Wednesday, November 26 2008, 23:38

Alert! Alert! Start shopping now!

Christmas has caught me unaware this year! If I were still living in the UK, all sorts of seasonal markers would have alerted me to the fact that it's just around the corner, e.g. it takes 5 minutes to psych myself up to emerge from my duvet into the frigid air of my bedroom; it's dark when I leave for work in the morning; I have to put on three extra layers to make it to the Tube (whereupon I have to remove them all while hanging perilously onto a handrail); it's dark when I leave work in the evening... More obvious signs are the decorations that bring a bit of anti-suicide cheer in the dark nights (habitually switched by an ITV zelebrity [sic]); and there are uber-cheery (pro-suicide?) overplayed Christmas songs playing in every shop and store in the land. Above all, menswear shops break out a line of useles gadgets they think men like to receive as gifts: tie clips, golf tees, tiny radios, LCD desk clocks, and the ubiquitous toiletry bags. As it is, the Christmas gifts alarm here has been a rude awakening because the hot weather seems to have blinded me to the tacky excuse for decorations draped over our local shopping centre. So the rush to buy gifts is on! This must be how useless, unprepared people feel every year! Thank god for e-commerce.

There's good news though, although you may not have noted it. It is of course Movember here (and in lots of other countries, it seems), but I've hung up my moustache comb and decided against harassing you, my dear readers, for trifling sums of cash for the greater good. I can only hope you've found local Mo Bros to donate to!

There's even more good news! John submitted his application for residency here back in April (I'm on it too - 2 for the price of 1!), and on the day we went to get poked and prodded for our immigration medical, John got an email announcing that our application has been assigned to a case officer! For those of you who don't know, the long part of the potential 13 month wait is the queue to have your files placed beneath the hand of one of these federal employees. Whether that hand wields a great stamp bearing the legend, "welcome to Australia" or, "piss off, we're full", remains to be seen. Breath is bated, and fingers and toes are crossed.

Thursday, December 25 2008, 9:38

Christmas, Kylie, Greg, Kylie, and Christmas (in that order)

Merry Christmas everyone!

I don't think I've blogged on Christmas Day before. The only reason I'm doing it today is because for the first time ever, I've woken up on Christmas Day in an empty home. John's in London and Chris is somewhere in the sky between here and Adelaide. Later on I'll be heading over to Matt's and Tim's, but right now I'm sitting in bed with a plush red stocking, pregnant with gifts and expectation while Kirsty MacColl and Shane MacGowan sing Fairytale of New York in the background :) I just have to wait for John to finish his dinner in Balham and give me a call, and then I can get stuck in!

This is actually my second Christmas this year. In preparation for the fact that everyone was going home, Chris, Luke, John, and I celebrated earlier in the month. It was the weekend that saw the ripping away of my turkey virginity. Unwilling to leave my bird out of the fridge in this climate overnight in summer, I had to leave it to defrost for forty hours in the fridge. And when that was done, I bravely tried to extract the neck from the cavity, having discovered no handy bag containing the pre-separated neck and giblets. I didn't realise for some time that the neck was still attached, and that trying to yank it out through its arsehole was doing nothing for the dead bird's dignity. Still, it turned out well, with stuffing rammed up under its skin, etc. As it turned out, that was also the day Warren and Tash returned from their (mostly by land) transcontinental London to Sydney travels, to pass a few days at our place, and munch on mince pies and slurp down some mulled wine while they were at it.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one weekend, we also went to see Kylie! I went to see her Showgirl tour shortly after I got here in 2006, X was far better. I'm not sure about her choice of Copacobana, but I guess she's allowed a few eccentric choices - I should be so lucky was definitely one of the highlights. Practically every show you go to these days has some kind of encore, but the princess of pop took it to extremes. I think a full seven songs made up her encore - a third of the show?

Immediately after Kylie, I joined Greg for his last hurrah at ARQ, which finished up with a day of lounging in and around a friend's pool in Coogee. Greg has now finished his almost two years in Australia and is back in the UK, spending Christmas with Chris H, who only left a short time ago too.

And then, with barely a day or two back at work, I was off to see Kylie again, this time with my friend Dan. We had to race over to the Acer Arena from work, and I was still scoffing my hot dog in my seat in the third row from the front, when the lights went down and the music started up. I've never been so close to the stage before, and it was INCREDIBLE. I haven't looked at my photos from the first show at all since I took my pics from this one. I had a great time at that first show, but the atmosphere down at the front was amazing - just being able to make eye contact with Kylie's dancers and maybe even [gulp] Kylie herself... Wow wow wow.

And in the background of all this festive fun, I've been flat out at work too! It's all rather exhausting - so I'm looking forward to this, the start of my two week Christmas break. More on that later... Merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 25 2008, 9:52

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Tuesday, December 30 2008, 8:04

Great Ocean Roadtrip

Happy New Year, everyone! I've finally managed to sort out my photos from our road trip, so I can blog it!

With John gallivanting about overseas, I felt I ought to get at least a little holiday so I wouldn't be crushed under the weight of massive London FOMO (fear of missing out), so I suggested that Chris, Chris, and I take a little road trip along Victoria's Great Ocean Road. The idea was that we'd stop and enjoy the scenery, lap up some sun at the many beaches along the way, and return bronzed, golden, and refreshed in time for our New Year celebrations. The final plan though, was to fly to Melbourne and drive from there along the Great Ocean Road, and then up into South Australia to Adelaide, where we could stay with Chris' mum and get shown around the city by a local, which always helps. Once we actually sat down to plot our itinerary, we realised there'd be no time for beaches and we'd be driving almost constantly - but we still went ahead anyway :)

Before we go any further, for the sake of clarity, I'll refer hereon to Chris McGillivray as Smooth, and Chris McGillick as Furry (which wil be obvious to anyone who knows them both).

Our first day's drive was from Melbourne, down through Werribee, to the coast; the Great Ocean Road starts at Torquay and hugs the coast west for 243km to Warrnambool, and runs through such busy seaside towns as Lorne and Apollo Bay, and passes the famous rock formations known as the Twelve Apostles. We had hoped to stay at Lorne, but we let it to the last minute to book anything, so had to resort to staying miles inland at a motel in Colac. So we made a point of having dinner in Lorne, which turned out to be fantastically overpriced tapas. We strolled down to the seafront to admire the view, but unfortunately the thing I'll remember most about Lorne is the sheepish stag party led by a man in a lime green Borat-style mankini...

Colac turned out to be just fine, and much cheaper than anything littoral we'd seen. We stayed in and let Smooth kick our butts at Risk twice before bed.

Once more unto the Great Ocean, we picked up the road at Lorne and drove to Apollo Bay for breakfast, and then wound our way along the seashore under darkening skies until it was time to turn inland again past Cape Otway to spend an hour or two at the Otway Fly Treetop Walk.

It was raining cats and dogs when we arrived, but I was sure there would be delightful plastic ponchos on sale, and I was proven infallible again. This didn't help the fact that Furry and I had left our jackets in Sydney, so we were still quite chilly. The photos below describe the 25m canopy walk better than I can, so have a peek.

From Otway we drove back to the coast, hoping the Twelve Apostles would be radiant in the afternoon sunshine... but it was not to be. Thankfully, those eight [sic] rock stacks look amazing standing in the deep blue of the sea with moody skies over them. Endlessly photogenic, it's not surprising there were hundreds of tourists milling around every patch of foreshore with Canons and Nikons snapping. The Apostles are one of Australia's famous landmarks with the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, and Uluru, so I've always felt a bit miffed that I hadn't crossed them off my places to visit. I have now. Tick!

Our last day's driving was from our overnight stop at Portland, about 550kms through South Australia to Adelaide. We stopped at The City of Craters, Caves, Lakes and Sinkholes (aka Mount Gambier) for some Blue Lake action, at Robe for some Long Beach disappointment, and at Kingston SE for some Big Lobster lunch discontent (anyone else notice the startling lack of imagination for those visitor attractions?). How those several hours whirled by! Finally we drove into the City of Churches and stopped for some deliciously expensive Argentine fare before dropping into the welcome hospitality of Furry's mum.

Perchance Furry was a bit nettled when John described Adelaide as 'desolate', so he was determined to prove that his home town still lived up to its 80s sobriquet, Radelaide. He needn't have worried: we passed a great day wandering around the Botanic Gardens, the shops of Rundle Mall, and the beachside charm of Glenelg before having a white-knuckle game of mini-golf at the Beach-house there. Finishing up with some home-cooked roast back at Chez McGillick, our day couldn't have been more fun.

Photos from the Great Ocean Roadtrip