights and the other was lime green with white highlights and was awesomely awesome. They were also on sale for $400 off retail. However, not actually being there today to purchase one (as above all else i'd hate to think I was that predictable) I just stood there and salivated. When the bike shop guy asked if I needed any help I almost asked him if I could take the bike to the change room with a box of tissues.....it was just soooo sexy.

Dave and I looked at several stores today and while the Trek was definitely a winner, at the Bayswater Cycles shop another bike caught my eye. This was also right up there in the sexy bike stakes. If only my bed was big enough for a threesome with the Trek and this baby here:

Merida All Mountain 3000-D
(Can you say "PHWOoOAAaaRRR!")

and in the flesh it's just as bike-gasm inducingly good.

This Merida and the Trek both had some of absolute BEST componentry that you can get on Mountain Bikes. Namely 29-Speed Shimano Deore XT derailleurs, Fox shocks, Swalbe or Bontraeger rims and wheels. All awesome and all expensive. The price for each bike was around the $3.5K mark with the Merida being slightly cheaper due to it being the current end of line model. Looks like I'll have to convince myself why I *NEED* one of these bikes in the very near future and take one home and show it a really good time :)

Also, due to nearly every store having a sale on today I managed to also get hold of a Fox Mountain Biking combo of shorts and shirt for the Paltry sum of $160. They are so comfy (I'm actually wearing them now while typing this :P). The shorts are fantastic they have inner chamois shorts (like lycra but not as tight, but make me look just as hot :P) and then outer tough nylon/cotton blend shorts just what you need to go whipping through trees without leaving welts all over your legs.

THUD!!

2008-10-01T09:32:00.004+10:00

That’s me coming back to reality again after another weekend in Gawler with Rachel and, this time, her full compliment of sick children. I had planned to just have a very lazy weekend with Rach doing pretty much nothing and just relaxing and enjoying her company (because..you know…she’s pretty awesome). The week prior to my visit saw her kids progressively fall victim to a virus that is currently doing the rounds in Gawler so by Friday all 4 kids were ill in varying degrees.

So I left work at 4pm on Friday and drove out to the airport for my 7pm flight. I again had flights with Tiger Airways (because I am a stupid, stupid man) and true to form the flight was an absolute shambles. I arrived at the Tiger terminal at 5:30pm and joined the HUGE throng of people waiting to board planes. A quick look at the departures board showed that both scheduled flights that Tiger had were already delayed by ½ h. Great. I called the relevant people in Adelaide and informed them that the arrival/pick-up/delivery times would now be later and waited to be processed in the queue. 40mins later I was checked in (carry on only *thumbs up* ) and made my way to the departure lounge and settled in for a long wait with my iPod for company.

I listened to music for about an hour before it dawned on me that we should actually be boarding now if the plane was 1/2hr delayed?? I went over to the departure board and looked again, the plane had been pushed out another 30 mins and was now running an hour late. I could feel the “Tiger Furrow” forming in my brow and my face contorting into a scowl. I once again informed the people expecting me in Adelaide that there were further delays and I would contact them again when I was actually getting on the plane (it couldn’t be that long …could it?). I sat there patiently waiting with a facial expression probably pretty similar to that which soldiers who are about to go into battle have. I was so annoyed at this airline and their complete inability to be on time EVER. They may be cheap but that doesn’t mean customers should forgive them for being ridiculously unorganised.

The “revised” boarding time arrived and went. Finally we started boarding the plane at 8:20pm … not bad Tiger only 1hr20m late, a real improvement on the 4 ½ hrs delay last time. Thinking the worst was behind me now an I could finally relax and get ready for all the impending awesomeness of Adelaide I sat in my allocated seat (a Window .. SCORE!) and settled in for the flight. Then the captain of the plane came on the speaker and apologised for the delay citing some rubbish that I didn’t listen to as the reason for it. He finished talking and the cabin crew started doing whatever it is they do. The captain then came on the speaker again and in a shaky voice informed us that Melbourne airport had closed all but one runway due to low cloud cover and there was now a “Queue” for taking off and landing. We had an “Estimated Time of Take-off” 40 mins from NOW. You are F$#king KIDDING ME!!!! The annoyance of everyone on the plane was made known by a tsunami of expletives and sighing. The captain graciously let us all turn on our mobile phones and make calls to inform people of this latest delay. I called my mum and told her of the latest delay and her reply pretty much summed up what I was thinking, it was a four letter word starting with “F”.

Eventually we took off and flew to Adelaide I found mum and we left the airport (paying $4 for parking….WOW. The same park time at Melbourne Airport would have been $20). Mum was tired and didn’t really want to go out to Gawler but she could see how much I wanted too and agreed. Thanks Mum, I’m sure I was too irritated and pissed off after that flight to really show my appreciation at the time, but I REALLY did appreciate it…you rock :). I arrived at Rachels place around 10:30pm and she was still up thankfully. We had a nice chat and a quick Chai (which I forgot to pack yesterday when I left…DOH!) and went to bed as I was pretty tired.

Saturday arrived and for the life of me I can’t remember what we did in the morning. I remember only going for a BBQ lunch (and Footy Final) at Rachels parents place with all the associated brothers, sisters and respective partners and cousin etc. I also remember that I was somehow able to cut up a whole heap of fruit salad for this party “The wrong way”. That’s right, you read correctly...apparently there is a wrong way to slice up fruit....who’d have thought anyone could stuff that up?? :P In all honesty the days actually just blurred into one and while I remember individual events…their order is a little hazy. This is due to very disrupted sleep patterns (and not in the good way). With Rach’s kids all being various degrees of “Sick” night times were absolute chaos to someone who has for the last 36 years gone to bed at hour X and slept uninterrupted through to hour Y to be woken by an alarm. The amount of times Rachel has to get up and deal with a child throughout the night was quite an eye opening experience for me. I know it’s easy for me to be completely overawed by it when in actual fact it is probably normal behaviour for every mum that has ever existed (and my limited research into the matter has proved this to be the case .. if you count looking at me with a somewhat disgusted look when I ask if that is normal for mums). Nevertheless the complete sleep deprivation she put herself through over the weekend by just being a mum was astonishing and to do it without a second thought really is impressive. I tried my best to offer assistance and help out in any way I could because, to me, what she does daily is herculean and if it was me I’d be a wreck in a few hours...well, probably minutes actually.

As usual the weekend was over far too quickly I wasn’t looking forward to it ending at all. I had made plans for Monday to have brunch with my Brother and then lunch with an old uni friend of mine who had been most offended that I hadn’t visited her on previous trips to Adelaide and I decided I just couldn’t snub her any longer :P. On Monday morning when I awoke I was lying on the fold out bed of torturous pain in the lounge room. Obviously, I had relocated there during the night at some point...I can’t quite remember why...I’ll just assume it was some huge act of kindness or chivalry....probably both. I was drifting in an out of sleep and at about 7am I heard the familiar sound of little feet circling the bed. I cautiously opened an eye and there was Rachels youngest daughter Sophie inquisitively trying to gauge whether I was asleep. I said “Hello Sophie” and was immediately greeted with a huge grin and she immediately launched herself on top of me to give me a hug. How can you not love 3 year olds?

The sounds of me being awake instantly brought the other 3 kids into the lounge room and they proceeded to amuse themselves with the Wii, PC and using me as some sort of obstacle course. After a while I had to go get my phone and call my brother and as my phone was in Rachels room I tried to be extra quiet as I assumed she would be sleeping as all the kids were occupied with me. I went in and she was awake and so ill I really felt sorry for her. After looking after her kids for nearly a week while they were sick she had eventually succumbed to the virus herself and it had really hit her much harder than she deserved. She could hardly move as all her muscles hurt and she had “daggers in her eyes”...sounded nasty. I went and got her some Nurofen for the aches and pains and asked if there was anything I could do. She gave me the monumental task of fixing breakfast for the kids. I foolishly thought it would be easy....Oh how wrong I was :). I called my brother and cancelled brunch as I wouldn’t be able to make it anymore and making breakfast was way more important :P. I eventually got the kids that actually wanted to be fed fed, “Flute Doops” and “Fruities” were the order of the day. Unfortunately I had no idea what “Fruities” were ... and the looks I got from Hannah and Sophie were priceless when I headed to the huge fruit bowl and they both yelled in abject horror “NOOOOO!! That’s not fruities...they’re here in the pantry!” and pulled out a packet of Rice Bubbles. The one breakfast cereal in existence with NO fruit content at all. Hahahahaha.

After breakfast my weekend sadly came to a close and I had to get ready to leave. I packed my stuff and said good bye to the children and to Rachel and walked to the train station. I used to catch this train everyday during the first 3 years of Uni and I hadn’t caught it since then I don’t think. It was really freaky and a total flashback to pass through all the stations and look at just how much everything had changed over the years from what I had remembered. The train journey was a little under an hour and when I arrived in the city I had coordinated so well with Jen that I stepped out of the station onto north terrace and she pulled up in her car seconds later. I haven’t seen Jen for maybe 3 years, we were in the same research group for our Ph.D.’s at uni and therefor spent a lot of time around each other. She is another of these women in my life that look absolutely no different to how they did 10 years ago. We immediately slipped straight back into being friends like no time had past. Jen was always my “moral compass” and “whingeing post” for girl issues in Uni as I had the most terrible time with dating and girls in general and she took it on as her hobby to try and help me out (god bless her :P). If you’ve seen my Facebook picture where I am being hugged by 5 different ultra-hot chicks with a massive smile on my face THAT was Jen and her friends helping me out. I was chuckling internally when this is all she wanted to talk about now years later too. How was I? What are my girl plans? Etc She heard all the relevant info then preceded to deconstruct it all, analyse it and inform me what I should be doing to achieve my goals. She’s a smart cookie.

Jen had her newest child with her (8 months) who was quite possibly the happiest little tyke I had ever seen (even happier than my nieces). We went to King William Rd Café district and had lunch and coffee and chatted for about 2 hrs. She then was gracious enough to drive me out to my mums place where I filled out the rest of the day until the dreaded flight home. It is still very hard for me to like the Adelaide Airport it holds such bitter sweet memories for so many reasons and when I am there to go on a plane back to Melbourne I reckon that’s exactly what going to prison must feel like. It’s harder and harder each time to get on that plane when I have just had more fun, excitement and happiness in the short time I am usually there than I have in a whole month in Melbourne. Reality is a cruel mistress indeed. Nothing for it though but to soldier on and play the waiting game until one day all the planets, stars and moons will align and I will be able to come back and STAY.

Anyway, I got to the airport and headed for the Tiger check-in. The sense of dread building with each footstep and mentally preparing myself for what ever unbelievable incompetence I was sure would be greeting me at the counter. Would the inevitable delay be only a ½ hr or would the plane be leaving at midnight again?? To my absolute amazement … the flight was not delayed. It was on schedule and no delay was anticipated?? I actually asked the guy checking me in if that was a mistake as Tiger had never once been on time ever for me. Apparently it was true, so I wandered over to the coopers lounge and got a beer and sat in their ultra comfy chairs and got out the iPod and started using the FREE (are you listening Melbourne airport because I am talking to YOU!) internet access. I caught up on the stuff I read on the net and did some facebooking and pretty soon the departure time arrived and the plane was STILL on schedule (can you tell I was expecting something to go wrong at any minute?). We boarded and the plane left on time and arrived in Melbourne about 15 mins early due to a strong tailwind all the way to Melbourne.

After getting off the plane and heading out the gates (Carry On luggage for the win) I headed to the car park and found my car. I did all the pre-drive checks. Four Wheels CHECK, All inflated CHECK, Mirrors folded out in Drive position CHECK. All windows intact CHECK. So I got in fitted the Stereo and GPS and turned the key. The car roared to life and then POW, POW .. BOTH my headlights blew. Both of them. F$#K. Luckily I had anticipated this would happen soon and I had (albeit a few months ago) serendipitously bought replacement globes and stored them in the car in anticipation. Still, replacing headlight globes in the outer edges of the long term carpark at Melbourne airport at 10:20pm in 8°C would not have been my 1st choice where to change them had anyone given me the option. I struggled for nearly an hour to change the globes with only a small torch and a screwdriver but eventually succeeded and drove home. I got home just before midnight and went straight to bed reviewing in my head quickly the fabulous time I’d had (yes Rach, really) and a little sad that, once again, it was all over and my Melbourne existence would fully smack me in the face in 8 short hours.

Once again thank you Rachel for your hospitality in what was obviously not ideal conditions. You rock so hard :). Thanks also to my Mum for helping me out on Friday night also in less than ideal conditions.

Additional: It’s Wednesday and I’m still virus free. Yay for the super immune system :)

slow week at the office..

2008-09-22T20:19:00.003+10:00

I just looked at my blog and noticed I haven't written anything for a while. Well, that's because not much has been going on for the last week. Work has been continually painful (as seems to be the norm now) and I've just had the first weekend without basketball for a while. Accordingly, I tried to sleep in but it just wasn't working...I woke at the same time as I usually do. Try as I might to stay asleep I just couldn't. So .. seeing as i was awake anyway I decided to watch TV for a while. I had about 4 weeks of "The Bill" to watch on the HTPC but when I turned on the TV it was "Hannah Montana" that greeted me, after weeks and weeks of saturday basketball I am semi-addicted to Hannah...but in a totally MANLY way. Honest to god....I didn't plan it :)

My basketball (where I actually play) started it's new season on Wednesday at the god-awful time of 10:10pm. I'd like to say our team was straight back into the swing of things but...oh dear...we sucked REALLY bad. We were so bad that we only managed to score 3 points in the first half!! We ended up losing by 2 points and the less said about it the better.

Went for a monster ride on Sunday when the weather here in Melbourne was nice and sunny (in contrast to today where it pissed down ALL DAY and was friggen freezing!!). That event has pics and a write up on my facebook page so go there if you wanna know about that.

This weekend I am back in South Australia for a much needed break from all things "Melbourne" and I am looking forward to it immensely. Going to have a "Flight Of The Conchords" watching marathon and make Pizza and possibly treat the hostess (+offspring) to Pancakes. Will be awesome.

It's all over...Even the shouting!

2008-09-17T08:14:00.005+10:00

Last night was the break-up party for my u10 Basketball team. The club (Eastern Bulls) hired out an indoor sports center in Knox so the multitude of kids (I reckon there was about 80 there) could run around, throw balls at each others heads, climb on stuff and eat food that was 90% grease and 10% fat :)

It was a very laid back and relaxed 2 hrs (for me to say it was laid back means it was REALLY laid back) and I had a good time talking with all the "mums" there as I was the only male over the age of 12 and they all seemed to want to talk to me. I found this a bit strange that no fathers were present but in this day and age it's increasingly becoming a social Faux pas to ask about "Where's your dad?". The mothers all seemed to be a bit "over" spending hours at play-parties with their children and maybe that's why no fathers were there?? I've only ever heard stories about these "Play Parties" from friends with kids and the mothers there last night conveyed a similar sentiment. That apparently I am lucky that I don't have to suffer through these "events" due to me having no children of my own. Are kids really such a chore??? I suppose I have the "luxury" of being able to walk away from all the kids in my life and leave them as "someone elses problem", but still some of the best fun i've ever had involved kids....I like em.
Back to the coaching/basketball, The general concnsus was that I did a good job throughout the season and reaching the Grand-Final was a very good achievement considering I had a "Team of 4 players" as I kept getting told. The kids all got fed and I had to chuckle at the absolute chaos this encompassed. One of the people working at this arena walked out to the dining area with a huge "44 Gallon" drum of hot chips and asked "Ok, who wants chip?"

80 children sprang bolt upright hands in the air going "Me, Me, Me!!" knocking over tables, chairs, cars, fridges and the elderly in their attempts to answer (what I thought) was the worlds most rhetorical question. I can think of no children in the history of the world that didn't like hot chips. Actually I can think of maybe one as this child also doesn't like cake or chocolate ;)

After feeding the masses all the coaches were presented with gifts and thanks for their efforts during the last season. Was a nice gesture and although I thought the thanks were presented to me every weekend by seeing smiling and happy kids after we won games it was good to recieve acknoledgement. The funniest thing was that I asked what they enjoyed the most and I got told I was a "Fun Coach" and that I didn't "Do too much boring stuff" but everyone agreed my best quality was that I "Cracked it at Tyler....because he's so annoying"..ROFL.

So here's some pics.

My job ....

2008-09-15T18:01:00.004+10:00

I went into today hoping the crap that occurred in the last 2 weeks at work would be behind me. I was wrong. I don't want to complain on here about it because people from work will see it.

It was quite surreal .... when did I move to Bizzaro world??

I can't believe the things people will hold against you. I really cant.

Yay for Mums!!

2008-09-14T20:38:00.001+10:00

I'm a big fan of Mums let me say that from the start. Above all other mums I am a big fan of MY mum and this weekend I got to spend a whole day with her in Melbourne.

Finally, after nearly 5 years living in Melbourne a member of my immediate family has visited me!! My Aunty Ros visited me last year in November and while that counts as a "visit" I am talking about people I share a Parent or two with here, or in this case, actually ARE said Parent. It was really good to see Mum again even though it’s only been a few weeks since we last saw each other. Because how often can you see your Mum when you are 10000000 miles away in another state? Mum had come over with a tour group to see the musical "Wicked" and see some of Melbourne. The tour had incorporated into it’s itinerary a very early departure from Adelaide (6am on Saturday) and then a full days "Sight Seeing" in metro Melbourne (seriously??) then onto the musical for an 8pm start. When I asked Mum how it was she replied "I don’t know…I slept through most of it". Ha, pretty funny, but yeah by the time she got to the Theater it was 8pm and she’d already been up 14 hours AND walked around all day. When you add dimmed lights and a comfy chair…the result is invariably "Sleep". I have the exact same problem with "Seminars" and "Presentations" at work….I find it incredibly difficult to stay awake in them even if I walked into one after having slept for 24 hrs straight…I guarantee you I’ll fall asleep.

So in order to make her trip to Melbourne a better experience I went into the City on Sunday and picked her up and we went on to Smith Street in Carlton. I wanted to look for some Basketball shoes at the clearance houses after not being able to find any on Saturday at "normal" stores. True to form the Converse store DELIVERED!!! That place is just fantastic. There are a few stores in this world where you can walk in with no intention of buying anything and invariably leave with purchases. Gazman and Colorado jump instantly to mind their stuff is just so nice. Well the Converse store is the ULTIMATE example of this. Everything in there is about 80% off retail price and it’s all well made (in Australia) and looks good. I made my way to the shoe section and found exactly what I wanted "Converse Wade v3.0" basketball shoes. Usually $200, on sale here for $65 !!!! HOW GOOD IS THAT!!!

I was feeling a bit hungry so I convinced Mum that we should have brunch (as it was nearly 11am) so I took her to this little café I know about on Smith St. The name escapes me at the moment (Zoo Doo’s??) who do the BEST continental breakfast. I ordered the CB and 2 coffees and we both sat, both ate (we’re a sharing family…apparently :P) and chatted. Keeping with tradition I snapped a pic of the food and sent it to Rachel who sent back what could have been the funniest reply to an SMS I have ever received. Let me set up the context..I took a pic of the CB (eggs, bacon, tomato, toast etc) with a caption "MmmM Yummy!!" what I received in return was:

"but is it on a pancake?!"

I went 2 notches past "Chuckling Audibly" onto "Unrestrained guffawing Laughter" right there in the café. Rachel comes out with some really witty and funny stuff sometimes and this was definitely one of her best efforts. Still not quite the caliber of "Cyan sequined jump suits" or "Smurf Porn" … but it did have me giggling pretty much all day.

After brunch we also ducked into the Adidas clearance store and got the bargain of the century. They had a massive clearance on CROWS football stuff. Mum picked up "Official" Guernseys for all the "Field" Crow heads. Imagine this, these things retail for about $120 normally and mum got 4 or 5 of them for the price of 1!! We both thought it was quite serendipitous (and a little ironic) that the best deal on Crows stuff was in Melbourne. I also got some socks (100% cotton and 4 pairs for $15) and a pair of shorts ($25). These shops are just too cheap!!

Basking in our post-purchase after glow we returned to the car and high tailed it back home to my place. Mum had the tour and was quite impressed with my house and "stuff". She was pleased that I wasn’t living in abject poverty I think. She even braved the "Mould Room Of DEATH!!" and survived. We then both made the fatal mistake of sitting on my couch. Both of us nodded off simultaneously for about an hours worth of napping. When we woke up it was nearly 2pm and Mum was now a bit hungry and due to the mention earlier in the day of Pancakes she was now hankering for some pancake action. How do you say no to pancakes?? It’s just not possible.

We jumped back in the car and headed up Mt. Dandenong to "Flippin Pancakes" where 2 weeks ago (is it really that long ago already??) Rachel and I partook in their offerings. This time I managed to actually park my car completely straight in "Worlds Steepest Car Park" and we went inside.

Straight as a Dye!!

Strangely, when we went in we got directed to the exact same table as when Rach and I were there?!?!! Even had the same waitress. This time however, I was determined to not make the same "Savoury Pancake" mistake and I focused solely on the "Sweet" part of the Menu. The déjà vu didn’t end there, my mother scanned the menu and saw the pancake with curry dish and goes "Wow, that would be awesome Pancakes AND curry together!". She ordered that. I decided to be difficult and asked for a banana and maple syrup crepe dish but with pancakes instead of crepes. They accommodated my request and after a short wait we got our treats. They were fantastic, we sampled each others food (I think I already mentioned..we’re a sharing family :P) and yes Rach, the Curry pancake is to die for!! Next time get it!!

Banana's in front...Curry & Rice in Back.

After pancakes we went back home via the scenic Mt Dandenong road which is very beautiful and surrounded by tall trees and huge natural ferns. Very serene and cathartic. We arrived home and got all mums stuff together and headed off to the airport. I dropped her off and started the long trek back home once more alone in the wild metropolis of Melbourne.

Again, and I know this is probably getting really boring to hear, as soon as mum left I instantly felt alone and isolated in this city again. I really am having a very hard time justifying to myself just why I stay here. This year i've been back to Adeladie almost monthly and being able to spend time with my friends and family just highlight how miserable I am living here when I really want to be in Adelaide. It’s time to stop kidding myself … something has to be done and the time to do it is now.

What a HUGE day!!!

2008-09-13T16:27:00.009+10:00

I'm currently having one of those days where you do so many different things that you actually stop and go "It's still Saturday...right?". I have achieved so much today that it's amazing.

Firstly, Today was "GRAND FINAL DAY" for my under 10 basketball team. We did amazingly well to get to the grand final and we were all pumped. The game started at 9:40am this morning and it was a really good match. My team played very, very well and really deserved to win....unfortunately we don't always get what we deserve and we were beaten 13-26. It's cliche I know, but that score really doesn't do the teams performance justice. We out-played the other team consistently through-out the whole game and in the end only lost due to them having more players and therefor fresher legs. By the end of the game I had 6 completely stuffed little kids who had given there all and were only beaten because they were tired. The games are 50 mins long and that is a long time for such young children to run, jump, concentrate and deal with the disappointment of knowing they aren't going to win and still keep trying. They truly are a bunch of champions. They never gave up and fought right to the end and unfortunately the other team had 10 players in total and all of them were of similar ability and their coach made sure that none of them ever got tired. I didn't have that luxury and in the last 3 mins they went from leading by 5 to leading by 13.

After the game there was a small presentation ceremony and I was asked to present the team with their runners-up trophies. Now, it's been a while since I won an actual "Trophy" by playing sport. In my 20's and 30's whenever any team I was playing in won a final, be it Basketball, netball, Volleyball we usually got something akin to a etched pewter beer mug or sport socks. So I was absolutely gob-smacked today by the advances in "trophy technology" that I witnessed.
All my team (including me) got this little beauty.

Let me just preempt this by saying the kids in my team, while disappointed that they lost the game, were so amazed by these trophies that they almost didn't care that they lost. The team that did win were also a bit miffed because they had different trophies which had your standard golden man on top layout. Why? you may ask. Check this out:

How cool is that!!!! Isn't that just like the best trophy you've ever seen ?? It was either a really well thought out plan by the Basketball stadium management to make the losing teams players feel a bit better about it or Trophies in general are just 1000% more kick-ass from when I was a kid :)

After the game a lot of the parents came over and expressed their thanks to me for coaching this season. That was nice as a lot of the time I get the impression that they don't approve of much that I do (especially at training) but today they knew that the kids have really improved during the season and making the grand final was no accident really.

After basketball I headed off to "achieve" the first 2 goals I had set for myself this weekend...both involved spending a lot of money...but necessity is a cruel mistress. My first task was to buy a whipper-snipper. I did the appropriate research and learned that the petrol powered models are more powerful, more economical and actually use very little petrol compared to the absolute mega-watts the electric variants suck down. I also thought (or maybe someone told me?) that it's best to go and spend the money on a decent "NAME BRAND(tm)" model as if the engine does pack-it-in later you're likely to be able to get it fixed.

So I went down to Bunnings-mega-super-consumer-a-polooza-warehouse in Croydon and navigated to the "Whipper Snipper" section. "HOLY SHIT" was my initial impression of this place. There must have been about 200 different whipper-snippers there on display...how the hell was I supposed to pick one!! It's like the whipper-snipper equivalent of the Greco cake fridge. Since I am new to most things that (a) require manual labor outdoors and (b) involve a garden, I did the only thing that I could think of to help with the choice. I started pulling them down off the wall and playing with them....pretty soon more and more people in the aisle where pulling down the Whipper-Snippers and waving them around getting a feel for their weight, arc of use etc. I always knew I was a trend setter. During my soujourn up and down the aisle looking at the various WS's (<-- that will mean Whipper-Snipper from now on...cos it's just stupid typing such a long word all the time) I had a "bonding" moment with another guy who was also trying to buy a WS. He, like me, had virtually no idea what constituted a "good" WS. He started the bonding session by casually looking at me and with a look of utmost confusion on his face, saying "There's just so many of them?? How do we know what to get? Which one do you like?". Not wanting to sound like a complete moron who knew nothing about WS's, I said "Well, im looking for a 4-stroke because that will use the same fuel as my mower." The question I immediately asked myself then was "Do these even come in 4-stroke??". Luckily, they did...mystery Man had seen them in another part of the aisle and met my answer with a whistle. "They are the really expensive ones" he stated. So we both headed to the 2-stroke WS's. 2-stroke turned out to be 1/2 the price of the 4-stroke models so we were at least making head-way. We both took a few WS's down and had a look at them. Mystery man was keen on a "straight" arm WS because he thought the extra reach would come in handy. "Handy for what?" is what I thought, where does this guy stand when WSing? Is he scared of grass and weeds?? Want's to be as far from them as possible? So many questions would be unanswered today. We looked at a few more models and quickly came to the conclusion that there was really only a few choices we had to make: 1) Chose a brand that we knew: (HA! I knew this already!!) because there were about 50 different brands here ranging from the well known (Ryobi, McCulloch, Makita) to some generic Chinese yum-cha brands that no-one whould admit to knowing even if they did (Mr. Tool (wtf?), "The Best One" (oooooh marketing genius there!) and "Grass Annihilator" to name a few).
2) Choose a price we were comfortable with: There was a WS for every $ price you could think of from $99 right up to $299.

I made my choice and this was cause for great concern to my new friend. He was under pressure now to choose as well. AaAannD you guessed it...he grabbed the exact same one I did. We bid each other farewell with the customary "nod'n'grunt" and I made my way to the register. So now I am the owner of a new 2-stroke McCullock T250 CLS...yay.

After successfully completing task No.1 it was on to task No.2. This was to buy a new pair of basketball shoes for the new season that starts this week. All I can say is that this was an abject failure. I visited every sports store in my local area that I could think of and noticed something very strange. You can't actually buy "good" basketball shoes from sport-stores anymore. Oh, they have basketball shoes in stock...but they are so "Bling" and totally unsuited to using on a basketball court now-a-days that you look akin to a circus clown if you wear them. That and they are so ridiculously priced that even if you do find a pair that you can stomache, you feel completely horrified because you know these shoes where probably made by child labourers in Malaysia who probably got paid 20c a week and here is the fruit of their labour being sold for $270?? I can't in good conscience support that sort of inhumanity. So I will go to the Converse clearance store tomorrow and pick up an "australian made" pair for about 1/4 the price.

With task 2 resigned to failure I headed back home to begin on task no.3 - Gardening. More precisely, WEEDING (ugh!). Now it may not be common knowledge to anyone but my closest of close friends that I have a hatred for all things "Garden". I'll come right out here and say it "I just don't get gardening"..I don't. I know that millions of people love to get out in the dirt and pull out one type of plant and stick another in it's place and say it's the best "hobby" on earth. I am not one of these people. I think this behavior stems (hehe geddit?) from me always having lived in rental properties....where you just don't give a shit about anything 1cm past the front door jamb. The house could have a garden but you never tend to it because..well...who cares what happens to someone else's Garden. I've always thought that it was the height of imposition for land lords to include a garden in their rental properties. It's just another whole level of responsibility that most renters don't want. Having said that...my garden has become so horrifically unkempt that even *I* got sick of looking at it. Something had to be done.

So, I got my gardening gloves on (yes, I have gardening gloves ... I think they were $1) got my organic waste bin and got my camera. The camera was so I could see if my efforts actually had any effect on the garden.

Here's some before shots:

and here's what it looks like now after about 2 hrs of weeding.

I didn't actually get to finish all the weeding I had to do because I actually filled up my whole waste bin. The bin is HUGE too look...

It was also such a nice sunny and warm day that I didn't want to spend it pulling vegetation from the Earth. I wanted to go for a ride!!! I promptly stopped "Gardening" and took the Avanti out for a spin on the Eastlink bike track and headed south. Got a really nice 90min ride in too, there were quite a few people out riding and running (Far too many running if you ask me...they are a nuisance to people on bikes doing upwards of 40km/hr!!). My "bike Ride" playlist on the iPod still kicks ass for riding fast too not hard to keep up the pace when listening to hard rock and metal. I'm glad I went out actually as Melbourne's weather is so random that you don't ever know just how long nice weather like this will last.

After the ride I remembered that I actually had to go grocery shopping too. because Mum would be here tomorrow and I can't go then..so I did that. Then when I got home 2 loads of clothes washing, washed my dirty dishes, washed my floors (again..stupid plumbers and their dirty boots) and AND washed my car!! This is all in one day too. Scroll back up and have a look at all the stuff I have done....who said men couldn't multitask.

and the best thing is...there's still a whole other day tomorrow!!!

Herculean Effort and Mr. Chainsaw (good name for a band that!)

2008-09-12T08:41:00.008+10:00

So today is my ninth (9th) straight day at work and apart from me wondering where the hell the time went (??) it has pretty much been a blur. I've put in some ridiculous hours over these 9 days to catch up all the work that didn't get done (by other people) when I took time off to spend with Rachel. I've pretty much caught up to where we need to be and all it took was 14 hr days, commandeering both Mass Spectrometers and both Gas Chromatographs and snarling like a pit-bull at anyone who even tried to talk to me or "help". We sent 5 GC columns last Friday to our USA office and today we're poised to send 6 more so that should keep the people on the other side of the blue door happy. This was no easy feat seeing as Mass Spec No.1 spent much of the last 9 days broken and is still the Mass Spectrometer equivalent of "Nerd Glasses" which are broken and being held together at the bridge by sticky tape. It now "works" and performs it's function (sort of..) but anyone who looks at it instantly knows that it's not healthy and on life support. This is why I had to also get Mass Spec No.2 in on the fun, the results it gives us are useful (it has no where near the sensitivity of MS No.1 though....and in mass speccing it's all about the sensitivity..oh and the vacuum..sensitivity and sucking...hehehe...also reminds me of another past time...anyway getting side tracked) but because the "client" for this project is the company that actually makes Mass Spec No.1 THEY of course want all the results produced on "their" machines. What they don't know won't hurt them though ...

So here we are at Friday again and (as of yet) there has been no mentions of anyone having to come in again on the weekend to work..let's hope it stays that way.

This morning, as it's WBBC day, I usually allow myself the luxury of 1/2hr extra sleep due to not having to make lunch for myself. So there I am, it's 6:45am and I'm merrily sleeping away dreaming of whatever it was I was dreaming of and suddenly there in my dream is a guy with a chainsaw?? Now, granted over the last 9 days I have thought many thoughts about many different things that could be solved (in my opinion) with the use of a chainsaw, so it's not all together unprecedented that my subconscious had stored this fact and thought that now was a good time to play that back. The subconscious after all is like the normal "Conscious" after several large Beers and 2 bottles of Tequila (i.e. EVERYTHING seems like a good idea regardless). I can't remember the context that Mr. Chainsaw played in my dream as I can't remember what I was actually dreaming about. For the sake of argument, i'll just go with what with I usually dream about which was probably something like being locked in a room covered in honey, surrounded by several diabetic Swedish lingerie models who all had low blood sugar levels and needed to get a sugar fix ASAP. As you can gather, a large, burly man holding a chainsaw and revving the crap out of it is somewhat the "Odd Man Out" in the above scenario. So my conscious brain sort of spoke up, as usually happens in such situations during sleep, and goes "WHAT THE HELL???".

I sort of slipped out out sleep into semi-awakedness and then realised that the chainsaw was infact real. It was being wielded by the people renovating the house next door who thought that 6:47am was the best time for them to start cutting up wood. Now, call me crazy, but there are several dozen other things I can think of that I would consider a good idea to be doing at 6:45am on a Friday morning and most of them involve a lot less chainsawing. So today, my sleep-in-day, actually started earlier than a normal non-sleep-in day. It's like I have some sort of phantom insomniac 3 year old waking me before I am due :( So I got up and did what any normal person rudely awakened in the early hours of the morning would do ..... played a bit of Scrabby (also because the chainsawing was accompanied by the arrival of the rubbish/recycling trucks to form an impenetrable sleep deprivation crescendo of "awake"). In my semi-awake state I didn't remember that I had played all my scrabby last night and would therefor be out of luck. However, upon opening scrabby...there were games to play??? Must have been a long night for my opposition as I went to bed rather late last night and they weren't played then? I quickly played my turns (noting that I am well positioned to win a few games to boot) and then went for a shower ... it was now 7am.

Tomorrow can't come quick enough now. Time off from work and a few exciting things to pass the time.

1) My u10 Basketball team is in the Grand Final :) we're going to get belted...but the fact that we are there is a major achievement in my first season as a coach.

2) My mother is in Melbourne and will actually visit my HOUSE!!! This will be the FIRST member of my family that has ever been to any of the houses I've lived in in Melbourne (I've nearly been here 5 years too!!)

3) My Basketball starts up again on wednesday and I think it's actually time for some new basketball shoes. The one's I've got I bought in Adelaide in 2004 ... so I thnk they have done a good job and besides, I think they are what's responsible for my foot aching for about a week after each game. So a trip into the Converse clearence store when I go get my mother is also on the cards for sunday.

Me 1: Mass Spectrometer 0

2008-09-08T13:15:00.011+10:00

As most people would know...I am almost always right and when I am not "right" it is usually just an anomaly and the universe soon corrects itself :P. Today was no exception. After spending my whole weekend at work trying to get the Mass Spectrometer working I proudly got to pronounce it DEAD to the managers out in the front office passed the "Blue Door" this morning.

The Blue Door: where time bends and reality takes a walk into the ridiculous once you pass through.

This door is amazing...once you pass through it from the "Workers" side to the "Managers" side it's like a whole new universe where scientific fact has no value and your IQ apparently drops from .. say..A Ph.D. Qualified Scientist to that of a small unimportant minion who couldn't possibly know what they are on about or can be believed on any topic (I am calling this "Thermo Engineer Syndrome"). So anyway, I went through the aforementioned door today to pronounce the Mass Spec dead and was greeted with such re-assuring logic as "It can't be dead, it's too important that we use it this week!" and "Are you sure? Is it turned on? Does it have petrol in it?" etc. After giving up my entire weekend to battle the illnesses of this machine I was so over trying to justify anything that I just said some thing along the lines of "Yes, it's dead, it doesn't work, here is the output, see that big squiggly line that looks like a guy having a heart attack was holding the pen? That's the background noise from the detector. See that nice sharp peak at 3.8 mins corresponding to the injected standard? NO YOU DONT..BECAUSE IT'S NOT THERE DUE TO THE BROKENNESS!!!" , but was probably less funny and along more apathetic lines.

So, true to form, no one believes that 3 days of me troubleshooting and improvised repairing only to have the repairs break rendering the machine useless for the purpose of measuring mass spectra (which for a machine called a "Mass Spectrometer" should seem like a major flaw) even with print-out showing what was wrong and why I can't fix it were presented. The higher ups decide that it couldn't possibly be broken and not fixable and they'll come out and tinker. Fast Forward 4 hours and we arrive at "I think it's actually broken and there is nothing we can do to fix it. Why didn't you bring this to our attention sooner Michael?" IDIOTS. Nowhere on my job description does it say I have to telepathically predict future events and have ESP abilities??

So I now, in my professional opinion, pronounce that the Thermo DSQ-II mass Spectrometer is Dead :)

The Worlds Most Expensive Door Stop. The Thermo DSQ-II Mass Spectrometer.

Now, I wonder what answer I get when I ask for the 29th September off as time in Lieu for working all weekend flogging a dead horse will be?

Late Afternoon Update (5:30pm): Found the culprit of the leak (just so you all can sleep tonight knowing the drama has ended). Turns out it was the Vent Valve solenoid, I should have been able to spot this earlier as it's photo was quite a pointer that something was wrong...but sometimes you just can't see the Forrest for the other bits of Forrest.

Sweet and Sour.

2008-09-06T19:16:00.002+10:00

I was not looking forward to today very much after yesterday. Having to go into work and WORK on the weekend is just wrong on so many levels but since I had no choice in the matter what could I do? The day started off with me not being able to sleep very well, I kept waking up all through the night and finally decided to get up at 8am and get ready for both Basketball and the working day. I copied a whole heap of TV shows onto my memory stick so I would have something to occupy the hours while waiting around for the work I had to do to "run" on the Mass Spectrometer and headed off to Basketball. Last weekend we managed a win and booked a place in the finals...fourth place :) So this week we get to play again and go for a place in the grand final ... but against the team that is first and 14 points clear on top of the table and beaten us on all but one occasion in about 6 meetings. However, rather than type out a blow by blow of each half lets just cut to the chase. Today we WON!!

The kids played the best game of the season and truly were awesome. We were down by 8 points at half time even after a blitzing start where we were winning 7-0 in a matter of minutes. The half ended with us trailing 11-19. The second half was absolutely amazing to watch, my kids just didn't give up and had a really solid defense causing the other team to turn the ball over time and time again. With about 5 minutes to go in the final half the score was 23 -24 with the other team in foul trouble with 8 fouls already. Then we hit the "free" zone, whenever the 9th or greater foul in a half happens the fouled team gets 2 free shots at the basket. The last 3 minutes of the game must've lasted about 10 min ... it was hard to not be excited as we drew further and further in front.... with a minute to go we were 11 points clear due to so many fouls by the other team. The game ended with a score of 35-28 WE ARE IN THE GRAND FINAL BABY!!!!

After that tremendous victory and a super start to the day it all was about to head downhill as I had to high tail it over to work and spend the rest of the day there :(
I was the only person there in Chromatech (The department I work in) and it was quite disheartening as the area is about the size of an Olympic swimming pool + a bit more and very boring by myself. The reason that I was there was because I had taken off Monday-Wednesday this week to spend with Rachel while she was in Melbourne and had delegated the stuff I would have been doing to my underling Yi. He was very excited to be doing something new and eager as a beaver but, true to form, the Mass Spec broke on Monday just when we needed it the most. With me not there to fix it...it stayed broken until Thursday when i arrived back at work. I spent all day Thursday getting it working in a "Semi-repaired" state. We used it Friday morning but just before lunch it broke again and I spent the remainder of the day trying to "triage" it into a working state. I left work at about 7pm after running out of "Fix" options and just hoping that by letting it run overnight (It needs a very high vacuum to operate which takes about 6 hours to pump-down) it would be usable on Saturday morning.

Luckily it seemed alright except for a small air leak that was identified on Thursday but we couldn't find to fix. I ran some tests and it game results that were "usable" but not optimal. Nothing I could do about that though. So I put in a solid 7 hours there today. Luckily for me at one point the company owner dropped in and saw me working...more Brownie points for me :). I had to do my grocery shopping on the way home and rushed to the only supermarket I knew would be open and bought some things for lunches for the coming week. I also seem to have aquired a new taste for all things "honey" (Cheers Rach) and bought another tub of "Honey Buzz" yoghurt. I just thought i'd mention that because I have had a psychological barrier to honey flavored yoghurt for EVER and always assumed it would taste crap...How wrong I was...especially when poured over fresh chopped fruit (cheers again Rach ;) )

Now I am home and after not having eaten all day I think I deserve Indian for dinner. Worlds best Garlic Naan and possibly a nice spicey vindaloo I am thinking. That should end the day on a good note.

Tomorrow I am back at work all day again and I am seriously already looking forward to the 29th of September when I get another day off from this crap. I can't wait until this project is OVER...it's sucking my will to live !!!

Extremes.

2008-09-05T11:28:00.006+10:00

I find it hard to believe sometimes just how crap my job can be and how this can affect a person. This week started off as brilliant as brilliant could be, mainly because I took three days off from this place and had Rachel visiting to boot. Now here I am on Friday just 5 days later and I am at the absolute opposite end of the happiness scale. I've returned to work yesterday to find NOTHING I had delegated to get done on my days off had been done due to the Mass Spectrometer breaking. As a consequence of that, the project is now behind by those 3 days. We had a meeting at 3pm yesterday to see where things stood with a delivery we have to fill by the end of next week and I left that meeting knowing (or so I thought) what was going on. This morning I find myself as a passenger on an email train from our R&D director about what HE thinks is happening that bears no resemblance at all to what the Product manager's and I decided was possible. To make matters even more confusing I seem to have got onto this email train 7 stops into the journey and see that this conversation has been going for almost 2 weeks already before I am included in it and then it's only to say how badly F@#ked up everything seems to be because the work we actually ARE doing on this project doesn't conform to the absolutely impossible promises the people in management have made to the customers . In this same email I am now informed that I don't have a weekend to look forward to either and I will be in here all day on Saturday and Sunday working to meet the unmeetable time-lines using a machine that is functioning at about 50% because I can't afford the time to take it off-line to fix it so it works at 100% .... ludicrous. Add on top of that the psychological torture of knowing that Rachel is in the same city and i'm not able to see her again before she leaves to go back home and you might understand what sort of state I am in at the moment. Not happy Jan!

Why can't every Friday be like last Friday?

Booooooooo Hiss Boo!!

2008-09-03T19:02:00.006+10:00

Well here we are on Wednesday night after 5 days with Rachel in Melbourne. I've been in Melbourne now for about 4.5 years and have NEVER had such an awesome weekend as I just had with Rach. Let's just leave it at that because there are just far too many highlights and good times to recount here and I'm sure there will be a flood of photos to see when Rachel gets home and uploads them. We went exploring nature, running from storms, shopping, out dinners, in dinners, out breakfast, in breakfasts, Pancake hunting, Basketballing and acting like a couple of teenagers. We laughed a lot, talked a lot and slouched around in unison.We both also will now always have an appreciation for "Lounge Music" thanks to Mr. Richard Cheese (I'm listening to him now while typing this. Google him!!).

Unfortunately (for me) my allocated "Rachel in Melbourne" time expired today after a nice day in the city eating cake on Southbank and wandering the riverfront in the sunshine. I'm back home now at a bit of a loss as to what to do with myself. I got so used to having you around Rach that it just feels wrong now that you're not here anymore. Melbourne sucks just that little bit more for me. The bright side is that i'll be back in Adelaide in 3 weeks so the fun can continue then.

So thanks again Rachel. You absolutely rock ... Two thumbs up, but you knew that already.

The Worlds Best Ever Friday.

2008-08-29T08:32:00.006+10:00

I'm so excited :) Not only have I got 3 days off next week as the first "major" holidays for the year since January, but Rachel is here, in Melbourne, staying with me for all of them!! We're going to have so much fun is almost unbelievable. It's also going to be great to not have to do my job for a few days, and not have to even think about it....aaahh Bliss. I just hope the Melbourne weather holds out and doesn't go too crap. I know I have already jinxed it because I washed my car last night and that is almost guaranteed to make it rain the next day. Sitting here at my desk at work and looking out the window it is all blue sky however and getting warmer.

I took ill on Wednesday night with a cold and usually my super-immune system makes short work of any such foible. This time the cold took hold a bit yesterday and after various people commenting on me walking around work in lab coat AND scarf looking like an arctic explorer I started engaging them in conversation about what THEY think is the best way to get rid of a cold? There were very few helpful responses (as honestly, how easy is it really to get a goat AND 3 live chickens in outer eastern Melbourne on a Thursday??). I got so snotty and coughy just after lunch that I had to go and get some "help" from a chemist shop to battle this flu. I was unfortunately using "Work" tissues also to blow my nose. I'm sure it's common practise across any workplace that the "tissues" and "toilet paper" provided to employees must be of the "quality" depicted here:

So, if you happen to need to blow your nose repeatedly through-out the day you end up taking a large portion of your actual nose flesh with each use. That's why if I ever meet the Guy/Gal that invented tissues infused with Aloe-Vera i'll quite possibly KISS THEM :) Tissues with Aloe-Vera should be the STANDARD tissue, I mean seriously why are there any other kind of tissues available?? They are never bought again once you've bought tissues WITH Aloe-Vera on them, so why bother?? I also bought a big jar of Vitamin-C tablets with which to dose myself with and while there I decieded to actually try some of Rachels "I swear by this!!" voodoo remedy that she told me about. Garlic Tablets. Yeah, I know...you're also going "What the F$#k?? Garlic for a cold??"... I did too. However, there are times when Rachel does actually know what she's talking about....and while I can't say for sure that this is one of these times or that the garlic remedy has any merit....today I feel a hundred times better than yesterday. It "Could" be that the 10 or so Garlic tabs I took since yesterday have had an effect (how many are you meant to take anyway? The bottle was very vague on dosage) but I have double-whammied the cold with 1.0 shitloads of Vitamin-C (a proven scientific method of combatting the influenza virus) and 1.25 shitloads of Garlic tablets (a non-scientific, more akin to voodoo method of combating the influenza virus). The net effect is today I feel a lot better.....but it is impossible to ascertain WHICH remedy is responsible for this. Also, no-one has commented that I smell like an italian pasta chef yet so maybe the Garlic is just a placebo??

Anyway, i'm really itching to get out of here today already (and it's only 9:15am). I have been prepping Yi (my chinese underling) to do my lab work for the next 3 days and so today will basically be broken down into 3 section.

1. Time untill I get WBBC (Let's see the cold survive THAT!!:) )

2. Time untill I can go home!!

3. Time until Rachel arrives!!

Quite posibly the BEST friday ever today :)

can you feel it? Can you FEEL it? CAN YOU FEEEeeEEL IT??

2008-08-28T10:17:00.002+10:00

ONE MORE SLEEP!!!

Neighbours on Meth.

2008-08-27T12:36:00.003+10:00

This morning I went to go to work in the balmy 3ºC Melbourne weather at about 7:45am. I got all my stuff together and put it in the car, let the car warm up or a bit before backing out into my drive way. That's when I realised that I wouldn't be going anywhere. My awfully considerate neighbour had parked her car in my driveway and I was blocked in. I spent the next 30 mins trying in vain to rouse ANYONE in their house to come outside and move it. I knocked on door, I knocked on windows, I knocked on walls....I even drove my car right up to her car and lent on the horn for a full minute.......nothing stirred in the house. I then went back to hammering on the front door for a full minute and still nobody came to the door. Then the most surreal thing happened.....my neighbors cat saunters up to the screen door and casually taps it a few times with it's paws. SOMEONE SPRINGS INTO LIFE inside and comes to the front door and opens it...greeting the cat and then almost jumping out of her skin when she see's me standing there (as she was wearing only a towel). I've seen this girl a few times over the 10 months I've lived in my house but she looked like she was absolutlely drugged out of her head.....like one of those Meth-amphetamine addicts you see on the TV adds, plus she seemed to have no idea who I was????? I calmly ask if she could move her car because she's blocked my driveway with it and I can't get out. She looks puzzled ... steps out side and looks at the car, she acknowledges Yep, it's in the way, goes and gets her keys and moves the car. As I drive past I put the window down to say "thanks" (Yeah, thanks for being an inconsiderate tool!!) and she looks sternly at me and goes "Happy Now?" and just dissappears inside.

Damn Drug Addicts...

Changed where this stuff is kept..

2008-08-26T15:37:00.002+10:00

Due to me not being able to use some of the "Blogspot" features on my blog because it was hosted on my own server. I've moved it to the Blogspot servers so I can use certain add-ons. Accordingly you'll have to update your bookmatks to my blog should you want to keep reading it. The new URL is:

http://fieldchild2.blogspot.com/

Change it now :)

Cleaning and Housework ...... and why you shouldn't put it off.

2008-08-24T23:45:00.002+10:00

A few weeks ago I ear-marked this weekend for a massive clean of my house. I had been putting it off for months for one reason or another (usually "I couldn't be arsed" or "Won't someone else eventually do it....statistically....if I leave it long enough?"). However, due to the imminent arrival of house guests I couldn't put it off any longer. So this weekend I dove in head, gloves, shears, mops, vacuum cleaner, lawnmowers and sudzy water first and cleaned EVERYTHING that looked even remotely dirty. It turns out it was a good idea and, in hindsight, a very good lesson in why you shouldn't put cleaning off for to long......but more on that later...and be warned it is NOT for the squeamish.

I started on Saturday after basketball (u10's) and after another magnificent win to my team as they are a bunch of pint sized champions and losing is not an option. I did all my grocery shopping and assorted other tasks to get them out of the way to allow no distractions to the imminent mother of all cleaning operations.

I started with my lawn...which to be honest I can't even remember when I cut last...it's at least 2 months ago. I didn't take a picture of the "before" state but a good approximation is thus:

... except mine had more lions and tigers and elephants roaming through it so more like this one:

That's almost an exact replica ...wow....scary how real that looks. Anyway, after a bout of "trying" to get the mower to start for about 1/2 an hour. I decided to check if it had petrol in it ... which is a rookie mistake that you hate to see...and it sort of did. So I put more in it and tried again...still no luck. I tried tilting it left and right while trying to start it ... no dice. I wracked my brain for what could be wrong....I was out of ideas....then I remembered hearing "somewhere" that swearing at it, kicking it and possibly throwing shoes at it has been reported to afford moderate success in getting mowers to start. I did all three...and what do you know it STARTED!!! I think that remedy can now be patented as a scientific fact!!

So I started mowing the lawn....and not 2 secs after *I* started my mower the guy over the fence started his mower...his started on the first pull. Obviously brand new and never been run before, that's the only logical explanation.

I took me a good hour to mow the lawn...which is a long time for about 10m2 of lawn. In parts it was so lush that the mower actually stopped mid-chop, choking on the vegetative beard that mother nature had let grow rampant and unkempt as it was forced mercilessly through it. This happened 5 or so times and thankfully the mower restarted each time :). So now my lawn looks "cut" and has 100% less wildlife stalking through it. Not bad hey?

That was all I had time for on Saturday, I put the mower away and returned my car to the garage and pressed the roller-door shut button on the roller door motor as I left the garage. I then enjoyed the rest of my saturday...a little TV, a little Scrabby and a few rounds of Teamfortress with my various friends. Went to bed and slept like a log :)

I woke on Sunday around 9:30am and got up and watched Stargate Atlantis's newest episode "The Shrine" while I had breakfast (Crumpets and coffee ... yum!) ..my god..I am either turning into a right cry-baby or that was some of the most heart-wrenching stuff I've ever seen in a SCi-Fi show. Especially if you've ever known anyone with Alzheimer's. After that I decided to plow headlong into more cleaning..today it was to be the house interior I checked each room to see what needed doing...pretty much every room needed a vacuum and a wash.......it was when i got to the back room, the "spare" room where stuff just gets put and left and stored that I made a discovery. It smelt ...funny... in there...I couldn't put my finger on it but I thought nothing of it because I also dry my washing by the window when it's too rainy outside and some times it gets a bit musty. I opened the window and as I turned I saw behind my bikes back wheel some greenish, black spots on the carpet. I immediately thought "Oh no, my rear brake has bled all it's hydrolic fluid on to the carpet". I looked closer..it wasn't ..oil..it was...well...it looked like mould??

Some of you may remember I had a rather grim discovery last week when i came home from Adelaide (at 2am I might add) and could smell a strange odor in my house. I found next day that some mould was growing out of the wall behind my washing machine. I cleaned it all as best I could and thought that was the end of it. Today I found out it was not. I moved all the stuff that was piled in the spare room away from the wall which has the laundry on the other side of it and was greeted by this..... (Please Don't look if you are a clean freak or at all squeamish).

pic 1 pic 2 pic 3

Let me just say right here, that yes that is horribly disgusting and quite possibly a health hazard. I cleaned it away as best I can and informed my Real Estate Agency then and there. It is obviously a major problem and I've taken all steps to have it professionally removed.

Anyway, after discovering that I had to go get some stuff to clean it. So I grabbed my car keys and my house keys and...the...where the hell is the roller-door key? I searched for a good 10 minutes ... it was definitely not here. Where would I have left it? Then I remembered that I had put the car in the driveway yesterday when i needed to get to the mower. Whenever I put the car in the driveway I usually leave the roller-door widget in the car :( Yesterday I put the car back in the garage and closed the roller-door with the button on the roller-door motor on the wall. The door opener (which is the only thing that can open the roller-door) was now safely locked away in my car behind the shut roller-door. DOH! "No drama" I thought..."there's a key to the door at the back of the Garage on my house keys", brilliant plan and a saving grace...if only it was true. The spare key was thoughtfully stored on the roller-door opener's key ring bit. So I had no way of getting into my garage :(.

After a brisk 45min walk to my Real Estate Agent and back to pick up the spare keys I managed to gain entry to the garage and rescue the door-opener. So although, In the end I was victorious...I think my "spare key" storage strategy needed an overhaul :) I took the spares back to the Agent (in the car, as i had to go shopping too) and when I returned I got full on into housework mode. Many male people's mothers (mine included)go to great lengths during their upbringing to instill some sort of "Cleaning Responsibilities" into the male brain from an early age. Many fail , and fail dismally and the only hope for these male children is they grow up and get married. Not all men are/were that lucky/unfortunate (take your pick) and HAD to learn the art of cleaning for survival. I lived in share houses all through Uni with (predominantly) women. That is the easiest way to get a guy to clean...because Women are VICIOUS and HORRIBLE creatures when "someone" forgets to clean anything, especially when there is a "roster" which said "person" may or may not know about. but I digress.

Behold the splendor as my house gets "The Treatment"!!!

Cleaning

See. How impressive was that? Not just a pretty face this boy...I have many skills that are useful. Hard to believe that such an absolute GEM of a man is single isn't it?? Smarten up your act ladies!!

After the house "Treatment" was over I had to go and play Taxi for my long time friend Matt who's father had taken seriously ill and had been taken to Geelong hospital from Mt. Gambier in SA. I can't remember exactly what Matt told me was wrong with him (was heart related), but he's been transferred twice already so it was pretty serious. Matt asked me to drive him from Tullamarine Airport to the Geelong hospital and I agreed without hesitation because to say "no" to something like that is just not an option.

So I set off to the airport at 4:15pm to meet Matt's 5:24pm arrival. Upon arriving near the airport I had recieved an SMS from Matt saying the flight was delayed. Seems that this is almost a standard occurrence nowadays with any airline. Remember when things arrived on time?? Nay, neither do I...someone should really do something about that...or...whatever. Now, anyone who's ever been to Melbourne airport will know that there is absolutely NOWHERE where you can park and wait without paying extortionate rates. There is McDonald's of course, but they seem to be perennially trying to disprove the logic that dictates "500 cars can't possibly fit in 25 car parking spaces", I think they are almost there. Their car park looked like they were holding a concert by some hugely popular artist who would attract a lot of fans (I'm sory .. but I couldn't think of one current "popular music" artist whom I could name here to make a really good analogy). There was nothing for it, I would have to use the paid parking :( I went to see just how late the plane was, 30mins. ....hmmm It could be worse. I found a Gloria Jeans near the baggage claim and got a Chai latte to pass the time...... I needed it to dilute my growing disgust with airlines lately. I was so bored during the wait that I tried to see how many ways I could photography the Chai Latte with my phone and make it interesting.....
... Turns out there was only "One" way. So that game got old pretty fast.

Matt eventually appeared and we went back to the car paying the parking on the way ($12!! Highway robbery for 47mins of parking!!) and started the journey from Tullamarine to Geelong. To cut a long story short...Tullamarine to Geelong is a F&%KING LONG WAY!! We left at 6:15pm from Tulla and got to Geelong a little after 8pm. I then had to drive all the way back to Ringwood afterwards. My round trip was Left Home: 4:15pm Returned Home: 9:20pm and did a total of about 300KM's.

That's just the sort of friend I am :)

Hope your Dad is doing alright and gets better soon Matt.

Basket-BRAWL!!

2008-08-21T08:02:00.007+10:00

Basket-BRAWL!!

Had an earlyish game of Basketball last night due to our team making the finals (wooot). The competition is "Male Over 30's" and at 36 I'd be probably one of the younger players in the competition. This might foolishly make some people think that the games are a bit of a friendly doddle and a chance for the older gents to have a run around and enjoy some healthy competition. Oh how wrong you would be. Weekly you see people going absolutely "postal" on the court and you better believe they are playing for sheep-stations. It's high stakes to EVERYONE who isn't me it seems. I'm there because I was always pretty good at Basketball and because it gets me out of the house and doing a bit of exercise (because..you know...I don't do enough already :) ).

Anyway, last night was as brutal as I have experienced it. I've seen other guys in our team as well as other teams players get pushy and shovey when it gets near the end of the second half and the scores are either really close or so far apart the losing team isn't interested in playing anymore and just wants to fight. Tonight the scores were REALLY close the whole game with the lead chopping and changing regularly. However, the team we were playing we affectionately call the "Tattoo Mafia" because nearly all of them are covered in Tat's and if they feel the slightest bit threatened they get really physical. I copped the brunt of this twice. I was playing quite well in the center (As I was the tallest on our team), I won the tap at the start of the game (insert mental image of me flexing!) and was converting a lot of passes to me at the post into baskets. After a while the other teams center player must have realised that he was getting owned by me on just about every occasion that we went toe-to-toe. So he decided that rather than go for the ball he'd go for my head...with a clenched fist. I got passed the ball near the top of the key, I spun left and dribbled past one guy and start my "2 steps" to lay the ball up to the basket ....1......2.....POW!! Some one pounds me in the back of the head. I'm seeing stars and spots and everything .. I collapse on the ground under the force of the blow and hear the whistle blow for a foul. I roll over and look up and 3 of my team are pushing the other teams big center player away from the huddle of players that is forming. He's staring at me like I just killed his dog...So I guessed it was him who punched me. I got 2 shots from the foul line for my trouble and another 2 for a "Technical" foul because he'd punched me...which "Technically" isn't allowed in Basketball. As a testament to my awesome skills, I got all 4 shots in. ALL OF THEM. I think we need to pause here and reflect on that brilliant achievement ...

So the game starts up again and continues on the same way..lead changing over and over. The opposition had very little luck driving or passing the ball to anywhere near the basket and were relying on 3-point bombs for their chances. Frustratingly, they had this one guy who never seemed to miss them. He'd just hang around the three point line and do nothing else offensively...then the ball would work it's way to him and he'd put up a 3pt shot..we'd all watch the ball arc in the air and "swish" ... GOD DAMN HIM. I reckon he got about 8 or 9 of them in..well over 1/2 their score. Anyway, there is a few minutes to go and I have so far not had a rest so am getting a bit tired. I have been getting a few good rebounds and even blocked a few shots. This again angers Mr. Opposition Center Player who decides again that the best offense against me is still not skill but punching me in the head. On this occasion they have put up a shot and missed, I've launched myself skywards to grab the rebound...got it....landed, turned around to be greeted by their center player who, calm as calm, raises his arm and presents me with a fist right into the left eye socket. Now I wear glasses while playing and for someone to even consider punching someone with glasses..IN THE EYE NO LESS...is really several kilometers away from the coolest spot in Cooltown. Again, I go down to the floor clutching my face. He'd got me a beauty and I was really spinning in "Did someone get the number of that truck??" land. The umpiring at this venue is usually of such a poor standard that this type of "Foul" would need a discussion to determine if the version of the rules used in our division allowed for punching to the head as a legitimate tactic. Fortunately, it seems that it wasn't and Mr. "I can't beat you so I'll BEAT YOU!!" Center Guy gets told to leave the stadium and is promptly ejected. Mind you he's still complaining that what he did was an "Accident" and that the Refs should just "Let the game flow" ..... Tosser.

The game ends with us scoring 31 and them scoring 34 ..... so sadly, and rather unfairly, only the "moral" victory is ours. The moral victory was that "People who are really, really, really, ridiculously good looking and have skill will always triumph over short, fat guys with Tattoo's of motorbikes, strippers and flaming skulls who can only throw punches ... at least in Basketball".

After the game I saw the first aid guy at the venue because I had taken 2 rather hard blows to the head during the last hour and was still a bit "woozy". He said that I wasn't concussed and I should go home and rest. So I went home and had a shower it's then that I noticed that I had had huge chunks of flesh gouged out of my arms and hands during the game also...I looked like I'd fell off a mountain bike and rolled down the side of a mountain (fortunately not breaking my shoulders in the process). Soap and hot water on open wounds is not the best way to end the day. I had a quick Scrabby check but all games were in limbo due to Rach having to "work" a bit last night in order to come to Melbourne soon (YAY!!). We had a quick chat but the "Woozy" was still with me so I decided to go to bed.

During the night I just couldn't stay asleep, my legs were absolutely aching and no matter how I lay or positioned myself they continued to do so. Seems my abundant physical exertion over the last few weeks is catching up with me. So here I am sitting at my desk at work at the crazy hour of 7:45am .... at least the Managing Director saw me walking in and I saw him check his watch...browny points for me :)

RADELAIDE!!

2008-08-19T23:03:00.016+10:00

RADELAIDE :)

I wrote this on my iPod while waiting...endlessly...for my plane to arrive on Sunday night...

Friday: flight delayed again. Tiger while being cheap and not crashing leave a lot to be desired in the punctuality department. A lot to be desired is actually praising them because quite frankly they are f%$ing USELESS!!!

Met by Rachel at airport and she was a sight for sore eyes. Looking fantastic. Proceeded into the city to meet a few friends for a quick beer and catch up. Then headed to Gawler and sleep. Got to bed about 11:30pm and we both just went out like lights.
Saturday: Went out to Angaston to visit Bruce & tash. Had lunch of pies and donuts/cakes. The nieces were a riot as always, such happy kids.
Left Angaston and returned home to Rachel's to prepare for quiz night at Somerton yacht club with Rachel's parents. Night was good, we came 3rd overall. Food was curry assortments and was pretty good.
Got home just after midnight and went to sleep pretty much straight away. Was a long day.

Sunday: Went for a Brunch of pancakes with Rach. Pancakes were as good as I expected..tres bon :)
Initiated plan "none the wiser" when Rachel's kids were due to return and this worked flawlessly. Was good to see them again they are all such great kids. For a while :P Went to my Mums for dinner and then onto the airport for the flight home to Melbourne.

I don't know if you are familiar with the iPod Touch interface but to type a document you have to press each individual letter of each word...there's no predictive text. I thought I had written "The Pillars Of The Earth" because that took me about 2 hours to type out and I thought it was a HUGE, sprawling narrative and when you actually see it on screen it is actually quite small. The time invested was OK though as my Tiger flight was, true to form, Delayed ....again...GRaAAaaaaAAAaaaaaaARrrRRrrRRggGGGhhhH!!!!

It really makes you wonder whether the "Cheaper" price of Tiger Airways flights is worth it when they seem incapable of running to their schedule. They don't even run that many flights and don't fly to many cities anyway so how do they constantly get it so wrong??. The $40 you might save by flying with them is not really a saving when you are CONSTANTLY delayed and reach every destination late inconveniencing anyone who you've organised for a pick-up or adding $20 to your parking costs in my case.

Luckily I had organised to meet up in the Terminal with some friends of mine from Brisbane who had also spent the weekend in Adelaide. Their plane (Jet star) was also delayed by an hour so we had a very cosy and lengthy chat to pass the time. I remembered REALLY quickly how god damn sexy Geraldines French accent is, it just makes you drool (not literally... but almost). When we were on holidays in Tasmania she would read the travel brochures in the car and you'd just not want her to stop talking :) I went on a brilliant driving holiday with Geraldine in 2007 to Tasmania but I haven't seen her since (except for MSN etc). In the interim since then she met her now husband Diego whom I also met that night. He is a Colombian guy who was really nice and they seem very happy together. One thing is for sure if/when they have some kids they would be an awesome mix of French-Columbian.

We talked for a while until Geraldine started getting chocolate withdrawls (I think she hadn't had any chocolate for a few hours!!) and she asked if I knew of "Haighs" chocolate and if she could buy some somewhere in the airport? I was certain that Haighs had a shop in the terminal so we went looking....and looking.....and looking.... Seems this was one of those VERY rare occassions when I was not 100% correct. Luckily no one was there with a camera so I can plausibly deny that it ever happened. We eventually found a shop called "Aussie Icons" that had a small assortment of Haighs chocolate and we both bought a 10-pack of Chocolate frogs ($20 but SOOO worth it....they're like little frog shaped, chocolate flavoured orgasms). Their plane eventually arrived and they left for Brisbane. It's then that I noticed something about flying to Brisbane from "anywhere" in Australia....you will ALWAYS leave for brsbane from the furthest possible gate in the terminal. In Melbourne..gate 56, In Adelaide gate 25 .... weird. So with Geraldine and Diego on their way I went back towards my gate (Gate 13..how fitting is that!!) to be hailed, not 5 steps into the journey, by an anouncement on the PA that my flight would be further delayed by ANOTHER 30mins. I'd had enough...it was Sunday night and not only did I have to leave Adelaide (which is never easy) I had to go to work in the morning 800km away and the plane was now 2.5 hours late...it was time for beer.

I walked over to the "Coopers Ale House" in the terminal and walked up to the bar, the girls there greeted me with a smile and said "We can tell from your stern, angry and disappointed expression that you are on the Tiger flight. This is the biggest glass we have... what can we fill it with for you?" .. That was the best sales pitch for beer I have ever heard :) I CA'd* and said "I'll take a Coopers Lager" and wandered over to the section of the bar where a small group of people were watching the Olympics. It was showing women's gymnastics of some sort, the event where they run towards a small springboard, bounce off it and then do a hand plant on some vaulting horse thing...chuck a few spins and somersaults and land "theoretically" on their feet. I say "theoretically" because a few of the women competing must have thought this step of the routine was optional as they were landing on their heads, knees, bums etc...was pretty funny, but it wasn't, but it was....

As the "revised" arrival time approached the PA crackled over head again to announce that my flight would be further delayed by another 30 mins. You could actually hear the disgusted growls of people wash through the entire terminal like a tsunami of disdain. Not 5 mins later another announcement declared quite cheerfully that our plane had "Just left Melbourne and it was on it's way here". Now, you'd think they would realise that the people who were waiting for this plane wanted to GO TO MELBOURNE on it...and therefor knew it would take it an hour to get to Adelaide, plus cleaning and refueling. then ANOTHER hour before it arrived in Melbourne...we were looking at an arrival at Melbourne Airport of around 1:15am. Disgraceful for a flight that was scheduled to leave at 8pm and ended up leaving at 12 Midnight.

Inspite of this moronically incompetent end to the weekend I had the best time while being in Adelaide again. Thanks to all involved.

*Chuckled Audibly

Never likely to be seen again....

2008-08-14T21:02:00.002+10:00

I think I just set a world record on the game on my mobile phone!!!

1482 in a single "Bubble Break" !!!

Sods and Odds..

2008-08-13T22:29:00.006+10:00

Sods and Odds..

Well, long time between posts here in blog world....

The truth is...well....I didn't really do much in the last week except catch up on housework (and who honestly wants to hear about that?). It's just been a routine week of "get up, get dressed, go to work" ad infinitum. Work has been "retarded" for want of a better word. The project I have been working on gets changed almost daily it seems and i'm never really sure what's going on from day to day. We've almost successfully come to the end of the projected time-line and then the whole thing gets scrapped and re-planned along a totally different route. Plus our "colleague" in the USA sends me emails constantly refuting everything we have accomplished so far in our research and claiming the exact opposite of what we have already reported (and recorded AND witnessed here in Oz). It gotten to the point where I open my email each day and hope that there isn't too many emails there from this guy...because 99% of the time I have no idea what the hell he is on about.

This week on Tuesday I again was called into a "Super Important Meeting" with 2 hours notice given and AGAIN expected to recount the history of civilization from the dawn of time (or rather the scientific equivalent). This is beginning to really annoy me, getting told you are meeting with the companies managing director in 2 hours and "Don't come unprepared!!" really is not pleasant when you are flat out working anyway and have to madly print off half a rain forest of data hoping that the correct stuff will be printed with it. Really gives me the shits when this happens...it's so unfair and I think quite unprofessional.

Today we (me and my trusty Chinese work-a-holic Yi) had our task plan changed twice in the space of 8 hours for the upcoming week. We slaved away at what had to get done then 5 mins before home time Yi's experiment exploded....f%$king brilliant. We decided there was nothing we could do about it then and there and would deal with the fallout in the morning. We're confident that we can save some of it and use it for what it was made for...if we can't ... well, there is a saying you might have heard about excrement and rotating cooling machines and this will adequately describe the consequences.

on a happier note...

Just had basketball tonight and we absolutely smashed the other team for a big win. 40-22. I got 10 points and no fouls because i am just so awesome. Some of my shots tonight were just brilliant...I faded, I pump-faked, I sold dummies and drove the lane.....it almost looked like I had unlimited skills and was unstoppable :) actually pretty close to real life ..

1 more sleep and I'll be going to Adelaide for the weekend too. Always a great feeling to be going back there and I have some pretty good things planned to enjoy myself. This will mainly involve seeing the siblings and parental unit, sleeping, lazing about and well.... more lazing about if I have my way :) I'm pretty sure I can sneak in a monster massage as well if I can find a willing recipient.

Got a funny thing in my email from Christine today at work...it was some Horoscope "personality" generalisation thing, but when I read the one for Pieces (i.e. Me) it said this:

PISCES - The Dreamer (Feb 19 - Mar 20) - Generous, kind, and thoughtful. Very creative and imaginative. May become secretive and vague. Sensitive. Don't like details. Dreamy and unrealistic. Sympathetic and loving. Kind. Unselfish. Good kisser. Beautiful. Great in Bed.

Now really....have they NAILED me there or what?? I can't find a single thing to refute there. Absolutely spot on.

Some others that I noticed seem to describe people I know quite well also.

Take my older Brother for example:

ARIES - The Daredevil (Mar 21 - April 19) Energetic. Adventurous and spontaneous. Confident and enthusiastic.
Fun. Loves a challenge. EXTREMELY impatient. Sometimes selfish. Short fuse. (Easily angered.) Lively, passionate, and sharp wit. Outgoing. Lose interest quickly - easily bored. Egotistical. Courageous and assertive. Tends to be physical and athletic.

I think his wife would say that describes him to a Tee. HAhahahahah NOT.

Or take my Younger Brother:

SCORPIO - The Intense One (Oct 23 - Nov 21)Very energetic. Intelligent.. Can be jealous and/or possessive. Hardworking. Pathetic kisser. Can become obsessive or secretive. Holds grudges. Attractive. Determined. Loves being in long Relationships. Talkative. Excessively Romantic. Can be self-centered at times. Passionate and Emotional.

Again, that would probably be refuted immensely by his Girlfriend..

Seems that the horoscope was only correct about Pieces :)

To be fair, I do know a certain Leo that this fits pretty well to:

LEO - The Boss (July 23 - Aug 22)
Very organized. Need order in their lives - like being in control. Like boundaries. Tend to take over everything. Bossy. Like to help Others. Social and outgoing. Extroverted. Generous, warm-hearted. Sensitive. Creative energy. Full of themselves. Loving. Doing the right thing is important to Leos. Attractive.

Not that I believe any of this tripe really. I always knew my "kind, Sensitive, Unselfish and loving" nature may be genetic. But my awesome kissing, good looks and orgasm inducing mastery in the bedroom is all the result of my own work and dedication and not something I was born with I don't think. It's hard to believe that such expertise can be "learned".... but I am living proof that THESE skills can be attained through dedication and persistence :)

Crappest Day ever...and it's only 8am!!

2008-08-06T08:22:00.008+10:00

Yesterday I was involved in a conversation that really ruined my day. It's no ones fault and it's not as if the conversation was malicious or deliberately hurtful but ...well .... I didn't really need to hear AGAIN what this person was telling me. What made it worse was that I know they are only trying to be subjective and mostly playing "devils advocate" and that everything they said was in fact true and I know it's true. The short version of this saga is that I find myself in a situation I cannot change and have very little influence over and certain "people" seem to think that because I am in this situation I shouldn't try and make the best out of it because in the short term I can't "win". They have this view that because the outcome will not likely benefit me in any way I should not try too hard or invest any time and effort to achieve anything. All I can say is you have to "pick your battles" I suppose? Is it better to be seen as someone who'll not even try if there is no personal benefit or is it better to be seen as a person who'll at least "participate" and "contribute" even if ultimately they'll not get any recognition in the short term or any thanks or any personal benefit? Anyway, this conversation was stuck in my head for the remainder of the evening and I couldn't get it out. I kept mulling over it, over and over and over again....which is really not a good thing to do when nothing I can do is going to change anything. I had basketball training with the kids last night and a few of them commented that I seemed a bit "sad", well that was a bit of a wake up call. I usually don't worry about much, especially things that I have no control or influence over but obviously this is affecting me more than I thought. The team manager (Kellie) also asked me if I was alright as usually we talk quite a bit at trainings and the actual games, I've also discussed this situation with her before and she's probably given me the best advice on the subject. Her take was 'No one can tell you what is important to you. That is the beauty of the individual and just remember people aren't judged only on their actions in the good times".
Needless to say I had a really crappy evening when I returned home from basketball. I had organised to get my washing machine looked at on Thursday due to it recently leaking like it belongs at Rachels house ( :P ). Tonight however it decided it would make the most of the repairman's visit and flood my kitchen. Fucking FANTASTIC. To top it off, the skirting around the walls in my "Laundry" weren't ever sealed when the house was renovated and all the wood has swollen and buckled and come away from the gyprock.... plus it's now water logged and mouldy. I'm hoping I can kick up a real shit-storm over this because the last time the house got flooded I pleaded with the owner to install a DRAIN in the laundry so this couldn't happen. They of course said they didn't see it as "nessicary" and didn't want to do it....well, come and look at your wall now you cheapskate bastards and tell me it wasn't "nessicary"!!
I'm pretty sure that I won't be getting my bond back now when/if I leave.
I dealt with that minor disaster as best I could and then tried to relax with some soothing Scrabby. Earlier in the day I had the good fortune to unleash a bingo tsunami on my opponent. I got 3 separate REAL words as bingos in different games and was in a pretty commanding position. So much so that a bit of SMS gloating was in order....... which true to form had little effect on my opponents moral. I opened up game after game to see that I wasn't really "winning" any of them. Most of them were still quite close ... was I really losing so badly before all the bingos that they simply brought me back into contention?? I went to bed and simply couldn't sleep. The day had been such a shocker that as soon as I tried to shut down my brain it simply started mulling over everything that had gone on. I slept in bursts of about 1hr at a time and eventually woke up at 4am (what is with that???) and couldn't get back to sleep. BRILLIANT start to the day. When I got to work this morning I then had one of my colleagues inform me that the left brake lights on my car don't work ...AAAarrrRrggHHH!!! If there's one thing I don't need it's things on my car breaking. Not that I can't fix it... one of my pet psychological hates is people who don't appreciate their cars (maybe it's just because mine is worth so much??) and I just HATE seeing other peoples cars with faulty lights or unrepaired damage etc. and always think "Fix it you TOSSER!!!" ... now I am currently the TOSSER (note: Rachel you are exempted from this generalisation). Also, troubleshooting tail light problems is nearly impossible by yourself as you can't press the brakes AND look at the lights at the same time, not without backing the car into the bathroom to utilise the mirror in there....BAH. Note To Self: Do it at night...in the garage...with the roller door down...look for lights on both sides of the car. Now, just checked the data I have had running overnight on the GC...and there is a contamination in all of it. I cleaned and replaced EVERYTHING in the GC over the last few days but this crap is STILL there and it's getting WORSE!!!!!! Anyone with any idea of where it's coming from let me know because I am at a loss to explain it. I have basketball tonight too, it's an early game..which is good I suppose and it's against the bottom team, but the way things are going today...I bet we lose. Something pretty damn terrific better happen today because I think I need some one to make ME laugh for once.

What a great weekend....

2008-08-04T12:16:00.011+10:00

Well this weekend was certainly one of the better ones I've had in Melbourne in the last year or so. Did lots and caught up with some old friends. The weekend started off on Friday with some awesome news of a pending visit to Melbourne by Rachel in a months time. THAT is going to be brilliant and i've already been compiling a (quite expansive...as it turns out) list of "Activities" that are possible during the time she is here. The Rach is good. Can't have too much Rach. I am going to take some holidays to really take advantage of this rare occasion and a big thank you to all the assorted Yacoumii who are "Allowing Rachel to go" again...you all rock harder than the rockiest Rockers in Rocktown.

Saturday started once again with an Alarm going off at 8am. Alarms on the weekend are just not getting any easier to deal with for me. There are very few things I will trade sleep for willingly and it is still a struggle each Saturday to get up within 15 mins of that alarm. Eventually my overwhelming sense of duty and commitment to the 7 kids in the team get the better of me and I get up and get ready. Thankfully the game was at the 2nd closest venue to my house so that meant a quick travel time. I arrived at the venue with about 10 mins to go before game time and scanned the place for my players..they were mucking around under the goal trying to throw the trickiest trick shots they could think of. You know, like trying to throw the ball up over the backboard from the rear and have it go in the basket etc. Totally useless in a game situation but no matter how hard I try week after week after week they just won't practise shooting from ANY position that they'll actually be in with the ball and trying to shoot a goal during the game 99.99% of the time. Accordingly when the game started we had to endure several minutes of shots at goal that were not even close to going in. The game was fairly neck and neck for the most part and my team was again playing quite well except for a few "brain fades" where their little brains go.."When all else fails...just chuck the ball as far and as HARD as you possibly can!!", never ends well that strategy.

The game came to a close with us winning 18 - 12. This is our THIRD straight win now and sees us firmly in 3rd place trailing second place by 1 point. We play them next week I think....if we win...we'll be second going into the finals...or....so I get told by all the parents that are at the game. I tend not to really care where we are on the ladder.... it's really irrelevant....but I feign interest and excitement for the sake of the children :)

After the game I said my goodbyes and as quickly as it all started not 1 hr ago everyone was gone. Having multiple children all playing sport on Saturday mornings must be hell for parents who have child-A playing basketball at 9:20am in Vermont then having Child-B playing footy at 10:30am in Oakleigh some 50km away. The car park is empty about 2 mins after the actual game finishes.

Saturday, Day was started with a trip to McDonalds for breakfast. There is one of those 24hr Jobbies near me that also has a McCafe in it. So sometimes I go and get a coffee and hotcakes after the game (I try not to eat alot of "Burgers" from these places as they really are foul, fat encrusted devilry ... Bacon delux burgers are the exception of course...they are delicious). I was planning to go and fill out my day with some looking at TV's as there where some very good "deals" at the moment on Sony stuff. The problem I face (if you can call it that) is I don't actually watch much "TV" I usually watch movies and shows I download on the internet. For that purpose the TV I have is brilliant...it's ridiculously large (72" widescreen) and it's native resolution is 476p. Getting a 1080p TV would make all the movies and TV shows I download look like crap due to excessive upscaling. I think the new TV idea can go on the backburner for a while as I really don't "need" a new one at all.

I was supposed to go and meet up with an old Adeladian friend of mine from around 1998-99 on Saturday night who had tracked me down on facebook earlier in the year. However they had spent the day shopping and didn't get home until about 7 pm before they contacted me and by then it was far too late for me to start heading into the big, bad city. We rescheduled for lunch the next day. I went and got some Indian from a nice little family place near me and proceeded to kill myself with "Worlds Best Garlic Naan" and Vindaloo. Saturday night was then looking good for a extensive Scrabulous session with Rachel. Much to our collective dismay the scrabulous webpage was just throwing up error after error when we tried to access any games. I must admit...I panicked a bit....we both did I think...scrabby has become much more than "just a game" to us. We both seem to be uncontrollably addicted to it and when it was not there we tried to find something internetty to fill the void. I must mention that we decided NOT to indulge in the "official" Hasbro version of Scrabble in a silent protest against their litigation against Scrabulous. This however left us floundering in internetland quite at a loss as to what to do. I think we eventually decided the non-facebook version of Scrabulous was just a monstrosity of complexity and we couldn't be bothered with it. So Rach went and blogged ... or something... and I went and played Teamfortress and worked off the aggression by punishing the randoms who dared stand aagainst me :). I had a good laugh when I got 7 dominations during a round of the map "Gold rush". Sure, my sentry gun did all the killing and all I did was smack it with a wrench for 20 mins keeping it repaired and full of ammo....but I came out a clear winner. 7 dominations is unheard of as to get a domination you have to kill the same player at least 4 times without them killing you. That means I had killed over half the opposition team repeatedly without them getting me. In my defense though, my sentry placement was exquisite and sneaky beyond belief. To satisfy the internet rule "Pics or it didn't happen" here's the pic (2 players actually left the game before the score sheet screen appeared..so only 5 are still there). EDIT: According to the bottom of that screenshot..I had *8* dominations..so this result is actually 14.28% more impressive!!!

Went to bed and had a good sleep after that. Slept in until about 10am and then got ready to head into Melbourne for lunch with Louise and her sister. I parked in the casino and headed to southbank in order to meet up with my lunch dates. We found each other quite easily and proceeded to find somewhere to have lunch where a sandwich didn't cost $700 (which is probably the standard price on 99% of Southbank). I remembered there was a good Irish pub in a little mini-mall thing a bit further up the river bank so we went there and were pleased to be greeted with reasonable prices and HUGE glasses of beer :)

I settled on the Chicken Parma...because you can't really stuff that up. It was not too bad...at least it was cooked and not pink on the inside. The beer I got (Heinekin) was pretty flat and bland out of the tap..actually tasted watery..but meh...it had alcohol in it. We talked for about 3 hours. It was really good to hear about what Louise and Craig had been doing in the last 10 years. Time really is a strange thing, this is the second time this year I have regained contact with someone from my distant past and discovered really quickly that people don't really change "personality" wise. Louise was pretty much how I remembered her, just older and wiser and not such a bundle of unrestrained energy as she was previously in our youth. We used to absolutely run amok together at various "band" nights when our friends and her husbands band used to play all over the place. We used to be the only ones out of our "Circle" who weren't too "Rock'n'Roll" to dance and stuff with the general populace. Good times, good times. She also has 3 kids now and seems to be enjoying herself being a mother.

After lunch I took them to the best cake shop I have ever encountered in Melbourne, "Greico" on southbank...they have a huge assortment of artery clogging delicacies that you gain weight just by looking at. We spent about 30 mins "trying" (in vain) to choose just one cake to eat....we

gave up when we realised it was 4:30pm already. A small victory that we manage to dodge the several thousand calories contained in one slice of those cakes. I think I counted 30 different cakes on offer so that is quite an achievement :)

We parted company and I headed back to my car in order to make the longish journey back home. Stopped off to do my grocery shopping on the way so I'd have food for lunch for the week. All in all a good weekend in Melbourne...for once.

In totally unrelated news, I finished my first modelling gig last Friday and the results are now circulating in the print media. You probably always said to yourself, "That Mikey...he's so really, really, really, ridiculously good looking....he should be a male model". Well, in the immortal words of J.P. Prewitt "I'm a hand model, mama. A finger jockey. We think differently than the face and body boys... we're a different breed. ". Behold the beauty that is me...if you're really lucky one day you may be touched by me, or stroked, or massaged ...either way you now know you're in the grip of a celebrity.

I think i've missed my niche...

2008-08-01T20:35:00.004+10:00

My sister sent me some pictures today about a strange phenomenon at the West-Lakes Mall in Adelaide. Apparently "The Field" is all the rage?? Now, I was aware that we as a family were pretty popular....but I had no idea that this was happening. We decided (we being "Fields") that we should go to the aforementioned mall and just stand around and lap up the admiration...I mean really, who could resist??

<--- Got a nice "Style" about it that logo. Much like myself. Should be able to get some T-shirt printed with that fairly easily enough.

<--- I was recently informed that "Good Manners Cost Nothing" and that is so true. So accordingly this sign would help purvey that we do appreciate the adoration of the public.

<----- Hahahahaha so many jokes there isn't there?
I am quite "minty" between the hours of 8am - 10am, then I take on the flavor of freshly brewed and aromatic coffee until about 1pm. Mid afternoon I am salad fresh with a hint of vinaigrette. By 4pm I am becoming quite savory and go well with strong cheese or pate. Late afternoon I have the delicate aroma's and taste of smoked meat. So step on up and have a lick :)

No, I don't smoke crack...in case you were wondering.

odds and sods..

2008-07-31T11:15:00.005+10:00

Just a few things to mention at the moment....

Firstly, After living in my current house for 9 months now I finally got my fist electricity bill in the mail. I have been getting regular gas, water & phone bills the whole time I have been there but for some reason an electricity bill never arrived. So I am 9 months in arrears for payment you would think? The power bill I got yesterday is only for May, June and July of this year and totalled $142. I rang the power company and asked if this was correct (without letting slip I have been at my house since late October 2007) and the guy assured me that the current bill covers from when I was connected (April 29th according to them) until now. So looks like I got 6 months power for free :) SCORE!!

Secondly, Played Basketball again last night at the ungodly hour of 10:10pm. Once again I left the venue wondering when the rules of basketball changed to the form we currently are subjected to?? The umpiring at the venue is amazing, each week we think it can't possibly get any worse or any less consistent but, amazingly, it does. Last night I got called for a foul that was just so NOT a foul that I sort of...lost my cool...sort of....and sort of dropped a pretty vulgar F-bomb straight at the umpire. He was not amused...and he technical fouled me as well. I was ropeable when later in the game I was driving to the basket and some guy on the opposite team steps across to block me just as I launched myself upward towards the basket, he slams into me while i'm soaring like Michael Jordan and sends me spinning off into "unbalanced-this-is-going-to-hurt-when-ground-and-I-meet" land and thus I miss my shot. No foul was called (of course), I beam several different kinds of grisly death stare at the umpire who simply shrugs and goes "No foul, you jumped into him" .. WHAT THE F#$K?? The opposition then run the ball up the other end and the EXACT same thing happens with the roles of defender and attacker reversed and HE CALLS A FOUL ON OUR GUY!!! I (now being the most uncool tempered person in cool-tempered town) not so politely ask for an explanation of how that is different to what happened not 5 secs ago down the other end of the court?? I get tech fouled again...for apparently being belligerent ...can you believe that?? ME..Belligerent?? At the end of the game the score was 18-20. Technically a "loss" for our team, but since the other team had no scorer to help with scoring and the scoreboard we should get 4 extra points and thus the win.

OOOOOOooOOOO also, during warm up I was practising 3-point shots and was getting a very high percentage of them to go in. So during the game I twice found myself open, with the ball, on the three point line and threw up shots. BOTH of them went in!!! :)

Thirdly, I was checking the state of Scrabby on facebook just before and was very pleased to see that every single game was waiting for ME to play. Many thanks to my Scrabby partner for such diligent work. I promptly played all available games but there was no bingos to report sadly. The competition continues. While checking the Scrab I noticed that there was a new notification there so I decided to check out what it was. I was dismayed to see that Facebook is now no longer content to just throw demoralising ads at you every 1.2375 secs offering you all sorts of sordid encounters with single males and/or females in your age group. It has now decided the best way to get your attention after noticing that you have clicked exactly 0 ads is direct insults to your self esteem via notifications.

<------ See, apparently I am some sort of ugly, unlovable, undateable, disfigured freak. Please tell me it isn't so Facebook!! I just don't understand the mixed signals FB keeps giving me. On one page it's telling me 7 of my friends have a secret crush on me and I should "Click Here" to find out who. On another, one of my friends who is mysteriously anonymous thinks I am "Hot" and I should "Click Here" to find out who again?? And on a further page, 87% of my friends would like to be trapped on a deserted Island with me?? Now I know I am a bit self conscious about a few things , but blatant "No one likes you and wouldn't date you even if you were the last man on earth and there was no sheep" notifications are just about crossing the line Facebook!!

Tomorrow sees the week come to a close (Thank God) and thus sees me eating WBBC for lunch :) It's also Rachel's birthday which is almost as exciting as having WBBC lunch...almost. So........

Happy Birthday Rachel.

You just can't kill the Devil!!!

2008-07-29T12:51:00.005+10:00

You may (or most probably may NOT) remember about the love/hate relationship I have with the Thermo technician. He just LOVES to make me HATE him.

see HERE for the refresher course.

Well, today he is back to look at the Mass Spec again after I arranged for some maintenance work to be carried out on it. True to form though he arrives, asks me what I think is wrong (again, this was ALL in the email I sent to the Customer service manager at Thermo yesterday) and then proceeds to inform me that I am wrong. Again, apparently I am so wrong that even if I was in the wrongest place in wrongtown people there would still point out that I could still be more wrong that that. I have arranged for a certain "non-user serviceable" part of the Mass Spec to be cleaned. By "non-user servicable" I mean, this part is absolutely critical to the functioning of the machine and should it break..the machine is useless.....therefor...I am not going to touch it myself :) Anyway, after sitting through 3 excrucisting hours of him going through every concievable possible cause of the Mass Spec not working EXCEPT for what I thought was wrong, we finally reach an impass. That being that what I said was wrong all along WAS what the problem was and *I* was right all along and he was going to have to eat humble pie again. You'd think he'd learn though wouldn't you?? Why do people even bother to question my awesomeness? It really is beyond me.

So now 4.5 hours after he arrived he's starting to clean the thing I organised him to clean from the get go. We'll get the pleasure of him then charging us 4.5 x $185 for his "Services". I'm definaitely in the wrong career.

EDIT @ 4:30pm: I left "technician Guy" to clean the Mass Spec and went to have my lunch. Not being one to ever gloat over victory I decided to continue with other work to keep myself busy (and away from Technician Guy) because, again (and this is turning into a regular occurrence) someone has not been scrabbying during work hours!!! I know this person will sprout some nonsense about "parenting" or "having appointments" or something as equally unbelieveable but I cant stress enough how dissappointed I am. Technician guy cleaned and re-assembled the Mass Spec and turned it back on. It worked and the cleaning had fixed the problem I had identified. He sauntered into my office to get me to come see the results of his "labour" and asked me "What do you think about that? It looks really good now huh?". "WHAT A FUCKING SURPRISE EINSTEIN!!" was the answer my facial expression probably gave, my actual spoken answer was something much more acceptable to a harmonious client-company relationship.

After all this he's just informed me he'll be BACK TOMORROW!!!!!

I think I'll call in sick.............

Weekend Round-up.

2008-07-27T19:58:00.011+10:00

Well another week comes to an end and how did it all go. Well except for some complete retardedness in the workplace it was a mix of ups and downs. Firstly on returning home from work on Friday night I was greeted with my latest phone bill. Now, as an Australian internet user I have been appalled with the way internet users have been treated by the incumbent Telco (Telstra) ever since I go back from overseas in 2003. When I left Australia in 2000 ADSL internet access was in it's infancy in Australia. Hardly anyone had it yet. Nearly every internet user was using Dial-up 56K modem access to get on-line and a luck minority could get cable broadband from Telstra or Optus for the price of a 1.5 major appendages. There were Thousands of ISP's and they all were pretty much the same only the price and number of hours this bought you differed. Today, ADSL is considered "old" technology and the "Current" new technology is ADSL2+ (Which can be up to 20x faster than ADSL1). In the five years since my return to Australia the one constant thing that has kept Australian broadband from moving forward is Telstra. They quite simply do not give a shit about anything but money. Because they are essentially a Monopoly in Australia (they own all the Telephone exchanges and Telephone Lines) you cannot choose any other provider for phone or internet without giving Telstra "some" money as part of any bill you pay for telecommunications. I have been trying to give them as little money as possible for a few years now, but recently after visiting my friend Rachel in Gawler and seeing her VoIP phone setup and discovering just how easy it is to setup I decided to get off the VoIP fence and use it myself. So now I have been using it for a little over a month and got my first Telstra bill since starting with VoIP.

Here it is, and as you can see the only money that Telstra get from me now is the cost of the actual phone line rental. All calls are now made through VoIP and my spending has gone from $7-$10 a month on calls to $0. Suck on that Telstra you bastards.

Basketball this week was a mixed bag again. The SGE Injectors game was an absolute farce this week. The umpiring was quite simply disastrous. We had 2 trainee umpires presiding over the game and they did not do a very good job at all. By about midway through the game both my team and our opposition had already had people ejected from the stadium for arguing with the umpires about their performance. I must admit, I have played basketball for the best part of 25 years and after that game I felt like I knew nothing of the game, it's rules or what constituted a foul. Needless to say, we "lost" on the scoreboard, but seriously...that game stopped being a game long before the end siren went. It was just painful to suffer through.

The u10 team I coach had a much better weekend. Fresh from their triumphant win over the top team last weekend the kids went out again looking for a win. I had a full compliment of players this time with all 7 turning up. The game was quite good and we didn't really look like we were going to lose at any point. The biggest problem I had, and this is the 1st time that I have had this problem, was that I had to make "coaching" decisions for the benefit of the whole team rather than just substituting players at regular intervals. There are 4 boys in the team and 3 girls and the different abilities of the players range from very good to woeful. The challenge with coaching this team is that there is never the "Best" combination of players on the court for very long because whoever is on the bench is constantly whining that they want to go back on. Well, this week I decided to substitute players so that we would "win" the game. This was in stark contrast to every other game so far where I just substituted players so that everyone got to play equal(ish) time and if we won it was a bonus.This did not go over with the 2 girls who I kept substituting over and over. They really were not doing anything useful when on the court and in a matter of minutes a 14 point lead was down to 2 points due to having to take the good players off to accommodate them. The other "challenge" with u10 basketball coaching is that at games there are usually at least 7 parents there also. They have no regard for you as the actual coach and will scream orders at their own kids on the court telling them to "Do this" and "Do That" etc. Not very helpful I must say, and they take offense if you keep dragging their kids off the court so that you have a better chance of winning. It's a fine balance, but at the end of the games when the team has won....well everyone seems to like that and quickly forget how it was achieved. Anyway, this particular game was a pansting and we won 22-14. It would have been a MUCH bigger win had I not given the more "skills Challenged" players so much court time :)

This coming week sees nothing exciting happening at work (that I can remember anyway) just more "routine" work really. Next weekend I am catching up with a very old friend of mine from my early-to-mid 20's whom got lost in the world of no mobile phones or Internet of the mid nineties and I haven't seen since about 1997 so that should be fun. We used to have a ball together back then and in the brief contact I have had with her since the now almost obligatory "facebook re-unification" of anyone you used to know back then and lost contact with, she's seems pretty similar to how I remember her. The last time I remember seeing her was when myself and 3 of my close friends from Gawler drove 16hrs straight to Newcastle NSW from Gawler for her wedding to our other friend Craig. That trip was surreal and the wedding is just an alcoholic blur. All I remember was singing karaoke at some point in the night and being the absolute best entertainment of the night. So pretty much standard behavior from me even 10 odd years ago.

The 2nd Funniest man on Earth may also be one of the smartest.

2008-07-25T09:38:00.003+10:00

One of my good friends, Affectionately known to all as "Admiral Bayls" has contributed a cracker of an opinion on the forums of the gaming clan that I belong to where we have been discussing carbon trading. Some of you may have had the pleasure of reading some of Bayls's opinions on a variety of different topics through various means. They are usually brilliant mixes of comedy, satire and bile....but always impeccably worded and factual. One thing is for sure, he is a very smart man and even when he goes off half cocked it is more informed than most people.

His "summation" post on the topic of global warming was so good that I think everyone should see it. No matter how you personally feel about the subject of global warming there is always room for another opinion on the subject. Here is Bayls's and I agree with it completely.

The full debate is viewable here (I'm pretty sure you can LOOK at the topic, just not post without a forum account): Click Here

"Testing Times" or "Melbourne, Root of all Evil" or "Get me the F#$k Out Of Here!"

2008-07-24T18:15:00.013+10:00

*WARNING* THIS POST ISN'T FUNNY

This week has been a "one of those" type of weeks. You know the ones where certain things happen and you have a bit of a stock take of your current situation in life? Where you go "Am I doing what I thought I would be doing with my life?", "I am happy?", "Does the future look good?", "Am I on track with my hopes, dreams and goals?". Mostly you get a mix of "Yes" and "No" answers to the various questions you ask yourself and weight up the results. Well, most people that know me would have a pretty good idea about the one thing in my life that I have been trying to change for the last 4 years. After what has happened in the last few months (mainly professionally, but also privately) has really made me question my sanity in staying in Melbourne. It really is the source of all my troubles. The problem is that my chosen career pretty much has me rooted to the spot here in Melbourne and I can't see an easy way out., in fact at this point in time I can't see ANY way out. It's becoming harder and harder to pretend that I like it here and it's beginning to effect and change me I think.

I have been taking pretty regular trips back to Adelaide for the entire time I have been in Melbourne. This equates roughly to a trip back every 6 weeks or so and more often if the cost of flights plummet and allow it. This is purely because I have never, not even for a day, felt that I belonged in Melbourne. I feel isolated from everything that is important to me and everyone that I care about. I liken it to being sent to prison, you are alone for the majority of the time and look forward to seeing your family constantly. That is what it's like for me. Now i'm not a "Stay at home shut in" either, I do have friends here and I do have a social life and partake in social activities, but it's just not the same. I get told all the time from people I work with that I am "So South Australian" from my "posh" SA accent (???) to the actual way I pronounce words like our, pool, lancer, lego etc. They are right though, I *am* a South Australian and every moment I spend in SA just reminds me of that. So much so, that every time I have to leave SA to return here ..... well lets just say it's a constant struggle. I'm sure many of you have seen me in Airports at various gatherings or trips and know my demeanour when the destination of whatever flight I am catching is "Melbourne". I'm never pleased to leave ever.

The biggest influence is that my *entire* immediate family resides in SA. That's a mother, 2 brothers and a sister and now 2 nieces. Couple that with most of my closest long time friends being there as well and you can probably understand why the "pull" to SA is so strong. Every time something in my family happens..it happens in SA and I more often than not I am not there to be part of it. My older brother has 2 daughters now (aged 3 and 1) and I get to see them maybe 4 times a year. The oldest girl, Charlotte has trouble remembering who I am when I visit because , well, why would she? Most of the time I am a voice on the phone only. Yet when my younger brother appears at the house too "Uncle Craig" is instantly recognised and greeted. Heart breaking stuff indeed.

I have pretty much been by my self though, for the majority of the time, since finishing uni in 2000. I even went overseas and lived for a few years and while I'm glad I did that, it also caused me to miss one of our major family events. I was not in Australia when my father died and as such my last memory of him is him standing in the old Adelaide airport saying goodbye to me with tears in his eyes as I left for Germany. I've not forgiven myself yet for leaving Australia at this time even though it was probably the right thing to do.

It's just that I have this overwhelming feeling of "Home" when I am in Adelaide. I think most people can relate to that.We all like to feel "happy" and be surrounded by family and friends and a lot of people take for granted sharing time with those near and dear to them. I have not had that privileged for a very long time and its beginning to really get to me now because the "next" generation of our family has arrived. I don't feel like I am part of anything that happens in this regard and I hear about the majority of news second hand or on picture galleries on Facebook etc. Your family affairs and news shouldn't be something that you go onto the internet to "Catch Up On" like some TV show, but that's the exact situation I find myself in. I don't like that and I don't like the way Melbourne makes it my reality. Melbourne really makes me lonely and I just hope I can steer the good ship "Mikey" closer to home in the coming months/year.

I apologise that this blog is a bit morbid and "unfunny" but this week has just made me think about a lot of "Grown Up" things again and .... well....it's my Blog and I'll write about whatever I damn well choose!! :P

Wrong Numbers II: The sequel.

2008-07-22T15:31:00.003+10:00

Having read recently about other peoples experience with wrong numbers I finally have my own to share. It all started yesterday when I was rung up at work on my mobile/pocket/Handy phone by Melbourne City Land Rover and I had the pleasant gentleman list off all the extras that they'd added to my new Land Rover and ended with him asking me when I would like to pick it up. Having to explain to him that I actually didn't buy a Land Rover and knew not what he was on about was quite hard.....not often you get offered a free Land Rover ;). So, he read the contact number back to me and , yes, it was my number. So he apologises profusely and I hang up and go back to work. About an hour later my mobile/pocket/Handy phone rings again and this time it's Melbourne Metro BMW, the guy on the phone also wants to give me a free car (a BMW 650 this time.....nice) that I have apparently ordered and was ready for pick-up. Again, I told the guy that I hadn't ordered any car and could he confirm the number he called. Again, it was my phone number???

Fast forward to today and I get to work (to be greeted by more unbelievable crap... but that is a whole other story) and start bearishly working away at my stuff when, lo and behold, my mobile/pocket/handy phone rings again. This time it's Porsche Centre Melbourne, and guess what? You got it...My new Porsche 911 4S Targa is ready for me to collect. Again I explain that I have not ordered any Porches and he again confirms the phone number he's called...again...it's mine. Now I'm beginning to get a bit worried, Is my phone number being used in some elaborate luxury car scam?? Sure seems that way...in mid ponder my thoughts are interrupted by my mobile/pocket/handy phone ringing again. Who could it be THIS time I wonder?? It's the helpful staff at Lexus of Melbourne this time just wanting to know if I would like to come and take a look at my new IS250 sedan that is apparently ready for me? Again, I explain to the guy that I haven't ordered any Lexii lately and could he repeat the number he's called ? Again..it's my number?? The mind boggles. I decided to ask the guy if he could throw any light onto the fact that I have just about been rung up by every luxury car dealer in greater Melbourne over the last 2 days all of them wanting to give me cars and all having my mobile/pocket/handy number as their contact. He can't but thinks it is interesting. He says he has an email address of the person he's trying to reach and will get in contact with them that way. He promises to "Have some fun with them" whatever that means. So there you have it....weirdest wrong number story I have ever heard of. It's quite funny in a way, due mainly to the fact that 4 separate people have apparently bought very expensive cars and all have given my mobile/pocket/handy number as their contact. Ooops, there goes the phone again.....I wonder if this will be Melbourne Mercedes or the Audi Melbourne chaps...........

Basketball Stars

2008-07-20T20:47:00.002+10:00

Well this week was another good one (sort of) for basket ball. While the SGE injectors (the team I play for) didn't "technically" win we surprised ourselves with how good we actually DID do. This week we had to play the "Behemoths", this team hasn't lost yet this season (I don't think) so as soon as I turned up and saw them I was already dreading the pantsing we were going to get. This however, didn't eventuate. Last time we played them about 7 weeks ago we lost about 70 - 13, this time we actually kept up with them and the final score was a respectable 42-34. A loss for us, but we played really, well. I even got told I played very well. There wasn't as many points for me as last week and true to form "with" glasses on I couldn't get the foul shots in when last week without glasses I couldn't miss??? Explain that one.

Saturday brought about my return to the coaching bench for the u10 Easter Bulls team. I missed last weeks game due to being in Adelaide and when I asked how they went (I forgot to at practice on Tuesday because Tyler was being an ass-hat and trying my patience). The answer was they lost and against the bottom team too :( Our opponents for today were, and you probably saw this coming, the TOP team in our division. We only played them 2 weeks ago....but .... somehow...here we are playing them again. This time I had 6 players so some substitutes could be made at opportune times this time.

So the kids are warming up and the first thing I noticed is that during the school holidays they have all forgotten how to shoot?? They were TERRIBLE. I got them doing lay-ups before the game and I don't think a single one of them got one in. The game starts and my team takes control of the ball straight away. They get it down our goals end and then it starts. Throw..Miss, shoot, miss, shoot....miss...shoot...miss..shoot miss. They must have put up 50 shots in about 10 mins (no kidding) and not one of them went in. The score was 0 - 0. Every time a shot went up and missed the crowd roared ..... with laughter mostly. I couldn't believe it...I was jumping up and down on the spot going "This CAN'T be happening!!!" It's sort of like winning a scrabble game...eventually....statistically....if you play enough games...you have to win ONE of them eventually (Right Rach?) That's what I thought would happen here...enough shots were going up that eventually ONE of them had to go in ?? The other team managed to get a rebound and raced down the other end of the court only to also shoot and miss. There was a mad scramble for the loose ball and the opposition got it and threw up another shot. To my great dismay it went in. 2 points to them. Eventually we managed to get the ball to go into the basket and not before time either I reckon we would have easily had 100 shots at the basket before the first goal was scored...insanity. The first half ended a low scoring affair of 8 - 6, with the opposition leading.

The kids played very well in the first half and should, by rights, be winning about 200 - 8. I told them at the break that they were doing really well but needed to remember to pass the ball out from under the basket if they got a rebound and couldn't shoot. This is the biggest problem with not just my team but all the teams in this grade. The guy (or girl) with the ball gets set upon by the WHOLE other team...and because they are all 9 y.o. they just try to POWER THROUGH ADVERSITY and more often than not lose the ball.

Second half was a much better effort from the Eastern Bulls.There was some good passes and we intercepted a lot of passes. We managed to get on level terms at 10 - 10 with 10 minutes to go and the kids were really excited to be in this position. Everyone on the team had already been off once during the game for a rest so I had to start again at the beginning. Beth came off again (without complaining, which ALL of her male team mates could take notice of!) and cheered with me from the sidelines. We got the ball from a rebound and worked it up the court and got a GOAL!! We were WINNING!! It really was gratifying to see just what that specific goal meant to the kids when it went in. Tyler had shot it (amazingly) and when it dropped in he punched the air with a fist and let out a "YEAH!!", he was so pleased with himself. The other kids all ran over and jumped around him going "Yeah!! Wooo Hooo Alright!" etc. :)

The next 8 mins went like a blur, the ball was back and forwards, back and forwards between the 2 teams with no one scoring. I dreaded it each time the ball was down the oppositions end because they have so many players they always can outrun my guys (and girls) because they aren't tired. At one stage Beth looks up at me from the bench and goes "Can I please go back on? I've been off since 10 mins." I think my mouth dropped agape....In all the excitement I'd forgotten all about substituting. I looked at the clock there was only a minute to go. I called the umpire and asked for the next sub, he nodded. My team got the ball and worked it down to our end this time Jesse put up a shot and BAM in it went ... the kids go bezerk with joy. Almost brought a tear to my eye they were so proud of themselves. The ref called the substitution and Beth went back on... with 30 secs of game time left. She said she was happy that at least she was on the court when we won, kids are so easily pleased sometimes.

So final score was 14 - 10 and a win to us.

This was probably the best game the kids have played to date. To come out and beat the top team so convincingly was a great effort by them. I personally think it's all in the coaching ;)