Melbourne Loft

Well actually it’s an old flat mate moving back in. Chris is moving back in from the suburbs. Last time he arrived with a suitcase. This time he brought an apartment full of furniture with him. I think this signals the end for my old blue couches. There’s just not enough room for everything now.

The worst thing about travelling around the world is the jet lag. I’m not sure why I’ve had it quite so severe this week. Chris tells me that it’s because I should have changed my sleeping pattern on the 22 hour flight home from London. I should have slept on the 2nd half of the journey putting me in sync with the Australia time zone. But it was impossible not to fall asleep on that first leg.
So I have been waking up many times during the night and feeling dis-oriented. And then I can’t sleep beyond 4am. I have been back for a week now. I was hoping this would have gone away by now.

I know… I’m very slow with these updates. But I will get moving on them quickly now. The trip around Europe (with a side trip to New York) has been very busy. Busy seeing friends, shopping and eating. So far it’s been a lot of fun. Oh… and I have to tell you all about the first class flight from Sydney to London. That was so much fun! So yes, I’m still alive and enjoying the vacation.

Rather than just sticking up a Christmas tree in the city square this year the Melbourne City Council have gone all out and transformed the whole square in what looks like a very green and leafy New York Central Park. The place looks great! And judging by the number of visitors it’s proving to be a real hit. Though I still find it funny that we dress our city in this Christmas wintery themes in the middle of our summer.

Okay… so I know I only bought my Macbook Pro last year. But the new Macbook Air is lighter to carry and it’s bench tests tell me that it’s also a bit faster than the Macbook Pro. So last weekend I travelled out to the Apple Store in Doncaster to pick up the newest and highest spec 13″ Macbook Air. And so far I love it! I’ve loaded all the programs I usually use on it already and this week I’ll start doing some photo editing on it to see how it goes. The 1.3kg laptop is going to make a big difference to the weight in my backpack when we head to Europe next month. Can’t wait!

I have been playing with the routing of the last part of the Europe trip and in the past few days we finally settled on Barcelona instead of Paris. So I’m very excited to be visiting Spain again in January. It will be a lot cooler there at that time of the year, but we don’t mind. We’ve booked a very nice large apartment right in the Eixample area and close to Plaça Catalunya. So this means that the trip and all the accommodation is finally booked! I can’t wait to go now. This is the apartment I found.

I made this short flick over the weekend with Tyson, Nico and Chris. We were headed to IKEA for shopping and some lunch at the IKEA cafe. http://www.http://vimeo.com/31707467

Okay… so I eventually got my hands on the new iPhone last week. It wasn’t exactly the smooth changeover I expected. First the phone was cut off without warning on a Friday night. And then just hours after getting the new phone on Saturday it broke down. So I had to wait until Monday to get it fixed. Eventually on Tuesday night Tyson worked out how to fix the thing. It turns out that the iPhone 4S doesn’t like having it’s software restored from an older phone. So Tyson was able to give it a fresh restore, back it up to iCloud and restore all my contacts. Perfect! And now the phone works great! My only disappointment is that the camera on the front of the phone is a low res camera. I’m assuming this is because that camera is used for FaceTime and other video calling apps. I’ll be posting shots from the new phone soon.

I was all set to pick up the new iPhone 4S yesterday when the phone company cancelled my order. It turns out that the cosy phone relationship I have with my employer is not so easy to get out of. So I had to place a helpdesk call and wait 10 days for the contract to be undone. And only then can I order a phone on a new plan. And since the 64GB model is out of stock, it’s likely I won’t get it until sometime in November now. I just hope I have it before we leave for Europe in December. In the meantime I will continue to contend with my 3G model that takes forever to do anything.

Thailand has always been and “easy” place for Australians to go to on vacation. It’s warm, cheap, a 9 hour flight from Australia, and super friendly. So whenever I’ve been here we bump in to lots of Aussies. This family trip has been planned since March this year. It was actually my 79 year old Dad’s first trip out of Australia. So everything has been new and interesting for him. It’s mostly been fun for me watching him enjoy seeing another culture. He;s fascinated by everything.
We came to Thailand for my sister’s 50th birthday. But we also orchestrated a little surprise for her and my parents. There were just the 4 of us coming here. When we arrived at Bangkok airport I had to delay them from leaving the airport for one hour for one of my friends from Melbourne to arrive on the flight from Melbourne. But in actual fact it was my other sister arriving to come on our vacation with us. My sisters are always the life of the party so having them both on the trip was going to make it a lot more fun. Our week long stay in Bangkok was a lot of fun. It was full of shopping, touring, spa treatments and lots of eating. Bangkok is a crazy city and everyone loved it.
Here are just a few of the pictures I took a long the way.