As It Happens, With Randy Pinkwood

This LONG AWAITED [sarcasm, that's original!] post contains spoilers pertaining to the new Star Trek film and the TV Series 'Lost'. If you do not want to have elements spoiled, I would strongly advise against clicking the link below. You may or may not also want to have a reasonable grasp of time travel and alternate reality concepts to understand some of this, but feel free to read it anyways. Just don't say I didn't warn ya.

( However if you're cool with that then by all means, click here )

And so the time is nigh upon us where I will soon be taking a journey to Obamaland. Preparation goes well in that all of my flights are booked and paid for (except for the Sydney -> Perth flight upon my return, but that won't really be a problem), and almost all of my accommodation is confirmed and ready to go. About the only thing left on my list of to-do's is sort out my time in LA with the Illustrious Avery. If you're reading this, please comment so I can make sure we're still a go or no-go for January, kk?

For those interested, here's a basic rundown of my holiday plans:

13th Dec: Leave Perth, arrive in New York, then Orlando. Estimated arrival time, 11:49pm. Yep, that's a 20 hour flight from Sydney to New York. Awesome.
14th Dec - 16th Dec: Disney World
17th Dec: Astronaut Training Experience at Kennedy Space Centre
18th Dec - 21st Dec: Florida Keys with Alice =)
22nd Dec - 27th Dec: North Carolina with American rellies.
28th Dec: Visiting Frank Foster and wife Cecile(sp?)
29th Dec - 2nd Jan: New York, Times Square
3rd Jan - 6th Jan: Calgary, Canada with Toni
7th Jan - 10th Jan: LA (Hopefully with Avery? Need confirmation for or against)
11th Jan - 16th Jan: Hawaii and lazing on the beach
17th Jan: Head home, arrive in the eve of the 18th.

So woo, pretty full on. Should be very exciting, and less than 5 weeks to go, i'm getting pretty fuckin' amped :D

Happy Birthday, Aaron!


Still single? Come check out your matches and find the women who want to meet you for your birthday!


Why yes. Yes I am. Thank you very. fucking. much. for pointing that out. -.-

Today marks my 27th year on this planet. Oh god is there no escape at all? Why haven't they sent out a rescue party or something already!

Miirdin is finally 70. FINALLY. SEVENTY. Sweet angry jeebus it's been a long time coming.

we've just been fucking robbed.

more info later, this place is a mess and the cops are on their way

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us....

http://www.thewaroftheworlds.com.au

Fuck yessssss

This goes out to Chris and Sera:



Congratulations, you did it! :D

I honestly don't know what to think, i'm just speechless. o_0

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21988724-2,00.html

What day is today
It's Aaron's birthday
A day for a birthday
Let's have some cake

AND YOU SMELL LIKE ONE TOO! HNAAAAAH!

That is all.

Yes its been a few days since I got back, but we all arrived back in perth safe and sound, and with a nice uneventful trip. The 14+ hour flight was very empty, so they gave bella and I a row of 4 seats to ourselves, which was entirely useful for actually getting some sleep. The 7+ hour flight from HK to Perth was fairly full, but we still got 2 seats to ourselves next to the window.

Isabella is absolutely fantastic with flying, she has no problems with pressure changes, always managed to make friends with the stewardesses, and kept herself entertained with whatever was available.

The whole thing is over way too quick, and in less than a week i'm back at work. Boo. The cool news is I made it through seniors, but the not-so-cool news is I now have to wait to see if they're actually going to give me a position or just keep me in the list for future availabilities. Well, we'll see.

Oh, and god dammit if Chris wasnt right, australian junk food now tastes like fucking shit. Damn you!! WHAT THE HELL AM I MEANT TO EAT NOW? Man what I wouldnt do for a jack in the box. Hurrrr.

So, back to the grind of things as it were. You've been a lovely audience, and any future transmissions will now continue to be on the friends only list, if/when they are made.

I present to you, Dr Pepper in a jar!

http://members.iinet.net.au/~inversation/tmp/dp.jpg


Fuckin'. Eh.

Hey folks, so its been about 24 hours since we arrived in Canadia now, and from even before we touched down, it was snowing here. It's been doing so pretty much non-stop in a nice light pattern, so there's fluffy white snow all over the place. It's incredibly awesome.

But before I get onto that topic, I want to go back quickly to my last few days in America. I need to send out a hee-uge thankyou to Avery and her folks for the incredible kindness and patience extended to myself and Isabella during our stay, who absolutely ensured that it was an amazing trip and that we all enjoyed ourselves immensely. Avery is quite possibly THE most awesome person on this planet, and I really enjoyed getting to meet and hang out with her after several years of 'oh I want to come visit ONE day'. Well it finally happened, and i'm kinda sorry that it went by so quickly. The whole thing still seems a little surreal, but a sincere thank you to Avery for letting us chill with you, taking us out to see the sights, and generally putting up with the both of us. Avery's folks were also incredibly cool, both of them spoiling 'bella on numerous occaisions, and helping us out a whole bunch with a variety of stuff.

So to Avery, you absolutely fucking rock, it was a pleasure to meet you, and unfortunately my american number does not work here so if you didnt get my last SMS before I left, it basically covered the gist of the abovementioned. To Avery's folks and friends, it was great getting to meet you, and thank you so much for making our American visit incredibly enjoyable.

Isabella already misses ya a little bit :)


Okay, so, Canada....


SNOW. Snow, snow snow. The winter gear we had packed was KINDA warm enough, with some layering. We went out today to do some shopping for the little one and get some warmer gear, but it seems that stores dont like selling clothing that's required for the CURRENT season, so we were rather limited in our supply. We did end up being able to get some gloves and a beanie and some other stuff, which was enough to make sure that bella could get all gussied up to play in the snow.

Oh yeah, bella loves playing in the snow. We went outside and threw some snowballs around, stomped the snow down, shook some off the tree's, and made snow angels. Well, Toni and Bella did the last part, and most of the others as well. I more stood around being cold and took photos. Yes, there are numerous photo's of 'bella playing in the snow. Those will uploaded shortly- Honest, these ones will. They are being processed as we speak.

Isabella seems (for now at least) to be in a better mood than she was for some of the time in America - most likely due to the fact that it's not just her and 2 adults with her all the time, but her, 3 other kids, and a total of 4 adults living in this house. So she has some other people to play with and show her things and generally keep her occupied. Avery - take note! You will just have to make sure you bear some children for the next time we visit! ;)

NOW WE KNOW! AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE!

Okay so funny things about canada so far:
- Beanies are called 'Toques'
- Still with the driving on the right hand side of the road, whats up with that?
- Money is called 'loonies' and 'toonies' (one and two dollar coins, respectively)
- Like America, they use 'Yield' instead of 'Give Way'
- Again like America, their food sizes are all messed up. A small is a medium, a medium is a large, and a large is fucking enourmous. Seriously.
- They really do say 'eh' a lot. eh heh heh.

So that's a basic summary of the canada things so far. More will come with time.

Oh yeah, photo's are online at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/inversation/sets/72157594525586983/

So yesterday heralded the second trip to disneyland. For the most part it was just revisiting stuff we'd already seen and done, but there were some new events. We visited Toon Town and bella got to see Mickey Mouse and give him a hug etc, so we have pictures of all that. We went on a jungle ride with a tour guide who had wayyyyy too much free time in his job, but was amusing nonetheless. We got to see the Haunted Mansion ride which was entirely too short for the waiting time. Still was pretty cool though.

Okay so now the big ones:

We went on the Buzz Lightyear ride no less than three times - Bella loved the whole picking up a ray gun and shooting at big cartoon figures. It was pretty cool because you got points for hitting targets, so at the end of the ride you have a score showing how well you did. The funniest thing from that by far is coming out of the ride when it finished and having some ditzy bitch saying "oh I never do well with these, I only scored like 600", and then me looking at bella's score and seeing that she got about 2000. Oh, how does that feel, bitch? You got fucking pwned by a _THREE YEAR OLD_. How lovely to see that natural selection has really come to halt over here.

Ben, What was the name of that movie we saw just before I left that had the future without natural selection and shit? I can actually see that happening, minus the guy in stasis thing :\

Anyways, we saw some fireworks and a big fantasmic show which was pretty cool, but by far the coolest thing ever EVER at Disneyland? Star Tours - the Star Wars ride. Absolutely. Awesome. Went in during the main fireworks so there wouldnt be a huge line, and got out just as they started the tribute to star wars section of the fireworks. Now that's timing. It was very damn cool.

We went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride twice more on this trip, and all in all it was another good day. Very busy, being a saturday, but good nonetheless. Not many pictures of it this time around, but i'll upload those soon enough. Still havent done the seaworld pics due to the sheer volume of sequential shots. I think i'm just going to have to pick out a few here and there instead of doing the whole lot.

Almost time to be moving on to Canada which is both cool and sad. The time here in LA has just flown by, and before I know it i'll be back home. Don't get me wrong, i'll be happy to get back and see all you guys, it's just a shame that the fun has to end sooner or later. Ah well. I have a week off from work still when I do get back, and if i'm lucky the seniors list will have finally been announced before then. So we'll see how we go :)

So hey i've been quiet the last several days after disneyland. Bet you all thought i'd given up on this thing, eh? NOT QUITE.

To summarise my first week here so far:

Day 1: Relaxxxxxx
Day 2: DISNEYLAND
Day 3: Stayed home, watched DVD's. Start to feel a bit off in the evening, collapse into bed early.
Day 4: Wait a minute, I'M FEELING SICK! DAMMIT!
Day 5: Still sick, meet Remy(?), go to the Zoo. The asthma kicks in whilst my defenses are down. Curses!
Day 6: Hurk cough wheeze. Meet Alec, go to Seaworld. (Photo's to come)
Day 7: more coughing, clean up day. Organise bags, do laundry, dishes, etc. Bella learns how to use the mouse to click on 'play / play all' for DVD's on Avery's computer. *beams proudly*

So here we are on DAY 8, which is another relax day. Somewhere in the last week we also went shopping at the mall and were subjected to Hot Topic, which as goth/emo as it is totally has a good reputation with me after finding shelves full of gaming and zim apparel. I might have spent a LITTLE bit of money getting presents for people and myself. Bella absolutely loves her GIR shirt though, and all I can say is FOR THE HORDE! /cheer

There's a lot of funny things about the states, its kinda like living in bizarro world. No-one looks at you funny when you ask for 'meat and cheese only', the hot and cold water taps are on opposite sides (hot is on the left and cold on the right in the USA) :: EDIT :: Apparently I am retarded and its the same way in Perth. Honestly I had never even noticed, I thought it was the other way around when I discovered that here. I just pushed the tap in the direction I thought cold should be and it was hot. Go figure. :: EDIT ::, you flip the switch up to turn on the lights and down to turn them off, and most surprisingly of all (to me at least) is that the mobile market is very motorolla focused. Whereas in australia its very nokia vs ericsson, here everyone i've met and all the ads I see all have motorolla's, usually the razr flip ones. Didn't expect that one.

So lets talk about the other sights we've hit up briefly.....

The Zoo I don't think there's terribly much to say. It was far different to the zoo in perth, I kinda like ours better but that may just be a personal thing. The odd part is that the zoo here actually seems to be more open, but to me gave the impression of being more enclosed. I don't even understand how that works, but as an example we'll use the tiger exhibits.

LA: Tiger exhibit is completely open, you could literally jump over the wooden fence thing and into the exhibit, but they're further away because of a big drop to make sure they cant jump right back at you.

Perth: Tiger exhibit is almost entirely surrounded in some form of solid plastic. They are closer to you but their only opening is the sky.

Kinda hard to explain, i'll try to gank some photos from Avery to demonstrate more (i left my camera back home that day). Hilights of that trip included:

- A hippo and its ability to change the color of water with one pugnent stench
- Squirrels. Everywhere, fuckin' squirrels. I'd never even SEEN a squirrel before. Avery and Remy find this amusing.
- More oddities regarding the language barrier: "erbs" vs "herbs" (pronounciation). I honestly did not know it was considered to be a silent 'H' here. Very odd.

We also had breakfast at Denny's beforehand. In keeping with the tradition of american food we paid $6 and got 2 plates of food consisting of: 3 Pancakes, 1 meat lovers ommellete...omellete....omellette- dammit you know what i mean. anyways, one of those (which has chopped up meat and cheese sauce), 3 strips of bacon, 2 sausages, and shredded hash browns. Awesome.

Okay, so onto Seaworld! They had like whales and dolphins and shit! Okay okay, so we saw some dolphins, bella got to see them fairly closely which she enjoyed. Then we went and saw a couple of shows, the first being Shamu the Whale "MUSHU! THE WHALE THAT THINKS HE'S BETTER THAN YOU!" which got off to a thrilling (sarcasm alert) start with the presenter person asking anyone in the US army, uk armed forces etc etc to stand up so we could all pay tribute to them. How deliciously patriotic. Ugh. Then they actually got on with the show and tried to play the whole thing up as a fucking religious experience to interact with a whale or something. Hey, all i'm here for is to see the fishies jump, I don't need the floorshow as well.

Either way, so whales swam around and did a bunch of flips and splashed the audience and whatnot. Was very cool. Then we saw the dolphin show which was a lot of the same sorta thing except they had a volunteer family come up to interact. They had the little girl and one of the dolphins get in a splashing competition, and the father did some hand signals to tell the dolphin to do stuff and what not. Then as they're talking about something else, the family was standing on a little bridge thing. The mother gets a little tired and sits on the side, and in typical blonde female fashion proceeds to LOSE HER BALANCE and FALL INTO THE POOL.

The announcer starts stammering, dolphin trainer people line up around the edges to try and get her out, and one of the dolphins starts barrelling towards her as she's screaming and flapping around. She see's the thing behind and starts trying to swim away at which point the dolphin headbutts her feet and starts pushing her around the pool. Ahhhh was very funny. Of course it turns out the falling in thing was staged and she was actually one of the trainers herself, but they executed it _brilliantly_. The rest was standard sorta stuff, dolphins flipping and splashing and all the rest.

Then we saw a bunch of other animals, sea turtles and sea cows, polar bears, yeah. We also went to a touch pool so bella could touch starfish and whatnot, and I swear the guy announcing stuff there sounded like the most cliche surfer dude you can imagine. I kept expecting him to bust out words like 'bodacious' and air guitar sporadically from a disappearing phone booth.

That night The five of us (Avery, Erik(sp?), Alec, Bella, and myself) went out to dinner, initially planned to hit to the rainforest restaurant, but there was a 2 hour wait on it, so we ended up going to some blues bar / restaurant nearby which was entirely awesome. (Oh, these food places are in Disney territory, so very pretty looking and busy.) I decided just to go for a burger because i wasnt hugely hungry only to discover that they are HUGE and DELICIOUS. Following that I got a chocolate milkshake. I know, what can they possibly do with a chocolate milkshake right? How about making it about 95% chocolate bar and 5% milk. There was JUST enough milk to make sure it was a liquid, and it was full of sugary chocolate to the point that even _I_ could not finish it. Yeah, I know. That's how bad it was. Oh but it was sooooo goooddddddddd.

So the trip continues to be great, bella is still having a fantastic time, and we'll be doing some more stuff this week, although not much. We've got the second day of Disneyland planned, a trip to the beach, and hollywood on thursday. Going to be hitting up Perv going decked out in nerdwares (so apparel and the like) with Avery that night as her folks are very graciously looking after bella for us. Should be awesome.

I'll get some photo's of stuff uploaded soon enough, but there's like 200 pics of seaworld thanks to the rapid-photography feature on the camera. OH and there are a couple pictures of the power station on the way to San Diego. It's shaped like giant boobs. Crazy americans.

The photos are finally up! Rather than inserting a bunch of them here, i'll just like you to the gallery directly, which is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inversation/sets/72157594501147117/

Enjoy!

Yup, second day here and what did we do? We hit up Disneyland of course. Hell yeah.

There will be many many pics to come but since its almost 1am and I'm lazy, they are not yet uploaded. So a rundown as follows:

Disneyland is about the coolest place you can ever visit on this planet. Isabella - naturally - LOVED it. She went on the monsters inc ride first, then we saw the muppets 3d (which still required glasses but oddly enough not the stupid red/blue colored lenses - and shit they did a good job), headed out to see some stuff from a bugs life (she hasnt seen the movie as far as I know but she loved it) and then went to the main park. Inside she got pictures with Minnie Mouse, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and Ariel from The Little Mermaid. We hit up a bunch of sights, a heap of stores, and a few rides as well. Surprisingly she liked the Pirates of the Caribbean (sp?) one despite it being dark and whatnot, and she went on the merry-go-round three times. I think she enjoyed that one the most typically enough. Go figure :P

We passed a few things that looked entirely awesome (like a whole section devoted to star wars and space) but unfortunately they werent suitable for bella and she didnt seem interested yet (d'oh). We had Avery showing us around the whole day and pointing out things to bella and all the rest, so we werent left wandering around aimlessly. We also managed to get bella in for free since they thought she was under 3 years old, swish! :D We were there for several, several hours (probably about 8 all up) and bella was an absolute angel. She was her usual fickle self with changing her mind about stuff constantly, but she didnt have any major grumps or get tired from all the walking until we got home. Avery treated her and got her a stuffed cat - which bella creatively
called 'Katt' - and a tinkerbell outfit to go on it. I'm glad to say that those two have been getting along absolutely famously, it's so incredible.

Oh, whilst I was there I had 3 incredibly amusing things happen:
1) I told bella without realising that she should put Avery on follow whilst she was leading the way.
2) I saw some girl who HONEST TO GOD used the head waggly thing you see in movies, in that 'oh no you did not' kinda way whilst talking to a guy whom I presume was her boyfriend. It was all I could do not to crack up.
3) some guy nearby is hearing me talk to bella and he's like 'hey that's an interesting accent. What is that, british?'

British? BRITISH? Do I sound british to you motherfucker? COR BLIMEY GUV I COUL'N BELIEVE 'E SAID THA'! Apparently its simply the fact that I don't talk like Steve Irwin or whatever, so maybe I come across sounding somewhat more civilised, i dunno. That was a bit weird though, I wonder how many other people that have heard me talk think i'm from fuckin england or something. Christ.

Anyways, so after we got home from Disneyland we went out to dinner to meet Avery's boy - who appears very cool by the by - and discovered about the single most awesome thing I have seen to date. I ordered a standard soft drink, y'know nothing special just a soda in a glass to go with the meal, right? Right?

WRONG.

Yes it was a standard soda (god I LOVE that Dr Pepper is a standard drink over here) but it didnt come in a glass, ohhhh no. It was IN glass sure, but they had a bit of an edge to it. They served it in a big, honkin', honest-to-god JAR. A FREAKING JAR.

I'll let that sink in for a bit.



okay? Okay. A jar of DP. It was the most mind blowing thing ever. That's just how they serve adult soft drinks, and its not exactly a small jar either, we are talking about a BIG jar. SO big it's 'honkin''. Yep, I polished off 2 of the buggers (free refills? Fuckkkk yesssssssssss). And the meal was enormous, it was just cutlets of meat, half a damn plate of fries, and a teeeeny bit of salad on the side. they didnt even bother putting it over the rest of it, it was pretty much just there to make the rest look pretty, like "bitch, we know you arent gonna touch this, just humour me".

God I love this country.

PS. Photo of the jar to come also.

Well I now have a mobile that I can use over here. We went with Cingular since there was a store nearby, i know a couple people who use it (free calls to other cingular users, awwww yeahhhh), it was cheap, and...uh.....well, i'd rather not say why I am suddenly a cingular fan over any other provider I don't know here..... NO I do not have one, I just went with the cheapest POS phone they had which incidentally is a mid-range phone back in perth. Go figure. For $40 though absolutely not complaining. Looks like I cannot recieve international text messages on it, but it makes and takes calls well enough, so yay.

Got back to Avery's to find that my phone's roaming was finally working, huzzah! So you can send text messages to my normal number (pretty sure it doesnt cost VERY much for messages only, just dont call me), and if you wanna call for whatever reason, just remember the time difference. Comment with your email address if you want the number and i'll send it to you.

Also, we have now experienced 'jack in the box' which is some sort of delicious hungry jacks / mcdonalds hybrid. After that it was on to Fry's which is a magical place as big as bunnings and entirely populated with electronics. We also picked up some twinkies and cupcake things, aw yeahhhh.

Looks like we might be hitting up disneyland tomorrow, not entirely sure at this stage so we'll just see how we go! First day is down, and so far is still entirely awesome. Bella is in love with the disney channel, and has been spoilt on dvd's. Must find a way to bring american tv back ....