2002 Blog
New Zealand Ski Trip
Greg, Spew, Shane, Chris, Ian, Warwick and I headed to New Zealand to ski. Unfortunately the snow wasn't the best but the trip was still awesome. We definitely need to do something like this again!
I'm flying back to Perth from Sydney as I type this diary entry out (and likely a couple older ones too). The last week I've been on holidays spending time with the family and friends. It was a bit of a short holiday because my flight landed me in Sydney on Sunday night and I couldn't get a return flight except for Saturday morning (so effectively 6 nights, 5 full days).
On Monday night I went with David's parents and Antonia to see a promo for Les Miserables at the Glen Street Theater. Afterward we got a quiet drink with some of the cast. Good night all up, thanks for inviting me Dave!
Tuesday the 7th was my sisters birthday so we had a big family dinner. Most of the focus was on little lucy though - such a cool little kid!
Roger and I met up on Wednesday for some dinner and drinks. I cooked my own
scotch fillet and it turned out fantastic. This is more surprising than
expected 
. We ended up having a few too many for me to get a
lift home so I crashed at his new apartment - very nice place!
On Thursday day I visited Nick, Masami and the kids. Nick and I had lunch and it turns out he's doing some work for a company in Perth. I might get a chance to meet up in Perth later on. In the evening I went out to dinner with my parents and Joy & Guy. Unfortunately Tom and John couldn't be there, the next time I'll have a chance to see them will be at the end of the year.
Last night Spew organised a great dinner at Simply Irresistible in North
Sydney. We were seated at a table opposite another really large party with
none other than Ray Martin at the head! Luckily enough Greg
stayed in check and Ray didn't complain to have us removed .
During the days I was mostly messing around catching up with emails, playing with Lucy and finally getting myself organised with real financial management software, ie: GnuCash. I'm rather impressed with this piece of GPL software!!!!
We're back from the US! It's been a busy 3 months, so busy the last month I've neglected to add any diary entries but we'll see what I can remember now. The return flight was a little tough. We had 3 hours wait in LA, about 1 hour in Taipai, and 7.5 hours in Singapore! At least Singapore had showers so we had a chance to freshen up then relax away. Most of us did some duty free shopping there too.
Ok, back around the 15th of March we headed off to the Grand Canyon. We had originally planned to spend 2 nights on the trip but we decided we could do it in 2. Of course we ended up packing things tight cause we actually visted the Grand Canyon, then the Hoover Dam, then Las Vagas (a second time). I was pretty much frozen at the Grand Canyon cause it was actually snowing and I didn't think it would be so I had neglected to bring along anything warmer than a jumper.
The other guys have gone skiing today (Sunday) and tomorrow. We worked yesterday to get the Monday off but as it turns out I didn't end up going because I a little worried about my back. I strained something earlier in the week when I was having a battle in the car with Vuong. Although it doesn't hurt very much now it did at the time and I think going skiing would be a bad idea...
I spent today instead cleaning up and washing clothes since I was getting a bit behind with all the work and weekends away.
Oh it was my birthday yesterday, I'm now 24! Thanks to everyone that sent
me happy birthday messages .
We were planning to go skiing again this weekend but as it turned out we just hung around on Saturday and actually worked on Sunday! Peregrine have their yearly customer trade show, Synergy, on all this week and we helped setup a stand that featured some of the stuff we're working on.
I think we'll end up going skiing next week instead. Otherwise it's as usual, working heaps. Oh and it's my birthday in a couple days. I'd have forgotten if it wasn't for Ruwani sending me a birthday package! Thanks babes!
Weekend in LA
This was an awesome weekend! We drove up to Los Angeles on Saturday morning straight to Universal Studios. That night we stayed in a Hotel near Disney Land and the next day we went to 6 Flags: Magic Mountain.
Universal was quite good, we got to see quite a few shows and went on many rides. The queues were fairly long though. Probably the best things were the backlot tour and Jurassic Park ride.
I
must say that I thoroughly enjoyed Magic Mountain a lot more than Universal.
It's purely a rollcoaster park! Apparently 6 Flags (Magic Mountain + some
other water theme park next to it) is rated as the 7th best theme park in the
world. Well it does feature a 250" drop rollcoaster called the GOLIATH! That
wasn't the scariest though, DejaVu had me scared shitless Just
ask the other fellas!
Tomorrow is a public holiday! But... we're not taking it just yet. Hehe, we were all pretty buggered and decided to hang around and relax this weekend. So we'll go into work tomorrow and take the public holiday another time.
I've been rather sick with a flu or something the whole week but it's easing up now. I was a bit worried back there cause I had some of the worst headaches I've ever experienced for 4 days solid along with coughing and the chills :(.
Ian and I met up on Saturday and cruised around the place. We got to see some hang gliders, paragliders, gliders, radio controlled planes, and seals! It was a great day, Ian even went paragliding!
That traffic jam on the way back from Las Vegas was terrible. In the end we arrived home around 11:30pm!
Las Vegas!
We're on our way back to San Diego from Las Vegas. It was an experience. From the I15 as we headed into Las Vegas in the early hours of Saturday the whole place stood out, lit up with a huge display of lights in the middle of the desert. There was road works on the I15 as it passed through Las Vegas and while we were stuck in traffic we were lucky enough to spot some local Nevada Americans doing American things like driving down the WRONG onramp either backwards or forwards at full speed to escape the traffic jam. Yer, GG!
We stayed in the Plaza hotel in the old downtown district of Las Vegas, at the end of Fremont Street. It's known for the "Fremont Street Experience", an amazing light show above the street on a canopy that extends for about half a kilometer.
After
sleeping in to 12ish on Saturday we spent the entire day visiting casino after
casino after casino. Although from outside the casinos look amazing in the
Las Vegas strip the insides started to blur together. Too many pokies!
We didn't finish up too late on Saturday night then slept in again to about
11 on Sunday morning. We had to check out by 12 and planed to head back to San
Diego as soon as we could. As it turned out we ended up going back to
Stratosphere to take some photos from the tower and go on another roll-coaster.
We followed this with breakfast around 2pm .
It's now 6pm and I'd better back fill diary entries for the last month!
[Later: 7:15pm] We're stuck in traffic on the I15 because it's closed up ahead. Yes CLOSED! I think we've got something like 20k of traffic before we reach a junction that will allow us to get around the closure. Not happy.
We just spent the weekend skiing at Snow Summit at Big Bear Lake. I hadn't been skiing for over 7 years and didn't realise how much I had missed it. Fantastic! I was a little slow at first but was surprised at how easy it was to ski again. All the other guys are newbies though so I pretty much spent the entire 2 days on my own. I tried to experience every run I could except for the most difficult. We're thinking about going a second time!
I think we're going to Las Vegas next week.
The place we're staying is
fantastic. Pool, spa, gym, and club house with some nice facilities.
Unfortunately we've been working very long hours during the week and don't get
to use them that much except the spa .
On Saturday we had a BBQ to celebrate our arrival and Australia Day. You can't really get sausages over here so we had to settle for Wieners (pork and beef hot-doggy type things).
San Diego Zoo was our first sight-seeing destination for our trip on Sunday. I haven't been to a zoo in such a long time but a zoo's a zoo. Actually I think I would have preferred to see the San Diego Zoo wild park some 30 miles out of the city rather than all these animals caged up.
And we're off!
We're here although the trip took much longer than the date suggests. San Diego time is 16hrs behind Perth (19 behind Sydney). I was looking forward to the flights but most of them were full and economy is cramped and you just get sick of flight food pretty quick.
The flight was with Singapore airlines and we went via Singapore, Tokyo, Los Angles and then finally to our destination San Diego. Unfortunately we couldn't get a flight with Qantas any earlier otherwise that journey would have been around 6hours quicker as the route is more direct.
On one of the the legs our seat entertainment systems weren't working
correctly so we couldn't play the games or watch movies. Mick and I didn't say
anything but Matt mentioned it to the hostess and at the end of the flight he
received a $25US voucher. We bought a bottle of black label Johnny Walker
whiskey . After arriving to Los Angles we flew a local domestic
airline called American Eagle (subsidiary of American Airlines). It was the
smallest plane I've ever been on! Mick, Matt and Vuong were not allowed to
board our scheduled flight though because of some mistake and came on the next
one half an hour later. Lucky for them though, American Airlines gave each of
them a $250US voucher for flights. I think they may use them to fly over to
New York at some stage...
To bed I thinks!
We're leaving tomorrow but since the flight is at 1:15am we'll be
heading to the airport tonight around 11pm. I left the packing up till today
(last minute as usual). Ruwani was nice enough to help me out again (as usual)
. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything cause it'll be a long
time before I get back.
Cya everyone!
We were meant to be heading off to the US on the 9th but there were some delays and our flights have now been booked for the 18th. The return flights are also set for a full 3 months so I won't be back until mid April.
Hehe, with the date approaching I'm getting all anxious. I know it's a business trip but we're going to have a lot of fun traveling around in our free time.
I had a great time in Sydney as usual. Lots of catching up and lots of
BBQs . The only bad thing is that I'll miss out on an awesome
diving holiday with the fellas up at the Great Barrier Reef cause I'll be in
the USA.
I finally bought a digital camera! It's a tiny 2.1 mega pixel Canon Digital
IXUS V that can also take short videos. Stand by for huge numbers of photos
from now on .
Back to work today too.
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