So I just passed the 2 year mark. Thats two years since I left Oz and came to live in the UK. Feelings are really mixed at the moment. I love the summertime here, but I hate the winter. I love where I live and my house mates but I hate working away during the weeks! I went home for xmas, and had a great time catching up with everyone. I really missed the place but I’m not ready to come home just yet! Plans for the next step are formulating, but I won’t say anything on here. But anyway, the summer is here right now and Europe is happy. Love it.

Right now I’m working away in Derby (in the east midlands), staying in a hotel Monday-Friday. There’s not much to do in Derby, but theres some cool old pubs about. I’ve been working there since February and its getting really old. The place I’m working is pretty dull, and theres no windows. Every weekend feels like a holiday coming back to London! On the up-side, I got promoted and I’m doing a technical team-leader role on this project which is really interesting.

Highlight for this year so far has been the trip to portugal. We stayed in Alvor, and got some great surf in Sagres and Arrifana. Heres a link to some photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chazwoza/sets/72157623698780277/. A few upcoming travel plans include Hungary for the Formula 1, Israel, and a couple of trips that are yet to be confirmed. Hopefully somewhere warm where I can get some diving in, as I haven’t been diving in 18 months.

Since the last update, I’ve been a) Working hard and b) Travelling hard.

I’m working on a bunch of different projects. I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I’m bouncing from client to client, day to day, and it’s getting really tiring.  Thankfully, most of it has been in London or close, so no airports/hotels. Just plenty of train travel.

In August/September, I took a month off and did a bunch of traveling. I went to Italy for a week, and saw Genova, Cinqe Terra, Lucca, Florence, Bologne, and Venice. I loved Italy but it really is damn expensive.  Next time I go, I want to hit the south and go to Rome.

I came back to London briefly for Reading Festival, then Skippy and I headed off on Eastern Europe Mission 09. We hit Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and finally finished up at Munich for Oktoberfest (my second year in a row). Great trip, and I met some great people. Highlights were probably Budapest and Oktoberfest. Heres a link to the Eastern Europe photos. I’ll put the Italy photos up soon when I get some time.

The other major news is that I just moved to Wapping which is in East London, near Tower Hill/Bridge. I put some other photos of the new area up here.

The weather’s getting colder, and today it is dumping the rain down. I guess things will get quieter for the rest of the year, although I do have most weekends booked up now! Highlight should be a trip to Edinburgh in late November. It’s only about 7 weeks now til I come home to Perth for Christmas. Can’t believe I’ve almost been gone for 18 months.

Can’t bloody wait to see everyone!

chaz

If anyone cares, here’s screen shots of what they did to it:

• The first time:  hacked1 ….
• and the second time hacked2

In August/Sept, I went on a work trip to San Francisco Bay Area, to work in our companies product development team. It was a pretty good experience, but 2 weeks really isn’t enough. On the way, there was a few flight stuff-ups which resulted in me spending the night in Washington D.C. So I made the most of it by doing some site-seeing. I saw the White House, Capitol Building, Abraham Lincoln Memorial, George Washington Memorial, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and some others that I just can’t remember. Anyway you can check my washington photos out here on flickr.

So then I finally got to San Francisco, and stayed about 30 minutes out down at Redwood Shores. Heres some photos of our headquarters and of the area. From there I worked by day, and checked the area out by night and weekend. I stayed in the Hilton in San Francisco city on the weekend. I saw Santa Cruz, Napa Valley, Mavericks (although there were no waves), Half Moon Bay, and probably some other things that I’ve forgotten by now! You can check out photos from San Francisco here on flickr.

So since I was heading that way back to London, I decided to take a trip to Denver to stay with my Aunty and Uncle, Niel and Alice. They live in Golden which is just in the Rocky Mountains. So that was a chilled out few days, with one exception, the big mountain climb. Mick and I decided to climb Mt Bierstadt which is about 14000 Feet. To get an idea of how high this is: Denver is about 5000 feet (1 mile above sea level), Niel and Alices place is about 7000 feet. For Mt Bierstadt you start at about 11000 ft, and go up to 14000 ft. Thats 4.26 Kilometres above sea level! So it took us about 2 hours to reach the summit. Every few steps you are really tired and you need to rest. Eventually we got there, and the view was amazing. At the top, you are very dizzy. After signing the register, taking some photos and videos etc (see below), we took a 1 hr walk back to the car. Both of us were feeling like absolute crap at this stage! Probably some form of altitude sickness or something.

The next day, I took a trip to Vail (ski resort for millionaiires) to check it out. It’s a really nice town but theres no snow in summer. Would love to go back one day in winter.

So that was the trip over, and it was time to head back to the UK for the move to London, which I’ll write about in the next post! Bye bye USA.

Driving across Golden Gate Bridge:

And… driving down the worlds most crooked street, Lombard Street.

And … Riding the famous Cable Cars. This vid is a bit jittery, its pretty hard to hang off the side of a moving cable car, with people moving all around, and take a steady video!!

• Stayed and worked in Leeds for a couple of weeks. Leeds is a cool city. Lots of old buildings, good restaurants and clubs. Shame I didn’t really know anyone out there!
• Have done bits and pieces of work around London. Getting to London from Reading is a major pain in the arse. The trains are packed, and the tube is HOT.
• I went to Munich, Germany for a training course! For those that don’t know, Munich is in southern Germany (Bavaria). Its famous for Oktoberfest. I truly love Bavarian food and beer!! Half roast duck was awesome.

So thats about it in point form. As for whats coming up, I’m going to USA (San Francisco) for 2 and a half weeks. I’m going to be working at company headquarters, which is in the Silicon Valley area. Its about time I got over there! Some work, some play. I’ll let you all know how it goes!

When you get frisked by security in German airports, you stay frisked …

I flew through Munich to Nice (Southern France), then onto the Mercure Country Club.. its a very cool place in the hills near Nice, Cannes and Antibes. I was there for a training course, but it felt more like a holiday!

When I got there I realised I had forgotten to charge my camera battery, and hadn’t brought the charger. I think the photos weren’t meant to be. More on this later.

Monday started at a lazy 1:30 pm where we met everyone, and had some presentations. Then we all boarded a bus to go to a seafood restaurant on the beach in Antibes.. this was the first of what was many many seafood dinners! Wasn’t long before we were craving red meat! One of our crew from work, a crazy russion guy, drank way too much and started acting quite the public nuisance. He didn’t show up at all Tuesday. Very poor form. Wednesday evening, a few of us went too Cannes, where we wandered down the beach, had dinner somewhere, then found a pub to watch the footy (soccer).

Friday it was time to leave Sophia Antipolis and head to Nice town, where I had booked a hostel. I checked into a 6-bedder there, but nobody was in the dorm. So I went down for a swim at the beach, and walked around the town looking to buy a battery or a charger. In the end I found a place to charge my battery for me. Excellent! I went back to the dorm, and found a couple of kiwi lads in there. We promptly went down the shop to get some drinks to play ‘drink poker’ in the common area. There I met another aussie guy from Melbourne who was in our room, and a few others from around Europe. After heaps of drinks we all went out and hit the town.

Saturday, waking up with a slight hangover (more tired really), me and Dave (the aussie from melb) decided to go to Monaco. We went there, and had a pretty cool day! We walked heaps of the famous F1 Grand Prix track, and through the tunnel. We went swimming out and took water photos of us with the city / mountains in the background. Some ladies thought we were crazy taking our camera in the water. I guess they eventually figured it was water proof and we weren’t that stupid!

Saturday night was back to the hostel, and more drinks with the same crew and some others that had joined. Then we all headed down the beach, where there was a big party but you had to be wearing all-white to get in. That was the last known whereabouts of my brand new $500 camera with all the awesome Monaco photos on it Was it lost, or was it stolen, I guess we’ll never know. A facebook group, ‘I lost my camera with all my photos whilst traveling‘ has since popped up in support of people like me. You can find it here. Cheers Skippy!

Sunday I spent the day down the beach, in the police station attempting to file a police report, walking around Nice old town and up the cliff to get an awesome view of the city. It would have made a great shot

Then I hit the airport to head home. Once there, I found that our companies travel agent had cancelled my flight. I had earlier called him to ask if I could change to an earlier flight and was first told yes, then told no. Don’t remember asking him to cancel my flight and leave me stranded? So with no chance of getting on the plane ( the previous flight had been canceled so the waiting list was 50 person long ), i attempted to book another flight which I ended up getting on British Airways. Lucky, as I had to be back to London by the morning to get my flight to Leeds. Which I actually missed But thats another story and you’re probably bored by now.

I guess I’ll have to go back to France and get some more photos!

Check out the video sequence which sums up the day.

1. Starting off… I suck

2. Pulling my head in, and making the call

3. Nailing it

My first stuff-up was bound to happen. I had been out pub-crawling around London Bridge area, and since I was still recovering from the heavy night before, I pulled the pin and decided to go home. So I got on the tube to Paddington, then on the 11:30pm train to Reading. When the train left I set my alarm for 20 minutes because I knew it takes about 25 minutes to get to Reading. Next thing I know, I woke up and the train had stopped at a town named Swindon. Too far. So I got out, and was then informed by the helpful train station people that there were no trains going back to Reading that night, and the next one was 8am in the morning. Its times like these when you really realise that you are a LONG way from home (perth, australia) …

I went for a walk around town looking for a hostel to camp at, and found none. I found some hotels but none had free rooms. Then I found the clubbing area which was spewing drunk lads and ladies into the streets. Eventually I found a bus station that had a service to Heathrow (via reading), leaving at 3:30 am. So 3 hours to wait, I wandered the streets a bit, and feared for my life because of all the drunks around. I saw 2 fights, and several women crying on the street. Sounds like a quality place huh.

So eventually I went back to the bus station and proceeded to freeze my ass off for 2 hours until the bus came. Yes I’m a dumb aussie and didn’t have enough clothing on. I’m just glad I decided to bring my jumper with me when I went to London that day, but it still wasnt enough! The bus dropped me on the outskirts of Reading around 4 or 4:30 AM. At that point I realised I didn’t know the number to call taxis here, so I started walking. About 1 hour later I crawled into bed, about 5 1/2 hours later than it should have been, and passed out

Well I’m here in the UK… and its a long time since the last update!

I finished up work in Australia, ran around like mad trying to organise myself, but I was slightly distracted by the good surf in my last week at home). Then I boarded Singapore Airlines to Singapore, then boarded an A380 (the largest passenger plane in the world) for the trip to London.

Since we stopped over in Singapore, I picked up a bottle of Bombay Sapphire (bombay duck according to fielder!) and a new Olympus shockproof / waterproof camera, a 1030 SW.

Then it was onto an A380 which are the largest passenger aeroplanes in the world. I believe Singapore Airlines are the only ones to have them yet, but I could be wrong there. The flight was fairly uneventful, just long and uncomfortable! The A380’s have a really cool entertainment system which I think is based on Mythtv or windows media center, or something like that. There was about 108 on-demand movies to choose from! I had heard Singapore Airlines was the best airline in the world but I think Thai Airways kicks its ass in the food department.

So I arrived in London at 5:30 AM, and quickly found myself a coffee as I was slightly struggling. I was being picked up by Gus who is a new colleague of mine, and who I am currently staying with. Gus picked me up, and we headed off to Reading. Gus is into paragliding and was heading out that day. Even though I was seriously jetlagged I decided to go check out the paragliding. It looks pretty cool, and I think I’ll give it a go one day soon.

Check out these photos on flickr.

Saturday night, while even more severely jetlagged, we went for a bike ride so Gus could show me around town. I ran into Mike from Perth on the street, who is working over here. We ended up going to the Hop Leaf pub for a few pints. I had a second wind! Eventually I got to bed around midnight, absolutely exhausted, and passed out.

Sunday I met up with a friend in London, and we went to Hampstead Heath park since it was a nice day. Drinking Fosters in the park, awesome. People were swimming in the pond there but it looked pretty dirty to me.

Monday I started work. I’ve got a new Nokia E51 phone, and a Dell Latitude D630 laptop. Finally I’ve got a dual-core. The last few days have been spent getting myself set up on the systems here and trying to organise stuff like bank accounts.

Work is looking a bit quiet until I get onto a project. No idea where that might be!

Well thats it for now.. More to come soon!