Avril Lavingne has a lot to answer for

Actually, I'm blaming Avril, but truth be told, I doubt that in Australia they've even heard of her.

The thing is this. I live near Hyde Park in Sydney. I frequently walk through aforementioned park to the CBD, or on my way to work, you know, things like that. It's pretty enough. They have a war memorial in the middle (ish) and I think what is meant to be a tranquillity pool. But what they also have, is an inordinate number of skateboarders. In itself, this isn't a big issue, after all, I'm big enough and ugly enough to scowl convincingly at a 12 year old boy giving it all he's got to be a cool dude, dressed in black and/or neon and lolloping about. But in actual fact the 12 year olds are way cooler than that and the skateboarders are, without exception, WELL OVER 30 AND LOOKING LIKE THEY NEED TO GET A LIFE. (And a bath.)

And in fact, now that I've noticed this, I see that this breed of degenerates are sodding well everywhere; skating in the park, skating down Oxford Street, skating by the swimming pool, by the cathedral/church thing, in all the other parks, basically wherever there are a few steps of ledges they can do skate tricks, they're there.

What's it all about. Recapturing your youth??? What happened, why are there so many of them?? Where do they live?? Why don't they go to work?? Why didn't they grow up?? Surely they all can't be thinking they're Peter Pan. And surely none of them have girlfriends?? Who would put up with a 30 year old man walking around with a skateboard trying his best to look 13 and avoiding all contact with soap and water. Ans: No one.

I'm actually tempted to become a skateboard vigilante and push them over as they skate past me. It was all I could do to restrain myself yesterday when one sailed past me on the pavement. Seriously, what twats.

Next weekend...

I'm doing my best to keep the frequent flyer miles up to date, so I'm off to Adelaide next weekend. I'm going to see Pink in concert, which should be good fun, although I've not actually heard that much of her work. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to go and buy the album beforehand and listen to it - or wait until afterwards??

But my trip to Adelaide means taking the Monday off work - no big deal (except my boss hasn't agreed to it yet - but duh it's not like he has to pay me, so ummm, hello???) but the other downside is that the Wednesday is Anzac Day which is another day off. It'd be cool if I was getting paid for this ridiculous number of holidays in one month (three, count 'em) but being Miss Contractor I don't get paid, and frankly it sucks.

But I'm looking forward to going back to Adelaide it's pretty there and makes a nice change to the tourist trap of Sydney..... which I know is stupid as I am a tourist as well, but there you go. I am fickle and have double standards. So bite me.

Ugh, Easter

Easter back in Blighty is one of those times when you know the shops aren't going to open on the Sunday. It's like Christmas Day. You know it's coming.

In Sydney, for reasons known only to Australians, and even then it's probably only about 3 of them, *all* the shops close for Good Friday.

So there I am, expecting everything to be open, at least half-heartedly for 6 or 7 hours of the day - but no. It was like the place had been infected with some hideous virus and everyone had fled the city. Maybe everyone *had* fled the city, that would explain why I could cross the road without being run over, or why there was tumbleweed blowing down the road.

Really it was a shock. And it wasn't a great omen for the rest of my Easter to be fair.

On Saturday we drove up to Palm Beach. Not as is usual to check out the set of Home and Away (I was very restrained all things considered) but to have a break from the city and to have a nice lunch. So we sat down at a place called the Beach Shack - or Shed - or something like that - and got the menu. It was one of those menus where they have to write 'jus' instead of 'gravy' because it sounds more posh and they can therefore charge you double. So I decided on the goujons of spatchcock - chicken nuggets. And then the waitress informed me they were out of spatchcock - plainly because we'd rocked up at 3pm and all the kiddies would have already eaten them on the basis that they were clearly chicken nuggets.

So I look over the menu, and being madam fussy eater, I wasn't going to eat the lamb, the fish, the duck or the steak which cost like $50. So I ordered from the starters Steak Tartare.

And then when it arrived in front of me I think I must have had a look of pure shock because the waitress had presented to me an enormous chuck of bread, served with a huge mound of minced beef mixed with various spices and chopped garlic and onion and so on. And. oh yeah, the crucial part of that tale was that the mince was uncooked. I had effectively been served with glorified cat food. Mmmmm, well apparently, it turns out that I am an ignorant imbecile because this is completely what was expected (well, by at least one person on my table, who declined to inform me of what I was ordering when I first chose it.....)

So anyway, being made of stern stuff (ish), I decide to give it a go. I have a taste of the death on my plate and to be fair, it wasn't as hideous as I had expected, but even so, being a pile of meat big enough to feed a pack of starving huskies, I wasn't ever going to eat the whole lot. Combine that with the fact that my enormous lump of bread was toasted into oblivion and had the consistency of a lump of rock, all in all it wasn't the gormet lunch I had anticipated.

It all must have been quite entertaining, because, unpromted the waitress came over and told me that the dish had been taken off the bill - I guess it had something to do with my utter horror, but whatever.

I didn't feel at all well on Monday or Tuesday following that escapade, but it might have been something completely unrelated - but you know, even the cavemen knew to cook the meat before serving it up. There's something altogether weird about eating uncooked food. I'm not sure I'd go for sushi either - but given that I don't like seafood I guess that's just one of those things we'll never know......

While I was in Adelaide.....

I went to see the comedian Ronnie Johns doing his impersonation of Chopper Reid, a notorious Aussie killer. It really doesn't sound as funny as it ought to when I put it like that. I think I would have a hard time trying to convince you based on my descriptive efforts. He's not released a DVD of the night yet, maybe he will, but in the meantime I'll attach some links to youtube where there are some of his clips.

Caveat: being in the internet cafe means I can't properly watch the clips before posting them, but given the usual standard, I'd suggest not viewing if you are easily offended by swear words.

Airline Safety: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADUsq_-Kd2U

Weather forecast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2X_YoNZ39E

Airport Security: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mA3voZUZrk

I didn't just see Chopper though, obviously, I also caught up with my friends there which was nice and I'm back to Adelaide again at the end of the month to see Pink play live, which should also be good. It's going to be a busy week....

The same the world over.....

Today I came into work in my jeans. Not as you might imagine for some random charity event or anything like that, but because we were moving desks. I've never been convinced that moving desks is particularly productive, but as a contractor right now I say bring it on, because effectively they're paying me for an hours work lifting a PC from one side of the office to the other. Bargain.

Add to that the fact that I arguably now have the best desk in the office, window in the corner, it's not all bad. I'm not entirely sure how it happened either, I think they thought it was going to be a really tiny area so they'd shove the contractors into it, but then the mainframe people moved all their IBM redbooks out the way and it's turned out OK.

The only downside is the airconditioning which is always set to 'fierce' and inevitably makes my hands feel like ice. Which is nice.

So there you go, completely pointless desk moves - they happen *everywhere*.

Google Kidders

So at the weekend it was April Fools day.

As you may have noticed, I have been noticable by my absence, the reason being I have been sans internet for the last couple of weeks. But I have been at work, posting to the blogger via email (and now nearly three weeks later, here at the intenet cafe to post it out)

But I digress, Google had April Fools - and very entertaining it was too. I've always liked the idea of working for Google where you can get 20% of your time to do your own little projects. (If anyone from Google fancies hiring me, pop us an email - happy to relocate...) But *anyway*, yes, here is this years April offering from Google

http://www.google.com/tisp/

and this one contains links to the old ones - which I hadn't seen before - where have I been hiding - under a big rock or what???

http://www.google.com/tisp/notfound.html

Its been ages...

It was only when i got a text from someone at home that I checked my blog and saw that they were right when they said I'd not been updating it. Oooops!

To be honest I've been here there and everywhere trying to sort myself out and not having daily access to a laptop makes it much harder to keep this up to date. But enough of my attempts to persuade you of my busy schedule, here's whats been going on!

A couple of weeks ago I moved into my own little apartment. It's nothing fancy, of course as I barely own anything here I've rented a furnished apartment. It's in central Sydney, 5 minutes walk to the CBD and about a 10 minute drive to the beach. Although I'm no expert, I kinda get the feeling that compared to flats at home it seems cheaper to rent, especially given how close I am to the city and the beach - and given that it's furnished.... but who knows. I was going to post up some pics of my little abode, but various technological limitations (internet cafe having no bluetooth connections) means that I can't upload the pictures.

Another time......