Stuff Happens To People With Blogs

… the solution to jetlag?

While sure, I’m doing a lot of travelling, it’s not me I’m worrying about.  We fly to Europe in about 10 days and Jack is currently in the States.  He flys from the east coast of the USA and gets back here in about 7 days.  So that’s around 20 hours in transit to spend 3 or 4 days at home before spending 24 hours in transit to get to Frankfurt.

Perhaps he’ll adjust better than me but perhaps he’ll be a complete feral for the first week of our holiday.  Any suggestions? 

… well not yet anyway. I’ve not been a very good bloggity blogger of late and I apologise to all my loyal readers (yes, all two of you … at least I hope there might be two!). The problem has been that this wonderful new job I have has had me travelling to Sydney three times in the last three weeks. While some may think this sounds good let me set the picture for you.

It’s a really long way from Sydney city to where our office is. So while the hotel is nice and there is a nice pizza/pasta shop a 10 minute walk away … that’s about it. Five nights sitting in a hotel room with not much to do but watch television and try not to think about the mini bar isn’t exactly exciting.

Don’t get me wrong, I did have dinner with my friend Jacqui a couple of times, which was a great catch up and I learnt some “stuff” from my new department but I’m hoping that when I come back after my holiday, work will get a little more exciting. At least I know my blogs will!!!

… and own goal??? Crap!

Last night we headed over to Suncorp Stadium to watch the international “friendly” between Australia and Paraguay. The game was highly anticipated as most of the Australian World Cup squad was playing, though Jackson was distraught that his favourite, Mark Viduka, wasn’t playing. (I was excited because the delightful Lucas Neill and Brett Emerton were!)

The game was great and the crowd raucous, all 48,000 of them, though anything would be raucous given that the last time the Socceroos played in Brisbane there was apparently 3,500 spectators. What a difference a recent World Cup appearance makes!

A quality game was played and the crowd went wild in the 87th minute when Australia broke the 0-0 deadlock with a GOAL! The crowd feel silent in the 92nd minute when some poor kid who’d just come off the bench tried to knock the ball out and instead just knocked it into the Paraguayan goal … own goal Strange finish to the game, the crowd were just stunned and the full time whistle was blown to subdued applause.

… when you have really low expectations to start with!

It turns out it’s been 10 years since we strutted our stuff in what was affectionately called our “smurf uniforms”. Through the internet grapevine our invitation arrived and was met with much trepidation. Counsel was sought, do we, don’t we? Is it lame to go or to not go when it’s just an hour away? In the end, we decided to go in a group of six … well I was in the decision-making and Jackson was told he was going.

As tends to happen with functions you dread attending, our group of six arrived approximately an hour late and with three or so drinks under our belts - dutch courage perhaps. We entered the local golf club as a strong wall of negative energy and were quickly attacked by organisers wielding sticky name tags and old friends and acquaintances. What happened to my group of six I don’t know as I hardly spoke to them all evening, instead my limited attention span was overwhelmed by wave after wave of long lost “best friends”.

OK, it wasn’t awful, even Jackson admitted it was fun, though the subsequent drama of getting about in “ClownTown” after dark spoiled the party. There is an objection amongst locals or expats against paying cover charge for the towns only official “nightclub” particularly when there is an inflated price for a guest DJ who turns out to be one of your old classmates. And, in a town that is supposed be a hive of tourism, you wouldn’t think you’d need to wait around an hour at the taxi rank on the first weekend of the school holidays.

In hindsight, we should have done the reunion thing and then regrouped our team of six to head home for a few nightcaps but it was a reunion so surely we were supposed to act like 17 year olds and stay out to late rather than the “sensible” old things we’ve become.