One that got away

Melancholy and the infinite sadness.

No matter how many times I've been through this before , heartbreak will always feel as painful now as the first time your heart got broken.

She was the epitome of a nurturing, kind and giving feminine essence. She was simple, honest and uncomplicated. She wasn't afraid to call me on my shit. She was old school and rolled her own cigarettes. She swore a blue streak when pissed off. She made me laugh. She loved the same music as I. She was much older.

She was the sort who had to give all her heart and soul to someone to want to be with them. Anything less, she considered a lie to herself and couldn't bring herself to do it.

Alas, I wasn't that someone, even though sparks flew and moments of intimacy were shared, it was not to be.

Sunday night, I left her place with my heart broken and she gave me a kiss along with the longest hug and didn't want to let go... we just stood there for a brief eternity; god I loved the smell of her hair...

Then we parted.

I smiled and said everything was going to be alright and turned to walk away.
Deep inside, we knew something has changed and we'll probably never be the same as before.

Lee Burridge

I have a confession to make: I'm totally in awe of Lee Burridge at the moment.

Anyone who's been in the club scene for as long as I have would have had their fair share of disappointing nights and know never to really expect much for anything. Especially when its in a tiny venue like Ffour.

However, just once in a while it is the rare gems that sneak right up behind you unexpectedly like a thief in the night, suddenly surrounding you in a sensual and intoxicating melting pot of tech-house and techno that leaves you sweaty, gasping, pleasured and still craving for another hit.

The most memorable gig I had with Lee had to be back in 2001, Zouk club, Singapore where he played back to back with Craig Richards as the indominatable tech house duo known as Tyrant. That left a really high benchmark which subsequent solo gigs by Lee would never again quite seem to cut it.


Incidentally, Saturday also happened to fall on the birthday of Prog-Girl.
If any of you have been paying any attention, you'll recognize that Prog-Girl popped out of the darkness of Sunny into my photos and my world during the Anthony Pappa gig in July.

How did the nickname come about? Well I haven't exactly figured that one out either, but somewhere between saying hello and hitting it off like peas and carrots; realising we both love progressive house, she must have entered her number into my phone under that alias, and so it stuck.



A major milestone that I managed to achieve that night was polling and getting more people to join my initiative of starting the "We hate Phil K" club. Vicky (pictured above) and Prog-Girl are the newest members to join Di and myself. No doubt this initiative will grow rapidly once people out there realise that Phil K seriously kills the vibe on any dance floor as attested in my last visit to Sunny.



It was a fair sized crowd who lapped up everything Burridge was throwing out at them


The sweet spot of sound at Ffour that night for me was standing right about here, near the front and next to the speaker column to be able to feel the bass kicking your heart around in your chest


Burridge hard at work


Both of us clearly having a great time


and with that, I'll leave you with a parting shot of the night.....

Pictures from Falls Creek

Its been a pretty full on week since the weekend that just past.

We left for Falls Creek at 4.30am on Friday morning to make the 5hr drive up.
It was almost 10am when we got there amidst pretty bad weather of strong wind and rain which meant the ski lifts were closed for most of Friday.

The accommodation was ok, with the 2 couples getting the better end of the deal with their own rooms equipped with queen sized beds.
Greg, Marika and myself had the honour of sharing the dorm room with double-decker, single sized bunk beds; I probably haven't slept in such uncomfortable conditions since I was in the army, not that we really got much sleep anyway with the excitement of a weekend away together and way too many Jägermeister and red bull shots during the first night

Irregardless, it was a tough challenge to learn how to snowboard. Nothing could possibly feel more unnatural being strapped into a board and having to use your body, knees and ankles to set the direction you want to head in. First lesson we learnt was that whatever your body feels it should do, ignore it! Its like learning to walk all over again.

I had a smooth start on the first try and forgot to secure the snowboard strap to my leg before I got the bindings on which resulted in a deadly runaway projectile snowboard zipping down the mountain and almost taking out a group of skiers before crashing into the village.



The view from the balcony of our apartment


Bad weather conditions of rain, wind and hail on the first day meant the ski lifts were shut. So we walked around the resort instead


The village center up in the snow


Getting ready to hit my first beginner run


Somehow did survive the run with the exception of some spectacular falls that sprayed snow everywhere


Group shot of the entire team


Me and Marika getting ready to hit a blue run on our third day of boarding


Just managing to skid to a halt for a quick photo before zipping off again


Pat who's a very experienced snowboarder cruising along taking a video of us

I survived the weekend of snowboarding to arrive back in Melbourne around 10.30pm on Sunday night, then I had to get out of bed the Monday morning at 5am to make a 7.05am flight to Brisbane for work! I swear to god, it felt damn bloody good to get back home on Tuesday night and sleep in my own bed for the first time in days.

Chasers War on Everything vs APEC !

This is the most fucking hilarious prank I've ever seen!!!!

247 million dollars spent this week at the APEC summit at Sydney, and the pranksters from the Chaser's War On Everything managed to get within metres of the hotel that George Bush was staying at.
They hired fake limos with tinted windows, had the Canadian flag flying from the cars and one of them dressed up as Osama Bin Laden in the back seat! All the while having fake security guards in suits running outside the car with fake IDs.


The amazing thing was they got through 2 checkpoints before realising they were going too far with the prank and decided to make a U-Turn back which was where they got caught.


See the complete news report. Shows you the outcome of 247million dollars well spent for security and hosting this crock of shit.

The clip at the bottom was their weekly program this week warming up to the APEC summit jokes

Countdown to the snow

So here I am, finally crawling out of the clutches of the dreaded flu bug that's been plaguing me the last week.

I have this theory: On average, I fall really sick about twice a year.

So counting this and the time back in January when Steph and Simon came to Singapore to visit and infected me with some pommie superbug from their England trip, I reckon I have reached my annual quota of great illnesses. If we assume that the past is a good predictor of the future, I'll be bullet-proof for the remainder of 2007!

Its almost midnight and I'm still slightly drunk. Was out earlier this evening for an informal catch up between my manager and the few of us Accenture folk working on this project. This was also a sneaky attempt by said manager running us through our annual performance objectives; what better way to do that than over dinner and drinks. I boldly suggested the european bier cafe across the road from our new office building on the posh end of Collins St and it was brilliant to break my 2 month abstinence from alcholol on Erdinger Weißbier Dunkel and Hoegaarden!!

2 more work days to go, I head up to Falls Creek this Friday for a 3 day weekend to have a go at snowboarding!

Sickie weekend

I've been feeling kinda sick this weekend, it must have been all those late nights and long days while travelling up to Brissy. Saturday was good enough to head out for a late 1pm breakfast at the South Melb markets with Steph and Simon.
I somehow made it to the gym for a good workout later in the afternoon before it started going downhill Saturday night and now I'm nursing a sore throat and body aches. =(

No matter, best way to get over any sickness is to distract yourself doing something else: So I spent all Sunday tinkering around on my PC.

Remember a couple of weeks back I was writing about experimenting with non-window$ based operating systems?
I finally did get down to giving Ubuntu a shot and almost drove myself to the edge of madness in the process.
Long story short: It is working now, and yes it was really fucking difficult to set up my wireless Internet connection on this damm thing (because yours truly had to use the top of the line WPA2 encryption). Not to mention sound, video and everything else.
I could almost pick up drinking again because of the stress involved in this.

.... but that's all sorted out now.... thankfully!

Here's some screenshots of how it looks. For normal web surfing, listening to music, chatting on messenger and stuff, it runs sweet and is stable as a rock. Not to mention it has a pretty slick interface.


Pretty much the default theme with a cool wallpaper in the background. Everything that I could do in WindowsXP, I can do here too now.



I'm running a music player called Amarok here, you can see the house channel from Digitally Imported running in the background and it even remembers and keeps a list of track titles and the times they were streamed.

Getting answers

Its been a hectic week for me.

Monday and Tuesday was burning it hard with 10-11 hr days at the office to finish my functional designs so that the developers up in Brisbane can start their technical work.

I made another trip up to Brisbane on Wednesday morning, it was pretty tough trying to stay awake after catching the 7am flight. Apparently it was a public holiday in Brisbane but we got the developers working through it.
This time round I was a one man road show coming up here, armed with only my laptop and trusty Analogue PDA (Notepad and pen) =)

It was good to finally meet development team face to face, since we've only spoken on the phone and through the email the past couple of weeks.
These are the guys who are going to be writing the data migration software based on the rules and designs I came up with from all the work done in the last 2 months. This is outsourcing at its best, seeing that they're migrated over from our various offices in India for the duration of this project.

The good:
The Indian team were great fun to hang out and work with.
Walking by myself up to the company we bought over to sit down with one of their programmers and getting all my important questions answered.
Room service food was yummy.
Fitness First on Adelaide St has a nice basement weights area which is a sweaty 4 wall dungeon filled with heavy weights.

The bad:
Getting hooked up at the Grand Chancellor hotel (again).
It ain't grand. In fact, it looks like it was built in the 70s.
Think porn movie set when you look at the raunchy red leopard print bedspread which matches the drab red carpets.
Situated on top of the tallest and steepest hill overlooking the city, you'd think it was an Everest expedition trying to walk up here.

At least the service was good, I helped myself to a cup of peppermint tea last night.
When I got back to the room this evening, sure enough the cups were cleaned etc, but the maid left a mug out next to the kettle with a peppermint teabag on top. Its little thoughtful gestures like this that really make my day! =)

Off to bed now.... So tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.
I can't wait to fly back to Melbourne tomorrow evening!