Africa pictures! Have finally slogged through the hundreds of photos from the Africa trip and whittled them down to a slightly-more manageable 120 or so - for those of you who are interested they're up at
This Movember I've decided to donate my face to raising awareness about men's health. My commitment is the growth of a moustache for the entire month of Movember, which I know will generate conversation, controversy and laughter.
I am doing this because close to 3,300 men die of prostate cancer in Australia each year and one in eight men will experience depression in their lifetime.
This is a cause I feel strongly about and I'm asking you to support my efforts by making a donation to me. To help, you can either:
- Write a cheque payable to Movember Foundation, referencing my registration number 706592 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 292, Prahran, VIC, 3181
Through the Movember Foundation and its men's health partners, PCFA and beyondblue: the national depression initiative, Movember is funding world class research, educational and support programs which would otherwise not be possible.
5895 metres and counting... Have successfully climbed Mount Kilimanjaro without losing any body parts. Was harder work than expected - not as fit as I used to be - but still great fun, and I can now say I've stood on the top of the highest mountain in Africa :)
Tanzania Made it to Nairobi successfully after a brief bout with food poisoning from the most up-market restaurant in Madagascar. Next step of the trip - a seven-day tour through Tanzania including a balloon flight over the Serengeti. Feel free to be jealous now :)
Still alive - not been eaten by lions yet Have made it successfully to Madagascar after an amazing trip through Botswana to Victoria falls. Won't be able to upload photos until I get back as internet access is slow here, but so far the holiday has included the Okavango delta, Chobe national park, white-water rafting on the Zambezi river, giraffes, Zebra, Elephants, Lions and Lemurs in the wild, snorkelling off the north of Madagascar and much much more. Next step is more discovery of Madagascar before heading off to Tanzania.
First two days in Cape Town - walk from hotel in city bowl to top of Table Mountain and back, plus diving in a cage with Great White Sharks. Pretty good start to a holiday:)
Made it to Africa in one piece... After nearly 30 hours of travel in planes we have finally made it in one piece to Cape Town South Africa. Five days hereto get over the jetlagand then it's off for a couple of months on Safari in various parts of south-eastern Africa. More updates to come later.
Homebrew beer. Hugely fun and a great way to produce large amounts of decent beer for very little money. It does, however, have a downside. High alcohol beer = lots of sugar = lots of fermentation = lots of carbon dioxide =
Still, first explosion in six months of brewing ain't bad...
My flatmate is the only person I know who, when the song "it's a wonderful world" by louis Armstrong comes on iTunes, complain because "it's too depressing".
Australia day So, it's been a while since I've updated this thing, and in a staggering display of originality I'm mostly going to talk about how drunk I've been getting recently...
This weekend was Australia Day weekend, meaning we get Monday off. This being in the middle of January - to remind those in the northern hemisphere this is summer for us - it's a long hot weekend of summery fun washed down with copious quantities of alcohol. My original plan was to take some time off socialising and get the body better sorted out for the strength training I'm currently doing - this looked like a good idea since my usual excuses for alcoholic excess weren't around - the flatmate is away, the training partner is keeping things quiet this weekend and most of my other drinking partners are not around - so I'd assumed a quiet weekend of good food and relaxing was on the cards.
No.
Saturday night involved a phone call to the parents followed by a quick drink down the local. Bad idea. The local had a bunch of English backpackers who I got chatting to who were up for a big one. I ended up crashing at their place and not getting back 'till midday yesterday. Things went from bad to worse when I went for a quiet recovery pint down the other local yesterday and started chatting to a bloke who was over with his mates for the tennis and up for some drinks.
Him and his mates were over from Western Australia.
They work in the mines.
I felt honour-bound to keep up my end of the drinking and finished the night with a couple of them back at my flat watching James Bond movies and finishing off the remaining booze I had left. I am now intending to stop drinking for a century or two.
On the plus side, I have a couple of mates who are willing to provide me with accommodation and booze if I'm ever over in Perth...
P.S. - Hi to cousin Gary who's now reading this thing and is apparently rather envious of my lifestyle out here. Of course, nothing stopping you from visiting... ;)
Christmas with a bunch of strangers Or more precisely, with a bunch of friends-of-friends. Ended up spending the day at an Orphan's christmas bash run by a workmate of the flatmate and a great time was had by all. Beer was consumed in large quantities, food was eaten in similarly large quantities, pool was played, charades was played, odd card games were played, rules were generally thrown to the wind after more beers went down and both me and the flatmate got drunk enough late enough to miss out on the last trams back and had to crash over on the sofas. Met a whole bunch of new cool and groovy people, mostly of the from-overseas-and-traveling variety, who I will happily be catching up with again at some point. Took me all of yesterday to recover properly as I'm not quite as capable of handling the all-night binges as I used to be.
And I've still got two more days off before I have to go back to work.
During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.
Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.
The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. The PCFA and beyondblue will use the funds to fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and depression.
Did you know:
* Depression affects 1 in 6 men....most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide. * Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who will die from breast cancer annually.
For those that have supported Movember in previous years you can be very proud of the impact it has had and can check out the details at: [ Fundraising Outcomes ].
Movember culminates at the end of month Gala Partés. If you would like to be part of this great night you'll need to purchase a [ Gala Parté Ticket ].
I'm an avid cyclist. I use the bike to cycle everywhere, I've never owned a car and I'm generally an advocate of getting more people onto their bikes.
I also cycle into work every morning, and the bloke who sits next to me regularly has to put up with my morning rants about idiot taxi drivers, bus drivers and the general carnage that is Swanston street at rush hour. I also get particularly incensed when protesters of some kind block of Swanston street for some march or other, as they generally do it during rush hour to get the most attention.
This morning I'm on my usual cycle up off Princes bridge and see up ahead the tell-tale signs of road barriers, police lights and even more chaos than normal. I head up closer, wondering whether it's a repeat of the previous accident, or whether this is another annoying protest. Around the town hall are a large number of police cars, tv camera crews, blocked trams and cyclists, so I assume it's another protest of some kind and manage to sidle through muttering under my breath as I go.
I get into the office with another rant about protesters blocking the street on my lips, and what do I find? Today is National Ride to Work Day.
"How cool is my life?" I've recently switched cycle routes into work in an attempt to increase my weekly kilometres of cycling. Instead of the normal slog up St Kilda road with the attendant game of Avoid the Psychotic Taxi Driver, I'm now taking the longer way around and cycling up along the sea front up to Port Melbourne and into the CBD that way. As well as being a longer ride, it's also much more enjoyable as I'm on a cycle track going past the beach rather than on a main road going past office buildings.
I also discovered another surprise benefit when cycling into the office this morning. Something that I hadn't seen before and certainly hadn't expected to see any time soon, especially not on my morning ride to work.
Dolphins.
Yep. A school of about five dolphins happily swimming away about fifty feet from shore in the flat, clear-glass water of Port Phillip bay. I had them in sight for a good ten minutes along the shore as they headed up inland, before they turned off over to the other side of the bay and I lost sight of them. No idea if they're going to be back or not, but you can bet I'll be keeping an eye out for them on the morning commute.
So yes - I live in a place where my morning commute to work involves cycling along a sea front in the rapidly-warming spring weather and I get the chance to watch dolphins swimming. Damn, life is tough sometimes ;)
Opposable thumbs are a great thing You don't realise just how useful an opposable thumb is until you don't have one. I have had to spend the last three weeks asking the flatmate and various workmates to do simple things for me like open beer bottles, pick things up, change bike tyres etc because my right thumb is (still) a mess of bruise and pain.
The reason for this is a trip up to Canberra a few weeks back to catch up with Amanda and purchase a new mountain bike (shiny!). The bike was purchased and some training rides were had, which were much fun as Canberra has Real Hills, unlike Melbourne which has small lumps - unfortunately one of the training rides involved me needing to test the bike's brakes at a high speed. The bike stopped. I didn't. My head hit the ground, followed by my back, followed by my thumb. The head hit involved mild concussion which was soon recovered from. The back hit involved mild bruising, which was soon recovered from. The thumb hit involved heavy bruising which has still not healed and has resulted in me discovering just how much of day-to-day life involves having a working thumb. It is getting better, but I don't think I've ever had an injury that's taken this long to heal. It is a little annoying.
In other news, my life has largely been taken over by work. The foolish and gullible people I work for have fallen for the line that I"m actually a responsible adult and have decided to give me more responsibility - so instead of sitting at a desk and writing software I'm now responsible for wandering around the floor and telling other people to write software. This is highly entertaining as I get to indulge my inner Authoritarian Git and boss people around. The only down side to this is that I'm basically doing the role of Project Manager, which means I have to deal with People. And People have these things called Emotions. And these Emotions make them get loud and cranky and start doing things like Yelling At Other People even if the problems are Their Fault.
Now me? I'm a bloke. I'm very much a bloke. I play sport and drink beer. I'm vaguely aware of Emotions as something that other people have, and that play little part in my life - now I'm having to try and learn what these Emotions are and figure out how to manage people who have them. It is turning out to be something of a challenge. It is also turning out to be interesting how much the Business side of work and the Technical side of work have very little idea of how the other half works. Conversations like the following are not uncommon.
Business: "We need X system built to do Y."
Me: "Sure. Give me a couple of hours and I'll get you a quote and a timeline for when it'll be done by,"
Business: "Uh, no. That's not how it happens. We tell you when the deadline is."
Me: "Right. When's the deadline?"
Business: "Next week."
Me: "Ok. Let's prioritise what you need and I can work on getting the key stuff done by the deadline and we'll sort out getting the rest of it done afterwards. What are your top priorities in these requirements?"
Business: "All of them."
Me: "Right. We're going to have to have a talk about this..."
Needless to say alcohol has also been playing a large part in my life recently.
In other, completely unrelated news, I have finally, at the age of thirty-two, come to realise that the Rolling Stones are one of the greatest musical acts of the previous century and the song 'Wild Horses' should be part of the Top Ten Greatest Hits Of All Time in anyone's catalogue. At some point soon I will probably finally realise that DIzzie Gillespie knew his way around a trumpet and Edith Piaf had a pretty good set of lungs on her. Sometimes it takes us a while to learn how to appreciate some people.
