Melbourne Loft

Okay, I’m a little slow posting on my USA trip here. I just arrived in Chicago today. But let me catch you up on what’s happened. I arrived home from Malaysia on the 21st of April and then left for the US on the 22nd April. So things were a bit hurried. I was thankful that Chris was travelling in First Class so we checked in fast and got to have brekky here in the Qantas First Class Lounge. Now that’s the way to start a long trip! I only wish that I was up in the pointy end too. Instead I was crammed in to economy with everyone else.

I’m having a great time hanging out with Jake in Malaysia. We met up in Kuala Lumpur before heading down here to Port Dickson on the Malacca Straits. We are staying at the Legend Water Homes. Pretty much a resort with villas built out over the sea. Each villa has it’s own little private swimming pool. It’s a pretty cool place. Though we are the only westerners here. It’s nice to relax by the pool and get some sun while back at home Melbourne is falling quickly into winter. Here are some pics of the trip so far.

So I headed to the airport last night shortly before midnight for my 2.30am flight to Malaysia (a 8 hour flight) to learn that the Emirates plane wasn’t coming. So Emirates were sending everyone home in paid taxis or to a hotel for the night. There are a lot of thunderstorms in Kuala Lumpur now so the plane from Dubai had to go to Singapore. So we are leaving instead at 6pm today. The girl at the Emirates counter said that everyone was being really nice about the delay. I think the delay was great! – I had no real plans for the day in KL today – I didn’t have to stay up till 2.30am to wait for my flight – I got to sleep in my own bed instead of sleeping in the upright position – The flight leaving at 6pm is a much better time. It arrives in Malaysia at 11.30pm (Malaysia time). So I don’t need to try to sleep on the plane. – The plane itself is now half empty as many passengers made other plans, so there will be space to spread out. – I get to go to my gym today after I missed a session yesterday. I can’t see anything not to be happy about. I’m looking forward to checking out the Emirates service today. I have never flown with them before. Their Boeing 777ER can fly up to 20 hours! That would be pretty amazing.

I’m packing today to fly to Kuala Lumpur tonight. And from looking at weather.com it looks like it’s wet season over there now. I don’t mind… it’s still hot and I’ll still go swimming each day. I have a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur first before we head over to the coast.

I finally booked hotels in Kuala Lumpur and Port Dickson for our mini vacation in Malaysia next week. I couldn’t actually get into the resort I wanted to. Mostly because I fluffed about for so long that it sold out. So this place is the next best thing. The Legend Water Homes are built out over the water, with each villa having it’s own swimming. Now think about how much of a pain it is to clean one swimming pool… and multiply it by hundreds. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. Even though it’s wet season there now I’m sure we’ll still be doing a lot of swimming.

So the past week and a half has been full of getting caught up on the many things I never had time to do while I was working, like getting to the doctor and dentist of check ups, changing a few things with my banking and learning a few new tricks with web development. And in the few days my travels will begin. I’m firstly heading to Queensland to see my family. Then I’m heading to Malaysia to go swimming with Jake. And then I’m heading over to the US with Chris. It’s strange that it has been 5 months since I have travelled anywhere. It’s been kinda nice staying at home for that long.
Really looking forward to catching up with Jake. Here is a recent shot from him in Vietnam.

It’s the first day of my 2 month long vacation! I actually started the day strangely at the office. I had a last minute request from my boss to hand in my old laptop before I left. So I needed to back up some important files before it got sent off to Sydney.
The break is going to be filled with doing some web development, visiting my family and friends, and then at Easter time I will be heading off to the United States. I’m really looking forward to spending a few days with my friend Bill in Ohio. Oh and Chris is coming along for the ride too! Until then I have a bit of work to do. Here I am in my new (actually it’s just moved) home office.

This is my last week at work before I start my 9 week long vacation. And last night I finally booked a trip to go to the US in April. The trip will take in Palm Springs, Columbus Ohio and San Francisco. I can’t wait to get back to the States again. It will be good to catch up with a few friends there too. This shot was snapped by a self timer camera sitting on the roof of a hire car just outside of Palm Springs in 1997.

When I saw strange posts in the Tagboard this morning I went to clean it up on the server. Only then I found that the tagboard is no longer on the server. So I suspect someone has actually hacked into the site somehow. It might take a little bit to sort this out. Maybe we’ll replace it with some kind of message board that is a little more secure.

I had Tyson come over to help me install some new hard drives into my Mac Pro yesterday. And while we waited for the data to copy over we gave the large main loft space a makeover. Firstly we got rid of all the junk that had accumulated around the computers over the past 2 years… and man there were some surprises under all that stuff. And then we moved the whole set up to the are that was previously known as the junk area. I really like the new set up. The old PC and the printer no longer takes up half the desk, and I now run two screens from the Mac. I still have to get rid of some of the junk from in front of the desk. But I quite like it over here. I no longer sit with my back to the room. Oh… and how handy is it having a mattress in my office… I can flip it down and take a nap at any moment. Thanks Tyson for getting me moving!