August 2005
31-Aug-2005
- Frags galore
Its the last day of winter
today, and it started out being a really hot day - now its
very windy and there is a severe weather warning. Just when
I have to go down to cash my work cheque!
The past week has seen me
playing lots of CounterStrike :-). My team (Derka Warriors)
has won the last two games we have played - which is pretty
rare since we never usually win any games! Tonight we are
playing another team in our clan - Derka 1.5. It will be
a fight for supremacy in the Derka clan! Yes its true -
i'm a nerd.
Test tried my mountain bike
on Sunday. Started just riding around to see how it was...
and quickly got addicted. Was having a great time riding
around - I should have bought a mountain bike ages ago!
Anyway, I kept riding from darling harbour all the way out
to a
new housing estate at Cabarita.. had a bit of a look
around then rode back. I figured I probably did about 25km.
Since I hadnt ridden a bike in years I had a pretty sore
arse the next two days! Doh!
The weekend was pretty uneventful
apart from that. I'm glad summer is approaching - and spring
is tomorrow :-). Cant wait for daylight savings!
24-Aug-2005
- Got a new bike
Thats right - i've been
wanting a new mountain bike for a long time, and now I have
finally bought one. I pick it up this weekend - cant wait!
Now I can finally ride all around Sydney like I did during
the HSC - study avoidance ;-).
In other news.. I saw Fighter
Pilot at IMAX which was quite good, but besides that the
weekend was fairly uneventful except for the big fight (err..
well one sided pwning
- i'm starting to sound like a real gamer now.. oh no!)
that I saw in the city. There were two asian guys.. not
that big.. and 1 angry bouncer (maybe he was turkish? possibly...)
from the nightclub Milk. The bouncer was very big and muscly,
while the two asian guys were both thin.
I didnt see what started
the fight, all I saw was a bit of a commotion, then the
bouncer king hit one guy and totally knock him out - he
fell to the ground and wasnt moving. Then the bouncer king
hit the other guy who also fell to the ground. He sat up
and the bouncer smacked him in the head again. The guy who
was knocked out regained his senses then stood up and tried
to run away, but he had lost his balance from the punch
and he fell over twice (the second time fairly hard right
in front of me) while trying to get away.
The other guy got up and
tried to walk away and the bouncer was following him being
aggresive - the asian guy kept moving back, but the bouncer
kept moving closer to him. Eventually the asian guy got
out of there.
It was totally excess violence
from the bouncer - I dont know what happened before that,
but from what I saw the bouncer was abusing his authority.
Typical if you ask me.
15-Aug-2005
- Race day
Today I am very sore. My
legs are killing - especially when I go down stairs, my
feet are hurting, and I can feel that my lungs are very
tired. Even my nipples hurt (from the tshirt rubbing on
them!).
Thats right, yesterday was
the 2005 City
To Surf. It starts at hyde park in the city, and goes
to bondi beach - a total of 14km. This year I managed to
get myself in the front pack (behind the preferential runners).
In past years I have been in either the middle pack or at
the back of the pack - but this means an entire race of
running around people who are walking, which slowed me down
quite a lot.
I have been 'training' for
this race for two years now. I was going to go last year
but got a cold just before the race. Every week I usually
do a big jog of around 10km, so I was much more prepared
this time than last.
I turned up early and got
all my stuff sorted out, then joined the front pack 40 minutes
before the start. This was so I could get a good spot when
the gun went off, but meant standing up in a tightly packed
until the start. At the last minute I took off my extra
tshirt, and long pants which were keeping me warm, so I
only had a light tshirt and shorts on. Then the gun went
off.
Its quite scary being in
a tightly packed crowd of thousands of people who suddenly
surge forward then start jogging at a reasonably fast speed.
Previously I had been in crowds where there were mixed walkers
and joggers, but this group were all jogging. You are left
with no choice but to jog at a similar speed to the crowd
- if you stopped you would be trampled. So I had to keep
up with the runners at the start, instead of slowly building
myself up to a fast pace which I normally do.
As a result I ended up with
a stitch about 1km into the race, which lasted for 2 or
3 kilometres. I had to slow down quite a bit and let the
crowd go past me to try and get rid of it.
Once it finally went away,
I increased my speed a bit but had to moderate myself because
I was overheating. Whenever I do my normal weekly runs its
at night, and its always cool and I never overheat - but
this was during the day, a very sunny day. So I kept overheating
and at every drink station had a drink, then got another
cup of water and drenched my head in it. I was wearing a
cap to avoid heatstroke from the sun and it was completely
soaked. By the end of the race I could feel all my clothes
starting to weigh me down with the weight of the water -
but I needed to stay cool.
I saw a poor guy who looked
to be about 20 years old, who was about 800m from the finish
line suddenly stop and look not too well. Then I saw his
face and it was bright red. He started to jog a little bit
more then stopped, looked down to the ground, and threw
up about a litre of vomit!
In the last couple of hundred
metres I was in a race with two guys dressed up as Batman
and Robin. But they beat me :-). My final time was 72 mins,
42 secs which was much better than my previous time of 89
mins. I came tied 6084th with 10 other people hehe.
I met up with John and Noel,
and got some food, then joined the half a km long bus ticket
queue which took over half an hour. Then joined the half
a km long St James bus queue which took another 40 minutes.
Not very well organised. By the time I got home I was completely
buggered, and I got an early nights sleep.
As for the rest of the weekend,
well I didnt do much at all except have a play around with
Reason (music producer). I didnt want to go out so that
I was ok for the city to surf, and Julian has chicken pox
so I'm not going near him for a while :-)
Well thats all for now,
bye!
9-Aug-2005
- The art of the swap
Well that was an interesting
weekend.
I had another 3 day long
weekend, and went out Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights
as usual. We saw Harry a few times, and everytime he comes
up to us now he says "hey julian!".. because he
knows ben wants harry to remember his name... (but he doesnt).
Harry's a funny guy - gotta love it! He's always making
references to Peter Garrett and Midnight Oil - because Julian
has a shaved head. Funny thing is Julian pays the least
attention to him, but gets the most attention from him :-)
I did a really big shop
on the weekend.. spent $250 on groceries! Ended up making
pizza on Saturday, Sunday and Monday - and now i'm all pizza'd
out. The problem with making pizza is once you buy the ingredients
you gotta use them all up - so I have to keep making pizzas!
On saturday night we went
to Jacquelines housewarming - and also went for a drive
in Ben's car listening to an old Nik Fish album which was
awesome - we were all loving it! Then Julian and I headed
off to the city for clubbing where we met up with Blake
and Daniel. After a while of clubbing Ben rejoined us and
we all got over clubbing and headed over to Bondi Beach.
Ben didnt stay long and left soon, but the rest of us stayed
there for around half an hour before the cold turned my
hands blue - it was freezing! So we all headed back to Julians
where we hung out until 5 in the morning.
The next day, Julian called
up and we were bored so we went on an adventure to Rhodes.
Its amazing how much this place has changed. When I was
a teenager I used to cycle through Rhodes a lot on my mountain
bike. I would ride out there from Croydon Park and go around
homebush bay, but sometimes I would ride all the way to
Parramatta, and go through Rhodes on the way. It used to
be just bushes and a road with some old rundown warehouses,
and vacant blocks of mess. But it has been totally redone
into the Rhodes
Waterside estate, complete with a new shopping centre.
We wandered around the foreshore
and had a look at the display apartment. We also went around
the shopping centre, where there was this very large Santa
Claus looking guy cooking up sausages. Julian made a cheeky
comment, and well that triggered him! He constantly kept
making cheeky comments back at us whenever we walked past,
throwing in references that only some would know. It was
very funny. I think he scared Julian off though hahaha.
Ben and his girl split up on the weekend too. I think he
has mixed feelings about it. Its back to the crazy life
of single Ben :-)
Monday was my day off, and
I spent ages doing really really fun stuff (cleaning my
window). For those who dont know, I have one balcony window,
and its huge. I had to use a mop to reach the top of it,
and there was SO much dirt on it. Even after an hour of
cleaning it inside and out it was still pretty dirty - although
much cleaner than it had been.
I made yet another pizza
and settled down for some CounterStrike action where I learnt
that using an AWP can triple your kill rate! I also headed
off to another group discussion thing where I got 50 bux
for talking about carrots for an hour - not bad!
Well this is a rather long
blog entry so I better cut it off before I exceed my daily
blogability and collapse into a withering heap on the floor.
It wouldnt be a pretty sight now would it? Bye!
1-Aug-2005
- Sunny weekend
What a great weekend it
was. The weather was perfect summer weather - in the middle
of winter!
Went out friday, saturday
and sunday nights again to the usual host of venues. I saw
tim (and tim) on saturday night partying it up at the wall
of stone. There were heaps of people out that night - John
W, Rick, Noel, Tim & Tim & co, Tom, Jez, Chase,
the "Zimbabwean Foreign Minister", and a bunch
of julian/ray named pseudo-celebrities. I saw some poor
guy having his bucks party getting wheeled around tied up
to one of those box-lifting trolleys - with writing all
over him and chains and a straight jacket (from memory).
He then got removed from the trolley and tied up to a pole
and had a sheet placed over his head - all the while being
video taped by his mates.
Then only a few minutes
later 3 guys in weird trikes (3 wheeled bike thingies) went
rolling down the busy street. The funny things that happen
at midnight! Saw crazy harry a few times and as always got
the latest in news and events. Sometimes I wonder how crazy
he actually is - I think there is some 'crazying up' on
his behalf, but there is definately some element of real
craziness.
Spent Sunday arvo rollerblading
with Richard and Joel around Centennial Park. It was the
perfect weather for it.. and there were quite a lot of people
at the park. Joel "blew a tyre" - something I
never knew could happen to a rollerblade wheel!
Well i'm not going to say
anything controversial in this blog entry - it is monday
morning after all. So have a nice day!