Darwin to London

As the plane was descending into London I could hardly believe that what seemed like only moments ago I was enjoying a bag of grease from the Parap Markets on Saturday morning.

The last three months have been a blur of parties, celebrations, websites, new beginnings and the rekindling of old friendships.

Every morning was spent down at the Coffee Club for a couple of long blacks, maybe a bite to eat, and the conversational rantings of Paul Manning, Karen Stoddard, Bec Walker and myself (with the occasional special guest appearances of Skevos, Bok, Suzie and Lyoness). Big cheers to the Store Manager Anna and her young yet very capable Assistant Manager Lauren for starting our mornings off with a smile.

Lunchtimes started off at the pool for a bit of exercise before I caught the debilitating disease, slackbastardititis, and moved to lunches at the wok, sushi train, banyan tree and shenannigans.

Afternoons were spent at one place, Shenannigans, and thanks to some quick promotional thinking Power and Water staff now get Happy Hour there every day during the week. Often it was just the two beers in the afternoon, but every now and then someone had a problem we needed to get to the bottom of which required 4 pints.

Fortunately we worked out a plan to keep everyones drinks/shouts in order as well. If someone went three drinks up in a shout (purchased 3 of your drinks before you brought them one) you owed that person 0ral gratification. No matter how hard Paul and I tried, the girls would never let us shout drinks!!!

During all this fun that was being outside of work we still did get some things accomplished. I managed to make the Power and Water Internet site go live (although I had nothing to do with the colour scheme/design/navigation structure etc etc, please don't judge me ;), and built a new services based Intranet site using an Open Source CMS.

It's hard to come to grips with though. On Friday morning I walked to work in 5 minutes and broke into a sweat doing so. Tomorrow morning, Monday, I'll take a 30 minute tube ride into work and we're expecting snow. On Saturday I lived in Dariwn, a city with a population of 120,000 people. On Sunday I'm back to living in London, a city with the population of 7.5 million people.

I'll miss everyone in Darwin, a few much more then I would have first thought, but I'm sure I'll begin to slip back into London lifestyle pretty quickly. I've already got my grandpa slippers, tracksuit and hoody on....... a far cry from last sunday with a pair of boardies and a singlet.

How to lose weight

While I was walking into the coffee shop this morning I was thinking how strange things can happen to you in certain circumstances.

People can show unusual feats of strength if a family member is trapped under a car, people get extremely competitive and border on being violent once they take to a sporting field, your best mate that sticks by your side no matter what will desert you at the opportunity to hook up with a hot chick.

We see bizzare things happen to normal individuals in circumstances like these as well as others.

It occured to me this morning because during my walk in I noticed something that I hadn't noticed for quite a few months. As I walked in I could hear a kind of jingle.

A kind of jingle jangle.

Or was it more jangle jongle. Or Jongle Jobble.

All of a sudden I realised I couldn't hear it, I could feel it. And it wasn't a jingle, jangle, jongle, jangle, jobble, it was a wobble.

Like the bed springs on a honeymooners bed I could not just feel my belly bouncing and shaking, but I could see it through my shirt!

It then occured to me that I hadn't seen someone under the car.

I had long been away from any kind of sporting field, unless you call the pub a sporting field.

I wasn't trying to hook up with a hot chick.............. I realised I had already hooked up!

And that is what happens, you get lazy, you get fat, and you start to wobble.

Executive Summary for The G Space: If you want to lose weight, break up with your partner and get yourself into the shape that would cause best friends to turn on each other just to hook up with you.

If God were on Facebook

Mmmm, sacrilicious.

Leaving home or heading home

It's been business as usual for the past few weeks.  Nothing of huge consequence has happened, but at the same time there's been a lot on and I've had a great time.

• The Power and Water Intranet site has been built and is just going through the final checks before it goes live.
  
• I've started up some podcasts based on the nonsense that Paul and myself talk during the morning coffee's at the Coffee Club.
• We created another pointless blog for the Nuggets of Knowledge that come from these pointless chats

The biggest news of the week is that I'm staying with the current flight plans and I'll be leaving Darwin on the afternoon of February 1 to fly back to the UK and start back up again with Squiz UK.

It's crazy to think that I've been away from London for 3 months already, the time has absolutely flown.  It's been great spending time with my ol' friends from Darwin though, and I've even managed to make a few new friends who I'll be sure to remember for years to come.

About now I'd usually go into a spiel about what I've learnt, maybe a poem or a song, but I've got to catch up with Paulie G tomorrow morning and I'll never hear the end of it.

How did new years treat you?

It's another year and it has started with a low pressure system off the coast of Darwin bringing some small fun waves to Casuarina Beach, and a few to Nightcliff as well.

If the low pressure system stays out off the coast we should see some small waves at Nightcliff tomorrow morning from 7am, but the tides will once again let us down for any action at Casuarina Beach.

If you're still struggling from some new years blues, head over and take the poll and let us know how you're handling it.

Darwin Surf Report

We've always looking in two or three different places to get a good picture about how the surf is going to be because it's not the kind of place that is ever going to get featured on something like Magic Seaweed or Surfline.

After a bit of tweaking I managed to pull down the virtual buoy reports and the latest tide guides onto a single page which will be known as the Darwin Surf Report.

If it proves to be useful I will mash up a few more surf spots from around the place, but don't be alarmed there won't be directions to any of your secret spots, just an idea as to how the surrounding conditions are at any point in time.

Let me know if it needs anything else.......

Taking forever to review Europe summer footage

I've been really lazy when it comes to reviewing my footage from the 3 month mid year trip.

It took me 4/5 nights to go through and capture all the footage on to an external hard drive, and since then I haven't been bothered to go through and start labeling footage.

After 6 weeks of non-stop afternoon beers at the pub with workmates, and an extra 8kg put on since the trip abroad, I'm going to forego the pub and instead hit the world of video production again to get sorted.

Of course, I need a bit of a plan to make this all come together so I know exactly how I'm going to tackle the footage, work out the sound track, and get the general flow of the short movie.

Alright then.

Tonight I will go to the pub with the boys for a bit of a brain storming session to find out how I'm going to tackle this project before I launch into the no drinking.