The weekend after arriving home from Tasmania was expected to be a fairly routine event for Leeanna and I. Most weekends consist of the both of us working on Friday, and then me working like a chump on Saturday and Sunday. Things took a considerable change when on our way to Krispy Kreme on Saturday morning for some low fat snacks; we looked up and saw that the sky was blacker than Chris Rock’s ass. Within minutes of arriving at the donut shop, the winds started whistling and hail the size of ping pong balls started dropping out of the sky. The storm quickly escalated, and soon the winds were whipping around everything (chairs, signs, pieces of buildings) and between the crazy hail and the now torrential rain, I felt like I might very well be living through “Dante’s Peak 2”. Leeanna and I remained trapped in Krispy Kreme for a couple of hours, but finally ventured out even though it was still raining, as I had to go to work. We returned to our apartment building to find that the entire first floor was flooded up to our knees and it literally looked like there were miniature lakes on the streets surrounding our building. There was debris everywhere in the streets and it was truly the craziest storm I had ever seen. Naturally, the elevator in our building was out of service due to the flooding, which is brutal for us as we live on the 15th floor aka the top floor. That night on the way to work, I saw some of the extensive damage first-hand. The train station had parts of its roof cave-in; all trains and trams had ceased service in the greater Melbourne area; the football stadium around the corner from my work had a couple of massive holes in the roof, where the ceiling had just come crashing through; hundreds of buildings had flood issues; and to top it all off, there were hundreds of traffic accidents and tons of people in the E.R. who had been injured by the hail. In the aftermath, many media outlets said it was the most intense flash flood/storm in decades in Melbourne. In related news, it took our dick-head building managers six days to get our elevator fixed, which when you live thirty flights of stairs up, equals six days of feeling like you would rather be bunking up with Rupert from “Survivor”.
Outside of the flood a couple weeks back, nothing too crazy has been happening. Last week, we decided to take a day trip out to the suburb of Williamstown, which is a nice little sea-side village. Unfortunately, within five minutes of arriving a seagull took a huge dump on Leeanna’s face and shirt. I was laughing hysterically, while as you can imagine the girlfriend was quite pissed off. The best part of the whole ordeal was the fact that she didn’t realize at first that in addition to being crapped on, on her shirt, she also had a nice white streak down her face! Classic! Aside from that, the day was pretty uneventful. We also hit up Chapel Street for the first time. It’s basically just another famous shopping street in Melbourne (there’s no shortage of them), although the only shopping I managed to do was for a pitcher of beer.
On the sporting front, football (Aussie Rules) season has just started here, which is far and away the biggest sport in Melbourne. It might not quite fill the gap of the NFL and NHL, but it sure beats rugby and cricket. On a personal sporting note, I have not been able to better my personal best bowling score of 170. My goal before I leave Australia at the end of the year is to be able to bowl a 200 game. This is definitely why I came to the other side of the world; to perfect my ten-pin game. Sadly, on the poker front things have continued much the same way they have for the past couple of years for me. I did not play online for a couple of months, primarily because I never had the internet in my apartment (been using internet cafes and Wi-Fi spots). Well that all changed a couple of weeks ago and was promptly followed by a small deposit. I quickly lost the money and immediately thereafter blocked all of my accounts, thereby not allowing me to deposit anymore money online while I’m in Australia. Also, after not gambling at all for the last couple of months, I decided that I needed a Crown Casino fix (yes, like a drug addict) and recently played three tournaments ranging in cost from $50 to $125. I did not make cash in any of them, although I do own the distinction of playing well (something I don’t do too often anymore) and being rewarded by having the card gods fuck-me-up-the-ass (pardon my French!). Needless to say, I will probably play a few more tournaments before I leave Melbourne, but after that I hope I don’t see a casino for quite some time.
In unrelated news, earlier this week it was my birthday, and like most holidays I will admit it just is not the same without your family. It’s also not the same when you have to work all afternoon and night, but that’s neither here nor there. Leeanna ended up buying me tickets to see Dave Hughes (one of my favourite Australian comedians) next month, which should be an enjoyable affair. We also had cake in the apartment, but for the first time in a long time, I did not kill off a large quantity of brain cells on my day of birth. I would also like to thank my parents and grandma for their birthday cash donation, which I have assured them I will be using for day trip next week and not spending on online pornography subscriptions.
Yesterday, in our never-ending quest to get out of our shit-box apartment, we bought tickets ($50 each) for the first of four days of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. Because it was only the Thursday (four-day event), we only got to see practice runs and qualifying rounds for a variety of different types of motor cars and racing series. Near the end of the day, they did do one cool demonstration where they had an F1 car against a V8 Supercar (think Australia’s version of NASCAR) and a traditional street car racing around the track. It was amazing to see how fast the F1 car is compared to these cars and how loud they are! In fact, as I write this from my apartment, I can hear the cars zooming around Albert Park and I live a few kilometers away. It would have been nice to go on the Sunday for the big race, but I need to work and tickets are atrociously priced (cheapest grandstand ticket is $300 if I’m not mistaken). All in all it was a fun day, although I did get ridiculously burnt on my kneecaps and forehead. How my kneecaps got burnt over other more prominent areas I shall never know, especially since I spent more time eating and drinking in the shade then I did in my grandstand seat!
And lastly, just a couple of random things…
Work is going fine. I continue to hump my serving job, although it has gotten a bit better the last couple of weeks as I have been able to get a few more hours due to the departure of the head waitress and assistant manager, who are currently creating babies somewhere in Thailand as we speak, and shall continue to do so for the next couple of months. Leeanna continues to work part-time at the dental office, although she has been told that she should be getting full-time for the month of April when one of the other girls will be gone on her vacation. If all goes according to plan, this will be quite financially rewarding for the girlfriend and make her the chief breadwinner of the house, err shoebox.
A couple of weeks ago, I was walking down one the busier streets in Melbourne when I was mildly assaulted by an Aboriginal youth. I was just minding my business, listening to my iPod, when these two teenagers who were clearly cracked out came up to me and got in my face. One then decided to give me a good shoulder-check/shove which I just ignored and kept on my way. He kept trying to provoke me. He was lucky I’m a pussy/pacifist, because a lot of people would have turned around and kicked the shit out of him! At least now, I can say I’ve had some true contact with “real/Aboriginal” Australians.
And then there was McDonald’s, or Macca’s as 99.9% of the population calls it here. While Leeanna and I were out grabbing a late night snack last weekend, there was an incident where the very slutty woman behind us in line had her panties fall out of her purse. She didn’t notice at first, but the guy behind her in the line sure did and proceeded to announce it quite loudly. The woman in the short mini-skirt proceeded to pick up her panties and put them back in her purse, because let’s be real no one wears underwear anymore. I mean how else are you gonna have sex on the dance floor and allow classy gentlemen easy access to your vajayjay in the fine establishments of Melbourne? And, yes I just used one of Oprah’s words to describe a vagina. My downfall from teenage rapper to middle-age white man is complete.
Anyways, stay classy and hope everyone has a terrific Easter weekend. Oh, and to all my man friends on my hockey team….GO BOOZEHOUNDS!!! (Pretty sure most of you are illiterate and can’t read this anyways!)
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010- How To Really Fuck Up A Mini Vacation!
Having now been living in Melbourne for just under four months, life has become rather routine, or as routine as I will allow my life to get. Living in the heart of such a large metropolis definitely has its perks (activities, events, drinking spots, homeless people, and homosexuals in abundance), but every so often one finds the urge to want to escape. So to combat this problem, back in January I decided for Leeanna’s birthday I would give her a post-dated trip to Tasmania if you will. So a couple of weeks ago we finally got the details all sorted out and made the trek down to Australia’s version of Keswick, Tasmania.
After ironing out all the details, we decided that we would leave for Tasmania early on a Tuesday morning and return on a Thursday night, as Leeanna had to work on both the Monday and the Friday. This made for some very hectic scheduling, but I being the slice of awesomeness that I am, concluded that this would be an adequate amount of time to see what we needed to see. The plan was to fly into Hobart (the capital city of Tassie), stay there for the first day and night and then rent a car and drive out to historic Port Arthur and up to Launceston (other major city, about 2.5 hours from Hobart) where we would fly out of on Thursday night. That was the plan, yes my great plan for our romantic whirl-wind tour of the exotic island of Tasmania.
But here is how it really played out…
Our flight out on Tuesday morning was scheduled bright and early at 6:00am, which meant waking up before 4:00am in order to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. I was able to grab a few hours sleep the night before, but I’m pretty sure that Leeanna had almost no sleep at all and was quite frustrated. Anyways, we boarded the shuttle bus to the airport and on the way it hit me, “fuck, I forgot my driver’s license”! In my dozy state that morning I had forgotten to pack it, which therefore was going to render it impossible for me to rent a car. This dramatically changed the outlook of the trip and how we were going to get about. The flight to Hobart was pretty uneventful, minus the three Irish guys behind me on the plane drinking beers at 6:30am and taking about the escort service they had just opened up (true story!). After dropping our bags off at our hostel (Central City Backpackers [6.5/10]) in the city centre and grabbing some breakfast, we headed over to the local Information Centre to book a group tour to Port Arthur the next day and a bus up to Launceston the following evening. All of this ended up setting me back a few hundred dollars, although it was all my fault for not packing my license. This trip was decidedly becoming a lot more expensive without that little piece of plastic. So as not to totally empty out my bank account, I decided that we should head out to Mount Wellington for the day to do some nice, casual nature walking. After catching the public bus out there and consulting with one of the local’s about what route to take, we set out on our climb to the summit, which was 1200 metres above sea level. It ended up being a fairly tough 3.5 hour climb almost exclusively uphill and was made worse by the fact that we were ill-equipped as we did not have proper clothing, any food, or any beverages. All we had was each other…oh and an empty paper coffee cup to fill up at the one tap half way up the mountain. Leeanna kept frequently wanting to quit and turn around, but me being the asshole boyfriend that I am made here continue on. She responded by sitting down/stopping every few minutes and trying to thoroughly test my patience. When we finally did reach the top, we were quite gassed and all I could do was laugh because 99% of the people at the top had driven up there, no doubt more than a few of them in their rental cars. After hiking down (with a lot less stops along the way) we finally made it back to the base for a grand total round trip time of around six hours. Both of us had extremely sore legs and would continue to feel the effects for the remainder of trip in Tasmania. That night, we went out for dinner at a place called the New Sydney Pub, which was a fairly typical smallish-busy Irish pub. We were supposed to go to some joint call the Republic Bar that my friend/co-worker Anthony’s dad owns. Since we could barely walk though, we had to opt for the Irish fare close to the hostel. Also, I was a bit sketched out about it being his dad’s bar, as this was Tasmania, and any Aussie worth his weight in salt knows that it was very likely his dad could have also been his cousin, brother, and family pet all rolled into one.
Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to catch our tour bus out to Port Arthur, which can best be described as Australia’s version of Alcatraz. The drive out to Port Arthur was a couple of hours and featured some stops along the way to take pictures of things like cool rock formations, scenic coastlines, and a village where every house had a nametag on it that had the word “do” in it (ie/ Do Nothing, Doo-Doo, Mountain Dew, Douche Bag, etc.). Once Leeanna and I and our tour bus full our senior citizens arrived at Port Arthur we were free to roam about the grounds and give ourselves a history lesson, which proved to be quite a chore for Leeanna and I, as both of us had legs that felt like cement blocks from the day before. Port Arthur was basically a place where they would send criminals who had reoffended in Australia, which was quite a dubious distinction since the whole mainland of the country was made up of criminals at that time in history. Most of the buildings there now are fairly decrepit, but the history behind it all is quite fascinating. We were also given a guided walking tour and a boat cruise around the very scenic harbor, which all added up to one very educational day. After sleeping on the bus the whole way back to Hobart, we hopped on another bus to make the drive up Launceston as that is where our flight was leaving from the next morning. The drive featured a whole lot of nothing, save for some sheep. We arrived in Launceston at around 7:30pm and checked into our hotel (yes, a hotel for once!) (Batman Fawkner Inn [8/10]). Next up we headed over to one of the local establishments that was serving pitchers of Carlton Draught on the cheap. Between and 8pm and 9pm they were $8, between 9pm and 10pm they were $9, etc. Needless to say, a few hours later I smuggled a full pitcher out of the bar that I promptly stashed on a street corner while I went in search of food. After some delicious wedges (cannot actually verify if they were delicious as I was intensely drunk at this point) the girlfriend and I made our way back to the hotel and scooped up my pitcher that was still resting peacefully in the street. And then…BLACKOUT!
Thursday morning, I woke up with one of the worst hangovers of my life. I was buck-ass naked which meant something was wrong as I always wear clothes to bed and felt like I had just been sat on by Rosie O’Donnell. When I finally was able to move a couple of inches, I saw my still full pitcher of beer staring at me from across the hotel room. Sure seemed like a good idea to steal it the night before! I slowly made my way to the shower/toilet and started to try and get ready for the day. During this time, the dude who runs the hotel came to the room and told Leeanna we had to check out, as I had not surprisingly overslept the checkout time. After finally getting my ass in gear, we decided to not follow through on our original plan of doing a tour of the James Boag’s Brewery (one of the more popular beers in Australia). I felt that this was in the best interest of all, as the sight or smell of beer would have been enough to send me into a vomit-inducing state. Instead, we headed over to Launceston’s most popular tourist attraction, “The Gorge” which features the world’s longest chairlift and some gorgeous scenery. Naturally we went for a ride on the chairlift, and I can now knock another thing off my bucket list. Pretty sure “ride the world’s longest chairlift” was right up there with “read every R.L. Stine book ever written” on my list. After walking back to our hotel, we were again thoroughly spent, as our legs were still feeling the ill effects of our mountain hike and I was still feeling the effects of draft beer. We decided to pass the afternoon away in one of the local parks that curiously had a large display of Japanese monkeys that kept Leeanna quite amused. After the monkeys, it was nap time in the park, followed by a trip to the airport and then back home to the comfy confines of Melbourne.
All in all, the trip ended up costing me a lot more money than I had anticipated because of my own stupidity. I can now say a couple of weeks later that I am none the worse for it, and can laugh rather heartily about my time in Tasmania.
Author’s note: No, I did not see any Tasmanian Devils, although I think I may have seen a dead one on the side of the road. We were going to visit the Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary, but this was thrown out the window when I was unable to rent the car.
After ironing out all the details, we decided that we would leave for Tasmania early on a Tuesday morning and return on a Thursday night, as Leeanna had to work on both the Monday and the Friday. This made for some very hectic scheduling, but I being the slice of awesomeness that I am, concluded that this would be an adequate amount of time to see what we needed to see. The plan was to fly into Hobart (the capital city of Tassie), stay there for the first day and night and then rent a car and drive out to historic Port Arthur and up to Launceston (other major city, about 2.5 hours from Hobart) where we would fly out of on Thursday night. That was the plan, yes my great plan for our romantic whirl-wind tour of the exotic island of Tasmania.
But here is how it really played out…
Our flight out on Tuesday morning was scheduled bright and early at 6:00am, which meant waking up before 4:00am in order to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. I was able to grab a few hours sleep the night before, but I’m pretty sure that Leeanna had almost no sleep at all and was quite frustrated. Anyways, we boarded the shuttle bus to the airport and on the way it hit me, “fuck, I forgot my driver’s license”! In my dozy state that morning I had forgotten to pack it, which therefore was going to render it impossible for me to rent a car. This dramatically changed the outlook of the trip and how we were going to get about. The flight to Hobart was pretty uneventful, minus the three Irish guys behind me on the plane drinking beers at 6:30am and taking about the escort service they had just opened up (true story!). After dropping our bags off at our hostel (Central City Backpackers [6.5/10]) in the city centre and grabbing some breakfast, we headed over to the local Information Centre to book a group tour to Port Arthur the next day and a bus up to Launceston the following evening. All of this ended up setting me back a few hundred dollars, although it was all my fault for not packing my license. This trip was decidedly becoming a lot more expensive without that little piece of plastic. So as not to totally empty out my bank account, I decided that we should head out to Mount Wellington for the day to do some nice, casual nature walking. After catching the public bus out there and consulting with one of the local’s about what route to take, we set out on our climb to the summit, which was 1200 metres above sea level. It ended up being a fairly tough 3.5 hour climb almost exclusively uphill and was made worse by the fact that we were ill-equipped as we did not have proper clothing, any food, or any beverages. All we had was each other…oh and an empty paper coffee cup to fill up at the one tap half way up the mountain. Leeanna kept frequently wanting to quit and turn around, but me being the asshole boyfriend that I am made here continue on. She responded by sitting down/stopping every few minutes and trying to thoroughly test my patience. When we finally did reach the top, we were quite gassed and all I could do was laugh because 99% of the people at the top had driven up there, no doubt more than a few of them in their rental cars. After hiking down (with a lot less stops along the way) we finally made it back to the base for a grand total round trip time of around six hours. Both of us had extremely sore legs and would continue to feel the effects for the remainder of trip in Tasmania. That night, we went out for dinner at a place called the New Sydney Pub, which was a fairly typical smallish-busy Irish pub. We were supposed to go to some joint call the Republic Bar that my friend/co-worker Anthony’s dad owns. Since we could barely walk though, we had to opt for the Irish fare close to the hostel. Also, I was a bit sketched out about it being his dad’s bar, as this was Tasmania, and any Aussie worth his weight in salt knows that it was very likely his dad could have also been his cousin, brother, and family pet all rolled into one.
Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to catch our tour bus out to Port Arthur, which can best be described as Australia’s version of Alcatraz. The drive out to Port Arthur was a couple of hours and featured some stops along the way to take pictures of things like cool rock formations, scenic coastlines, and a village where every house had a nametag on it that had the word “do” in it (ie/ Do Nothing, Doo-Doo, Mountain Dew, Douche Bag, etc.). Once Leeanna and I and our tour bus full our senior citizens arrived at Port Arthur we were free to roam about the grounds and give ourselves a history lesson, which proved to be quite a chore for Leeanna and I, as both of us had legs that felt like cement blocks from the day before. Port Arthur was basically a place where they would send criminals who had reoffended in Australia, which was quite a dubious distinction since the whole mainland of the country was made up of criminals at that time in history. Most of the buildings there now are fairly decrepit, but the history behind it all is quite fascinating. We were also given a guided walking tour and a boat cruise around the very scenic harbor, which all added up to one very educational day. After sleeping on the bus the whole way back to Hobart, we hopped on another bus to make the drive up Launceston as that is where our flight was leaving from the next morning. The drive featured a whole lot of nothing, save for some sheep. We arrived in Launceston at around 7:30pm and checked into our hotel (yes, a hotel for once!) (Batman Fawkner Inn [8/10]). Next up we headed over to one of the local establishments that was serving pitchers of Carlton Draught on the cheap. Between and 8pm and 9pm they were $8, between 9pm and 10pm they were $9, etc. Needless to say, a few hours later I smuggled a full pitcher out of the bar that I promptly stashed on a street corner while I went in search of food. After some delicious wedges (cannot actually verify if they were delicious as I was intensely drunk at this point) the girlfriend and I made our way back to the hotel and scooped up my pitcher that was still resting peacefully in the street. And then…BLACKOUT!
Thursday morning, I woke up with one of the worst hangovers of my life. I was buck-ass naked which meant something was wrong as I always wear clothes to bed and felt like I had just been sat on by Rosie O’Donnell. When I finally was able to move a couple of inches, I saw my still full pitcher of beer staring at me from across the hotel room. Sure seemed like a good idea to steal it the night before! I slowly made my way to the shower/toilet and started to try and get ready for the day. During this time, the dude who runs the hotel came to the room and told Leeanna we had to check out, as I had not surprisingly overslept the checkout time. After finally getting my ass in gear, we decided to not follow through on our original plan of doing a tour of the James Boag’s Brewery (one of the more popular beers in Australia). I felt that this was in the best interest of all, as the sight or smell of beer would have been enough to send me into a vomit-inducing state. Instead, we headed over to Launceston’s most popular tourist attraction, “The Gorge” which features the world’s longest chairlift and some gorgeous scenery. Naturally we went for a ride on the chairlift, and I can now knock another thing off my bucket list. Pretty sure “ride the world’s longest chairlift” was right up there with “read every R.L. Stine book ever written” on my list. After walking back to our hotel, we were again thoroughly spent, as our legs were still feeling the ill effects of our mountain hike and I was still feeling the effects of draft beer. We decided to pass the afternoon away in one of the local parks that curiously had a large display of Japanese monkeys that kept Leeanna quite amused. After the monkeys, it was nap time in the park, followed by a trip to the airport and then back home to the comfy confines of Melbourne.
All in all, the trip ended up costing me a lot more money than I had anticipated because of my own stupidity. I can now say a couple of weeks later that I am none the worse for it, and can laugh rather heartily about my time in Tasmania.
Author’s note: No, I did not see any Tasmanian Devils, although I think I may have seen a dead one on the side of the road. We were going to visit the Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary, but this was thrown out the window when I was unable to rent the car.
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