If truth be told, I wasn't best impressed with the party. The Hordern Pavilion was decked out in far better than usual finery, but - call me old fashioned - the music was like a car alarm going off! Outside they had a little tent set up with more mainstream tunes playing; it was pretty quiet to begin with, but when the Potbelleez started their earsplitting set inside, this poor cousin of a dancefloor filled up. Even so, it was a bit on the quiet side (noise restrictions until 7am), and a wee bit chilly. Hey ho. You can't have a ball (if you'll excuse the pun) every time. Let's cut back to those contact lenses for a moment. Having struggled at getting them in by poking my own eyes for a few minutes, Matt poked them in for me. Several hours later, some nice chap on the dancefloor obviously couldn't bear to watch me plucking at my corneas anymore, and put me out of my misery with a few deft pinches. My sympathies to those of you who live this experience every day...

Anyway, John loved the party so we stayed until the end. But I got my thrills for the weekend at the party the following day, Frisky, which was comparatively sublime. Who comes up with all of these dirty-sounding party names? They could give a clean-living boy like myself a bad name... But after all that good fun, I felt decidedly wretched for most of last week, even though we've welcomed Chris, our newest UK export, to Sydney just as the sun has got his hat on (hip, hip, hip, etc.).

So Friday rolled around, and we made our way up in two cars, luggage and grub crammed in the boot, passengers crammed in the back. By the time we got there, we just about had enough time to fling together a quick thai and chill out with a few drinks in the living room before our work weariness forced us all to bed.

First thing Saturday, while Tim and I got our hands dirty in the kitchen, Chris H roped the willing into an impromptu fitness session outside - running, squats, and push-ups. And all before breakfast! Seems like madness to me, but there was no coercion involved. Maybe it was to offset the huge carb intake planned for the day. Over the course of the day, our little tour van dropped us off at five different vineyards with a stop at Hunter Valley Gardens Village for lunch. The Village appears to be an artificial cutesy shopping mall with overpriced shit for wine tour groups to visit at lunchtime, but it was a nice little break from the van and the constant drinking.

Ah... the drinking. I think the plonk of the day was the dessert wine. We seemed to all be biased towards the lighter wines - verdelhos, semillons, moscatos, and the sweeter botrytis and muscat wines. We got off to a good start at our first stop (Briar Ridge), with a nice lady chatting amiably with us as she poured - quite the contrast to Iron Gate, where a stand-offish man made us stand while he rattled through the bland vintages. But probably the crown of the day was at Ernest Hill, where Rita got us all laughing as she filled our glasses. Maybe it's because it was the last stop and we were all semi-pissed, but she seemed genuinely funny, and she did throw in a bottle of sparkling moscato at the end. I already bought four - again, maybe because I'd had a skinful over the whole day...

A whole day's drinking left me a bit tired, and I wasn't the only one. After dinner (cheerfully washed down with the bonus free moscato), we managed one game of Articulate, which ended in Luke running around the room screaming, "In your face! In your face! In your face!" Everyone loves a graceful winner ;) Maybe that's what took it out of us, but within an hour, we were all tucked up in bed.

Our last morning in the Barnstay was taken up with clearing up after ourselves (only a few things burnt/destroyed). John, Chris, Luke, and I decided to make the most of being out of the city and stop off on the way - at a wildlife park of all places! It was a roasting day, far too hot to have tshirts on, so we attempted some topping up of tans while walking through the wildlife park. Only a handful of wallabies crossed our path, and a couple of emus and some exhausted looking roos were skulking around the giftshop, so we left a bit underwhelmed. Our last stop was for lunch on the Hawkesbury River, and then before we knew it, we were home sweet home again. With a full wine rack. Cheers!

Photos on facebook at the moment, coming here soon.

So it was with no sign of nerves that the media here observed Britain's super medal weekend with articles poking fun at the "cocky Brits" and their "premature celebrations". After all, surely it was only a matter of time before those whinging Poms got knocked back to tenth place where they belonged? But it didn't happen. That jibe about Brits winning at sitting down sports had a slight taste of bitterness to it, and there were comments about Poms stealing Aussie coaches and methods too, and the per capita argument has been raised ad nauseam. Not very sporting for a sporty country! Britain got knocked off third place by Russia, but fourth place is still our best result for a century. Great news for a country that doesn't really expect to win anything, but always excited when it does. Australia finished in sixth place, which Britain would have been overjoyed with, but some here seem to feel that there were only two teams that mattered, not 204, and that these Games were just the latest round in a long-running grudge match, a round which Australia lost to the Old Enemy.

This week I read two articles on SMH. The first ('Tears before bedtime as the empire strikes back'), is the first piece of journalism I've read here that seriously asks why Australia is so obsessive about sports and winning them.

The second told us the cost of Australia's medals - $50 million for each gold, apparently, or $12 million for every medal of any colour. This comes on the back of comments that suggest more sporting investment is necessary if Australia's getting "beaten by the Poms" (never mind the fact that sixth place is an achievement most countries would be proud of). This article goes on to ask if that money can't be better spent on making Aussies overachieve in something other than sports, that benefits the whole community, and not just its elite athletes. It appears the UK has learnt that stumping up the extra cash and getting its sporting house in order (much like Australia after the Montreal Games), delivers tangible, shiny results. Will this turn the Olympics into some kind of sporting arms race? If so, can the plucky Aussies afford to keep up? Or is Team GB going to find the purse strings pulled tight again after 2012?

After not nearly enough sleep, we emerged for some brunch in Chapel Street and began our day of shopping. I say "shopping", but really it was more window shopping (or even more accurately, "window licking" as you might say if you were French), and really all that I bought all day was a book which has since reduced me to tears on several occasions. Anyway. Exhaustion pressed a short nap upon us on our return. Alarms were set with plenty of time for us to zip in and out of Adam's crystal bathroom, but I soon realised that Adam has managed to conceal a guilty secret from me all these years: he is a master of procrastination and delay. I shall certainly appreciate his polished appearance more in future, knowing how many anxious moments have been expended in the preparation! We eventually met Matt, freshly arrived in this faraway place, and Chris and Curtis at Big Mouth Café in St Kilda, which was sadly not a patch on the previous night's meal at Fog. You can't win them all. And from there we revisited our nightlife tour of Melbourne...

It really wasn't that many hours later that John and I met (a much more lively) Matt and Chris for brunch in Prahran again, having left Adam sleep-wrapped in his duvet. My sugar pick-me-up took the form of pancakes drenched in strawberry syrup, which refuelled me with just about enough energy to make it to the Art Deco exhibition at the gallery, where we fruitlessly thumbed through every poster in search of the sleek train blazoned enormously down the wall of the gallery building itself. But sugar and caffeine only get you so far, and our subsequent homewares shopping became an aimless wander until we stopped at Melbourne Central to sit down, chat, and watch the much-hyped Swiss-style pocket watch do its hourly thing until finally our schedule drove us homeward.

The moral of the story is: it's great to visit friends, and it's silly to try to cram too much into one weekend.

In Australia, people don't just "move house"; since the people who help you aren't "movers", they're "removalists", I suppose that means we removalised. Our removalists arrived after 5pm, already tired from a long day's removalising (removalisation?) and sluggishly removalised over the next four hours while Chris and I moved from a position of distanced "we paid for you to lift this stuff, we're not doing a thing" to a vigorously collaborative "let's get this show on the road or we'll be here all night!" We did have to pause briefly while the building manager harangued us for having the temerity to removalise outside the acceptable removalising hours and the gall to load through the lobby of our new building instead of the carpark... That's the kind of reception that makes you feel welcome!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, where was John while you and Chris were labouring to get the job done? John was off on a work jolly on the Great Barrier Reef for four days, so he managed to avoid any kind of lifting. There's no justice.

But why? Because killing with guns is easy - you pull a trigger and death happens: you're not even physically connected to the person you've shot. If you stab someone, you're connected to the agonised thrashing of your victim, the unavoidable effusion of blood, close enough to look your victim in the eye and feel the frenzied rhythms of their heartbeat fading away. But even that is over quickly - quickly enough for a murderer to feel shock, amazement, and most importantly, remorse. It takes a completely different kind of deranged or inhuman monster to persist through the horror of inflicting a mortal wound to the throat and then continue through the gory minutes that must seem a lifetime and saw, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, through another human's neck.

It's horrific and dehumanising in a way no gun rampage could ever be. It astonishes me that there are some people capable of such acts of brutality.

So imagine my inner shock and turmoil every time I read something on BBC that Call Me Dave (Cameron) says and find myself slightly agreeing with it (John on the other hand wouldn't bat an eyelid - he thinks I'm a closet fascist anyway). This happened again today, when I read a bit of news about obesity in the UK.

"We talk about people being at risk of obesity instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise," Mr Cameron said.
"We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things - obesity, alcohol, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather."

I shudder to think that I agree. Food isn't to blame for obesity - we don't all passively sit there and eat whatever's put in front of us, someone has to go out and choose shit food and cook it (or heat it up in a microwave). You hear people complaining that the government should do more to educate people about health and healthy eating. What? Why? Can't people bloody get off their backsides and do it themselves?! Why do people constantly want everything done for them, and then complain about Labour turning the UK into a nanny state? People in this country (er... I mean that country of course) need to take responsibility for their own lives. Isn't that what being an adult is all about?

Anyway. I'm starting to sound like a Grumpy Old Man. Old before my time. Luckily though, nothing could convince me to vote for Dave's bunch. As much as I sometimes agree with Big Dave himself, as long as his side includes such notorious stars as Margaret 'reinvade the Falklands to win an election' Thatcher, Michael "something of the night" Howard, evil Norman Tebbit, career spinster Ann Widdecombe, Baroness Young (who fought so long and futilely to keep Section 28 - and then died), the vastly entertaining clown, Boris "flag-waving picaninnies" Johnson, arch Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith, miming John Redwood, and so, so, so many more, I'll have to remember Aneurin Bevan's words from 1945:

That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party [...] So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin [...] If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.

It started and ended with germs. On the way out there, I was sicker than any dog I've ever been acquainted with, and John had to lead me like a befuddled old person around the airports of Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, and I collapsed into my KL guesthouse bed with all my clothes on, shivering under two blankets, while John was too hot for a single sheet in the sultry Malaysian climate. After a day of travelling with shivers, sweats, aches, and headaches, I raided the care package I'd brought along for Shane and popped some Nurofen Plus. Hallelujah. I might have been sub-optimal for our quick Petronas Towers visit, but within hours I was almost back to my normal self and alert and enjoying our flight to the paradise island of Langkawi.

Our stay there was defined by frequent taxis, gorgeous resorts, monkeys, and vigorous sweating. We stayed at the jungle cabin-style Berjaya Resort, John's uni mates were at the more decadent Andaman Resort, and the wedding itself was at the superluxurious Datai Resort. I'd show you pictures, but I lost the memory card in Bangkok. Suffice to say, we sat (sweating profusely) in white-shrouded seats under a pristine white canopy on the beach as the sun angled downwards; the bride made her way across the sand, along a rose-petal path bordered by glass-cupped candles to an arch of vivid tropical flowers and her waiting groom. After the ceremony, we chatted and sipped cocktails as Wen and Robin were snapped by cameras on all sides against the backdrop of the sunset sea. Dinner was around the pool, not so much a buffet as a row of Malaysian kitchens serving you a little of this, a little of that, while a band slowly raised the tempo and tempted us out to dance. And when dancing was all too much, we jumped in the pool and drifted and floated until it was time to go home.

We had one full day before we left Langkawi, and we spent it taking in the views from the lofty cable car, and splashing in some nearby waterfalls. Our next day of travel took us from end of Langkawi to the port on the other, over the sea to Thailand, and then on a 220 mile/350km journey from Satun in the south to Don Sak on the Gulf of Thailand - a 4.5 hour trip - by taxi. I love the decadence of taking a cab across the country, but for $70 it was a bargain, and also got us to Don Sak in time for a ferry stuffed with rancid backpackers to the holiday island of Koh Pha Ngan.

My highlights from this renowned jewel of Thailand's gulf include: pole-dancing in a leopard print bikini/mini-skirt combo at a pool party (I won); getting sunburnt in the shade at our resort; giggling uncontrollably at Beth under the influence of mushroom shakes at the Full Moon Party; enjoying the dawn view of the sea at the party while taking a leak in the sea (if you'd seen the toilet facilities available, you'd understand); and finally, my birthday dinner under the stars at the sea's edge. Probably the low point of our stay on KPN was leaving: in a cost-cutting exercise, John and I had decided on the 2h30 ferry back to Don Sak, 1hr bus transfer to Surat Thani, and 3 hours waiting in the airport for our flight to Bangkok. Shane took the more expensive option but didn't have to get up at 6.30am and still arrived before us.

Bangkok is a crazy city. Alive with sights, sounds, smells; it's not really a relaxing place. It's full of bargains if you can be bothered to haggle for them - Mikey, Beth, Debs, and Tony spent the larger portion of their time there in malls and markets (Bryan and I did a lot less shopping). I got my culture in with a daytrip to the ruined capital at Ayutthaya, north of Bangers, and probably saw more buddhas in one day than I have seen in total since seeing the thousand plastic buddhas of Nan Tiet with Wally back in 2003. Bryan and I also squeezed in a trip around the Grand Palace and Royal Temple on the day we left, and I think I've similarly seen as much tiny coloured glass and gold plate as I'm likely to ever again. Nobody told me the Thais had glama buildings! Our taste of Bangkok nightlife took in both ends of the spectrum - seedy bars and clubs in red light Phatphong and the gorgeous rooftop bars of the State Tower and Banyan Tree Hotel in the swankier parts of town.

As I said, it ended in germs. Poor wee John's been struck down by salmonella and is still wasting away in bed, shirking all of his household chores. Fingers and toes crossed that he'll be feeling a bit better on my actual birthday, tomorrow...

Photos coming soon. I put some on Facebook already if you want to check them out.

A trip to the cinema in Sydney almost always means comfy seats with enough legroom for people to stroll past in front of you without you having to do much more than pull your feet in. Gold Class is a step above all of that. It's so special, we get separated from the hoi polloi early on, to await our film in a comfortable lounge while slurping on a G&T. It's so special, we don't even have to sit in the same auditorium as the great unwashed, we have a whole cinema to ourselves - it's so tedious having the less fortunate staring, wide-eyed up at your comfort in those other less exclusive premium cinema seats. Once we had climbed into our gargantuan seats, we lay back, pressed the little buttons that lifted the leg rests and reclined the backs into an almost horizontal position, and waited for our first course to arrive while the trailers began. Before too long, a waiter came and knelt (yes, knelt) at our table, and delivered my chicken strips, John's popcorn, and our glasses of wine.

What luxury! Love it. What a terrific way to enjoy a film - served with munchies and drinkies throughout the entire show. Gone are the days you'd run down to the kiosk to get more popcorn, although inevitably there were more toilet visits. The film itself was almost a secondary consideration. Indiana Jones, the fourth instalment was incredible. And I do mean incredible - more unbelievable, fantastical and ludicrous than ever before, but totally enjoyable. Dr Jones returns to the rainforest in this Cold War nostalgia romp, replete with bomb-proof fridges, killer ants, speed-swinging Tarzan sidekicks, shiny extra-terrestrials, and Cate Blanchett as a Russki. It probably helped that we were half-cut, to be honest. Go and see it. But go and see it in Gold Class if you can.

So to make the most of our evening of Eurovision, four of us (Chris, Luke, John, and yours truly) pulled 25 countries out of a hat in the hopes that one of our selections would come second. No drinking games this time - there were far too few of us, so 25 countries' drinking penalties would have seen us all in hospital having our stomachs pumped.

Some highlights for you if you weren't tuned in (links go to YouTube - pics on the right have captions if you mouse over them):

• The UK's soul-pop entry, Even If performed by unheard-of Andy Abraham (dubbed by Popbitch "the dustman cometh") failed to impress us and the rest of Europe, and came a shameful joint last with Germany. In fairness to Andy, his song and performance were leagues ahead of some of the more outlandish (ok, I mean shit) entries from Spain and Finland. More about them soon.
• Germany's four babes were winners of some X-Factor style contest back home, and were among my favourites. Apart from the lady with the red afro. Unnecessary.
• To call Bosnia & Herzegovina's entry 'experimental' would be kind. I call them Wurzel Gummidge & Aunt Sally with a chorus of fat brides, with laundry as props. Without the visuals the song wasn't too bad, but it's hard to ignore such a performance.
• Finland tried it on again with their ear-bleeding thrash metal, but they didn't enjoy the same success as monstrous 2006 winners, Lordi. They came a deserved 22nd.
• I kind of liked Croatia's folksy tune, replete with septuagenarian rapper doddering about the stage and strangely flexible lady in red, flinging her limbs around like Miss High Leg Kick.
• Iceland's entry was deleriously good - we can't wait to hear it out in a club somewhere! It's classic Eurodance stuff. Easily one of my top five, so destined to fail, boohoo. Sure enough, it came in at 14th, even with all that help from their Nordic friends.
• Latvia's pirates took the piss. It was like something you'd get from a school band. Unbelievably, the Wolves of the Sea came in 6th with lyrics like, "With a hii hii hoo and a hii hii hey! We're hoisting the flag to be free. We will steal the show, Jolly Rogers go, We are wolves of the sea." Toilet break.
• Despite looking like a scary cat-faced tranny, Sweden's entry was rockin! Their slinky silver feline star bopped around in front of some fab background lighting (did we say how much we loved the stage and backdrop? Fabulous!). Watching her belt out her Eurotastic choon with her hot ladies (and oddly bland chaps), we all screamed "OO LASERS!" as the beams came on for her inevitable key change finale. I'm breathless just thinking about it. But there's no justice, and Ms Perelli came a dismal 18th.
• Who would have thought there was so much Eurovision talent in Ukraine? Well - I suppose it is huge. This year's entry, Shady Lady, was quite a toe-tapper of a tune, and the performance was violently entertaining. Athletic, fierce, and suspiciously orangely tanned, Ani began her song by grinding against backlit boxes containing her writhing dancers, went on to pose for some cheeky silhouettes in front of aforementioned boxes, before moving onto them on all fours for some seductive lounging. What showmanship!
• France's beyond bizarre entry drove onto the stage in a golf caddy, clutching a helium-filled globe (from which he sucked repeatedly?), and burst into a less-than-special song in English (much to the chagrin of many Frenchies), backed by singers touting fake beards.
• Greece - Britney in pink pants playing a bouzouki.
• Spain's entry defies explanation really; I'd suggest watching the video, but you'll never get those three minutes back. Ironic maybe? Toilet break definitely.

So Russia's heart-throb, Dima, eventually won the show, without even having to rip his shirt off as he did in the semi-finals. It was all quite boy-bandesque, although we were dumbfounded by the sub-attractive ice-skater (yes, ice-skater) trying to steal the show with whirls and pirouettes and shamelessly theatrical arm wavings. All quite strange. In the event, the race for second place turned out to be much more of a nailbiter than the race for first, and I was ecstatic to be very rarely on the winning side of Eurovision as Shady Lady kicked Balkan Britney's butt.

Now, Terry Wogan of the biting wit never holds back from giving everyone on screen a thorough and well-deserved tongue-lashing, or a lavishing of praise if deserved, but he was rather sour during the awarding of points. The usual farce of mutual backscratching between Greece and Cyprus and the reliable solidarity of the nordic countries was much in evidence, but the orgy of self-congratulation among the countries of Eastern Europe was simply jaw-dropping - the Balkans and the former Soviet countries gave almost all of their points to each other. A detailed look at the final scoreboard shows that the only Western European country not languishing in the bottom half of the table was Norway, leading the redoubtable Terry to wonder if any Western country has a chance of ever winning again.

All sorts of accusations of political voting have been slung already, but instead of decrying conspiracies and looking for Soviet sympathisers under the bed, remember that there are large numbers of expats and large ethnic minorities split across the Eastern countries - there are thousands of ethnic Albanians, Romanians, Serbs, Russians, Poles, Macedonians, etc. outside their "home" countries. Added to that, the countries of this region no doubt have similar musical tastes, and are exposed to the same songs and artists on TV and radio. And while new Eurovision countries frequently enter successful stars in the competition, in the UK Eurovision is widely seen as a Russian (haha) roulette at best or the kiss of death at worst for an up-and-coming popstar's career. Russia's answer to Enrique is already a big star - an MTV Russia award-winner for three years in a row and frequent chart-topper; so it's not surprising that when Lithuania delivered their votes, they gave 12 points to Dima, not Russia.

So all that rubbish from Terry about Latvia and Estonia knowing where their bread's buttered or Ukraine knowing how to avoid a gas shortage is a bit melodramatic. Nevertheless, Brits and Germans and the like are wondering whether to pull out of what's becoming Eurasiavision - if half of the 'Big Four' (the ESC's largest financial backers) pull out like Luxembourg and Italy, will it be the end of the Contest?

But do we really care about winning Eurovision? We don't need some crystal trophy to prove that the UK is full of musical talent - it's written all over the world's music charts. But if we're seriously in it to win it, it's time we entered someone with more universal European appeal... Any suggestions?

• Iceland's Eurovision entry (and also Germany's and Andorra's). See them yourself.
• Dating thirty-year-old men (Happy birthday, John!)
• Subway's new chicken tandoori sandwich.
• Thighs being too big to fit in my jeans!
• Autumn in Sydney. Dry, sunny, cool.
• My new job at Amnesia Group (part of Avenue A | Razorfish).
• Nick's latest blog. Witty and incisive as ever.
• Finally submitting John's monstrous permanent residency plus one (that's me) application to the Department of Immigration.
• Being able to buy a new camera from eBay to replace my wedding-wrecked snapper for only $50 more than the cost of repair.

Thumbs down to:

• Wedding-wrecked camera repair costing $300! Daylight robbery!
• Not being able to watch Eurovision live.
• The UK's anodyne Eurovision entry (see them yourself).
• Not receiving my postal vote for London mayoral elections.
• Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London :(
• No Country for Old Men - "Nobody goes to the movies for the irony. They go for the satisfaction" (Well said, Washington Post).
• Natural disasters :(

The purpose of this little transglobal jaunt is to attend the wedding of my friends, Andrew & Andreas, the soon-to-be Fox-Masons (or is it Mason-Foxes?); I can't wait! I think it may go down in history as The Most Well-planned Nuptials Ever given how über-organised those two are, so I had to have a dress rehearsal of my formal finery last night, just to make sure everything went together; John graciously remarked, "very nice - you look like a different person." Some sort of backhand compliment, I suppose. Of course I'll look fine if weddings without shoes are the going thing, otherwise that's another item on the to-do list this week.

So with all this holiday and matrimonial excitement just ahead, it's hardly surprising that I haven't really dwelled upon the fact that I'll be starting a new job when I return. After fifteen months at Massive, it's time to move on. I've worked with some great people, learnt a lot of new tricks (I guess I can't be an old dog just yet), been involved in some exciting projects, and I've enjoyed my harbour view; I'm leaving just in time to avoid the low-rising winter sun roasting me at my desk every morning too, so that's a good omen. When I get back, I'll be starting work at Amnesia, which is happily still within walking distance from home and gym, although I think there will be no harbour view. Sniff sniff. I wonder how the heady cocktail of post-holiday-blues + jetlag + induction works out. Watch this space.