November Archive

Librarians

It has been brought to my attention that some Librarians think that the blog might need to be "spiced up" a little. I can only assume that they are referring to a lack of pictures, because in the last post I mentioned that I had a shot bought for me by a transvestite. On that note, I'll be adding pictures during the week. I've been too lazy to do it before but when a librarian calls you boring... its time to take action :)

The Melbourne Cup Fiasco

Jonny and Joe headed off for the Melbourne Cup today. They flew to Melbourne this morning, taking in Neighbours night tonight and then off to the races tomorrow... Hopefully.

I say hopefully because the lads have made extremely hard work of this trip. It started during the week when Joe had problems with his credit card. After a lot of phone calls he had his card unblocked, but he still can't use it on atms.

Yesterday though it got very funny. The lads went to the internet to check the time of their flight. Unfortunately for them they booked it for Sunday morning instead of Monday morning so they had to book a new flight. They were a bit pissed off but in fairness, they could see the funny side. Which is good seeing as I broke myself laughing when they told me.

The drama did not stop there though. I rang the lads this morning and they forgot their tickets for the Melbourne cup and can't afford to buy new ones. Its all very funny really. I now have to try to go in to ticketmaster to see if they will cancel the lads tickets that are in my pocket and then have the lads collect new ones in Melbourne. Hopefully they'll be able to sort things out but until then I'll be laughing a lot.

Other than that, there is not much news here. I have gotten a job and start work next Monday working on some kind of roll-out/migration on a 2-3 week contract. We still can't find a place to stay but are looking.

Finally some pics

Here are some pictures of neighbours night!

Sydney Goings On

We have been in Sydney for just over a week now and so far it has been successful. The only thing we are really missing is somewhere a bit more permanent to live. All our stuff is in a dorm room with us so its hard to keep everything clean. Plus its crazy expensive.

As for work, me and Ian both start work on Monday morning. I'm working as a Rollout Engineer or something like that. It sounds fairly easy. Its a 2-3 week contract but when that's up I think the agency will be fairly quick about getting me more work. So all is good. Jonny has an interview on Tuesday probably and Joe then just has to get himself together.

I have spent the week playing Football Manager 2007 and editing photographs. There hasn't really been much else to do. It has rained most of the week. So below you can see some of the fruits of my labour...

More from Sydney

Right so I started my first job since July. I hate working already. My title is an IT Rollout Engineer but my job is to change settings... wait a while and change them back again. Not really a whole lot to it. At the moment I'm based in a company who bought the wine division from Fosters. This place is gas. There are wine bottles everywhere. Full ones at that. Everyday so far somebody has pulled out a drink by 5 o'clock. Drinking at their desks during work. I'm interested to see what Friday will be like so. I couldn't imagine what Ammeon would be like if similar things happened. Would be a jollier place I suppose.

I made it to see the Opera house and Harbour bridge on Saturday. Got some great photos too. I'll add some to this post soon. The Opera House is a class building and the bridge is massive too. I was however very dissapointed to find out that the Opera House is not actually white! Its a yellowy browny whitey colour. Maybe it just needs to be cleaned.

After doing that we headed out on Saturday night and I ended up staying up til 8 o'clock drinking coffee. That was good fun. Then after 3 hours sleep, me and Matt (who is I think going to add a post with those pictures) headed to a festival in Newtown, just outside Sydney central. That was cool. It was a free thing with loads of bands and we just sat around having a laugh and drinking a few beers. There was one really great band called Dead Letter Chorus playing there, who I'm going to try and see play again. Basically though we just spent the whole day lying out on grass or sitting in a beer garden enjoying the sun. It was really hot. Somehow I didn't get burnt though... happy days.

We still haven't managed to find a house yet. We have figured out that we can get an unfurnished place and rent furniture for the same price as a furnished place, so at least we have options. For now we just keep looking. Well the lads are doing most of it in fairness coz I'm in work when they are viewing places. Hopefully we'll have something by the time they get jobs or we'll really be in trouble.

Until next time

Brian

Newtown Festival weekend

Hi all my name is Matt and i am pleased to say im a friend of Brian, Joe, Jonny and Ian. I actually met Joe and Ian in Sri lanka and six hours later we were on a flight together to Bangkok! a few days later i then met Jonny and Brian when they met back up with Joe and Ian in Thailand. Brian and Jonny were great and took the time to sit down with me and give me loads of great places to see, stay and feed and water myself as i was heading off to Loas, Vietnam and Cambodia. They had just returned so were full of usefull info and all this within 2 mins of meeting them! great guys all four and a fast tracked friendship was formed! The crowd i travelled with very much appreciated the tips i had in my lonely planet especially when i pulled it out and said right we are off bowling at 1am in the morning!
anyhow long story short and about 2 months later we are all reunited again in the amazing cosmopolitan city that is Sydney and Brian has trusted me to upload to his blog so I will do my best to explain a great weekend which started with a txt asking me if I fancied a Tapas? well I love Tapas so I jumped at the chance so off we headed. The night started all civilised drinking red wine and swapping travelling stories and highlights as well as feeding our faces with some amazing food and ended at a foam party a good few hours later! Friday night not relishing the thought of drinking again we headed to the cinema caught an ok film and planned a night out for Saturday which for me ended at 6am and Brian gone 8am! anyhow Sunday all hungover me and Brian headed to the Newtown festival not really knowing what to expect and after going to the wrong station and taking a tour of Sydney we finally arrived, it was a blistering day and Brian went and got some alcapops in! ill never forgive him :) we had a great day chilling in the sun listening to local bands and like Brian said we will have to see one of the bands again as they were brilliant! i even caught Brian almost breaking into a dance in the corner of my eye! After the festival we headed to a local pub and chatted to some locals and generally had a great time after that we headed home on the train and popped into a local hostel bar to meet a friend of Brians :) ill let him explain that one

Saturday at a Gig

I'll first go into a bit more detail about my job. I am presently an IT Rollout Engineer. What that basically means is that during the day I uninstall software and change some settings and then in the evening I change those settings back again. It's an awful job and to be honest it really doesn't pay well. From the look of things too the contract will be extended until another week. Good because that means I still have a job but bad because that means I still have this job. In saying that its money, which I need so its not the worst thing in the world.

Anyway, on Saturday me and Matt went to see Dead Letter Chorus. This was the band we saw last Sunday at the Newtown Festival. They are a really good band and they put on a good show. We were talking to them a bit afterwards... well I was, Matt was a bit starstruck. Matt got his picture taken with them too. What I found really funny was that the band are all mad Frames fans. Its so strange, in Ireland if you say do you like the Frames you get a fairly calm yes, however these guys... "Oh my God, I love the Frames!" I found that strange. The lead singer of the band does look like Glen Hansard though, its quite funny. Apparently when they went to see the Frames he got asked a couple of times if he was Glen Hansard. I also found out that Bic Runga is from New Zealand... I never knew that.

Ok, so the pictures below have nothing to do with this post really. I took them the same day as the Opera House photos but only really got to sort them out last night. Enjoy...

New House, New Job

Finally we have moved in to our new house. Its in Ashfield which is a suburb about 20mins by train outside the city centre, which is handy enough. At the moment there is just the four of us living there at the moment but Jonny's brother and two friends are moving in in 2 weeks so that will make 7 of us. There is only one bathroom which will make things awkward in the mornings but I'm sure we'll survive. The house is nice and fairly big with a bit of a garden out the back so we can have bbq's or whatever. There are 3 single rooms, which the lads have named the Japanese Room (Jonny's), the India Room (Ian's) and the Madonna Room (Joe's). Joe fought valiantly to have his room named the white room but thats not happening. We still have no kitchen yet because they are still working on it, although I did manage to make my first home cooked dinner since Melbourne last night. Pork chops, carrot, spuds and gravy. The spuds weren't great and the pork was a but dry but I loved every last bit of it. Bring it on.

Other than that, I have gotten a new contract with Ericsson. I'll be working as a Network Fault Analyst. Either way, its a job that will look good on the CV when I get home. I'm not the only one starting on Monday thought. Both Ian and Joe will be working with me. That should be good fun.

Yesterday, me and Ian went to the Blue Mountains. Wandered around a path after a 2 hour train Journey. It was nice with some great views but I don't know that I would go mad about it. It was nice to see. There is a scenic railway and cable cart there that we didn't go on but if we go back up with the lads, we will probably go on that. It was a nice day though and good to get out of the house and have a wander. Legs were slightly stiff.