quiet day

Ayyy, the last night in the land of the Scots. No tour for us today, just a large amount of cruising the shops around Glasgow looking for stuff. Like the rest of the trip so far, this place amazes in me, just in a different way to the rest of the place. It was odd that in a city that really isn't that large, there seems to be multiple locations of the same stores.

So yeah, all I mostly did all day was just walk around a lot. Lunch was at a chinese place, which is really funny, as nearly all the meals I've had so far has been asian food, hehe. Not too much else to mention I'd say. Was watching the Chelsea v Liverpool Champs League match on Sky Sports HD. Man that was cool as. If only Aus had decent quality pay tv sport like that.

Tomorrow we're off to Berlin in the morning. To get there we gotta fly to London then change plane for Berlin. We'll have a bit of time once we get there and look around, and then we go to the VW Autostadt the next day. Not sure how my access to the internet when I get to Germany though. Hopefully I've be able to eat some German food when I'm there tho, ehehe.

I'd put up photos of stuff so far, but I can't get to a mem stick reader. Dodge. I'll get some up when I find one hopefully.

-d

wonders of scotland

Maan I'm exhausted. Lots of walking around everywhere in the past couple of days. On the day of my last blog, we went up north towards Stirling. On the way we visited Bannockburn, the site of Scotland's battle for freedom over the English when led by Robert the Bruce. (The stuff that Braveheart was based on). It was pretty interesting stuff, and the hertiage centre there had chain mail and helmets from that time period which you could try on. Way cool.

After that, we went up to Stirling Castle to have a look. We were lucky that it just happened to be a free weekend to visit it, and we didn't need to pay the £11 each to get in. It was okay in there, but there wasn't a lot of things due to the ongoing renovations of the place. That night I got to try one of my uncle's guitars, his Gibson ES-335. Unbelievable instrument, so incredibly nice!

The next day we had to be up early to follow my uncle to his asian grocery store. As his staff had not made it to work yet, me and dad had to help him with a bit of work at the shop, including unloading stock from a truck, ehehe. At around 12pm we went off to the train station to take our trip to Edinburgh.

1 hr later, we got to Edinburgh with the intention of looking around the place for a bit and then heading to St Andrews to stay the night near the golf course. We took a hop on-hop off tour bus around Edinburgh to see the place, and it was really nice. Heaps different sort of city to anything else I've seen, the architecture and history being the things which really stood out for me. We visited Edinbugh Castle, seeing the Scottish crown jewels amongst other things. As it got later in the day, we realised that we should try and find accomodation. We weren't able to find anything in St Andrews that wasn't heaps expensive, so we stayed in Edinburgh for the night and decided to go to the course in the morning.

The next morning (which was this morning) we trained it up to St Andrews to try our luck with golf. The good news was that we were able to play if we really wanted to. The bad news was that it was £125 + £30 for club hire if we wanted to play. Incredibly expensive for two ppl who haven't played for a while. Hehehe. As a result, we had a look around and while at the main clubhouse found out that there were different golf courses that weren't the famouse Old Course. I really should have looked it up on the internet before we came, haha. We thought to have a go at one of the other cheaper courses, but my dad didn't feel up to it (he hurt his shoulder carrying the bag he brought up there with his golf stuff!). We shopped around at the various golf shops in the town centre, and I picked up an Adidas cap and shirts.

After lunch, we tried to rush back to the train station and get the train back to Glasgow. Like what seems to happen to me quite a lot back at home, we missed the train by 1 min! Ah well. On the plus side though, the Tornado jet fighters from the nearby air base did a number of fly bys as they landed at the base. We had the same in the morning when we got off the train, as a couple of them flew by on their take off, with full afterburner. The noise was incredible. Anyhows, we got the train back an hour later, and soon after getting on I was so tired and just slept for most of the trip.

As I'm really tired at the moment, I'm not really concetrating well on what I'm writing right now. But how good was Man Utd's win over Milan! Awesomeness!

-d

laggin of the jet variety

Ahey there,

Sitting in my uncle's living room watching tv atm, feeling a lot better than I was last night. I hit the wall around 6:15pm yesterday while on the plane to Glasgow and felt really tired. That continued for most of the night, but I was a bit more awake when we got back to my Uncle's place after dinner as he was showing us his home entertainment system and array of guitars.

At this point, I think I've mostly gotten over the jetlag, but we'll have to see how it is later on in the day. Apparently it hasn't been raining much here, but since our arrival its started to rain again! It feels like Melbourne at the Aus Open again, bringing the rain and all.

I think the plan for the day is check our some castles at Stirling and maybe check out the city. I'm watching Narnia on SkyMovies HD right now, which is cool as. They have HD channels on their tv here, soo cool! In a bit I'll have a go at my Uncle's guitars.. his Gibson ES-335 looks incredible.

Anyways, time to get more socks on, its 13 degrees today, nice springtime day in Glasgow, hehe.

-d

yum cha breakfast

Ahoy all those people who have decided to follow my trip (or are just bored at work)!

I'm currently in the Cathay First Class lounge and I'm just marvelling at the stuff they offer people here. I'm so lucky my dad is an uber frequent flyer. Anyways, we begun this trip waiting for the check in gates to open at Sydney. We had tried to avoid traffic so much that we got to the airport way early. It was good though, and we spent plenty of time at the Qantas lounge as well. After a nice bit of food, we got on our plane to HK. This flight was actually a bit icky, as it was really uncomfortable to get to sleep, and my butt is still feeling the after effects of a bad sitting/reclining position. Otherwise the flight was great, and they had dinner served (at 10:30pm) and breakfast as well (chicken rice congee! my gosh that was cool I'd have to say).

We arrived in HK right on the anticipated time they had planned, at 5.05am local time. After which we mafuddled around until we got to the Cathay lounges here. I could not believe what I saw, there was an entire games room, with banks of tvs and PS2s to be played! Also, there was a full seat/wheel/pedal set up for Gran Turismo 4! Crazy.

The great thing about these crazy lounges is that you can shower here with everything provided, and I'm really feeling heaps better now that I'm not cramped in economy anymore. The flight later this morning will be a killer though.. 13 hours to London!

Back to brekky now. Har gou, noodles, etc. for breakfast! Crazy

Will post more once I get there.

-d

hmm

maan
stupid email disclaimer..

So it (nearly) begins

Heyheyhey

This place certainly has a lot of cobwebs ay..

Well! I'll amake sure this is updated in the next few weeks at least. Heaps of things have happened since I last posted, the Aus Open has come and gone, and so has my life as a bumming uni student. I began work on the 5th of Feb at the most sustainable bank in the world (5 years running). I'm part of the grad program, and while it has its heights, I'd say that there are a number of lows too. Lets hope it evens out a bit :)

Work has sorta sucked a lot of my time, but I currently have a good schedule. I start around 7:30-7:45 and finish around 4:15 or so. I'm savouring this until I get to an area that is more pressured. It will get long then.

Oh, the exciting part now, I'm going to be off to Europe for the next two weeks (as many of you know).
I fly out tonight at 10pm, to London with a stopover in HK for 4 hrs. Then change planes and go to Glasgow to stay with my uncle for a bit. Then theres golf and castles (St Andrews GC!!) and then off to Germany to see the Volkswagen Autostadt in Wolfsburg. Then back to the UK to see London for a while and then stopping in HK for a couple of days before coming home.

It doesn't seem very long, and I'm sure that it will go faster than I realise, but I'm grateful that I can take the leave so soon after starting this job!

I'll try and put up pictures too ay.

-d