On a lighter note...

Well, this week is off to a good start. Monday afternoon I went with my friend Gaston to the airport where his girlfriend from Japan was flying in. He had the great idea to sing to her when she appeared in the terminal, and recruited me to play accompany him on guitar. He wanted to sing a romantic song, so we picked "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith. Now, first of all... Gaston isn't exactly the greatest singer. And he's certainly no Steven Tyler. We were practicing in the morning in a quiet corner of the park nearby, and an old guy walked by with his dog. Gaston doesn't have much in the way of volume control, and this guy just glared at him, and walked away shaking his head. heh.

It turned out really good though. After waiting around for an hour with Gaston getting more and more nervous (he sweats and hops around a lot), he spotted her coming out, and started singing at the top of his lungs. We practised the song pretty slow, but he was blasting through it. I had a hard time keeping up... but what Gaston lacks in talent, he sure made up for in volume. The look on her face was priceless when she saw him... and the whole arrival terminal gave us a big round of applause after we finished (possibly because we'd actually finished. haha). Here's a picture of them afterwards... if you look close enough you can still see a few stunned looks on people around them.



So that was fun. Other than that I've got my travel plans pretty much figured out. Stefan, Tarja, Ann and I are going to rent a car in a few weeks and travel around Western Australia for 2 weeks, ending up north in Broome (break out your maps). Should be much warmer up there... and nothing more exciting than a road trip. There's should be plenty to do also... go swimming with dolphins, learn to surf, whitewater rafting... who knows what we'll actually do, but it'll be fun no matter what.

I had a request to see how I'm living here, and what my room is like, so here's a picture of my corner of the room I'm in. There's two bunk beds behind me, currently occupied by three English guys who came in last night as I was getting up to go out to work. :) At least they didn't wake me up! haha



And yes, I know... it's a pink blanket. It was handed to me, and I was cold. haha

Nothing else for now, other than to show off last week's profits. The only thing better than being paid in lots of cash is to be paid in lots of colourful cash :)



-Brad

We'll miss you

This has to be by far the worst part about travelling and being halfway around the world. My nana died a couple days ago at my parents house in Belleville. I always felt I was close to her, especially since I lived a few blocks away when I was in university in Hamilton. It was always great to have her close by whenever I needed to borrow her car, use her laundry machine, eat some of her cookies, or just to have someone to talk to and forget about the pressures of school for a while. Heh... how can you not love a lady who calls her grandson a dumbass? :)

Anyways... it's hard not to feel guilty about being out here having fun while everyone else in my family was helping to take care of her, but I hope nobody holds it against me. I know everyone knows that I wish I was back home right now more than ever. I've been hit with a double whammy the last couple days too; I've been down with the flu or something and haven't moved out of my bed much. Being sick in a hostel, with people in and out of your room all the time isn't much fun.

I wish I was better with words, but I'm not... so all I can say is we'll all miss you Nana.



-Brad

Bam ba lam

Heh, been a while. I promised drunken bar pictures (I think) and drunken bar pictures there are. See them here. Nothing anyone hasn't seen before anyways, me drinking.

Still working at the same job... it's really not too bad and Steve is a really cool guy. He knows that the hostel here has nights out at the bar Wednesday nights, so he suggested I take Thursday off so I could go out. How cool is that? I think he may have just wanted to go golfing, but still.

Been keeping busy otherwise... still going to the gym with Murray most nights and as soon as my running shoes get here from Canada I'm going to start running again. I went out today with Gaston and a couple other guys to play a bit of football (soccer) and it was kind of an eye-opener to how badly I'm out of shape. Went down to Fremantle again Saturday, and went on a tour of the prison there. Interesting place... seemed a lot like a prison out of the movies. They shut it down in the early 90's because of sanitary problems; they had no plumbing in the cells, just buckets. Ugh.



Anyways. Most of the pictures I've been uploading so far have just been of places... since I haven't been to many new places in the last month or so I guess I'm overdue to post a few of the people I've been hanging out with here. Most are at the local backpacker's bar, Black Betty's. Every night a live band, and lots of cheap drinks. There are a half dozen people that have been at the hostel as long as me, so you get to know them pretty well. Other people, like Val, Karen or Anne are just passing through and only stay a week or two. It's a good mix though; keeps things interesting and you're always meeting new people. I tried to find the most flattering pictures of everyone, but it's hard when everyone's making faces at you all the time :)

As always, a couple more random pictures. Here's me posing, out for a walk in East Perth. Also, City Hall in Fremantle.





Nothing much else is new. I dyed my hair, in case you hadn't noticed. It's kinda dark brown now. I like it... still could be a little longer though. Ummm... other than that nothing really new with me.

Well... my plan anyways is to work at this place for another few weeks likely, then head south towards Albany. It might be a little cool at nights to do now, but I'd like to do some bushwalking along the coast down there. There's supposed to be a nice track that runs from Perth to Albany; some 900kms long. I think walking a section of that would be cool. I'm having a great time here right now though... it's good to be kinda settled into a place like this where you get to know a lot of different people. And Perth is a really nice city, it seems like a much smaller place most of the time. Still, the urge to get moving is starting up again, so I'll probably stick it out here for a while longer then head out. I have to do cheap things now though; I'm too far in debt to go spending like crazy again.

Another post later this week; I've been slacking :)

-Brad

Stayin' aive.

Ahh... despite the urge to go out drinking the night before the run common sense prevailed. Stupid common sense... what's it ever done for me? haha

So my leg of the run was 9.4kms, and I did it in a little over 45 minutes. Not too bad for very (very!) little training. Getting out of bed the day after was a bit of an adventure though.

I was very happy with how it went... I didn't even have to stop and walk or anything. Plus, the whole time I was blowing by old people running the full marathon. A few people tried to pass me, but since the track was by the river in town here it was pretty easy to bump them over the railing into the water. Some people have no sense of competition... I have no idea what they were yelling about afterwards?

heh. A couple pictures from the run; me sprinting to the finish of my leg at the relay point, and a group shot of three of us that did parts of the run. Yeah, I know I'm not exactly styling it up. I had to run in my crappy black bar shoes, and the hostel gave us all shirts to wear so I wore a yellow collared shirt.





L-R; Gaston from Argentina, me, and Murray from New Zealand. The fourth guy was from South Africa, and he was kinda missing in action for a while. He ran to where I started, which was the furthest point away from the start/finish line. His plan was to ride his bike back to the finish here, but he left it at the wrong relay point. He ended up walking about 15km (after his run) to get back to the hostel... since he forgot his bike key also :)

Other than that bit of fun, it's been work work work. I've been going to the gym steadily with those two guys in the picture (it's tough to keep up with Murray!), plus the crappy job and jobsearching on my day off.

Guess I've done a bit otherwise... took the train to Fremantle down by the ocean on the weekend with another Canadian (Kevin, from Moose Jaw) and took some pictures. Got a nice shot of the sunset...



Well, to make up for not going out Saturday night tonight'll have to do. I have the day off tomorrow so it should be a good one. It's almost been a couple weeks since I've had a drink! (almost longer than my attempt at taking a month off...hahaha)

Eeeh. Sorry about the lack of interesting posts lately. It's hard to do anything but boring stuff when you're working or working out most of the time. Go read Pam's blog; she's actually doing exciting stuff :)

-Brad