Canadian vacation

I ended up getting a room at the Banff Center's Lloyd Hall for around $70. It was twice what I would have paid at a backpacker's hostel, but all the ones in Banff were booked out for that day. The good thing was that it was a nice little hotel room. It obviously had to be classy-looking because of all the international conventions they had at the Banff Center.

After checking in at the hotel room, I headed into town for some dinner. After seeing the big line-up at The Keg (steakhouse), I went a few doors down to the Elk & Oarsman, a pub and grill. I had a bison burger, which tasted quite nice. Afterwards I ran into a trio of travelers from New Zealand and proceeded to get drunk. There was a guy playing tunes on the stage and knew some NZ and Aussie songs like Crowded House and Paul Kelly. I eventually got drunk enough and went up on stage and sang a couple of songs (rather badly), and I got a free Jager bomb from the barman for my troubles.

Mike turned up at the bar after he finished work, and after a couple of drinks we went across the street to Tommy's, a nice little pub, for a couple more drinks. We had a few games of darts and eventually headed back to the Banff Center with Mike's girlfriend, Lindsay. We hung out for a bit then I crashed at my hotel room until about 10 in the morning.

Splurge!

Despite the late start, Sunday was a pretty full day. I took a scenic trail over into town, which was great. I hadn't done a walk (as in, a nature walk type of walk) in some time, so this was a nice scenic experience. I saw the Banff Springs from a distance and eventually ended up in town after going along the Bow River. By this point, I was pretty hungry, so I stopped over at Evelyn's Again, a coffee chain in Banff (the chain is called Evelyn's, this particular one was Evelyn's Again, the third one in town is Evelyn's Too). The food there was pretty average. There was something advertised as an Aussie Meat Pie, which was nowhere near what an Aussie Meat Pie should be. Needless to say, I was not very impressed with my purchase.

The Bow River meets the bridge at the end of Banff Avenue, and makes for some good photos

What I was happy with, however, were my other purchases on Sunday. I bought some new DVDs and, after meeting up with Mike, some new clothes. I finally bought those gloves I've been looking at buying for ages, as well as a new tuque (what Canadians call a beanie), a shirt, a sweater, and a windproof North Face shell, which was the most expensive of the lot. I won't even say how much I spent on that day of shopping, let alone for the entire trip. It had to happen eventually though, I had been planning to buy new stuff for a while.

At the end of the day, Mike and I were very tired for reasons we could only attribute to the energy drink we had earlier in the day. We lounged a bit at Mike's room then went to see a show at the Banff Center. We saw Mae Moore and Lester Quitzau, a Canadian folk-pop duo. They put on an incredible and entertaining show that everybody in the small intimate audience really enjoyed, myself included. The plan afterwards was to go to Aurora for 25c beers. Sadly, there as a DJ playing that night, and they were charging a big cover charge and coat check fee, so we just went to McDonald's for dinner and went to Tommy's again, where the drinks were also fairly cheap. It was an early night out as we wanted to go to Sunshine for a full day of snowboarding the next day.

Monday was pretty straightforward day to explain. We woke up early, snowboarded until about 4:30, had dinner, and went to bed. An entire day of riding really takes it out of you. Mike and Pat took me out to Sunshine's backcountry, which is not nearly as good as some of the stuff we have inbounds at Panorama, but was still a fun adventure. I started becoming comfortable with jibbing small features in the middle of runs, which we don't really have here at Panorama.

Mike and Pat hike up to do a kicker at Sunshine's backcountry

More complications

I had a long, albeit interrupted, 12-hour sleep and woke up just as Mike was going snowboarding and Lindsay was going to work. I left and took the scenic trail to town again, this time to have breakfast at a much nicer bakery-style place, the Wild Flour. I generally just had a stroll around town and ended up on the other side of the Bow River, doing the start of the Bow Falls trail. Unfortunately, the rest of the trail was closed off for reasons unknown. Consequently, I just went to the Fairmont Banff Springs instead. It's much more grand up-close, and the inside was just insane. There were probably more rooms and more shops in this huge castle than there was in the entire Panorama village. I'd like to think that one day I can afford one or two nights in that place.

They don't call it the 'Castle in the Rockies' for nothing

I headed back downtown after checking out the hotel and had a milkshake from Cow's, which Reader's Digest had once highlighted as having Canada's best ice-cream. I must admit, it was pretty darn tasty. My next stop was meant to be an art gallery at the Banff Center, where I would hang around for the next couple of hours waiting for Mike to get back from snowboarding. Alas, the gallery was closed for the day, and I just sat around the lounge area outside Mike's apartment reading Popular Science and Ender's Game for a couple of hours. Mike was stuck in Sunshine until about 4:30, so when Lindsay got back, she let me leave my stuff in their room while I went out and got dinner.

I had dinner at The Keg, which had one of the most phenomenal steaks I have ever eaten. I had their biggest cut of prime rib, which was 14oz, and it was juicy and tasty all over. The accompanying baked potato was also about as great as the steak. After chomping down this huge cut like a machine, I walked back to the Banff Center to get my stuff. I caught the taxi to the Greyhound station early so that I wouldn't miss the bus, which seemed pointless later on as the bus showed up about 30-40 minutes late.

As we approached Radium, I turned on my phone (which was running out of battery) and tried to make some calls to get a lift back to Panorama (the last bus to Panorama was 9:05, which I was not going to make even in the bus from Banff was on time) but alas, the phone went dead before I had any success. At this point I was consigned to the fact that I had to hitch a ride back up, which would have been hard at 10 at night. By sheer luck, when the bus pulled up to the Petro-Canada station in Invermere, Justin, one of the people from the cash office at Panorama, was waiting there. He was picking up his friend from Toronto, who had just flown in, and so I was fortunate enough to be able to get a ride up from him.

Right now it's back to the normal routine. I was slow at work yesterday due to exhaustion from the Banff trip, and today I'll probably only go riding for a couple of hours before calling it quits. I got a whole weekend of work ahead of me, and I don't wanna be feeling dead for that busy period. New photos are finally up on my Photobucket album for February. The video of me crashing spectacularly at the terrain park should be on Ben's website, but I don't know the URL for that yet.

Banff

I have nowhere to stay tonight. I'm currently in Banff, at the Banff Center, anxiously awaiting on whether or not I can find some lodging for the night because, due to certain complications, my first night's accommodation has fallen through.

Complications

It all started when I woke up late for the bus (as I had mentioned in my post this morning) and had to end up hitching down to town. After about 10 minutes of waiting by the side of the road watching a very small number of cars pass by as I stuck my finger out, a nice man from Calgary (with a rather nice BMW) stopped and told me to hop in. We had a chat, as you do when you get a ride from somebody, and before I knew it, we were at the Petro-Canada gas (a.k.a. petrol) station where the Greyhound buses stopped. I hung around the general area for an hour before going back to the station to wait for the bus, which was, naturally, about 10-15 minutes late.

I caught a bit of sleep on the bus, and when I woke up we were getting close to Banff. Last night, Justin told me that Mike could no longer give me some accommodation for Banff for tonight. I was originally going to stay at Zach's place, but he was going to Edmonton tonight, so I decided I'd try Mike. Alas, that fell through, so now I sit here at the lobby of Mike's accommodation, using the Internet, as I wait for him to find me some slightly less free accommodation at the Banff Center (where he works and lives). Fortunately, I hear it's quite a nice place since they have lots of important international guests visiting here on a regular basis, so maybe it'll be a bit of money to buy a bit of the experience. Anyway, I have to wait for Mike to go on his lunch break before he can try giving the reservations desk another call (as he got put on hold for about 10 minutes just before he had to start work).

To go on a bit of a tangent, but still sticking to the general theme of things not being as simple as they could be, I decided to buy a board bag today. I figured that I'd be needing one for the end of the season when I set off on my adventure and have to haul off my two boards, bindings, and boots, among other things. All the ones that I had seen so far at other places had been too large for my board, so I decided that Banff would be an ideal place to get some more variety in terms of size. I ended up buying an LTD board bag... just a cheap padded carry-on bag (i.e. no wheels). However, it wasn't my first choice. There was this really cool looking Drop bag that I bought, but once I got my board in there, it turned out that the handle was a bit off-center, making it a bit of a pain to carry around. The good thing was that the LTD bag was the same size and the same price, so I went for a straight swap for it. Should teach me to look more closely next time.

Action plan

I'm not sure if I'll get much done today. It's already 4:45, and I'm still waiting on that accommodation to be sorted out. Assuming it does get sorted out, I'll probably just take a leisurely stroll around downtown Banff and maybe buy a couple of items I've been meaning to buy for a while, mainly gloves since mine are breaking apart. There's always tomorrow to do some more shopping (which was one of the main purposes of this trip). I'll probably also get some nice food to eat for dinner, as I am quite famished. I only had a sausage and egg (and hash brown) sandwich for breakfast, and a few snacks for lunch, and the greater variety of food establishments that Banff has compared to Panorama is calling out to me. Mike finishes at midnight tonight, so we'll probably end up going out late. Not quite sure where the night will take us, but it'll be short (bars close at 2) and hopefully pretty damn sweet. The big night will be tomorrow night, when Aurora serves 25c beers, kinda like Cowboys in Calgary but with bigger glasses. Time to get drunk on a dollar again.

The plan for Monday is to go to Sunshine Village for some backcountry snowboarding. Since Mike's a local, he knows all the sweet spots that not a lot of people go to. Jacky, Andy, Tyler, and possibly a few others might be coming to Sunshine on Monday too. I'm not entirely sure that I'll go again on Tuesday. I've only got a reciprocal letter of introduction (for free lift tickets) for Monday, so getting some tickets on Tuesday might be a bit of a hassle. Another hassle is going to be getting home on Tuesday night. The Greyhound gets to Invermere at about 9:30, and the last bus back to Panorama leaves at 9:05. I'm hoping that I can get a ride back from one of the people coming back from bowling.

Oh yeah, speaking of which, there's now a regular bowling get-together every Tuesday. I obviously won't make it this Tuesday, but I went last Tuesday and it was great fun. It's not your regular 10-pin bowling though. This was a Canadian variation on the well-loved sport... 5-pin bowling. It's pretty crazy. You get 5 pins positioned in a V-shape (each pin worth a different amount depending on position), 3 shots at knocking them all down (like regular bowling, you get a strike if you get them all on the first, and a spare if you get them all on the second), and have to aim at these targets with a ball that is about half the size of a regular bowling ball, and has no holes. It certainly takes more precision aiming to get a good score in this variation of the game. It's just about as fun as 10-pin though.

I guess I should get going soon. I gotta wait for Mike for any updates, and I've been hogging this computer for about an hour now. Ciao.

Marathon man

Well, I survived the craziness of working 8 days out of 9, and came out of it in one piece. I am, however, incredibly exhausted and just missed the bus to Invermere that I needed to catch. I guess snowboarding all day on Thursday didn't exactly help.

It all started on that fateful Thursday of last week when I started work, when I thought I'd be working my longest shift ever. Alas, I was mistaken as, after 6 days in a row of hovering around the 10-hour mark, and about 6 or 7 hours of snowboarding on my day off, I experienced a true marathon of a 14-hour shift yesterday. I came home at 11 at night, which threw my plans for Banff completely out of whack. I was meant to sleep early so I could catch the 7:40 bus to Invermere and wait for the Greyhound over to Banff, which leaves at 10:25. Sadly, I woke up at about 7:25 and couldn't be bothered walking over to the bus, which I probably would have missed. The current plan is to hitch a ride down, which usually works out. I hope it does again today.

The actual marathon was meant to happen on Thursday, when I had planned to do a 9am to 9pm snowboarding bonanza. It was all talk though. I was dead tired by 4, and Mark, Jacky's friend, hurt his shoulder on a run, so everybody decided to call it a day early. I guess it was a good thing, as I wouldn't have lived through that 14-hour shift if I had boarded 12 hours the previous day.

Anyway, I better start heading off and try to hitch a ride down to town. Photos when I get back, I promise.

Ch-check it out

Well, I ended up getting that job. They started me off on the same day that they told me I had the job, so it was a bit intense. Add to that the fact that it was a fairly busy day and it all equated to a 12-hour marathon of work. I was actually going to finish at about 7:30, but there was a bit of an emergency at the last minute, which I volunteered to help out in, and I ended up finishing at 9 on the dot, quickly rushing to Laura's going-away dinner soon after, for which I was about an hour and 10 minutes late for. But anyway, I guess it's pretty good that I get paid for 12 hours on a higher rate than what I usually get paid for... and that's just my first day for the week.

The annoying thing is that I gotta work for the next 6 days, making it a full 7 days in a row. It only really sucks because the heavens have finally opened up today and is giving us some insane snowfall, and by the time I have a day off to go snowboarding, all the snow be chopped up. It's a really busy period too, so any new snow is almost guaranteed to be tracked within days of fall. My only hope is that it keeps snowing until Thursday (or it snows HARD on Wednesday).

Road tripping

The Fernie trip on Monday was pretty epic. The resort had gotten 11cm overnight for a 24 hour fall of 14cm, so everybody on the bus was pretty excited to have a great day on the slope, and it certainly didn't disappoint. I rode with Nugget for most of the day, and he's a bit of a crazy snowboarder, so we did some pretty crazy stuff. The most memorable run was the short but oh so sweet ride down one of the Knot Chutes, which were some crazy double black chutes off of one of the ridges. We also managed to get stuck in a creek (with no paddle) after going too deep into some trees. We somehow managed to navigate our way out of there. All in all it was a crazy day, and I was just so tired by the end of the day that I completely skipped jam night.

I went on a bit of a road trip on Tuesday. It was an impulse decision after finding out in the morning that Tyler and Andy were driving Georgie to Calgary (with a slight detour at Banff) so that she could catch her flight home. The general plan was to drop Georgie off then go back to Banff for some sightseeing and shopping. Unfortunately, as we were leaving the Calgary city limits, Tyler's car had a bit of a cough up and the 4-wheel drive gave way. It was still fine in 2-wheel drive mode but they didn't want to risk prolonging the trip so, apart from a stopover at the mechanic at Banff (which was just about closed), the side-trip was canned.

I was meant to go to Lake Louise yesterday but decided not to after feeling lazy in the morning. I got up early, but unlike the morning of the Fernie trip, the snow report on the net wasn't that appealing. It was only about 3cm overnight, and the weather was freezing, so I decided to just surrender my $15 (which is what it costs for a staff trip to another resort - quite a bargain) and chill out at Panorama. I did a few runs, trying out a smaller board that Becky donated to me, and decided to call it a day early on. I ran into Leigh and Ben and we hit the park for the last run of the day. It turned out to be a bad call, as I had a massive bail (caught on camera too) off one of the jumps. Nothing broken, but I got a bit of whiplash and a few bruises.

I'll try to upload that video and some new photos this weekend... if I get the time. It's going to be the busiest period for the resort since Christmas, so it should be a hectic few days in a new position. Talk about trial by fire.

Worn out blues

It's been another full-on week. I had two days boarding at other resorts (Fernie and Kicking Horse), two days of pretty long days at work, and another two days at work when it was fairly quiet. The other day was spent at an interview and in town. The interview went pretty well although I won't find out who they decide will get the position until next week. I hitched a ride to town (I love how easy it is to get a ride down to Invermere) and spent about 60 bucks on groceries, mostly consisting of various meats that will hopefully last me for the next few weeks.

The trip to Fernie was pretty good despite the icy conditions. I spent most of the day doing groomers and had a few runs at the terrain park too. I can definitely see how the resort would be great on a powder day. Kicking Horse had some pretty epic terrain too. The visibility was pretty bad but that was because it was snowing all day, which made for some pretty sweet riding. The only really bad thing that happened that day was Denise having a huge crash. She got a concussion and was taken to the hospital as a precaution. Fortunately, it wasn't anything major.

I have the next three days off, two of which will be more staff trips. Tomorrow shall be a return to Fernie, where it has been snowing on and off for the past week, and on Thursday, I'll finally go back to Lake Louise where it probably won't be as good as it was the first time I went, but hopefully it won't be icy either.

The vibe around the staff housing has been getting a bit weird lately. There have been a lot of parties but they have mostly been for people leaving, so it's kind of a bittersweet feeling. A lot of the people are going back to Aus or NZ because of uni or because they simply want to get on with their regular life. It's strange to see people leaving so early when it's only just halfway through the season.

Going to California

Plans for my post-season travels have been uncertain due to the many options that I've had to choose from... until now.

Earlier in the evening, Ben, John, Kelly, and Leigh were making plans to see Tool in San Diego at around mid-March. I was tempted to go but wasn't sure because of the total cost of that trip, which would have had to have factored in return travel (bus to Calgary then plane from there), concert tickets, and accommodation. I then decided to research other bands who were on tour, and found out that Arcade Fire were doing a few dates to promote their upcoming album, Neon Bible.

The tour date that caught my eye was their appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Coachella have had pretty solid lineups in past years, including some of my favourite bands. I decided to investigate further, and to my amazement, I read through one of the best festival lineups I have ever seen. I had no other choice but to throw caution to the wind and commit to going to this event. The 3-day pass and camping fee alone is around $400 [side-note: I speak in Canadian dollars because that's what is most familiar to me right now] but the 3 headlining acts (Björk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Rage Against The Machine) themselves makes it worth the cover charge.

I guess the loose plan right now will be to visit some relatives in LA and take a 4-day side-trip to Coachella. There's about 6 of us that are going so far. I think most of those people are taking a week-long trip to Mexico right after the season ends, but I don't know if I'll join in on that. It'd probably be a good idea to save some money after that $400 splurge, especially if I want to see a specialist about this rib problem. I'll definitely need to start dipping into the Australian bank account some time soon.

Curling is a dangerous sport (and other winter adventures)

On Sunday, some people from housekeeping and guest services, along with a few others from a variety of departments, went to Invermere for some curling. Curling is one of those sports that you wouldn't think would be very interesting but, upon closer inspection, is quite a neat little game. I would equate it to lawn bowls, with the obvious differences of the lawn being sheets of ice, the balls being stones, and the people sweeping to help the stones along.

Anyway, during a few practice games, I got a bit too enthusiastic about sweeping the ice, and slipped over, falling on the stick, with the stick hitting me square on the ribs. It's been hurting ever since, and was probably not helped by the fact that I took on some more physical activities this week.

On Monday, we had the weekly broomball game where, quite spectacularly, we lost 1-0. Drama was added to the game late in the first half as I scored a goal that was soon disallowed because the ref couldn't see the goal too well (which I thought was a bunch of crap). I was pretty angry for the rest of the game, especially after the other team scored. By the end of the night, the pain in the ribs was intense.

I wasn't going to do anything on Tuesday, but ended up going out to buy some new bindings for my board and tested them out for a few runs. A couple of weeks ago, I had a huge crash on a run rife with moguls. I flipped over a few times and ended up landing on my board. The front strap of the back binding (probably the weakest part of the bindings) ended up snapping, and I had to ride down to the bottom with one dodgey binding. It wasn't really too bad because it was the front strap, and I guess it was bound to happen eventually, seeing as I got those bindings about 6 years ago. Anyway, the new bindings ('06 Burton Cartel) feel so much better than the old relics that I used to ride with (Burton Custom from ages ago).

I wasn't going to do anything on Wednesday, but again I strayed from my plans and went ice skating on Lake Windermere. Cara, my supervisor, knew somewhere to borrow some skates for free, and it was free to skate on the lake, so this helped my current financial situation. Oh, and it was lots of fun to go ice skating again, and with a bunch of friends too. The only downside was that the ice was a bit uneven. That, and I was quite tired by the end of it. Read as: ribs hurt like hell.

They were very sore again today after a few hours of Nordic skiing (aka cross-country skiing). A few of us that went ice skating yesterday decided to give Nordic skiing a try, and we went on a couple of the easy trails, which weren't all that easy due to a few big dips. There were several spills but nobody was seriously hurt and the general consensus was that it'd be great to go again some time.

One of the many great views witnessed while Nordic skiing

Today is also the end of my 3-day weekend, and I now have 3 days straight (possibly more, depending on next week's roster) of work. Fun times. I applied for a different position within the department that has slightly better pay and a bit more consistent hours, so I hope I get that. Otherwise, I'll probably be applying for a transfer to a different department as soon as the 3-month probation period is over (around the start of March) because my current position just isn't getting me as much money as I would like.

$1.86

That's how much I owe the company after rent was taken out of my last pay. It could have been a lot worse, I guess. It's still a bit annoying though.

Earlier in the week there was a staff trip to Kimberley, another nearby resort. We were lucky enough to catch it on a powder day. Unfortunately, I had, in the previous day, accidentally left my board and gear at the office. Consequently, I was riding with Jacky's board and boots all day, which felt a bit weird.

Yesterday saw a massive party at Paradise as the Aussies (and a few non-Aussies too) listened to the Triple J Hottest 100. It was a grand time, matched only by the BBQ today, followed by beers at the summit. As the new batch of photos will reveal, we hoisted the Australian flag up at the summit and generally had a ball.

That's it for now. I'm about to go to an Australia Day party at the Crazy Horse. Hopefully it'll be good, though I won't drink a great deal due to aforementioned money issues and work tomorrow.

Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent

Well, after (somewhat) recovering from that illness that I had last week, I found myself in the unfortunate position of having 3 out of my 4 days at work with very little to do. I didn't work a great deal of hours, and I'm unsure on whether or not I'll make enough to cover rent.

One of the better things to come out of this week is my new guitar. It's a 1/2 size acoustic guitar that I got from eBay for about 40 bucks, and it's great to finally be able to play some songs in my spare time.

Dave called me the other night to catch up a bit. I was half asleep when the phone rang but couldn't sleep after the call after finding out that a good mate's sister had recently passed away. It's that kind of news that you don't want to hear, especially when you're overseas. You feel so helpless when all you can do is make a phone call and see how they're going.

New photos!

Yay.

The Internet is still as slow as ever in our building, but thankfully, it's working perfectly in our sister building, Paradise (FYI, our building is called Monument), so I've taken the liberty of uploading some photos with their connection. As always, they can be found at this location. Here's one I prepared earlier...

You're probably wondering one of two things right about now: 1) What the hell is he wearing? and; 2) What the hell is that thing next to him?

First, let's go into the story of the suit. I bought this suit waaaay back at the start of the season. It was the week leading up to the '80s theme party, and I desperately wanted to find some really cheesy '80s style fluro ski suit. Out of sheer luck, I found a proper heli-skiing one-piece suit at just about my size at the children's consignment store for a very reasonable $25. I picked it up without hesitation and was quite pleased when I found out it was actually quite a warm and waterproof outfit. In fact, it's a bit warmer than the ski jacket that I brought with me. It's also good for riding in powder because you don't get any snow down your pants (because it's a one-piece). I've been wearing it more than my normal ski gear due to the amount of powder we've been getting.

Now the deal with the wolf in the Santa suit is a bit more straightforward. This was on Christmas Eve when I went riding for a bit in the morning then headed down to the village to chill out for a bit. I found out that Santa was going to be around, and ran into this mascot walking about. I just had to get a photo with it. It turned out there was an actual human Santa as well, but that wasn't nearly as fun as the costumed wolf Santa.

I called in sick again today. I worked yesterday but didn't feel the greatest and couldn't really get a lot done, so when I woke up today, feeling a bit better but still not the best, I decided not to risk overexerting myself for another day and just took the day off. I'm hoping I'll recover over the weekend. I guess I'll just have to pay for rent out of my pocket for the next pay period. The good news is that I got about $360 today (pay day), so I have a tad bit of wiggle room for the next bunch of weeks, as long as I don't splurge too much.

Crazy days and lazy days

It's been more than 2 weeks since my last post, which is probably due to the craziness of the past few weeks. Work has been really busy, and in between work were New Year's celebrations. My first day off for the week was Saturday, and I spent that snowboarding and generally being lazy.

Work has been okay lately. It's been really busy, and I've been really slow, but I'm told it's better to be slow and get everything done than cutting corners to be quick. It's not earning me a lot of dollars, but it's not too bad. Still, I wouldn't mind getting a different position.

Snowboarding-wise, I haven't really gone too often lately, mainly because the resort has been pretty busy, and it's not really worth it to go out a lot unless it's a powder day. I've been trying to cover much of the resort's runs so that I could claim I've done all of the runs by the end of the season. It's looking pretty good so far, but there's still a fair bit to go.

My other mission is to visit as many other resorts as possible. That started on Tuesday, when I went on the staff trip to Lake Louise. The trip wasn't as great as I would have hoped, mainly due to the fact that I've been feeling pretty sick lately. I had almost no energy during the trip and only managed to go up 3 times before giving up. On the plus side, I did have some incredibly tasty (albeit incredibly pricey) prime rib burger.

At the end of the day I had worked up quite a fever and ended up calling in sick today, although half of the reason why I called in sick was because of a temporary limp I had acquired from playing in the staff broomball league. Broomball is a game that is pretty much a bastard child of field hockey, ice hockey, and football (aka soccer). It is played, oddly enough, with brooms and a ball. Similar to ice hockey, you can bat the ball down with you hand, but only the goalie is allowed to grab the ball. Like football, you can kick the ball, but you can only score by using the broom.

Anyway, a teammate and I, and a player from the other side, were all going for the ball. My teammate accidentally hit me square in the calf, and it's literally been a pain to walk ever since. I still have a bit of a limp, but I'll probably go to work tomorrow since I only have 2 working days left (requested the Lake Louise day off and had today off sick), and I want to make rent for the next pay period.

Despite the minor misfortunes of late, it had just recently hit me that I am living in a beautiful and friendly mountain village where I get to snowboard often and am surrounded by great people. Life is good.

Photos may be delayed for a bit longer, since the Internet connection seems to be moving along at a snail's pace lately. It really sucks not having admin or physical access to the router to be able to mess around with settings and whatnot. I'm just mooching off the other staff building's net connection at the moment.

Oh yeah, I hope everybody had a great Christmas holiday period and a safe New Year.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

The double black Christmas thing didn't exactly go to plan, but the good thing was that it was a powder day (15cm new snow) and we got some pretty damn good runs down.

Last night was a massive Christmas celebration at the apartment building. Many people brought down food and everybody had a massive feast. After dinner, gifts were given out as part of a Secret Santa thing that almost the entire building was part of. Anj dressed up as Santa and gave away gifts from everybody to everybody. I got season 2 of Alf on DVD, which was pretty sweet.

I didn't have too much to drink because our beer supply ran out, which turned out to be a good thing because when I woke up on Christmas morning, Santa had given the second best present I could hope for (next to Alf, naturally) - powder. I turned on the TV when I woke up and lo and behold, there was 15cm of fresh powder to be ridden. It was my first ever white Christmas, and the entire day of riding was just incredible, despite a few times when I got a bit buried in powder.

The day was actually full of incidents. Leigh took out a tree (and didn't damage his board), Ben did a few flips due to a crash, and John and I fell into a crevasse in the middle of a run. We ended up calling it a day at about 2:30 in the afternoon because we were all pretty damn tired.

We came home to find the common room completely covered in food scraps. It was nasty. Apparently there was a food fight last night after I had gone to sleep. Hopefully tonight will be another good night, as I have 4 straight days of work to look forward to, and at least two of those are predicted to be powder days.

Photos will be up as soon as I can be bothered to upload them.

I'm dreaming of a double black Christmas

There's a plan going around that involves doing as much of Taynton Bowl as possible on Christmas Day. Taynton Bowl is an expert area of the mountain filled with powdery (or one would hope) double black diamond runs. Interesting times should be had.

On a slightly tangential note, I did my first ever double black run the other day. I took on Elmo at the Extreme Dream Zone (another double black area). Apart from the time when my board hit an exposed tree stump and received some big scratches, it was a pretty good experience (and at the same time told me that I need to improve on those kind of runs).

The view from the summit

Apart from one or two riding days, the week involved mostly work and a whole lot of not much else. The most interesting point was when the lifties were out for a quiet drink, which eventually turned into 4 guys buying large rounds of Jager Bombs for everybody (I think it cost them $122 Canadian each for those rounds). Good times.

Anyway, as this is probably my last post before Christmas (Canadian time), I would like to wish everybody a happy and safe holidays.

Christmas tree!

View of a thousand peaks

Today, we took the run aptly named 'View of 1000 Peaks'. It was quite a beautiful view, though not as breathtaking as the one I witnessed in Innsbruck. Nothing beats the Austrian alps. The run it linked up with was filled with moguls and took us some time to get through. It wasn't a whole lot of fun, but it did improve my skills on those kind of runs.

Last night was jam night again. It was a great celebration of Andy's birthday. He got well drunk, as did a lot of other people. I stayed fairly sober so that I could get up and sing again (and not screw up). I sang Everlong (with somebody else on guitars), and it was fairly well-received. The whole getting up on stage thing is something I could get used to. I believe the next jam night is on New Year's Day, so I have a couple of weeks to practice something new.

Embrace the sun

The Sun Bowl opened up yesterday. The Sun Bowl is a massive area (a bowl to be specific) in Panorama that's not too steep and can get some insane powder. Alas, I was too busy either teaching Kelly how to ride, or going to Invermere to do some shopping, so I missed out on first tracks there.

The sun was shining brilliantly yesterday

Fortunately, it was still good today, and I had an awesome time riding some pretty sweet powder. The groomed runs were also quite good and I got some huge speed down a few of them. I think today was actually my first full day of boarding since I got here. Good to know I can last a day of hard work. The worst part of the day is a toss-up between when I left my lift pass at the apartment in the morning (and had to walk back and get it) or when I crashed on a traverse (after trying to come back from the powder on the side) and landed on my back, smacking me squarely on the back of the head (I feel fine now, though). Methinks I should invest in a helmet. And some warmer gloves, my hands were freezing today.

A few freshies

Last night was the pirate theme weekend party. A lot of creative costumes were spotted. Gordon (aka Nugget - Sydney-sider) was all decked out in pirate gear (see below), but I think he was topped by the guys (whose names I can't remember right now) who showed up in a cardboard pirate ship. At the party I saw Pete, who runs the jam nights, and he said I should get up again tomorrow night. We'll see.

Swashbuckling Nugget

Powder keg

Today, I woke up early to catch the first lifts up to the summit of the mountain. It was knee-deep powder up there, after a 25cm dump in the past 24 hours. It's pretty crazy that the base at the summit is already at 110cm after only one open week. It was without a doubt the biggest powder I've ever ridden in.

Last night was the staff Christmas party, and it wasn't as wild as it could have been. The good thing was that the food was free (nice and tasty turkey and ham) and you got two free drinks. There was also a prize draw. A beginner (Nat) won a heli-skiing adventure day, and a skier won a snowboard. It was pretty amusing.

Photographic goodness

All the (decent) photos from the trip so far can be found here.

Panorama

That's right, folks... I'm still alive.

The following post covers the past Internetless week or so.

I write this as we make our way to Panorama via the company bus. It's been pretty cool driving through Banff National Park, though we didn't go past Lake Louise. I'll have to check it out some other time in the future.

Yesterday, I had a leisurely stroll over to the comic book store as it was no longer really really cold. It was a nice and comfortable -4 or so. I grabbed Scott Pilgrim vol. 2. It was a shame that they didn't have vol. 3 in because there was a sale for manga and digest-sized graphic novels - buy one, get the second at 25% off.

I took a side-trip over to the mall to get a SIM card for my phone. It must be noted that the prices for mobiles here are crazy. Not so much the price of the actual phone but rather the charges for calls. Here you get charged for airtime, so even receiving calls gets billed. You also have to pay for 'extras' that are stock standard for most networks in Australia, such as text messaging, voice messaging, caller ID, etc. In summary, Australia's awesomeness should not be taken for granted.

Anyway, after that whole phone stuff, I headed back to the hostel and waited for Leigh and Ben to arrive. We hung around a bit then went to the store to buy my snowboard boots. I ended up going with the Burton Hail. Not cheap, but incredibly comfortable, and having comfy boots is one of the most important things when snowboarding.

The train station

After dinner, a fair portion of the people from the hostel went to Cowboy's, where they have 25c beers on Thursday nights. Needless to say, it was packed. Everybody got pretty damn drunk and woke up this morning feeling horrible. Regardless, all the Panorama folk were ready for the bus, which left just about on time.

No net access makes Adrian something something...

On the way to Panorama, the bus driver noticed that the staff bus had been stranded on the side of the road. He dropped us off at central check-in and headed back to pick up the staff, leaving everybody without their luggage for about half an hour. When we finally got to our apartment, everybody was very hungry.

A nice view on the way to Panorama

After a short talk from the staff, mostly everybody headed over to the Crazy Horse for some meals and drinks. Myself, Leigh, and Anj (Melbournian) stayed to play pool and have drinks while the others left. I ended up drinking far too much and felt rather hungover this morning. Leigh and I still somehow managed to give our boards a wax in the early hours of the morning after getting back, which wasn't really too useful since it wasn't a low temperature wax and sucked in these conditions.

Ben, Christel (Canberran), John and Kelly (Kiwis) bought some food supplies for us in Invermere while we slept, so there was finally something to eat around the house. We had a quick feed then headed to the lifts because it was staff skiing day. I finally got to try out my new gear. Pretty damn good. The boots are amazingly comfy.

I had two runs down before they stopped letting staff through (since the hill is primarily used for ski racing training), of which one involved a rather spectacular crash, leaving a big scratch on my chin and a lot of snow in my clothes. Regardless, it was fun to be on the snow again. Afterwards, Christel, Jackie (I actually can't recall where she's from at the moment), and I went to get our staff passes.

On the way back to the apartment, we took a different route, and fearing that we'd get lost, Christel and Jackie backtracked to the way they knew. I kept going knowing that I would eventually find the way home, and quite confident that I wouldn't get lost. I did. I took one wrong turn and ended up at central check-in. I still got home before Christel and Jackie though.

By the way, we have discovered that the free Internet in our rooms does not work as of yet, so this post may end up being pretty large. It's really a bit annoying, but hopefully we'll be in business soon enough.

Tonight is apparently a massive staff party at the Crazy Horse, so it should be pretty fun. I hope the guys get back from town soon because I don't wanna be heading over there by myself.

The good times are killing me

Dinner was great. Ben's a cook, so that's always nice to have in an apartment. About 8 of us from the same floor surrounded the insufficiently-sized bench top for a pasta feed. The staff housing, by the way, is set up rather nicely. It's pretty small but certainly spacious enough. My only gripe is that there is virtually no soundproofing, so you can hear the smallest things.

My room

After dinner, a big group of people from the apartment headed over to the Crazy Horse for the big staff party. There were drinks all around, a cover band (who played some songs badly and some songs pretty well), and lots of mingling. I met a lot of people, most of whose names I have already forgotten. I'm really bad with that kind of thing. It was a lot of fun though.

I was not planning on having a big night because it would have been my third in a row, and I have orientation in the morning. Alas, as the story usually goes, I had a pretty big one. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as the past two nights. My throat still hurts like hell (probably from singing along to Everlong when the band played it), but I can remember most of the night, which is a good sign.

Toby Creek

I'm hoping that orientation doesn't take too long. I need a bit of a rest, and I'd like to get some shopping done down in town (the colloquial term for Invermere). The apartment is in dire need of rice, a rice cooker, soy sauce, and a wok. A little meat would go a long way too. Sadly, I hear that meat here costs a lot, so I might not buy as much as I would hope to get. Still, I do need to use up all that bihon (noodles) that I bought back in Calgary. In hindsight, it seems like it may have been a bad idea to buy so much of it.

The Sunday roast

Half the new people had staff orientation the day after the big party. Most were feeling under the weather during the speeches, but it was a pretty interesting day. It pretty much introduced people to the company and their values, and told us what kind of benefits we'd be getting. After orientation, I headed home and decided I'd have an easy night so I can be fresh for my first day.

The view outside my room

The 2nd floor community decided to roast a turkey, which turned out rather tasty, despite not having any gravy. During the roasting period, the fire alarm went off no less than five times, which led us to believe that it is a rather sensitive alarm. I called it a night early but couldn't find a good run of sleep and woke up for my first day pretty tired.

Work was pretty interesting. We were introduced to the department, how they operate, and were shown around the resort so that we would all know the different buildings. At the end of the day, I pretty much had the layout of the resort down pat.

Last night was fun. We had roast leftovers for dinner, and headed out for John's birthday. We first hit the Jack Pine Pub and soon moved over to the Crazy Horse. Some people left pretty early because they were starting work today, but a few stayed. Fortunately for me, I was one of them, because some random guy was buying rounds of Jager Bombs for everybody. I hear it ended up costing him more than 700 dollars. Ouch.

After the pub, Ian and Gary (Poms), and Kelly and I started to head home. However, I had the grand idea to start throwing snow at people, and it escalated into a snow fight of epic proportions. We all ended up very white from snow and I had a bruised knee. Kelly and I took a short pit stop at the place where the Brits were staying, then headed back to the apartment.

Today, I woke up early and went to Invermere with Vi and Alex (Melbournians) to do some shopping. I ended up getting some useful stuff like soy sauce and a deep frying pan to use as a makeshift wok (since I couldn't find any woks around town). I also bought my costume for the opening week theme, which is The '80s. I got a pink headwarmer and a one-piece ski jumpsuit. Looks very old school.

After grabbing groceries, Vi and Alex realised that they had bought too much. As a result, we ended up having to ring up Mallory (a local) to bring some of the things up for us while we hitchhike up the mountain (which is pretty safe at this time of year because it's only employees that are heading up to Panorama). Becky (another local) drove around and got our stuff then we headed up to the hitchhike point. A nice local named Catrien picked us up in her Golf and we got home before too long.

When I got home I got the Internet working for a brief moment, but it seems to keep dropping out, which is pretty annoying. I really hope they fix that soon.

All the dirty work

When I signed up to be a room attendant, I thought it would be rather cruisy. Not so, it seems. The first few days at work have been pretty hard, and I'm hoping I will soon get the knack of cleaning rooms. Apart from that, it's been pretty much all party. The village has this great atmosphere where everybody has a lot of fun, and I'm glad to be part of it.

This weekend is opening weekend so it's starting to get a lot more lively, with all the people from out of town coming up for the snow. The '80s fashion showoff was really fun. John (from next door) won with his incredible skin-tight fluro purple ski outfit.

That outfit

The net is still not working, which is annoying the hell out of me, but not enough to make my time here a bad one.

Tonight should be a massive party over at Chopper's Landing, carrying on the '80s theme. I'm a bit tired after work and a bit of riding, but I'll tought it out. I got out of work early today, so I decided to hit the slope for a run or two, but the visibility was horrible, so I decided to give up after one run.

Opening weekend

Apparently it was the best opening weekend Panorama has seen in several years. The base was pretty good, but not all the runs were open. That said, for an opening weekend the conditions were pretty damn good. It's about what Thredbo can produce at its peak on the average 'good' season.

Enough about the snow though, and more about the partying. The '80s night at Chopper's Landing was pretty wild. We first hit the Crazy Horse before the big party started. It was pretty busy there already. A few of us hitched a very short ride over to Chopper's landing with a guy more than willing to show us a good set of icy doughnuts in the parking lot. That was a lot of fun. There was an '80s cover band at Chopper's pumping out a lot of tunes, and a lot of people were enjoying themselves despite the slow service on the alcohol.

The day after was not spent recovering, but rather, it was spent snowboarding. I went up 2 lifts and did some pretty steep runs. I started to get my groove back but was also getting rather tired, so I didn't ending up going again too many times. At the end of the day, I was feeling sore, and ended up sleeping at about 8:30.

Nothing like a good view heading up the slopes

The next day at work was pretty relaxed, and it was a good lead-up to the first jam night of the season, which are held every Monday night. I did a fair bit of pre-drinking, and got on stage rather drunkenly. My attempt at singing Good Riddance was impaired by several breaks when I either forgot the lyrics or chords, or both. It was, however, not such a bad experience considering it was my first time on stage in front of a live audience. A lot of the other (also drunken) people were very supportive, so that was cool.

The Internet has finally started to work today, so I'm very happy about that. Apologies for the ultra-long post.

Getting warmer...

Today it was only about -15 and -25 after wind chill. You could feel the difference too. Last night I froze my butt off taking photos at Canada Olympic Park. Didn't even really get a lot of photos taken. It was a nice field trip overall. Manny (my mum's friend's cousin) took me around to the COP and the center (whose name escapes me at this present moment) where people trained for the Winter Olympics. Saw a friendly ice hockey game and some speed skaters training. Love the speed skating. I wanna try it out despite the risk of injury. We also had some Wendy's for dinner. I had the triple burger. It was heart attackingly awesome.

I didn't really get much sleep last night. I attribute it to some minor jet lag and some major snoring in the room. Regardless, I was awake with more than enough time to spare to make my banking appointment. I opened up the bank account without much dramas, and had a bit of a stroll around the block in the nice and warm weather. It was still fairly cold though, so I didn't stay out for too long. I couldn't find any bookstores that stocked Scott Pilgrim, so that was a bit of a bummer. Hopefully I'll get off my lazy ass and check out the comic book store tomorrow when it's even warmer. I think it's meant to be around -4.

Anyway, tonight was fairly eventless. Aggie (my mum's friend) picked me up from the hostel at around 7:45 and we went shopping. I got some food supplies for Panorama and some Reese's. Gotta love peanut butter with chocolate. It confuddles me how Australia gastronomists have not made this simple yet extraordinary correlation between peanut butter, chocolate, and awesome. Anyway, this is the one sweet I love to get anytime I'm in North America, with the possible exception of Mr. Goodbar, but I haven't been able to find that here yet.

When I got back to the hostel, I had a beer with a couple of the guys in my dorm room. Cool Canadian guys here for work. It seems that Calgary has massive demand for jobs and yet an incredible shortage on accommodation. As a result, you see lots of Canadians around in the hostel, and you see a lot of homeless people on the street. Apparently around half the homeless people in Calgary have jobs. Very strange. The guys also tell me of this bar downtown where draft beer is 25c. We're gonna hit it tomorrow night. I'll be drunk before I spend a dollar!

Snowboards and souvlaki

Today, as the previous post touches upon, was rather cold. As a result, I stayed in for most of the day. I did, however, get some money changed, and also do a bit of shopping when I met up with my mum's friend who had access to a car (very useful for this weather). I found the boot I wanted but I didn't buy it straight away because it was at RRP (and quite an expensive RRP at that). The board was another matter. I found a fairly good one at around my size for around CAD 200 after tax, so I decided that was too good to pass up.

Afterwards, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We settled on Opa!, a Greek fast food joint whereupon I discovered quite possibly the best lamb souvlaki ever. It was so good I had to have another. Now my breath stinks like onion. I want more.

The wind chill factor

It's now -25 degrees, but feels like -39 due to the crazy wind chill. I kid you not.

Calgary

I'm sitting here at Honolulu airport, waiting for my flight to board after a brief stopover in Hawaii, a bit annoyed at myself that I didn't bring more things to keep me entertained on the flight. Most of it was spent listening to music and podcasts.

Some random cliff notes on the trip so far...

• Air Canada: Small plane, good leg room, poor entertainment options, standard food.
• Molson Canadian Premium Lager: For a premium brew, it lacks taste, but not too bad overall.
• Scott Pilgrim: Rating: Awesome. You should all get it, lest ye die horrible deaths. I must get more volumes.
• Transiting through the USA: Annoying but painless. The hassle kind of makes me want to avoid going through this way to another country again.
• Unsecured wireless networks in Honolulu airport: None that you don't have to pay for. Lame.

(about half a day and lots of stress later)

Delay-o-rama

Ok, so things didn't quite go to schedule today. It all started when the flight from Sydney left about half an hour later than it was scheduled to. This meant that it arrived somewhat late in Honolulu. The Honolulu flight would have left in time, were it not for two of the passengers being held up at US immigration. So anyway, the flight left late and thus arrived late in Vancouver. This was made worse by the fact that Vancouver was hit with a snowstorm the day before, so it took about 10 minutes to taxi to the terminal.

At this point, I was completely stressing out because I needed to get my working holiday visa from immigration then transfer my bags over to the domestic carousel. I then had to run all the way to the domestic terminal, where it seemed many people were late for their flights. Flights ended up being delayed anyway, due to the snow cover on the tarmac. Our flight was held up about an hour and 45 minutes while runway was being cleared. Understandably, some people on the flight were annoyed that weren't going to be able to make it to wherever by whenever.

So anyway, we finally arrived in Calgary, and it was -20 degrees Celsius. And that's the high for the day. But more on that later, because the delays don't end there. It took a long while to get the baggage from our flight into the carousel in Calgary Airport. They kept changing the carrousel number in which it was supposedly coming out of. With that all done, and me all drained, it was time to make my way to the hostel. Thankfully the airport shuttle people were helpful with my airport transfer to the HI Calgary, where I'll be staying for the next 5 days. But guess what? The shuttle... delayed!

The cold open

I eventually got to the warmth of the hostel, where I promptly embraced the glow of the information superhighway. I then had to get food. In the negative 20s. It was a horrible walk, consisting of two false starts when I got lost and didn't have money, respectively, and finally reaching the only open restaurant in many many blocks - the world-renowned golden arches. The receptionist at the hostel gave me a 2-for-1 Big Mac voucher, so I used that.

It was about as terrible as it is anywhere else in the world, but I forced myself to ignore this fact as I was both incredibly hungry and quite poor, Canadian dollar-wise. I didn't exchange any American dollars at the airport because they were exchanging for 1.05 Canadian dollars for every American, plus a $3 processing fee, where it should be getting at least 1.10. Anyway, the airport didn't have them, and Sunday seemed to be very dead, business-wise, so I was stuck with my CAD 9.36, of which 1 I gave to the nice shuttle bus driver as a tip (as I gotta start getting used to tipping when required).

On the way back from McDonald's, I discovered the wonders of free public transport. I didn't feel like walking the long walk home in the cold snow (which, by the way, hurt my face) so I took the free tram that ran on the avenue that my hostel was situated. It didn't stop right in front but it's still pretty damn useful nonetheless. I have a feeling I'll be using it whenever I decide to step outside into the ridiculous cold snap (which apparently stops on Thursday, where it's back to a warm -2). The way things are going, I'll probably try to stay inside except for when I eat, get money exchanged, or buy snowboard-related goods.

Anyway, that was a pretty long post and it's been a pretty long day. I sneaked in about an hour or two of sleep during the past 24+ hours, so I'll go and quietly retire into my top bunk hostel bed to prepare myself for another day of adventures.

Next year

I'm scared as hell. Not a lot of people seem to consider that. When I tell people that I'm going overseas for a year and going (mostly) by myself, they usually reply by saying that I must be brave to do that. That's not really the case. Only a few people realize that not only am I excited about going, but I'm also pretty damn nervous. This is the longest time I'll be away from home, and the first time that I'll be traveling alone outside of the country, so it's only natural that I'm at least a little scared. Don't get me wrong though, I'm very much looking forward to the challenge and the experience.

Anyway, I think I shall designate this as the first official post of the Canadian edition of this blog. I know I'm not in Canada yet, but this is my last post before I leave for my great adventure, and I'm not 100% sure that I'll get to be on the net any time soon. The hostel I'm staying at is meant to have free Wi-Fi, but you never really know. I leave tomorrow (Sunday) morning and arrive in Canada about 2 hours later... if you ignore time zone difference. The travel time actually adds up to about 20 hours, so I hope I get some sleep on the flight, or at least get to watch some movies. I had a look at the list of movies showing this month, and it's not looking too great. I've either seen them, or they're not very good, or both.

This entire week has been pretty intense. It kicked off last Saturday when I had a going away party at Steve and James' place. It also happened to be Nick N's birthday party. A good time was had by all. The people at pub trivia saw me off on the Tuesday. We didn't win, but it was as fun as always. Thursday was probably the biggest night. I had a farewell dinner with about 13 other people at the Belgian Beer Cafe. Great food and drink. I ended up rather hung over yesterday morning.

Throughout all of this, I've been scrambling around, trying to get my computer files in order, and also double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking things that I need to bring to Canada. I'm actually writing this as I take a break from the crazy last-minute thing that inevitably happens before a big trip. I just know I'll still be at it tomorrow as I watch Australia beat up on England some more on the cricket. This final day shall be interesting indeed.

New layout

I decided to change the layout of the blog. This is mainly due to the fact that I was feeling creative at the time. Due to my rusty web design skills, I didn't try to make it too complicated. Basically, I just switched templates and messed around with the header. You may notice that it already says "Canadian edition". The reason for this is that I am too lazy to come up with 2 new header images, so I decided to just upload the Canadian one in advance. If you think it looks like a load of crap, let me know.

Adrian's thought of the day, vol. 2

Why do people use the term 'meteoric rise'? Meteors fall. Do these people come from some bizarro planet where the laws of physics do not apply, and meteors do in fact rise? Perhaps the term would apply to a rise so abysmal that only a falling object can be used to describe it.

Think about it.

Play that funky music

Last week, I took a little trip to the north-western suburbs of Sydney to record a few vocals for Morgan's band, River of Bass. If you have never heard of them (which is more than likely), they're an electronica duo, and they do really good stuff. Anyway, it was a pretty cool day. It was the first time I had ever recorded stuff with proper equipment, and it gave me a lot of insight on how songs (especially electronica songs with vocals) are constructed. The album that I did vocals for, called Accidents Mistakes Happenstance Fate is coming along really well. I'm very much looking forward to the final product.

Last night, I went to see Pearl Jam. It was an incredible night. They played lots of their old stuff, with the majority of the songs they played coming from their first three albums (Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy). They didn't even play any songs from No Code or Riot Act, and only a single song from Binaural, which is my favourite album, so that was kind of a shame. That didn't take away from the quality of the show though. They started off with Release, which got everybody immediately pumped up. They didn't relent, as they followed that up with Rearviewmirror. Overall, the gig was all about the old school, and I suspect that tonight's show might be more skewed towards their later songs.

Apparently Pearl Jam weren't entertaining enough though, as a few of the people sitting next to me decided to leave at the first encore break. It was their loss, as they missed an amazing sequence of songs that lead to the end of the show, including Black, a perennial fan favourite. The boys eventually finished off with a Neil Young song, Keep on Rockin' in the Free World. It was a fittingly rocking ending to a very rocking show.

Sadly enough, I'm not going to tonight's show, or their third and final Sydney show in a week and a half, as I am saving up money for my trip. Last night was probably my last concert of the year, though I'm hoping to catch some bands over in the USA and Canada, especially those that never tour here.

The final countdown

*cue Europe song of the same title*

Right now it's about 31 days, 8 hours, and 30 minutes away until I leave for Canada. I've even got a Yahoo! Widget telling me how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds I have left until I go on my merry way. If you rewind half a year, I don't think I was even seriously considering this, and now I'm barely over a month away from setting off on a year-long adventure.

Now that I've left work, I have a feeling time's just going to fly past in this next month and before I know it I'll be on that plane, enjoying the free beer and watching movies in 4:3. Leaving work felt good. It feels good to know that I have some time to relax for once, to know that, as much as I loved the people I worked with, I don't have to go back to working there. My last day was pretty interesting - they put me in a department where I hadn't worked before. This effectively meant that on my last day, it felt like my first day. But that's all done and dusted now, and it's time for some celebrations.

However, I couldn't really celebrate my resignation in typical Adrian fashion (that is, by having a few cold ones) because I'm currently on antibiotics that, from what I've been told and have researched on the internet, react quite badly with alcohol. This is a direct result of the fact that my dental health regime sucked during high school and university, and now I'm paying for it with bad gums. So, the dentist (who had quite an attractive assistant, but I digress) prescribed me some antibiotics to reduce the inflammation of my gums. They've worked pretty well so far, but I think all those years have really screwed the gums up and it's going to take some time to 'fix'.

Anyway, the celebrations will probably commence in about three weeks with a couple of events - a farewell party with my friends from Wollongong, and a farewell dinner with my friends from Sydney. The latter is taking place mainly for the fact that the venue - the Belgian Beer Cafe - has some incredible beer.

Also ahead in about three weeks is my final night of trivia at the local pub. That trivia night might also be the next time I'll actually have a chance to go, since my team is going to be AWOL for the next few weeks. One of them had a heart attack, and I sincerely hope he gets better. Another has a few busy Tuesdays coming up. Couple that with the fact that it's Melbourne Cup Day in two Tuesdays (which is, incidentally, when I'll be in Sydney seeing Pearl Jam anyway) and it's looking like I have just one trivia night left. I'm going to miss it. It's a lot of fun with some nice locals.

Exits and endings

Today marked a milestone in my life. It is the first time that I handed in a resignation letter (FYI, I finish in two weeks). Not to say that I have been fired from my previous positions... it's just that this job is the first in which my contract was not for a limited period. Perhaps coincidentally, I also found out that about a week ago, a former co-worker of mine, who had been ill for quite some time, had passed away. It was pretty sad to hear that, especially since, judging from the times we talked, she was not a bad person. That's life I guess. Though I did not know her too well, tonight I shall have a drink in her honour.

Obligatory filler post

I've noted more than a few times that I haven't made a single entry for a couple of weeks. Thus, I shall ramble on for the next paragraph or two about semi-exciting developments.

It's been an interesting week, actually. I was feeling a bit down on Tuesday for reasons unknown, and then was up again as my 4-day weekend started after work on Wednesday. I made my way to Sydney on Thursday for Morgan's birthday dinner and drinks at the Belgian Beer Cafe, shortly followed by more drinks at nearby Jackson's. It was (relatively) a pretty quiet night for me, as I was going to be backing up on Friday for another full day, where I would meet up with Matt for some time geeking out at the comic store, then meet up with Dave and Josh to head over to the Swans game (Swans won, hooray for Sydney).

Somewhere in all that mess, I also managed to finally get my hands on The Illogical Consequence by Planet Funk, which is probably the most expensive album I have ever bought, on account of it being insanely and unreasonably lacking in availability (you have to import from Italy!). I also got an email from Amazon UK that my copy of I Choose Noise by Hybrid had shipped after experiencing a delay. I've heard the album and I can't wait to have the actual CD, although it's a bit annoying that I had pre-ordered it from the UK in an attempt to get it as early as possible, and I got a pretty lengthy delay anyway.

Hot day today. Gonna head over to the beach.

Time perception

Funny things happen to your brain when you're not in your right mind. For example, in a drunken attempt to figure out what that phone call was all about the other night, I decided to make a few calls. I ended up talking to another stranger for what seemed like a few minutes. However, when I looked at my call history, it was actually only about a minute. The same thing happened when I got that first mystery call while I was half asleep.

Right now I'm a bit under the weather, both figuratively and literally. My head is still recovering from last night, and the rain outside doesn't seem to want to go away. If I didn't have to work in less than half an hour I think I would just stay in bed all day.

Late night phone calls

What is it that makes people talk to complete (non-telemarketer) strangers over the phone?

It was about 1 o'clock this morning, and I was fast asleep. All of a sudden, the sound of my phone ringing (or rather, the phone vibrating on the desk) wakes me up, as it so often does. I answer the phone, still half-asleep, and find that it's a girl I don't know on the other side. I try to tell them, as best as I can in my current state, that they must have dialled a wrong number on whoever's phone it was that they were dialling from. I mentioned where I work and then they mentioned a couple of workmates' names, and what I thought about them. It was probably nothing, but my paranoid self tells me that I was being 'scouted', in a manner of speaking. Either that or the late night hotlines are getting really desperate.

It was a very unexpected and unusual phone call.

Bloody Sunday

I'm not quite sure what came over me yesterday. I had intended to, you know, do stuff seeing as I had the entire day off. I was planning to at least go shopping for some new shoes and watch some DVDs. As the day progressed it became clear that going to the beach would be a very good idea due to the unusually warm weather for early spring. Alas, what occurred was a gross misjudgement of the conditions - I slept for a good part of the day's daylight hours. What's more is that this meant I couldn't find any sleep at night, meaning I got about 2 hours sleep before my opening shift this morning.

Bloody Sunday.

Foos. Acoustic. Money.

I was excited to find out that the Foo Fighters were doing 2 acoustic gigs at the Sydney Opera House in about a month's time. Tickets go on sale mid-week, and I started to write a message trying to organise people to go. Unfortunately, it was then that I read that the tickets would cost around $150 each. Seeing as I spent about a total of $380 on Friday, I think I'll have to skip this one, as tempting as it sounds. The rock concert they did last year was cheaper, and that's the one I'd rather see.

Oh right, there's an upside

Amidst all the hooplah that I had to go through today, there was a good point that should be noted. I went over to IEP to sort out some final details of my trip. While the major things such as visas, flights, and employment had been sorted out, I still had the business of some added extras. Firstly, and probably most importantly, I booked some accommodation through IEP to last me until my bus to Panorama. Secondly, I upgraded to a "Fully Loaded" membership, which means IEP's Canadian partner SWAP would help me out with whatever the hell the reason is that I am there in Canada at the time (or so I hope). Lastly, I also ordered a Lonely Planet guide that IEP were offering at a discount price. I decided to go with the USA and Canada on a Shoestring guide, as Alison (from IEP) had suggested that they tend to be good for people on a budget, as I assume I would be.

It's a bit weird to have almost everything organised about 3 months in advance. In fact, all I really need now is a better backpack and a new pair of shoes. Alison noted that I'm very organised. I'm really not. Not usually anyway. It's just that when it comes to travel, I turn into this machine that just needs everything sorted out. 3 months in advance... yep, I should be a travel agent.

When it all falls apart

Ok, so I know I was being very optimistic in yesterday's post. I was planning a grand day of adventures. I had forgotten that I should always expect the worst. I guess it all started this morning when I was being lazy and left home later than planned. As a result, I had to run the final leg of the trip to the train station so I could get there with time to spare.

The second thing to 'go wrong' was the US visa interview. The actual interview was fine. It was a short sub-5-minute chat about why I was applying for the visa. The wait, however, was incredibly long. I should have learned from the visa application process that it wasn't going to be as quick as I had hoped. Nevertheless, I got out after enduring almost two hours sitting quietly in a room full of similarly bored people.

To top it all off, the whole Belgian Beer Cafe meet up I had planned fell to pieces. Matt decided not to come because it was too far away from his work, Jenny had a massive hangover from last night, and Jim seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I sat there waiting for Josh for about 40 minutes, having a couple of drinks. I eventually left the place at around 2:30 and headed off to buy some CDs and DVDs and go home.

The twist in the tale is that Josh was actually on his way to the Belgian Beer Cafe as I was leaving. My battery had died so I couldn't tell if he was coming or not. When I got home and charged my phone I got a message from him saying he was on his way. Damn technology.

Who would have ever thought spring onions could sting so much?

I figured that chopping spring onions would hurt less than chopping regular onions since they're smaller. How wrong I was. Anyway, it was all part of my pasta sauce experiment, part 2. Today I decided I'd try to get a Venetian style sauce going. I used spring onions instead of regular onions because I like them better, skipped the garlic (added a bit of garlic salt instead), and added parsley and vinegar to the mix. I also added a few more tomatoes. It was totally improvised once it had started cooking. At one point I thought I had added too much vinegar. To my surprise, it tasted quite good. I can't believe it didn't turn out terrible. This makes it two in a row now, which is starting to scare me. However, I'm glad that I finally discovered how to finely chop onions.

Tomorrow, I head off to Sydney to do various stuff. First and foremost is my interview with the US consulate for my B1/B2 visa. I hope it doesn't take too long and goes smoothly. I can't really see why it wouldn't. The rest of the day shall be spent buying CDs and DVDs and whatnot. Hopefully I don't splurge too much. I plan to purchase some of the classics like Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and Quadrophenia by The Who. I'll also have a slight intermezzo at the Belgian Beer Cafe during lunchtime, provided I can get some other people to join me. It's looking like the day will end with an early Father's Day dinner.

Adrian's cooking... success?!?!

Ok, so it's not a secret that I'm more than capable of cooking simple meals with relative ease. However, I've never actually made my own pasta sauce from scratch... until now. What is scary is that this was my first try. Does this mark the end of Adrian's cooking disasters?

Argh, headache!

What was meant to be a relatively light night of farewell drinks for Cynthia at one of Wollongong's watering holes turned out to be a binge of beer, Jagermeister, and vodka. I am only now recovering from the gigantic hangover/headache that I woke up with in the morning. It was a good night though, had a nice chat to some various people, conversations in which I became less and less talkative as my drunkenness progressed. It just occurred to me that I didn't even buy Cynthia a farewell drink. That's the third person heading over to Europe in the span of about a month. It seems I'm the only person going overseas who is going anywhere but.

In between seeing friends off to foreign countries, I've been fervently reading comic books. The most notable (since my last post about comics) have been Daredevil and The Ultimates. Daredevil for its great consistency in writing (I still can't believe they actually jailed Matt Murdock) and art (Alex Maleev is awesome), and The Ultimates for the great modernisation of The Avengers, and the fact that the storylines are worthy of a big-budget action movie. It's a shame they take so long to release issues. The final issue for Ultimates 2 is still about a month away.

Adrian's thought of the day

Why do they call a leave of absence a leave of absence? I mean, if you're taking leave, wouldn't that, by definition, already imply that you would be absent? I don't think it's really possible to have a leave of presence. It's kind of like saying flame of fire or bacon and egg sandwich of sandwich.

Think about it.

Déjà vu times two

I can't really say it's been a bad day today. Sure, bad things have happened, but I think I've just been so tired that I've lost the ability to form any emotional response and thus complain. Nevertheless, I'll catalogue some events in an attempted complaint-like fashion.

No sleep for the wicked

I had a 5:30 am opening shift today. This would usually mean that I would be asleep pretty early on the night before. Not so the case last night. I tried to sleep countless times but I just wouldn't lose consciousness. I would tussle around in bed, trying to get comfortable, but to no avail. In between attempts would be sessions of reading comics, making my eyes more and more weary. Still, this has no effect, to the extent that I finally gave up trying to sleep and just rested, waiting for my shift.

Work itself was not so bad. The opening shift is usually a calm one, with little activity compared to the day time. The only thing I could really complain about is the intense cold breeze that seemed to make its way into the store in the last half hour. I fell asleep almost immediately after getting back home. I slept twice during the day, and this kind of sleep pattern is eerily reminding me of my university days, much like the recurring dreams I have, though that story will be saved for another time.

Guess what? It's 10:20 pm at the moment and I've got another opening shift tomorrow.

Vuda je: The feeling that none of this has happened before

After the first stint of sleep I had today, I got a call from some guy asking if my dad was home. I told him he wasn't, and he left me a number to call back. About an hour later, the same guy calls, saying the exact same thing, and leaving the exact same message. I dismissed it as déjà vu, until I was woken up from my second stint of sleep by yet another call by the same guy saying the same thing. I told him that he already called me twice before, and he claims he didn't. If he calls again, I swear he will get an earful.

Play that funky music

What was probably the worst part of today was when I found out that renowned band Tool are touring Australia... in January! Normally, this would be great news. The bad part comes when you consider my overseas trip. I'll be in Canada working on the snow during their tour, so I'll miss seeing them. It may not be a complete loss though, as they could still tour North America (again) after finishing off their overseas shows.

What I'll also be missing out on is Homebake for 2006. The festival of home-grown acts has a great line-up this year, including Silverchair, You Am I, and Infusion just to name a few. Last year's show was incredible, and I doubt this year's would be any different. Sadly, I will narrowly miss it by a week due, once more, to my trip to Canada.

Oh snoes!

I read in the local paper today that so far this snow season, the NSW slopes have experienced the worst snowfalls since 1982. That's pretty horrible, considering 1982 had 91.0 cm of snow. That's less than a metre! I'm glad I decided to stay away from the snow (apart from the yearly pilgrimage) until my trip to Canada. I sure hope this terrible record doesn't follow me over there.

This week on Mythbusters

I went to see Australia play Kuwait with David (Boyd) in an Asian Cup qualifier tonight (which is technically last night) and had a ball (no pun intended). It was with a bunch of people from his work, and it all only cost $20 including the transport to and from Aussie Stadium. The only bad thing to come from it was that we got there about 30 minutes into the game. Fortunately, no goals were scored in the first half.

Australia ended up winning 2-0, and the crowd was understandably elate. People were singing various Australian/victory tunes whilst exiting the venue. I decided to start singing Bohemian Rhapsody, which worked out pretty well. I did, however, damage my lungs and throat in the process. As for the title of today's post, one of the girls that were there was a spitting image from Kari from Mythbusters. I'm not kidding here, she looked very much like the attractive female member of the Mythbusters.

Some good news today. I have finally found a suitable flight for my year-long mission to Canada. It leaves on the 26th of November, and goes to Calgary after 2 stops. I am indeed very excited about this development. More on this as it happens.

Late on the bandwagon

Radiohead are great. Ok, maybe I'm about 15 years late to the party. So sue me. I had heard some of their stuff before but have never owned any of their albums. It was only recently when I got a hold of OK Computer and was completely blown away. I haven't been able to stop listening to it since. Now I'm eager to get their other five albums. And The Eraser. And their next album expected in 2007.

Radiohead bandwagon... check.

I only started reading comics again lately so you can't blame me as much for this one. There's a great mountain of titles that I still need to catch up on as well as some ongoing series of considerable interest. In particular, I've been hooked on Marvel's Civil War event and Y: The Last Man. Ultra was a great mini-series by the Luna Brothers, as were all of Frank Miller's Sin City stories.

However, what has impressed me the most so far has been the works of Brian Michael Bendis. I read through his Alias and Secret War series, and they were just pure gold. Both series showed that the Marvel Universe can be very gritty indeed, and I think Marvel was very smart to get him on board. I also read through other Marvel-related things that he masterminded, namely The Pulse, Avengers: Disassembled, and House of M. Although I had only heard of him in passing in the past, now that I'm back into comics I can safely say that I am now a Bendis fan.

Bendis bandwagon... check.

It must also be noted that I used Wikipedia for 100% of the links on this post.

Wikipedia bandwagon... check.

Randomness, part 2

I just realized that I didn't even cover the drunken shenanigans that occurred on Friday night, so since I'm still awake, I shall try to elaborate. Friday was Lauren's birthday, and so she decided to have a night out with friends. It wasn't until about 9:30 when I found out where the hell to even go, and so the drinking began soon after at the Glasshouse which, it must be said, is one of my most hated places in all of Wollongong these days. The beer taps there are pretty horrible, and the other drinks are expensive. Mind you, I only spent around $50 for the entire night, including the cab fare home, but I digress.

I guess I still had a few drinks there because I wanted to have a fun night. I randomly ran into a girl named Angela who remembered me from primary school. I didn't remember her... but then again, I only remember about a handful of people from primary school. My memory sucks, and the fact that I don't have class photos doesn't really help either. Kind of annoying really, I wouldn't mind meeting all my former classmates again. Anyway, after Ricky, Lauren's boyfriend, got kicked out for having sandals (the Glasshouse has really stupid rules for such a small-time place in the great scheme of things) we headed over to the Illawarra Hotel, leaving behind Tara who was seemingly out of contact. The Illawarra was pretty good. I guess I don't really put as much hate on the place since an acquaintance runs the place.

The drinks were much cheaper there and so I drank. I also played pool. Now, I only remember playing pool once, but Amanda assures me that I played quite a bit. The powers of alcohol at work, obviously. Amanda was one of the people that stayed sober that night, so I'll take her word for it. She also claims that I was doing a very strange dance with some lady on the dance floor. I also don't remember this. Apparently it was very amusing to watch, though that's not really that hard to believe. Seeing me dance is like a spectator sport. It's kind of like how people watch Funniest Home Videos to see people hurt themselves... you watch it because know it's going to turn out badly.

I eventually went home at around 2-ish or 3-ish. I split a taxi with Matt, who lives relatively nearby. I tried escaping the taxi without giving him my part of the fare, but he was very observant (that is, probably more sober than myself). After a short sleep, I woke up with a headache and some memory loss. The reason I got up was because work called to ask if I could take an early shift next Saturday. And so the cycle begins once again. I can't say I'll miss it when I finally leave.

Map your visited countries

I can't really think of very many things to do in the early hours of the morning, so I usually just read stuff. The usually fare are comics, Wikipedia, and other people's blogs. After going through Nabil's blog, I found the following handy little link for the keen world traveller.

Visited Countries

If you haven't already figured, it marks on a world map the countries that you have visited. Hopefully one day I'll have covered a good portion of it. For now, this is the extent of my adventures.

"Same thing we do every night, Pinky... try to take over the world!"

Canada is obviously next, though I've already got that on my map (I was there for about a week in 2002). After that, I'm thinking it'll be New Zealand and Japan.

Early morning ramblings

What is it about the twilight hours that makes somebody think up weird random thoughts? I think the better question at the moment is "why am I awake so early in the morning?" I guess I just woke up randomly and can't get back to sleep due to said weird random thoughts.

I'm still considering whether or not to go to Sydney today to record some stuff with Morgan and co. I mean, it would be nice to experience a recording and all, but I figured it'll take me about 2 and a half to 3 hours (or possibly more) to actually get to the place from Wollongong. That means a total of about 6 hours on public transport for barely 4 hours in the 'studio' (I say 'studio' because I don't actually know if it's a studio I'm supposed to be going to... but I assume it is in one way or another). I guess I'll have to discuss it with Morgan if/when he calls me later in the morning.

I've never really had anything against public transport before. I think being on the Sydney-Wollongong train for extended periods of time every couple of weeks for the past few months has started to get to me. It's not so much the fact that there are complete weirdos on the train. I'm used to that. I see weirdos all the time. No, it's the fact that, in the 1 and a half to 2 hours it takes to make the trip, the most exciting thing to happen is often to find yourself trying to memorise which station comes after which.

Shenanigans

I've been convinced that I should apply for the US B1/B2 visa just to make sure I don't get held up in the US, even though I've been told that they are usually confused when you show them the visa. The B1/B2 visa is meant to be for stays in the USA of more than 90 days. It stipulates in the conditions that going to neighbouring Canada or Mexico does not count as leaving the country, so technically I would have to get a visa even if I'm only transiting through the USA. However, by all reports they usually tell you at the airport/border that the visa is unnecessary, thus causing more confusion than would be desired. Regardless, I'll still apply for one just to get it out of the damn way.

In terms of the actual flight, I have yet to book anything. Since I'm applying for the visa, I figured I may as well get the cheapest flight that goes through the USA instead of going through Korea or Japan as I had originally considered. This would also mean I could visit my relatives in San Francisco. The FlyBuys idea fell through pretty quickly. It turns out that the flight is valid for 12 months from the date of issue, which is really annoying. It would mean that if I book it today, I would have to return in August, and if I book it later in the year, the seats would probably not be available anymore.

It's true that I usually enjoy the organizing part of a trip. However, if it involves the USA, stress inevitably comes into the equation.

Further tales from the deep

And now time for more dreams that don't make sense...


I was minding my own business at work (doing checkouts at Coles) and noticed that one of the supervisors was in the store, off-duty, and had a very attractive friend with her. I decided to help them out in whatever the hell they were trying to find. It was starting to get late in my shift so I decided to try and hurry them up. A while later, I tried looking for both of them and before I knew it I was in the clothing section of K-Mart. No big deal as K-Mart was in the same shopping centre as my work.

The worrying thing was that I found that I no longer had my pants or shoes on. My supervisor friend then told me that I better get back to work as I was late. I started heading back to work but, after running randomly into another friend from work, who offered me a lift back, I realised that Coles was on the other side of the mall.

In what can only be described as an extended scene from Risky Business, I finally found myself back at work. I didn't quite remember it being that far away from K-Mart, let alone either K-Mart or Coles being in the city mall. I rushed in, more than 30 minutes late, and told the supervisors that I was sorry I was late but I had somehow lost my pants and shoes. They already seemed to know all about it and laughed it off. Maybe it was because the girl I was helping out was already back at the store (she somehow got there before I did).

I went back to my register, which had now turned into a really old-school cash register, and tried signing off (which isn't the right procedure, mind you). For one reason or another something wouldn't print out, and it took all of the supervisors and a few other people from the store, all crammed into the register area, to fix it. All this, time I still haven't put on my shoes or pants.


What the hell is it with dreams involving me being half-clothed?

In like Flynn, baby!

I had to pike Dave's birthday. I had to skip what was probably an awesome bonfire with the boys from the Northern Beaches. It was all worth it.

I started off the day being woken up by my mobile phone alarm at around 7 in the morning. It took me a good while to get up from bed and, after taking a shower, I caught the bus into the city. I had a hot chocolate at Gloria Jean's while going through my 'interview notes' then proceeded to head to the nearby Y Hotel, where the IEP Work & Ski Canada Job Fair was being held. At this point I was feeling both very tired and very nervous. As soon as the employer presentations started, the nerves miraculously went away.

The first couple of hours seemed to go like a bullet train. Not just a regular bullet train either, more like the ones you see in Japan. Before I knew it, I had a job offer from both employers I interviewed with. I had a choice of either being a kitchen steward at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, or a room attendant at Panorama. Mind you, my interview skills had deteriorated a great deal over the years. My mastery of the English language is not nearly as good as it was when I was still in public education. Anyway, I decided I'd wait for Leigh and Ben (from Canberra) to figure out where they'd be going before I chose which employer's offer to accept.

Several coffees, a Guinness, and a few slices of pizza later, it had looked like Leigh was not going to get the job at Whistler so I stopped hassling the IEP people about details about the trip (especially Alison, whom I had talked to a few times before with related issues) and put my autograph on that piece of paper for Panorama. I haven't exactly got the job yet... but it's pretty much guaranteed. All that needs to happen now is for me to send off a reference or two to Panorama and for them to send me an employment contract.

And so the grand plans for a year-long North American adventure begins. I'm having some Verdi Spumante (really nice despite not being very alcoholic) to celebrate.

Extravagance

Monday was a strange, strange day. I guess I could just leave it at that, but something compels me to write about it. Most likely because I am rather bored and taking breaks from watching season 2 of Stargate Atlantis.

It all started in the wee hours of Monday morning. I had gone with my parents to Sydney so that, on the next day, scout out the location of my interview, which takes place this coming Sunday (more on this here, here, and here). I was ready to go to bed when my mum realised that she had left some important documents in Wollongong. I volunteered to go home and fetch said documents the next day. I proceeded to spend about half an hour figuring out the bus routes and schedules in Wollongong, as I had not caught public transport there in quite some time.

4+ hours on buses and trains later, I had made the return trip from Sydney to home and back in one piece. During transit, I ascertained that two of my friends were no longer attending a dinner I had planned (the other reason why I was in Sydney), leaving only three of us in total. The other two people were Jim and Apte, from the great Thredbo adventure.

After taking care of some travel-related things and buying some CDs at the $10 CD store (it must be noted that cheap CD stores are evil, but I digress), I jaywalked seemingly dozens of times (thanks to peak-hour traffic) and met the duo at Circular Quay station. Our eventual destination: the Heritage Belgian Beer Café. We came for the beer - as Belgian beer is among the best, if not the best in the world - but we were also there for dinner. The appetiser was a bottle of Forbidden Fruit, served in its own fancy special glass. After our main meals, we decided to go all out and split a magnum of Chimay Grande Réserve three ways. It was by far the finest beer I've ever tasted. It also cost us around 20 dollars each. The entire dinner (including drinks) cost each around 60-70 each. It wasn't cheap, but it was worth it for a nice fancy night out, and I would not count out doing it again some time. In fact, I would bet on it.

Sadly, the fancy-schmancy theme of the night ended there. After leaving the Heritage, we headed to a nearby bar and played some pool. I made the dubious decision to purchase a Jager Bomb. Stupidity and memory loss ensued, as is often the case when I have that drink. The last thing I remember after leaving the second bar was being at home. Later investigation (by way of looking at my TravelTen) suggests that I caught the bus home. Apparently somewhere along the line Apte climbed a pole too.