Melbourne Loft

I am loving this sunny warm weather!   It’s perfect for outdoor photography.   Soon I’m hoping to get down the coast or out to rural Victoria for some outdoor shooting.  I was busy with work this weekend so I didn’t get to enjoy it.  The above was taken out on my rooftop last weekend.   I’m pretty tired now…  I think I’ll go fluff up both my pillows and go to sleep.

It really annoys me when I see the difference in pricing between from from Australia to the US and the US to Australia.   The difference is actually quite huge!   The cheapest Qantas seats from Australia to the US (return) are about $US1700.    Below are the prices advertised in the US this week for return flights from the US to Australia.   Maybe Qantas are having trouble filling seats coming back to Australia.   This also begs the question…   what happened to the Australians that Qantas flew to America?   Jailed?  Killed?   Or even worse… married?
If anyone knows the answer to the difference in pricing please write me or leave a comment.

So I had plans last week to close down the Private Room and concentrate my efforts on commercial sites.   But then when I went back to take a look at everyone I have done I decided to keep it going.   The Private Room now contains well over 400 videos and 263 galleries with almost 100 guys!  Well actually I lost count a long time ago.   But there’s tonne of stuff in there.   I’ve just loaded 40 new videos today.  I had a bit of a backlog to post.   And now that the warm weather has arrived I can start shooting outdoors again.

Well it was a sad day for Geelong yesterday as they were beaten by the Hawks during the AFL grand final at the Melbourne’s MCG.    We spent the first quarter watching the game at Federation Square and then retreated from the heat to the Loft to watch the rest of the game there.   It was a close nail biting game.   And I’m kinda glad that the under dogs got up.   Hawthorn is a hard working team and it was nice to see them win.   Would have been nicer to see Geelong take the trophy 2 years running.

On my first day back from my vacation I worked my way through the city to the new office on Bourke Street.  It is actually a temporary office in an old call centre until our new office in the Docklands is ready to move in to next year.    I spent the past 4 years working in an office pretty much by myself.  So it’s strange to now be surrounded by people that I actually work with.  I’m finding it a bit chaotic but it’s not so bad.   Being busy makes the days go faster.
Mostly I’m enjoying the new scenery as I walk too abd from the office which is 3 blocks across and 4 blocks down from the Loft.   There are so many interesting ways to get there.   I even found a new supermarket with some amazing stuff in it along the way.   The office is quite close to the office I worked in during 1998 when I first moved to Melbourne.

Well I wrote about the new cafe il Cubico in Flinders Lane about a year and a half ago.  I wrote about the terrible service we got there and vowed never to go there again.  It was sad because the Fat Arnies previously occupied the space, was always my favourite place for coffees and breakfasts.
We finally il Cubico have moved out and today the workers are jackhammering the shit out of the place.   This makes me think it is being prepared for something other than a cafe.   Interestingly it seems that Flinders Lane is starting to get more clothes and shoe stores rather than the traditional cafes or fast food stores.   There are several empty stores in the area being made over.  I really hope that some useful stores open up.    And please bring back Fat Arnies!

The photos from our trip to Thailand are now posted up HERE.

I’m a little bit sad to be writing this post today.   Frank and I have been on the road for the past 11 days exploring Thailand.   It was a pretty quick trip and I’m sure we could have spent a lot more time exploring.  There wasn’t a moment that went by that we weren’t busy doing something.
The highlights for me were definitely swimming a lot (in the pool and in the ocean), shopping in loads of strange places, meeting lots of beautiful Thai people, and spending time with Frank.
On our last day we had found a private taxi operator to take us back to the airport.   We had our last dinner at Kata Mama Seafood and took our last walk along the southern part of the Kata beach.   We have finally realised that this is a really small community where everyone knows everyone and they all help each other out.  I can’t bare to think what it must have been like when then tsunami waves came and ravaged the little village by the water.   They did not deserve it.  The feeling there is that “it won’t happen again”.
It was a long trip home starting with the long drive to Phuket airport, then the flight to Sydney and then the flight to Melbourne.  Door to door it took about 20 hours.  So I was exhausted by the time I got home.   It was so nice getting to travel to such a nice place with one of my best mates.   It rates as one of the best trips I have ever done.   I guess now I will start dreaming of the next adventure.
The photos from Thailand will be posted up in a gallery very soon.

Well today was the last day of our holiday here on Kata beach. This morning we woke up and went down and had our breakfast and the staff seemed to be a little more excited. It was their annual staff party. So they were all dressed with their staff party polo shirt getting organised for all the activities they had planned on the beach.
Thai people have got to be one of the most friendly, fun loving and warm people on this planet. The way they embrace you and make you feel welcome in any situation is really inspiring to see. So watching them have fun on the beach was awesome. One of the games they played reminded me of the Big Brother friday night live games. They had to splash water on their heads and eat this powder from a plate, then run over to the next table where they had to eat a banana, a piece of cake and a bottle of coke, then run over to another table and thread a needle, and then run to another table where they had to blow up a balloon until it burst. It was so much fun to watch!
As we decided yesterday today was going to be our last beach day so we got our gear organised and headed down to claim our spot on the beach lounges. Then we went and got ourselves a surfboard each, well Phillip got a surfboard and I got a boogie board. There were good waves today so this was going to be fun!. After getting in there with the boards I now have more respect for the guys who surf. We got pumbled a few times and caught some waves too. It was a real experience and a good laugh too. I then thought it would be fun to make a sand castle, more so to distract the sellers on the beach from harassing us, which they found amusing. We are so lucky that the weather turned nice for us today. We got heaps of swim time and then headed to the Kata beach BBQ for some lunch and watched the monsoon come in from the ocean.
After lunch we decided that a massage again was in order, so we headed on up to the Rub Tum Massage  behind Kata Mammas where Phillip got a fot massage and pedicure and I got a back and shoulders massage. These massages aren’t like the ones you get back home, they do more pressure point massage here using their fingers, elbows and even sticks. You feel great afterwards and it is only 350 Baht which is about 12 bucks! After the massage we returned to the room and watched a couple of episodes of Benidorm. Then it was happy hour again! I’ve come to appreciate cocktails on this trip and todays cocktails were delicious! Seeing it was our last night here we had a couple each, one was served out of a coconut. You can see it on YouTube.
Every night we have been going to the Kata Mamma Seafood restaurant for dinner. The food is delicious, the staff are great and it is very cheap as well. So tonight we had our last meal here and said goodbye to the beautiful people who were sad to see that we were returning home. After this we went for another walk down the road and had a chat with a few of the suit sellers about their businesses and Kata life, did the last and final shop, (oh my god we have done alot of shopping!) and came back upto the room for the night.
While Phillip was watching Air Crash Investigations I decided to go down for a walk and discovered that there wasn’t any staff around. They had all gone to their Staff Party in Phuket. So I chatted for a while with one of the staff and we talked about working here and life growing up in Phuket. It was pretty cool talking with him and his friend. They wanted me to go out dancing with them but I thought it would be better not seeing we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. So I said goodbye and headed up to bed.
This has been such an awesome holiday. We have had such a good time. Bangkok was great and Phuket was great too. Im sure we will come back here again sometime. Maybe sooner rather than later.

Day 9 and we are still lazing about on Kata Beach in Phuket.  The sun came up during breakfast and we both knew it was time to hit the beach.   There has been a lot of rain here this week so we are taking every sunny opportunity to get out on those lounges and soak up the rays.   We got about 3 hours before the rain came back.  So we headed back to the room (about 12 metres from the sand) to get changed and go out or lunch.

Lunch we fairly average because we had gone into the touristy area of Kata.  But we had fun playing some Connect 4 in the restaurant and seeing who who take the strangest photo.

After lunch we checked out the shops in Kata.  We found that the real bargains are found in the backrooms.  They are not really allowed to sell fakes and copies of big brand handbags, watches and DVDs.  So we bought well over 100 DVDs and I found a new watch.  Of course when we were first taken down an alley into a backroom we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.  But once in there both Frank and I knew how to drive a hard bargain…   or at least we like to think we did.

Then when we were exhausted we stopped into the Kata Starbucks for a chai tea served to us by one of Phuket’s beautiful ladyboys.