Another long awaited post

I am guessing by this point I have chased off my already limited following on the blog with my month lag between postings. However, I am going to give this one another go, and I should have some good stuff as I have begun booking trips out of Sydney as well as tickets to several rugby and aussie rules football matches coming up.

First, an explanation of the photos - The group on the left is the MIG - Macquarie Infrastructure Group - Finance Team celebrating the completion of mid-year reporting. An excellent group and a fun evening. For those back home, MIG is the company that has purchased rights to the Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road. Among other things, seem to disagree with the usefulness of the Skyway McDonalds. Obviously they have never wanted to waste an hour of would be tailgate time at ND in order to wait at what is the slowest McDonalds ever due to friends who stayed out overly late the previous night.

The second photo is the Queen Mary 2 - this is the biggest cruise ship ever. It is massive. I think it was something like 33 odd stories tall, but I haven't bothered to confirm it.

Other than that, I have not been carrying my camera enough.

So, on to an update on what's new (or not) in my half of the world. the weather has remained great, but with a little more rain, so I have still been going to the beach 2-3 times a week. However, the time change means the coming of winter here so it is getting dark much earlier. My yearlong summer is coming to an end here soon. People are telling me how cold it gets here, and I am not all that nervous since they have been quoting temperatures between 50-60 degrees, but we shall see.

I have decided to extend my stay in Oz until mid-September. I have obtained another visa, this one sponsored by Macquarie. I will be working for a different fund in a more senior role until then. At that point, it is my intention to continue my travels. Needless to say things are good here, otherwise I would not be sticking around longer. I am also planning some trips in Australia before that point, with the first being to Adelaide for Easter weekend, including a Wolfmother concert (Aussie rock band). I will wait to give more updates on those until I actually head out on those trips.

My free time has mostly gone to hanging out with my housemates/friends, doing various projects, services for the young adult group at the parish I have been going to, reading, and as mentioned above, the beach. I have also participated in a couple open ocean swims/races, including a 2.7 kilometer one from Palm Beach to Whale Beach. Great fun. I skipped out on the next race I intended to participate in and was lucky because the swimmers ran into a school of blue bottle jellyfish resulting in about 100 people getting pulled out of the water and the cancellation of the race.

Another random Australian observation - Money: Australia has $1 and $2 coins, and then the bills - 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 all have different colours and get this, noticeably different sizes - the larger the amount the larger the bill.

Another random thing - I made quesadillas this week and no one here had ever heard of them. I can't believe I just wrote about quesadillas, no one is going to read this anymore. I will just start making up better stories........