800 miles from home

I’m 800 miles away from home and sitting in a café at Brisbane airport’s domestic terminal.

View from my seat at the Virgin Blue terminal.

An interesting shot within a shot, I took these photos on my mobile and sent the pictures via Bluetooth to my laptop. Red Rooster chicken salad and a cup of tea for my afternoon snack.

Actually I’m starving as lunch was hours ago and I’m still feeling sore from a hard gym workout last night at what I fondly nickname “The Dungeon”. The Fitness First branch at 320 Adelaide St in the city has a great windowless weights room in its subterranean basement, filled with big heavy dumbbells and barbells. Blood and guts is the order of the day, and I love working out there whenever I get time away from the office.

The past week has been a daze as I was up at 4.30am on Monday morning to catch a 7am flight. I’m up here again to work with the development team as they fix the defects from the last trial conversion. I’m also the only person currently tasked to work on the reconciliation aspect of the project, which accounts for every single record that we process and tracks that record from start to wherever it ends up. In essence, this is like auditing, except with data instead of cash flows. The business and external auditors will want proof that nothing falls through the cracks when we crunch, transform and spit out this tremendous amount of data.

I think I’m finally used to working as a consultant now. The short notice to fly interstate doesn’t even faze me this time around and I’ve rehearsed the packing of my luggage and toiletries like a marksman disassembles and reassembles his rifle with a map burned into his memory. I can be ready to leave for a week’s trip in under half an hour.

My toiletries bag is always filled with miniature versions of what I’d normally use, packed neatly and stored away in the little compartments. My electric toothbrush is charged and ready to be transferred to its clear blue plastic travel case, the battery good to last for a week.

My mobile has got the numbers of airport pick-up and transfer services in 2 different states which I use to avoid the nightmare that is queuing for a cab and dealing with smelly foreign drivers. Its always nice to have a guy in a suit holding your name on a piece of paper and offering a clean and comfy ride to your destination when you trudge off the plane.

I’ve also learnt the fine art of catching up on sleep during the interstate flights. I always bring a book to read while waiting to board the plane and when in the air, as it serves a dual purpose of feeding the brain and inducing sleep. There’s nothing better than falling asleep shortly after take off and waking up just when the plane touches the ground.

So here I am, the week before Christmas and I have never worked harder in my life before with all the overtime hours I’ve been putting in to make this project run. I’m hoping to go home to Singapore in time for New Years Eve, but all the flights are full at the moment and I’m stuck in limbo on a wait list.

Here’s hoping for the best anyway….

Stereosonic

2 weeks ago I made a last minute decision (while still up working in Brisbane) to go for the Stereosonic festival at the melbourne showgrounds.




My friend had a spare industry ticket so I asked my trusty sidekick - prog girl to drive down during the week to Dan's workplace and front the money to help me buy a spare ticket as she and her friends were going too.


Prog-girl with her friends Kerry and Rita


It was a brilliant day spent in the sun with a venue that was big enough to accommodate the 15,000 strong crowd.


I'd say as with most outdoor raves and parties nowadays, there were still a large percentage of wankers, idiot kids and power muzzas; but not as much as what I experienced earlier this year at a string of events run by Future Entertainment.


The view from the grandstand overlooking the massive main outdoor arena. Notice the panels of 2 storey tall video columns showing trippy visuals.


Bumped into Liz, a party acquaintance I knew from some mutual friends


Big blow up gorilla casting its shadow over the crowd.


Some pretty cool 20yr old kids, Cameron and Spanky whom I struck up a random conversation with. They exclaimed that it was 'way cool' that even at my age I was rocking it hard at these events. Seeing that I'm only 27 and definitely have heaps more partying to do in my lifetime, I cracked up laughing so hard that my sides hurt.....


Mr Stacey Pullen from Detroit city, Michigan. One of the pioneer's of Techno in the early days!


A view of the sun slowy setting in the horizon and a cool breeze wafting into the grounds to replace the heat from the afternoon as people are still dancing


Stacey Pullen performed one of the best sets I've heard in recent times, considering the fact that he was playing outdoors in a pretty small stage in the corner.


Giant pie in the sky towering above the Hardware arena. I don't know why I took this shot but I felt compelled to because it was the best landmark there telling people to "meet me below the giant pie!"

Dinner at Ezard's

Last night I had one of the most extravagant and expensive dinners in recent memory.
My friends and I have always been talking about dressing up, getting together and catching up over a fine dining experience somewhere.

So we did, and made a reservation (1.5 months in advance) for dinner at Ezard's


Ezards is located at 187 Flinders Lane, next to Adelphi Hotel.

View Larger Map

Run by owner, Teage Ezard, this establishment has already won accolades of awards the last 2 years for its innovative representation of Australian free-style cooking with strong influences from Asia.


I ordered a smoked duck salad for a starter, which came with pickled beetroot, pink grapefruit and topped with a hot and sour dressing.


For mains, I ordered the barramundi, served on a bed of roasted eggplants, tomato and lime salad and finished with a thai-style yellow curry dressing.

The service was impeccable, the wait staff always hovered nearby, with slick hair and suits, they were extremely attentive and knowledgeable about all the intricate aspects of the food and drink.

Everybody in our party was very impressed by the food.
I'll have to give it a 10/10 score, every dish was a sensational work of art, pleasing to the eye and bursting with flavour on the palate.

Equally impressive was the bill which came after rounds of coffee and dessert.
Thien took a peek, eyes widening as she gasped and quickly put the bill down. I picked up the book and took a look, never have I seen that many digits towards a dinner party of 6.

The wine alone cost $308..... (we had 2 bottles of merlot and 2 bottles of chardonnay)

The total bill was.... (drumroll please!)......
....
..

$1085 ++

ouch.

We walked out with our stomachs feeling very heavy after all that rich food, and our wallets feeling much lighter.

It was worth it though.

Dinner at Jodie & Dave's

While we're on the topic of housemates, I caught up with my ex housemates Jodie and Dave over dinner the other week.
We lived in South Melbourne for about a year before the apartment got sold and we had to move out.

They recently had to move house again, but within the same property, just different floors and I offered my services and expertise in lifting the heavy stuff. So this was a thank you dinner at their new apartment.



Jodie in one of her more flattering poses


Dave, Jodie, myself and Dave's colleague, Des


Jodie showing us the cheesy side of her persona


Dave showing us the sexy side his persona

A sunday whinge

Its yet another sunny and warm sunday afternoon, its nice to sleep in my own bed the past 2 nights.

Hard to believe a week went by in the blink of an eye. Well to be honest it wasn't really a blink; more like a slow stabbing eyesore of a week.

I didn't get any time to blog while away, Brisbane was a nightmare with crazy 12hour days in a cramped office overseeing a bunch of indian programmers writing the programs to extract and convert the data. It was particularly frustrating because everything was barely holding in at the seams, most of these muppets aren't very experienced programmers and when things aren't working, nobody raises their hand up until the last minute!
Coupled with the fact that there were only a limited number of PCs which I had to share and it was impossible to work with a laptop on my knees, it feels like a futile exercise to go up there, hold their hands and answer the painfully obvious questions all day long.

Enough work talk now, I've got other stuff to whinge about.

As mentioned last week, me and Pat decided to kick our new housemate Samantha out.

We found her through a flatmate finders website which we've all used to get where we are now. Through the site, I found Lisa a year ago and we found Pat a few months later.
We were the perfect happy household that felt like a family.
Then in October, Lisa moved out with her partner Dave and we lost a fantastic housemate and dear friend. We then advertised on the website and did the interview rounds with potential applicants. The top few which we wanted to offer the room to either declined or found someplace else and I was the one who convinced Pat that we should take Sam because she seemed funny and down to earth although a little loud.

Turns out my gut instinct was terribly off the mark as you don't really know someone until you live with them.
In the 3 weeks she lived here, Sam:

• Sat out in the outdoor garden with her friends, got drunk and loud while chain-smoking
  
• Yelled drunken hellos at neighbours walking by
  
• Left a mess of empty wine bottles, glasses and filled ashtrays for us to clean up
• Left the bathroom in an absolute mess of hair, makeup and wet puddles
  
• Fried fish and made the whole house stink of fish for a week
• Left the frying pan full of burnt crap stuck to it soaking for more than a day
• Put a metal scourer to my non-stick frying pan to remove the burnt crap and successfully removed the Teflon as well
• Broken glass on the floor
• Dirt trails on the carpets
• Wet laundry left to dry all over the laundry area
• And finally earning us a warning letter from the body corporate and building manager because of numerous complaints against our unit from the residents in other blocks
  

So enough was enough, Pat called me while at work one day and suggested that we could get rid of her, to which I whole-heartily agreed and we ripped up the rental and bond agreement forms with her name on which we haven't handed in yet; sat her down and told her to start finding somewhere else to live as it wasn't going to work out.
2 weeks later she is gone, the house is nice and clean again and it feels great to come home now.

We ran the ad in the flatmates website again, interviewed some people and 2 days ago we accepted Emily, a soft spoken kindergarten teacher as our new flatmate!