Air Canada does not feature Neil Perry designed crapped out meals, save it for Rockpool, this is Business class and if I wanted slop I’d just go to Woolworths and make it myself. And a good breakfast with Canadian bacon, not some cold hard toast and rock solid butter like Qantas like to dish out. I guess I’ll have to stick to Singapore and Star Alliance airlines, although it sucks for domestic as Australia has no domestic Star alliance members. waah. I’m actually looking forward to 15 hours of peace on the flight home.

So yea, Vancouver, its a great place and I’m sure it would be a lot better if it wasn’t 4 degrees and raining, still it’s good. Clothes and stuff are cheap, lots of Asian food to choose from. If you’re a fatcunt there is always BK Triple Stackers or Wendys Baconators at your disposal.
The scenery is awesome with views of snow topped mountains behind North Vancouver as you walk around downtown. It’s very snappy and pleasing to the eye also.

And stop telling me that rent money is dead money, interest money is dead money too, and I can assure you that I pay less rent than the interest you pay on your 300k home loan, and I save the rest.. AND THOSE SAVINGS DESERVE A FUCKING FAT INTEREST RATE.

And don’t even get me started on this tax breaks for family’s too, why the fuck am I PAYING FOR SOME DOUBLE INCOME FAMILY THAT ISN’T STRUGGLING?

Seems to me like Australians just complain about the cost of everything these days, what happened?

HARDEN THE FUCK UP AUSTRALIA

Rate My Steak, Blue Smoke BBQ

I took my parents to Blue Smoke, I was sure I said.. “It’s a ribs place, famous for ribs… ribs.. ribs.. drool”. Mum got the pork belly and Dad got an eye fillet, I went for the classic Texas beef short ribs.

The pork belly looked amazingly good, dry rubbed and really juicy, and if I get to go there again twice, I’ll try it. Twice because I’ll go the beef ribs again as it’s too hard to get past on the menu.
My Dad is pretty serious about his steak and he ordered the fillet blue but warm, which was exactly how it came out, impressive. Meat scored 10/10, it really couldn’t have been done any better.

Mum ordered the pecan pie for dessert which came with some ice cream that was larger than the pie, and it was very win. I wanted a coffee but the coffee machine was out, a few hints to the waiter about getting one from a neighboring shop didn’t sink in and he kept saying we were welcome to get one somewhere else… um… get our own?.. We also did not get any corn bread with honey butter. lose. Service 7/10, he knew what blue but warm meant.

Polished off my last bottle of 1988 Heggies Cabernet, I bought a case of these 15 years ago and I had one stashed in the back of my parents storage cupboard. They found it, and it survived, yay. No doubt the best red wine I’ve ever had.

Overall 8/10.

Rate My Steak, Kingsleys

Just had to try this place after John kept ranting on about it.

Entree’s – The soft shell crab was by far the largest I’d ever seen, looked like a sand crab and tasted incredible. Got a dozen natural oysters which were perfectly fresh.

Mains – I got the Reef and beef rib, I forget what the other guys got now *blush*. Perfect steak but they didn’t de-vein the prawns which let it down a little. The mushroom sauce was by far the best I’ve ever had. Had the grilled artichokes, roasted root vegetables, and potato bake for sides. All very delicious.

After the last bottle of Heggies I chose the 2005 Heggies Merlot which was also memorable, looking for someone with a case for sale, but I’ll have to resume my search when I get back. These guys had a working coffee machine, yay.

Service, they stuffed up one order but were quick off the mark to resolve it, the girl was a bit nervous and dropped a knife on a plate, but handled it well and spoke to us to get off the subject.

Overall 9.5/10. I’m going back. Maybe we can convince John to eat seafood and drink wine next time. I gave them a half point for stocking Heggies wine.

Rate My Stay – Saville Executive Suite, 2 Bond St, Sydney

So I’m a bit of a nomad right now, My home is in Brisbane, primary office in Sydney, secondary offices in London and Stockholm. Due to the circumstances my employer is supplying a studio near work right now.

Very nice, good staff, nice apartment. But.. No foxtel and the restaurant menu could do with some work. I’d stay here again for sure. The guys at the office called this the second choice, wonder what the first choice is?!

Rate My Gig – OMX Sydney

I was lucky enough to score a window seat.

The other side of the building is marginally better as it looks out over North/South head. But I’m not one to complain. Also I’m very happy with my new Lenovo X61 laptop and Blackberry curve phone. Salary is very competitive and conditions are obviously designed so no one will ever complain. The highest global health insurance possible, 10.6% superannuation and a very generous per diem when away from home. 10/10 employer, I’m very happy there.

So I’m off to London and probably Stockholm as well, leaving tomorrow. I guess I’ll have to Rate My Flight, Hotel and Offices over there.

Leaving the wonderful people at VB and Brisbane (well I’ve only half left Brisbane) was a bit sad, but things are going well which takes my mind off it. Looking forward to getting back from Europe already so I can find somewhere to live that isn’t a hotel or executive studio apartment.

A couple of pics from the VB 7th Birthday Party……

That’s all :)

Rate my steak – Fridays hot dog van.

Always love Fridays, it is a great perv, and it’s really warm so there is lots of skanks showing lots of skin, and when mixed with alcohol it ends up for a good time. Nothing finishes off a really good time quite as well as a hot dog from the guy that parks out the front.

The bun – fresh and soft, but not too soft.
Hot dog – perfectly cooked, firm, no skin peeling off or crap like that.
Onion – just caramelising, not burnt.
Bacon – oh yea.
Cheese – just the right amount.
American mustard – tomato sauce doesn’t cut it on quality food like this.

Portion control is the key and they have it, not too much, you dont get crap over your face, or drop any, it fits in your mouth. 10/10.

Rate my steak – Chimiburger @ Chimi’s Burger Bar.

We had to try this bad boy out. Take a massive double patty hamburger, batter and deep fry the whole thing. Yes, it is bad for you, yes, it takes about 8 hours before your stomach works again, no, I don’t want another one for a while. The helpdesk at my current job has a record of 4 minutes 15 seconds to eat one. The Chimi guys say someone once ate 2 1/2 of these in 1 sitting. ouch.

Can’t say much about it really that isn’t obvious, it’s big and fried, the buns taste like KFC. The only way to better this burger is to get rid of the bun and use 2 snitchels instead. 9/10 coz it hurt.

The Ekka and other non related crap.

The Ekka is on and I didn’t go, again, it is one big flu pit. Nothing destorys peace and quiet like planes and fireworks. Jedi got me a bertie beetle bag (thanks Jedi), which is as much Ekka as I can handle.

I’ve discovered how good pork ribs are when you pressure cook them, tender falling apart bbq porky goodness in under 30 minutes!

I was rudely awoken this week by an invasion on my airspace, I need to find out if I am legally allowed to defend my airspace. Nothing ruins sleeping in like hot air balloons above your house.

That is enough for now, more exciting news to come this week. Stay tuned.

Such an indirect form of punishment, which is remarkably similar to a form of celibration, example below.

Secondly, Angry went and quit on life and got married, no one misbehaved at all during the wedding, soft all round. Guru did his best to take the limelight and copped a full frontal assult from the paparazzi. One day of being the center of attention was not enough for him.

Married people seem to exhume some sort of positive message about being married, but when you break it all down, just read between the lines :) Pick the married person in the picture below.

On a serious note, an awesome wedding, as weddings go. If I had one and it went that well, I’d be happy….

Harden the Fuck Up!

Boise, Idaho is a unique place and reminds me of Dubbo just with snow.. or like Hobart with less something and more hicks and lots of SUV’s. They have several cool things there besides trailer parks. Idaho has its own air force! Just imagine of they gave Victoria planes with guns. They have e85, 85% ethanol fuel, and most car vendors supply chips for free if you wish to run it. E10 is there if you decide you only want a little bit of ethanol, make you feel better about driving the v8 (or v10!). There is biodiesel and premium biodiesel, I forgot to ask about the difference.

I was busy with the engagements that I missed out on to making it to Cabelas which was sad as it would have been a good place to see some silly 10ft SOA’d pickups in the car park.

After a bender of an evening at the local “edge of town” style of bar and a morning of recovery listening to presentations from my hosts (Sorry I signed a NDA), we headed to the Boise International Airport, were reminded 30 times that the current threat level is Orange via the PA, and jumped on another Canadaair jet off to San Francisco (hooray).

San Franciso was amazing particularly after LAX and Boise it was good to go somewhere that wasn’t backwards. The host (Sorry-NDA) put us in a very nice hotel in the center of the action. Action was not very hard to find but unfortunatly as soon as we spotted man on man tounge action we hit the streets to find somewhere we could excerise a little more personal choice.

The next morning we hit the road to Palo Alto to visit the hosts (Sorry-NDA) labs. On the way we saw the house where lots of Dynasty was filmed, and the longest building of some sort which was actually some massive particle accellerator. Palo Alto is pretty cool but reminded me of the Sunshine Coast without the beach. Lots of relaxed looking university like people walking around or driving Porsches.

So we headed back to San Francisco and headed down to the wharves for a feed, checked out the sea lions next to the resturant, ate and headed over to Alcatraz for a quick tour, and headed back home. Wasn’t there very long but it was good to be home. It’s kinda freaky seeing George W Bush pictures on the walls.

Pics are here

Last week I went to Fraser Island with Angry and SJ. The fishing was soft as there was a 2m easterly swell and 20 knot winds, but if you’ve been to Fraser (there’s a few I haven’t yet convinced to come up – you know who you are) you know that it is awesome every time no matter the weather.

I played probably 20 hours of Scarface in between, good stuff.

The tracks are good and the maps are awesome with grids, they have signs with your grid location at most intersections to make it easy. I don’t think the lookout tracks would be very good in the wet with all the hillside driving, but there is also plenty of places that would not be so bad with a bit more mud.

Chester made a video where I had a few cracks at a rock, I figured when I was at the top of that track I prolly should air down from 44psi :) Made for a challenge tho. Good spotting by Fatty and IP.

We camped on top of Mount Tilley and enjoyed the awesome view and got shitfaced, you could see Brisbane, Beaudesert and Boonah from the camp site at night. Also another pic of the view towards Brisbane taken on Sunday.

IP made a pretty good vid also with lots of the shortys having fun.

Pics HERE and HERE