...and the world was poorer for it.

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.

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....

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....

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....

..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.