To paraphrase what a visitor to Australia once said: "Australia is a nice place to visit,
I wouldn't want to live there though - they are still stuck in the 70's". To this day I
couldn't figure out why he said that- Until I saw "The Dish".

The Dish is a really good movie about a radio telescope in Parkes, NSW. If it wasn't for
this telescope, the world wouldn't have been able to see the Apollo 11 moon walk. So its
based on a true story which happened in 1969. In the movie I recognized cars that I see
driving around on the streets today. They have the same lisence plates as well. They even
still use the really wiggy fuses (that I had to fix) back in the 70's. They arn't the fuses
like we have back home, but are just a ceramic block with a wire (which is the fuse) running
from the top to the bottom. If it wasn't for the way people dressed, you could sware that
story was happening in the 90s.

This last week has been pretty hectic, doing double shifts and all. It seems that my new
bosses like me - I was invited for a little get together/dinner after work on last night.
We sat around talking about stuff, some people came over - it was nice. I think I will
enjoy working there. It's going to be hard work I can tell, but I have already learned some
good stuff. I should get the hang of things by Tuesday, since Monday is my first full time
day. The contract is only for 6 weeks, which will bring us to the start of December. That
gives me some money for Christmas and should be able to tie me over until I go back home.

As for Christmas, I think I am going to head up to Noosa for a skydiving trip. 14,000 Feet
of yummy freefalling goodness - all for $150! Spend a few days there, then make my way back
down to Sydney. OR I could head up further North - to Darwin, then south to Alice Springs,
then back to Sydney. This is what I have to plan out. In anycase I have to be back in Sydney
for New Years stuff - to hang with friends.

Just a reminder, that as of tomorrow - there is now a 16 hour time difference between Sydney
and Toronto.. Hope everyone has a safe Halloween.

Wheee! Journal update... finally :) Sorry about the lack of an update
this week. Things have been pretty hectic. I have broken things down
into days (as far as I can remember).

Friday:


Friday was the last day for Christy at BPI, so a lot of the staff went
out to The Toxteth to celebrate. Andy and I took this oppourtunity to
invite some of our friends as well. Duraid and Sue came down. It was
the first time I met Sue - she's cool. Thats the chikypoo that works
for Optus. We had a good time, Duraid was flipping out over the size
of the "Aussie Beef Burger" we had ordered him - then again, he isn't
used to the way Toxteth works :P~

Saturday:


Woke up early, but not early enough. James was having his pre harbour
cruise BBQ. James is located in one of those places where public
transit doesn't really get you to his house. So I decided to head down
to Oatley, then go back up (the way I came) via car with Andy.

BBQ Was good, events are always good when you have David Caldwell at
them :) He wouldn't miss a barbie for the world. If I was to pick a
model Australian, he would be it. Everything from the Akubra Hat
to his 1950 FJ Holden. I took some pictures of this classic and tossed
them in the archive section. Andy and I were the first to arrive, bearing
Nachos and Salsa.

The people who wern't going to the cruise left at about 5pm, while the
rest of us got dressed/ready for a night out on the water. When I got
my ticket, I asked Kristy whether this was a formal affair. She said
it was just Casual dress. I was dressed in my canuck hat with my white
jeans and green top plus runners. When I saw what Kristy and Gavin
changed into, I started freaking out. Kristy reassured me that removing
the hat and spiking the hair would be "dressy" enough. :)

After some car shuffling and public transit. We arrived at Commissioner's
Steps about an hour early. James, Anthony, and I went to a pub to get
a drink while the girls did their own thing. We hopped on board at 8pm.

I had a great time. Took some snaps of people (since there really wasn't
anything else to take pictures off). Most of them where highly drunk,
considering the alcohol was free and unlimited. There was food (pizza)
dancing (nice DJ and dance beats) - surprisingly nobody got sea sick!
The ride was smooth nontheless. Anthony was bartending most of the
night I think he was doing the "2 for me, 1 for you" considering he was
pretty drunk by the end of the night.

When the boat pulled into harbour at midnight, most people headed for
the bars. I tagged along for a little while but was pretty tired and
headed home at 1:30am.

Sunday:


Got up at 2pm, bummed around at home all day. Did some research for my
new job. Did some laundry. Had an incided with the circuit breakers.
Turns out that one of them I think is dodgy. Aussies like to use fuses
so the two circuit breakers we had were special types that you can fit
into the fuse box. What happened was that instead of the specific breaker
tripping. The main one for the whole house tripped instead. I can only
assume the 5a one is faulty. So in the meantime, everything but the
lights on the first floor works.

Monday:


First day at new job was...well. tedious. For the 4 hours that I was
there, I was in one meeting. It was good though because I was able to
be brought up to speed on the project and how everything is coming
together. It definatly is something new working on a website inwhich
you are not the only party involved :) I am looking forward to getting
my hands dirty tomorrow (today) and start coding some HTML.

So we are all caught up to today!

Greer (as well as Mic) and I have been keeping in touch via e-mail over
the week. Although no plans have been solidified to see them again, I
am pretty sure we can work something out. I really want to see them
again (especially Greer). She keeps on trying to get me to call her
older friends to do stuff. Thats fine I guess, but I really want to see
Greer again. Penny keeps on making fun of me because she says I am
obsessed with her - girls always over exaggerate things.

The weather here has been overcast the past two days. It rained a little
this morning, but nothing too major. Remember kids! Its spring time here!
Glebe Point Rd. is looking really nice now with all the trees full of
leaves. The days are finally getting longer.

So what am I doing at my new job you ask? Well I am the HTML d00d. I
dont have to fiddle with graphics, or backend stuff - I just spend all
day coding HTML. The company that I work for is called Digi Do.
It's a 6 week contract, at which time I will probably be given the
decision as to whether I want to stay with Digi Do for longer, or go
back to Canada. I will have to see in Feburary what the situation is
before I make my decision. I know I want to help my parents with
the restaurant. Mark also let me know that he wants me to help him
for his Final project of the year thing in Feb as well. Only time
will tell. I am also going to have to book my return flight by Nov 15.
So I have some thinking to do as to whether what day/time I want to
return to Toronto.

I started making super preliminary plans for Christmas. I think my
family is going to go down to Florida (of course they go without
me). As for myself, not sure yet. I might hang out at Bondi for a bit
or (depending on the cash flow) do a Skydive in Noosa. I was also
thinking about pressies. Not sure if I want to send stuff home or not.
Again - it all depends on the cash flow. New Years Eve on the other
hand is going to be spent in Sydney with my friends.

I just calculated how long I have been here.. 7 months 6 days. Its
more then half over :(

I forgot to bring my camera last night, but Sally took some pictures and I hope she puts
them on the net. Anthony brews his own beer - so he had about 20L of the stuff to drink.
The sad thing was that he hadn't done it in YEARS and this batch was lacking that certain
eidble quality we all know and love in beer. So we went out and picked up a slab of Carlton
Cold.

It was your typical beer spilling, salsa splashing, upside-down-compressed-air-dick-freezing
party: And everyone was invited! I got to finally meet Dave Coote as well as Sally - she's a
hoot! She brought along a red boucy ball that you would attach to your finger, so you can
throw it around but it doesn't go very far because its tethered to you. I was playing with
that all night, until Sally took it away from me because I kept on hitting her in the boob
with it.




Ok, this is like a one entry two day thing. It's now tomorrow (sunday) and I wrote that
part above yesterday (Saturday).

Right, anyways - I had a great time at Anthonys place, except for the fact that I left my
mobile phone there :/, I should be getting it back later this week - probably when I go on
the harbour cruise this Saturday.




I wanted to do something today, I spent all night last night (until 4:30) updating a website
. I just needed to get outside and do some fun and wonderful things :) I convinced Penny to
come out and spend the day with me in the city. She agreed, so she came into the city with
Andy (Andrew was working today at barnet.com.au). We walked around, she took some pictures
of me. I took some pictures of her - just killed a few hours until we met up with Andy at
Town Hall steps at 12:30. I didn't have any money on me, only $10 in my bank account, so I
was forced to find a food place that I could use my ATM card with. Both penny and I wanted
some Maccas, so we all decided to go down to the Pitt St. Food Court. Thats when we say
Greer and Mick (or is it Mac?). Odd names indeed - the last 'r' in Greer is silent and Mick
is short for a really long name that I don't remember. Penny in all her pre adolescent wisdom
dared me to take a picture of them (which you can see in the Photo Archive). I did, and they
were all cool about it. So I decided to start talking to them more and stuff - you know
get to know them better. So I started talking to them for about 10 or 15 min, then Andrew
and Penny come over and join in the conversation. Turns out that Penny knows a buch of people
they know, etc..

I spent the next 3 hours with them, talking about stuff, getting to know eachother and stuff.
I had a great time. Exchanged e-mail/phone numbers, etc.. Made some preliminary plans for
the future. It was a blast. I just hope we keep in touch, its up to them now - so I hope they
e-mail me soon :)

The weather has been on the chilly side lately. On and off rain, its spring time! The leaves
on trees are starting to come out and my view of the city is being blocked by a tree now. I
can't wait to get into summer though, get on the beach.

After two days, the rain finally stopped! Which is good, it was a nice day today as well - not to hot
not to cold, just perfect.

I encountered yet another peice of Australian culture today, the Huntsman Spider (genus Heteropodidae for
you scientific folk). I was sitting at my computer chatting to a bunch of my friends:

[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= FUCK ME
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= ther eis a huge spider
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= like REALLY BIG
[22:35] =Shaun= take a photo of it
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= I did
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= two
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= now I want to get rid of it
[22:35] =Shaun= then I can tell you what it is
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= well
[22:35] =c4nuckb0y= I dont want to keep my eye off it
[22:36] =c4nuckb0y= its on my wall
[22:36] =Narf= so kill it
[22:36] =c4nuckb0y= its HUGE
[22:36] =Narf= so use a bat
[22:36] =c4nuckb0y= i'm serioulsly scared here
[22:40] =c4nuckb0y= crapo
[22:40] =c4nuckb0y= *out of breath*
[22:40] =c4nuckb0y= this thing moves fast
[22:41] =c4nuckb0y= I missed it with my shoe, it fell off the wall and went nuts on my floor

*shows them the picture that I took*

[22:44] =c4nuckb0y= yeah

[22:44] =c4nuckb0y= fuck

[22:44] =c4nuckb0y= I wont be able to sleep tonight

[22:44] =c4nuckb0y= I would say it was twice the size of a 50c peice

[22:45] =Shaun= that's not big

[22:45] =Khayman= that's big?

[22:45] =c4nuckb0y= yes

[22:45] =Shaun= you should see a nice big huntsman then

[22:45] =c4nuckb0y= where I come from they are 

[22:45] =Shaun= about the size of your hand, but they're really flat

[22:45] =Narf= heh, he'd be scared to death

So yeah, here is a picture of the beast. According to the locals its a small one. It was about 5cm
(2 inches for you folks back home) long, the pictures don't do justice :)

I am in the middle of experiencing my first ever Aussie bush fire. Some lamer in Manly
set some stuff on fire and now there is a medium sized bush fire on the island. You walk
outside and all you smell is burnt wood. Quite weird actually! From my window I can
nolonger see the city because its all orange from the smoke.

I was planning on getting my mom something for her birthday, but they are all sold out here.
I think I will wait until they are in stores, because its the perfect price, and I think
my mom would like it :) I will probably do that next week, I am going to be busy this week
with BPI stuff (finally have some work to do for them). It looks like the new site design
is finally going to go live next week - so thats good. I also finished up most of the
Clearnet Weather stuff as well - so I should be able to launch that really soon (hopefully
by November)

I have been keeping in touch with Chrissy, she is probably going to take The Loft when I leave
in March. She's a cool chikypoo! She is also helping me with my mommys b-day present. To bad
she lives in Perth :(

So what are my plans for this weekend? Apparantly its supposed to be 35 C tomorrow, if thats
the case I am going to head out to the beach. All I have to do, is step out my door and hop
on bus 370 to Coogee - about 15min away! I will get the rest of my body nice and tanned! I
already have a sandle tan on my feet, so I think its time to start to even things out a bit.

Steve wants his squishy brain back - blah

Sort entry I know, don't really have much to write about.

Whoa! I totally forgot to mention what I did durning the Closing ceremony! Here is a photo of
what we saw: