Catherine's Bday at Charlie's

Saturday was a full day. I started the day with a two hour commute to Sasha's house for lunch, a co-worker who lives in Ringwood. A tram, a train, and a walk later, I arrived before Mike and Terra in their vehicle. Sasha is an Australian married to a beautiful woman Marta from Poland. They have two boys. Mike and Terra are from the U.S. and have a daughter Maddie. We lucked out with a beautiful day on the porch, with amazing food that Sasha mostly prepared himself! We had avocado and shrimp boats, followed by gourmet foccacia sandwiches, followed by a Polish apple cake dessert. We sat around talking for hours while the kids played. That's what we married people do. Wait a second... I'm not married.

From there it was onto a Network 21 business development seminar in the city. My 'friend' Adrian from boxing tried to lure me into Amway. The session was crazy energetic with more up and down than any Catholic church service. I had to laugh a bit because the 'ultra impressive speaker' who'd been fast-tracking the Amway business for the past 21 years put up a show-off video at the end to demonstrate how great his life is, and his last vacation was to Penang. As I watched the video, I elbowed Adrian to say I'd stayed at the same resort the previous year, where I celebrated my 30th birthday with Katie. At the end, several people asked me what I thought, and I said I'm already living the dream! I have his life at age 30, I've got him beat by 20 years. They asked if my trip was free. I said no, but I could afford to pay for it. Not much room for further harassment!


Next stop of the evening was Charlie's Bar on Hardware Lane to celebrate Catherine's birthday. Here I am with the birthday girl!


The night was a bit of a reunion for us, as I met Catherine, Sarah, and Kate on the Continki tour in New Zealand. Fun, fun! Yayayayayah as Catherine would say.

Friday Night Drinks

The Melbourne office has the right idea. Every Friday night, the office provides beer and wine and a few nibblies to promote inter-office camaraderie. About once a month, we have a bbq on the balcony. The weather has been amazing, so the work crew has congregated to the balcony off our sixth floor tea room (lunch room) which overlooks the Yarra River.


Tonight was a farewell to Rachel in the center front, as she's headed back to the UK. Christina, Kath, and Natasha comprise the back row. I've met the other girl at least 3 times and had substantial conversations but I can't for the life of me remember her name.


Elliot raids the beer fridge.

The Young Professionals group is responsible for this latest addition to our balcony. I took a turn on the foosball table, but as I looked into the sun through Duncan's prescription sunnies, I failed to block a good portion of goals, leaving Robo-cop less than thrilled with my partnership. Maybe I'll invest in some sunnies before giving it another go.

My girls inside! Karen, Danni, Natalie, and me

Tim, Robo, Danni, Peter, Susan, Duncan, and Elliot's beer.

What a view! It's a rough life I'm tellin' ya!

The sunset in one direction...

...and the view in the other direction. Apparently this bridge was in the movie Ghostrider. I haven't seen it, so I don't know.

As usual, the WISER group is among the last standing at Friday night drinks before moving onto nearby bars along Southbank - Bear Brass, World, and Blvd are the typical contenders.

Shakahari

Thursday night, we went out to celebrate Jojo's birthday. We checked out a vegetarian restaurant in Carlton called Shakahari. There were seven main courses on the menu and nine of us, so we ordered everything on the menu and a couple appetizers, and shared everything around the table. The food was delicious, and the company even better! It was me and all of Alex's friends, but no Alex as she is enjoying her honeymoon in Fiji. Oh, how I've stolen her friends out from under her! In the photo from L to R; Sam, Tori, Caz, Mel, Jojo, Duff, Suz, Joey. After dinner, we headed across the street for dessert at Brunetti's.

Parliament of Australia

We eased into Sunday with a lazy morning, farewell to Saul and Ryan, and a stop at the Parliament of Australia. The Commonwealth of Australia was established in 1901 by the six British colonies in Australia. Sydney and Melbourne were the two largest cities in Australia but neither could become the nation's capital because of their long history of rivalry. Rather, an independent state was formed to house the country's seat of government. Federal Pariament met in Melbourne until 1927, when they relocated to ACT.


The above building is the Old Parliament which was in use until 1988, when the new building was finally completed. The Australian War Memorial stands behind the Old Parliament.


The design of the $1.1 billion site is in the shape of two boomerangs enclosed within a circle. Much of the building is buried beneath Capital Hill, but the meeting chambers and accommodation for parliamentarians are free-standing within the boomerang-shaped arms. There are 25,000 granite slabs on the curved walls which, placed end to end, would stretch 46 km. The building required 300,000 cubic metres of concrete, enough to build 25 Sydney Opera Houses. The building has 4,700 rooms and has 2,416 clocks that are used for voting.


The Australian Coat of Arms features a kangaroo and emu as these are two of very few animals said to be unable to walk backwards, thus we "Advance Australia" as in the national anthem.


The public entrance to Parliament House opens into a main foyer leading into the Great Hall, which features a tapestry based on a painting by Arthur Boyd. Functions that have parliamentary and federal relevance often take place here, but the Great Hall is also open to functions for the general public, such as weddings and graduation ceremonies.


The House of Representatives


The Senate


The flag flown from the 81-metre flagpole is 12.8m by 6.4m, about the size of half a tennis court. The flagpole weighs 220 tons and is made of polished stainless steel. It was designed to be the pinnacle of Parliament House and is an easily recognizable symbol of national government. It is visible by day from outside and inside Parliament House and floodlit at night. The flag itself weighs approximately 15 kg.

Sky Fire

We stayed with Eva's mom while we were in Canberra. She made such a beautiful host! I even ate a traditional African meal (where Eva's mom lived until age 27) and learned to shake my booty to African tunes.


Eva took me to one of her favorite spots in Canberra, Mount Taylor, where she liked to start every morning with a hike to the top.


It was a beautiful hike with mountains surrounding on all sides. The landscape in Australia is really beautiful, and I seem to have seen a lot of it lately!

Here I am at the summit with the Telestra tower far off on the left and the city and lake below.

We later went to the lake for "Sky Fire", an annual event organized by one of the local radio stations. We just happened to time our visit to Canberra perfectly.

We stopped by the Telstra Tower for a closer look.

We met some friends of Eva's (all of the above crowd!!! she knows everyone!) at Regetta Point on the lake later that evening for Sky Fire.

We brought a deluxe picnic and drinks which we enjoyed as the sun set.

me, Ryan, Jimmy, Eva (can't see her), and Saul ready and waiting for the fireworks show

Ryan, Jimmy, Eva, and Saul in front of the rest of the crew

The fireworks show was among the most impressive I've seen with a great variety of explosions, shapes, and colored flares bopping around the sky.

The finale consisted of thousands of fireworks being set off constantly for at least a minute.

After the fireworks, we ventured over to King O'Malleys in Civic, a hopping spot for nightlife, perhaps partially because of the large crowd at Sky Fire.

Roadtrip to Canberra

My next door neighbor Eva and I decided to take a roadtrip to her hometown of Canberra in ACT (Australian Capital Territory). We passed through 3 states in a matter of 8 hours (Victoria, New South Wales, and ACT). We left after work Friday and arrived in Canberra around 1:30am Friday night/Saturday morning. We wasted no time and headed out to soak up a bit of nightlife. Mooseheads turned out to be a hot spot for the evening and did not close its doors until 5:30am.


Canberra is quite small with a population of 340,000 and is not known for its nightlife or social scene. However, Eva made a fabulous tour guide and knew all the hot spots. The first night, we concentrated on the bars wrapped around this single block of Canberra's small downtown area. I was impressed with the many hours of nightlife that followed our late arrival.


Of course there was dancing!


Canberra Chris made a great dancing partner for the evening. He'd just been at a wedding, so he was all warmed up and rearing to go.

Later I met a guy from Griffith whose grandfather Robert Trimbole was an Italian-Australian drug lord and organized crime boss in Griffith, New South Wales, featured in the now-televised Underbelly Tale of Two Cities. You just never know who you're gonna meet.

My First Earthquake

I felt the tremors of an earthquake today! The tremors measured 4.7 on the Richter scale with no known damage. The floor shook noticeably beneath my chair as though heavy construction was drilling up through the floor or very nearby. This is actually the second 4.6 earthquake in two weeks (first one was March 6, which I didn't notice). The stresses originated in Korumburra, which is 90 km southeast of Melbourne.

St Patrick's Day

We returned to Dove Lake the next morning to see if we could get a better view of Cradle Mountain on what appeared to be a sunnier day. It was a bit better but still stuck under the clouds. Unfortunately, this is common in Tassie.


me and Katie in front of Cradle Mountain, I swear.

We got an early start on the drive back to Launceston, which was a really good thing since Katie and I have a tendency of taking the scenic route. Is it bad when you have to tell your navigator they're not even looking at the map in a moment of unmistakable lost-ness? Well, the up side to all of this is that we had time and we had a beautiful drive. Above is the Wilmot Valley of views. Cradle Mountain was off to the right (not in the picture) and was still covered in a cloud, which made us feel less bad about having poor weather the day before.

We made it so far off course that rather than heading east to Launceston, we arrived in Devonport, nearly due north from our departure point. This is where the Spirit of Tasmania ferry arrives from Melbourne. Ah well, I was a bit curious what the city was all about so all is good. We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the northern coast of Tassie before sorting our path back to Launceston.

Once again, we were enjoying a beautiful, sunny day. If only we could have chosed when and where the sun would shine...

Katie was stoked when we passed a cheese factory en route to Launceston. We did a 180 to pull into her cheese paradise with lots of funky painted cows in the pastures.

We sampled around 20 cheeses, me picking the tiniest piece I could find as I'm not much of a cheese lover.

Beer, however, now that is something I can get stuck into. Next stop was the Boags Brewery in Launceston.

This was a display-only bar. I went in for the photo op and got a bit of a shock when beer came gushing out when I pulled back on the tap.

The Boags beer selection on display.

I'm hoarding every beer that comes off the assembly line.

And hugging a life-size bottle.

I arrived back in Melbourne around 6:30pm, and met Glenn and Josh at 8pm at Bridie O'Reilly's on the corner of Sydney Rd and Brunswick Rd to celebrate St Patrick's Day! We had the traditional Irish corned beef with cabbage dinner, and a few obligatory beers.

I'd never been to this pub before, but it was huge with a live band and lots of holiday festivities.

Huge outdoor courtyards were packed with more patrons. The bar actually ran out of Guinness. How does that happen on St Patty's Day?! I ran into Alex from the Contiki tour in New Zealand with some mates of his. The world is getting smaller!