Usual story, not alot of updating so a fair bit to blitz through since Feb so here is 3 months in pictures…

I was leaving Australia for a while so it made sense to sell ‘Jeremy’ the car. Due to exchange rates I even managed to make a profit…!

So goodbye to nice proper beaches for abit!

A few days later I was back to sunny UK weather:

Luckily we had a trip to Italy sorted so I ended up in a nice warm Rome:

From there we went down to the Amalfi coast area / Capri / Naples etc.

Whilst down there we visited Pompei, which had not changed since I had been last, nor the last 2000 years as far as I could tell.

The logical thing after that is to go up the closest active volcano, where I was snapped being a geek checking GPS on my phone to work out what I was looking at.

The weather picked up when we went down to Capri so here is the obligatory Brit-In-Med shot:

We took a ferry from Capri to Positano which took about an hour more than it ought to due to bad sea fog. If you take a photo in fog this is what it comes out like:

After abit more travelling about down the coast we went back to Rome, where Amy captured this cracking shot

and I had some tasty Thrush

On return to the UK the coldness was cemented with a roadtrip up to Edinburgh (where I will be based for abit) through the BRRRR highlands:

then back down to beautiful North Wales. Bish Bash Bosh thats the last couple of months

There have been a few more trips up to Edinburgh / London etc but I think thats enough procrastination for now…

After the ease of the last post I thought I would hook up the phone and upload a few quickie pictures of what has happened over the last week. The ‘new’ (2 month old) gadget is a Nokia N95 8gig version which has a great camera (5mp) inbuilt which is all very funky.

It is not *all* play out here in Australia, I have been doing some work, for example forming a Auzzy based company with a Brisvegas internet guru. The following picture was taken hard at work in the GunShop Cafe , the vodka cured salmon gravalax was excellent.

One other ‘venture’ that has reaped rewards of another kind has been the brewing, just look at this beast:

Co-brewer Nick has just returned from Thailand / Cambodia / Other such places, and it seems some of the local brews take a ‘NOB’ approach to their ABV %ages. We know the one pictured above is around 10-13% abv, however what exactly we do not no. We brewed this beast a few months back and it has certainly matured into a decent moreish beer, however in 750ml bottles it is a fair amount so one for the night is the reccomended dose.

This is a baby tree frog, taken while clinging to someones t-shirt so the fibres give some scale to it. It still makes you stop and think sometimes when you hear what appears to be jurassic park outside, hear tales of brown snakes (super venomous ones) or the local 12 foot python that has just eaten a neighbours cat in full view of the owners.

This place is quite wild compared to Europe, but I am slowly coming around to the auzzy way of getting on with it rather than worrying about what is about to leap out at you. I did see what could have been a snake tail slithering outside the other day, however I was told it was more likely to be a blue tounge lizard. I must admit I was tempted for a split second to investigate further, then then decided it was quite nippy so gave it a miss.

We were out having a great meal that night and then cocktails later on at the wonderful Bowery Bar , and bumped into these guys above kicking off the Chinese New Year celebrations plus a load of kids juggling knives / axes and banging drums. All good fun , and certainly at 29C and humid in the evening, a fair bit warmer than back in China!
Australia are playing Qatar tomorrow, the Roar v Sydney on Friday so a footballing feast to come plus the prospect of my big project actually going live for the first time means a busy yet fun week ahead.

As there is too much to update since last post I will do a quick photo tour of whats what. Initally flying into the UK for Christmas;

Chester in the winter… brr!

From there is was to Prague for more coldness and the Christmas markets

Which was shockingly rammed with idiots from England.

We squeezed in a decent game of football, Bohemians!

And of course the local beer… this one was from the famous U Flecku .

So Christmas was excellent, leaving a quick round the world dash from -5C in the land of the gods down under to 30C and sun for New Years Eve in Sydney

Top right white splodge is the opera house, coogee is one of those beaches at the tip of the wing.

Mrs Macquaries Point from which we saw the fireworks. I would post pictures but the internet could not cope it was that good.
There is a great load on Flickr of the whole harbour explosion which is well worth a look.

So there we go, right up to date. As they say round these ‘ere parts… Where the bloody hell are you?

After showing someone how WordPress works yesterday I realised that I had not posted for a couple of months - whoops! A catch up: I didn’t travel back over in September, rather staying out for the wonderful weather in Brisbane and coming over a couple of weeks ago.

So what have I missed? Tescos now has two floors and a gladiator style travelator for the pikeys to play on, there are quite bland looking £20 notes and there seems to be a need to speak Polish as well as English to get anything done.

Lets not even go into the murky weather, which is fine when you are going around the green fields of Nantwich as it looks quite quaint, but venture towards Liverpool and the hellscape of Stanlow/Ellsmere Port area loom up like some prehistoric volcanoes erupting with smoke and fire. I half expected to be swooped by some pterodactyl, however it turned out to be a pigeon that has been breathing in the fumes too long. Nice.
Saying that, the 3000BC burial chambers on Anglesea are quite cultural, anywhere else it would be £15 to get in rather than jump over a gate and away you go. It was good to go through North Wales into Snowdonia, the proper bit of Wales, with proper welsh weather sadly.
The main thing that has struck me looking ‘outside in’ on the UK is how parochial things can be, established systems such as legal, banks, companies house, the post etc can be slow slow slow - yet no one complains. We nipped down to london the other day (don’t stay at the Grange City - it isnt 5* like it claims) and so being an internet type, I bought the tickets online. Get to Chester station and the machines are broken, and I am asked why did I bother to buy online?! Nothing like customer service.
Also, I just have to mention this, £1.05 for a litre of petrol!? Try 43p Again, do you see anyone complaining? What is wrong with people?
Brisbane, Singapore, Duabi and London so far this month, and we are looking at a mini euro tour as well, so hopefully some nice geo-located pictures up once the new gadget arrives - so more then!