Life on Mars

For those in the UK this will be old news but for us on the other side of the world the TV show "Life on Mars" finally aired on Sunday night.

This is a show my mum told me about probably a year ago now so when I saw it advertised on the ABC I had to tune in.

The show is about a 21st century copper who has an accident and wakes up in 1973. He can't determine if he is in a coma and has a very detailed and vivid imagination or if he really is in 1973. He finds himself Detective Inspector at his normal 'nick' in Manchester on a murder case with startling similarities to one he was working on in 2006 (but without the help of mobile phones, DNA evidence or computers)

Sam: "Where's my PC terminal?"
1973 copper: "You need a constable down here?"

The contrasts between the two eras were very interesting. Everyone smoking in the office, woman officers treated like tea ladies, having to use an operator when making a phone call. I thought the best line of the episode was from Sam's boss "Hey you kids! If anyfing 'appens to that motor, I'll come over to your house an' stamp on all your toys. Alright?". Hehehe. I really enjoyed it and will definitely be tuning in next week.

Names & Dates

Ok, this has to be at least an 8.5 on the cacky handed witch scale - Steve, your opinion please as you're the only one who reads this blog :)



The cocky cow even re-tunes mid song! Hehe.

Ps. The 'cacky fingered old witch' phrase comes from a very amusing story by the very amsuing Jack Dee.

32 Flavours

Check out the rare live TV performance by Ani Difranco - playing one of my favourite songs "32 Flavours"...

Chad Vader strikes back

Thanks to Steve for the heads up that Chad Vader episode 7 is now available on youtube. Will Chad get back the Day Manager's job? Looks like we'll have to wait for episode 8 - doh!



Best line: "Shut up! No!! You shut up!!" Hehehehe

Pink!

Last night we went to see Pink at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. We met up with our concert companions at Donna's place in Surry Hills and were introduced to Michelle, Julie, Trish, Steph and Bronwyn.

We all enjoyed a few drinks and nibbles before heading into Chinatown for a bite to eat (and to avoid the support act) before the show. I've never been to the Emperor's Garden before but the food was fresh, yummy and cheap so chances are I'll be back! We got to the Entertainment Centre at about 9pm and Jo and I took our fantastic central seats, unfortunately not sitting with the others who had seats elsewhere.

Pink kicked off her "I'm not Dead" tour to an extremely enthusiastic and noisy crowd to "Cuz I Can" and the got the entire place rocking.

Pink struts her stuff

She dazzled the crowd throughout a 2 hour energetic show that saw her display huge amounts of flexibility in a net 30 feet up in the air and talk to the audience in an intimate mini acoustic set. In between she was dancing around the stage, voice strong and always with a smile on her face. The entire show went so quickly but was so packed with energy you certainly didn't feel short changed and definitely left feeling fully entertained.

Donna had arranged for us to get free entry into the Shelbourne Hotel after the show for a few drinks and a dance. As suspected, our little dance turned into a long one and we eventually left at about 3:30am!! I blame the "retro" theme of 70s, 80s & 90s and my quality air-guitar :)

Still, I paid for it in the morning as there was a server upgrade at work this weekend that didn't go to plan and I had to have a tele-conference at 9am to decide what action to take. Eurgh.

My Humps

Fergie: "Check it out!"



It really should've been like this originally and Fergie should've done the cover! Hehehe.

Hungerford Hill

Jo and I took our first trip this year up to Nelson Bay to visit Jo's Mum for her birthday. We left early on Saturday morning and arrived at about 10:30. We had no plans of what to do for the day but inspiration struck and we decided to go to the Hunter Valley for the day.

We were off shortly afterwards and decided to stop into a winery for a look around as even though we had decided on our destination we still had no idea what to do once we got there.

We entered Hungerford Hill and saw people having a very nice lunch out on the terrace, well that was that. We were sat at a table in no time looking at a delicious menu that was to turn into Mrs B's birthday lunch treat :)

The head chef is Darren Ho (yes, brother of Lisa) and his asian influenced menu was delicious. We were all treated to a complimentary

Mrs B and I started with the aylesbury duck won tons with roast duck jus, blackwood fungus & pickled vegetables while Jo had the sea scallops stuffed with water chestnuts on sautéed garlic chives & sauce vierge.

Jo and I then had the beautiful fish of the day and Lyn had the waygu beef cheek slow braised with hungerford hill shiraz, on braised witlof & paris mash potatoes, served with béarnaise sauce. Yum!!

If that wasn't enough, we had already had a plate of mixed bread before the entrees and after we treated ourselves to gelato at a place down the road! Pigs!

Missy's Back

I went to see Missy Higgins showcase her new album "On a Clear Night" at the Enmore Theatre on Friday night.

We spent the first half an hour trying to "sell" a spare ticket we had by a late cancellation but with a lack of touting skills we ended up giving the ticket to some French tourist who seemed pleased enough!

We arrived in time to get a drink and take our seats to watch the support act. Leroy Lee played about 5 songs, a simple acoustic set that was reminissent of Jack Johnson mets John Butler.

Missy arrived on stage at about 9:40 and the crowd awoke and burst into cheers as the catchy but simple riff from "Secret" emerged from behind the curtain. The album was only released about a week before the concert but I've been lucky enough to listen to it for free for the past week via Claire's website :)

"Secret" is one of my favourite tracks on the album, probably because it consists on 3 notes on 1 string so I should be able to play it on my guitar hehehe.

Missy in action....

Missy played a great set mixing new with old favourites from the ever popular "The Sound of White". True to form she stuffed up the opening lines to no less than 3 songs but her innocent charm means she can get away with it with the crowd laughing along as say blurts out "Ahh! Those are the wrong words!" then mentally backtracks to the beginning to start over again.

Points have to be awarded for effort though when she gave up her trusty piano and guitar to simply sing, although you can tell she finds it extremely awkward and you want to shout "That microphone does detact from the stand you know!". Once again, a very enjoyable show from someone who improves everytime I've seen her.

Work, work, work

It's official, I'm in training coma.

Not only am I in a new role, in a new team, with a new technology, with 1 technical person to support 3 production applications with about another 10 on the way, I seem to spend my life in training courses.

First there was the Project Management course going back a few months, this was backed up with the conference in Queensland (sounds like a junket but wasn't really), followed by a dose of "Emotional Intelligence", then came my LSI training (I can't even remember what it stands for but they plot stuff about you on a circumplex, that's about all I can recall), now I am on a "Resilience" course that is for 2 hours a week for 6 weeks. I think. I have an exam to take in July and the rest I'm trying not to think about!

And to top it all off, it was announced today that my team is going to be split away from my current manager into a separate team. As much as I'd love to apply for that role, I'm not sure I'm ready to manage a team of 15! Fingers crossed whoever lands the role will do a good job and not be a twat.

The past few weeks

Well, if I thought my week up at the Gold Coast was busy I was wrong! Things certainly haven't calmed down since I've returned, either at work or at home! Here's the recap of the key events since the beginning of April....

1. We farewelled Steven as he returned from his trip to NZ for a night and took him to one of our favourite pizza places (Bar Reggio) in Darlinghurst. Our quiet Monday night dinner took 2 hours to eventuate - I've never seen that restaurant so busy in my life! We had a great time though and devoured some excellent pizza's.

2. The Easter long weekend was then quickly upon us and we were on cat/house sitting duties. We looked after Tiffany and Mia (Lisa & Christian's cat who has gone away to christan their beautiful twin girls with their family), we made sure that April and May (Carl & Martinette's cats who had gone up to Mooloolaba for the Easter break) were ok and of course our own little ratbags. We ended up spending most of our time our in Manly praticsing our non-existent surfing skills but we sure did have fun. We checked out a new bar - "Henry Afrika's" before enjoying dinner at the Manly Ocean Beach House.

The Manly Ocean Beach House Restaurant, at Manly obviously :)

3. On a sadder note, we helped our friend Jenny pack up her house as she was moving to Melbourne on the 12th. Jenny lost her husband Steve in December to a brain tumour and I have to stay it was a very strange experience packing clothes into a box of a man who I had never met and would never get to meet.

If I ever need anything to put things into perspective, I will certainly recall this experience and I have such utter respect for Jenny and how she is handling the horrible situation she now finds herself in.

4. We've had Jo's cousin Karen, partner Paul and 3 boys stay since Sunday so we've been busy little bees and our apartment feels much smaller with 4 adults, 3 young lads and 2 cats in it!

5. The pace doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon as coming up in the next few weeks are:
- A weekend in Newcastle this weekend
- Jo's Mum's birthday on 3rd May
- Missy Higgins concert at the Enmore on 4th May with Bo and Claire
- Pink concert on 12th May

and don't get me started on what's been happening at work!!

Busy week

I left for the Gold Coast (again) on the 23rd March for my week long conference. Nicci and I decided to fly up on the Friday so we could make a weekend of it.

Friday night we stayed with Nicci's friend Luke near Brisbane and enjoyed a great dinner and a few nice wines and dinner in the garden with his family.

Luke kindly gave us a lift the next day to Wet n' Wild where Nicci and spent most of the day at Calypso Beach floating around on a rubber ring!

We arrived at our conference venue on the Sunday at about 11:00am - Nicci had to be there early as she was facilitating and had to attend a session. I spent the afternoon in the huge lagoon swimming! What was to be the only relaxing time of the following week.

The Hyatt at Sanctuary Cove

Up early Monday morning for a run and gym session before breakfast and then to our conference room for Day 1 activities. I had met some of my team the previous night at the welcome dinner but today was designed to make sure we worked as a team. Our task was a 'virtual safari' run by Peak Teams.

The next day the real work started. The whole point of the conference is to teach a strategic planning and thinking model and apply this to real business issues, skillfully facilitated by Michael Wilkinson from Leadership Strategies based in Atlanta, Georgia. Believe the hype, Michael is the most incredible facilitator I have ever witnessed and I was super proud to be voted by my team as the person who had contributed the most to our case study challenge and receive a copy of Michael's book.

We all were taken through the process using a common case study and by Thursday we were back in our teams to work on other case studies submitted as part of the application process. Luckily I knew quite a lot about my case study because I wrote it :) We started at 8am in the morning and finally finshed up at 9:30pm (this could have been worse had it not been a master-stoke to pause for dinner and drink wine!).

The Hyatt's fantastic fake beach and lagoon

The other focus of the week really is the networking, getting to know other people in our vast organisation and also presenting to a board of senior leaders on the Friday with the aim of getting some support for your case study.

All in all, it was a fantastic week which saw me go ten-pin bowling, surfing at Surfer's Paradise, stroke a real life white tiger, have dinner on a fake beach, sing karioke twice and present to over 70 people with a hangover! Great stuff.

Steven's Birthday

St Patrick's Day is also Steven's birthday so today we went out for a nice brunch at Manly with Carl and Martinette. We went to a cafe called White Water and it seemed that Eggs Benedict was the order of the day as Steven, Jo and Carl all had the same. I went slightly different and had Pear and Walnut bread with stewed rhubarb, banana and honey - very yummy indeed! After breakfast we took Steven shopping to get him a birthday present - Jo and I bought him a nice Quiksilver T-shirt and some thongs (aussie terminology for 'Flip Flops' before anyone raises their eyebrows!). Steven treated himself to a few more T-shirts, a pair of shorts and a pair of long combat style pants (Aussie for 'Trousers' before anyone raises their eyebrows - again!).

We went got home in the afternoon we had a modelling session to see Steven in his new outfits, before Tanya and Nia arrived for the night.

Pose, Monkey Boy!

We had struggled to find somewhere to go for dinner but settled on 'Fish at the Rocks' and it was a great choice. We arrived in the rocks and finally managed to find somewhere to park. Be in mind, it was St Patrick's Day and the Rocks is the most popular place for the Irish to get drunk in the whole of Sydney!

Ooooh, you Chocolate Tart!

Dinner was wonderful and the menu suitably seafood - I had prawn ravioli to start, Steven and Jo had the grilled scallops. For main I had a very nice baby barramundi filled with minced prawn red curry, Jo and Tanya had the Jewfish and Steven had the Kingfish. We all succombed to dessert and we weren't disappointed - the Chocolate Tart was fantastic!

Summer Bay

I've been very lucky this week as I was able to take off two days to spend with Steven while he is here visiting. I took off Wednesday so we could go kayaking at Manly and I took off Friday so we could take a drive to enjoy the best of Sydney's north. Jo took the train to work so we could have the car and we headed to Palm Beach at about 10:30am.

Steven enjoys a walk along Palm Beach

It was super hot and it was a good thing we were at the beach because you certainly needed to take a dip to cool down! I went in for a quick swim and Steven paddled around up to his knees. The water was lovely but there was so much kelp it made swimming a bit crap.

The "Summer Bay Surf Club" at Palm Beach

After our swim we had to head up to the surf club, as used in Aussie Soap 'Home and Away' - as you can see from the Summer Bay sign. It is an actual livesaving club as we had a nice ice lolly there to prove it.

After some lunch we headed down to coast and stopped off at Whale Beach and Avalon to take a look around. We even managed to pick Jo up from work on the way home (as we got stuck in Friday afternoon traffic). Wish all Friday's could be like this!

Visitors and Kayaks

Steven arrived on Monday night to stay with us for the week. We met him at the airport at 7:30pm and he brought the English rain and drizzle with him! Jo was very happy though as he came bearing gifts of PG Tips :)

I took Wednesday off work and the weather was much better so we decided to get the ferry over to Manly and do some kayaking. The queue for the ferry was ridiculous! I've never seen it so busy, but luckily the ferry can take about 1100 passengers so were able to get on board. The trip takes around 35 minutes and after arriving at Manly we took a walk down the Corso to the beach and then to find somewhere to have some lunch.


After lunch and some walking around we found our way to the kayaking place - it's not far from the Wharf and only cost us $15 for an hour (each). After a brief introduction (which consisted of "Don't go near the wharf or ferries" and "Do you know how to paddle?") we put our life jackets on and dragged our kayaks into the water.

Our sea kayaks at Manly

Steven then fell in while attempting to get into his kayak (I was already paddling out by this point) and managed to get in on his second attempt..hehehehe.

The water and weather was beautiful and calm, we paddled down past Fairlight beach and round to where the boats are moored and really just enjoyed being out on the water. We paddled back in an hour later and treated ourselves to a nice gelato as a reward for our efforts.

Stormy Sydney

It was hard to get to sleep last night as Sydney was covered by a huge thunder storm. The weekend had been really hot and muggy, we were at the beach on Saturday taking a dip in the beautiful cool water at La Perouse.

Sydney's La Perouse Beach

When it's so hot, and you've walked 10 minutes down a hill and along track the last thing you want to do is to go and find somewhere to buy a cool drink or an ice-cream (and still have it cold by the time you get back!). So that's when you need "Munchies Afloat"!! The floating convenience store!

Munchies Afloat - How cool is that!

The heat continued through Sunday and it all had to come crashing down at some point. A southerly change came through late on Sunday night and was eventuated was a massive lightning storm across the whole city.

Lightning strikes Centrepoint Tower in the heart of Sydney

Taronga Zoo

Today was another 'Community Day' for me - this is a paid day where I can volunteer my services and myself along with 9 of my team mates from work went along to Taronga Zoo. I arrived as specified at 7:30am, ready and willing to start work for the day. Our designated keeper came to get us at 8:15 (!) and our post was with the miniture penguins.

Taronga: The Zoo with a view!

Two of my colleague were assigned with shovelling the old sand out and putting new sand into the enclosure. Scott and I were tasked with cleaning the little huts (16 of them) out by hosing and scrubbing them clean. The huts hadn't been cleaned since they were put in last July so there was a fair amount of penguin poo to be scrubbed off that's for sure! After we had finished those it was time for morning tea and a cup of coffee in the Keeper's staff room by the Elephant enclosure.

We were all set for more work but the keepers seemed happy with our mornings efforts and gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the seals! I got my picture taken right next to one called Kira and even rubbed her belly! The keepers showed us how they train them using a whistle and some fish and another seal put her flippers up on my knee as a trick! So cute.

I was so disappointed that I didn't take my camera along, but another lady in our group took a picture of my with the seal so if she e-mails it to me I'll post it here.

I haven't been to the zoo for a while and they certainly have been doing lots and lots of renovating and refurbishing! The place looks great, the animals are very well cared for and spending the morning with some keepers really showed me just how much they love the animals they look after. The new elephant enclosure looks great and they are still building and expanding to improve the enclosures for many of the other animals - if you haven't been to the zoo or it's been a while I'd highly recommend you give it a go. Make sure you visit the giraffes - well known to have the best view of Sydney bar none!!

Colin Perini

Whilst we were on holidays, we noticed paintings by Colin Perini that were just fantastic. They are all ocean and beach paintings, wonderfully life-like with perfect colouring.

"Summer Twist"

We noticed as our paintings are looking a little small and out of place at the moment and one has fallen off it's 3M hook and I haven't bothered to put it back up again so that probably isn't helping.

If I had my choice, I'd go for the beautiful 'Wishes and Dreams' triple but at a cool $5670AUD, I may be waiting some time...

"Wishes and Dreams" - courtesy of Colin Perini

Day Eight: Dane and Alyse spent the night on the air mattress they brought with them (this was before we realised that the sofa was in fact a sofa bed - doh!) and we all had some breakfast before driving out to Wet n' Wild.

The weather was a perfect Queensland day and the queue for the water park on a Saturday was understandibly huge! We eventually made it through the gates, put our gear in a locker and headed straight for our first ride - Mammoth Falls!

Saving the best 'till last - The Tornado!

We systematically went through every ride the park had to offer, occassionally chilling out in the relaxing Calypso Beach where you float around on a tube being gently carried by a soft current. Until that is we arrive and all chase each other around the 'river' like idiots! We ended up spending nearly 6 hours at the park and were throughly exhausted by the end of it. The combination of being in the strong sun, chasing each other on rubber rings and walking up endless stairs to the top of huge rides took its toll but it was excellent fun. We saved the best thrill for last as we joined the largest queue to ride the Tornado (bascially the equivalent of White Water World's 'The Green Room').

It was great to spend the time with Dane and Alyse as we didn't get to see them much when there were last in Sydney, hopefully we can catch up with them again soon.

As it was our last night we decided to go out for a nice dinner (we had been mainly eating in as the view from the balcony was too good to waste!) and we found a very nice restaurant near our apartment called Moo Moo's. Obviously this is a serious place for MEAT!!! But Jo was tempted by the Fish of the Day - Salmon on a crab salad with chinese cabbage, garlic gnocci and something else with truffle oil. It was much better than it sounds. I went for the lamb backstrap on pommes lyonnaise with seasonal vegetables - served with a global knife (like we have at home) - excellent stuff.

We then wandered over to Jupiter's (the casino) and Jo was tempted to have a flutter on the roulette table. We looked slightly stupid with our massive collection of eight chips ($20's worth) when most other people were betting $100 each round but we had fun anyway :) We had a nightcap and I turned into my brother for some reason and had a brandy and dry. The week has gone so quickly but we had a great time on the Gold Coast - looking forward to coming again one day.

Day Seven: We took it easy yesterday and just stayed around the Broadbeach area, enjoyed the pool at our apartment complex and had some very nice and very cheap Yum Cha for lunch. But we can't stay still very long and as we got such a good deal with the massage that we decided to use the rest of that budget to go Sea Kayaking for the day.

The pool at 'Air on Broadbeach'

Jo called up the night before to book with Splash Sea Kayaking tours that we take us on a 7km paddle to South Stradbroke Island (or "Straddie" as the locals call it). Our 'Triple Adventure Tour" started at 8.10am when we were picked up from our apartment and taken to a spot where we would get kitted out with our life-jackets and other equipment. After a short introduction to the day and some kayaking safety lessons we were on our way.

The Sea Kayaks

There were about 12 people on the trip, with one instructor. This meant that we were two to a kayak and Jo had the fun task of being in charge of the steering (the kayaks use a rudder at the rear) for the day. We paddled over to Wave Break Island and took a rest stop. The weather wasn't fantastic today (which was probably a good thing as otherwise we'd be so sun-burnt!) so we had morning tea at our first stop and we went for a snorkel. Just off the beach the water was teaming with fish and they ate the fish food I was given right out of your hand. Awwww.

The rather miserable South Stradbroke Island

We then paddled over to South Stradbroke Island and took a walk over to the beach. The weather by now had really closed in and it was starting to rain so it wasn't as picturesque as I'm sure it would have otherwise been. The Island is popular for camping and fishing but we didn't stay for very long and were soon back in our kayaks for another paddle around the top of Wave Break Island before heading back to land for our pick-up.

We got back to our apartment just in time to have a quick dip in the pool, shower and change before Dane and Alyse arrived at about 5:30pm. We all enjoyed a nice cold X&Y Sauvignon Blanc on the balcony before heading up to Chaing Mai Thai up the road. We continued with our exploration of yummy wines this week (we had already sampled some great ones including Stoneleigh, Montana and Rockbare Mojo) with a bottle of Eye Spy and South Island!

Alyse had made the booking for 8pm and we had heard this was the place to go for Thai in the area. We certainly weren't disappointed as Jo and I tucked into Coconut Prawns and Thai Dim Sim for entree. We all shared a Massaman Beef, Tofu with Chilli & Basil stir-fry and Lemongrass Prawns for mains. Yummy!

Day Five: Yesterday saw us head down to Rainbow Bay and Snapper Rocks as there is lots of activity there due to the Quiksilver and Roxy Pro's happening from the 26th February.

The as yet blank leader board

We took our boards down there but didn't have much luck as the current was terrible, the waves were a bit too big for us at the moment and the rips all up the coast are pretty bad this week.

Still, we did get to see some people who actually can surf carving up and down by the rocks as most of them were pro-surfers or plucky locals practising for a wild card spot in the comp next week.

A proper surfer gets some practise in

I stood and watched for a while from the rocks, it was pretty busy out there but the guys and girls who were having a go were excellent. It's such a shame we didn't plan our trip so that we could've seen a few days of the actual competition, but still there's always next year.

Some youngsters head out for some action

That afternoon we went to the Wings Day Spa at Surfers Paradise for a well earned massage. We booked in yesterday and got a great deal that included an hour of steam room/hydrotherapy pool before an hour and a half of all over massage. It certainly was value for money, the spa was beautifully designed and we were very well looked after by the staff there. Note to self: Must do this more often!