We have been without internet for 2 whole days now. In the last 2 days i have also felt quite nausious…..I have internet tonight and i feel fine.
We went to York and visited the NRM, for those of you who arent down with the NRM it’s the National Railway Museum.
I love trains.
NRM
The NRM recentlly aquired the flying Scotsman, my favourite steam train in the whole world. Here it is below.
After York we headed to the lakes district to stay with some of my family. It was fun, my cousins sure do have a lot of energy, we played the worlds longest game of rounders in the back field and chatted away.
Today we went and had a look at some lakes.
Lakes
This afternoon we crossed the border and are staying in Perth.
This morning wife and I made a dash across London to go on the DLR (Docklands Light Railway). It’s cool, super frequent trains to a range of places, and best of all the trains are fully automated. No driver!
Then it was back to the Hotel to meet the olds. We drove to Oxford where we spent some time sorting out hire cars, for some reason we ended up with 2 cars instead of one. But we are hopefuly changing back to just one in the next couple of days.
Here is the one that my parents got for me and jenny.
It has a sun roof, in case you thought we must have got out my pocket knife and made a hole in th roof for a good photo op.
Village
Now we are in some village, it’s small and english like. I had steak for dinner, cows taste different in England, must be the mad cow disease.
Today wife and I caught about 5 thousand buses and 3,238 trains.
I can’t remember where we went exactly, just the main attractions.
I know thumbnails can be anoying but i figure you may not want to actually look at my photos so now you get a choice.
Big Ben
London Eye
I really enjoyed the eye, I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.
Madam Tussauds
Madan Tussauds was no way near as good as i expected. It was packed full of rude french people whou would physically push you out of the way so they could push in or get in front for some reason. I was getting pushed around a lot and sometimes with a lot of force.
you may have noticed that Mr Speiilberg and myself don’t look very impressed, well i can tell you why. I just showed him an episode of ‘wisdom with tabitha’
London Bridge - complete with their ‘package deal’ photo opportunity.
We also went to St Pauls, and i drank a bottle of coke that was from Germany.
We went for a walk with my parentals into hyde park. we didnt get very far casue everyone was so exhausted.
Our hotel is just down the road from a big strip of cafes and food joints. A lovely part of town to have dinner. But why do that when you can have a real dinner.
I’m eating a frozen lasagne and drinking a bottle of coke. there was only 2 problems, the first being our micriwave doesnt work, the second there is no utensils.
being the handyman that i am i fixed both problems. I took my frozen lasagne into my parents room and used their microwave. The cooked plastic container was too hot to carry so i wrapped it in an old newspaper. Now i’m in our room eating lasagne with a tea spoon.
them my friends it is sleep time, i miss sleeping.
I packed my bag tonight for our UK trip. I know i broke my own ‘day of departure packing’ policy. but for some reason i did.
Anyway I have packed socks, undies, boxers, shirts, shorts, pants, hats, drink bottle, shoes, thongs, cables, towel and other bits and pieces and my suitcase is only just over half full.
I’m pretty much the best.
one more sleep then i get to go on a plane, i love planes.
I’ve now sent out my resource kit that i made at work. It’s gone, posted, and emailed. So now thats done i’m ready to escape for 3 weeks to the kingdom that is united.
don’t really have a heap to do now so maybe it’s home time…..
there is no internet at work casue telstra are dumb, and now we have gone over our limit at home so its super slow thanks to dumb optus. looking forward to the 5 mins of free internet at sydney airport on Saturday. Unmetered, internet kiosk bliss.
In other news Paul Mcdermott still hasn’t called me asking me to be a guest on GNW, must be waiting for the season finale.
Today was day 2 of meetings in melbourne. I awoke to the rudeness of my alarm at 7:23am and had a shower and a vegemite sandwich (not at the same time). Then began my walk to Richmond train station so i could grab a train out to blackburn. I really enjoy exploring transport in other cities.
I got to the station as the train was pulling in so i had to make a dash for the platform, I just made it!
Meeting today was good. Although i was pretty stuffed so didnt say much compared with yesterday.
at 4pm 6 of us filed into a maxi taxi to head to melb airport.
we parted ways at the airport and 3 of us boarded straight onto out flight back to sydney. The plane landed at 7:20pm and at 8:25pm i was in hornsby ordering a pizza. lovely.
It was good to go down and meet my colleagues and see the national office. Met some lovely people and had some good conversations, was also tops to hang out with david and sleep in his pad and talking over a beer in a richmond pub.
My 7am flight to melbourne didn’t leave until 7:30am and then due to crap weather we had to circle melbourne 3 or 4 times so it ended up being almost a 2 hour flight.
got to melb and met the other buddies then we got us a taxi out to the TEAR office. $76 cab fare.
then all of today was in a meeting, twas pretty good and good to meet other tear peoples. Tomorrow is another day of meetings.
Tonight David and I went to a pub in richmond for dinner. I had a tops chicken parma. and when we got back to his sisters apartment I did the biggest poo i have ever done in my life…Melbourne’s pipes will be working that baby through for a while.
We drove to Armidale on Friday, Drove home yesterday.
Was a pretty productive time, we planned lots of our trip to the UK. Not the kind of planning Gowers do but super duper planning for the howie’s.
Us howies normally rock up somewhere for a holiday and decide on each day what we will do that day and just stay and places we drive past and think look nice.
So i think jenny was finding that idea a bit stressful. So we have planned a fiair bit. We even know which towns we are staying in each night. On top of that we have even booked a few of the nights accommodation.
My dad nealry exploded with all the planning and had to go take some time out. I kept it well hidden that i too like the just rock up kind of style but its not too bad, we dont have a running sheet for each day, if we had that i’d run away.
Now the only hurdles that need to be jumped before we leave is that my mum needs a passport and my dad needs a re-entry visa into australia.
we are in Armidale, sitting in myparents house awaiting their arrival home from work.
I brought my airport express so was ableto plug it straight into their internet connection and now we have wireless. this town is starting to look more appealing
in the morning wife and i are heading up to Armidale to hang out with the fossils over the weekend. the plan is the organise a bit more of our trip and do some booking of stuffs.
we drive up in the morning and drive back sunday. 1 full day in armidale is more than enough.
I have been watching a lot of slight of hand magic on the internet lately. I love it, it keeps me entertained for ages.
tonight i thought i would give it a go myself. And i must say i did a pretty good job.
I was scooping out my ice cream for dessert and, well lets face it scopping ice cream isnt normally all that entertaining. So i set out to make my ice cream disappear. I knocked the bowl on to the floor, smashed it and abra kadabra my ice cream was gone infact so was the bowl, i turned it into 2 small bowls.
with just over 2 weeks until we jet set off to the UK, I’m starting to get super excited about a 3 week holiday.
I think for one of the first times in my life there are people who are really starting to get on my nerves, more than i can ever remember. So it will be a lovely moment stepping onto the plane and taking a break.
In other news I think 2008 could be the year of howie getting a tattoo.
Today two of our buddies got married. I was all dressed up in a suit and tie. Wife and I were ushers.
It was a nice wedding, although the minister began his sermon talking about a diamond incrusted g-string and how he saw it on the internet. not your average wedding sermon.
The reception was fun too, at a fancy place in pyrmont.
