Cairns Day 53

Today has been pretty BLAH!

I woke up kind of early from the phone ringing non-stop for what felt like 30 minutes. I decided to take advantage of getting up early and phoned my brother in Toronto. His wonderful wife picked up and although he was out I did get to have a great chat with her. Turns out my little nephew can roll over! I can't wait to see him when I'm back in Canada. After the phone call I went back home (I use the pay phone around the corner for long distance calls0 and rather than doing anything productive I ended up watching Fight Club. I've seen it before but it's one of those movies you need to watch a few times to understand it fully and now I can say I am on eof the few people that DO understand it FULLY. I also discovered there is a slow motion button on the DVD remote so that was....

WOW! Sorry to break from a really EXCITING (read boring) description of my DVD remote but this guy just interrupted me and turns out he's Graham. I met him in Melbourne many moons ago. We were in the same room and went out to Dallas the week I was leaving to go to Sydney. He remembered my name and everything. Tres cool. It turns out he's leaving to go back to Canada on Monday and with my work schedule it looks like i won't be able ot catch up with im but we may be able to hang out for a quiet one on sunday night. Wow! it's just great to still be bumping into people i"ve met throughout my travels. Even if I didn't know them well, it's just a great feeling knowing that someone knows you, you know? (haha).

My plan the afternoon has been to go into town and get the next set of guitar notes. I don't htink I'll get a chance to practice a lot today but I have been playing everyday and for at least an hour. Yesturday I tried to get that Nirvana song going and I'm hoping int he next few weeks I;ll be a pro at playing Smells LIke Teen Spirit. I still need a lot of work on almost ALL the songs I'm learning but iA figure rather then sticking only to them and trying over and over unti they are perfect, I'd rather continue on with my lessons and learn new things. I have been good thoug, and i still go back to the all the songs I'm learning and pay thenm a few times if I can rather than neglect them and only play new stuff. I have yet to read the notes in detai lbut this weeks lesson includes:
a barre chord
a blues shuffle
the b flat chord
and a few songs:
Hote California - The Eagles
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan (I'm starting to learn that almost EVERY SONG that Bob Dylan has made has been RE-MADE by someone else and as far as I can tell the remakes are ALWAYS better...)
Otherside - Red Hot Chili Peppers

The only problem with trying ot play any of the songs I"m learning is I don't have the audio tracks of many of them and the tablature notes I'm using don't give tempo or strumming patterns so I'm kind of winging some of it and it's tough trying ot play something when you're not sure it's right or not. I'm hoping when I get back to Canada I'll go back to most of the songs and try hard to get them perfect so I can play them at parties and stuff.

My plan for the rest of the afternoon is to just go back home and eat dinner before work and amybe squeeze in a bit of quitar playing. In promotion with Batman Begins, KFC has this special combo deal called the Bat Box. I have food at home but i"m SO tempted to try it while they have it ( it's probably a very short term thing) so I'm going ot buy it on the way home. That being said, I still have some time to kill so I decided I would just share some random thoughts:

They have this thing in Australia called Vegamite. For those who don't know what it is, it's basicalled a yeast extract (thats what the bottle says). It's this really salty, black spread that you put on toast or other things. I hated it at first but one day I just acquired a taste for it and last week I bought a bottle and now I eat it on my toast all the time. It's quite tasty in small quantities. I'll try and bring a bottle home if I can.

Another weird thing I noticed in Australia is that they don't have three holes in their papers, only two. I bought a binder and a hole punch for my guitar notes and was suprised when I only found 2 holed items. I had to ask a store worker for assistance and she told me thats how it is here.

The other night I went to the Wool Shed and had the weirdest feeling. I saw this girl throughout the night who reminded me SO MUCH of my friend Nadine from back home. She didn't really look like her facial wise all the way but she was the same size and height and just had her hair up in a similar way and had the same type of clothes I coud see Nadine wear. The freaky thing on my end was I just kept staring at her throughout the night and I'm almost certain that girl thought I was some freak.

Finally, the last thing on my mind lately is this WEIRD dream I had the other day. It's not really WHAT the dream was about but what happened DURING the dream. In the middle of the dream I realized something was odd and that the onl yanswer to it was that I was dreaming. Once I was aware I was in a dream I called out to wae myself up. Then I woke up abruptly in my bed. I've NEVER done that before. It was like out of the twilight zone or something. And the weird thing is the dream wasn't about me in danger or anything, it was just me at home in Canada telling someoen about my trip as if I was there right now but then I realized I didnt travel to the places I intend on going to after Cairns and that made me realize something was awry. TWO WORDS: WEI RD

Wow I"m getting hungry now! To the BUD MOBILE! (which is my bicycle)
NA NA NANA NA NA NANA KFC!

Cairns Day 51

Today was a sad day. I had to say goodbye to my friend Sophie. She is flying back to brisbane for a few days and then flying home to Quebec! We promised erach other to meet up again in Montreal for she is moving there to be able to go to Concoridia and study Media and Design. Her, her friends and I had a barbecue righ tbefore she left and it was a lot of fun. I cooked a whole bunch of beef sausages. MM MMMMMM!

Yesturday I spent the day by the lagoon jamming away on my guitar. I'm still loving ita dn learning so much. I still need to work on a lot of my songs but rather than slow myself down and repeat the same songs over and over I'm still readuing and learning new things about guitar playing everyweek. Probably tomorrow I'll pick up lesson 5!

I couple of weeks ago when my hours got cut from Vivo I decided to apply and work at Peter Pans again. I figured if i work for them I'll be able to get a discount on the trips I want to do in the future. They said they'd get back to me and this girl , Kat, who works at Peter Pans and happens to be the girlfriend of a guy who works with my roomate Carl, told me on Monday she was quitting to move on and then yesturday I got a call to com ein for a trial for today. I got up early and made it over to the place and had to work for an hour. It's really easy work, al I have to do is:
Ensure everyone who walks in the door cvomes to the from desk
Find out if they want ot use the internet, talk to someone about a trip or both
Find out where they are heading to after Cairns and if they need to talk to anyone
Burn a photo CD for them if asked
Work the cash for all the money recieved form the internet use
Clean up the place when I have time

It's not really that bad a job, and hope i can stand it for 8 weeks.

Also, last night I saw Batman Begins. It was great. Not he best movie I've ever seen but aside from Batman 1 being a cult classic, this one was the best batman movie I've seen. It was quite cool although I wasn't such a huge fan of th eplot involving the back guy adn his intentions to do evil. If you're into comic book movies and enjoy Chris Nolan (Director of Momento) you'll enjoy this flick, a lot.

Cairns Day 49

I havn't been up to much lately except work and playing guitar. Work is going okay but I have 4 days off in a row (from sunday until wednesday). It's not bad having so many days oof except that:
a)there isn't too much to do that isn't free
b)I'm trying to save my money
c)By not working i"m making less money

So money is the key here. That being said, if anyone whould like to make donations to the "Give Budman Money" fund feel free to donate anything from 1$ to 1000$.

Guitar playing is getting really fun. I picked up a new lesson last thursday. Iotal, I am now know and/or still learning:
The basic chords - A,Am,C,D,Dm,E,Em,G,F
Power chords - For the sixth and fifth strings
The Chromatic Scale
The E Phygarian scale
The A Blues Scale
And I'm learning a handful of simple songs (mostly just the back ground chords, no melodies):
Leaving on a Jet Plane - John Denver/Chantel Kraviazuk
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrisson
Take it Easy - The Eagles
Last Kiss - Pearl Jam
American Pie - Don McLean
Kiss Me _ Sixspence None The Richer
Smells like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Have you Ever Seen the Rain - CCR
Still havn't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
Mr. Jones - Counting Crows

I can only plauy a few of them semi well and need work on the rest but for someone who's only played over 3 weeks, I'm doing OK. I'm really loving the guita playing and just spent the last 2 hours sitting under the shade by the lagoon and jamming. I think thats my new favorite thing to do when not working, hanging by the lagoon on a beautiful sunny, cloud-free day and just strumming away for a couple of hours. I stopped because I got hungry and my hand started to hurt.

Tomorrow i"m hoping to go see Batman Begins and maybe rent some movies with my friends Ben and Mandy. I'll write about any movies I see, so keep checking for updates.

Cairns Day 44

First off I realize the pics are TOO big and I will try to fix it sometime soon (or never) depending on time and money.

As for this weeks MOVIE REVIEWS, tuesday I rented Sideways, Pulp Fiction and The Jewish Hammer.

Sideways - stars Paul Giamatti and Christian Hayden Church (think thats his name). It was quite good. I love Paul Giamatti. He played in Confidence and American Splendor. I definitely recommend it for those that like more independent type movies. It's a comedy/drama about a depressed guy who takes his best friend on a wine tasting getaway week before his buddy gets married and certain things happen on the way (but not CRAZY things for that rent Harold and Kumar go to white castle).

Pulp Fiction - I'm probably the only person who never saw this movie. I REALy wanted to finally watch it and loved it. I'm sure everyone has seen this but if not it's with agreat cast including John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by Quentin Tarentino (Kill Bill, Resevoir Dogs, Jackie Brown) it's just one of these gangster movies with weird plot twists and lots of shooting. Cult indeed.

Jewish Hammer - By far one of the FUNNIEST movies I've seen in a VERY VERY long time. You may not understand the jokes that much if you're not jewish but there non jewish jokes are all hilarious. This movie just takes the piss out of jews and christians. The premise is that Santa Clause Jr. (Andy Dick) kills santa Clause Sr. for his plot to erradicate Chanukah (the jewish holiday that happens around christmas time) so the Jewish Justice League calls in help from The JEWISH HAMMER (Adam Goldberg)! Totally taking the same format as Shaft, this movie is just great with one liners and crazy jokes. Favorite lines the Hammer are by far "Remember... Stay Jewish!" and "Shabbot Shalom MOTHER FUCKER!"

I also saw a B-rated movie called the circuit (Adam, roomate rented it) and it was also very funny but it's an action movie and isn't supposed to be funny at all. Not worth even mentioning the plot because it was just SO BAD.

Cairns Day 43

Here's a little run down of what I've been up to since moving to Cairns but this time with PICTURES!

As always, I've been going out and having fun at the bars. My newest hang out is the Woolshed where as I've mentioned before, I have a VIP card and I get cheap drinks!
Don't worry I'm not going overboard or anything...




Here are photos of my lovely room that I have to myself in the most awesome house I've lived in so far in Australia.
I got a double bed to myself and I already decorated the room slightly.



This is my "closet" which is basically a wire hanging from the ceiling in the corner of my room.



This is my favorite part of the room. What LOOKS like a REAL closet is actually just
doors drilled into the walls of the room to give the illusion there is closet space,
but there isn't.



I'm still working at that Italian restaurant Vivo:



The Kitchen:



My space in the kitchen:



The view you get from the kitchen, there's a beautiful beach right outside:



And the man himself, Ivo, the owner of the restaurant and my boss:




My friend Sophie is in town so we went out for dinner the other night.



She wanted Indian food but it was like 20$ a dish so we opted out for this food court where they have about 4 resturant competing, each offering a buffet style of food where you pay for the size of your dish. I was starving and took total advantange by shoving as much as I could on the plate.



I get hungry everytime I look at that pic.


Today was another beautiful day so I went by the Lagoon.



Basically it's just a fancy public swimming pool for everyone to use since the real beach in Cairns looks like this:



and the funny thing is they are right next to each other so if you face one way it looks like a resort and then behind you it's like Swamp Thing's home land.

Being such a nice day as it was, I sat under a tree in the shade and played guitar for about an hour and half until I broke one of the strings.



Thankfully, the guitar shop was nearby and I got it fixed right away and was told some tips to avoid it in the future.

Sophie just invited me to a BBQ which is perfect timing since I was going to buy groceries anyways today, so I'm off to the supermarket so by some BBQ food and cook up a storm.

Cairns Day 38

My work hours were cut recently and now I have 3 days off instead of 2. that being said, Wednesday night I went out to the Wool Shed to meet up with two irish girls I met the other day, Yvonne and Grace. Very nice people and we had a good time together. My relationship with the Wool Shed is improving though. The landlord of the house I live in, manages the bar, my roomate Karl, works in the bar, someone I met in noosa now works at the bar as a bartendress, and I also foudn out the same night that someone I know from Peter Pan travel (where I use the internet) is going out with a guy who works with Karl. Plus, I have a VIP card that gets me cheap drinks and free entry.

So I get to the bar on tuesday and Karl happened to be there for a heavy night of drinking and told the bouncer I'm coola dn that I live with him so I got to skip the line and got in for free. Then I couldn't find the girls but bumped into this guy, Stephen who I met the week before and we hung out. Karl came up to me and introduced me to his work buddies and I got a free drink from him and finally I met up the girls. We hung out until 2am but then I called it quits since I had to work the next day and even though I only started work at 5pm I like feeling good on a work day.

ON a completely different note it's about time I put this out in the open. I havn't been very honest with everyone and I've had a secret that I think I should now throw on the table since my mom found out about it recently... I AM GAY!!!!

JUST KIDDING!

No I'm NOT gay... BUT I WAS hiding something from everyone. Three weeks ago I bought a GUITAR. It's a Sanchez Steel String SK-17 Accoustic Guitar and it's bright blue! I kept walking by a guitar shop on the way to the city when I first moved into my new house and it kept tempeting me to pop in and look around. I gave it a lot of thought and figured if I work from 5pm to 12am and get up at 10am every morning it doesn't really leave me much time to go to the city and there itsn't much to do except watch TV or rent a DVD now and again. So I decided if I were to buy a guitar, I could teach myself daily and have something fun to do besides sit at home until work. I walked into the store, spoke to the guy and he told me that had a special going on. For 200$ I got the guitar, carrying case, a strap to hold the guitar on my holder, an electric tuner AND a DVD on how to play guitar. Howvere, I had a feeling even before buying the kit that the DVD would probably be crap (it's not very good), I looked online and found an EXCELLENT webside designed JUST for beginners. It written by a quitar instructor and basically he just put on the interenet the lessons he would teach to his students inreal life. Each lesson is designed for 1 week. There are a total fo 12 lessons and so far I am on lesson 3. After 3 weeks of plying I now know the 9 basic chords, 3 scales, 3 struming patterns and a I'm trying ot learn a handful of songs. I can't play the songs properly yet but the whole point of them, the instructor states, is just to practice changing chords. I didn't buy the quitar with any intentions of becoming a rock god but only a means to kill time and learn something new. I'm enjoying it quite a lot and I hope by the time I move back home I'll be able to play a few simple songs. I wanted to keep the news to myself but I forgot my mom pays my VISA bills and was wondering what I spent for 200$ in a music store.

Well now that it's out in the open, I now have other things to talk about on this blog.

Different story all together, the other night I got a suprise call from my Russian Relatives in Bondi Beach, Syndey. They are such nice people! Jenny, called just to see how I was doing and wanted to make sure eveythign was ok. She asked me all the typical questions - ae you ok? Are you working? How are the folks? Have you gained weight? I was nice talking to her about all that stuff and I hope to meet up with them one more time before I go back to Canada which is looking to be sometime in September.

So for the latest news on my adventures, DVD reviews and guitar lesson updates keep checking this website!

Cairns Day 36

Well as of Monday ngiht I am now a VIP member of the Wool Shed. I am now entitled free entry and cheap drinks (and possibly even meals) at the most popular backpacker barin Cairns. The card even has a photo of me. It's the coolest thing I aquired in Cairns next to my movie store membership card.

Speaking of movies, yesturday I ended up renting The Village, The Forgotten, Walking Tall, Shown of the Dead and I picked up Alien VS Predator for my roomate, Adam - he wanted something horror-ish. I had already seen Shawn of the Dead but it's a great movie although, even though it's supposed to be a comedy it's REALLY graphic in the blood department but it's not scary. The Forgotten was OK, I liked th eeffects but the story does go downthe drain near the end. The village was quite good. I remember the reviews not being so great but it was worth the watch. I quite like M Knight Shamalayan (or how ever you spell his name) movies and this one was as good as his others. Finally Walking Tallw as a great brain cell killer. Got to love the Rock. After spending most the day inside watching movies I decided I should get out of the house, so I left my home ot meet up with Ben, this guy I met on my Whitsundays trip, and we went to go see Star Wars 3. I actually liked it! it's probably the best out of the 3 new ones. The only thing is I always get lost when they talk politics and I find there are just so many special effectsd and things moving all the time it's hard to actually focuson some of the sceneries. Like in a normal movie you have the camera start to focu on a building and maybe you see a cloud move or a bird fly by but thats about it! In Star Wars (1-3) you have space ships and aliens and robots and Storm Troopers and jedi And wookies and all sorts of things moving about in 1000 directions just while the camera focuses on ONE SIMPLE BUILDING! It's like that one scene could have taken weeks and cost thousands of dollars just to make up.

Today I just took it easy and have been in the city for a while. I have a few errands and then it's back to the house.

Cairns Day 34

Sorry I havn't posted anything in a while but the reasons are:

a) I was home sick with a really bad case of the stomach flu

b) I don't really have much to say anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I could type lines and lines about my bowel movement but I doubt anyone wants to read about it (and if you do you're just a very SICK person!).

Aside from that I'm not really up to anything that really exciting to write about. Since I'm stationary now in Cairns, I havn't really done any sight seeing. Cairns is VERY small. The main part basically has a giant pool/lagoon area, there are a bunch of shops, resturants, convinience stores and a supermarket. In the back of the city centre is a giant mall. Thats Cairns for you. Most people go off on trips to the reef or Cape Tribulation. I havn't looked into any trips yet but I still have that voucher for the day trip on the reef that I won last week.

Last night I was working and was now told that my hours will be cut because they want to share the hours witht he new guy they just hired. So, now I'm going from 35-40 hours/week to 25-30 hours/week, It's not too bad now though since I won;t be as stressed at work but now I got to figure out what to do with 3 days off in a row. All there is to do is watch movies, or go to the city and check my e-mail. I'll see if I can find something on the side to keep me busy (maybe sell drugs or even better my body).

Well at least tomorrow I plan on going to see Star Wars 3, I hear it's great so I'm looking forward to see it.

As for something semi-exciting to write about, last night I went out with 5 guys from work, Marco, Charles, Aaron, Hamish and Marco. We started at P.J. Obriens and made our way to The Woolshed. Good times had by all. I even bumped into 2 girls I met in Melbourne. They said they remebered me but I think they were so drunk they would have believed what anyone would have told them. All in al, though, it was a good ngith and i got to bed at like 4am. now I know it only casts 7$ to cab home!

Cairns Day 26

Ok sorry for the short and boring pist but just wanted to let everyone know that I went to Vodafone today and bought a new cell phone. I am now the owner of a white Nokia 1100. It;s just like those blue ones we used to have back in canada but a lot smaler and thinner. It doesn't have many bells and whistles but it's a decent phone and the best thing is I got to keep the SAME phone number I had before. That being said, anyone who knows my phone n umber, call me or txt me so I can add your number to my contact list, or e=mail me your phone number.

Aside from that I settled in even more by getting a membership to the local video store. On tuesdays it's 1$ rentals, including NEW DVDs!

Cairns Day 23

Ok so last night was really something and I thought I'd talk about it here.

First off, yesturday in the mall I bumped into Jacob, this guy from Holland who I knew from my room in the hostel I lived in in Melbourne. I was so excited to see him that we arranged to go out at night to a bar called P.J. O'Briens. Also, the other day I put up a post on the SWAP bulletin board (website from the organization whom helped me with the visa and arrangements to get here) saying that I'm in Cairns for a while and if anyone wants to meet up for a drink, contact me. So this girl, Andreea, sent me an e-mail and I invited her out to meet Jacob and I. Later in the evening I head over to the bar and meet Andreea, who happens to be French Canadian from Brossard. She just graduated from McGill and has a friend doing a PHD in Chemistry at McGill (For all my chem friends, does Jordan ring a bell? I don't think I knew a Jordan). After our little introduction, Jacob shows up and we go inside the bar.

Jacob wanted to meet up at this bar because wednesday night they are famous for Coyote Ugly Girls. 3 girls in bikinis and cowboy pants jump on the bar and dance for 5 minutes. Afterwards they have a dance competition between girls and another one between guys. They call it a "Dance" competition but it's more of a strip show because they try to get the girls to take their tops off and show their chest. It was no different for the guys since they ended up takng their shirts off and eventually their pants (but keeping on their underwear). Guess who won the guy dance comp?

I had NO intentions of entering! I just went to the bar to buy another pitcher of beer for my friends and I to share and this guy is on the bar and says 'I need 4 guys!' so I raised up my hand and he pulled me onto the bar, then I was told I had to dance. So I started dancing and took off my shirt, tried playing it a little sexy and then the music stops and the guy asked the groud to cheer when he points to the contestants. Myself and this other guy (who happened to be someone I knew from my whitsundays trip, Olie) end up with tht emost cheers out of the 5 of us, and we were told to stick around for the FINALS competitions. Next was round 1 for the girls, rounds 2 for the guys and round 2 for the girls, the cowboy girls danced a second time and then finally it was time for the men finals. I get back on stage and the music starts and we start dancing. I was standing next to one of the Cowboy Girls and she takes off my belt and starts smacking my butt with it. then she made a noise and put her hand over her mouth and got one of the other girls to come over and starts pointing at my back. She was hitting me SO hard that I have RED marks all over my back! When the music stopped the MC did the cheering thing again and I was first and got a pretty big cheer. He moved on to the others and they all had about the same amount of cheers but when he did it a second time he came to me last and when he finally pointed to me the whole bar went WILD! I ended up wining an 80$ snorkel trip to the reef. It includes a glass of wine, buffet lunch, trip on a boat, snorkeling in 2 spots on the reef and a scuba diving demo we get to watch. I'm going to have to call soemtime soon and book a day to go but theres no rush since it's good until December 2005!

As for my phone business, I double checked with the bus company and they don't have it so I need to buy a new phone. Unfortunately the only store for my phone company in Cairns, which is Vodafone, is being renovated and I have to wait until sunday for it to reopen. Until then if anyone needs to reach me just e-mail.

Cairns Day 21

Wow the days are flying fast! (or I'm just really really bad at math...)

What have I been up to you may ask? I have settled further into the house i living in. I am now used to things and am getting along quite well with everyone living there. We are on completely different schedules. I work at night, some work during the day, at night, on call, etc. I have wednesday and thursday off, one guy has Monday and tuesday off, the other guy has the weekend off, etc. I still can never tell if someone is in the house or not so Im always trying ot be really really quiet in case someone is sleeping in or I'm home really late.

Work has been keeping me really busy. I am now working 5 nights a weeks and I am now starting at 5pm instead of 6pm except on saturday when I start at 12pm and have a 2 hour break. When I finish all dependson how busy it is. Saturday night was quite busy and sunday was insane! It was so busy (about 50 bookings at 6pm!) that the chefs ahd me helping them out. At one point i was greilling some bread (which I burnt so they havn't asked me since...) and from now on when they scream out suflee I need to scoop some chocolate cream into a chocolate cup and shove it in the oven. I finished at 12:30am on saturday but at 1:15 on sunday! However, the other nights havn't been so busy. Monday I finsihed at 12:15am but only about 20 minutes after the kitchen guys leave (saturday and sunday it was more like an hour and half) and last night i was so on top I finished everything at around 11:30pm but it was really not that busy.

Now I have a couple of days off which is great. Sunday I bought a bike for 30$! I went looking around the other day and wither foudn really expensive new bikes (200$) or really expensive used bikes (120$-200$ - USED!). I bought saturdays paper and found an ad that said "Drive away bikes under 50$" and it had a number and an address. I couldn't call because unfortunately I LOST my phone (Mark, you're cue to laugh is 3... 2... 1... Now!). I don't know what I did with is but only discovered it was missing 1am after work. i think I left it on the bus I was sleeping on to work but not sure. At first it was ringing but now on my voice mail comes on meaning the battery is dead or someone stole it and it's off. in any case I'm going to have to buy a new phone an dmay need a new phone number all together. If anyone wants the new number (i.e. friends I met out here) e-mail me because I lost ALL of my friends contact numbers (never wrote them down ust put them in the phone). Going back to my story about the bike, I went to the address and it turns out its the appartment complex of this 80 year old man who buys bikes (used or broken) and fixes them up. He sold me a big bike that he painted black since the original paint was coming off and it makes a biut of noise but it gets me from A to B which is all I care about. I also bought a purple used helmet and a lock from him for 15$ extra. I rode the bike to the internet cafe and I REALLY need to get used to the fact that cars drive on the other side of the road because I never know where to look.

And now for something comepletely different... Here's a pic my friend Tina sent me of when I dressed up in Dingo. As you can tell, it was a wild and crazy night...

Cairns Day 15

I've been in Cairns just over 2 weeks and just when I thought I'd never find a job, I found a job and yesturday I moved into a house. I'm now living at 461 Draper street which is about a 20 to 30 minute walk from the city but only a 5-10 minute walk to the bus stop so I could go to work which is key. I have a huge room to myself. There's not much in it in terms of furniture but I got a double bed, a little desk where I put some things in, a shelf, a little stand where I have my clothes folded on and a bar sticking out to hang things on a hanger. Yesturday I emptied out my bag and really made my room look like i"m staying for a while. I went to the mal to buy some posters but was disappointed to find out that the poster display was only temporary and moved to another mall far away. In the meantime, I went out last night and got a free sombrero when I bought a corona, so I hung it on a small hook in my room just over my bad. There is also a fan on the ceiling that apperently won't turn off, which could be worse (i.e. a fan that never turned on...).
As for the rest of the house, there are 4 other bedrooms and 5 other people living in the house (1 couple) and they all seem really cool, 2 from England (the couple), 2 guys from New Zealand and a girl from Japan. There is a huge living room with a giant tv and 2 guys just bought a DVD player (theres a deal at a music store where you buy 4 DVD's they give you the player for free!). The kitchen is quite large although there is no stove, just a single burner to cook on but I"m used to it by now for mall the hostels I've lived in. The bathrom is in two room - one with the sink, shower and even a seperate tub - a smal room for the toilet who's walls are painted blue with white clouds and there is a map of the world for decoration. There is a backyard with a patio are for people to smoke or eat etc. and there is even a pool! The pool gets cleaned every 2 weeks and the house gets cleaned every week (vaccuumed, bathroom cleaned, etc.).

The house is owend by a guy, Tim, and his wife Micheline. They used to live in it for many years before turning it into a shared house. It also turns out that this guy I work with, Marcos, used to live there as well adn is good friends with Tim and Micheline. Also, Tim manages the Wool Shed, the famous backpacker bar in the city. He told me if i give him a photo he'll make me up a VIP card for the bar, so thats a kool bonus.

Todays my day off so Im in the city looking to buy a bike to make my trips to the city shorter.

Cairns Day 9

I've been in Cairns a little over a week. I spent my first couple of days going out and seeing the 'sites'. The fact is there are no sites except a giant swimming pool called the lagoon. Cairns is basically a portal for those who want to go diving or snorkling on the reef, sky diving or head further north to Cape Tribulation (a rainforest). The city center itself is nice but quite small, boasting only a few shops, restaurants and bars. There is also a mall but it, as well, is tiny. Outside the city, though, it's quite dumpy with building that look dirty and have peeling paint.

My plan once I reached Cairns was to go snorkling on the reef then head noth to Cape Tribulation and continue onto the city of Darwin (top of Australia), then cut down the center to Alice Springs and Ayers Rock (largest rock int eh world - I think). Unfortunately, I dont have enough money at the moment to accomplish all that and since I"m not ready to leave this beautiful country yet (sorry to dissapoint anyone, haha) I've decided to look for work in Cairns. After looking for a few days it was getting hopeless. There were no jobs available anywhere. I got a few 'We're not looking at the moment' or 'we might have something' followed by 'but if you want to leave us your resume we'll file it for you and get back to you'. Translation: but if you leeave us your resume I'll be sure to throw it out when you leave my store'.

I met this Englih girl Tina on the oz bus and she introduced me to Claire and Jenny, two Scottish girls who are also planning on staying here in Cairns and work. They are really nice people and have been helping me by giving me a few application forms from hotels and suggesting to try applying to hotels as well since they are huge organizations that own restaurants and whatnot. So with their advice I hit all the hotels and filled out 20 applications. Still no luck.

I was tempted to drop everything and go work on a farm fruit picking. At first I was excited about the idea but while hanging out with Claire and Jenny at the Lagoon after coming up with the idea, I was sweating bullets just lying on the grass. This turned me off completely since Id be working about 60 hours a week in the sun and making about 350$

Finally, yesturday I decided to venture an hour up north to the Northern Beaches area. I stopped at the most northern beach, Palm Cove. Palm Cove is 100% cleaner than Cairns and is known more as a resort area. All there is are hotels and a beach. The bus ride took about 1 hour and I hit a few restaurants. I got 2 'Yes we are looking and will get back to you' but I kept looking and reached an Italian restaurant called Vivo. I spoke to the owner Ivo and after a nice talk he offered me a job as a kitchenhand since they were in dire need for one. They had just opened up 6 weeks ago and their 2 kitchenhands left - 1 moved on with his travels and the other was a 15 year old who decided to stop coming to work without letting anyone know. I accepted his offer to try out in the kitchen that night and hopped on a bus back into the city, changed into my dishwashing clothes and jumped back on the bus to the restaurant.

The kitchen is huge and has up to date cleaning equipment making the job SUPER easy. When I was a kitchenhand in Melbourne I had to load the dishwasher with soap all the time and make sure the water was clean. I also had to wash everything by hand prior to putting it in the dishwasher. Plus, my workspace was so small I just stood in the smae place most the time. IN this kitchen it's all different. The dishweasher is automatic - I just lift the door, put in the tray, close the door and it turns on and washed without me even needing ot push a button. Instead of needing to wash all the plates, all that i"m required to do is hose the down with thee kitchen sink/hose thingy and they're ready to go!

I picked everything up quickly but since i"m not used to everything yet, I got really tired by the end. I have o confirm with Ivo my hours and what is expected of me but the head chef, Ashley, told me that my days will most likely be 3pm to 11pm involving prep first and then doshwashing during the dinner rush.

I'm hoping to be able to handle it for the next 3 months and then travel again. Until then I'm hoping to make a group of friends out here and hopefully find my own place to live. I hear there is a university enear Palm Cove so I may fit right in, haha.

Side Note 1: Today is Friday the 13th, I'm staying in room 13 in the hostel and I'm using computer 13 at the internet cafe...

Side Note 2: While looking at this blog to see what I last wrote about, I noticed a button on the top right that says Next Blog. Upon clicking o nit, it sends you to the next random blog. So I was cruisnig for abotu 15 minutes to see what kind of blogs people are writing. Some were journals like mine, one was a man looking for a wife, another was bulletin board on the topic of horses. What freaked me out was how I randonmly found 2 of them that were written by 2 girls in their 20's who seemed depressed/suicidal and were openly writing about it on the internet and that was from just reading the first few lines on eaither website. This is from a database of hundreds if not thousands of blogs.

Cairns Day 3

After Magnetic Island we travelled further north with a few stops for food breaks and to take pictures of funny signs. Far North Queensland is the home of the Castlereigh. It's this bird the size of an Emu, bigger then an ostridge and has a an axe shaped horn on it's head made of keratine and a a super sharp claw on each feet (click HERE for picture). It's an endanged bird so they have signs all over the highway to be careful not to kill it and of course the bus driver stopped to let us take pictures of one of the many funny signs.
Afterwards we stopped at a crocodile farm. It was quite interesting. Tons of crocodiles and the owner was a bit excentric. His farm is the home of the second largest croc in captivity and he just opens the gate and sat on it's back so we could all take photos! This, coming from a man who slipped in one fo the pools he was cleaning and got 2 of his fingers eatent hen recovered them and ended up getting them surgically re-attached to his hand! When he offered all of us the opportunity for work, I was actually interested but he admitted he was only joking. At least I spared my mom from having a heart attack.

I even got a chance to hold a baby croc and a snake. I pissed off the croc when I made a joke lke I was going to eat it... It started to try and run away.

After the farm we made our way to a bungy jump site for all the thrill seekers. My thrill seeking was to see if I could get away with eating 3 sausages (hot dogs) at the free barbeque when we were only promised 2. Thats enough thrill for me in one day.

By 6pm we made it to Cairns! I checked into my hostel, Hostel 89 which is righ along the water (no beach thought but another Lagoon i.e. public swimming pool) and for now I have the 3 bed room all to myself.

I went for dinner to ther Wool Shed which is a big backpacker bar similar to Cheeky Monkeys in Byron Bay. I had a good time and even bumped into Marius this guy I met while in Byron Bay.

The next day I started settling in by buying tons of grocceries to last me the week and bumped into 2 of my favorite people I met during my travels up teh east coast - Eric and Tom. I met them in Byron Bay (through them I met Marius) and we just hit it off and had a real good time hanging out. Great guys to hang out with and I'm excited I got a chance to catch up with them again, so we ended up going out to the Wool Shed.

Today I'm going to start getting my CV set up for job hunting and the front desk of my hostel was nice enough to point me in the right direction on where to go looking. Hopefully by the of the week I'll be employed! Wish me luck!

Magnetic Island Day 1

I have a LOT to talk about but have only 15 minutes left on the internet before my money runs out so heres the abridged version of what I've been up to the past week:

I left Hervey Bay on the Oz Experience bus and ended up in Bagara for a night. We stayed in a really nice hostel/resort. The next morning we made our way to Dingo and stayed on a 46,000 acre cattle station. It was great! The new Oz Experience owners are not havign Dingo as a stop anymnore so I was one of the last few people to stay there. We stayed there along with the southbound bus and had drinking games and tug of war against them. I saw a few peopel I knew from before and we all had a blast. There was a chest filled with clothes and the locals promoted us to dress up. Men were women, women were men, people were cowboys, pimps, hos and mecanics. Yes, I dressed up as a girl and i had a bra on. We partied late and even did some line dancing!

The next morning we had a little tour of the station and a bit of a talk on how it is runa dn what goes on. The guy giving the tour, Richie, was HILARIOUS. After the tour her showed us 2 guns, a rifle and a shotgun, and explained how they use it to fend of predetors of their cattle (dingos, feral pigs, etc). He let a girl shoot the rifle and she went flying and missed her target. We also had a go at a whip, but unfortunatley I wasn't able to break the sound barrier (thats hwat happens when you crack a whip correctly).

After Dingo I arrived into Arlie Beach. Or as everyone calls it Arlie No-Beach, for there is no real beach btu a fake "lagoon" which was just a swimming pool.

I stayed there 2 days and then went on a 3 day/2 night boat cruise on a tall ship called the DEFENDER. I wish I had time to go into details but it was the MOST relaxing trip I've ever been on. We sailed around the Whitsundays, went for walks, swimming, saw the stunning White Haven Beach (PURE WHITE sand, CLEAR BLUE water), slept under the stars on the deck of the boat (Saw the WHOLE Milky Way and the Southern Cross amongst other stars) and went snorkling with the fishies! There were so many fish and a huge one thats famous for the boat compagnies and they've dubbed it Elvis.

I'm currently in Magnetic Island known so because when Captain Cooke discovered it his compass went haywire and thought it was due to the magnetic field of the island. Tomorrow I'll be in Cairns and thus ends my Oz Experience trip. I'm planning on staying in Cairns for 2-3 months and work somewhere to make money so I can travel some more!

Hervey Bay Day 4

I just returned this afternoon from Fraser Island. What an experience the past 3 days have been! The island is just BOOMING with things to do.

My group ended up being myself and 8 brits - Toni, Barry, Jamie, Katie, Layla, Karen, Louise and Maria (note: 6 of them are girls, haha). They were a great group. We all got along, no complaints.

Barry was the main driver and since he used to be in the military he was also the most experienced. The island basically had tiny dirt roads literraly between trees when driving through the island and the east coast beach was basically like the highway. Barry knew what he was doing so well he got us from A to B in no time and due to that we got to see a LOT of things.

Here's what I've been up to:

Day 1 - We all got up early and packed our gear onto the roof of the 4x4 vehicle. We were then brought to the car hire place for a brifing on the dos and don'ts. Then we were off to the ferry. After a long ferry ride across the water we reached the island! Our first stop was at Lake Wabby. It was just like the sand patch in Noosa except there was a lake next to it. Great view too. After a quick dip in the lake, t started to drizzle so we moved onto stop number two: Eli Creek. Well we almost fell IN the creek. Maria was driving and we were shooting down the beach and al of a sudden there is this 1 foot drop with water. The creek runs perpendicular to the beach and we were told to drive closer to the water when we reach it to cross it but it came out of nowhere and we dove straight over it! Freaky but must have been damn cool! Once we got our bearing back we parked the car and walked along the creek and waded through it back to the car. We next reached The Mahona Shipwreck. The Mahona was a war ship that was to be scrapped in Japan back in 1935. however, on the way to Japan, the ship got pushed onto the beach from a bad storm and since then has been rotting on Fraser Island. Most of it is destroyed but the shell was still there to get an idea of the size of the thing and it aint small!After the shipwreck our last destination for the day was The Pinnacles/coloured sands. They looked like jagged peaks sticking out of the ground with different colours of white/brown/tan sands. We then made it to our base camp and set up tent. Dinner for the evening was sausages and hamburgers cooked by yours truley. The girls made a wicked salad and dinner was done. Was also had wine and played Ring of Fire (a drinking game). I called it a night at 10:30pm.

Day 2 - Got up around 8am and had left over sausages, cereal and eggs for breaky. Once in the car we made our way to Indian Head. It was a small climb to this cliff where I had an amazing view of the surroundings. I just sat on a rock and took it in for about 20 minutes, listenign to the ocean. So GREAT! After Indian Head was The Champagne Pools. They were this little rock pool just inside the beach and gets its name due to the foam that happens when the water from the ocean wades inside it. It was a nice little spot to get wet. On our way to our next destination we all took turns driving along the flat beach. Barry helped me with the stick shift and i got a chance at driving a manual car on the left side of the road (for about 5 minutes but nonetheless!). Our last stop was a long way through a really bumpy track but well worth it. We ended up at Lake Allom which is the home of Krefft's Turtles. I got to swim with turtles! We were told when you clap your hands lightly in the water the come to you and one got up to a foot away from me! After a quick swim it was off to camp for dinner which was pasta. After dinner we were all nackered and I went to bed early.

Day 3 - On our last day we took apart our tents, packed everything up and went to two lakes - Lake Birrabeen and Lake Mackenzie. Lake Birrabeen was lake with a white beach and clear water. Lake Mackenzie was like Birrabeen but 100% better. The water was SO clear and the sand was SO white. It was like swimming in a chlorinated swimming pool. We only had 1 hour to spend there but it was the BEST thing on the island!

I'm now back at Beaches and about to have dinner. Tomorrow I"m back on the bus and headed for Arlie beach with a stop in Bagara and also Dingo.

Hervey Bay Day 1

I am in Hervey Bay! Hooray!
Got up this mornign and hopped on the Oz Experience Bus. I met these two Swedish Guys who were in my room and chatted with them a while. I also met this girl from England, Maria, who I remembered seeing on my bus trip from Brisbane to Noosa. Turns out she chose the same company as me for the Fraser Island trip, Beaches, and we're actually int he same room at the Hostel (where I am now). A little backgroaund of Fraser Island and what I'll be doing:
Fraser Island is the biggest sand island int he world. I was told that it was made by the particles that eroded down the east coast of Australia and got swept away to this spot byt he sea currents eventually building up to an island. It's not completely just sand anymore, apperently there are forests and fresh water lakes on it but it's supposed to have more sand than the Sahara Desert! What I'll be doing tomorrow until tuesday is roaming around it with 8 other people in a 4 by 4 all terrain vehicle. We are given a map and free to roam on our own! There is also a base camp located on the island where we return to cool dinner, shower and meet other people, etc. After checking into the hostel I got to meet my group which includes Maria (and 5 other chicks :) ). I think I'm going to get along with everyoen just fine. I was then deligated as one of the two people to go shopping for food (Maria was the other one). I'm glad I got to go shopping since it's now officially Passover and I'm not supposed to eat any bread for the next 8 days (or anything with yeast in it - this includes beer). I don't know if it's COMPLETELY kosher but I convinced the group to buy tortilla wraps since they are flat and have no yeast. Hopefully it's all good (Lorne am I wrong??). Well if not, no actual BREAD is as far as I'll get. I asked the supermarket if they had Matzah and the woman suggested I try looking in Brisbane (about 5 hours south of here by car...). Tonight I'm going ot pack everything and have to get up tomorrow mornign for my adventure. I'll write about my trip when I return on thursday so keep posted!

Noosa Day 4

Yesturday I returned from my 3 day 2 night canoe trip in the Everglades of Noosa. Wow it was something!

DAY 1 - Got up early and jumped into a bus for a 30 minute drive to a lake whose name I can't remember. I then met my group: An English guy named John, 4 guys from Scotland (Kev, Ian, Steve and Elliot), 2 couples from England and a couple from Israel.A the lake we loaded our gear onto a boat and went accross it to a Rangers Station. There we got briefed on what the trip is all about and was theb left on our own! I shared a canoe with John and the whole group went down this tiny creek called Kin Kin Creek. The surroundings were beautiful and it was a really nice day. I got to see a few interesting birds as well. We canoed down for about an hour until we saw this bridge and then turned back. John is 29 and a big guy so he took the back and the canoe kept veering left a bit. On the way back, we just BARELY hit this branch sticking out of the water but missed it and got stuck int he underwater tree. Everythign was ounder control and we pried ourselves free. Ten mnutes later though, I managed to navigate us DEAD ON into another branch. We hit it with such an impact that John went flying out of his seat smacking his knees against the seat in the middle of the canoe. I don't HOW i did it because the branch was about 2 inches thick and sticking out of the water about a foot. After the 'accident' we continued back to the ranger station and got all our gear on our canoes. We canoed north for about another hour until Harry's Hut. There is no hut or Harry it;s just the name of the camp ground. We unloaded our stuff and pitched our tents. I juped into the lake for a swim and the water was funky. Due to all the tea trees whose roots are in the water, the water was actually really dark and when I put my head under water it was just pitch black. The only thing I could see was my hands and arms and they were this golden orange color lke maple syrup. Afterwards it was basically eating dinner and drinking in the dark. We played this game Look-a-likes where you choose someone and name allt eh famous people you think they look like. All the usual ones were choesen for me: Egon (Ghostbusters), Skreech (Saved By The Bell), Weird Al Yankovick, Shaggy (Scooby Doo). We were all nackered and I ended up going to bed at like 9pm.

DAY 2 - Got up early, had breakfast and then we were off! We canoed for 6 km and tghen hiked up a hill for another 6km to reach The Sand Patch. Imagine a moutain with snow on the top of it but replace mountain with hill and snow with sand! It was like a forest with a desert in the middle. It was well worthe the treck. The view was phenominal and the sand dunes were really cool. After chilling up there for an hour it was time to head back. On the way back the new group who were arriving to start their day 1 passed us and apperently they missed Harry's Hut and canoed down for like 3 hours to where we were! We left them behind and went back to our camp site. Back at the site we had the pleasure of being invaded by 3 giant lizards aka Goanas. They were huge but very cool to look at. We then cooked dinner as it got dark and chilled before bed. Once I was in bed it started to down pour and ended up raining all night.

Day 3 - It stopped raining but it was time to go. Two nights out in the woods was plenty. It was a struggle to get back to the Rangers Cabin since the wind was against us. We finally made it back, jumped on the boat and headed back to land. I got back to the hostel by 1pm. John, the four Scots and I decided to go out for dinner and have a REAL meal. John had a car so we drove down to Noosa Ville, the more rich area of Noosa. We went to this Indian restaurant and it was delicious! It was the first time I ate in an Indian restaurant. After dinner we headed back to the hostel adn they guys had rented The Princess Bride. I could hardly stay awake so after 20 minutes called it a night. I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to the guys because they were all sleeping but if you guys are reading this, good luck in your travels and have fun!

Today I went to the Australian Zoo - Home of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. It was really big and great. I got to be up close with kangaroos and koalas. I also saw the lots of other animals including the tasmanian devil and dingos. I went into the venemous snakes hut and while taking a picture of the most venemous snake in the world it flinched! Thank got it was behind glass.

Tomorrow I head to Hervey Bay.

Noosa Day 1

I am in Noosa! Yesturday I left Brisbane north at a place called Mooloolaba (try saying that 5 times in a row). I'm sick with a cold so the trip was pretty much a blur but the hostel was nice and I relaxed watching the movie The Replacements with Keanu Reeves and eating a large pizza from Dominos for just 7$! (Although a large here is like a small in North America, I kid you not).
I slept quite well compared to the night before and am feeling better today. I checked into Dolphins at Sunshine Beach and it looks like a really chill place. I'm right now in Noosa Junction and am about to buy food and stuff needed for my canoe trip tomorrow which I keep hearing good things about!
Really excited and will let you all know how it was when I get back on Thursday.

Brisbane Day 5

Well this is my final day in Brisbane. Yesturday I went shopping at used book shops for a new book. I recently finished Blood of the Fold by Terry Goodkind, the third book in the Sword of Truth series. It was quite good but someone had given me a free copy of the first Discworld book by Terry Pratchet, The Color of Magic. That book was getting quite interesting and funny, a real easy read. But then I lost it. I think I left it back at the first hostel I was staying in. So I was tempted to buy a used version of the book butafter having read half of it I didn't really feel like shelling out 5$ so I decided to buy a book by another author. I just bought Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb. I've only read one chapter. So far so good but i realized now although it's the first book of her new series, I thin kit's based on character from her other trilogies so I dont' fully understand who all the characters are yet. Hopefully as I continue reading things will make more sense. I traded my old book for it and th eguy sold it to me for 5$. I realized after buying it the book was BRAND NEW and there wa a price tag for 20$ on the back form the book store it was originally purchased from. So I saved 15$! Not bad!
After buying the book I went to the Lagoon - man made beach in South Bank and hung out with Andy and Mark - 2 guys I met in Surfers Paradise at the hostel who also happen to be on the Oz Experience.
At ngiht I met up with Josh and Luke again and then Ross, this guy from my room, joined us adn we headed to a bar/club area called The Valley (think St. Laurent or Cresent/McKay/Bishop area) and ended up at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow. It was quite fun with a happening cover band.
Unfortunately I'm beat and now my throat hurts. NO MORE PARTYING!.... for a little while at least, haha!
Tomorrow I'm on the bus and heading to Moloolaba and then Noosa where I'll be partaking in a 3 day 2 night canoe trip which I hope will be fun.

Also I found out I'm in someone elses blog! Here's a post from Sophie's blog and what she has to say about me:

Allo allo!

Voici mes dernieres aventures: Hier, je suis allee rencontrer mon ami Josh Budman que j'ai rencontre a Melbourne lors de mes aventures precedentes. Ce joyeux gaillard vient de Montreal, mais ne parle pas tres bien francais...Le voila donc a BrisVegas pour quelques jours. En moins d'une journee,il a trouve un endroit qui vendait de la poutine, donc nous y avons fait halte pour le diner. Malheureusement, nous n'avions pas nos appareils photos...Nous sommes ensuite alles au Museum of Brisbane ou il y avait quelques trucs interressant. Apres cela, nous sommes alles nous perdre dans la ville, en essayant de trouver le pont pour traverser la riviere qui nous menerait a South Bank. Nous avons reussi apres un assez long detour.

Pour me recompenser de mon tour touristique, Josh m'a fait un stir fried au poulet pour souper AND HE IS THE BEST COOK IN THE WORLD! MUCH BETTER THAN TYLER. Nous sommes joyeusement alle boire de la biere apres ca au bar en dessous du Palace Backpacker et nous avons rencontre ses 2 amis d'angleterre.

Donc cest ca mes dernieres peripeties...aille aille aille! Vivement le depart:)

PLEASE NOTE: SOME OF THE ABOVE MAY HAVE BEEN ALTERED AND NOT ACTUALLY WRITTEN BY SOPHIE.....

Brisbane Day 3

Yesturday was a packed day! I moved into a new hostel called Palace Backpackers. SO much better than where I was before. Nice and clean. I also convinced 2 birtish guys to come with me, Luke and Josh. They are really cool guys. In the morning I hung out with them and for lunchI met up with my friend Sophie from Quebec. She's been in Brisbane for 7 months now and I met her in Melbourne. She gave me a real tour of the city ( a bit unintentionally since we got lost at one point). We started the day with POUTINE at New York Fries!!!! I went ecstatic when I found out they had a NYF in the city! It wasn't the best tasting food but did make my day. After lunch we headed to the Brisbane Museum which is in the city Hall. They had an exhibit on the making of the city hall and it was really detailed and interesting.
After the museum we went to an area called South Bank which was a nice walk. This was followed by a bridge back over the river and into the botanical gardens, and then back to my hostel. As payment for the tour of the city I cooked dinner for both of us (Tyler if you are reading this she told me it was the BEST MEAL SHE HAS EVER EATEN IN HER LIFE!... or she might have said it was OK for a backpacker meal I can't remember...assume the former!).
After dinner we went down to the Down Under bar in the basement of the hostel and met up with Luke and Josh. It was Superman night. If you wore undies on the outside of your pants you got cheap drinks. Yes I did it.

Brisbane Day 1

I'm in Brisbane! I havn't done much of anything yet. I arrived this mornign and have been at the internet shop for about 2 hours now. I checkedinto a hostel I got a free night in from when I worked for Peter Pan Travel but it looks really dodgy so I'm searchign this afternoon for a better place to stay the rest of my time in Brisbane. All in all it seems just like a big city just liek Toronto. I'm here a few days. I'm hoping to catch up with a friend who lives here and check out the city. I also plan on spending a day going up north to the Australian Zoo which is owned by the Crocodile Hunter himself, Mr. Steve Irvin.

Surfers Paradise Day 5

Friday day I met this great German named Tobias. We chated it up and then at night we went to a bar with the hostel called The Shack. I had a really good time and even bumped into 2 irish girls I met on my tour in Nimbim.

Saturday night I paid 25$ and ended up on a club crawl. We went to 3 club/bars : Melbas, Shooters and The Shack. It was an OK night but nothing great. I was hoping ot meet people on the crawl but no one involved really sociallized with anyone. I got a group photo and a keychain necklace, though, which is pretty cool.

Sunday I hung out at the beach and played some soccer with a bunch of guys from the hostel. I then took it easy sunday night.

Today I went to the beach with Tobias and hung out. The weather was finally nice and sunny, the rest of the time here it was rainy. In fact the weather was so good we went back to the beach again.

Tonight being my last night, I'm off to The Irish Pub and then Shooters for a free drink we get for staying at the hostel and hopefully some dancing.

Surfers Paradise Day 2

I left Byron Yesturday and ended up at Surfers a couple of hours later. It sounds like a popular surf place by the name but don't let that fool you. Surfers Paradise was a lot like Miami, LA and Florida mixed together. There is a beach thats 32km long but there are lots of tall high rises and residential buildings. About an hour or 2 away are 3 major theme parks (WB Movie World, Wet n Wild and Dreamworld) and there is also a Sea world somewhere accessible from Surfers Paradise. The only reason it's called that, I was told, is because the first residential building was called Surfers Paradise and as the area got built up they decided to just name the whole area that.

They are currently building the tallest apartment building complex in the world at over 100 floors or soemthing like that. Trust me it's tall!

I ended up walking around wit this girl from my room from England named Naomi to a mall complex called Pacific Fair. I pictured a big indoor mall but for the most part was an outdoor mall, like a maze of strip malls contained within a box. I bought new sunglasses that I desperatly needed. Now I look even more sexy when I strut my stuff in the streets.

Today the weather was a bit better and I ended upwalking along the beach from the city center back to my hostel.

Byron Bay Day 5

Last night at Cheeky Monkeys I bumped into two canadian guys from BC who I met in Melbourne. Turns out they were staying at my hostel. We went to the beach during the day and at night signed up for this game of pool called Killer. Everyone pays a dollar and we all take turns taking a shot. If you get the ball in you stay in teh game and then it's the next persons turn. If you miss, you lose a life. After 3 lives are lost, you're out of the game. The winner of the game collects everyones entry fee. I don't know how it happened but I won the game and ended up with 20$. Off to the bar I went to celebrate my final night in Byron Bay. At Cheeky Monkeys I bumped into these Israeli guys I saw the other day at the internet cafe and we started talking. They were really cool guys travelling across Australia after having finished their term in the army and were now having a vacation.
I ended up in another contest on stage where I had to play a didgeridoo. It sounded bad so I didn't win anything but I noticed a lot of people I reconized from my bus trip between Melbourne and Sydney. Most of them stayed in Sydney for a while and managed to catch up with me in Byron Bay that night.

Byron Bay Day 4

I ended up on a tour bus to Nimbim. Originally a place named for the spiritual rocks that the aboriginals would climb up to have cicumsisions done, it later became a dairy farm industry area but the industry collapsed. In the 60s there was supposed to be a big concert against the vietnam war but the was ended before they had the festival so they made it an environmental festival instead. most people who came for the show just never left.

It was a pretty far out place. They are really big on trying to legallize weed. The minute I got off the bus, I got asked if I wanted weed about 12 times. There was this funky 'museum' and accross the street was the Hemp Embassy where they are really trying to legalize the drunk as well as sell weed related items.

After Nimbim, we skipped swimming in a waterfall because it rained but ended up at a barbecue area and had a gigantic lunch. Then it was back to Byron.

Pictures!

Ok I have so many pictures and it's too nice a day to stay inside on the computer so here are a few pictures to wet your pallate:

Street Art in Melbourne
Pictures of the last two pieces I did in Melbourne: Bartman and Dead Pool

Suggan Buggan School House
A really old school that was used way back when.

Mt Kozciviszko
Pictures of my hike up the halfway on the tallest mountain in Australia. Includes Blue Lake.

NSW/Victoria Border
Pictures of me at the Victoria/New Douth Wales border.

Enjoy!

Byron Bay Day 3

Yesturday I met some really cool guys in the hostel, one from Switzerland and th eother from Italy and we ended up on the beach all day. I didn't realize how close my hostel was to the beach! Not even a 5 minute walk. The beach was beautiful and i decided to take a walk along it to a light house. On the way I ended up the most eastern point in Australia and even got to see a bunch of dolphins in the water.

At night I decided to take it easy instead and hung out with my new friends in the room 2 doors down and we played some card games and then snuck onto the beach before calling it a night.

Today I'm going to try and book a day trip to this very popular town nearby called Nimbim. It's supposed to be a really laid back place and worth the trip so I"m goign to try and make my way there.

My plans for the rest of the day are to go and chil on the beach and possibly join my new friends at a bar. Unfortunately the great people I met are all moving on tomorrow but hopefully I can meet up with them in the future.

Byron Bay Day 3

Yesturday I met some really cool guys in the hostel, one from Switzerland and th eother from Italy and we ended up on the beach all day. I didn't realize how close my hostel was to the beach! Not even a 5 minute walk. The beach was beautiful and i decided to take a walk along it to a light house. On the way I ended up the most eastern point in Australia and even got to see a bunch of dolphins in the water.

At night I decided to take it easy instead and hung out with my new friends in the room 2 doors down and we played some card games and then snuck onto the beach before calling it a night.

Today I'm going to try and book a day trip to this very popular town nearby called Nimbim. It's supposed to be a really laid back place and worth the trip so I"m goign to try and make my way there.

My plans for the rest of the day are to go and chil on the beach and possibly join my new friends at a bar. Unfortunately the great people I met are all moving on tomorrow but hopefully I can meet up with them in the future.

Sydney to Byron Bay Day 3

Despite it being a bar, I slept quite well.It was actually the best sleep I had all week. We left Bingara with a full day of driving ahead of us. We watched Starsky and Hutch on the bus to kill time. We stopped at Inverell for a quick break. It's actually a gayleck word for "meeting place" and is known to be a big scottish community hence it being a non-aboriganol name. We then drove through Glen Innes and went to Gibraltar National Park. This was followed by Grafton and then I got a chance to get a picture of the Giant Prawn in Ballma. Australia is known for having giant sculptures of things for restaurants and what not, like the giant apple that you see on the drive from Montreal to Toronto.
By late afternoon we stopped at Lennox Head to celebrate the birthday of 2 people on our bus. We had 14 bottle of champagne amonst 40 of us. Got a chance to see the pacific ocean again!

By 5pm I we got into Byron Bay! I checked into my hostel which was completely booked so I was very smart to book a couple of weeks in advance. The rooms are quite nice with a fridge, sink and proper bathroom. I'm sharing the room with 3 swedish guys. They seem like a lot of fun. After dinner I went to the msot popular backpacker bar in town called Cheeky Monkeys to meet up with my bus group. It was a crazy time there. For being part of the oz experience they got us involved with playing games on stage. I ended up in 2 games. The first one was to win some free beer or something and it involved my eating a meat pie, drinking a beer and then doing 20 pushups, situps and star jumps. I was so slow by the time i finished the beer, someone had beaten me and one the contest. The next one I was in was to win a free sky dive jump and involved choosing heads or tails. I was competing against others and when you got it wrong, you either had a choice to leave the game or remove a piece of clothing. Lets just say I gave it a good try and ended up in my undies butthen I ended up leaving the game. The winner ended up being a girl and she won because she decided to remove her top in order to have one more chance in the game.
After Cheeky Monkeys, I bumped into my bis driver Luke and we went to another bar right ebfore I called it quits.

Sydney to Byron Bay Day 2

The place I slept in last night was basically a giant cabin where we had dinner and a row of tiny bare rooms with a few bunk beds. The meal we had was delicious. For 8$ I got roast beef with potatoes and gravy. For dessert we I had sticky date and it was SO GOOD!

In the morning I got up and almost missed the bus. We went to the Warrumbungles National Park where we got to walk around for about an hour and saw lots of kangaroos and wallabies. We then had lunch in Narrabri and went to see the astonishing Sawn Rocks formation. Tres Cool. On the bus we watched Old School and finally made it to our hostel in Bingara. Everyone went horse back riding but I didnt really want to spend 38$ to sit ona horse so I stayed back and planned some more of my trip. The place we stayed in was actually a bar and there were giant dorm rooms in the back.

Sydney to Byron Bay Day 1

Last night I ended up at Jordons again and got to catch up with some other peopel I knew who worked there. I even had a nice chat with George my former manager and it was good talking to him again.

In the morning I woke up qutie early, checked out and made it over to the Oz Experience Bus Stop. A huge green bus pulls up and we all get on it. This time the bus was a giant coach and the group was about 40 people rather than 20 like on my last trip. I met a french canadian from Montreal and sat with her on the bus. First we stopped in a place called Bilpin for a quick bite at the bilpin Fruit Market. then we drove through the edge of the Blue Mountains until we hit a spot called Lithgow. We passed through Lithgow until Mudgee where we bought food and headed to the Poets Corner Vinyard where we had a picnic and then a small tour and some wine tasting. For 4$ I got 4 glasses of wine and a port, not bad. Three hours later we got to the Warrumbugles.

Sydney Reloaded

OK! Now that I updated what I did over my Melbourne to Sydney Trip (see comment in March 22nd post) I can tell you what I've been uip to since I've been in Sydney!

So I got into Sydney on Monday and spent the night at Footprints. Yesturday morning I made my way to IEP to say hi to the friendly staff and then jumped on a train to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountians is a really beautiful country area about 2 hours from Sydney. I went on a walk in the trails and it was AMAZING. The view is great! I got lots of pictures and will put them up soon. There is this famous rock formation there called the Three Sisters which is basically 3 giant points next to each other hanging out of the moutain cliff.

It was 5pm and I decided to walk along a path that sounded really cool called Giant Stairay. It was 900 steps down! After that I went along a trail and it started to get darek. I ended up meeting this Irish guy so we wlaked together which was nice since i was starting to get scared. Finally we made it to the end of the trail but then there were 900 steps UPWARDS! It got really dark, I was getting rteally tired and sweaty and couldn't see ANYTHING! I thought after a while I hallucinated the guy since he disappeared for about 20 minutes but he was just walking alot faster than I was. I was afraid I wouldn't make it out alive!

Now I am back in Sydney (Alive and Well) and am going to take tonigt easy, hopefully at Cohi Bar where I'll see some more Jordons friends. I won't be out too late for I have to get up super early tomorrow to hop on the bus where I'll be on a 3 day trip to Byron Bay.

I'll try to updat emy blog in Byron Bay and hopefully will have lots of photos ready by then!

Melbourne to Sydney Day 3

ot up early again and had breaky. I slept on the bus for a while until we hit Canbera, the capital city of Australia. It stands for Meeting Place in the Aboriginal language and is also home to legallized porn and marianna. There are a lot of museums and galleries in the city but we ended up at the House of Parliment. There are actually 2 of them - old and new. The new one is where I walked around, The old one is accross the street and is know a museum.
After lunc, we ended up at the War Memorial. Australia really likes to show that they care for all the soldiers they had participate in wars and peacekeeping incidents. They ave one in each state and I think Canbera's represents Australia as a whole. It was quite sad in there but the details they went into showing what happened witht their involvement in the wars was crazy. the had models and paintings and all sorts of things that were very interesting. The whole place was HUGE and I only got to see a little bit of it - mostly stuff on world war I and a bit on world war II.
Three hours later... SYDNEY! AGAIN! It felt like I never left. I checked in at my hostel, Footprints, dropped off my stuff and then ran to Jordons to see my friends. I saw a few people I recognized but there were a lot of new faces. I promised I'd try and go back on Wednesday before I leave for Byron bay on Thursday. I then made my way to my buddy Blair;s where we caught up for a bit but couldn't stay too long since i had to run to Scubar where I partied one last time with all the great people from my trip. It was awesome!

Melbourne to Sydney Day 2

oday I got up really early again. We all got up at 6am but in reality it was only 5am because we had to put the clocks back the night before to accomodate for it getting darker earlier. We left the hostel and on the drive spotted all kinds of wildlife - kangaroos, wallabies, emus, cows and even a rooster on the road! I got some really nice pictures of the snowy mountains (I promise to put them up in the future).
We passed by an area called Suggan Buggan where there was this really really old and tiny school.
Finally we reached out hostel in Lake Jindabyne. It was actually a motel/hotel and was by far the cleanest coziest place I have been to so far. We had out own fridge, tv and kettle in the room. There were 4 bunk beds and 1 double bed and we were only 6 people in the room so it was a nice. After lunch, we drove to Charlotes pass where lies Mt. Kozciviszko, Australia's tallest mountain at 228km! We ended up climbing up halfway to a lake known as Blue Lake. It was FREEZING and most of us, including me, had changed into shorts because it was so hot when we had lunch. The hike was 5km to the lake but a lot of fun because Luke, our TRES COOL guide, kept finding all sorts of bugs and anumals to look at. I saw a skink, alpine grasshopper and a millipede. I missed it but he also found a wolf spider.
After the hike, we went back to the motel/hotel where we played drinking games all night. The group I'm with is made up of really great people. I wasn't the only canadian this time. There was this guy from Calgary named Kyle who happened to go to high school with Stephanie, the girl I lived with for 3 months in Sydney. Small world eh? The othets were from England, Wales, Sweden and there was a guy from California.

Melbourne to Sydney Day 1

Today I got up at 5:30am and hoped onto the Adventure Tours bus. First we got to St. Kilda where I had to pay 60$ for the 2 nights accomadation, breakfast and park fees. 1 hour later we had breakfast in the tiny town of Yarragon. About 2 and half hours later we reached Barnsdale where we had lunch and finally after that reached Karoonda Park where we were going to stay the night. As part of the extra activities we could do, some did this thing called a flying fox, where you strap yourself to a cable and glide accross a tiny lake in the forest. I chose to do Rock climbing instead. Inside the hostel we were in was a gym type room with a ping pong table, volley ball net and a climbing wall. For 12$ I ended having a proper home cooked meal. It was SO good! I had some appetizers, soup, chicken and then chocolate cake for dessert.

Melbourne Day 66

[NOTE: I am currently on the move and it is difficult to update this weblog at the same rate I am doing things, and believe me I'm doing A LOT of things as of late. Therefore I have started writing my entires in a real journal and will recopy them onto this blog. I want to try and label the comments on the same days I actually wrote them down in the journal. Therefore, some post will appear all at once with several past dates. I hope this won't confuse anyone. Right now it is in fact March 30th and I am in Sydney but this post is about my last day in Melbourne on March 24th. Enjoy!]

Last night I went to Dallas with this canadian guy I met at the hostel named Graham. He was from Vancouver. Dallas is the all you can drink/kareoke bar I went to almost every thursday while in Melbourne. It was a lot of fun and it sadened me to leave it behind. Today I went and bought 2 CDs for to listen to on the upcoming trip - Queens of the Stonage's Lullibies to Paralyze and The Mars Volta's Fances the Mute. Both really good disks! I later met up with Nick a british guy I met through IEP and went to watch a comedy show I had tickets for. It was called Best of the Edinburgh Fest. the headliner weas actually from Calgary and asked if any other Canadians were present. I was the only one. Since I announced my attendance whenever he made a Canadian joke he'd always say "my Montreal friend knows what I'm talking about!". The whole show itself was a lot of fun.

Melbourne Day 66

So it finally paid off. Since I'm leaving saturday from the beautiful city of Melbourne I decided to squeeze in just one more street art painting (pictures to come in the near future I promise). This time I went all out and did a comic book super hero called Deadpool. It was so complicated because it was so detailed. After 3 hours I hardly got far so I called it quicks and returned the next day. Tuesday was a much better day I finished the other 2/3 of the picture within 4 hours. I also got to meet a lot of nice people. I would always mark that I'm from Canada near my money box so a few people who come and ask where in Canada I"m from and then tell me what part they are form and we'd chat about our travels and how we enjoy Melbourne, etc. In fact I met a lovely couple in their 50s from calgary who were originally from Montreal but moved away during the first referndum scare back in the 70s. The woman was from Cote St. Luc so of course she was Jewish and the couple insited on not only taking my picture but taking down my parents e-mail address and mailing them a photo and a short message on how they are travelling around australia and met this nice boy from Canada i.e. me. They insisted my parents are worried about me and thsi way they would know I"m still alive. It was the weirdest thing and I can't wait to hear my moms reaction when she gets this e-mail from strangers with my photo in it.
WhenI finally finished the picture, I packed my stuff up and ended up earning $9.20! That was the most ever! So being a tuesday I treated myself to a 5$ movie (Be Cool - it was an amusing movie btu I never saw Get Shorty so I didn't get a lot fo the inside jokes) and then headed to a bar (Birdie O'Reileys) that has kareoke and 4$ Guiness pints on tuesdays. I even got to hang out with some Melbournians! I finally meet some actual people from Melbourne but I'm just about to leave! I may meet up with them one more time. All in all it was a great night.

Melbourne Day 61

First off, I'd just like to apologize to everyone who received this invitation for some website called Hi5. All it is is basically a "friends network". You join the website and then get your friends to join and now I have a record of how many friends I have and through them I can meet other people. I recieved one of these e-mails and by accident pushed the wrong button and ended up sending aninvitation to everyone on myu hotmail address book. I have over 300 people on that address book so all of you who recieved this junk e-mail, I apologize.

In other news, I have been quite busy these last few days working out my next leg of my trip.
Here is a map of Australia!
What I have done so far is start in Sydney and live there for 3 months then I flew to Adelaide where I spent 1 night followed by a 3 day drive to Melbourne where I have been living for 2 months.
My plans are to leave Melbourne on March 28th and do a three day trip to Sydney where I will spend 1 night in a hostel. The following day I will make my way up to the Blue Mountains which are 2 hours away from the city. I'm staying there 1 night and then returning back to the hostel the next day. The following mornign I'm back on the bus for a 3 day trip to Byron Bay whcih I plan on staying there for 5 days. Once i'm done soaking up the sun it's off to Surfurs Paradise in the Gold Coast which is in Queensland. I havn't booked any hostels after Byron Bay but I'm planning on going to Brisbane. Working at Peter Pan, the travel agent, as a flyer guy paid off! I just exchanged the 205$ I earned for 20.5 hours of work for a 3 day canoe trip in this place called Noosa. It looks amazing! I also got 2 nights free in a hostel in Noosa and 1 night in Brisbane with the money I earned. I have a lot planned for after noosa but it's so far away I'll worry about it when I get there, besides I'l be really busy with what I'm already going to do that I won't even have time to think about it!
Here are a couple of maps to help you get a better idea of my trip:
New South Wales
Queensland

Melbourne Day 56

I'm extremely tired and hungry right now but I have to right this down so I won't forget it happened!
I got home at 3:30am last night from partying with my work friends and at about 7am I got woken up to "FIRE! FIRE!" *Bang on the door*. I was so out of it but we all got outside and then the firetrucks showed up. it ended up just being a small garbage fire but there wasn't even an alarm that informed everyone of the potential danger, only a smoke alarm in one room went off. Before we even knew it was ony a small fire, while standing outside, the owner opens her window and looks out at us all confused and we're all yelling at her to get out quick! After about 20 minutes we were all allowed to go back inside to which I slept another 5 hours. Lets hope in the next 2 weeks i"m still here this is the worse it gets.

Melbourne Day 54

no much has happened in the past week. The wether was cold at first but this weekend has really gotten beautiful. It's now around 30 degress celsius! Perfect timing shince this weekend is the Moomba (Water) Festival. It basically a lot of activities, live shows and a full carnival with rides and what not along the Yarra River. The Yarra River basically runs right along the outskirts of the major city center. I went by there on Friday, when they were first setting it up but there weren't that many people there because it was early. Monday, however is not only my day off work but it's also Labour Day. Thankfully I do have the day off since restaurants usually don't close on such holidays and mine definitely is still open. Also my friend Tyler who I met in Sydney and hung out with in Melbourne (who;s from Ontario) is coming back today into Melbourne so hopefuly he'll stick around a couple of days and we can hit up the fest together.

Other than that, I tried street painting again. I went to a completely different area this time and I loved it! The pavement was not as smooth so I was able to get really dark and thick colours out of my drawing. I went to an area usually dominated by this amazing artist. He/she had about 10 murals on along the sidewalk and they look like they would take hours to draw. Then I come along and I drew Bartman! It looked really awesome though. I took tons of pics of it and will put them online as soon as I get the chance. Hopefully sometime next week I'll get a chance to go back to the same spot and do another drawing.

Melbourne Day 47

I finally decided I had enough of Melbourne. Dont get me wrong, I love the city and have been having a great time out here but I still have so much more of Australia I want to see and time is flying by! Come March 26th, i'm be on a bus heading up the east coast.

Aside from that, today my hair has finally gotten long enough fo rme to start gelling it again.

And as promised - PHOTOS!:

Street Art - As I have mentioned before, I have a permit which allows me to draw on the street and make a little bit of cash. I havn't done it since my hat with money got stolen the last time but here are photos of the first two pictures I did (click on the highlighted words):
BUD - For my first drawing I tried a graffiti logo of the word BUD. For my first try, I quite like it. I earned 40 cents with it.
Charlie Brown and Snoopy - For my second picture I figured I'd draw something people would recognize. The colors are a bit off since I didn't have any black at the time. A lot of people enjoyed it and took pictures of it but I only earned 50 cents. It was a step up though!

Meet the Neighbours - These are pics from a special night I went to at a bar called The Elephant and the Wheel Barrow. Melbourne is home to a very famous prime time soap called Neighbours. The show revovles around the lives of people that live on a street called Ramsey St. The show is filmed in a studio in Melbourne but any scenes involving the outside of houses is actually shot on a REAL street in Melbourne (who's real name is not Ramsey). The show isn't that popular in Australia but is geared more for british people. Thatnight at the bar was a chance to meet 3 actors from the show. I went with my friends James and Fiona (the ones wearing the Neighbours T-shirts) who are die hard fans and having seen the show 3 times, I thought the night was ok, but they were going crazy! The whole bar was filled with brits so I felt kind of out of place. But now I have pictures with actors that no one knows! For the record I met the characters known as Tody, Izzie and Dr. Karl.

Royal Botanical Gardens - It's seems that every city has a Royal Botanical Gardens. The Melbourne one is quite beautiful and right in the middle is a huge Shrine of Remembrance for soldiers lost in past wars.

St Kilda Beach - Here are photos from the St Kilda Area in Melbourne. It's basically the beach area in Melbourne. Lots of bars and night life. I went there at night and got to see a penguin! The last pic is of a star fish someone caught on their fishing line.

St Kilda Festival - On Feburary 13th, all the major streets of St Kilda shut down and were filled with people for a huge festival. It was a lot of fun. The pic of people making out infront of a stage was the attempt to break the world record of most people kissing at once for 30 seconds. Malaysia held the current record of 12000 and according to officials Melbourne was just short a few thousand people. The other 2 pics of the stage are of a famous melbourne musician, Xavier Rudd. He plays all his insturments himself at once and his music is very similar to Jack Johnson.

Night with Carolin from Germany - Carolin was this nice German I met at the hostel we hung out a bit. These are pics from a night we went to a few bars for some live entertainment along Brunswick Street. First we listened to an irish folk jazz band and then we went to another bar and listened to a latino hip hop ensemble. They were really cool and the night was a lot of fun. Carolin has since returned to Germany btu we've been in contact since she has left her camera in my hostel room and I'm trying ot send it back to her. I lost her address, so the process is slow. Hopefully I won't lose her friendship either, hehe.

Phew! That took a long time to set up! I hope you enjoy all the pics. I'm bound to have tons more in the future!

Melbourne Day 44

As I promised - more photos!
I didn't have enough time to upload all of my latest pics but here are pics from Australia Day - Jan 26th!
Enjoy and I promise to put the rest up later this week.

Melbourne Day 43

Alright so In the past week I've actually done more sightseeing. I went back to the Center of the Moving Image, this time with this German guy I met named Greg, and saw more shirt animation films. Some are really great. Afterwards I ended up at the Kylie Minogue exhibit at the Art Center. It is filled with Kylie clothes, awards, records and videos. She is ONE TINY PERSON. She is the size of Gary Coleman. Following that I went to this Art Gallery that had an exhibit called Grotesque and had images from artists in the 1500's about their interpertation on stuff like Satan and mystical creatures, etc. It was quite good. Not bad for a full day of activities and all of them were free!

Today marked the first day of the Grand Prix. Being the 10th anniversary of it being in Melbourne, the city made today a free event and I went down to the race track which is built around a lake in a place called Albert Park with a bunch of friends from the hostel. We just hung out all day on the side lying on teh grasss and watching the cars go by. Just before I left because it was so sunny today and I felt I was int eh sun for too long, there was a race between a normal BMW, a Super V8 car (Nascar racing) and an F1 racer. They gave the BMW a 15 second headstart over the Super V8 and 27 seconds later of the super car left, the f1 caught up to follow. It was crazy, The second car caught up withthe BMW and then the F1 racer was right behind. In the end, the F1 car passed the V* and just barely won by like a fraction of a second!

Still plenty of more to come in Melbourne for the month of March. There is a comedy festival as well as a food and wine fest and other stuff. I'm planning on staying until April so hopefully I'll be able to check everything out.

Melbourne Day 39

Well I've been pretty busy the last few days. My boss at my job nformed me that the old dishwasher guy came back so now i have to share shifts with him and I'm only down for 3 maybe for shifts this week so I tried doing stuff to keep busy. Tuesay I went to the Melbourne Museuma nd saw an AMAZING exhibit on insects. They had boxs of household spiders on display and let me tell you they aren't tin like the ones back home. I really enjoyed th eexihibit because rather than just show pictures of movies of how, say, a colonie of ants behave, they had an ACTUAL colonie behind glass. It was really something. Then Tuesday night I got a call from my friend Matt V. who I worked with in Sydney at Jordans. He was in town so we got together to catch up on things. It was fun talking to him and learn about all the cool things he's been doing on his trip. I also me this American girl in my room named Laura and we ended up checking out this place called the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (I thin kthats the name) and it had a sction with movie screen where we watched a bunch of animation shorts made by people who go to an Australian Animation school or some sort. The movies were really fun to watch. Afterwards we made our way upstairs to this art exhibition. One floor was Aboriginal Art and the other was historical Australian art form the 19th century but then we got tired and left.
Today I started a new job as a... wait for it... FLYER HANDOUT GUY! I basically have to stand in fron t of this internet/travel agent place accross the street from my hostel and say "15 free minutes of internet with this voucher! 2$ per hour but if you book one of our wonderful trips you become a gold member and get 1$/hour internet!". I'm so tired form talking so much tonight I'm not going to talk at all! (I know that for me it's hard to believe but its the truth!) I'm not really getting paid cash but I'll make 10$/hour and get to redeem it for one of their trips which can be used up to 6 months so I"m bound to find somethign I want to do and save a couple of hundred bucks. Or if I opt out for money I'll get 8$/hour after tax which isn't great but I won't get any moeny until I finish my time here in April so at least it's going to be saved up a little no matter which option I choose.

Expect tons of pictures of things soon!

Melbourne Day 36

Wow! I've been here over a month.
Yesturday was the Bris (circumcision) of my little nephew Charles! The whole family was together in Toronto for it. I wish I could have been there but I'll get a chance to see my nephew when I return to Canada.

Today was a crazy day. I woke up to discover my shampoo and conditioner was gone. Either I left it in the shower or someone took it but either way I need to buy new bottles of both. Afterwards I decided since I had no work today to try the street painting again. The last tiemI did it I made 50 cents. This time I went all out and bout cheap washable black paint and did this huge graffiti picture of the word 'Melbourne'. A lot of people came by to comment on it while I was doing it and at first my hat was empty but then it filled up with change. I might have had about 3-4$! However, afer about spending 3 hours on the street, when I didn't notice, someone swipped my baseball cap with the money in it! The money is nothing, I don't care abour 3$ but I loved that hat! I had it for about 5 years and it had 2 kool pins I got - one from the billy talen concert I was at and on from when I saw Interpol. Things got better shorlty after though when this guy from Malaysia commented on my drawing and was talking to me about graffiti art. He showed me his portfollio he just 'happened' to have on him and it was amazing! Him and his 'crew' can do some really awesome grafitti stuff. He had picturesd of walls and other things he's designed like cd covers and t-shirts. He gave me his e-mail and said we should go for a beer sometime so maybe i"ll folow up the offer. Then I went back to finishing the picture. It came out REALLY AWESOME and even though my hat got stolen I'm happy with the result and got some really good photos of it which I'll post onteh website soon.
The only other thing to add to this crazy day was on the way home someone handed me a flyer and it happened to be for Jews For Jesus. I havn't met any Jews and now i"m seing Jews for Jesus! I thought that was really HILARIOUS!
Well I"m tired and starving so I"m off to make a giant meal of chicken stir fry of (if my food hasn't been stolen! haha)

Melbourne Day 26

Good news and bad news. Good news: I am now employed! I'm currently a professional dishwasher at an italian restaurant called Di Palma and a cafe called Royal Domain Cafe. I worked 55 - 60 hours this week and because of it comes the bad news: I'm sick (BOO!). So I got this weekend off work and am resting up in the hostel. I stocked up on cold remedy supplies - Kleenex, cough drops, cold medicine, orange juice, chicken soup, etc. and I slept a bit better last night so I'm feeling better but still need lots of rest. I'm not too sure what I'll do this weekend if anything but maybe anice walk will do me justice. It's not too hot right now (pants and sweater weather) so some fresh air might be great.

In other news, I present to you all CHARLES SIMON BUDMAN (YAY!):

Melbourne Day 20

We break from the regular scheduled program to bring you this important news update:

I"M AN UNCLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night my sister in law gave birth to CHARLES SIMON BUDMAN, the newest addition to the Budman clan weighing in at a whopping 8 pounds 9 ounces.

MAZOL TOV CONNIE AND MARK!

Melbourne Day 19

Wow time is flying! I'm in Australia almost 4 months!

Looking back now I realized I forgot to include pictures of one of the most talked about thing on the great ocean road: The Twelve Apostles. And THIS is what they look like. The picture is tough to really see them properly but they are fantastic. There aren't really 12 of them, there are only about 8 or 9 and 1 collapsed a few years ago, but basically it's just these tall skinnet rock formations in the water close to the shorline.

I don't have the time or energy to put up more pictures right now on the computer but I still have a lot of great stuff to show. You'll just have to wait until I get back to see the rest on this part of the trip (if I show everything now there won't be anything to talk about when I get back home, haha). I promise I'll have more pictures of OTHER things though in the near future.

So basically I made it to Melbourne and have been up to a lot fo stuff since I got here. I spent 1 week in a hostel called Hotel Bakpak and promised myself I wouldn't do any work and just have fun. And fun was had by all. I went to a tennis match in the Australian Open. I randomly bought a ticket and ended up seeing Federer (world #1) play against some guy Suzuki. I also discovered this bar called Dallas. For 8$ you can get free refills of you glass for 2 1 hour peeiods (9-10pm and 11pm-12am) AND there is free kareoke! I've been there three weeks in a row now and sang about 8 songs. They know me now by face and I'm becoming friendly with the bouncer (always good to have big strong friends). Also, on January 26th was Austrlia day. I went to watch the fireworks display they had and bot was it something!
For the past 2 weeks I've been looking for a job. After not hearing anything from anyone and almost giving up, I ended up getting 3 job offers at once. Right now I'm a dishwasher at a tiny italian restaurant called Di Palmas. It's nice and laid back there and the people I'm working with are all a lot of fun. I've only worked there for 2 shifts so far and already feel accepted in the group. I opened my big mouth when my boss told me to not work too hard and chance tiring out too fast and mentioned that I was a 'machine'. For the rest of the shift he just kept calling me 'his machine' and if someone was distracting me he'd say 'Don't break my machine!' haha! On monday I'm trrying out a day job as a kitchenhand in a tiny cafe and if I can handle them both I'll work at both places and make a few extra bucks. Speaking of that, I thought I figured a way to make a few extra dollars but was terribly wrong. I endedup applying for a free busking permit. I am now legally allowed to draw on the sidewalk on 2 streets in the city. I saw a guy doing it and asked him how he got to do it and where he got his supplies. For TWO dollars I bougth a giant bucket of street chalk and spent 2 hours drawing this graffiti type thing on the street. I figured I'd make a few bucks... I made 40 cents! It was cloudy though so maybe on a sunnier day I'll be able to make a few extra dollars.

I better get going, I need to get things done before work.