land of the long white tracksuit

just a quick little post with my photos from Auckland.

i realise this blog is getting crazy out-of-date, considering these images are from when i was in Auckland in May of '09. so now i am officially one year behind myself.
which means a i have a whole year's worth of images on back-log, and that thought alone is enough to give me a head-ache and turn me to the bottle.

so i'll try for a renewed effort at getting these posts up. i'm not known for my determination, but i'll at least give it a shot.

so back to these photos:

this Auckland visit was a continuation of my Melbourne trip that i just wrote about, and i was lucky enough to be in Auckland on the same day as my mate, Dusan, who was on a Brisbane/Auckland trip.

our day went like this:
walked around this town with Dusan's mate Alessandro, mostly in the rain, ran into a few other crew members, grabbed a meal at a mexican restaurant down on the water, went hunting for iPhones (someone told us they were cheapest in Auckland -- it didn't matter, no store had any in stock that they were prepared to sell to Dusan & Alessandro, they must hate Serbians or Italians, that's my guess), went to see what exactly a "viaduct" is (i still have no idea), have some drinks in some girl's hotel room before heading out to see what Auckland's night-life had to offer (not much, as it turns out, no offense Auckland).
Dusan woke up early and went sky-diving the next morning.
at the other end of the excitement scale, i slept. well, slept and then got a starbucks and a fridge magnet. which is just as exciting as sky-diving, now that i think about it. and that's how i spend 24 hours in Auckland. (i promise i'll go sky-diving next time -- that 7am start just seems so unGodly, even before you factor in the throwing-yourself-out-of-a-plane part)

Auckland didn't feel much different to Australia, which im sure won't surprise anyone greatly. At times i had to remind myself that i wasn't in Brisbane. it has similar stores to the ones we have in Australia, people look the same, as equally multi-cultural, though a dramatically different accent, even if my friends from the Northern Hemisphere struggle to recognise a difference -- which is fine cos i can't tell the difference between an American accent and a Canadian one....but i can tell the difference between a southern England accent and a northern England one, if that scores me any points? didn't think so.

from what i saw of this place, i liked it. i'm not dying to get back here, but i certainly appreciated being there, i guess because it offered a lifestyle much like the one i grew up with...except without all my loved ones that make Australia so appealing to me.

here are the photos:


stay tuned, next week: ZURICH!!!


let the good times roll!!

melbourne, yeah we drove alone the Yarra

my first ever visit to Melbourne!

I think it's so strange that I first had to move my life to the other side of the world, before I ever visited a city that's just a one-hour plane ride from the town I grew up in.

it's not that I had anything against melbourne, or even that I had a lack of interest in it, I guess I just never had enough motivation to go there...until I was sent there.

the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry has been going on for decades, and while Sydney is obviously incredibly close to my heart, I've never really entered into that rivalry. Melbourne has always seemed liked a really cool place, and I was excited by the prospect of going there, and by the hype that surrounded the city.

...and Melbourne certainly didn't disappoint! A big thanks to Adie Fernand and Gus Murray for showing me around this city.

also, was amazing to be in melbourne at the same time as my mate Natalie Aarons and I got to meet her mum. We all had lunch and talked shit and did a bit of shopping.
Imagine my embarrassment when we were in a shoe store and I pick up a pair of women's boots and say:
"Oi Nat! Check out these lezzo dyke boots!",
only to realise her mum was sitting two metres away, patiently waiting, as I watch the salesman bring out those exact boots in her size for her to try on. I don't know what's worse, the fact I said that, or the fact that she still bought them.

aaaaaaaaanyways, here are the photos:
(editor's note: despite what the layout of the photos would suggest, Gus and I did NOT actually eat at Gaylord Indian Restaurant, nor did we eat at the New Kum Den Chinese Restaurant. I mean, I'm sure they're both lovely restaurants, and I'm glad those restaurants are named that way, I just don't wanna eat there!)

stay tuned, next week: AUCKLAND!!!


let the good times roll!!