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Year View| Summary| 2007 (Year View – Showing Highlights Only)

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | This Year (2007)

12.02.2007 – Monday 12 February – New Flatmates

Morning

• I’m sad, because I had a sad dream.

7am

• Lucienne came and picked up her laptop.

10am

• One of my new flatmates came and signed her lease, and we had a forty-five minute philosophical religious discussion. This could be interesting.

Midday

• It rained. Actual raindrops fell from the sky, like in the stories the old folk tell. Wow, now there’s lightning. It’s almost like proper weather. I’m working three to eleven at EB, which I proceeded to do.

21.02.2007 – Wednesday 21 February – Bronwen Moves

Morning

• Working.

Evening

• Maz dropped by, followed shortly after by Bill, Benji, Bronwen, and her parents. We packed things into Bill and Bronwen’s Dad’s cars and a trailer, drove to Bronwen’s place, and had dinner at her new house. She’s now officially moved out, and a distinct chapter in my life has closed. It will be interesting to see what the future holds. I’m still living the uni-student lifestyle—living in cheap shared accommodation with no commitments, but at some point soon, this stage of my life is going to have to end, to make way for the next stage, which I’m guessing will be expensive. Bronwen has now moved to that stage. I still want to travel first, but to maintain a life without commitments is probably more difficult than committing. It’s a large commitment to remain uncommitted, ironically.

03.03.2007 – Saturday 3 March – Cairns, Tulani, & Silas

Morning

• I caught a Virgin Blue flight to Cairns. Tulani picked me up from the airport and we had breakfast at a coffee plantation near Mareeba.

Afternoon

• I had lunch at Tulani’s place, and went and saw “The Illusionist” with her at Cairns City Cinemas, which turned out to be an unexpectedly good movie, and an expectedly uncomfortable cinema.

Night

• I had a pleasant dinner at an Indian place with Tulani, before heading to Silas’s, where I spent the night.

05.03.2007 – Monday 5 March – Cooktown

• Tulani drove me to General Aviation, from where I flew to Cooktown in a small eight-seater Cessna Titan. Dad and Mum picked me up from the airport, and I spent the day in town with them.

24.03.2007 – Saturday 24 March – Coomera Gorge

• I got up at five o’clock, and was ready shortly after half past. Clint arrived a little after six, having already picked everyone else up, and we drove a couple of hours south. Our walk started easily enough—Clint, Maz, Eddie, Bronwen and I walking down a well-marked track, but we soon left this, bashing our way through the wait-a-while and stinging trees. Maz, Clint and I managed to get stung. As the sides of the creek we were approaching began to get steeper, it became increasingly difficult to claw our way through the prickles, so we made our way to the creek and began to walk up the gorge. Once we’d got used to the feel of walking in the water, it was actually quite refreshing—it sure beat the normally dry, hot and sweaty clamber up some death-defying rock.
  Roughly four hours of sliding up the creek on rocks later, and we arrived at the base of the falls, where we could see, far above us, the lookout easily attainable by an hours walk on a marked track. An icy swim later, and we headed back down the creek, spending another four or so hours pinching our feet between concealed rocks and trying not to fall in the water, destroying thousands of dollars of camera equipment. The hour or so walk back up the steep, but marked, track to the road was probably the hardest of all, on tired legs.
  All up, it was a very enjoyable walk—I much prefer rainforest to the drier “Australian” bush—and I managed to stay less injured than the rest, only getting two leeches, falling only a few times and not badly, and getting stung by one stinging tree. My jungle-skills from up north prevented me from becoming stuck in the wait-a-whiles that attacked everyone else, and even though very sleepy, I’m more used to navigating rocks.

Night

• Too exhausted to even consider making dinner, I had Thai from the nearest Thai place, and fell into bed.

08.04.2007 – Sunday 8 April – Perth

Very Early

• I got up and caught a train to the airport, arriving late, bypassing the queue, and going straight to boarding. Qantas really is better. No waiting. No missing the flight.

8:20am

• A Boeing 767-300 (2-3-2) flew me to Perth, uneventfully. I was planning to sleep, but accidentally got engrossed in the movies—“The Holiday” and “The Pursuit of Happyness”—a silly romantic movie followed by a feel-good movie, which really wasn’t what I needed in my current sleep-deprived and emotionally traumatised state. The movies, as crappy as they were, passed the time well, and combined with what wasn’t a bad breakfast and the lack of hard sell, made flying Qantas much more pleasant than Jetstar or Virginblue.

11:40am

• I arrive in Perth, where I’m picked up by Lois. It’s quite nippy. For some reason, I always think Perth is roughly the same latitude as Brisbane, but of course, it’s more in line with Sydney, so much cooler. The lack of humidity is very nice too—no sweat. It seems Yellow Cabs and Black and White Taxis have lost out over here—they have Tri-Colour Cabs. It also seems that everyone here has personalised number plates, and those that don’t have random ones—there must be at least twenty different standard templates, including town- and sporting-team-specific plates. I meet Laurie and Jill at Lois’s place.

Evening

• Lois and I go to hospital to see Pop, who looks unexpectedly healthy to me, but is a bit vague. Once back at Lois’s, I meet Bryce, and we drive to the airport to pick up Dad, who only just made it due to his Cairns to Adelaide flight being delayed due to an aircraft swap.

10.04.2007 – Tuesday 10 April – Pop’s Surgery

6am

• Lois and Shirley go to see Pop. The hospital doesn’t want visitors at this time of day so no one else goes.

9am

• Pop has his operation.

Morning

• Laurie and I drive to Lisa’s, so I can check for email from work, and then on to Centro Galleria—the largest shopping centre in the Southern hemisphere when it was built. Lisa and one of her sons, along with Bryce, Dad, Laurie, Jill, and after a while, Lois, are now at Lois’s, nervously filling in time.

Afternoon

• I walked down to the Galleria, and caught a bus into Perth. They have the smart-card based tickets here that Brisbane has been trying to implement, and they seem to be working well. I wander around Perth, ending up at King’s Park, finding lots of steps, and an internet café, where I again check my email. I had forgotten how sandy Perth is—what they call “soil”, we’d call “sand”.

6pm

• I head back to Lois’s, where Lisa and her husband, along with their kids, are.

11.04.2007 – Wednesday 11 April – Brisbane

Morning

• Dad, Laurie and I drive to Fremantle, via Dad’s childhood house, for a bit of sightseeing, before dropping me at the airport.

1:55pm

• I fly to Adelaide on a Boeing 737-800 (3-3). It’s an uneventful flight. I have mushroom ravioli for dinner. The movie is again “The Pursuit of Happyness”, so I don’t watch that, watching instead some of the finalists from this year’s Sony Tropfest.

6:15pm

• I arrive in Adelaide, where, unlike Brisbane or Perth, they recommend not drinking water from the toilet bowl. At least they’re not pumping it back into the dams, as Brisbane is going to, I suppose.

7:15pm

• I emplane another Boeing 737-800, this time to Brisbane. Once again, it’s an uneventful flight, though this time I have a specially ordered Indian meal for dinner, complete with four pappadums.

10:05pm

• I deplane back in Brisbane, where it appears not much has changed. I catch a taxi home, and listen to the driver complain about how the school holidays are going to ruin him, along with the tolls, and the stupidity of the new cross-city tunnel they’re constructing.

3am

• I go to bed.

22.05.2007 – Tuesday 22 May – Building a Computer

Morning

• I’m working seven to three in the valley, and am now mostly only congested and coughing—my sore throat is, thankfully, mostly gone.

Afternoon

• I rushed from work to Umart and picked up new computer parts. For the geeky, and future record should I ever be interested, I bought a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 P965 motherboard for $140.08; a gigabyte of DDR3 PC6400 800 MHz RAM for $56.65; a Gigabyte GF7100GS 512MB DVI-I HDTV PCIEx16 graphics card for $69.01; an Intel ATX E6320 CORE 2 DUO 1.86GHz/4MB CACHE/1066FSB/LGA775 processor for $232.78; and an Asus TA881 300NP1.3E Silver/Black case for $60.77 (all including a credit card charge). This wasn’t money I’d wanted to spend right now, but it turns out I’m rather reliant on having a computer at the moment. Life without one is a bit like an ice cream cone without the ice cream.

Night

• I put the computer together, installed XP, visited Maz to get a floppy drive and some floppy disks, and tried flashing the BIOS in the old computer with various floppy-disk based methods, none of which worked.

10.06.2007 – Sunday 10 June – Spiderman, Spiderman, Spiderman

Morning

• Who knows what I did this morning. After tonight, I’m lucky if I can cross the road without getting run over, let alone remember the past. No, wait... it’s coming back. I worked this morning. I got up horribly early and went to work. I got very little sleep last night and worked all morning. That’s why I can’t remember anything after staying up all night tonight, and working again tomorrow morning.

Night

• Bronwen and I enjoyed a fantastic curry from the always-fantastic curry place, which seems to be getting busier and busier.

11:30pm

• Bronwen and I rush to the local supermarket, where we buy a bag of bananas—synthetic, naturally—a bag of liquorice allsorts, and a bag of “orange rollers”—which are identical to jaffas in all but name, and two litres of Pepsi. We then catch a bus to Indooroopilly Megaplex, which is full of young women, all made-up to go out, but wearing pyjamas. There’s two huge queues waiting for the two other movie marathons, and a couple of what appear to be hardcore cartoon fanatics waiting for our marathon—Spiderman one, two and three. We sit in the very middle of the front row, surrounded by our junk food.

6:30am

• I’m not sure why people sit down the back. Even in the busiest sold-out movie sessions, the last place to fill is the middle of the front row—yet it’s clearly the best seat in the cinema. People complain that it would hurt their eyes, or their neck—but I’ve just sat through eight hours of action movie, in the front row, and apart being fully immersed in a near-wraparound cinematic experience while the folk up the back had to peer at a small screen down the front, having unlimited leg room, and being able to lay on the floor when I got sick of the seats, it was fine—my neck and eyes are as attractive, deep and soulful, as ever. What isn’t too good though, is that I need to be at work in an hour.

25.06.2007 – Monday 25 June – Car!

10am

• Caught Train. Met David at Northgate. Test drive car. Drive back home. Get money. Drive back to Northgate. Mess around for hours. Get to work late. Drive home from work in lots of rain. Find demister. Though, looking on the bright side, I now own a ’99 AU Falcon, which cost me a very reasonable $3400.

09.08.2007 – Thursday 9 August – Car Accident, Towed

Morning

• I drove to work. While looking for parking, I was run into by a girl reversing her car, the wrong way, down the wrong side of the road, who then turned and reversed into me, while I was driving normally along in my lane. Fortunately I saw it coming, and managed to mostly get out of the way, and she only ran into my tyre, depositing lots of plastic from her car into my brakes. This made me late for work.

Work

• Work is hectic. Work is stressful.

Evening

• I found my car gone. It has been towed. It costs $180 to retrieve. I get a taxi to the tow place, having found out from a nearby service station their number, as it’s not advertised anywhere. This made me late for Amanda’s. Today has not been a very good day.

Night

• I spent the night at Amanda’s.

05.11.2007 – Monday 5 November – Resignation

9am

• Working 9 to 5 for a rare change.

4pm

• I resigned.

Night

• Helped Stella move some things into her room, had a kebab, and watched “Across the Universe” at Indooroopilly.

18.11.2007 – Sunday 18 November – Stella moves in

Morning

• I slept in. Stella officially moved in today.

Midday

• Drove to Garden City with Bronwen and Stella.

Afternoon

• Had nachos from the Calypso bar.

Night

• Had planned to go to Gold Class at Indooroopilly and see “Elizabeth—The Golden Age”, but this did not work out due to Stella losing her phone while out, and suddenly having to buy tickets for Dad to Perth.

28.11.2007 – Wednesday 28 November – Working

• My last day at work. Everyone is nicely impressed by my last-day-of-work email.

01.12.2007 – Saturday 1 December – Tasmania

Day

• Bronwen had already packed for Tasmania, but me being myself, I hadn’t, so packed now. Then, with everything neatly packed away ready to go, it occurred to us to weigh the bags, and they came out far too heavy. A quick re-pack, moving everything possible into cabin baggage, or not taking it at all, got the weight down a little.

Afternoon

• I drove up to the train station, dumped Bronwen and the luggage there, drove home, and walked back to the station, catching the train to Roma Street, changing for the airtrain, and catching that to the airport. Thus began our Tasmanian holiday.

5:40pm

• Jetstar’s Airbus A320 departed roughly on time, with Bronwen and I seated in seats 1E and 1F—I asked for extra legroom—but not before we’d had to pay $35 excess baggage, which was actually lenient, it should have been around $50.

9:15pm

• We arrived in Hobart. My first impression was that the airport is very small, and catching the $12.50 bus into the city, that Hobart itself is also very small. Bronwen had prebooked a $60 room at the Hollydene Inn. We went for a short wander around the city, and then slept.

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | This Year (2007)

Year View| Summary| 2007 (Year View – Showing Highlights Only)