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Summary| Highlights| 2007 (Year View)

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | This Year (2007) 2008 |

01.01.2007 – Monday 1 January – The year of what?

• For the past few years, I have given each year a focus—last year was the year of work, when I got my first full-time job, the year before was the year of Bronwen. I’m not, however, sure what the focus of this year should be—I’m still with Bronwen, I’m still working, nothing much has really changed. I’m planning to do a few small trips this year, and go overseas, possibly next year, but they’re not really the focus of the year. I’ll have to think about it.

Dawn

• Bronwen, Mum and I sit with several thousand other people and watch the sunrise.

Night

• I attend the closing fire ceremony, followed by volunteering.

02.01.2007 – Tuesday 2 January – Back in Brisbane

Morning

• Mum, Bronwen and I got a lift from Woodford to Brisbane with two girls from Woodford. Coincidentally, one of them had lived with Marjorie’s friend Georgie, so knew our place.

03.01.2007 – Wednesday 3 January – Sick & Back to Work

• Off to work. Dinner with Mum and Bronwen at a Thai place at Rosalie in the evening. Feeling fairly sick—throat and neck glands are quite sore. I blame sleeping in the wet, then ingesting kilos of dust, at Woodford.

04.01.2007 – Thursday 4 January – Mum flies home

Morning

• Mum and I caught a train to the city, from where I headed in to work early, and Mum headed off to the airport on her way home.

05.01.2007 – Friday 5 January – Tulani

• I still feel terrible—no better, worse if anything. If I work today, I won’t be able to work tomorrow, so I called in sick.

2:30pm

• I met Tulani in the city. We caught a City Cat to UQ, had a short walk around uni, then headed to Elena’s work.

06.01.2007 – Saturday 6 January – Sick & Working

• I’m still nastily sick—my throat seems perhaps a little less sore, but my nose is running powerfully. I caught an early City Cat to work, and am now here, drinking lemon soft drink, having tried milk and found it to not be particularly soothing to the throat.

Evening

• I slept most of the evening. While I can’t say I enjoyed it, there is something that’s almost fun about lying, semi-delirious, somewhere on the border of thinking and dreaming.

07.01.2007 – Sunday 7 January – Blood Diamond

• I have had a lazy day, lying in bed for most of it. I think my ‘flu, or whatever it is, has mostly gone—now I just have the after-effects—runny nose, cough, and a head that hurts if I move it.

9:35pm

• Clint and I went and saw “Blood Diamond” at South Bank, which turned out to be a reasonable movie, albeit predictable and the same as all the others in its genre.

08.01.2007 – Monday 8 January – Delirious

Morning

• Clint and I moved some stuff from his place to our place and Maz’s place, as he’s moving out. We then grabbed lunch from a patisserie at Rosalie, before he drove me out to work—three to eleven at EB this week.

Night

• Clint drove me home from work, and I went to bed, feeling poorly—my throat was very sore again. I then slept fitfully for a few hours, finally waking up delirious. I kept thinking in circles, which was preventing me from sleeping, but even though I’d woken up—and even went for a walk around the house—I couldn’t stop myself from thinking in circles. I must have eventually got to sleep, but it was not a fun night.

09.01.2007 – Tuesday 9 January – Working Late

• On Sunday I had thought my ‘flu had gone, but last night was the worst night I’ve had from it, so now I’m not sure. Still, I don’t feel too bad now, and despite waking up thinking in circles at all hours of the night last night, I feel normally refreshed this morning.

Afternoon

• I missed the City Cat to work, arriving a little late. Today isn’t as bad as yesterday as I don’t feel as sick as yesterday. I even walk home, which takes about an hour, arriving back shortly after midnight.

10.01.2007 – Wednesday 10 January – Shopping

Morning

• Bronwen took the day off, and she and I went to the city, where I had lunch at Govinda’s. While I couldn’t eat the whole thing myself, it does seem as though my appetite is returning. I took back some shorts I had got for my birthday, which were a size too small, watched a performance of skill and daring in the Queen Street Mall, and then headed on to work.

11.01.2007 – Thursday 11 January - ZimboyZ

• I headed to the city before work, watching the ZimboyZ perform in the Queen Street Mall again, and bumping into Amanda.

12.01.2007 – Friday 12 January – Getting Better

• Work. Walked home from work. I am finally getting over this ‘flu.

13.01.2007 – Saturday 13 January – Pan’s Labyrinth

• Bronwen and I caught a bus into the city, went to the art gallery and an interesting display of religious art at QPAC, sat at South Bank for a while, and then caught a train to Indooroopilly, where we watched “Pan’s Labyrinth” at the Eldorado.

Evening

• Bronwen and I finally discussed our Tasmania trip dates, and I got out “Kill Bill 2”. I also found that my bike has apparently been stolen. I’m not sure when—I assume it was there when Clint and I dropped his stuff off, as I imagine I’d have noticed if it wasn’t. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that’s when it was taken—when the garage door was open.

14.01.2007 – Sunday 14 January – Relaxing

• I slept in until after midday, and have had a pleasantly relaxing day, though it has been quite hot. I’ve begun going through my Woodford photos, and selecting a few to put on my website.

15.01.2007 – Monday 15 January – Working Early, Working Fast

• I’m working early shift again, back in the city. Today went really fast for some reason—I don’t like getting up early, but I really like how fast early shifts seem to go. They’re becoming my favourite. After work I dropped past the new library and got out a few books on Tasmania, which I probably won’t get around to looking at. Thus concludes the public part of yet another exciting journal entry. Stay tuned—I’ll likely be back tomorrow.

Comment by io – Monday 15 January 2007, 5:14 PM

  Mindblowing.
  
  Also, you really need that "remember me" feature that Maz has on his site.

16.01.2007 – Tuesday 16 January – Cold

• Yo ho ho, it’s back to work I go. I’m currently in the fishbowl, where it’s about eighteen degrees and humidity controlled in such a way that it feels even colder. I think I shall bring a jumper tomorrow.

17.01.2007 – Wednesday 17 January – Ode to a Milkshake

Morning

• I got up very early, got ready for work, caught the bus to work, bought my morning milkshake (chocolate), and worked. Apparently it is unhealthy having free soft drink, so we now have free fruit instead, and a complicated coffee machine. Fortunately, there’s still Milo.

Evening

• A girl and her mother dropped past to have a look at the rooms we currently have available.

18.01.2007 – Thursday 18 January – Sleepily Wrought

• I’ve taken to having a little doze when I get home from work. Apart from sounding weak, it’s actually quite enjoyable—the semi-delirium of being nearly asleep, half-dreaming, half-daydreaming, and sometimes thinking clearly, makes a pleasant change from the semi-delirium of working half asleep—which, I believe, is when I’m at my most efficient. Psychologically, or so the story goes, I’m over-wrought, and being sleepy calms me down, bringing me back to the most efficient middle ground of just-the-right-amount-of-wrought (which isn’t quite the right medical term).

19.01.2007 – Friday 19 January – Comet McNaught

Evening

• After an uneventful day at work, Maz and I drove to UQ’s new Green Bridge, where we met Raymond and watched Comet McNaught set shortly after the sun.

20.01.2007 – Saturday 20 January – No Movies

• I’ve been trying to get to see a movie all week, and it’s just not working out. I’d been told that I was going to fix Bronwen’s brother’s computer tomorrow evening, and have dinner out at his place, but found out shortly before I was due to head to the cinemas that it was actually tonight. I rushed to get the appropriate software together to give to Bronwen, as I couldn’t go seeing as I was planning to see a movie, and managed to miss the movie. I then waited a few hours and caught the bus towards the cinema to see a late screening, only to find that the ramps onto the bridge over the river were closed, preventing me from getting to the cinema. I had a short walk around the city instead, before catching the bus home again, defeated.

21.01.2007 – Sunday 21 January – Déjà Vu & Apocalypto

Afternoon

• Bronwen and I went and saw “Déjà Vu”, which, while being a typical, predictable Hollywood movie, was actually not too bad. We then caught the bus home, had a quick dinner, caught another bus back to South Bank, and watched “Apocalypto”—which was quite impressive, though powerfully violent.

22.01.2007 – Monday 22 January – Working & Bronwen

Afternoon

• It is extremely hot. I caught a bus to Toowong and had lunch with Maz, before catching the train to work. I’m working late shifts in the fishbowl this week.

23.01.2007 – Tuesday 23 January – Working

Afternoon

• I caught a bus to Toowong, where I had lunch with Maz, picked up a $25 Myer Voucher sent to me registered post that I got for using a Citibank transaction account, and caught a bus to work.

24.01.2007 – Wednesday 24 January – Hot

Morning

• It’s looking to be another very hot day.

25.01.2007 – Thursday 25 January – Hot & Cold

Morning

• It’s hot—very, very hot. Moving is not a thing that one does. When one does have to move, one can at least slide in one’s sweat, which saves having to move the legs. Such is Brisbane in the summer. Apparently it’s raining nicely up north, while using water will soon be a capital crime here. People won’t be robbing petrol stations; they’ll be mugging schoolchildren carrying water bottles. Speaking of schoolchildren, I’m hungry and should eat something so I don’t waste money buying something I didn’t really want when I get to work.

Midday

• Marjorie popped over to pick up a letter.

Night

• I decided to pop up the road to Woolworths for some corn and beans, just before a torrential downpour—complete with lightning, like the old days before the rain stopped. By a clever combination of hiding under eaves, carefully preplanning street crossings, and running, I managed to keep from getting totally soaked. Getting rather damp wouldn’t normally be too much of a problem on a hot night like tonight, but the next few hours, in the humidity controlled and very, very cold fishbowl were, well, very, very cold. I managed to survive by a combination of incessant eating (who would have thought Mexican chilli beans, corn, milk, Milo, cream, custard and muesli bars would be a lifesaving combination?) interspersed with more traditional survival methods, such as shivering, hand rubbing, and visiting the warmer areas of the building.

2am

• I should probably be sleeping, but not really feeling like going to bed. I’ll try soon. In geeky news, I added a dynamics processor to my sound card, which is currently normalizing my music as I play it—meaning I don’t have to keep adjusting the volume each time I play a new song, which was getting annoying. I’m surprised how well it works actually. I’ve now got two physical stereo channels out—one to my headphones and computer speakers, the other to the TV and speakers in the lounge room—and separate (software) outputs for music, DVD’s, and all the other random noises things make. This lets me flexibly mix what goes where—I can play a DVD to the TV while listening to something else at my computer, and I’ve got a six channel mixer, ten band equalizer, parametric equalizer, generic bass and treble booster and am separately routing DVD’s low frequency channel… all on hardware on the soundcard, without using any CPU on the computer. Geeky, but good—and now I really should get to bed.
  Oh, one other geeky thing I’ve done tonight—now that IE 7 is out, and has CSS support for “position: fixed”, I’ve fixed the top menu of most of my nedmartin.org site. I’ll test it tomorrow in IE 6, and convert the rest over if it works.

26.01.2007 – Friday 26 January – Australia Day

Morning

• I had a rather strange dream. I was in a space diner, presumably dining. That is, a diner out in space. John Travolta, Pulp Fiction style, was the waiter—as you would expect—and this small group, maybe five, of fearfully powerful, all-knowing four or five year old grown up babies arrived—without walking, as that’d be too normal. They just arrived—and while they seemed benevolent, there was a very uneasy atmosphere, as I just knew they weren’t normal—let’s face it, your average five year old doesn’t turn up at a space diner. It was a little more in-depth than that, but that’s the main gist. I’m not sure if it’s deeply meaningful, or not, but as I didn’t eat any curry last night, I figure it must be.

Night

• For dinner tonight, I ate a can of Mexican chilli beans, a can of corn, a cup of cream and custard, half a bag of corn chips and capsicum dip, two different sorts of chocolate (dark mint and green aero), iced coffee, and a cup of Milo containing a little milk and a dash of cream. That’s what happens when I turn up to work on a day when no one else works, and I’m already sleepy. My university training has stood me in good stead—why do something, when there’s still a whole night to do it? Sleep is for those who don’t have something that can’t be put off any longer due the next morning; an entire bottle of LA Ice cola costs less than a dollar, and there’s always Medicare, for those nights when you accidentally drink two litres of iced coffee as well as a litre and a quarter of cola, and come out in a strange rash. Thus, I learnt. Sometimes I even wonder what all those people who actually studied learnt—and bemoan what they missed.

27.01.2007 – Saturday 27 January – Hotter

• Today appears to be the hottest day yet, though perhaps that’s just because I haven’t been at work in the icy cold, or perhaps because I have been at work in the icy cold every other day, and now I’m patriotically doing my little bit to solve our water crisis—one sweaty drip at a time. Either way, it’s too hot to move, so I haven’t.

28.01.2007 – Sunday 28 January – The Blues Brothers

Evening

• Bronwen and I walked up to Woolworths with Maz.

Night

• I watched “The Blues Brothers” with Bronwen, as she hadn’t seen it.

29.01.2007 – Monday 29 January – Working

• Working seven to three at EB, which pretty much sums up today.

30.01.2007 – Tuesday 30 January – Still Working

• Still working. Still haven’t figured out how to get rich quick.

31.01.2007 – Wednesday 31 January – Satellites

• I stayed at work late, trying to fix a satellite streaming issue.

01.02.2007 – Thursday 1 February – More Satellites

• I stayed at work late for the second time in a row, still fixing the same satellite streaming issue.

02.02.2007 – Friday 2 February – Day Off

• I have the day off, due to working Sunday.

Afternoon

• Clint drove over, and we walked into the city. I picked up some forms from the RTA, bought a bath mat, and some wood glue. I also made the mistake of drinking a milk shake, followed by flavoured milk, then three small Hungry Jack’s post-mix Pink Fanta and Sprite drinks, and eating a Hungry Jack’s veggie burger. Not recommended—stick to hard drugs; they don’t do so much damage.

Night

• Bronwen and I had curry from the Indian place at Rosalie. My site has problems—I don’t seem to have permission to write files, and am not receiving email. The stars are shining.

03.02.2007 – Saturday 3 February – Motor Show & The Last King of Scotland

Morning

• Maz and I went to the Brisbane International Motor Show. I’m not particularly interested in cars, and am not planning to buy one at the moment, but it was still interesting to see. It was particularly interesting seeing the markets the particular manufacturers are aiming at.

Afternoon

• Maz and I went to Kieran’s, then to Umart, then I came back home. My site has problems—an inability to write to files—and my username and password aren’t working. They’ve been making some unannounced changes on the server and I’m not that happy. This has been happening since yesterday evening, and still isn’t fixed. Anger, flamethrowers, napalm.

Evening

• Fought my web server. It sucks.

Night

• Went and saw “The Last King of Scotland” with Clint, which affected me oddly. It’s not a bad movie, reasonably powerful in an emotional way. Normally I wouldn’t be affected by a movie, but something about it triggered my existing mood, and I ended up in a pensive mood all night. Similar to how some music you may have listened to a million times will suddenly take on a strong emotional significance, due to your existing mood.

Late

• I ended up having a late night.

04.02.2007 – Sunday 4 February – Working

• I’m working early shift at EB. I was supposed to get up at six o’clock, but when my alarm went off, I figured I’d die if I got out of bed, so I slept in until seven and caught a taxi.

Afternoon

• Just before leaving work, I got an SMS from Kaitlin to say she wasn’t moving in anymore—she spun some story about her car having broken down and costing her a lot to fix and so on. She had been here however, so I don’t believe her. No more trusting people—it’s a week’s rent up front to secure a room, bond and two weeks advance rent to get the keys. This is a pain as I’ve not been accepting anyone for the room as I was under the impression it had been taken.

Night

• I went for a walk with Clint and Bronwen to Cold Rock where we met Maz, then into city without Maz to put up rental posters on poles.

05.02.2007 – Monday 5 February – Working

• Lucienne dropped her laptop here for checking. I’m working midday to eight this week—which I then proceeded to do. It’s been a little overcast, making it not quite as hot as it has been.

06.02.2007 – Tuesday 6 February – Potential Flatmates

• A Singaporean girl came and looked at rooms. Doing her master’s at UQ. Has car. Asked many logical questions. Will call back as soon as she decides.

07.02.2007 – Wednesday 7 February – Not Draining

• Work. Had planned to secrete myself into one or more of Brisbane’s drains, but when it came down to it, sliding into a dark, dank hole all by myself sounded rather scary, so I didn’t.

08.02.2007 – Thursday 8 February - Work

• Work. Not much else.

09.02.2007 – Friday 9 February – Operation Blitz

Morning

• Looking at Lucienne’s laptop. Got a rental arrears notice from the real estate. Paid rent and took over paying it from Bronwen.

Midday

• Went to work. Today was Operation Blitz, cleanup office. There was no oxygen, only cleaning chemicals.

Night

• I was planning to go draining with Maz and Bronwen. Instead, Clint dropped by, he and I walked to the IGA, where we met Maz. Maz and I then stayed up late talking about geeky things. Bronwen went to sleep. Maz and I walked to the city and had Hungry Jack’s burgers for dinner, getting back nastily close to four in the morning.

10.02.2007 – Saturday 10 February – Smokin’ Aces

10am

• Two Asian girls, along with a UQ driver, came and looked at the room, followed by another Asian girl, and then a vegetarian girl—who can read and write (some) Sanskrit. I am suitably impressed.

Midday

• Bronwen and I walked into the city, where we went to K2 to look at sandals. I dropped my Tasmanian library books back to library. It nearly rained on us on the walk home.

Night

• I caught a bus to city and watched “Smokin’ Aces”. It contained lots of unnecessary violence, had an unbelievable (in the bad sense) plot, and ending that really didn’t make sense for the character to have done—logically or emotionally—but it contained lots of action and I enjoyed it.

11.02.2007 – Sunday 11 February – More Potential Flatmates

Morning

• A girl and a couple came around to look at the room, and the second of the two girls planning to move in called to ask a few questions and to confirm that she does want the room.

Afternoon

• Bronwen, Kieran, Maz and I were going to get curry, but the Indian place was shut, so we got Cold Rock instead. Maz, Kieran and I then headed to Kieran’s place, where we spent the afternoon in the air-conditioning.

Evening

• Maz, Kieran, Bronwen and I had curry at the curry place near here. I then spent a while at Maz’s before coming home and remembering I had to finish fixing Lucienne’s laptop before I go to bed.

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 (Nandini (Nataki McGarn)) 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.

13.02.2007 – Tuesday 13 February – Running Late

• I woke up just before two o’clock, and had to be at work by three o’clock. I’m not sure why, I went to bed around one o’clock, which isn’t that late. I think it’s because it’s been so lovely and overcast recently. To make matters worse, as it was raining, half of Brisbane was also waiting for a taxi, and the other half was driving erratically and wondering why they can’t corner at 60 kilometres an hour like they can in the dry. So here I am at work, late, traumatised, and writing this instead of working.

14.02.2007 – Wednesday 14 February – Valentine’s Day

• The first flatmate (Nandini (Nataki McGarn)) is moving in today, and has been bringing her things over. I’m working as usual.

15.02.2007 – Thursday 15 February – Disasters

Morning

• Today’s disasters so far: It has rained a few times. While not technically a disaster, it could have been. We’re not getting any serious rain (which is a disaster) but it’s wet enough that I’ve pulled most of the weeds out of the garden (which was a disaster), and will start getting it back into shape (which is probably going to be a disaster). I’d given up for a while, as it was just too hard to water it with the silly water restrictions (which are a disaster). I managed to cover myself in sticky spider web containing millions of “little things”. It appears that there’s no known way to get them off. What a disaster! I then got very itchy from some kind of itchy plant with lots of tiny hairs, which apparently embed themselves into unprotected arms, for no reason other than pure malice. How disastrous! Then, most disastrously, I dropped my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens while taking some photos of a grasshopper, which now has a nice and large scratch across the edge of the rear element. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to make any difference, other than making a horrible noise when seeking focus at infinity.

Afternoon

• I caught a bus to the city and a City Cat from there to work, where I’m sure there’ll be plenty more disasters.

16.02.2007 – Friday 16 February – Working Sleepy

• I worked until eleven o’clock last night, and am supposed to be working from seven this morning. It was after midnight by the time I got home and got to bed, and I woke up around seven, making it a little difficult to get to work on time. I got ready as fast as possible, and caught a taxi. Fortunately, this turned up relatively quickly, and I got to work half an hour late. I then proceeded to have a relatively bad day, which I enjoyed, being nicely sleepy.

Evening

• Maz dropped by on his way back from work, and we walked to his place, where I stayed awhile. I walked home past Cold Rock, which was a bad mistake as I accidentally bought a small Super Shake—chocolate, natural cream and strawberry, though without my normal whipped cream on top.

17.02.2007 – Saturday 17 February – The Good Shepherd

Morning

• Went through some more Woodford photos, and got some ready to put on my site.

1pm

• Went to Indooroopilly to buy pots and cutlery, and for lunch with Maz and Bronwen. Dropped past Maz’s place on the way home, and am now very sleepy.

Night

• Went to a new café in valley for dinner, then to Indooroopilly to see “The Good Shepherd”. It’s not a bad movie. A little confusing though. Caught a train home sometime after midnight.

18.02.2007 – Sunday 18 February – Shopping

Morning

• It’s raining.

Afternoon

• Met Maz in the city and had lunch. Bought a few house things—a set of saucepans, some cutlery, and another dish drying rack.

19.02.2007 – Monday 19 February – Working

Morning

• Working seven to three in the fishbowl. No job satisfaction today. Not sure why. Seems to be an undercurrent of dissatisfaction amongst the people I’m working with at the moment. Perhaps it’s contagious.

20.02.2007 – Tuesday 20 February – Working

Morning

• No job satisfaction today either. Still unsure why. Technically, it’s been a normal day; I’m just not happy about it. David is quitting for, amongst other things, similar reasons.

Afternoon

• Bought a few house things—kettle, cordless phone and some power adaptors.

Night

• Had a nice dinner cooked by Nadini.

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.

22.02.2007 – Thursday 22 February – Packing

• I have the day off, as I’m working Sunday. I spent the morning packing furniture with Bronwen, drove to her place, unpacked it, attended Garden City twice, and then got a lift home with Bronwen’s parents, who had turned up in the evening. Here is a total mess. I can barely fit in my room—and it’s a large room.

23.02.2007 – Friday 23 February – Rocky Balboa

• Work, as usual. I see “Rocky Balboa” in the evening, at Indooroopilly, with Clint. It’s as bad as expected—what little actually happens, is predictable. There’s no action, no drama, no emotion, and not much else. Still, as with most movies, it was fun to go. When I got home, dinner was served—a very nice curry, rice, dhal and fried bread. I’m very impressed—everything was made from scratch, even the bread. My flatmates are apparently good cooks, and both vegetarian.

Evening

• The charity bins at the train station are gone. It’s the end of an era.

24.02.2007 – Saturday 24 February – Glow Worms

Morning

• Today was my sleep-in day, where I recover from a week of early shifts. But instead, I walk to Tomato Brothers, where I meet Cam, and drive back here. Things are packed, and driven to Bronwen’s. Things are unpacked. Things are eaten. I get a lift home.

Evening

• Clint, Maz, and I drove to a glow-worm cave at Natural Bridge, via Bronwen’s place to pick her up. We were fortunate to arrive between organised tours, and got to have a look at an impressively glow-worm-lit cave with a waterfall flowing through it, shortly before hundreds of Asians arrived.

25.02.2007 – Sunday 25 February – Raining, Sunny, Sleepy, Work

Morning

• It’s a lovely day. A rain shower has just passed, and now the freshly cleaned sun is shining down on the newly washed earth. It’s a pleasingly brisk temperature—not too cold, but not yet too hot. It’s the perfect day not to be inside, in front of a pile of computer monitors. Unfortunately, I’m not yet independently wealthy, so can’t yet retire.
  I slept in this morning, missing any public transport options to work, so called a taxi—“Honk honk, we have your address recorded as blah, press one if you are ready for a taxi”. I pressed one. “Vroom, vroom. A taxi has been dispatched”. Fifty seconds later, there’s a business-class cab at the front door. Service like this would normally be great—had I been expecting it, and wearing clothes. As it turns out, I can get dressed in sixty five seconds, and the rest I can do in the cab. The air-conditioning even dried my feet before I had to put my socks on.

Work

• The bakery had both olive and pineapple pizza rolls. I have three types of chocolate—dark with macadamia, rum and raisin, and “Peppermint Affair—a layer of crisp peppermint crunches covered by a layer of smooth, cool peppermint crème”. Music is pumping. Screens are glowing. Not too much is breaking. Work is good, for the first time in a week.
  I didn’t get enough sleep any night last week, because I’m stupid and never go to bed early enough when I’m doing early shifts, and I didn’t get my expected sleep-in on Saturday—so I’m running on an average of around five and a half hours sleep a night, across the past week. It’s a liveable level, but means I’m probably running quite well right now—unnecessary parts of me are sleepy, but the vital parts seem to be functioning at peak efficiency. Either that, or the bits that tell me I’m going well, are actually sleeping and just left up “You’re going well” notices so I wouldn’t know they’re slacking off. I’m still a great fan of the theory that I’m naturally overwrought and need relaxing sleepiness to achieve my peak performance.

Evening

• I took my VoIP phone to Maz’s to test, as he’s been having issues with his.

26.02.2007 – Monday 26 February – Work Insanity

Morning

• I had a Chantilly Mille Feuille and milkshake for breakfast from Michel’s in the Myer Centre, which nearly killed me. I then bought a broom, and attempted to not move for the rest of the day, as it was ridiculously hot.

Afternoon

• I’m working three to eleven at EB, which was rather insane today. There’s usually only the two of us there, seeing as everything else is done remotely, but tonight for some reason many changes were being made, and many very sleepy people turned up. It felt like an all-nighter in the labs at uni, with similar levels of happy insanity.

Comment by anon – Sunday 27 May 2007, 1:17 PM

  I'm not surprised it nearly killed you. Alot of food and drink at the myer centre contains ghb!

27.02.2007 – Tuesday 27 February – Gloves

Morning

• I had a bit of a sleep in, though not enough after my late night last night. Once awake, I bought a new ADSL modem from Umart (Billion 7300 something or other), which I’ve now installed and seem to be using successfully, as per how it should be. I’ve also noticed that there are seventeen white gloves hanging on the clothesline. Not seventeen pairs, just seventeen gloves. Am I living with a disabled caterpillar? How peculiar.

Afternoon

• Two hot dogs and a few cups of juice later, and I’m feeling nearly ready to take on the world, provided it’s air-conditioned, and comes at me one at a time. Thus encouraged, I make my way to work, boldly sweating.

28.02.2007 – Wednesday 28 February – Gold Coast

• I took the day off work, heading to the Gold Coast, where I spent the night in a $220 room at Jupiter’s, visiting a friend who was up for a conference.

01.03.2007 – Thursday 1 March – Gold Coast

• I attended a meeting at work at two o’clock, before heading home and back to the Gold Coast.

02.03.2007 – Friday 2 March – Packing

Morning

• I’m very, very sleepy after not sleeping much down at the Gold Coast.

Afternoon

• I had lunch with Maz.

Night

• Maz picked me up from work with Clint. The theory was that this would be much quicker than walking home, and as I didn’t finish work until near midnight, had had very little sleep up until now, and had to pack for my flight early tomorrow morning, I could get more urgently required sleep. In practice, however, we ended up driving all over the place, stopping at South Bank for a while, and it was approaching the wee hours of the morning by the time I got home and began packing. It was well and truly into the wee hours when I got to bed.

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.

04.03.2007 – Sunday 4 March – Silas, Mossman Gorge & Moonlit Pizza

Morning

• I spent a pleasant morning chatting to Silas. I’m far too slack keeping in touch with my friends.

Afternoon

• Silas and his girlfriend went for a walk somewhere. Tulani and I went to Mossman Gorge for a swim, followed by a walk along the Esplanade.

Night

• Tulani and I had a pizza dinner at Trinity Beach. It was quite scenic—sitting watching the moon rise over the ocean, silhouetted by palm trees—and was quite late when we left, returning me to Silas’s, where I again 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.

06.03.2007 – Tuesday 6 March – The Family Thing

• I spent the day with my parents in town, meeting my sister and Vince, and generally doing the “family thing”. It’s nice to be back, but I don’t think I could live here—not at this age anyway. It’s just too small.

07.03.2007 – Wednesday 7 March – Rossville

• I drove out to Rossville, dropping Dad at the Lion’s Den Hotel on the way, and headed out to Home Rule. I stopped at Craig and Mandi’s for a chat, before walking up to the Home Rule Falls. It was nice to be in the rainforest jungle again, where everything is wet and there’s a huge amount of spider web across the track, and subsequently my nose. On the way back, I stopped and had a chat to Ric, before heading up to Dad’s, where my old caravan is stored, filled with all my old junk. Sadly, the time has come to get rid of that junk, so I went through it all, collected a few things I didn’t want to leave behind, and left the rest there, to be disposed of as my parents see fit. It’s a little sad, but I haven’t needed any of this stuff in the past few years so I’m unlikely to ever need it.

08.03.2007 – Thursday 8 March – Rain

• It’s raining here in Cooktown. I pop down to the post office to lodge a few documents, and head up to the Top Pub to chat to the publican about a website she wants me to build. I then spend a quiet evening with my family.

09.03.2007 – Friday 9 March – Cairns & Kebabs

• I was very tired when I left Brisbane, from working late shifts combined with staying at the Gold Coast, and I haven’t had much sleep since, so I’m now spastically tired. I had a nice lunch with my family, drove out to the airport picking Sarah up from work, and flew to Cairns in a 32- or 36-seater Dash . We all waited at the aerodrome for quite a while, wondering why the hostess hadn’t called us out to the plane, only to find when we were out there, that they’d been waiting in the plane wondering why the ground staff hadn’t sent us out to the plane. All the seats on one side of the plane seemed to have been allocated to two people, and none of the seats on the other side.

Evening

• Tulani picked me up from the airport, and we bought kebabs for dinner at the Esplanade, and watched emergency crews recover someone who had fallen off the esplanade onto some mangrove and mud covered rocks.

10.03.2007 – Saturday 10 March – Shan & High Humidity

• I spent a quiet, but very hot and humid, morning with Tulani, before being dropped at Shan’s, where I spent the night. It’s absurdly hot and humid in Cairns. Moving—even thinking about moving—results in sweat.

11.03.2007 – Sunday 11 March – Mareeba Motocross

5:30am

• Shan, Kylie and I got up quite early and drove to Mareeba, where we attended a Motocross event. I bumped into Clayton, Jake, Amos and Justin, took many photos, got sunburnt, got wet when a thunderstorm blew across, and watched the carnage. One man broke his hip when his bike landed on top of him, and a few others were carried off on a stretcher. The rest just broke their bikes.

Evening

• Tulani picked me up from Shan’s, and we had dinner at a restaurant on the wharf.

12.03.2007 – Monday 12 March – Brisbane & Virgin Hilarity

• I spent most of the day with Tulani—Shan and Silas being at work—doing some shopping at Cairns Central and trying not to move too much because of the heat. She dropped me off at the airport in the afternoon, from where I caught a flight back to Brisbane.

4:30pm

• The flight back was interesting. The plane itself was blue, and had people’s names alphabetically printed all over the inside—Virgin Blue’s special fiftieth plane, apparently. Ironically, I’d had a conversation just prior to leaving about hostesses, and how Virgin’s hostesses are more attractive than Jetstar’s, only to find that this flight had three male hosts, one of whom was in his forties, and a single female hostess—and it was her first day.
  It doesn’t sound quite as funny after the event—you really had to be there—but it was the funniest flight I’ve ever been on. It began by the older host telling us that this was a special flight and a special crew, as he was flying with his wife—the young female hostess on her first day. He then said that the second male host was her ex-husband, and that the way she’d been looking at the third host, he was likely to be her next husband. At this, all the male hosts couldn’t stop laughing, preventing them from performing the safety announcements.
  A rough transcript of the normally comprehensive and boring pre-flight safety announcements was “There is a serious side to flying [pause for laughter]. We have life jackets, doesn’t [the female hostess] like them? [Points to the female hostess and breaks into uncontrollable laughter] And they have whistles [male host performs an impromptu ditty on his life-jacket whistle, followed by most of the aircraft laughing]. You can blow in here, and [a pause for more laughter], and there’s exits, if you see me running and screaming, exit after me”. Almost everyone in the plane was laughing, and while it was probably illegally brief, it was by far the best pre-flight safety announcement I’ve ever had.

6:25pm

• I arrived back in Brisbane, to find it wasn’t anywhere near as hot and humid as Cairns, and was in fact somewhat overcast. A slow train journey later, and I was home—very sleepy, somewhat traumatised, emotional, sentimental, stressed, and generally worn out, as per most relaxing family holidays.

13.03.2007 – Tuesday 13 March – Working

• Well, here I am, back at work. I’m not very happy—too tired I think. I’m working seven to three in the fishbowl, though Wade was there today for some reason, so I worked downstairs with everyone else.

14.03.2007 – Wednesday 14 March – Chez Tessa

• I’m much less sleepier now, despite having to get up before six to get to work on time. Maz printed a few photos for me today, which I’ll have to post off to my parents.

Night

• Maz and I caught a bus to Chez Tessa, and had our traditional uni dinners, just like old times.

15.03.2007 – Thursday 15 March – Cold Rock

Work

• I had a generic day at work, other than attending some new training sessions they’re putting on at the moment. They’re all very positive—we’re the best there is, apparently, making me one of the best of the best in my field, or so they’d have me believe. I suppose the figures speak for themselves, but I don’t feel like one of the best of the best right now.

Night

• I walked to Woolworths with Maz, via Cold Rock and a cookies and cream, vanilla and chocolate super shake with whipped cream on top. I’ve decided to add photos to my journal more frequently. It seems a little silly keeping a daily journal, and carrying my camera around with me, but not putting photos in with my journal—so I shall.

Late Night

• I should really be sleeping, but I have to get this Stone site up and running.

16.03.2007 – Friday 16 March – Sleepy

• I’m really quite sleepy, but nothing cashews and Milo can’t fix. Work went by in a delirious haze of sleep-induced efficiency. Evening came and Maz and I walked into the city, as a bus through the traffic on Coronation Drive would have been slower. I bought a slice from Michel’s and a veggie baguette from Hungry Jack’s, filling myself with their refillable post-mix, and feeling suitably sick.

17.03.2007 – Saturday 17 March – Breasts, Power Failures & The Computer Crocodile of Death

Morning

• So, like, there I was—just sitting there, you know, trying to get something done? And, like, there they all were, just watching, like hungry crocodiles; not helping, not doing their job—making fun of me. So, like, I just stared back, sullenly, defiantly—but not giving in, you know. You have to be strong; they’re waiting—they’re waiting for you to give in, and once you do, they will laugh. They will all laugh, and that’s the worst thing. But, in the end, the crocodile of death, he got me—he waited, and he won. You can’t win, when the crocodile of death comes. You can’t win, when the crocodile of death is in your computer.
  It all began when I noticed I had no volume on my primary Windows output. I reset the sound card, which BSOD the machine, as usual. Crocodiles one, our valiant hero, nil. To make matters worse, I was halfway through an interesting conversation, and my computer, being the dinosaur machine it is, takes a long time to do anything, particularly when there’s crocodiles around. I figured this could be related to hard drive failure due to a lot of disk related errors in the event log. Then Bronwen came over to get a copy of the photos I took of her new house, and I discovered that ACDSee wouldn’t work, no matter what. Crocodiles 2, our extremely intelligent and rather attractive hero, nil. Needless to say, had I not urgently needed to use ACDSee, it would have worked. Much crocodile hunting later, our now thoroughly disgusted hero left for work.

Evening

• I don’t mind working on the weekend. Working on the weekend isn’t too good—but the work itself I enjoy, because I’m by myself and in charge of a lot of expensive things. Tonight was interesting, as we had a series of brownouts, switching over to generator power several times. For some reason, every time the power failed and everything switched to panic mode, the immortal phrase “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” came to mind. I’d seek psychiatric evaluation, but I’m too sleepy.

Night

• It appears to be the patron saint of alcohol’s birthday. The tract of vomit between the city and the valley is covered in legged-breasts, closely followed by drunken staggerers. I’m reminded of when the Pied Piper de-ratted Hamelin.

18.03.2007 – Sunday 18 March – Photos & Hot Fuzz

Morning

• I slept in a little, but not heaps. I picked 59 photos, took a few pictures of my flatmates, Maz came over, and we went and printed them for 15¢ each at Harvey Norman’s. There’s thousands there—they won’t be ready until Tuesday, they reckon.

Evening

• Maz and I pulled Nandini’s laptop apart to see why it didn’t work. As it turns out, it’s a miracle it is working. It’s rusty, and everything is physically broken—actually snapped, cracked or missing. I then watched “Hot Fuzz” at South Bank. It’s quite entertaining and amusing, in a British-humour sort of way. They’ve installed a new water feature at South Bank, complete with a rather odd water-tipping thing. Due to our foolish water restrictions, all the water has been imported from outside the Brisbane catchment area, apparently.

19.03.2007 – Monday 19 March – Pop Unwell

Morning

• It turns out it wasn’t crocodiles. It was lzx32.sys. It’s apparently a root-kit known as Backdoor.Rustock.B, which no doubt tries to do bad things, and results in the computer dying. I’m not sure how it’s being installed, but turns out it’s easy enough to remove. I then put some photos on my the-i.org site, ordered a new torch, and caught a bus into the city. I tried to pick up Maz and my photos from Harvey Norman, but they’re not ready yet. I then bought a Canon 75–300mm f/4– lens, which must be about their second cheapest lens at a guess. It’s listed at $249, but with a $100 off deal, cost me $149. It’s not as crappy and plastic as I was expecting either.

Evening

• I’m the only one in the fishbowl tonight. Mina is sick. I got an email that Pop has been to the doctor and isn’t well, which, at his age, is not what one wants to hear.

20.03.2007 – Tuesday 20 March – New Torch

Morning

• It seems I still have lzx32.sys. I suppose I’ll have to figure out how to entirely remove it at some stage, but that sounds like a lot of effort. In other news, it’s hot and my torch, a Fenix L1D CE, has arrived. It’s a bit hard to say when it’s not dark, but it seems it’ll satisfy my peculiar torch craving for a while—it’s over twice as bright on its brightest setting as my current torch, and lasts over twice as long on its dimmest setting, which isn’t much dimmer than my current torch. In other words, it’s over twice as efficient. It’s amazing how far torches have come really—this will run on a single rechargeable AA battery for nearly twenty-four hours at a brightness that’s better than a mini-Maglite, or burn away phenomenally brightly for an hour and a half. It’s also got a strobe setting, which isn’t particularly useful but might be fun—and all in something half the size of a mini-Maglite.

Afternoon

• Bus to near Harvey Norman, up 2 escalators, collect Maz and my photos, down 3 escalators to the eatery, vanilla milkshake, punnet of potato bake and pumpkin pasta, punnet of dhal and curry, up one escalator, walk across road, catch bus to work. Work. Chocolate, milk, biscuits from Woolworths. Walk contemplatively home.

Night

• Quite humid out. Walking home results in sweat. Just cooling down now, before bed. Greatly impressed with new torch—very bright. Low setting could be a bit lower, but is better than my other Fenix. Funny how strongly attached to certain music memories—and their associated emotions—can be. Rammstein’s “Du Hast” reminds me of “Pulse FM”—a local Cooktown radio station—a few specific incidents there, and that period of my life in general. Almost all of Metallica’s earlier work reminds me of the numerous nights I spent out in the Mary Valley with Aaron, camping in a caravan in the corner of his parent’s small farm, getting up to crazy pyrotechnic things and running around the bush in the dark. I still think Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” is one of my favourite songs (along with a myriad other).

21.03.2007 – Wednesday 21 March – Uneventful

• I had a quiet morning, doing a bit of work on the Stone site, heading to Toowong for lunch with Maz, and heading to work from there. Work was uneventful, as was the walk home, and now I’m cooling down for bed.

22.03.2007 – Thursday 22 March – Generically

• The generic—get up, mess around online, go to work via the city (where they had a rally car display, for some reason) to collect some cheap food, work, walk home, mess around online, go to bed.

23.03.2007 – Friday 23 March – Bus Woe

• Slept in. Worked on Stone site. Waited for bus for work. Bus did not come. Caught another bus. Bus did not go where it said it should go. Bus was invaded by prams in the city. No wonder people don’t stop driving and use public transport; it’s a mental health liability.

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.

25.03.2007 – Sunday 25 March – Relaxing

Morning

• I had a quiet morning. I’m a little achy, after my walk yesterday. Interestingly, my shoulders are bruised from my pack, which hasn’t happened to this extent before, even though I’ve carried it far further and when loaded far heavier.

Afternoon

• Feeling guilty for sitting inside all morning, despite being a bit sore, I caught a bus into the city with a view to take a few photos and get some lunch. Typically, as soon as I got to South Bank, it began to rain, though I managed to get a Hungry Jack’s Veggie Baguette and a bus home, without getting too wet.

Night

• Maz and I had curry from the Indian place near here for dinner.

26.03.2007 – Monday 26 March – Sleepy

• Up at a quarter past five in the morning, catching the city cat to work (early shifts at EB this week), working, finding that the server my site is on has been downgraded to PHP 4 by accident, yelling at my web host, working some more, catching the city cat home again, walking to Woolworths, shopping, and eating a nice dinner cooked by Krish. Just a few of the annoying things I had to do before bed.

27.03.2007 – Tuesday 27 March – Taxi

5:15am

• I woke up, having got around four and a half hours sleep, and decided it was worth paying twenty dollars for an extra forty minutes sleep. While rather expensive, it was a lovely forty minutes. It takes about a minute to get a taxi to my door at this time of day, and just under twenty dollars to get to work, as opposed to the fifteen-minute walk to the city cat, followed by the relatively slow, but quite pleasant and scenic, city cat ride.

Day

• I worked.

Afternoon

• I played around with some photos I took on Sunday, trying to figure out why it’s so much harder to make panoramas from photos from my new camera.

Evening

• I did some more work on the Stone site.

Night

• I had a late dinner, and rushed to bed, excessively late—I’ll get less than five hours sleep, again.

28.03.2007 – Wednesday 28 March – Sleepier

Morning

• I woke up shortly after the city cat would have left, again having got around four and a half hours sleep, and again, had to catch a taxi to work. This is getting to be an expensive habit. I then worked, while other people sailed.

Evening

• I walked to Woolworths with Maz, where I bought his groceries, he having forgotten his wallet.

Night

• I decided that I must get to bed early tonight, so as to avoid abject conjunctive liver and kidney failure, or whatever it is that happens to people that work more than they sleep, but things happened, and when they had finally finished happening, Clint needed to do an emergency food grab from the IGA. By the time I got to bed, it was again after midnight.

29.03.2007 – Thursday 29 March – Sleepiest

Morning

• With minutes of sleep now valued higher than chocolate biscuits, I decided that the fifteen-minute walk to the city cat is an inefficient way to get to work, so caught a bus that’s only a minute from my door. I then proceeded to get lost, walking a long way in the right direction, only to find that it was a different right direction to the actual right direction. For some reason the city planners built the city pointing in the wrong direction here.

Lunch

• Today I learnt that it takes a little over three times longer to make extra cheesy spaghetti as hot as extra cheesy baked beans, in the especially angry microwave here at work.

Evening

• Fixed an annoying problem where IE displayed white “speckles” or seemingly random pixels in the opaque resulting image from the image-fade-in loading script I’m using on my journal.

Night

• I got to sleep a little after midnight, which was not what I should have done.

Comment by Maz – Monday 2 April 2007, 3:46 PM

  Make a new label for it that says "Radiation king" or something?

Comment by Ned – Monday 2 April 2007, 6:39 PM

  Exactly why it has that label I don’t know. Nearly everything is labelled. That’s what happens when you let people work all night and leave labellers lying around.

Comment by Maz – Thursday 5 April 2007, 11:23 AM

  Yeah. We have a few Dymo labellers here and have a similar problem but people don't have such a sense of humour. Or I just don't get the insider jokes.

30.03.2007 – Friday 30 March – Work, Complaining & Cold Rock

Night

• I dropped past Cold Rock on the way to Maz’s, before heading up to Café E, for a pasta dinner.

Comment by krait – Sunday 1 April 2007, 11:51 AM

  Hmm, your rss feed said come here to read the article because of the addition of photos, but I don't see any... Additionally, the length of the entry is actually *shorter* than the message in your feed redirecting me here ;)

Comment by Ned – Sunday 1 April 2007, 10:56 PM

  That is true. No photos here explicitly, but photos in various entries now, which, mostly due to needing cookies, can’t be put into RSS. Also, I enjoy the design of my sites, and RSS defeats the purpose of that.

Comment by Maz – Monday 2 April 2007, 3:45 PM

  RSS would only defeat the purpose if by reading it, people were not encouraged to visit the site for some reason or another. Perhaps you should have something that says [image removed] or something so people come here to see the images.
  Maybe having something that says more than "Went to cold rock" too? And as Krait has shown, the rss actually gets people to visit the site, (thus not defeating the purpose of design).

Comment by Ned – Monday 2 April 2007, 6:38 PM

  That is essentially what it does now–it basically says “image removed”. If nothing else, it’s an experiment, and, not to sound provocative, the reason today’s entry is so short is that the rest is hidden as it involves work. People with a login can read it.

31.03.2007 – Saturday 31 March – Crazy Gothish & Missing People

Morning

• I finally had a little bit of a sleep-in, though probably not as much as I should have. I got up sometime after nine o’clock, walked up to the real estate to deliver a request for maintenance form, and caught a bus into the city to post photos to Mum. The crazy Gothish seem to gather in the mall now that their park has been turned into a bus-tunnel-construction-zone.

Afternoon

• I wandered slowly home via the Botanical Gardens, where the SES were hunting for a missing person, and South Bank markets, where I couldn’t resist taking a photo of a “no photos” sign.

Night

• I have had a relaxing, albeit somewhat geeky, night chatting online and fighting the JavaScript that lets me add photos to my journal. It’s a horrible mess of child nodes nested in child nodes, and wasn’t handling the case where an acronym was contained within an image link, which was itself before text where another image link was to be added. It’s crying out for some amazingly clever recursive function, but I dislike JavaScript and hope to never have to look at it again. Now I should consider getting some sleep, so as to be recovered for next week.

01.04.2007 – Sunday 1 April – Zombies

Morning

• Ned had a pleasant sleep-in.

2pm

• Ned and Maz and caught a bus to South Bank, and walked back to the Roma Street Parklands, where many zombies were gathering for their annual walk, through the city, past Queen Street Mall, and on to the botanical gardens. The police were out, ostensibly to keep traffic out of the way of the zombies, but overall it was a well-organised collection of, well… zombies. Maz had one zombie bite his ear, and I had one throw a bottle at me, but I also took 551 photos—getting to well and truly test my new 75–300mm lens—and had a great time.

Night

• Ned dropped past Maz’s, managing to get to bed with enough time to sleep for nearly six hours. Dreams of zombies not permitted.

02.04.2007 – Monday 2 April – Tsunamis, Management, and is “is” is?

Morning

• This morning began early—I’m working seven to three in the fishbowl. It also began a little worryingly—I received a call from Mum—“Hello, we’ve been advised to evacuate, a Tsunami may hit within the hour, got to go”. I phoned Tulani and Silas, finding out that non-essential staff had been sent home from Cairns Base (or at least some on the lower floors, apparently a Godzilla sized tsunami wasn’t expected), leaving the rest to drown, or save those that had, depending how strong the windows there are. As it turned out, nothing happened—the ocean rose about a foot, causing discomfort to a seagull and confusing the seaweed.

Evening

• I’ve done almost entirely nothing. After my stressful, and rather long, day at work, I’ve chilled—eating dinner cooked by Nandini, and getting in my washing. I didn’t even go to Cold Rock, though I am keeping up my exercise schedule—completing fifty sit-ups, push-ups and leg-ups, and concentrating hard on philosophical subjects—my favourite right now being one I found from a hoax discussion the BBC hosted some years back—is “is” is?

Night

• After a little pondering, and a twitch through the Oxford, I found that is is “that which exists”, so clearly, is is; however, this only works if is doesn’t, because if is does, according to the Oxford, then is, as a past indicative, was—which might mean is isn’t anymore—and once we get to the past participial, is is in fact, isn’t, or in the case of the colloquial, ain’t, wa’n’t, weren’t, and basically, never was. So there we have it: is “is” is? According to the Oxford, is isn’t, unless it is—or as they put it, is is “an irregular and defective verb”. And that’s not a question.

Comment by Mum – Wednesday 4 April 2007, 6:08 PM

  I am that I am. Which cometh from the Holy Bible, and is God describing Himself. Or if you prefer, Jesus.s description, much more blunt and to the point in regard to the is "is" is, which was a succinct and overt pointer to finding out if is "is". "GO TO NOW" So, if you want to know if is "is", you will have to go to where Jesus Christ bloody well points you. Which is to go to NOW. I mean, right NOW.

03.04.2007 – Tuesday 3 April – Pizza

Morning

• The day progressed. I worked. I had a look at the hole they’ve dug for the new Inner Northern Busway. The day continued progressing.

Evening

• I had a chat to Nandini about life in general, to Roberto about upcoming Stone Easy site changes, and an otherwise relaxing evening consuming pizza, it being cheap pizza Tuesday.

04.04.2007 – Wednesday 4 April – 300

6am

• I’m already up, and about to head to work. I am, naturally, sleepy, but I will have a reasonable day at work.

Evening

• I walk home from work, then on to Coles at Toowong via the unlit park with scary shadows and hidden tripping rocks, hunting for mythical “Pluravit” multivitamins—the best there are, according to a Choice study Clint dug up. My new Solid Internet account is finally enabled.

3am

• Going to the midnight premiere of “300” at Indooroopilly was probably not a good idea, but I had no choice. At about twelve to nine, Clint asked if I wanted to go see “Bra Boys” at ten to nine, which of course, I did. Unsurprisingly, however, once we got there it had already been running for some time; and of course, as we can never retreat, never submit, we bought tickets to a midnight premiere instead.
  It turned out to be quite busy, quite violent, and overall, quite good. There was a very disturbing start, with a good-looking girl sitting alone in the row in front of us, and clearly looking for someone. Clint and I couldn’t help wondering what fine specimen of manhood would come to claim this damsel, but the man—and I hesitate to use the word—that eventually eventuated, wasn’t, well, much at all—and to make matters worse, the instant the credits started, he left, leaving her there alone. However, this horrible injustice aside, the movie was good, I had a litre of chocolate milk and a block of peppermint dark chocolate, it started at midnight, and had slow-motion fight scenes and an oracle with nipples. What more could one want from the movies?

4am

• Time appears to have progressed. I need to be up in a little less than two hours, so shall fall into bed for a patent pending power nap.

Comment by Maz – Thursday 5 April 2007, 7:53 AM

  Yet Clint and yourself returned, single. Typical. :P

Comment by Ned – Thursday 5 April 2007, 8:25 AM

  I want an oracle with nipples. One that can predict Lotto results.

05.04.2007 – Thursday 5 April – Awake

5:20am

• Nandini and Georgia arrived home, waking me. Having had just over an hour’s sleep, headed off to work. I took chocolate, bought chocolate milk, and was given much more Easter chocolate.

Evening

• Had a sleep when I got home from work. Not sleeping is fun, but I have too many things to do, and need some semblance of normality to do them.

Night

• Popped around to Maz’s for a bit. Maz suggested writing something that’d send all the photos from my site to flickr. This wasn’t something I had planned to do, but as soon as he said it, I began thinking of ways to do it—which means I’m doomed, and have to stay up all night until I get it done.

4am

• Here’s hoping my evening nap gets me through, because this has not turned into an early night. Still, I’m suitably impressed with my flickr integration thing—it builds a queue of images, and slowly sends them through to flickr, complete with tags, titles and descriptions. It seems as though it might even work.

06.04.2007 – Friday 6 April – Rainbows & Relationships

Morning

• Woke up early but went back to bed, and managed to have a bit of a sleep in. Hurrah for a badly needed day off work.

3:30pm

• Eerily windy. Industrially framed rainbow, right over the city.

4:30pm

• Raining a little. It’s miraculous. Water is actually coming from the sky, as in times of old.

4:31pm

• That wasn’t very much rain.

Evening

• Booked flights to Perth for Dad.

Night

• Curry with Maz and Loki. Found out flickr only displays 200 most recent photos on free account, so all my effort writing my thing that sends all my photos to flickr was essentially useless.

1:30am

• Bed. Working tomorrow. Suspect I’ll be sleepy.

Comment by io – Sunday 8 April 2007, 6:11 AM

  Wow I saw that brief rainbow at that time too; although it wasn't so pretty from the UQ Tennis Courts. Unfortunately, msngirl couldn't see it through the trees and thought that I was trying to distract her when I said "Look rainbow!". Random fact: some rainbow website tells me that (horizon-horizon) rainbows aren't actually that common - makes sense cause you need sun to be low, and rain to be in front of sun, and sun to be beneath cloud.
  
  All that said, very nice pic - what settings did you use? I think the last time I tried to take a photo of a rainbow; I was about 12 and wasted a bit of film on the reel.

07.04.2007 – Saturday 7 April – Waxing & Waning

Morning

• Got a taxi to work—early shift at EB. Bought tickets to Perth, leaving early tomorrow morning, coming back Wednesday night. For some reason, flights back are at a premium—I’m flying via Adelaide. It cost a little over eight hundred dollars, and I expect work won’t be too happy about the lack of notice, but Pop’s operation isn’t going to be postponed for my convenience.

Evening

• So much to do, so little motivation. Instead, I’m putting photos of the Mareeba Motocross on my site. I’ve re-concluded, for the umpteenth time, that while I seem to operate just fine on almost no sleep, it’s actually bad for me. It’s made me emotionally unstable now, which is not particularly fun.
  Fortunately, it’s nothing a little sleep won’t fix. Unfortunately, it’s not looking like I’ll get any sleep in the foreseeable future, what with early flights, traumatic relatives, work, life, etc.

1am

• I’ve packed for Perth, and have to get up in exactly four and three quarter hours.

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.

09.04.2007 – Monday 9 April – Pop

Morning

• Lois, Dad and I go to see Pop. Jill and Laurie, and then Bryce, turn up shortly after. Shirley is already there.

Afternoon

• Lois, Dad, Jill, Laurie, and I spend the afternoon at King’s Park. The grass is much greener over this side of the country. Despite having perpetual water woes, they’ve stated that a non-green city wouldn’t be a “city for people”, so refuse to ban sprinkling, unlike the morons over here who are busily tearing up all the water fountains. I heartily support this attitude, as water and greenery is more important, if anything, when there’s a lack, though “Perth—a city for people” is perhaps one of the worst mottos ever.

Evening

• Lisa drops by Lois’s, on her way to see Pop.

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.

12.04.2007 – Thursday 12 April – Sleepy & Stupid

6am

• Yay for stupidity. I caught a taxi to work, eating some Easter bunny and iced coffee on the way to make sure I don’t fall asleep, only to find I’m not working until three o’clock. Then, once I got home, I couldn’t sleep. So, instead, I’m gazing blankly at things, wishing it wasn’t so humid here—the lack of sweat in Perth was lovely—and stitching up panoramas of Perth using “autostitch”, which appears to be brilliant, albeit very slow.

2pm

• Off to work—again. Taxi home. Stay up late. Zombie mode on.

13.04.2007 – Friday 13 April – Normal

Morning

• We sleep in. We’re now back to normal, we think. But is it because we’re thinking, that we think we’re normal, when perhaps we’re not normally normal, but how we normally think, is how we think normal is, making it all a little more confusing than normal?

Afternoon

• Work. I’m the only one at EB. Walk home. Lots of people in city. The police are hunting drink drivers, and messing up the traffic in the process.

14.04.2007 – Saturday 14 April – Relaxing

Afternoon

• Had a fairly quiet evening at home, snoozing for a bit, dropping around Maz’s shortly after midnight to pick up some panorama software, and getting to bed shortly thereafter.

15.04.2007 – Sunday 15 April – Saucepans & Milkshakes

• Went shopping at Garden City. Bought three saucepans and a milkshake.

Night

• Had curry for dinner with Maz.

16.04.2007 – Monday 16 April – Mondayitis

Morning

• Up at a quarter to six, out the door by ten past, buying a milkshake at a quarter to seven, and in the fishbowl, complaining about everything, by ten to seven. Making an entire room out of glass is not a good idea when it’s sixteen degrees. Nor do mice work on the glass tabletops. Glass rubbish bins are a bit odd too. Still, I suppose it looks good and impresses prospective clientele.

Afternoon

• I went well for half the day, then Mondayitis struck. The rest was a struggle. I tried eating beans, drinking various flavoured milk and soft drink, eating a chocolate bar, and eventually feeling terrible and vowing never to eat sugary things again.

Night

• I had an evening snooze, which made me feel somehow guilty. Reheated palak paneer (पालक पनीर, apparently) from last night made a nice and suitably un-sugary dinner.

1am

• The girls have finished watching their DVD, and I’ve finished listening to music and avoiding doing things I should be doing, and am off to bed. Last.fm and Pandora make having one’s own music collection essentially pointless. I guess it’s the modern equivalent of advertising-supported free-to-air radio.

17.04.2007 – Tuesday 17 April – Pizza & A Large Balloon

Morning

• I woke up just a little after my bus left. Fortunately, I don’t believe in time. Unfortunately, work and the public transport system do. There was a large balloon frolicking. The connection is not immediately obvious.

Evening

• I visited Cold Rock and Maz, who made me a banana and chocolate super shake and is reinstalling Windows on his new server, respectively.

Night

• It being cheap pizza night, cheap pizza was had.

18.04.2007 – Wednesday 18 April – Chocolate Milk

Morning

• I went to sleep at a reasonable hour last night, yet I’m sleepier today than I was yesterday. It seems there’s little, if any, point going to bed early. I seem to be more efficient when tired. I seem to be less tired if I don’t sleep enough. I’m sure something there doesn’t make sense.

Day

• I went to Woolworths to buy corn chips, spicy Mexican dip, Mexican chilli beans, corn, and a small carton of chocolate milk. Regrettably, three litre bottles of chocolate milk were on special, and it seemed rather silly buying a small carton of milk when it actually cost more than a large bottle… so all day I’ve been drinking chocolate milk and eating corn chips with dip. I think that covers at least two food groups.

Night

• The search for the mystical Pluravit multivitamins (and a need to escape from being inside) took me to their alleged source—Coles at Hawken Village—however, they managed to maintain their mystical status, being nowhere to be found.
  There’s a third girl staying here at the moment—a friend of Nandini’s—and I’m avoiding doing things I should be, so I watched a variety of junky television with her.

Comment by Mum – Saturday 21 April 2007, 12:22 AM

  For goodness sake. You wouldnt need the bloody multivitamins if you gave up the toxic chocolate milk and the mexican dip and the etc etc. Why dont you get yourself one of those papers which actually tell you what the toxins and additives are in all that crap you are eating. One cannot hope to maintain reasonable health whilst eating all that crap.
  As far as the sleeping hours go...It is like a coiled spring. When one is overtired (or stressed) and one finally gets an early night, the coils begins to unwind, but it takes a little while....so one oft times feels more tired after "an early night" but is only the beginning of the unwinding.
  Is always best to try to have as early a night as possible as the mind and also the spirit are more alive so to speak in the early am. It is also a time when one can have a little china blue slice of solitude in the hectic ness of city life.

19.04.2007 – Thursday 19 April – Not a lot

Morning

• I made a semi-conscious decision to sleep in a little longer, arriving at work just slightly late.

Night

• Some of my called mates went and saw the movie I wanted to see, without telling me they were going, after I’d already asked them if they wanted to see it. I’m not particularly impressed.

Comment by Maz – Thursday 19 April 2007, 9:47 PM

  You never asked me if I wanted to go see it. So if anything I should feel left out.

Comment by Ned – Thursday 19 April 2007, 9:48 PM

  Yes I did.

Comment by Mum – Saturday 21 April 2007, 12:30 AM

  Grow up. Both of you.

Comment by Maz – Wednesday 25 April 2007, 12:44 PM

  He started it!

Comment by Mum – Friday 27 April 2007, 7:30 PM

  Oh,well. Things collapsing over the planet hither and yon. One does not want to agitate over nothings. A missed appointment....oh sorrow....?? Has either of you lost a limb. I mean, get real.

20.04.2007 – Friday 20 April – Working

• I worked. It wasn’t very exciting. The Holden Blimp is back. I thought it had been banned.

21.04.2007 – Saturday 21 April – Relaxing

Evening

• I’ve had a relaxing day, and now a pleasant curry dinner.

22.04.2007 – Sunday 22 April – Relaxing

• It’s been quite hot. I’ve had another pleasant, relaxing, day.

23.04.2007 – Monday 23 April – Work

• I worked late shift at EB. That pretty much sums up my day.

24.04.2007 – Tuesday 24 April – Work, Romanians & Toc House

• Up at a normal time. Into the city to find a macadamia nut cracker. Then off to work. Chatted to the cleaning lady, who it turns out is a Romanian lawyer, who had to go on a hunger strike to get out of the country. There was a nice sunset over Brisbane.

Midnight

• I stopped past Toc House’s ANZAC day event, at the Eternal Flame, and didn’t get to bed until after half past two.

25.04.2007 – Wednesday 25 April – ANZAC Day

10am

• I attended the ANZAC Day parade, the one day in Australia when there’s a lot of Australian flags. I managed to catch up with Joe.

Afternoon

• Work.

Night

• I was approached by a gent near Roma Street, with “you can help me, or you can call the police”. Twenty dollars, and several minutes, later, I left, feeling somehow guilty for giving him money, but also guilty for not giving him more. I then witnessed two backpackers attempting to kill each other.

Comment by Mum – Saturday 5 May 2007, 7:12 PM

  What? Twenty dollars and several minutes later. If this is artistic license, designed to make your journal "interesting", well.... Your Mum reads your journal, and it gets up my nose that you write these things which worry me, as if they are just ordinary things. You ought to feel guilty for writing things that are potentially horrible in an offhand and casual manner, just to make you "cool" whatever the hell that is. I am very cross with you. I can only assume the 2 backpackers you saw attempting to kill each other werent besmattered with blood, although if they were it might have made your journal today a little less bland. And a little more interesting to the mob who log in or on or whatever it is that people log onto who have nothing more interesting or educational to do

Comment by Mum – Saturday 5 May 2007, 7:13 PM

  Get a life.

Comment by Mum – Saturday 5 May 2007, 7:16 PM

  All of you

Comment by Mum – Monday 7 May 2007, 5:26 PM

  Sorry. An extreme reaction. Just scared me a bit. I live in the most beautiful part of Australia, where no one locks their car or even their house, well, most of us. Is a bit scarey the things that can happen in the big bad cities. Anyway, Mums will always be Mums and who of you do not stiffen when Ma uses "that" voice. You should not have stolen all those biscuits and sneaked out that night, etc. Did you really think Ma did not know, having " been there, done that". This is addressed to anyone who reads this. Is okay. Is actually love and concern for all you ratbags who have Mum at home, worrying, loving. Thank goodness that He can erase any of my comments that embarrass him. This will, no doubt, be one. Peace

26.04.2007 – Thursday 26 April – Network Failing

• Things were left out of a compile on my web server, stopping my site from working. I went to work. We lost our nicely redundant local link to the valley—something to do with Cisco not being very good, and our own redundancy killing us. Chris and I sat around not working for hours. This was fun for about half an hour, and then it got very boring. Funnily, everything routes via Sydney when both links to the valley go down—outbound calls even have a local Sydney number.

27.04.2007 – Friday 27 April – Working

• I worked on the Cooktown Hotel site. I then worked at work. I walked home. It’s always interesting walking through the valley and city on a Friday night.

28.04.2007 – Saturday 28 April – Bronwen’s House Warming

Morning

• I had a quiet morning.

Night

• I attended Bronwen’s house warming, where a pleasant night was had.

29.04.2007 – Sunday 29 April – Curse of the Golden Flower

Evening

• I watched “Curse of the Golden Flower” at South Bank. It’s rather tragic. I even managed to find and photograph an extremely rare golden flower.

30.04.2007 – Monday 30 April – Working

Morning

• Here I am, working 7 to 3 at EB.

Night

• Maz and I engorged ourselves on Curry from the local curry place.

01.05.2007 – Tuesday 1 May – Ned’s House for Homeless Vegetarians

Night

• My place has been a little chaotic recently. A girlfriend of one of the girls needed a place to stay while finding another place, so she moved in for a few days, and is now in Melbourne for a week’s holiday. Nandini was down in Port Macquarie doing modelling photo shoots, trying to become a model. Krish was spending the weekend at a girlfriend’s place, and I was out for the night. So, with no one home, I get a late night call from Brinda—another girlfriend of one of the girls—who had recently moved into share accommodation with a guy she didn’t know, and had her food drugged and needed to get out of her place immediately. I guided her over the phone to the hidden spare key, and now she’s staying here until she can find another place. I suspect the girl in Melbourne will arrive back while this new girl is still here, as it is difficult to find rental accommodation at the moment. And they’re all vegetarian.
  If nothing else, it’s not boring.

02.05.2007 – Wednesday 2 May – Night

Morning

• My bus missed its connecting bus, by only a few moments. I caught a taxi, which then picked up another lady going in the opposite direction. She was very angry.

6:30pm

• I watched “Shooter” at South Bank. It wasn’t too bad, for a generic Hollywood action movie.

03.05.2007 – Thursday 3 May – Relaxing

• I had the day off due to working this coming Sunday. I went shopping. I bought new pillows.

Night

• Curry and Cold Rock with Maz, meeting Clint.

04.05.2007 – Friday 4 May – Reclining Thai Style

Morning

• Work. Only just made the bus. Only just missed the City Cat. Story of my life.

Night

• Dined at Tara Thai in the valley, discovering their upstairs reclining area.

05.05.2007 – Saturday 5 May – Flickr & Buddha’s Birthday

Morning

• I walked down to Coronation drive, meeting two Flickr people taking photos of the Brisbane sunrise. I then caught buses that weren’t supposed to come when they did, to the West End markets, again meeting Flickr people (and a lizard), and walking to South Bank with them, taking photos along the way, and finishing with lunch.

Evening

• After a housemate-cooked dinner, I headed back to South Bank to watch the fireworks.

06.05.2007 – Sunday 6 May – Working

Afternoon

• Here I am, working at EB all by myself, on a Sunday. Fortunately, I brought my camera.

07.05.2007 – Monday 7 May – Working

Morning

• I attempted to see Spiderman 3, even managing to arrive on time, only to find that it’s booked out.

3pm

• Working in the fishbowl.

Night

• It has rained a little bit.

08.05.2007 – Tuesday 8 May – Work

• Work. Not much else.

09.05.2007 – Wednesday 9 May – Spiderman 3

• I saw Spiderman 3. It’s a dismally poor movie, as expected, but for five dollars, it was worth it. Now, work.

10.05.2007 – Thursday 10 May – Work

• Working. This is getting to be a habit. Finally got around to updating the fullboar site.

11.05.2007 – Friday 11 May – Work

• Work, and not much else.

12.05.2007 – Saturday 12 May – Dawn on Mount Coot-Tha

4:45am

• I didn’t get home from work until after midnight, and didn’t get to bed until after one o’clock, so getting up horribly early wasn’t much fun. However, up I did, and off to Greg’s place I was, then to the city to pick up Shaun and a friend of Greg’s who is down from PNG, and up Mount Coot-Tha to watch and photograph the surprisingly cold dawn and sunrise over Brisbane.

Morning

• Greg picked up Nikhi and three more friends down from PNG, and all eight of us drove to the West End Markets, where I had a nice breakfast, and bumped into Bronwen.

Evening

• I had a relaxing evening, snoozing for a while.

13.05.2007 – Sunday 13 May – Carindale Billycart Races

Morning

• I attended the Carindale Billycart Races. It wasn’t at all what I expected. They’d billed it as “Brisbane’s Biggest Billycart Races”, which is probably true. I’d naively coupled this with Cooktown’s June Weekend billycart races, and figured it’d be bigger, harder, more dangerous, more daring, more Crusty Demons of Dirt style. I mean, people used to travel up from down south with fibre-carbon carts, and Cooktown hasn’t been able to get public liability insurance for theirs, ever since a few blokes entered a beer-powered power pole as their billycart. An entire power pole—the things that hold up the powerlines—with car wheels. It must have weighed half a tonne. The hill they race down isn’t small, and it’s lined with people, and halfway down they got up the wobbles, nearly wiping out several hundred people, before thundering through the hay bales at the end, narrowly missing the police car, on down the street, through the mangrove swamp, and into the crocodile infested river.
  The Carindale Billycart Races were more of a subdued family affair—the average age of the carters was somewhere around seven. It was, however, absolutely hilarious—and everything was free. I went to buy chocolate milk, and was given it. A man was walking around with a freshly squeezed orange juice dispenser, giving out free drinks. An ice cream man was wandering around offering people ice creams. I was impressed. There was also a huge orange walking around, who later managed to crash his cart. The funniest part was when they loaded a turtle into a cart, and raced him. He managed to flip onto his back, as turtles do, and couldn’t get up. Then they raced a ten pin, versus Crazy John. The ten pin’s neck bent backwards in the most hilarious way, and as he couldn’t see a thing, he managed to skittle himself quite well—also unable to get up without help. It really was funny. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, but the hilarity made up for that. They even had cheerleaders.

Evening

• I met Maz in the city, and we wandered around, eventually ending up back at Rosalie, where we had curry from the fantastic Indian place, along with Bronwen.

14.05.2007 – Monday 14 May – Chez Tessa

Morning

• Working, seven to three, supposed to be on level five, but in the fishbowl today.

Evening

• Maz and I are both curried out, and at a loss where to eat, when it occurred to us that we hadn’t been to Chez Tessa in a while. A short bus trip later and we were both eating our standard uni fare—cheap, probably nasty, but filling. Catching the bus back seemed a little too easy—and it was actually waiting to depart when we arrived at the bus stop, making it far too easy, so we walked to the new “UQ Lakes” bus stop and caught a bus into the city via the new Eleanor Schonell bridge, the first time I have.

15.05.2007 – Tuesday 15 May – Ye Olde Normal Day

• Slept in. Late for work. Working on level five again. Had chips for lunch. Had a quiet evening at home. Finished off my curry. Went to bed. Ye olde normal day.

16.05.2007 – Wednesday 16 May – Feelings, Thoughts, & Water Fountains

• The problem with my journal is that it’s boring. The idea was to keep an accurate record of my life, and in that respect, I think I’ve done a fairly good job. Unfortunately, day-to-day life—at least mine—is not actually very interesting, and when it is, I’m often not at liberty to publish publicly the juicy titbits, making it even more boring than it otherwise would be. I actually enjoy writing, and enjoy playing with the English language for some unknown reason, but no longer get the free time needed to build up the motivation needed to feel like sitting down and writing. It’s not really that I don’t get free time—in a purely mathematical sense, I probably get more than the average full-time worker—it’s more that the free time I do have isn’t mentally free. Even if I don’t have something I’m busy doing, there’s something I should be doing, and if I’m not doing that, it’s because there’s some reason I can’t, and for that same reason, I don’t feel that I can sit and relax, building up the required laxness needed to enjoy writing. For example, when I get home from work at the moment, I should be designing a website that I’ve put off for far too long, but I’ve been working all day in front of a computer, so don’t feel like it, but because I can’t do the site design, I’d feel guilty doing something else, so I don’t. Instead, I sit in front of a computer, and design my own site. It’s not very logical. Probably, I’m just tired.
  Anyway, the point I was meaning to get to before I went off-track, was that my journal, as a day-to-day factual record of the physical events that occurred in my proximity, is rather boring, and I’m wondering if I should branch out into recording more than mere physical actualities. After all, our physical state is meaningless without the associated mental state—perhaps what I thought today is just as relevant as what happened—not that either are actually relevant to anything other than, perhaps, me. So, before I ramble off-track again, let’s try this for a few days and see how it goes. And, in the silly way I find playing with English interesting—I’ve already begun.

Morning

• Yesterday morning I slept in. This morning I intentionally got up later than I usually would, and should have been just able to get to work on time—perhaps five to ten minutes late—had the bus not failed to stop at work. In what’s becoming frequently more common now that I’ve decided to buy a car, I’m finding myself frustrated at the seeming ineptitude of the public transport system here—buses anyway. I think they should advertise some method of complaining, so if nothing else, they can gauge public opinion, or hopefully identify and attempt to correct the problems plaguing buses, and the reasons why people don’t like them. They just fail to turn up, or they’re late, or they go somewhere they shouldn’t, or fail to stop—to put it simply, they’re unreliable and annoying. I ended up half an hour late at work, though five minutes of that was picking up my morning milkshake.

Night

• Maz walked here, and we caught a bus into the city. He had KFC; I had a veggie baguette from Hungry Jack’s. I currently fail to see any reason to cook. I can quite easily afford to eat out, all the time, and despite what Mum would no doubt think, it’s not necessarily any less healthy than home-cooked food. A curry meal from the local Indian restaurant sets me back about sixteen dollars, and provides enough leftovers for another meal. That’s eight dollars for a chef-cooked dinner. There’s no point in me competing with that.
  After dinner, we walked to South Bank, to take photos of the new water feature they’ve placed there. It’s pretty crazy, and I’m actually quite impressed now I’ve spent some time examining it. There’s these water-jets with lights set under them. It’s a bit hard to explain. They shoot a perfectly formed arched jet of water, and the light shines through them, bending with them, as it would in an optic fibre. The jets pulsate, seemingly randomly, the light tracing through them. Standing close, you can see small, perfectly formed detached “chunks” of the arc flying through the air, as it turns on and off, and the light bending through the water turns them into something akin to a light sabre. Placing a hand into the arc causes the light to break out. Really quite impressive.
  Then, fifteen minutes or so into photographing things, it suddenly, and without warning, began to rain—and thunder, and lightning. Then it announced that we should stand clear, as the doors were closing. We began to run to shelter, fearing we’d been caught in some apocalyptic flash-storm, when we realised this is a feature of the water feature—apparently it’s artistic. It randomly begins to rain, while speakers play thunder and lights fake lightning, then random sounds—I think picked from around Brisbane—play, the lights dim, mist effuses from unusual places, the fountains stop, and the strange arts-grant noises stop, and everything starts up again. It’s realistic enough to fool anyone into thinking it’s beginning to storm. Having it suddenly start raining on what must be around five grand worth of camera equipment isn’t particularly great though.
  Funnily enough, what made me think of trying to write a little more than my usual boring “had a milkshake”, was telling a story to Maz on the way back, and having him tell me I should write it in my journal, rather than what I’d done. It was the fake rain—it made me think of a post apocalyptic science fiction scenario—one that’s becoming scarily feasible—where it simply doesn’t rain, and people have set up places where they can go and show their children what it used to be like in their day. “Back when I was a youngster, water used to fall from the sky just like this, and it would thunder, just like that”, and they’d all stand in the rain, in awe, and then they’d go home and drink their recycled, chemically enhanced, government approved water.
  To contrast with my bus experience this morning, there was a bus just about to depart as soon as we got to the Cultural centre bus stop, getting us home in good time. I walked to Maz’s with him, buying the obligatory Cold Rock (vanilla, banana and coconut, seeing as you asked), feeling suitably sick after, and am now back here, in theory going to bed, so I can get up at the proper time tomorrow, and get to work without being late. In reality, however, I’ve just read Clint’s latest journal entry, which was quite interesting without mentioning anything at all that he’s done or doing, and that’s enthused me to write. So, if I’m late tomorrow, I’ll blame Maz and Clint.

12:30am

• Turns out I’ll have to blame Loki if I’m late tomorrow. I’ve just finished knocking up a quick website layout template for him, and it’s somehow become half past midnight.

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 May 2007, 5:06 PM

  Anyone ever seen an old movie called "Soylen Green" or perhaps "Soylent Green"? With Charleton Heston?? Was a futuristic movie, wherein everything was kaput and when older folks or anyone at all, wanted to "out" they would be taken to this place and as they were dying or being deaded, they would get a glimpse of this lovely planet earth with waterfalls, green grass, birds, etc. which did not exist (in the movie) and then they were "out". This movie scared me half to death. But I did not know about God then.

Comment by Ned – Friday 18 May 2007, 5:17 PM

  I have seen that.

Comment by anon – Tuesday 26 June 2007, 7:01 PM

  I hope it wasn't kfc from the myer centre, because the chicken there contains ghb!

17.05.2007 – Thursday 17 May – Yoghurt & Capsicum Dip

Morning

• Welcome to Ned’s daily living tip #428: “How to ruin your day before 9 AM”. First, begin by eating yoghurt. Throughout the centuries, man has treasured fresh milk, along with women, beer and football. All was good, the sun was shining, cows expressed, and your favourite team was winning. Enter microbes, viruses and bacteria, and all of a sudden, you have the bubonic plague, smallpox, Ebola, and yoghurt. You also develop heartburn, a sore tongue, and an unquenchable thirst.
  Second, open your bag to find your jumper, because it’s extremely cold and dry in the fishbowl, and discover that your only cure from yoghurt poisoning, your corn chips and spicy capsicum dip, are in your bag—rather than in their containers. Not only are they in your bag, but they have taken the liberty of trying on your jumper, which now has a pleasant capsicum smell, somewhat akin to baby’s vomit. This will mix with your internal yoghurt wars in a pleasing and satisfying way, happily ruining your day, before 9 AM.

10am

• To correct aforementioned problems, apply large plate of fresh cream filled lamington.

Midday

• Note that the abovementioned solution does not work. In fact, I strongly discourage the use of fresh cream lamingtons, as their medicinal properties are, at best, doubtful. I am now going to try green curry Thai vegetables and rice.

Afternoon

• The Thai curry cheered me significantly, but not enough for my happy mood to survive our gloomy weekly meeting. I’m now having a bad day at work.

Evening

• I headed to Indooroopilly with Maz, meeting Clint, Kieran, and his new cat; and enjoying my Hungry Jack’s veggie baguette dinner.

Night

• Nandini’s boyfriend stayed over, along with the four other girls. I had a multivitamin before bed, despite the warning not to as they’d keep me awake. I wasn’t happy about work. I then went to bed earlier than usual. One or a combination of these meant I had trouble getting to sleep—tossing and turning, fighting the sheets, and failing to set myself into a nice contemplative daydream. I usually really enjoy going to bed, as it gives me time to think, time to design and plan out all the crazy, and mostly unrealistic, things I’ve been mentally working on ever since I can remember. But tonight, I couldn’t fix on any one idea—they refused to gel.

Comment by io – Thursday 17 May 2007, 1:10 PM

  Welcome to io's daily living tip #4228: “How to exacerbate your stomach's flipping after not-enough-sleep”. First, begin by reading this above entry.

Comment by Ned – Thursday 17 May 2007, 5:37 PM

  What comes next?

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 May 2007, 5:22 PM

  Mum comes next! Yoghurt, spicey whatever, followed by lamingtons? Lamingtons? LAMINGTONS? Holy mackerel. Who in their right brain would even poke a stick at a lamington? The yoghurt would have been curdled by the spicey whatever, the corn chips would have been nothing which is what they taste like, but the lamingtons.....well. They taste and look like some sort of depraved sponge mattress dipped in pretending chocolate. Rolled in pretending coconut dessicate. Geez. Good luck with the Thai green curry.

18.05.2007 – Friday 18 May – Anger, Birthday Presents & The Greek

Morning

• I’m having a crap day, for no known reason. Nothing has gone particularly wrong; I’m just feeling as though I’m only just skimming along on the top of my suppressed anger for some reason, which is making it difficult to be a happy, cheery Ned. If only I had a grenade launcher…

Afternoon

• Our washing machine stopped washing, making it more of an objet d’art than anything else.

Evening

• I went shopping for a birthday present for my sister. This is a very stressful, difficult and arduous process. I also came across some Hellenic dancers, and two rather large-headed Greeks, dancing in the mall.

19.05.2007 – Saturday 19 May – Infinity & Curry

Morning

• I managed to sleep in until near eleven o’clock, something I badly needed.

Day

• I rushed into the city to buy strange fluffy wool to pack my sister’s birthday present, and post it, coming across a strange film set at Brisbane Square, and stopping at the Gallery of Modern Art on the way home.

Night

• A lovely Curry dinner from my local Indian life-support shop was consumed with much appreciation.

Late Night

• I walked into South Bank, to have another look at the amazing light-bending water jets, but the lights were turned off.

20.05.2007 – Sunday 20 May – Sore Throats & Aboriginal Worshippers

Morning

• I have a sore throat. This is particularly crap. I woke up with it yesterday morning, and it’s been building since then. I’ve been attempting to kill it all day—with no success yet. I’ve tried the orthodox—vitamin C, and the unorthodox—ice cream to slow and weaken it, followed by Coca Cola to poison it in its weakened state, but so far it’s survived.

Evening

• A bus delivered me to Hungry Jack’s in the city, where a staff member delivered me my baguette; I came across a fast, but rather dangerous looking car; and discovered the modern equivalent of an Aboriginal rock painting, complete with traditional worshipper.

Night

• My attempts at writing a little more than a simple factual account of what I did for a few days shall need to be extended, because I’m apparently too stable to have any changing emotions at the moment—and sadly either too busy, or too tired, to sit and contemplate. The former is good; the latter is something I need to correct.
  In theory, I have a fair bit of free time—more than the average worker due to my shiftwork, but it doesn’t seem like that. I think I’m not getting enough relaxation time, time where I’ve nothing else I need to do, and this means that I’m using my spare time to do nothing, to catch up on the relaxation I’m not getting.

Comment by Mum – Monday 28 May 2007, 10:43 PM

  Well, has been a bit of a smallish blast of rain up here. Just a small smidgeon of a sort of a blast of rain. Better than no thing. Look, this is the rainforest, and we are looking at drought. Drought? In the rainforest? We have had the worst lousiest "Wet" season. Puny. You all have to think further than your felafal source. Your felafel is after all WHEAT predominantly, and you and I and all of us are stuffed if the Australian wheatfields are again struck by drought, again. Again. Have mercy. The highest suicide rates in Australia are in the rural sector. Farmers sons, or sons, of sons, who cant do it any more.

Comment by Mum – Monday 28 May 2007, 11:28 PM

  Okay. I am using this as a forum. Knowing that Ned can nix it as he sees fit. Is okay. Just to keep it in focus. We are looking Up Here, at Canberra mob telling us what to do with our rivers, OUR rivers, our land, OUR land, and how to do it, and where and when. From a desk in Canberra. Get real.

21.05.2007 – Monday 21 May – Brooms, Mops, Delirium & Broken Computers

• Today hasn’t been a good day. It started with a slightly delirious night. I kept getting stuck in mental loops, without the mental faculties to bring any of them to a conclusion. Fortunately I wasn’t too delirious to realise this, and got up each time, managing to escape from the loop and get some sleep. All this caused by a sore throat.
  I called in to work sick, and should have slept the rest of the day—but we have a house inspection tomorrow, and a broken broom and mop. A short trip to the city got me a new broom and mop, and I set about cleaning. Being sick was bad enough, wasting a sick day cleaning and being sick was a bit too much, so I figured I’d go buy a new 500 GB SATA hard drive, as I’ve run out of space on nearly all my other hard drives. This in itself was good—but unfortunately the drive didn’t detect, so I decided to flash the BIOS. This worked quite well, right up to the part where it nicely informed me that verification of the newly flashed BIOS failed and I’d need to flash the BIOS again, and again, and again, and again. Getting sick of this fairly quickly, I rebooted and found that my computer no longer boots. As irony would have it, I’d disabled my floppy drive in the BIOS some time ago as it was annoying and essentially useless, so I couldn’t do much at all.

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.

23.05.2007 – Wednesday 23 May – Installing Software

Morning

• I am still congested and coughing, but fortunately highly intelligent. The sunrise was also quite pretty.

24.05.2007 – Thursday 24 May – Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Morning

• At work. Slept in but managed to get to work just a little late. Bought tickets to 8:50 PM Pirates of the Caribbean movie at South Bank. Only seven tickets were remaining at seven o’clock in the morning.

Afternoon

• I bought another gigabyte of RAM from Umart. For $55, it’s just too cheap, and it seems a little silly having half of a dual channel of RAM.

Night

• Bronwen and I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”. Fantastic movie. The audience weren’t too bad either. Unfortunately almost all my photos of them turned out blurry, as I felt too awkward taking photos in a cinema with a prominent and professional camera to take the time to take them well. I’m not entirely sure if photography inside the cinema is banned, but I’m willing to assume it is.

Comment by Mum – Thursday 31 May 2007, 10:50 PM

  2nd movie, Caribbean was total crap. If it had not had Johnny Depp in it, it would not have been worth watching at all. Octopuiii. Bah, humbug. Hope so the third movie is better.

25.05.2007 – Friday 25 May – Mice & Rain

Morning

• Ye Olde Work.

Afternoon

• Maz dropped by on his way home from work and gave me the two computer mice I bought with curry. I carried my computer over to his place and installed software.

Night

• It’s raining a bit.

26.05.2007 – Saturday 26 May – Self Heating Cans of Coffee

Morning

• Quiet morning. Maz and I bussed to Kieran’s, who had a self-heating can of coffee. It has a ring-pull at both ends of the can. This is surely technology for the Australian man at its peak. Only a twenty-four-hour-pausable-sports-channel-remote-control complete with breasts and self-filling stubby cooler could beat this. I feel a little left out, as I don’t drink coffee, beer, or watch sports. I don’t mind breasts though.

27.05.2007 – Sunday 27 May – Lipstick Plants & Rain

3pm

• Had a photo shoot with a lipstick plant before catching the bus to work at EB, via South Bank.

Night

• It’s raining. I had to catch a twenty-dollar taxi home. But wow, it’s raining! Actual rain! Proper cold rain, not just solidified humidity revaporising as it falls.

28.05.2007 – Monday 28 May – Working

Morning

• I had breakfast at Govinda’s, before buying another few bags of pine bark chips. I’ve decided, now that it’s rained, to replant the front garden. As poetic as the dead flowers are, I think they need replacing. There was some sort of aboriginal event underway at the ANZAC memorial, though I’m not sure why.

Night

• I got a lift back from work.

29.05.2007 – Tuesday 29 May – Large Teeth

• Hello. Nothing much to report today. I lazed about in the morning, sleeping in, and worked in the evening. I came across a large, and rather dangerous looking, eating machine on the way home—the sort of thing that would normally come to life on its own, and chase me. Then I stayed up far too late.

30.05.2007 – Wednesday 30 May – Rain

• It’s actually been raining on and the past few days. Large, moist clouds have been seen hovering over the city. It’s almost like it should be.

31.05.2007 – Thursday 31 May – Working

• I’ve had a generic, relatively boring, day. That’s not to say I was bored—just that nothing anyone would consider exciting has happened. I woke up sometime after nine, lazed around in bed until after ten, pulled some weeds from the garden, put down some pine bark, caught a bus and city cat to work, worked, got a lift home with a co-worker, finished off Brinda’s apple crumble, and wrote this.

01.06.2007 – Friday 1 June – The Bike Parking Mushroom

• I’m not sure what the opposite of inspiration is, but a choking fog of it is engulfing me. Some sentences do come to mind, but most of them start with “Once upon a time, in a land on the other side of the river”, and end with “where it was the same as yesterday”. Though, there was a bike parked at the new bike-parking-mushroom, which there wasn’t yesterday. I managed to get a lift to the valley, and a train from there—I am becoming lazier and lazier—making it easy to get home, though still midnight.

02.06.2007 – Saturday 2 June – Shootout at Lokhandwala

Morning

• I have a quiet morning, mostly involving not getting out of bed.

Night

• Bronwen and I tried to get curry, but it was extremely busy and we ran out of time, heading to the city and getting nachos from one of the little places in the centre of the mall, before watching “Shootout at Lokhandwala”, one of the most powerfully violent movies I’ve seen in a while, and certainly not what I was expecting from a Bollywood movie, but very good. How could anything with the tagline “It lasted six hours, 1755 rounds were fired, six deaths were reported. Based on true rumours” not be good?
  On the way home, I came across a man who had had all his money stolen by the KGB, to do UFO research, and was looking for more, and a school of police bikes, hunting.

03.06.2007 – Sunday 3 June – Curry & Cold Rock

Afternoon

• A bus to Bronwen’s, then a bus back here. Must remember to buy a car.

Night

• I finally got to have my curry. Curry has been growing on me all week, and after last night’s abortive attempt to secure some, it had assumed great importance. I followed it up with Cold Rock, just to make sure I was full. There’s six girls sleeping here at the moment, which is a bit worrying. Three are currently talking at the same time.

04.06.2007 – Monday 4 June – Rain & Gardening

Morning

• Brinda redressed the little men, and I polished my résumé. It’s been raining, and I’ve finally got around to pulling out most of the weeds from the front-most part of the front garden, and put pine bark down, which is causing thousands of nasturtiums to rise. I planted a row of flowers today, to try and fight off the nasturtiums.

Afternoon

• I’m working three to eleven in the fishbowl.

05.06.2007 – Tuesday 5 June - Nachos

Morning

• I had nachos at Toowong with Maz for lunch, and managed to catch the worst bus home. It spent what felt like—and probably was—half an hour an hour driving through suburbs, only to end up back where it started, before heading to my place.

Night

• It is raining quite heavily. The internet has died somewhere in Sydney, causing a lot of chaos. I caught a taxi home.

06.06.2007 – Wednesday 6 June – Whatnot

• Work and whatnot.

07.06.2007 – Thursday 7 June – Nachos, Rain & Résumés

Afternoon

• I had Nachos at Toowong with Maz.

Night

• It was sprinkling lightly, so I caught a taxi home—the same driver as last night, funnily, so I didn’t even need to tell him where to go.

Comment by io – Saturday 16 June 2007, 7:07 AM

  That's pretty cool. I wonder if that'll happen to me soon as well, I'm starting to catch cabs more often as well.

08.06.2007 – Friday 8 June – Shopping

• Woke up reasonably early, when the people spending the night here got up. Did some washing. Ate muesli. Met Bronwen in the city, where they’re planting new fully grown trees. Shopped. I’ve the day off because I’m working Sunday.

Night

• Yay! Curry!

09.06.2007 – Saturday 9 June – Pasta

Morning

• I went shopping at Indooroopilly, after a relaxing morning.

Night

• I was introduced to fresh pasta packs and pasta sauce available from the refrigerated section in your local supermarket. These are surprisingly good.

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.

11.06.2007 – Monday 11 June – Sleepy

6:30am

• A bus home from Indooroopilly, eight and a half minutes getting ready, and a taxi to work. I’m alone in the fishbowl, on a public holiday. I haven’t slept. It’s just like being back at uni.

Evening

• I caught the worst bus to Bronwen’s, travelling via every side street and avoiding the direct road the entire time. It would have been quicker waiting for tectonic shift.

12.06.2007 – Tuesday 12 June – Java, Dogs & Amanda

Morning

• I took the day off work, and helped Brinda with her Java learning. We appear to have a new washing machine.

Afternoon

• I spent the night at Amanda’s, along with Danny and Dana.

13.06.2007 – Wednesday 13 June – Masonic Vapours, Pizza, Cake & Cold Rock

• Got a lift back with Amanda, and a short bus trip later was at work—working on level five today, working through to six due to starting late.

Night

• I came across some vapours escaping from under the Masonic hall, before catching a bus home and finding that Brinda is cooking pizza, because Krish and Priya are panic-studying for exams. I remember when I had to do that. As fun as uni was, I think it’s more fun not studying, and actually having some money. There’s nothing stopping me staying up all night doing insane things now, if I want to—but only if I want to.

Night

• Cold rock with Maz, then Brinda’s cake. Thought of solving a few global conflicts, but it was too cold.

14.06.2007 – Thursday 14 June – Windmills Pizza

Morning

• Working from 7 to 3 in the fishbowl.

Night

• Bronwen came over, and didn’t want pasta or curry. Women truly are strange. So we had pizza from Windmills.

15.06.2007 – Friday 15 June – Adieu Mark

Morning

• Bus to work. Not as cold this morning as previous mornings.

Night

• Drinks at Birdee’s, as today is Mark’s last day. Some of us managed to get kicked out. The rest had a good time. Wandered past Shelley’s after, then home via Brunswick Street, and girls that wear long shirts and not much else.

16.06.2007 – Saturday 16 June – Ocean’s 13

Morning

• Ned put down more pine bark in his garden. This should stifle weeds better than glaring at them while walking past, prevent plant dehydration better than most moisturisers, and thwart communists.

Day

• He went to Indooroopilly with Maz, and Maz’s aunt. Once there, he got keys cut (one of which turns out to be ornamental and does not work), had expensive nachos with Kieran, and walked up and down at least three hundred escalators. He then noticed that tickets to Ocean’s 11 were selling at the rate of around thirty per minute, so he bought his online.

Night

• He feasted his belly on a fantastic curry, which he then took to South Bank, where he feasted his eyes on Ocean’s 13. It’s not as good as his 12 or 11, but fun nonetheless.

17.06.2007 – Sunday 17 June – Chocolate Mud Cake

Afternoon

• Ned and Bronwen walked up the hill, to fetch a pail of water—and a chocolate mud cake. This was intended for the dinner they were having at Bronwen’s parent’s place, but they arrived early in the evening to find that it was a lunch, and everyone was just finishing up. Despite of this, an enjoyable evening was had by those concerned, and they got to keep their cake and eat it.

18.06.2007 – Monday 18 June – ANZAC Flour

Morning

• I dropped in some new keys to the real estate, and got the forms needed to transfer my lease, before heading to Toowong for nachos with Maz. I also managed to catch a very scary bus down Milton road, surrounded by men with large balls, hugging. It’s a bit of a mystery actually, because I can’t see how I can have caught a bus down Milton road today, but as they say, a photo never lies.

Evening

• I discovered that ANZAC biscuits, unattended in a gentleman’s bag, will, with time, become ANZAC flour, and that the liquorice allsorts from Coles are vastly inferior to the Black and Gold ones from the IGA. In fact, I’ve had a bit of an eating day. It began with chocolate mud cake for breakfast, followed by nachos for lunch, then an entire bag of substandard liquorice allsorts, ANZAC flour, synthetic bananas, and orange rollers (“jaffas” presumably being a trademarked name). I believe a mixed diet is important for health and vitality, hence the mixture.

Night

• It appears to have rained. This is a good enough excuse for me—a taxi home, with my regular taxi driver.

19.06.2007 – Tuesday 19 June – Cold, Windy & Washing Machine Hoses

Morning

• Got up half past ten. Felt crappy for sleeping in so much. Found that my rent is being increased. Decided a nice hot shower would make me feel better. Found that there was no hot water. Found that the power had tripped out, turning off my computer, which was halfway through doing things, while I was in the shower. It’s going to be one of those days. Looking on the bright side just makes my eyes sore.

Afternoon

• Fixed the washing machine hoses. One hot water hose, one cold water hose—not that complex, but surprisingly difficult. Items used included one cable tie, two hose clamps, vice grips, half a brick, a Leatherman, a screwdriver, a solenoid actuated valve, a bucket of hot water, three washing machine hoses, one heat-expanding hose, the rubber from a hose tap adaptor, and a partridge in a pear tree. Actually, I made the last one up.

Evening

• Here I am at work, feeling a bit sick. Apparently chocolate cake and a multivitamin for breakfast, followed by a chocolate milkshake and the last remaining cup of day-old chips for lunch isn’t the ideal recipe for health, vitality, and brighter, whiter teeth.

Night

• I sit in the fishbowl, surrounded by cold dehumidified glass, fighting metaphorical fires, for hours and hours, and then when it’s time to go home, I find that it’s blowing an icy gale outside. It’s almost scary, and a good enough excuse to get a taxi. I then sit at home, listening to some of the crazy music last.fm has been giving me, find that my mail server is blacklisted by Yahoo, request that it isn’t and switch to another one, and hide in my bed, listening to the wind slicing through air, battering against the window, in a vain attempt to get inside.

20.06.2007 – Wednesday 20 June – Freezing

Day

• It’s remarkably cold and windy. I froze to the bus, which was nice and warm, had breakfast cum lunch at Govinda’s, and froze back to the bus, which was again nice and warm. I then froze back home, before freezing back to the bus, which was still nice and warm, and spent the afternoon chilling politely in the fishbowl at work, which for operational reasons, I’ve now renamed “Ned’s Disaster Response and Emergency Reaction Centre”.

Night

• As it’s still extremely cold and fierce outside, I caught a taxi home and have been sitting here, moving my fingers slowly, sorting music, and listening to a few new songs I’ve recently got, and it occurred to me—between cursing the current lack of global warming—how fast technology does move. It wasn’t very long ago that I had a single 9 GB hard drive, and now I have (if I have counted correctly) one 500, three 200, and two 80 GB hard drives, along with some 40, 20 and 9 GB hard drives, which are now too small to even bother using—and all this in my small home system.

3am

• It’s late. It’s cold. My internet connection just dropped out. Probably frozen. Might head to bed before this liquorice kills me, via the cold room with the toothbrush and scary women’s tools.

21.06.2007 – Thursday 21 June – Cool & Dry

Morning

• I slept in, not getting up until nearly midday, which isn’t that surprising I suppose, given the time I went to bed last night, and how cold it is. I wish I had a heavy quilt—not that my current one isn’t warm enough (I’ve slept in a pile of rocks at the foot of a glacier in the Himalayas in it, waking up to find everything had frozen over but me), it’d just be nice to have something heavy so I feel like I should be warm—and they’re far cheaper than women. Though they don’t have breasts.

Night

• I couldn’t think of any good excuses to get a cab, so I walked home. It’s definitely on the nippy side out there. The frozen tips of my ears may not recover.

1:30am

• My sleeping bag has made me think of the things I’ve done that I consider to be “cool”, and I’m sure they say something about me. I didn’t think graduating with a great GPA was particularly cool—but I thought getting there without studying, or having attended high school, was. I found the hidden anti-Chinese helicopter bases in the Himalayas, the tanks hiding in the desert on the Pakistani/Indian border, and the fighter jets flying low over old castles in Rajasthan far “cooler” than experiencing the aeons old society surrounding them.
  I value having been charged by police with bamboo canes, attending illegal raves in Goa, and being apprehended riding an unregistered bike, unlicensed, and without a helmet, more than swimming in the Arabian sea with the setting sun.
  While it wasn’t fun at the time, having my hotel room searched by police with machine guns, multiple times a day, seems far more impressive to me now, than sleeping in bamboo huts in a tropical paradise, and unexpectedly bumping into drug growers with automatic weapons while wandering around in the jungle seems much cooler than climbing scenic mountains (particularly as they’re always up).
  Deciding it wasn’t too windy, and taking all our clothes and computer gear in a small tinny, navigating in almost total dark through part of the Great Barrier Reef with only a dim dolphin torch and the almost indiscernible border between land and sky to guide us, while discussing UFO’s, and nearly capsizing in the surf, would be a better idea than simply driving the few hour drive, makes sense to me. Doing everything at the last minute, staying up all night because something has a deadline the next day and I haven’t begun yet, seems to be the best way to do it—the achievement of getting it done wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t a challenge.
  Having my internet connection die right now, doesn’t seem cool. I suppose it’s a sign to go to bed.

Comment by io – Friday 22 June 2007, 10:03 PM

  Most cool of all, is this post. You should highlight it.

Comment by Mum – Monday 2 July 2007, 9:37 PM

  It is true. Tinny, computer, sea rollicking,dolphin torch, which was actually dropped overboard at some stage, the home base of saidfriend only accessi ble by sea. You think the bloke exaggerates? Well, only a little.

Comment by Mum – Tuesday 3 July 2007, 12:55 AM

  Value cops harrassing your motorbike without necessary paperwork more than the sunset which was the result of the run of motorbike, legal or illegally made? Bah!! Anti Chinese helicopter bases,tanks hiding in the desert on the Pakistani/Indian border and the fighter jets flying over old castles in Rajasthan far "cooler" than WHAT? The aeons society surrounding them. Surrounding them, as in surround. Get real.

Comment by Mum – Tuesday 3 July 2007, 1:03 AM

  You sashay in as a tourist. You know nothing. You are not invited to know anything. You do what is cool or not cool. What is cool or not cool is dictated and alloted by the indigineous locals. Whether or not you choose to like or not like the local sunset is of no consequence to them. You got rupee, goodfella.!! Em tasol

22.06.2007 – Friday 22 June – Relaxing Insanity

Morning

• I’ve taken the day off work, gone to Toowong for lunch with Maz (nachos, naturally), and dropped the bond change form at the real estate. Not bad considering how late I got up.

2:30pm

• I am buggered. It’s lucky I didn’t go to work. So far today, I’ve nearly been run over, deleted all my SMS’s by accident, and now I’ve just opened a browser window... but can’t remember why. I have a feeling it was important too. It’s sitting there saying “Input URL or Search String”, and I’m sitting here, full from nachos I had at Toowong with Maz, but worried because I know there was something I had to do. Nup, drawing a mental blank here—no idea what it was I sat down here to do, so I might take out my old motherboard and return that to Umart.

3pm

• My floor is covered in computer parts.

4pm

• Returning my $69 motherboard to Umart under warranty cost me $25. I’m not sure if that’s particularly good value, or even legal. Returning my graphics card didn’t cost me anything, but the “tech” there kept referring to the d-sub VGA plug as an AGP plug, so I’m not overly confident about that one. I can feel an “it’s not broken, you owe us money for testing it”, “yes it is, and you owe me money for the inconvenience” fighting match coming up.

Night

• Bronwen and I drive to the airport to drop her parents off, and then off to indoor soccer.

Comment by io – Friday 22 June 2007, 10:00 PM

  I'm the creepiest Asian I know - if you need extra firepower, you know who to /query! I think the other Asians get a little scared. It must be my haircut.

23.06.2007 – Saturday 23 June – Working & Curry

Morning

• I went to work. What a crappy idea. On the bright side, I had a fresh cream filled sponge cake.

Evening

• It’s been raining a little, and is quite bleak weather. I’ve been updating the Jianshe site, and discovered that, even with 4 GB of RAM, I can still quite easily run out using Photoshop—which is a bit worrying as I’m already exceeding the technical limitations of a 32-bit operating system, so there’s really nothing else that can be done. Fortunately, Bronwen has come around so I can go share two hot Indian curries for dinner, from everyone’s favourite Halim’s Indian Taj Restaurant.

24.06.2007 – Sunday 24 June – Harry Potter & a Change of Girls

Morning

• Woke up late, Maz came around, went and got pizza for breakfast cum lunch, followed by a Cold Rock milkshake.

Evening

• Krish is moving out tomorrow, and Brinda is moving in today (despite having already been staying here for some time now). Signing lease and things soon.

Night

• Got, and am watching, Harry Potter 1. Also got fresh pasta and yummy pasta sauce.

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.

26.06.2007 – Tuesday 26 June – Insurance & Fireproof Toilets

• Got insurance, renewed licence the extremely slow way (never, ever, renew your licence by losing your renewal letter with the magical number that lets you do it online and going into a Queensland Transport office), went to super cheap auto, bought things. Went to work. Came across lots of fireproof toilets.

27.06.2007 – Wednesday 27 June – Harry Potter & The Sickness

Morning

• Taking the day off. Have felt bad yesterday and Monday. Hopefully have a relaxing day and get better today.

Afternoon

• Bronwen arrived.
  Drove to Indro for lunch.
  Watched Harry Potter 2.
  Curry for dinner with Maz.
  Watched Harry Potter 3.

28.06.2007 – Thursday 28 June – Car Fixing

• Slept in. Drove up north, met David, had oil and transmission oil and filter changed. Drove to work.

29.06.2007 – Friday 29 June – Wreckers

Day

• Drive to auto wreckers. Buy jack, seatbelt. Bus to work, in the fishbowl today. Train and bus home. Very cold and windy.

Night

• Stay up late, adding things to Jianshe site, and adding a corner-fold to Fullboar site, which, I’m pleased to say, works in IE 5, 6, 7, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

30.06.2007 – Saturday 30 June – Transformers

• Sleep in. Woken by B. Drive to IKEA, then Bunning’s, then B’s, then home, then pasta pre-dinner, then curry dinner, then Transformers. Now bed.

01.07.2007 – Sunday 1 July – Indooroopilly

• Slept in. Drove to Bronwen’s parent’s place, then on to Indooroopilly, with Maz and Bronwen. The Holden Blimp is back.

02.07.2007 – Monday 2 July – ♪♫♪

• Drive to work. Work. 7 to 3 at EB, training Shane. Come home. Finally got around to connecting my music drive. Stayed up late listening to music.

03.07.2007 – Tuesday 3 July – Pizza

• Another day of work, culminating in a very, very slow drive south through the city—when I wasn’t stopped entirely, I wasn’t going faster than ten kilometres an hour. I found out later there’d been an accident somewhere further south.

04.07.2007 – Wednesday 4 July – Deratting

Day

• I drove to work, grabbing an olive and a pineapple pizza roll for breakfast, along with an iced coffee. Eight and a half hours later, I drove home.

Evening

• I soldered up the cable that the rat ate. It has chewed the phone cable into several pieces. Fortunately I’m multiplexing it all across cat5 at the moment, which it has nibbled but not cut.

Night

• Clint, Maz and I enjoyed curry at the local Indian restaurant, before playing various games on Maz’s new Playstation 2.

05.07.2007 – Thursday 5 July – Deratting MKII

Morning

• I attended work, where I worked.

Evening

• I re-fixed the rat-chewed cables, and tied a kitchen sink strainer to the bottom of the cable hole that the rat has been using to enter and chew my cables. Hopefully this stops it and it decides to go to sea or something.

06.07.2007 – Friday 6 July – Break-in Attempt

Morning

• I was awoken by Mi phoning Bronwen to let her know that an external door on her house was broken, scratched and appeared to have been forced. Visions of Wolverine came to mind. Bronwen and I drove to her place, to find that the door did indeed appear to have been forced. Fortunately, there’s a security door inside the external door, so he/she/they/it hadn’t actually got in. The police were called, and turned up surprisingly soon after, to take a statement.

Afternoon

• Bronwen and I drove to an auto-wreckers, where I picked up a few bits of plastic with a few fewer holes than those currently on my car—a few things have been installed and subsequently removed in the past, leaving various holes. Now all I have to do is work out how to remove the existing plastic and put these on.

Night

• I’m back at my place, having failed to get to Umart in time to pick up my hopefully fixed motherboard, which is apparently now awaiting me there. I’ve had a nice curry for dinner, and am going to have to get to bed sadly soon because I’m working horribly early tomorrow morning—though I think some ice cream is required first.

07.07.2007 – Saturday 7 July – Cold, Sockets & Curry

Morning

• I had to get up, shower, detangle my hair, clothe my body, resume my computer, and run to the train station. Running in the freezing cold, barely awake, is not good for one—particularly one’s nose. I managed to survive, and celebrated with a nice warm veggie patty six inch subway, before diving into work.

Afternoon

• I rushed home—managing to catch a bus without waiting for ages, for once—and drove to Super Cheap Auto, via Maz’s, where I bought a super cheap socket set.

Night

• Maz and I had curry for dinner, followed by Cold Rock—chocolate, caramel mud cake and strawberry tonight, topped with whipped cream.

Comment by Mum – Wednesday 1 August 2007, 8:26 PM

  erk

08.07.2007 – Sunday 8 July – Amamoor

• Bought breakfast from a bakery near here, and then drove to Amamoor to have a look at where I used to live. Bumped into Annette while up there, so dropped in on her place and had a chat.

09.07.2007 – Monday 9 July – Joe’s

• Working 7 to 3 in the fishbowl.

Evening

• Left my car at Bronwen’s last night. Caught bus out there and drove down to Joe’s for dinner and to set up a new LCD.

10.07.2007 – Tuesday 10 July – Working

• Working 7 to 3 in the fishbowl.

11.07.2007 – Wednesday 11 July – Stereo Install

Evening

• Got a wiring connector from Supercheap Auto. Attempted to install car stereo with Maz. Dash coming out etc. Lots of plastic clips and nearly impossible to reach wires and pipes. Pulled dash entirely out. Re-jigged all the vacuum pipes and wiring. Re-installed dash. Fitted the stereo. Doesn’t really fit, but looks ok. No aerial yet. Spent hours on it, getting it finished after midnight, and going for a bit of a drive to test it. Will need to redo it later when have more inspiration.

12.07.2007 – Thursday 12 July – Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix

Day

• Work.

Night

• Pick up four chairs with Bronwen, that someone was getting rid of. Enjoy a Biryani from Halim’s Indian Taj Restaurant.

9:50pm

• Watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at Southbank with Bronwen.

13.07.2007 – Friday 13 July – Sleepy

• Sleepy due to movie last night. At work.

Evening

• Indooroopilly for shopping, meeting Maz and Kieran, and dinner. Stay late at Kieran’s.

14.07.2007 – Saturday 14 July – Ocean’s 12

• Drove up to the real estate to sign and return the renewed lease. Looking for chair leg rubber things. Drove to West End factory warehouse. Drove to Indooroopilly. Drove to Maz’s, Clint and Kieran there.

Night

• Watched Ocean’s 12 with Bronwen.

15.07.2007 – Sunday 15 July – Nachos & Pasta

Morning

• Indooroopilly with Bronwen. Very expensive nachos!

Night

• Drive to Bronwen’s. Nice Pasta.

16.07.2007 – Monday 16 July – Bunnings

Morning

• Bus from Bronwen’s to work.

Evening

• Walk to Big W. Bus back to Bronwen’s. Pick up car, drive to Bunnings, via getting lost. Buy door slides and chair feet. Drive home.

17.07.2007 – Tuesday 17 July – Relaxing

Night

• Bronwen stayed the night. She was upset as she’d flushed her iPod down the toilet in a terribly traumatic, but highly amusing, accident. Met Maz, got DVD’s. We had pizza and watched “The Wrong Man”.

18.07.2007 – Wednesday 18 July – Rental Hunting

• Took today off, instead of Friday. Drove with Maz looking at rental properties. They’re getting expensive—$250 a week seems to be the going rate for a small two bedroom/one bedroom and study unit.

Evening

• Fixed my old computer. Seems to work. Had curry with Maz and Kieran.

19.07.2007 – Thursday 19 July – Cold

• Working 9 to 5. Install aerial plug into car radio and get it all fitting nicely. Get Cold Rock with Maz. Find out that Pop has been transferred to terminal care.

Night

• Very cold. Coldest night on record. My pathetic twenty five dollar doona that would warm you slightly on the beach, in the sun, didn’t really work very well. Fortunately I have an arctic sleeping bag.

20.07.2007 – Friday 20 July – Friday!

• Working

Evening

• Relaxing. Hard week. Nine to five is hard after early and late shifts.

21.07.2007 – Saturday 21 July – Shopping

Morning

• I am, sadly, at work, and will be until half three.

Half Three

• I drive to Bronwen’s parent’s place, where I drink tea for some time, before picking up Bronwen and driving to Indooroopilly, as she has flushed her iPod down the toilet and desires a replacement before flying to Sydney tomorrow. Unfortunately, JB Hi-Fi at Indooroopilly has sold out of the MP3 player we were looking at, so we decide to check the city tomorrow.

Night

• Bronwen and I try the third curry place in West End—the one we never go to, beside the other two we do go to.

22.07.2007 – Sunday 22 July – MP3 Players

Morning

• Bronwen and I walked to the city, where we had a look at MP3 players at JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman’s, between a milkshake and rum truffle. We bought the last two GHT 4 gigabyte MP3 players they had, and managed to get them for $90 each. Happy with this, we celebrated with lunch at Hungry Jack’s.

Afternoon

• Back at my place, Bronwen noticed that her MP3 player was broken. We’re guessing it was returned as broken, as it was missing a USB lead when we got it. After a call to JB Hi-Fi at Indooroopilly to confirm they had stock, we drove there and swapped it for a new one.

Evening

• Bronwen had forgotten several things, so we drove back to her place to get them, before dropping her at the airport.

Night

• After spending ages putting music onto my new MP3 player—because Winamp somehow manages to transfer songs over ten times slower than just copying them—I went for a walk to the IGA to get some pasta sauce, and took the MP3 player along. When I got to the store, I put it in my pocket on pause, and when I got out of the store, it had turned off, and wouldn’t turn back on. Once back home, I plugged it into my computer, and it worked, but still wouldn’t turn on. I put some water on to make pasta, plugged it into my computer again, unplugged it again, and it did turn on. I’ve left it running for over half an hour now, and it hasn’t stopped.

23.07.2007 – Monday 23 July – Milk Crate MKII

Morning

• Working, seven to three, in the fishbowl—and quite busy I am.

Afternoon

• I caught the bus home from work, helped Krish with some rental application things, drove to Maz’s, drove to Indooroopilly, and argued with the manager of JB Hi-Fi there. He said I couldn’t return my faulty MP3 player without a receipt, even though I had all the details from the receipt—which is currently in Sydney with Bronwen—and that they wouldn’t swap it, and would instead send it back for repair. After some heated disagreeing, he agreed that I could swap it within fourteen days, with a faxed copy of the receipt.

Night

• Maz and I dropped past Kieran’s, and then on to Rosalie for our regular curry, parking at Maz’s old place, just like old times. We then spent several hours making Maz’s Milk Crate MKII, which has so far turned out very nicely.

2am

• Staying up this late, when I have to get up in less than four hours, was not a good idea.

24.07.2007 – Tuesday 24 July – Drizzling Sleepily

Morning

• Waking up after getting less than four hours sleep and finding that it was drizzling lightly was enough motivation to skip the bus and drive to work. Finding parking, however, wasn’t as easy. I ended up parking on the side of a mountain, literally too steep to reverse up—the wheels just spun.

Afternoon

• I was pleased to find my car hadn’t slid down the hill in the wet on its own, jumped out of park and rolled down the hill, or stopped working from being parked with the fuel tank higher than the engine. I picked Maz up from work and we drove to Indooroopilly, where I swapped my MP3 player for a new one, and Maz bought a microwave, some crockery (along with a specially broken glass), and a bucket. I took my left over curry over to his place, and had dinner. The girls here seem to have gone all out on their cooking last night.

25.07.2007 – Wednesday 25 July – Umart

Morning

• I woke up around the same time my bus left. I arrived at work nearly an hour late. My MP3 player has worked all day so far, almost like a normal one.

Afternoon

• I picked up my graphics card from Umart, and some RAM for Maz, and drove to Maz’s where we powered up the Milk Crate Media Centre MKII, installed some Knoppix media centre system, which appeared to lack the ability to play media, and then Vista, but ran out of drivers for that and couldn’t download any without internet access.

Midnight

• The power failed, handily halfway through writing this. I’ve had less than four hours sleep the past two nights, and have to be up before six again. I must get to bed.

26.07.2007 – Thursday 26 July – Sick, Umart

Day

• Managed to drag myself out of bed to call in sick. Got up around midday. Umart disaster wasted rest of day. I figured I’d swap my (theoretically fixed) graphics card for a working one. Umart figured the warranty return process knew more than me. I had to take my monitor and computer in, with two graphics cards installed, and show them the difference between the output from a working card and this one, before they’d refund me the money, with which I bought a new graphics card, twice the price of the old one.

Night

• Went to Maz’s. Walked around the graveyard on the other side of Eleanor Schonell Bridge, bumping into some police, who thought that a little odd. There really aren’t that many good excuses for why you’re wandering around a graveyard, in the dark, at 2 AM.

27.07.2007 – Friday 27 July – Tired

Morning

• Woke up but there was no way I could get out of bed and go to work, so called in sick again.

Afternoon

• Caught a bus into the city and had lunch at Govinda’s. Their $6 student deal between two and three is good value. Also bought some soap.

Night

• Drove to Indooroopilly, via Maz’s, with Clint and Maz, and then watched Maz and Clint slaughter millions of people with their Namco Playstation guns.

28.07.2007 – Saturday 28 July – The Simpson’s Movie

Day

• What a nightmare. The front-right door speaker in my car doesn’t work. I finally decided to find out why. Or to be more precise, several hours ago I decided to find out why. I’ve actually got a manual now, so I’m not flying entirely blind. Unfortunately the instructions on getting the door trim off start with “insert a screw driver covered in a rag...and prise upwards”, and it gets worse from there. However, getting the door apart turned out to be the easy part. I spent most of the afternoon upside down, where the carpet and trimming used to go under the dash. After hours, multiple things in my eye, I found where the break in the wire is—it’s somewhere behind the very strong metal thing that’s bolted to something behind the dash, and which then goes out to the door. It looks like I’ll have to take most of the car off to get to it.

Night

• I drove to Keiran’s via Maz’s, and we had curry for dinner with Smeagol and his friend, before watching the Simpson’s Movie. The curry wasn’t fantastic, and the movie was crap, but we had a great night, not getting home until a quarter to five.

29.07.2007 – Sunday 29 July – Lost Phone

Day

• I’ve had the worst day, in a very minor way. After getting to bed not long before five o’clock this morning, I was woken by Nandini’s, or her boyfriend’s, phone in the morning. It has the worst ringtone, is very loud, rings for a very long time, and rang out several times, and again half an hour later. I eventually got back to sleep, and woke up after midday, feeling crappy for having slept in most of the day. I drove to Indooroopilly to buy a line-in cable for my car stereo, found that they’re over twenty dollars at Dick Smith, checked Harvey Norman, and ended up with one from Target for $8.95. It was about then that I discovered I didn’t have my phone. I checked in Harvey Norman, drove back to Dick Smith, but they were shut, rushed home, phoned my phone, and found that someone had found it and dropped it into Woolworths at Indooroopilly. A speedy drive back to Indooroopilly, and I was reunited with my phone.

Night

• Picked Bronwen up from the airport. Drove her to her place. Drove home.

30.07.2007 – Monday 30 July – Running

Lunch

• I woke up around lunchtime, and rushed to Toowong for Nachos with Maz. Unfortunately I accidentally ordered cheese nachos, rather than bean nachos, and they are very salty and boring. I then caught a bus to work, and spent the rest of the day problem solving.

12:30am

• After walking home from work, in what I plan to make the first of many, I went for a run. I’ve been becoming increasingly unfit, now that I have a car and spend most of my time sitting at work, and I need to do something about that, so I’m going to go running—or jogging—every weeknight I’m not doing something else. It’s going to be a long, slow, and rather sweaty slog by the looks—I managed to do what was probably not much over three kilometres tonight. Still, it’s a start.

31.07.2007 – Tuesday 31 July – Not Running

Morning

• Work

Night

• Didn’t go for a jog. Decided to do some form of exercise each weekday, rather than always jogging. Today’s was walking briskly home from work. Something of a copout, but more realistic than jogging everyday given my laziness and random shifts.

01.08.2007 – Wednesday 1 August – Jogging

• Myself and I drove to work, where we worked. It’s not very interesting, so we’ll skip to the part about food. But first, we must justify it with the exercise. We actually managed to go jogging tonight, after which we drove to the Ville, where we had a kebab at a quarter past one. We didn’t know the kebab place was open that late. We also noticed that Dave’s Ampol (which didn’t have anyone called Dave there, nor was it an Ampol) is gone. It hasn’t just shut down; it has actually been dug up. Another sign that an era that’s already ended, has well and truly ended. We then went to bed, contemplative.

02.08.2007 – Thursday 2 August – Chocolate

• Slept in. Caught the bus to work. Worked. Got a lift partway home. Walked the rest. Decided that was enough exercise. Felt slack for deciding that, but ate chocolate to make the feeling go away. Top Deck, seeing as you asked.

03.08.2007 – Friday 3 August – Work

• Work…

Midnight

• Dropped past Bronwen’s parent’s place and picked Bronwen up.

04.08.2007 – Saturday 4 August – Upper Portals, Mount Barney

• I went walking with Clint and Bronwen. We walked to the Upper Portals, Mount Barney. The water was extremely cold, but the walk easy, and enjoyable.

05.08.2007 – Sunday 5 August – Sunday Live

• Slept in heaps. Went to West End markets, but they weren’t on. There was a Hot Rod car show there instead. Went to Jaguar show at Southbank. Went to the ABC’s Classic FM Sunday Live Concert. Southern Cross Soloists this week. Ironically, neither Raymond nor Stella came. Curry for dinner.

06.08.2007 – Monday 6 August – Working

• Working 9 to 5.

07.08.2007 – Tuesday 7 August – Work

• Work.

08.08.2007 – Wednesday 8 August – Work

• Work.

Night

• Drove around the Mt Nebo scenic thing. It’s longer than I thought.

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.

10.08.2007 – Friday 10 August – Die Hard 4.0

• I’ve the day off, due to working tomorrow.

Night

• Headed to the Valley and had Thai with Bronwen, then watched Die Hard 4.0 at South Bank.

11.08.2007 – Saturday 11 August – Soirée

Morning

• Worked.

Afternoon

• Went to International House’s Soirée with Bronwen, where people bared their bums, spat flames, and there was a large spider web.

Evening

• Had curry from Halim’s at Rosalie, with Bronwen.

12.08.2007 – Sunday 12 August – Die Hard, Again

Morning

• A nice, lazy morning, not getting up early. Drove to Indooroopilly for expensive Nachos for breakfast.

Afternoon

• Dropped Bronwen at her parent’s place, and drove to Maz’s, then on to Kieran’s and Indooroopilly, where I had Hungry Jack’s for lunch.

Evening

• Drove to Bronwen’s, then back to Indooroopilly, where I watched (for the second time) Die Hard 4.0, this time with Clint and Maz.

Night

• Had dinner at the Taringa Hungry Jack’s, and proofread a job application for Bronwen.

13.08.2007 – Monday 13 August – Working

Day

• Working EB 3 to 11. We had an air conditioner failure, which was exciting. Getting spare air conditioners up stairs is not good.

Night

• Drove up Mt Coot-Tha.

14.08.2007 – Tuesday 14 August – Fracture

• Work. EB 12 to 8. Mina away sick.

Night

• I drove from work, past Bronwen’s parent’s place to pick up Bronwen, to Eagle Boys, where I bought Pizza, which Bronwen and I ate on a pontoon at South Bank, before watching “Fracture” at the Cineplex cinemas.

15.08.2007 – Wednesday 15 August – Ekka Holiday

• Work. EB 12 to 8. Mina back, with deadly Egyptian flu. I eat most of a bottle of vitamin C, as a placebo to avoid catching deadly Egyptian flu.

16.08.2007 – Thursday 16 August – Working

• Working, as usual.

17.08.2007 – Friday 17 August – Wellington Point & Black Sheep

Day

• I’ve the day off. Bronwen and I headed, via Mount Gravatt, to Wellington Point, where we had chips.

Night

• Had curry at Rosalie with Bronwen, Clint, Maz, and myself, before watching “Black Sheep”. It’s very funny, but excessively grotesque.

18.08.2007 – Saturday 18 August – Cheese

• Worked 7 to 3 in the fishbowl.

Evening

• After much cheese-desiring, Bronwen and I had nachos and a strange cheese and chilli pizza-ish thing at a place in Park Road. It wasn’t very good.

19.08.2007 – Sunday 19 August – Sick

Morning

• Sick. Threw up. Raining lightly. Dropped Bronwen at her parent’s place.

20.08.2007 – Monday 20 August – Interviews, Taxis, and Rain

3pm

• Working 3 to 11, EB. Raining a little this morning, but not much now.

21.08.2007 – Tuesday 21 August – Raining

Morning

• It was a nice, sunny morning. I had already been forced to get up by Bronwen getting up, but had gone back to bed. I was again forced to leave the warmth of my bed by the rubbish truck, and the realisation that I had forgotten to put the rubbish out, for the second time in a row. I rushed the three wheelie-bins down to the next road, where the truck hasn’t yet been, and accidentally woke myself up. I then tried to fix Lucienne’s laptop. It has a stupid backup application that’s filled the hard drive with backups that it can’t delete because there isn’t enough space for it to delete them, despite there being 7 GB free space, and I can’t access the files, or even reset their permissions, because it’s XP Home.

Afternoon

• Despite being nice and sunny, it began to rain, and soon clouded over. I drove to UQ, past several accidents, picked up Stella, drove to Maz’s work and picked him up, dropped Stella at her uni, and Maz at Umart, before returning to Toowong with Maz and eating nachos for lunch.

22.08.2007 – Wednesday 22 August – Working

• Still misting slightly and overcast. An electrician dropped around to “reinstate” a fire alarm, but as neither he nor I could work out what that meant, he fixed a light fixture and power point instead.

Evening

• I enacted a slight stylistic change on the-i.org.

23.08.2007 – Thursday 23 August – Late Night Assignment

• It’s still a bit damp, though only an optimist would call it rain.
  Marjorie dropped by to pick up her mail and chat about my upcoming Tasmania trip.

Night

• Worked. Raining. Wet. Picked Stella up from uni at South Bank, helped her do her assignment. This took a long time. I am now sleepy.

24.08.2007 – Friday 24 August – Sleepy

Day

• Very tired. Did not really sleep last night.

3pm

• Kebab for breakfast, then rush to work. Attempt to stay awake with the assistance of chocolate and iced coffee.

25.08.2007 – Saturday 25 August – Indooroopilly

Day

• Messed around doing very little. Indro with Maz, collected Bart CD from Kieran to fix Lucienne’s laptop. Had felafel as Hungry Jack’s was absurdly busy. Went shopping with Maz.

Night

• Curry with Bronwen.

26.08.2007 – Sunday 26 August – Sunday Live & The Bourne Identity

Morning

• Indro nachos with Maz and Bronwen. Had argument with Stella and Bronwen. Couldn’t find any other women to anger.

3pm

• Sunday live choir with Raymond, Stella, Bronwen. Milkshakes after.

Night

• Watched “The Bourne Identity” at Maz’s, after getting dinner from Chez Tessa.

27.08.2007 – Monday 27 August – Seatbelts & Torx Bits

• Work, 9 to 5. No one else on level 5.

3:30am

• I sit here, nursing my bleeding hand. Did I meet someone in the valley? Or perhaps a little vigilante justice? Or maybe the girlfriend wouldn’t do as she was told? No, I’ve fitted a new rear seatbelt to my car. Some of the highlights included having my torx bit drop out of its holder and fall down a small and inaccessible gap, and working out just how to retract the seatbelt once it’d fully tracted (which is apparently not a word, despite its reverse being one).

28.08.2007 – Tuesday 28 August – Pittsworth & The Lunar Eclipse

5:45am

• After almost exactly two hours sleep, I got up, got ready for work, drove to work, and worked. Fortunately I was rostered on with some fun people, so the day went well, if a little insanely.

2:45pm

• I drove to Bronwen’s work, got Bronwen, drove to Bronwen’s place, got her things, drove to her parent’s place, picked up some mattresses, drove to my place, got most of my things, drove to Maz’s place, drove back to my place to get the things I’d forgot to get, drove back to Maz’s place, and followed Clint and him in his mother’s car, out to Pittsworth.

Night

• We got some chips from Pittsworth, and spent most of the night chatting around a bonfire and watching the lunar eclipse.

29.08.2007 – Wednesday 29 August – The War Against Mould

9:30am

• Woke up, having slept fitfully with a builder building a house around us. I guess I got around three hours sleep, on and off.

Morning

• Drove Clint, Maz, Bronwen and myself back to Brisbane. Also drank a lot of iced coffee.

Afternoon

• Drove to Indooroopilly with Bronwen to look for photo frames, got Chez Tessa for Bronwen and Thai for me, and watched The Bourne Supremacy with Maz at his place, before driving Bronwen home.

10pm

• Spraying the shower roof with anti-mould isn’t much fun. The spray tends to head downwards—something to do with gravity I expect—and ends up in one’s face, breathing tract, and eyes. Mopping the shower roof isn’t that good either; it’s very high (I can only just reach, even with the mop), and because of that I can’t get much of an angle, and have to push quite hard to get it to move, which isn’t the ideal thing to do with one’s hands above one’s head.

30.08.2007 – Thursday 30 August – Trouble

• Work at EB. In trouble for not being at Wic. Busy. Drive to work. Phone engin. On hold for ages. Now have an answering service that emails me my voicemail. Rather cool.

31.08.2007 – Friday 31 August – Working

• Working in the valley, 9 to 5.

01.09.2007 – Saturday 1 September – Riverfire

Afternoon

• Riverfire. Rush to South Bank with Bronwen. Rush to Kangaroo Point. Find that it’s insanely busy and not a chance to see anything. Rush back to South Bank, along with several million other people. Manage to see some Roulette’s, the F1-11 Dump and Burn, and of course, lots of fireworks, without getting trampled.

Night

• Wander to the Valley with Raymond and Bronwen, for a Thai dinner. Come across a random demolition, complete with monster. An expensive milkshake from Copenhagen’s and cheap ice-cream from Maccas finish off the night.

02.09.2007 – Sunday 2 September – Regattafest

Morning

• Work early, EB.

Evening

• Bronwen and I went to Regattafest, where we met Chris (Pascoe). I had a good time taking pictures of women—models, seductresses, professional dancers, unprofessional dancers, and even some seemingly normal people. After a while, we went and picked up Raymond and Stella from UQ, had pizza at my place, and went back to the Regatta for a while with Bronwen and Stella.

03.09.2007 – Monday 3 September – Working & Curry

• Working 7 to 3 in fishbowl.

04.09.2007 – Tuesday 4 September – Raining

• Work. Raining today. Met Stella at South Bank, went to Hungry Jack’s. Traffic atrocious on the bus. Missed my stop. Had to get bus back from Toowong, which took ages. Traffic not flowing. Ended up walking in the rain.

05.09.2007 – Wednesday 5 September – Working

Day

• I worked.

Night

• Bronwen visited.

06.09.2007 – Thursday 6 September – Hair, Curry & Mechanics

Morning

• I worked, 7 to 3, in the fishbowl.

Evening

• Bronwen has cut her hair. It’s still reasonably long, but quite a bit was taken off. She seems to like it. David dropped by and replaced the front lower ball joint in my car. The steering is much lighter now, so presumably this had been broken for some time.

Night

• Had curry with Bronwen, and a very nice curry it was.

07.09.2007 – Friday 7 September – A Day Off

Day

• Bronwen and I both took the day off work. She has an atrocious sore throat, which I’m hoping to avoid. We drove to RGB Digital, to drop off some photos for printing, then on to Bronwen’s place so she could pick up a few things, then to Indooroopilly for nachos, and then to the city to drop Bronwen off.

Night

• I drove to Kieran’s, via Indooroopilly for shopping and Hungry Jack’s for dinner. Maz and Smeagol were there. We drove 20 kilometres or so to some place where Smeagol had to feed a dog.

08.09.2007 – Saturday 8 September – Crime Scenes, Explosions, & Lunch

Morning

• After a sleepless night, I “woke” to find the place covered in press and police. The entire street was full of police cars. The park was full of police. I asked them what was wrong, they said “nothing, we’re just having a picnic, feel free to join us”. Lots of smoke was billowing up from down south, so I drove down Oxley way and found a huge warehouse that had exploded. This was interesting until the police moved me on, and shut down all the roads, due to an asbestos risk. This made driving home very difficult and slow. When I got home, I found the police had been supplemented by a whole pile of SES. They’ve searched through the garden, made me move my car so they could look underneath, looking for a weapon. I found some reporters and cameramen and they told me there’d been a sexual assault around three o’clock last night, and that they had a man in custody, but were searching for evidence. I remember hearing a siren last night, I suppose that was it.

09.09.2007 – Sunday 9 September – Relaxing

• I had a relaxing day, wandering down to South Bank to watch the Dragonboat races, only to find they’d finished an hour early, so took some photos of seagulls instead and watched some Acoustic in the Park, before heading home.

10.09.2007 – Monday 10 September – Photos

Morning

• Back to work, 7 to 3 at EB.

Evening

• I picked up the photos I dropped off at RGBDigital on Friday, and took them around to Bronwen’s. They seem to be quite high quality, nice colours, and so on. The laminations don’t look too bad either—not as classy as a framed photo, of course, but still quite decent.

11.09.2007 – Tuesday 11 September – Curry

Morning

• I worked, as per usual.

Night

• Maz, Ian, Bronwen and I had curry from the fantastic Rosalie curry place. Nandini’s Mum is here.

12.09.2007 – Wednesday 12 September – Pancakes & A Stark Lack of Humour

Morning

• I’m at work, where I’m in trouble for sending funny emails in response to serious situations. Humour is, apparently, not appropriate when there’s server outages.

Evening

• I took some photos of Stella at Kangaroo Point, before heading back to my place to help her with her web assignment. I am angry at universities which let clueless people “teach” clueless students things—the blind leading the blind, yet at the end, they all end up with a degree. It devalues my degree.

Night

• I went to the pancake manor for Stella’s birthday, where I ate nachos, and far, far too many pancakes. I may explode. I also missed the last bus home and had to catch a taxi. Luckily it was a maxi-taxi, so I fit, along with my pancakes.

2:24am

• Off to bed. New look journal front page complete. Insane amount of pancakes somewhat digested.

13.09.2007 – Thursday 13 September – Deathly Throat Plague

Morning

• I worked, as I usually do.

Evening

• I have come down with a sore throat, sore head, sore lower neck, sore eyes, sore brainstem, sore frontal and rear lobes, sore behind the ears, sore glands, and so on. I also do not feel very well. Brinda has had this for a day now, and apparently it’s very bad and she’s searching for stronger drugs.

Night

• After a short troubled sleep—wherein many of the world’s problems were solved, but unfortunately the solutions forgot when I awoke—I drove to Hungry Jack’s for a sustaining, healthful, veggie baguette, and the IGA for paracetamol and cough medicine for Brinda.

14.09.2007 – Friday 14 September – Work & The Valley Fiesta

Morning

• I made the mistake yesterday, of agreeing with my backup that I’d be at work today for sure, so he could attend a concert last night and take today off. Then I came down with the deathly throat-and-brainstem plague, and this morning I feel “somewhat less than optimal”, but have had to come to work anyway, and it’s fortunate I did, because the backup for the backup NOC is also away, so there wouldn’t have been anyone to take my position had I not come in.

Night

• Drive to Valley Fiesta. Meet Bronwen. Meet Stella. Take photos. In fact, I took my 10,000th photo with my new camera. I need some new lenses, but the lenses I need are going to cost over five grand, which I can’t justify. Wander around. Witness fight. Listen to music. Drive to Kangaroo Point. Sleep.

15.09.2007 – Saturday 15 September – Valley Fiesta

Morning

• Bronwen and I drove to the West End Green Flea Markets, where we had langos for breakfast.

Afternoon

• It’s really hot today. Bronwen and I drove to Indooroopilly, via Maz’s, meeting Kieran there, for lunch. I had the worst cheap nachos from a cheap takeaway place.

Night

• Drove back to the Valley Fiesta with Bronwen, where we watched people, listened to music, ate Tara Thai, found Stella and Sam, and had a general good time, before dropping Stella and Sam back to Sam’s place, and the rest of us to my place.

16.09.2007 – Sunday 16 September – Brisbane Markets & The Blue Lotus

Morning

• Got up early-ish. Drove to Brisbane Markets with Bronwen.

Afternoon

• Had lunch with Raymond, Stella and Bronwen at the Blue Lotus, after which Bronwen and I went to the Valley Fiesta.

Night

• We gave Stella and Sam a lift home, ate left over curry for dinner here, and drove to Bronwen’s to get things.

17.09.2007 – Monday 17 September – Working

• Working. Level 5 has been changed so we have to sit with level 1’s. Work in the fishbowl.

18.09.2007 – Tuesday 18 September – Pizza

• Normal day at work. 9 to 5. Late night last night. Doing nothing, just sat at PC. Sleepy now.

Night

• Pizza at Kangaroo Point with Bronwen. Talked to the Griffith climbing and bushwalking club.

19.09.2007 – Wednesday 19 September – Working

• Working.

20.09.2007 – Thursday 20 September – Day Off

• Have the day off, but have no recollection what I did.

21.09.2007 – Friday 21 September – Working

Evening

• I worked at EB, 3 to 11.

22.09.2007 – Saturday 22 September – Still Working

Morning

• I worked at EB, 7 to 3.

23.09.2007 – Sunday 23 September – Locks

Morning

• Drove to Bunning’s with Bronwen, for a new lock.

Evening

• Curry with Bronwen.

24.09.2007 – Monday 24 September – Working

Morning

• Worked, 7 to 3 in the fishbowl, and a busy day it was.

Evening

• Drove to Maz’s, then to Indooroopilly, where I got a veggie baguette from Hungry Jack’s, and did some grocery shopping. People were sitting outside EB Games waiting for Halo 3.

Night

• Picked Bronwen and her Dad up from a conference in town.

25.09.2007 – Tuesday 25 September – Rushing & Rooves

Morning

• Working. Chat to Stella about moving in here.

Evening

• Rushed home, left work early. Couldn’t find Bronwen’s key. Bronwen not answer phone. Drove to Bronwen’s to take photos of roof. Drove home.

Night

• Drove to Chez Tessa with Bronwen and Maz for dinner, which we had at Maz’s place.

26.09.2007 – Wednesday 26 September – Work

• Nothing exciting to report.

27.09.2007 – Thursday 27 September – Work

• Still nothing exciting to report, sadly.

28.09.2007 – Friday 28 September – Working

• The end of the week. Yay.

29.09.2007 – Saturday 29 September – Relaxing

• Bronwen and I wandered through town, having lunch at Govinda’s and having a peak at Parklife, where the girls wore very little, in a colourful way.

30.09.2007 – Sunday 30 September – Gold Coast, Hair, Breakdowns & Rush Hour 3

Morning

• Bronwen and I drove to the Gold Coast. It was a nice 120 kilometre an hour drive right up until we turned off the freeway, at which point it turned into a three kilometre an hour, frequently stopped, nightmare—which became even worse when we broke down. I’ve driven 5171 kilometres since I bought the car, and this is the hottest it will have got—but I suppose I’ll have to track down what failed under temperature and replace it.

Afternoon

• After a nice swim, Bronwen sold her hair, and we drove back to Brisbane.

Night

• Bronwen and I saw “Rush Hour 3” at South Bank, after eating pizza for dinner.

01.10.2007 – Monday 1 October – Eating

• Not working today. Instead, I’m eating. I had expensive nachos with Stella for lunch, spent the afternoon with Maz, and followed that up with expensive curry.

02.10.2007 – Tuesday 2 October – Fines

• Sometime ago, I got towed for parking in a clearway. It cost me $180 to get my car back. At the time, I thought this was a $120 penalty, and $60 towing charges. I thought that was fair—parking in a clearway is rather stupid, and very inconvenient to others, so should be penalised fairly heavily, and $60 towing seemed a fair price for the couple of kilometres and 15 minutes it would have taken them to do it. However, today I receive a notice that my unpaid $120 fine, now increased to $127.50, will be sent to the State Penalties Enforcement Registry. It turns out it’s $180 to retrieve a towed car, plus a $120 fine. This is, I believe, unreasonable, and equivalent to being fined twice for the same offence. Fairly obviously, there’s no point me arguing that it’s unreasonable, as I’m sure everyone else feels the same way and presumably haven’t managed to successfully argue that yet, so I suppose I’m left no choice but to pay it. I am, however, going to make a point of rorting Brisbane City at every available opportunity, seeing as they, legally, do it to me.

Midday

• In other news, while America continues its War on Peace, I have begun my own battle—the War on Ants. It used to be that we had to worry about reds under the bed—now it’s ants. They are even on my desk. It’s totally unacceptable.

The Rest of the Day

• Work.

03.10.2007 – Wednesday 3 October – Up Late

3pm

• Hi-ho, it’s a-working we go. Ian left halfway through his shift due to nasal congestion, leaving me without a backup.

Night

• Stayed up late, doing things and building hardanswers.net

6am

• Went to bed.

04.10.2007 – Thursday 4 October – Felafel

3pm

• Working.

Night

• Drove back from work, via South Bank to pick up Stella, and out to the Ville where we met Raymond, and had half a felafel kebab.

05.10.2007 – Friday 5 October – The Kingdom

Midday

• Working 12 to 8. Very, very sleepy.

8pm

• Rushed off to West End, where I had a Vietnamese curry with Bronwen, before seeing “The Kingdom” at South Bank. It was what might have been a hard-hitting, almost meaningful movie, but unfortunately the typical American stereotypes ruined that—though I still enjoyed it.

06.10.2007 – Saturday 6 October – Not Working

Morning

• Someone from Origin phoned up and, as far as I can tell, I’ve agreed to twelve months of free green energy and some energy efficient light bulbs, though it was quite hard to tell through the accent. In other news, I received over a thousand spam emails last night.

Evening

• I spent a relatively wasted day-off doing things inside, before Bronwen arrived back from fixing things at her place.

Night

• Bronwen and I had a lovely pasta dinner at her parent’s place.

07.10.2007 – Sunday 7 October – Work

• Here am I, at EB, working until near midnight; not overly happy with this roster.

08.10.2007 – Monday 8 October – Lightning, Dancefest & The Dark

3pm

• Here be I, work as usual. What a drag.

Evening

• There be much lightning. It be very close.

7pm

• I temporarily exit work, to find why home is powerless and for Dancefest at UQ. Many of my area are powerless. It be very dark. King’s won Dancefest.

9pm

• I be back at work.

Midnight

• Stella and I find that there’s 10 minute parking near Hungry Jack’s in the city, and consume veggie baguettes.

09.10.2007 – Tuesday 9 October – Pancakes & The Miraculous Traffic Lights

3pm

• Work was as work is. Enough said.

Midnight

• I had every light green from EB to home. Amazing. Possibly miraculous.

Even Later

• Stella, Raymond and I drove to Pancakes, parked in a taxi zone, and engorged.

10.10.2007 – Wednesday 10 October – Evil Spirits, Snow & Lightning-less Curry

Morning

• There was a bit of a storm—rain and lighting. I have unusual dreams. I was walking to Annette’s, as one does. Never mind that I haven’t lived in that area for over ten years. And it was amazingly scenic—mountains covered in mist, and when I went around a bend, a snow covered mountain that’d take your breath away—but I didn’t have my camera with me. So I rushed home to get my camera, only to get caught up with an evil spirit that ate my mother and sister. I never did get to take any scenic photos, nor did I ever manage to exorcise or entirely remove the fear that the creature may get me. I did, however, eventually wake up.

Afternoon

• I’ve today off, and a rather average day it has proved to be. I drove to Indooroopilly with Stella, to do some shopping and get something to eat, but on the way Bronwen called, so I had to rush, skipping food and buying a slice from Michel’s Patisserie, and rush to Bronwen’s. When I go there, I found the cream in my slice was sour. After spending some time at Bronwen’s, and getting very hungry, we drove back to my place, via Hungry Jack’s for a combined breakfast and lunch.

Evening

• Just as we were about to go and get curry, there was lightning, so we rushed to Maz’s, and up to Mount Coot-Tha, where it rained but didn’t lightning, so we rushed back to Halim’s Indian Taj for an amazing curry.

11.10.2007 – Thursday 11 October – The Day Which Was

• Upon which Ned, finding that he is awake, prepares for work and attends same.

12.10.2007 – Friday 12 October – Working, not Washing

The Heat of the Day

• I slept in as long as I could, finally woken by it being too hot to stay in bed any longer, to find that the washing machine doesn’t wash anymore, having been fried by the recent lighting. I left for work about the same time as the washing machine man arrived, to tell us that he hasn’t got any power boards in stock for the washing machine so it’ll be Monday before it’s fixed. Work was its usual self, though nicely air-conditioned—almost on the too-cold side. I remembered to take my leftover curry this time, and it made a very nice lunch—good enough that I didn’t need dinner, though I did eat quite a few jellybeans and liquorice allsorts.

The Cool of the Night

• I didn’t go to bed, nor did I sleep. Instead I stayed up, prowling, wasting lots of time building the new public section of my site.

13.10.2007 – Saturday 13 October – The Red Hat

• I picked Bronwen up, dressed for a party, dropped her at her parents, and headed to work. Having not slept last night, I thought work was going to be terrible, but it turned out quite well.

14.10.2007 – Sunday 14 October – Multicultural Festival

• Bronwen and I slept in, then wandered around the Multicultural Festival at Roma Street Parklands for most of the day, before having a lovely curry with Raymond and Stella.

15.10.2007 – Monday 15 October – Work, Nachos & McDonald’s

Day

• Sadly, today I’m back at work. Nachos for breakfast/lunch helped a little though.

Night

• Raymond, Stella and I attended McDonald’s, and the crazy park near here.

16.10.2007 – Tuesday 16 October – Pancakes

Midday

• I heard the rubbish truck drive past, but didn’t have the energy to jump up and rush the bins out. A few hours later, when it began to get too hot to lie there any longer, I got out of bed and dragged myself to the shower. Once showered, I made the mistake of trying to eat months-old ice cream with custard and cream. It wasn’t good, and ended up down the drain. Breakfast over, I drove to work, managed to find parking, got told by my manager that, despite being effective when other methods had failed, I should not threaten other departments with dire consequences for failing to rectify horribly annoying problems late at night. Agreeing that that was a good advice, I embarked upon my day’s work—making people happy, making computers happy, complaining lots, eating liquorice allsorts and jellybeans.

Midnight

• I realised I’d forgot to eat dinner, so had a pancake (with extra ice cream) from the Pancake Manor. It was fantabulous (which is, to my surprise, in the Oxford dictionary).

17.10.2007 – Wednesday 17 October – Sick & Hunting Expensive Glass

• Called in sick. Went to Indooroopilly and Photo Continental with Maz, looking at expensive camera lenses. Had curry with Stella for dinner.

18.10.2007 – Thursday 18 October – Sick, Expensive Glass & Michael Clayton

Morning

• Called in sick again. A man came to look at the hole in Nandini’s wall. Maz and I bought some camera lenses—I got a rather expensive Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which should be nice.

Evening

• Bronwen caught bus to city, ran from city as had forgot phone so couldn’t tell me was late, we drove to South Bank, saw “Michael Clayton”, then had dinner at Hungry Jack’s.

19.10.2007 – Friday 19 October – The War on TNT

Morning

• Drive early to mechanic’s, leaving car there. Train home. Help Brinda move out. Advised by TNT that lenses not coming until Monday. Threaten to cancel order. Decide not to cancel. Pick up car probably after lunch tomorrow. Not happy.

Afternoon

• I catch the bus to work, and begin my fight against TNT. They advise that, due to their freight delays, my “overnight” order from Sydney won’t arrive until Monday. I advise the camera place that I require a full refund, as the lenses were bought conditional on delivery prior to Sunday. The camera place advises that TNT Sydney advised them they’d be delivered by the afternoon. I contact TNT Brisbane, who advises me that they are unlikely to be delivered before Monday. Repeat several times, until I’m thoroughly sick of TNT, at which point the camera place agrees to refund my full purchase if it doesn’t arrive, and TNT agree to find my package and send it to their next-day pickup counter at the airport, where I can pick it up between nine and four on Saturday.
  Unfortunately, this takes them until five o’clock to do, at which point TNT Brisbane closes. I contact TNT Sydney for further details, and am advised that TNT Brisbane will not open until Monday morning, and that there’s no way anyone can find my package. This doesn’t really impress me. I demand to speak to a manager, who isn’t very helpful, and then their manager, who does her best to tell me there’s no possible way anyone can access my package in a closed depot until it reopens Monday morning. After threatening TNT with everything possible, I finally manage to get my lens delivered to Maz’s door, free of charge, just after 9 PM. It shouldn’t take twenty phone calls and two managers to get something overnight from Sydney.

Night

• I met Maz and Smeagol at Kangaroo Point, drove back to Maz’s, picked up my lens and UV filter, and walked home. Carrying a tripod, camera, and obviously large lens past the Regatta just as it closes is not something I’d recommend, in retrospect.

20.10.2007 – Saturday 20 October – Relaxing

Afternoon

• Head to city with Bronwen, meet Stella, eat food, and try out my new lens at South Bank.

Evening

• Drive Bronwen to her place then to her parent’s place as she’s off to a party.

Night

• Curry at Halim’s Indian Taj with Maz.

Later Night

• Wander Kangaroo Point with Maz and cameras.

21.10.2007 – Sunday 21 October – Burleigh Heads, Rogue Assassins & Pancakes

Morning

• Drove to motocross with Bronwen and Stella, then on to Burleigh Heads. Swim. Surf. Injure leg by kicking hard into water flowing the same speed as my kick.

Night

• Pizza at Mount Coot-Tha with Bronwen, and then “Rogue Assassin” at Indooroopilly, combining Jet Li, as his usual miraculously better-than-everyone-else-yet-indifferent self, and the crazy guy out of Crank in his usual invincible action-hero mode—a combination that can’t go wrong.

Midnight

• Went to the Pancake Manor with Bronwen.

22.10.2007 – Monday 22 October – Milk Crates & Chocolate

• I’ve today off, so I bought mint-flavoured chocolate, messed around with my new lens, and caught some milk crates with Maz. I also drove Raymond and Stella to McDonald’s and The Ville, respectively.

4am

• Uhoh, late. Must sleep.

23.10.2007 – Tuesday 23 October – Night Watch

5:45am

• Got not much more than an hour’s sleep last night, then up to get ready for work. Not the ideal way of doing it.

Afternoon

• Maz and I wandered around UQ, playing with our new lenses.

Night

• Have curry with Bronwen, then go all moody, then watch “Night Watch” on DVD. Sleep deprivation affects my normally nicely stabilised mood centre!

24.10.2007 – Wednesday 24 October – Day Watch

Day

• Worked. Photographed scary women.

Night

• Drove to the Ville, had Chez Tessa stuff for dinner, then saw “Day Watch” with Bronwen at South Bank.

25.10.2007 – Thursday 25 October – Monopods & Insane Traffic

Morning

• I slept in, arriving at work late.

Evening

• Today must be the day for stupid drivers. Driving to South Bank, down Coronation Drive, on our way to get a Cold Rock Supershake and then on to Photo Continental to buy a monopod, Maz and I were wondering why traffic was flowing so slowly—cars had taken over one of the outbound lanes and were using it to drive into the city, despite being blatantly illegal to do so. This meant cars heading out of the city had to merge back into themselves when they all of a sudden found a lane of traffic heading towards themselves, and had a lot of difficulty turning right as they had to try and sneak a spot in amongst cars going the other way.
  Then, later, after a huge downpour, some lightning, dinner at McDonald’s with Maz, and shortly after driving through a puddle large enough to drown a car in, I found myself driving into a car driving the wrong way down a one-way street at me. Fortunately they pulled into a parking area before being squashed.

26.10.2007 – Friday 26 October – Stardust

Day

• Work. Very sleepy.

Night

• A quick snooze, followed by curry and then “Stardust” at Indooroopilly with Stella.

27.10.2007 – Saturday 27 October – Vagina Monologues

Morning

• Work at EB.

Afternoon

• South Bank with Stella, a lizard, some ducklings and a goose. Vagina Monologues at UQ with Bronwen—disturbing, biased, but interesting. Followed by Pancakes with Stella, Bronwen, Raymond.

28.10.2007 – Sunday 28 October – Burleigh Heads

Day

• Bronwen, Stella and I drove to Burleigh Heads, where we swam in a thick soup of broken seaweed.

Night

• Bronwen, Stella and I enjoyed an always-fabulous curry from Halim’s Indian Taj.

29.10.2007 – Monday 29 October – 24 Hours of Work

5:45am

• I got up.

7am

• I worked in the Valley.

11pm

• After a KFC and Hungry Jack’s dinner with Maz and Bronwen, I dropped Bronwen back at her place and headed back to work at EB to cover for someone who had called in sick.

8am

• I drove home from work, very tired.

30.10.2007 – Tuesday 30 October – Deathly Sleepy

8am

• Unfortunately, driving home coincided with both peak hour and that part of night when the sugar high has entirely gone, all energy has been drained, and you’re barely able to stay awake. I fell asleep a few times at red lights, of which there were lots. Heading through the city wasn’t going to work—traffic was barely flowing. Heading out of the city, I impressed myself by managing to find a circuitous route through South Brisbane that entirely avoided all the congestion, got me back onto my side of the river, and home, where I went to sleep.

2pm

• Woke up. It is very hot.

Night

• Wandered around South Bank. Dropped ropes off for Bronwen at Kangaroo Point. Had Chez Tessa for dinner with Maz, Stella, Loki.

31.10.2007 – Wednesday 31 October – Relaxing

• I’ve the day off today, from working Monday night. Bronwen and I wandered around the city, having dinner at Govinda’s, finding a fun run, and discovering that Bronwen is quite useless at licking her nose.

01.11.2007 – Thursday 1 November – Tripods & South Bank

Day

• I worked, and bought a tripod.

Night

• Maz, Stella and I wandered around South Bank, taking photos. We’d planned to take photos of the cool water feature there, but it’s been turned off due to the “water crisis”, what a joke.

02.11.2007 – Friday 2 November – Ballet in the Park

Day

• Work, as usual.

Night

• Bronwen lost her phone, but fortunately, Telstra were sponsoring Ballet in the Park at Riverstage, and let her use their NEXTG phones, so Raymond and I managed to meet up with her. I was asked to leave because I had a professional looking camera and a tripod, but managed to stay by requesting that in writing.

03.11.2007 – Saturday 3 November – Work, Pizza & Misguided Youth

Morning

• Relaxing with Bronwen. Headed to Indooroopilly to get some bolts for Stella’s bed and breakfast, and found millions of misguided youth queuing to have copies of Summer Heights High signed. Continuing the theme of having problems because my camera is bigger than everyone else’s camera phone, a security guard asked if I was a member of the press, and then demanded I show ID, which I refused to do.

3pm

• Working at EB.

11:30pm

• Off home, then off to Windmill’s with Stella for pizza.

Comment by hg – Sunday 11 November 2007, 1:40 AM

  First for some reason adsense has decided that autism ads are relevant for this web page. I wonder why?
  
  Secondly a meta comment that is less relevant then the above - good work on the photo popup. Like it. Can I use that here?

04.11.2007 – Sunday 4 November – Tunnels & Burst Pipes

12:30pm

• A water pipe under the house burst.

3pm

• Bronwen, Sarah and I went to the new Brisbane North-South Bypass Tunnel open day; saw a 400 tonne, $55 million tunnel boring machine, and an animal petting zoo.

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.

06.11.2007 – Tuesday 6 November – Working

• Working.

07.11.2007 – Wednesday 7 November – Rain

Night

• It rained. Maz and I walked to South Bank to take some photos of the city.

08.11.2007 – Thursday 8 November – Pides

Morning

• Working in the fishbowl, where it’s cold.

Night

• Had pides at South Bank.

09.11.2007 – Friday 9 November – Day Off

Day

• Had the day off. Drove to Indooroopilly with Maz. Bought Nandini and Stella fans. Bought a keyboard. Tried to set up XP on my old computer but it is being annoying.

Night

• Drove to Bronwen’s, had dinner with her, and came back here to have dessert and sleep.

10.11.2007 – Saturday 10 November – Dularcha National Park

Day

• Slept in a bit, then drove to Dularcha National Park rail tunnel, then on to Ewen Maddock Dam, and the Glasshouse mountains, with Bronwen, Maz, and myself.

Night

• Eated Curry. Much good.

11.11.2007 – Sunday 11 November – Rain, Leeches & Coomera Circuit

• Drove down south to walk and photograph the Coomera Circuit with Maz and Bronwen, but it rained, there were thousands of leeches, and it was too wet for photos. Abandoned attempt a couple of hours in.

12.11.2007 – Monday 12 November – Working

3pm

• Working at EB.

Night

• Moved some of Stella’s things from college to here.

13.11.2007 – Tuesday 13 November – Working

Day

• Working.

Night

• Picked up Stella from college, along with her remaining things.

14.11.2007 – Wednesday 14 November – Pancakes, Work & Veggie Baguettes

Morning

• Bought a wireless USB thing from Umart for Stella, and a USB Ethernet adaptor for Lucienne.

Midday

• Drove to Indooroopilly with Maz and Stella, had a veggie baguette for lunch, did some shopping, and am now preparing for work.

Afternoon

• Worked.

Midnight

• Went to Pancakes with Stella, Raymond.

15.11.2007 – Thursday 15 November – Working Alone

3pm

• Working alone.

16.11.2007 – Friday 16 November – More Work

3pm

• Work.

Comment by Lloyd Fulton – Thursday 28 February 2008, 8:32 PM

  Hey Ned been reading through you journal and I am impressed with the pic's think they are really good. Especially the the Landscape/Panaramic ones. Can you tell what Camera and Lens combination you use.
  
  Thanks

Comment by Ned – Friday 29 February 2008, 3:00 PM

  Thanks for the compliment. Camera has varied, but mostly a Canon 400D. Lenses vary. Usually a Canon 50mm f/1.8, Canon 17-50 f/2.8IS or Sigma 70-200 f/2.8DG.

17.11.2007 – Saturday 17 November – All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane

Morning

• Bronwen’s hair blew in the breeze.

3pm

• Saw “All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane” at Indooroopilly with Bronwen and Stella.

Night

• Bronwen and I had curry from Halim’s, the leftovers of which Stella then ate.

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.

19.11.2007 – Monday 19 November – Curry

Morning

• Slept in.

Afternoon

• Had lunch at the Ville, along with two milkshakes.

Evening

• Went to Indooroopilly with Maz and Stella.

Night

• Had curry for dinner with Stella.

20.11.2007 – Tuesday 20 November – Birthday Pizza

Day

• Working 7 to 3 in the Valley.

Night

• Kangaroo Point with Bronwen, then birthday pizza.

21.11.2007 – Wednesday 21 November – TPG Internet

• Woke up to no internet. Put in the TPG details, and they work. Seems they churned me sometime around 6 AM this morning.

22.11.2007 – Thursday 22 November – Fast Bus

Morning

• Insane bus driver. Fastest I’ve driven through the city, weaving in and out of traffic... and it was in a bus... with a female driver.

Lunch

• Custard tart and whipped cream for lunch.

23.11.2007 – Friday 23 November – Compassionate Leave

• Took day off for “compassionate leave”.

24.11.2007 – Saturday 24 November – Sarah

Morning

• Drove to Bronwen’s for voting. Stella supported the Greens.

Night

• Drove to the airport with Bronwen, met Sarah and Vince on their way to Thailand, walked to the international terminal from the Kingsford Smith Memorial with Sarah. Waved goodbye to them.

Later Night

• Pancakes with Bronwen, Stella.

25.11.2007 – Sunday 25 November – “Gabriel”

7:30am

• Work at Valley.

3:30pm

• Drive home. Woolworths then Hungry Jack’s with Bronwen, Stella.

9:50pm

• Watch “Gabriel” with Bronwen, Stella, at South Bank.

Midnight

• Drive Bronwen home.

26.11.2007 – Monday 26 November – Working

• Working.

27.11.2007 – Tuesday 27 November – Working

• Working.

28.11.2007 – Wednesday 28 November – Working

• My last day of work. Everyone is nicely impressed by my last-day-of-work email, which I stayed up late-ish last night making. Leaving is tinged with sadness, but I’m really too busy to notice—worked nine to five, went home, slept.

29.11.2007 – Thursday 29 November – Shopping

• My first day having quit work.

Morning

• Picked Bronwen up from her place, went shopping at Garden City. Wasn’t really able to buy much as hadn’t really thought it through.

Afternoon

• Went to Jaycar with Bronwen and bought a cigarette lighter powered FM transmitter and USB stick reader. Dropped Bronwen off at something she was going to in the city. The FM transmitter blew up. Rushed back to Jaycar with Stella and got a new one.

30.11.2007 – Friday 30 November – Packing

Morning

• I got up semi-early, planning to go to Umart, but by the time I was ready, had tested my motherboard, etc., it was half past ten.

10:30am

• Rushed to Umart. Returned motherboard. Brought CPU back. Will check with them later this evening to see if they have had a chance to test. Sorted out what clothes I am taking and did some washing.

Later

• Rushed to Toowong to pick up mail. Unfortunately nothing had arrived from my eBay camera stuff order.

Midday

• Rushed to Bronwen’s, and Garden City, to buy shoes, an inflatable mattress, and an inflatable mattress pump. Went via Jaycar to return FM transmitter number two due to static problems, and bought a car cigarette lighter to USB adaptor and a different car cigarette lighter charged FM transmitter. This one seems to work well. Tried Bronwen’s Dad’s car phone charger which did not work. Bought one that does work from Tandy.

Afternoon

• Rushed back to Umart. They had not tested my motherboard. Told them they must. Rushed home for fifteen minutes. Rushed back. They tested it. It failed as per how it does here. They’re going to return it under warranty.

Evening

• Had some left over curry for lunch.

Night

• Stella going to work. Picking up Bronwen from her place. Packing things into my pack. Having dinner. Maybe pancakes or something similar later.

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.

02.12.2007 – Sunday 2 December – Hobart

Morning

• Both Bronwen and I slept in. I woke feeling seedy. We went for a walk around Hobart, looking for food, but nothing was open. It was fairly hot and tiring. Around lunchtime, as things gradually opened, we had nachos at a café on the main mall.

1pm

• It’s quite hot, though I suppose not very hot compared to what Brisbane would be at this time of year. Bronwen and I retired back to our room.

2:20pm

• Off for a walk. Checked out a local beach, imaginatively named Sandy Beach. The water is quite cold—I don’t think I’ll be swimming. We also found a Woolworths, so there’s some civilisation around here, though the city still seems very small.

9pm

• Wandered around Hobart. Bought a milkshake. It has been quite hot, only getting cooler now, though it didn’t get dark until 8:30. Had a nice curry that Bronwen made for dinner.

11pm

• Back from our walk, and off to bed. There weren’t many people around, but there were still several restaurants open—later than they’d normally be in Brisbane, particularly on a Sunday night.

Comment by io – Saturday 12 April 2008, 1:39 PM

  The ubiquitous milkshake makes materializes in Hobart!

03.12.2007 – Monday 3 December – Port Arthur

7:30am

• Got up. Packed. Turns out it’s raining. Walked to Lo-Cost Auto Rental, where we picked up our Hyundai Accent Auto, 2005 model. We’d booked a manual, but turns out they had an auto instead—which normally cost a little more, so can’t complain. I drove to Mount Wellington, through thick fog, which lifted just as we got to the top. We couldn’t have asked for better timing really. It was very cold, and didn’t take long before the fog began blowing back—something between sleet and cloud, cold and coming sideways. The car wouldn’t unlock with its remote key, due to the transmission towers on the mountain. The car radio also failed to work. Bronwen drove back to Lo-Cost Auto Rental, who changed a fuse, fixing the radio.

1:30pm

• I picked up an American tourist from the Pickled Frog—who Bronwen had met back in Brisbane—and we drove to Port Arthur, where we had chips for lunch and left our American friend. Bronwen and I went for a walk to Remarkable Caves and along the spectacularly cliffy coast, before getting a $20 campsite at Port Arthur Caravan Park.

Evening

• After setting up the tent, we went for another walk, had Bronwen’s curry for dinner, and wished it hadn’t again begun raining. A Launceston school is having some kind of camp here, so it’s very busy, with school kids all over the place.

Night

• The tent leaks from the corner of each window somehow. Fortunately it didn’t rain enough to be a big problem, though the two corners of the bed did get wet. The bed also went down a bit—fortunately not enough to really matter. Perhaps buying the cheapest inflatable air mattress and K-Mart tent wasn’t the way to go.

04.12.2007 – Tuesday 4 December – Coles Bay

Morning

• We woke late, packed out still-wet leaky tent, and Bronwen drove slowly north along the scenic East coast of Tasmania. We visited Dootown, where all the houses are named various “doo”-related names—proof enough that while Tasmanians don’t seem to have two heads, they’re certainly not normal—the Blowholes, Devil’s Kitchen, Tasman Arch, and Tessellated Pavement, before taking a gravel forestry road through Sandspit Forestry Reserve. We somehow managed to have to turn 180 degrees to keep going the right way.

Afternoon

• We drove through Orford, Triabunna, Swansea, and on to Coles Bay. We stopped a few times to sightsee, seeing an old convict bridge, several sections of scenic coastline, and some boring historic streets that Bronwen insisted were interesting.

6:15pm

• By the time we got to Coles Bay (which has mosquitoes, it turns out) it was too late to go walking, and we were fortunate to get a $20 campsite at the Iluka Holiday Centre, as it normally closes at 6. Bronwen made the first of many marvellous pastas, having somehow managed to disappear and return with half a kilo of good parmesan. Exactly how she managed this I’m not sure, as we only just managed to get a campsite, let alone fine foods.

Night

• After dinner, Bronwen and I wandered along the scenic beach, before going to bed, ignoring the noisy kids nearby. So far it hasn’t rained.

05.12.2007 – Wednesday 5 December – Bay of Fires

Morning

• Bronwen and I walked the two and a half hour walk to Wineglass Bay—said by many to be the most scenic bay in Tasmania—via a lookout perched on the side of a mountain. Bronwen had thoughtfully made sandwiches, which we ate on the beach. I knew there was a reason she’d come.

Afternoon

• I drove to Cosy Corner Beach, in the Bay of Fires. It’s a free camping area, though quite windy and cold. We’ve done 585 kilometres so far. We stopped off at a beach on the way here, and again at Saint Helens, which has the dubious distinction of having the largest supermarket on the East Coast. It’s a Supa-IGA, about the size of a small Brisbane supermarket. There are some nice rocks out at St. Helens’ Point though.
  Wallabies and wombats are abundant and quite tame. There’s even a cinema at Saint Helens. The council here is called Break O’Day Council. It’s all quite backwards, in a scenic, pleasant, rustic British—but worrying—kind of way.

Evening

• After a lovely pasta, Bronwen and I spent a while looking around Cosy Corner Beach. It’s the sort of rugged secluded coast some people dream of. Bronwen cleverly opened the car door onto a rock, denting it slightly—though I’m glad to say the rock was fine.

06.12.2007 – Thursday 6 December – Launceston

Morning

• Cornflakes and muesli for breakfast. Pack tent. Bronwen drives to Saint Helens again for water, some supplies from the supermarket—and of course, a chocolate milk for me.
  Bronwen drove to the Pyengana Cheese Factory, at Pyengana in case you hadn’t figured that out, and onto Saint Columba Falls. It rained gently most of the way. Carrying my tripod and a couple of thousand dollars worth of camera gear underneath my $2 emergency poncho (we went all-out on the equipment for this holiday) seems like something I’m going to have to get good at. I drove back down the mountain from the falls.

Afternoon

• Bronwen drove to Derby, where we had Bronwen sandwiches at a park. We stopped again at Sideling Range, where we had planned to climb a mountain, but thick fog had rolled in and visibility had dropped to well below a hundred metres, and being bitterly cold and wet, we decided we should abandon our mountain ascent and remain alive.

Evening

• Bronwen drove us into Launceston, where we got temporarily lost looking for the Treasure Island Caravan Park, which cost us $22 for a tent site for two. From there, we walked into Launceston, had a look around, and a curry from a nearby Indian restaurant. It wasn’t as good as Halim’s back in Brisbane.

Night

• We walked up Cataract Gorge—which really is spectacularly scenic, lit up colourfully at night, and seems to be a popular haunt for the local youth—before walking back to the caravan park and having a shower at last. We’ve put 805 kilometres on the clock, just a little over our 800 kilometre (200 kilometres a day) limit.

Comment by io – Tuesday 13 May 2008, 9:42 AM

  Yep that colour is vibrant brilliance.

07.12.2007 – Friday 7 December – Devonport

Morning

• We woke (fortunately), and packed up the tent just as it began raining. I drove into Launceston, where we bought the cheapest umbrellas we could find—at a place called Chickenfeed—and had a look at King’s Park, its monkeys, and went for a walk across a suspension bridge at Cataract Gorge, before driving to Devonport. Excitingly, we came across a normal-sized Woolworths on the outskirts of Launceston, which cheered me up no end. Perhaps there’s hope for this island after all. We stopped, of course, and I bought flavoured milk.

Afternoon

• We found a gale-force-wind-attracting lookout, complete with driving rain, Batman Bridge, and Beaconsfield—which looks just like it looked on every Australian news report while the miners were stuck underground there. Bronwen and I spent a fascinating few hours in its museum. The mine is almost unbelievably vast.
  I then drove on to Latrobe, had a milkshake (caramel, seeing you asked), and set up tent at Mersey Bluff Caravan Park, in one of the most fantastic spots for a camp I’ve seen—overlooking an isolated beach, on a grassy expanse surrounded by shrubbery.

Night

• Nice hot chips for dinner were followed by a wander around Devonport, and I’m now eating chocolate. We’ve driven just under a thousand kilometres, and there’s a power point in the kitchen so I can charge my camera battery.

08.12.2007 – Saturday 8 December – Stanley

• We’re at Stanley, with 1112 kilometres down. We had a look at a lighthouse at Devonport before Bronwen drove to Leven Canyon—which is by far the most impressive canyon I’ve ever seen. Breathtaking comes to mind. I wish I knew how to capture its grandeur, and sheer depth, but my photography just doesn’t do it justice.

Afternoon

• Being late for a tour through Gunns Plains Caves, I drove from Leven Canyon on to Gunns Plains, as fast as I dared.

1:33pm

• Arriving just a few minutes late, we literally caught the tour preparing to go underground. Rushing, we managed to join them, and it was well worth it—with cave after spectacular cave unfolding before our slightly clammy and damp selves.

Evening

• Exiting troll-like from our caves, Bronwen drove us on to Stanley, where we got a powered campsite for $22—being the same cost as unpowered for some reason—at Stanley Caravan Park. In contrast to last night’s campsite, this is boringly neat, orderly and well-maintained. We walked up the “nut”, wandered down a rocky beach on dusk, snuck behind the sensitive penguin rookery warning signs, and sat with a penguin. We also bought two litres of Neapolitan ice cream, which we have to eat prior to leaving the caravan park fridge tomorrow—this perhaps wasn’t a good idea.

Night

• I charged up my camera battery, and the air mattress went down. Evil mattress.

09.12.2007 – Sunday 9 December – Rosebery

Day

• We woke to find that our air mattress had let a lot of its air out. After managing to finish our remaining litre and a half of ice cream, and forgetting to get our wine out of the fridge, I drove to Roseberry via Wynyard, where we restocked at Woolworths. We had planned to stop at Cradle Mountain Campgrounds and go for a walk in the morning, but icy rain and reports of snow changed our mind and we got a nice, large $60 room at the Top Pub in Rosebery instead.
  On the way, we stopped at Port Latta, Rocky Cape National Park, Hellyer River, Table Cape Lookout, and accidentally came across the world’s largest tin mine just outside Waratah.

Night

• It’s still raining and quite cold. We’ve put 1454 kilometres on our hire car, and nice Bronwen pasta in our bellies. Hurrah for miraculously obtained parmesan.

10.12.2007 – Monday 10 December – Strahan

Morning

• Bronwen drove to Murchison Dam, the first in a series of Dams—and a cold looking dam it was—and then on to Montezuma Falls, one of the highest in the state. We managed to complete a three hour walk along a scenic old tramway through spectacular forest and past an old adit without it raining, though it tried a few times.

Afternoon

• We continued on to Zeehan, where we weren’t game to drive through an old tunnel just wider than the car, then on to Strahan (pronounced “straw-n”, in a very Queensland sort of way) via a lookout, where we paid $25 for the least inspiring campsite we’ve had so far, complete with mosquitoes, at West Strahan Caravan Park.

Night

• We bought chips for dinner, and drove down to the beach to watch the sun set over the ocean. Unfortunately it rained on and off, but we did get to go on a free sheerwater (muttonbird) tour, which was surprisingly educating and interesting.

Trivia

• We’re up to 1604 kilometres.

11.12.2007 – Tuesday 11 December – Lake Saint Clair

Morning

• Awoke, with the mattress again flat, and the tent promptly snapped a main pole. It’s still raining on and off too. The west coast sucks. I drove out to Macquarie Head (Devil’s Gates), then checked in Strahan for tents, tarps, mattresses, poles, or other things someone with a broken tent, broken mattress, and stuck in the land of three-headed-cousins while it rains, would want. Unfortunately, nothing in Strahan sold anything useful.

Later Morning

• I drove on to Lake Saint Clair, mostly through rain, stopping for a lovely little rainforest/waterfall walk where we had lunch, and at Queenstown, where we got a tarp but no rope or poles. All the rope had been bought by Parks and Wildlife for catching wombats, apparently. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to believe that or not, but the man in the hardware seemed serious enough. I bought bricklayer’s string instead, in a lovely fluorescent pink.

Evening

• Camping at Lake Saint Clair is $10 per person, with a six-minute shower token included. It’s still raining. We’ve set up the tent with the broken part of the pole removed, and the tarp over the top. Hopefully that survives the night, and ideally the rest of the trip. In other exciting news, Telstra’s CDMA tower here is an hour wrong, presumably it doesn’t know about daylight savings, and we’ve now driven 1785 kilometres.

12.12.2007 – Wednesday 12 December – Mount Rufus

Morning

• We wake up after a fairly uncomfortable and broken sleep, but feeling rested. Sleeping without a mattress really isn’t ideal, particularly when the ground is quite cold. After breakfast, we talk to the rangers about the weather, before heading for a hike up Mount Rufus. The weather looked ominous, building up as we walked, and getting stuck on a mountain here in inclement weather can be dangerous, but it only sprinkled lightly on us on the way back. It was a sweaty and exerting climb of around three hours, with quite a steep ascent, and a less physically exerting four hour walk down the other side, via Lake Shadow, a lot through very impressive carefully laid walkways. It was interesting in that we passed several different types of vegetation.

Evening

• My feet and legs, particularly ankles, are now a bit tender.

Night

• Our washing is now done, for only $2, and is drying in the apparently (but probably not intentionally) free dryer. We’ve eaten Bronwen pasta. It has rained, but not too heavily, and so far looks to be holding off.

13.12.2007 – Thursday 13 December – Mount Field

Morning

• With 2026 kilometres done, we are at Mount Field National Park. We had a late start; both poles snapping on the useless joke Kmart call a tent. Bronwen drove to Great Lakes, with me driving the latter half, then on to the Waddamana Power Station Museum via unsealed roads, before heading to Bothwell where a bakery had very good cream filled apple turnovers.

Afternoon

• From Bothwell I drove, back on sealed roads, to Mount Field National Park, through fields of hops.

Evening

• We fixed the tent poles by sacrificing the third pole, set up camp ($8 per person), and had dinner. I managed to find a platypus, which swam only a few feet from me.

Night

• Just before bed, we walked up to Russell Falls and saw some glow worms.

14.12.2007 – Friday 14 December – Lake Pedder

8am

• The ranger turned up to wake us up and collect the $16 for camping.

9:11pm

• Dusk is gathering. I’m sitting at a table at Edgar Campground. There’s no one else (other than Bronwen, of course—we haven’t killed each other yet) for miles. The road in is gravel. I’ve just finished pasta. We’ve driven 2232 kilometres now, and this is the most remote area we’ve been to.
  This morning Bronwen drove to Lake Pedder, after walking for a couple of hours at Mount Field, stopping for chips for lunch on the way. We stopped at several lookouts, passed some protestors protesting against the logging of old forests, saw Lake Gordon and its dam, Lake Pedder and a few of its dams, bought fuel and milk at the Hydro Electric Commission’s Strathgordon resort, and I am now surrounded by mosquitoes as the darkness grows.
  Ironically, the first day we’re totally out of CDMA range, I check my email for the first time in Tasmania—free internet at Strathgordon, courtesy of the Hydro Electric Commission. The road here, which I drove, is unsealed, and we’re quite a long way from anything, and anyone, else. We do, however, have a nice fire.

15.12.2007 – Saturday 15 December – Snug

Morning

• I was woken by gale force winds, which I listened to until they tore some of the tarp pegs from the ground and broke the tent pole again and I had to get up and re-peg the tarp. A few hours later we had breakfast, looked at a nearby dam, and I drove towards Hobart. It had rained a little last night but the gravel road was much the same. We stopped at a treetop protest—sneaking up behind them, accidentally waking one who was sleeping in a mostly abandoned car, and scaring him considerably. I suppose they’re waiting for some kind of surprise armed intervention, and sneaking up on them probably isn’t the politest way to check out their impressively high camp. We then stopped at New Norfolk, where we did some shopping, had lunch, and I checked my bank balance for the first time—not too much of a nasty surprise, fortunately.

Afternoon

• We watched a steam train being moved onto train tracks, went to a historic oast house, looked out the lookout, and drove on to Bridgewater, where a new Woolworths had just opened. It’s nice and big, like a normal mainland one. This also marked us having completed a loop around Tasmania—we’ve driven past here earlier on our trip.
  I then drove on through Hobart and along little windy roads down to Tinderbox, before ending up at an $18 campsite at Snug Caravan Park with 2448 kilometres on the clock, and am now enjoying a glass of red with Bronwen’s semi-Asian style noodles, Trangia style. We’ve again fixed the tent pole, which again broke in the morning, again around 4 AM, and seemingly for no apparent reason—again.

16.12.2007 – Sunday 16 December – Bruny Island

Morning

• Bronwen drove to a waterfall a short, but quite warm, walk from Snug, and then on to the 75 car capacity, $25 return ferry to Bruny Island, on which we had some lunch.

Midday

• Bronwen drove around the north of the island—where we met an echidna—and on to Adventure Bay. We walked up a mountain along very high, steep and dangerous looking cliffs over the sea, and had a look at a lookout on the neck, before setting up the tent (and fixing the pole yet again) at a free campsite on the southern end of the neck. The sand is mineral-black and dirty, it is windy (which isn’t that good given our tent poles likelihood of re-snapping), there are no showers or power, and there is a tiny bit of water in a small rainwater tank but it is quite brown and not overly appetising. Still, Bronwen managed to make a lovely pasta. 2561 kilometres on the clock.

9pm

• We went and saw lots of penguins, along with quite a lot of other people. We had to pick up red cellophane beforehand—which a shop kindly gave us for free, along with rubber bands to attach it to our torches. Hundreds of penguins, and a lot of muttonbirds, turned up.

17.12.2007 – Monday 17 December – Cygnet

Morning

• I was woken by Bronwen wanting breakfast, and was in a bad mood for the first few hours. I drove to the south of Bruny Island, where we walked along the beach, had a look at a lighthouse, and lots of scenic craggy cliffs.

Afternoon

• I drove to the ferry back to the mainland but we had just missed it, so we drove to a nearby bay for lunch and to await the next one.

4:30pm

• We caught the ferry back to Kettering and drove to Cygnet, where we have pitched camp for $15 (along with a $30 key deposit, payable at the nearby hotel) at the Cygnet Caravan Park, which is basically just a grassy area adjacent but across a road from the Cygnet Hotel. We wander around Cygnet, which is eminently unexciting—a generic small town. Dinner is our traditional Bronwen Pasta, along with some wine. We’ve driven 2746 kilometres now.

9:30pm

• It’s very cold, and only just starting to get dark. It has clouded over and there are a few mossies coming out. We’re putting the tarp over our damaged tent, in the gathering dark, in case it rains.

18.12.2007 – Tuesday 18 December – Southport

Midday

• We didn’t get up until after midday. I drove to Huonville, where we had breakfast at a bakery, then on to Franklin, where we stopped at a wooden boat making school, and then on to Police Point, where there’s lots of salmon farming, before driving through Dover and arriving at Southport around 5:30.

6pm

• We’ve set up camp at the Southport Hotel for $16, eaten Bronwen Pasta, and are now enjoying the evening sun. There’s very little CDMA signal here. Showers are $1 and cannot be turned off. It’s feeling quite remote again.

Driving

• We’ve driven 2862 kilometres, well below our 3200 limit for today. I managed to get the car sideways around a bend today, on a lot of loose gravel. That’s fairly scary in a car that feels like it has no handling ability at all.

19.12.2007 – Wednesday 19 December – Hobart

• Having driven 3137 kilometres, we’re again back in Hobart.

Morning

• Bronwen drove to Cockle Creek, the most southerly place one can drive in Australia, and we walked out to a navigation light, past a large metal whale. It feels very remote here, though there’s a surprising amount of people camping in various sorts of caravans and makeshift camps. We then spent the rest of the day heading back north, via some nice gravelled forestry drives, and through a little rain.

Afternoon

• We had planned to stay near Dover, but the free camping we were looking for turned out to be $30, and the next place didn’t exist, so we drove back to Hobart, getting there not long before 8, finding most caravan parks shut, and ending up at the Treasure Island Caravan Park, where it cost us $22 for a fairly average dried out mud puddle. The car began to sound quite like an angle grinder as we made our way into Hobart—sounds like the front-right brake pads have worn out.

Night

• The tent pole broke again last night, so we had to again remove the broken part and replace it with one from the sacrificed third pole, before setting up the tent.

20.12.2007 – Thursday 20 December – 7 Mile Beach

Evening

• With 3280 kilometres on the car, we’ve set up camp at Seven Mile Beach for $15.

Morning

• We dropped the car back to Lo-Cost Autos, who changed the brake pads while we wandered Hobart, had an iced chocolate and an iced coffee, and some quite good nachos for lunch.

Afternoon

• After picking the newly-fixed car up from Lo-Cost Autos, I drove to the Shot Tower, Bronwen swam in the icy water at Kingston Beach (just so she could say she’d swum in Tasmania), we looked out at lookouts, went shopping, walked along Seven Mile Beach, and are now packing in readiness for our 9:15am flight tomorrow, hopefully arriving 10:50 in Brisbane, with Virgin Blue.

21.12.2007 – Friday 21 December – Brisbane

Morning

• Bronwen and I woke up, gave our surplus camping gear to some fellow German travellers, and drove to the airport. We dropped the car and its keys off, and managed to board our flight with roughly the same amount of excess luggage as when we flew down—but without being charged for it. The flight was uneventful, and we arrived back in Brisbane, to be picked up by Bronwen’s parents. It feels like we’ve been away for quite a while. It’s been an odd trip, as it felt like the sort of thing I’d have done with my parents, except this is the first time I’ve done it without them.

22.12.2007 – Saturday 22 December – Construction

• Maz, Stella and I found our way into a nearby construction site and took a few photos.

23.12.2007 – Sunday 23 December – Mowing

• Bronwen mowed her lawn. I’m fairly sure other things happened too, but I’m not sure what.

24.12.2007 – Monday 24 December – Mooloolaba

Morning

• I should pack for Woodford but don’t.

Afternoon

• I pack hurriedly.

5:30pm

• I rush off to drop some DVD’s back to the video store and up to Bronwen’s parent’s place to pick up her Mum. We then drive up to Mooloolaba, where we meet Bronwen and the rest of her family.

25.12.2007 – Tuesday 25 December – Christmas Day

• I spent my birthday with Bronwen and her family at a unit overlooking Mooloolaba. Traditional Christmas present-giving was given; there was a cake, and a sort of Christmas tree. I was given a pole-set for my new tent.

26.12.2007 – Wednesday 26 December – Woodford

Morning

• I drive to Woodford, which is a bit of a drama as Bronwen and I had both forgot our tickets, requiring a detour via Bronwen’s grandfather’s place to print new ones. This is further complicated by Bronwen having lost her wallet, including her required identification. Fortunately our volunteer status lets us into Woodford without identification for Bronwen, where we manage to find one of the last remaining spots on Cloud Nine, and pitch our tent, along with my birthday present from Bronwen’s parents—its new centre pole.

Afternoon

• We attend our volunteer training, and wander around the folk festival. It looks rainy. It is rainy. Not good.

27.12.2007 – Thursday 27 December – Rain

• It rains. We wander the festival, finding strange birds, strange people, and more strange people. Stella arrives. We set up her tent beside ours.

28.12.2007 – Friday 28 December – More Rain

• More rain. We meet some birds again, a large Scotsman, a displaced frog, machines fighting mud, and lots of umbrellas, not to mention bubble blowing giants.

• Stella, Bronwen and I all worked at the Festival Shop—Stella and I as checkout chicks, though I was moved to a cashier supervisor after one didn’t turn up and Stella was moved to a CD girl after some credit card difficulties, and Bronwen as a reconciler.

29.12.2007 – Saturday 29 December – Woodford

• A branch fell on someone not that far from our camp, injuring them and causing a few areas to be closed down, and a warning given to people such as ourselves who were camped under a certain sort of tree. Today’s street performers included some black people, and the evening’s entertainment included a circus.

• It was still quite wet in spots.

30.12.2007 – Sunday 30 December – Woodford

• Today the strange things set up for the closing ceremony paraded around.

31.12.2007 – Monday 31 December – Woodford

• More Woodford.

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