Start of Sail 2010

Just after lunch the first tall ship came in. It's still in the distance here.

There it is. Pardon my crap quality photo... iPhone, you know ;-P

The copper chopper.

Another tall ship in bad quality...

There was a Starcraft II conference in the office today.

As a joke I complained about a spelling mistake in the email of a colleague. He rushed over and marked the mistake... On my screen...

Tall ships kept coming in.

The ferry on the way home was... well, full to say the least. We had to manouver between a few hundred little boats to get across.

The picture present.

This is very Amsterdam house moving. The picture isn't very clear but it's a house-boat being towed.

For some reason there were a lot of seagulls tailing the ferry in the morning.

Mid morning we were all called downstairs. My colleague Harold got very excited.

ChipSoft's employees wanted to thank the board for taking us on the skiing trip last Easter. So we all pitched in and gave them...

A picture of all of us on the Zell am See station in our jackets printed on glass. It's mounted on the wall in our lobby. They were very surprised and they loved it.

The picture.

Early arvo the ice-cream van came by again. Mmmmmhhh.

I sat in the sun while waiting for the ferry.

Beating the masses at Central station. I feel like a salmon swimming up stream sometimes there...

The wookie

Our lawn early morning.

My view in the bus on my way to work.

Passing Northpark, our shopping mall.

My lunch view. Can't go to the park yet. It's also too wet most of the time.

At 3 o'clock it was beer-time! This one was very fruity. I liked it very much.

Nicole picked me up after work and we drove to Henley for a spontaneous visit to the Thai Orchid.

The come back

The way to work this morning was dramatic. Somebody allowed their car to kiss a bus. Pretty bad actually. The person driving the car must have overlooked the bus judging by the left front that was completely ripped off / dented / gone. You'd think it's kinda hard to overlook a 25 metres long and 3 metres high bus.

Police, ambulance and the firies were there and they blocked one side of the road which is why it took us half an hour to get to work...

I hope the person driving the car was OK though.

Driving to bowls after work we passed this four wheel drive with two dogs in the back seat. Don't know if you can actually see the second one. The photo is a bit crap coz of movement etc.

We kicked total lawn bowl ass tonight. We were ranked 15th and we played the runner up, nr 16. It was just Richard, Tony and me playing tonight and the first half we managed to squeeze out one point. Unfortunately our opponents squeezed out 20 points by half time. We sucked.

Then, after the break, everything turned around. We were on fire. We won end after end and when there was only one more end to go we were only two points behind: 18-20. Great come back.

A draw would've been well deserved for both parties but we ended up winning 21-20 after a measure of the third bowl that was 0.5 cm closer than the opponent's. Good stuff. What a come back!

Datsun (for Koen)

When Koen and Josie were here, Koen was showing clear signs of a Datsun fixation. We're talking about the car here. This morning on our way to work we were stopped right behind one and noticed it was called "Nissan Datsun". Rumours had it that today's Nissan car company used to be Datsun but that's only partly true. According to this Wikipedia article, the Datsun car (or actually Datson) Was originally manufactured by a company called DAT. In 1933, DAT was acquired by Nissan who renamed the car from Datson to Datsun.

There you go, your bit of car history du jour.

Lunch.

Looking down King William Street from Victoria Square.

Last week one of my computer screens died and today my replacement came in. They are just getting bigger and bigger.

Work, work, work.

Yeah, at 7:15 already I was waiting for the bus. Nicole couldn't drive me today so I had to go on my own.

Waiting...

And there we go. More waiting inside the bus along the way as the bus was ahead of schedule. Can you believe it?

And then, after ten hours at the office I was waiting again. This time for Nic to pick me up.

We enjoyed a luxurious Mc. Donald's dinner.

Your rainbow is intensely shaded yellow, white, and brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are a deep thinking person. You appreciate quiet moments. People depend on you to make them feel secure. You're good at getting people to like you.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

I followed a link on Kees' blog who followed a link from Marion's blog about a rainbow describing me. This is the result.

In the evening I played one game of poker. The entry fee was $1.20 and you play against eight others. But I won and thus earned a rock-solid $4.50! I think Nicole can start thinking of what colour boat she wants...

Playing online poker requires a lot of patience (amongst other things). There was this Dutch kid tonight. Dutch kids play coz they're bored. Just like the German ones. They play very annoying and go "all-in" very often. I guess they want to show that they have balls. Unfortunately for them you play poker with your brains more :-)

Mr. Moped

On my way to work this dude came along side on a wicked moped.

The neighbours across the street had some work going on in front of their door. They were putting in some cable.

During lunch I went to Dick Smith to buy some cable. Mark joined me and afterwards we had lunch at the food court there.

We lunched in style at the Mc. Donalds where the git behind the counter managed to screw up my order of a cheese burger plain. I even told him "JUST the bread, meat and cheese, NOTHING else. For some reason the ketchup made it onto my f-ing burger. Outside Australia I have NEVER had any problems ordering a cheese burger plain but over here it's a different story.
Maybe next time I'l prepare a ingredients list.

Yesterday we got our sign put up finally. We're almost a real company now ;-)

My new career

The city view on my way to work in "Taxi Nicole".

At my work we have a coffee machine. It apparently cost AU$700. For some reason every second time I go there it wants me to do something with it. Fill the water tank, empty the used coffee bin, clean the used coffee bin, add more beans, re-attach the water filter that came loose, clean the internal coffee brew mechanism or sometimes it just cocks up on a stuck bloody coffee bean. I get coffee twice a day so every day there is something of the above that needs doing. Today was BIG clean up time of the internal brewing mechanism. I was lucky to get some actual programming time in today.

At least after today I can add "certified coffee machine mechanic" to my resume :-)

Lunch girl

If you think Dutch busses have little leg room try the bus in Adelaide...

Bus view left.

Bus view right.

My colleague Mark and I went to cafe Fresh during lunch. Almost every time I'm there, this girl has lunch as well. She's always alone. She's always on the phone. She always smokes a cigarette. She always faces the wall. That last thing I find odd.

Looking at my building while waiting for Nicole to pick me up.

As we were driving off the fire brigade arrived with the standard three trucks. Someone must have been making toasties again in our building...

The way to work

Driving on Main North Road towards the city.

Got myself a nice front row seat.

Approaching the Scotties Motel where we turn half right.

Crossing Fitzroy terrace towards the paddocks.

Driving next to the paddocks arriving at the merge point of Main North Road and Prospect Road.

After the merge it's called O'Connell street.

Keep on swimming, keep on swimming...

At the end the road changes name to King William Road and we take the curve to the left...

... and a turn to the right.

Letting people out next to the women's and children's hospital.

Taking off from the hospital we drive towards St. Peter's cathedral.

Aiming straight for town we pass the first lights.

Past the bus stops.

Coming up to the lights where the city begins.

Across the lights the road is called King William Street and I get off at the first stop before Rundle mall.

There goes my bus and I start walking.

We turn left into Rundle mall which is very empty around 7:30 in the morning.

Walk towards the entrance of the CX (City Cross mall/food court)

Turn right into the CX.

At the end of the corridor the food court starts where we go left a bit...

... and right again. There is nobody here except...

Doughnut bakers!

This doughnut bakery is fantastic. I could die there as long as I smell doughnuts. All the bakers were asian people, funny.

Walk past the doughnut place, out of the exit and turn left on to the side walk outside again.

Enter out office building.

Left on to the stairs.

And all this to sit at the smallest desk in the world!

For lunch I went to the soup nazi. They're actually called "Leaf & ladle" and they make excellent soup. I had Minestrone today.

This was my view during lunch, it's quite nice staring outside.