We're finding it hard to break the mouldso my ever interesting life has resulting in the excitement that is reformmating my computer at 3am on a friday nite =p i had a lot of trouble with driver CDs that id lost and CD Keys that id forgotten.. it was rather painful.. and oh so lonely in a nerdy way.
luckily for me my Windows XP CD is so old that the FCKGW key still works =) and shame on you if you know what i mean by that (wiki it if ur curious) =p but my HDDs were all mixed up and the wireless router wouldnt login and msn still wont connect... and im sure all the non-computer nerds have stopped reading by now....
moving on.. -> saturday i had to vote in the state election, but im in a liberal blue seat so it didnt really make a difference. still i cant understand how the government got voted back in. everyone who voted for them must have never caught a train or driven on a road in sydney for the past 12 years.
.. ahem.. i also went to Amy's bday thing at this park in Vaclause. i drove all the way there =) which is awesome cos i probly wouldnt have gone if i couldnt drive. ive never been out that way before, but its pretty nice.. if you can get parking. it was like this park/beach area , but since is in the harbour there arent really any waves. so its good for swimming and theres even a shark net. interestingly though its called shark beach.. so maybe there was a reason why they put up that netting.
at 7am this morning i drove my parents to the airport where theyre going to Alice Springs for a week. so i have a week of microwave dinners and trying to find somewhere to go out ahead of me. on the way home from the airport i thought i should stop somewhere on the way home since im rarely so far from home with transport. but all i could think of was Chatswood which is only sorta on the way home. but since daylight savings has ended overnight, my clock read 9:30 even though it was only 8:30.. and too early for any shops to be open on a sunday morning. so i got a couple of krispy kremes and a coffee to tide me over till i could impulse buy some stuff.
at the end of the day (or morning as it were) i had a new suit and a another pair of pants and a new shirt. all for jsut a touch over $200 =) what a bargain. Myer is gold mine for getting a deal.. i have no idea how they make money. although if uve seen their shareprice lately they arent really making much =p
Labels: beach, driving, shopping
so monochrome and so lukewarmso i went to UTS frisbee training yesterday cos i had time to kill before meeting up with hoy and jjm to go to the all new Pancakes on the Rocks. which turned out to be not nearly as all-new as i thought it was going to be. it was closed to for ages.. and listed as "closed for renovations", yet it looked pretty exactly the same as before =p it was suggested that "renovations" was a code word for "pest control" .. since that place has been known to have the odd bug/rat around the place =p
Labels: frisbee
extra extraum.. as jen pointed out, i forgot to mention the jetskiing incident where jen managed to tip the whole thing over. before we started the lady was like "its pretty hard to fall off unless you really try" yet jen found a way =p luckily the water was really warm. although i got jens wet hair in my face the rest of the way back .
i also forgot to mention that i volunteered at Tropfest the weekend before i left. its was ok fun i spose, i got to see all these no-name australian "celebrities" who i didnt recognise.. ive been told they were all from Home and Away or Neighbours or some other show id never seen.
on the weekend i went to see
Jen's bollywood performance at Castle Hill. i was told it was at the "School" behind Towers.. and im like waiting around at Castle Hill Public going "where the hell is everyone?" .. and it turns out it was at the other "School" which is not actually a school as much as it is an ex-school turned into a dancing college or something. afterwards we had sushi train at towers and this average apple crumble pizzetta at GPK.
yesterday i went to Autumn Hat at ELS.. i was soo rusty it wasnt funny. i coudlnt really run or anything.. i jsut kept throwing it away.. and we lost by 1 (or 2) in the end. grr. it was very rainy, but also the sprinklers were on on our field which jsut made it worse.
snap back to realityso i've sorta been absent of late. partially due to the Gold Coast, but mostly due to Canada. but im back now *sigh* so i guess i should post or something about the events of the past month which ive been away.
:: Gold Coast
so straight after work we headed to the domestic terminal to go to the Gold Coast.flying for me isnt as exciting as it once was. ive been a fair bit in the past few years so the whole security thing is getting a bit tedious =p
anyhoo the whole thing of pre-paid transfers was the biggest mistake. i highly unrecommend the experience. we spent large parts of the trip just waiting hours for transfer buses or being rushed by transfer drivers, when we couldve caught a cab for about the same price. theyre totally lame unless you're traveling by yourself, but then u might as well catch public transport.
we stayed at the Gold Coast International Hotel and made full use of the concierge as we basically kept those guys busy every moment we were there, even when we were asleep we had them investigating jetskiing options for us =p
so our activities did include jetskiing (which is awesome btw) and Dreamworld and
Draculas which is this horror-themed cabaret restaurant. it was a rather fun night out. but when i think back, it was actually pretty lame like the jokes n skits and stuff and i dont normally like that sort of thing hehe.
click here for pics of the GC courtesy of jenjen (the last one is particularly pimpin =p
:: Banff
due to delayed flights, missed connections, mechanical failures and personal screw ups, it took us a total of about 36 hours to get from Sydney to Banff. it was sooo painful.. and for all our troubles, we only got a $12 meal voucher each to eat at one of the fine establishments inside the Vancouver domestic terminal. after a long selection process, we decided on none other than Starbucks! because it had the least gross looking sandwiches.. and i could spent most of my share on a white choc cap.
transit pics here courtesy of tina
we finally arrived at almost midnite Banff time. the hotel wasnt bad, cept the rooms were a rather dimly lit, even when we turned on all the lights and lamps. it was warm at least.. thats always a plus, especially when its negative 20 outside.
Banff is analogous to Jindabyne, its for tourist who want go to the snow but dont like the commitment of staying at the one resort, staying at Banff lets you play the field =p the resorts in Banff are the win! unlike japan, they encourage tree runs instead of taking your lift pass for it. they even have these things called glades, which are like "artificially enhanced" tree runs in that they take forest and thin out the trees a bit. so the runs have a bit more space and so its less dangerous for n00bs. it is however way more fun when u can go whoosh thru the trees instead of it feeling like crowded school holiday weekend down the Easy Starter at Blue Cow.
the 3 resorts we visited were Lake Louise, Sunshine Village and Norquay. Lake Louise was the biggest and had an full village there. It was probably the nicest resort to visit, because of the overall snow/weather/runs combination. it had an area called "Extreme Steeps" which were all double black diamonds. you needed to catch a t-bar to get up there, and it was the longest line i was in all week. When i was there i was the only snowboarder going up and im like wtf?! but it turns out that on the close-side of the mountain and around the "extreme steeps" were vast areas skier-friendly moguls. not a good place for a snowboarder to be =p
Sunshine Village was also pretty big, it sorta had 3 main areas on the sides with the "village" in the middle. the "village" being the usual overpriced bistro and a merchandise store =p this resort is much more exposed to the wind, so at times it has pretty unbearable cross-winds and poor visibility. especially at the top of the mountains. but because all the runs sorta pooled towards the middle you could happily go off-piste without having to worry about ending up in a gully or off a cliff =) there was also a freely accessible boardercross course which is cool =)
Norquay was the smallest and quietest resort we went to. there was like hardly anyone there. it was however good for practicing going fast, like very fast. in fact the Canadian junior ski team was there training when we were there. there are some nice long wide well groomed runs to test of your edges. i tried going really fast and i think i had a bit of a leak in my goggles cos my eyes went all watery =p
due to the extreme cold that day, i did venture to the terrain park for most of the afternoon. i didnt really go that well though. they have this cool thing in Canada they rate each obstacle in the terrain park as S, M, L and XL. so you know how big to go. i struggled bad on the rails and i couldnt even board slide the boxes, i think it was cos they were metal and not the usually plastic im used to. there was a M sized kicker which i did a few 180s off. and a XL table top which i tried over and over and over.. but i kept landing on the flat (boo). it didnt help that my front knee is in a bad way.
at night we cooked rice + corn + beans + tuna in tina's rice cooker. because it was made for 240v australian power, it took forever when plugged into a 120v canadian power supply =p we were usually too tired to do much at night times, but we ventured into town a few times to purchase groceries from Safeway and investigate the endless streets of souvenir stores selling moose bobbleheads and the like.
banff pics here:: Vancity
hrm.. this is dragging out to a long post.. but moving on.
Vancouver was pretty cool it reminds me heaps of Melbourne. there was good food, good live music (more on that later) and there was stuff open past 6pm unlike Sydney =p
the annoying thing about it is the sales tax, which is 6% GST and 7% PST (provincial sales tax) on most things u buy. a quite annoying extra 13% on top of the tag price. especially since they have 1c coins, so u can end up paying like $37.67 for something and end up with a pocket full of change.
we went out a bit to some places like a comedy club and later to Bloc Party! because it was on the day after daylight savings we got the time wrong and missed out on the first opening act (boo), but the 2nd was called Final Fantasy. It was this guy named
Owen Pallett who had a violin and a keyboard and a looping machine which he controlled with pedals. he has had some other dood who was doing this sort of animation thing using an overhead projector and cardboard cutouts. u kinda had to be there =p but it wasnt bad.. i wouldnt mind hearing some more of his stuff.
Bloc Party was mad =) it was sorta weird cos it was a seated concert but everyone stood up so it was ok. they like a song with 2 drum kits which was mad.. although Matt Tong played shirtless which was less than appealling to me =p during the last song Kele went into he crowd and dragged ppl onto the stage. unfortunately we were in the balcony so we couldnt get there (boo).
the day after i got back home Bloc Party tix for Sydney went on sale and sold out the Hordern in 8 mins!! mad props to jenjen for getting me tix =)
um.. i think thats it for now
ill add more later as i remember things =p
Labels: canada, snowboarding, vacation
