April 2005

29-Apr-2005 - The era of the long weekends

Had an unintentionally extended long weekend last weekend. It was anzac day on the monday, and I had a cold on monday and tuesday so didnt come to work on tuesday either.

I have now accrued almost 4 weeks of holiday days at work, so I've decided that every couple of weeks (when I accrue another day), i'm going to have a long weekend! :-). I think i'll take Mondays off so I can go clubbing on Sunday night. And i'm starting it this weekend, so yeah!! another long weekend!! :-)

Didnt get up to much last weekend - just the usual. I bumped into Cristan at stonewall on Saturday or Sunday night.. cant remember. Was good to catch up with him. Alex G came around on the weekend and we watched the movie I, Robot. I thought it was awesome.

On the way back from work yesterday, they had covered town hall station with Star Wars ep III advertising. Lots of hype about this movie.. lets see if it turns out any good.

Tim H lost all his data on his hard drive when things stuffed up... including his music and photos! Poor guy. Coincidentally, I have recently bought an extra hard drive for my computer, and have scheduled a weekly backup of my entire main hard drive to it... so hopefully I will never find myself in the same situation.

For lunch today I have some of mum's spaghetti bolognese. yumm! Had it for dinner at her place last night.

Oh and I am learning German again. Julian decided to start learning again, so I thought what the heck.. i'll do it too. I have listened to 5 half-hour audio lessons, and have a little book I write words and phrases into, along with a german RSS news ticker on my home and work pc's, plugins for IE to help translate words and all kinds of stuff. Hopefully this time around I will become reasonable!

I know a couple of german people I can go to for help, as well as Julian who is also learning.

My jogging has temporarily stopped until I am 100% over my cold. Speaking of healthy things I discovered I can buy a quite large salad sandwich from darling harbour very cheaply.. so I might do that on the way home a lot more instead of eating crap out of a tin or something.

Fascinating (or not so fascinating) fact of the day: The word "Salary" is derived from "Salt" - the Romans used to get paid in salt which was considered highly valuable at the time. The latin word "Salarium" means Salt Money.

So there you go!

21-Apr-2005 - Dance dance dance

Well its thursday today.. went for a 10km jog on tuesday night through the streets of balmain. I was amazed to see so many cafes open full of people at 9pm at night on a tuesday! There were people everywhere around balmain.

Unfortunately I have not learnt my lessons of the past, and I went for a big jog in new jogging shoes. When I had got almost all the way to balmain point I got blisters from my new shoes.. then I had no choice but to jog half an hour back home! ouch!! They only got worse, and my feet are still sore today.

Had lots of fun on the weekend. Went to Ultra 4 with Julian on the weekend (a rave). It was pretty cool.. lots of great music in a pretty good venue. Stayed until around 3 or something then went home.

Alex G came over on Sunday and we hung out and watched the movie Robots. He's got a job now yay!

Went out to Arq on sunday night until around 3am - I didnt even have an afternoon nap on sunday! Danced for ages and had a great time.. best time i've had at arq so far - I usually dont like it that much. Surprisingly even though I only got 3 hours sleep before going to work, I was still quite energetic on Monday!

Its the long weekend this weekend.. yay! Looking forward to it.. byeee!

11-Apr-2005 - The longest jog ever

For the past couple of years i've been jogging more and more. I jog faster and longer.. partly to help lose some weight which I wanted to lose, and partly to keep fit. And now that I've been jogging, I have become slightly addicted to it and need to jog every now and then listening to my mp3's :-)

About a year ago I thought that I should really try to do my best for the city to surf and see what time I can get, since I'm going faster and faster these days. The last city to surf that I did was about 2 or 3 years ago, and it was the first time I completed the run without stopping. My time was 89 minutes for the 14km run. This time around I'm hoping to get closer to 75 mins.

Last year I had bad timing and got a cold just a few days before the run, so decided not to run.

Which brings me to The Longest Jog Ever! On saturday I thought i'd go further than I've ever gone before.. and ended up jogging at a reasonable speed for 15km non-stop.. a record for me! I went from darling harbour to iron cove bridge (via anzac bridge and victoria rd), then did the "bay run" around iron cove, then back to darling harbour. Took me around 1.5 hours. Doing a quick calculation, then that means at the same speed I would do the city to surf in around 83 mins. However it would be slightly shorter so I'd have more energy to run slightly faster, i'd be pushing myself harder, i'd have drinks on the way, and it would be cooler.. so 75 mins is possible. Lets see how I do..

Had an average-ish weekend.. Went out on friday, saturday and sunday nights with the boys. Went to a skate comp on saturday at Summer Hill skate park because ben was DJing there.. with great difficultly because of the really really loud ska band that was playing about 100m away, then went home and did my big jog :-). And spent sunday arvo hanging out with Alex.

Last night (sunday), saw all the celebrities with Julian at Arq. There was EGD, Mr S-offer, One minute man, Mr Tall, Corner boy, Californian Boy, Not-not-Scott amongst others.. hmm.. most people reading this weblog will now be thinking WTF?! I have turned EGD into a celebrity superstar in my own mind now.. yes, I have issues. I wonder what EGD would think - probably love it! :-)

Enough chat. C ya.

05-Apr-2005 7:50p - How to elect a new pope

The pope has died. Many do not know the process to elect a new pope. I describe it here.

 

Survivor Vatican City has begun!

16 Cardinals will be whisked to a tropical island to compete to outwit, outplay and outlast each other for the title of Survivor Vatican City, and ultimately named new Pope.

The cardinals will fend for themselves and fight in a battle of wits and strength for the grand prize of Papacy.

THE GAME IS ON. Prepare for the ULTIMATE BATTLE.

05-Apr-2005 1:17p - See ya Dan!

Last week Daniel left our company to move back to Perth with Carol. It was sad to see him go - so many people have left in the last year!

To wish him farewell we all went out to lunch last Thursday at Chelsea. Even though I am trying to be careful about what I eat, I ended up getting the steak and chips :-).. mmmmm!!!

But thats not all! We got delivered one extra plate of food which we did not order, and noone else wanted to eat it, or even share it - and I cant just sit there and let food go to waste, think of the Ethiopians! So for a charitable cause, and in honour of Australians international goodwill, I did not let it go to waste and ate the entire plate of chicken schnitzel with mash potato. Yum! I was so full, but had totally blown my diet ;-). But it was worth it! Funny thing is Brian was not eating because he didnt want to pay $9 for the meal (no comment!).. and he had left just as the plate arrived, so no free meal brian - sucked in! muahahaha!

Anyway, that night some of us also went out to eat at a Korean restaurant to wish daniel farewell. I ate lots of unusual things which I hadnt eaten before.. but quite tasty! Then it was off to Karaoke! :-) A bunch of us stayed there for around an hour and a half, and my voice was buggered by the end of it :P.

On the weekend hung out with Ben and Jules as per usual.. but Julian had a cold and was feeling crap. Ben had a very interesting saturday night at the Columbian (and post-Columbian events). Enuff said. ;-)

Went over to see Chase's apartment on Sunday.. wow! Very good views of the harbour.. looking directly out to the Harbour Bridge and with the Opera House in the background.

Was also talking to Armond.. who was telling me a lot of interesting things about his past and showed me his bullet scrape on the top of his head from being a soldier in Iran.

And I finally finished the damn level I was stuck on in FarCry!! I have since finished two more levels.. yeah!! I only just worked out the zoom-further feature using your mouse wheel - wish I had known about that before.

Well thats my life. See ya.