A Week in Review

From the previous Thursday to this past Saturday, it was non-stop action for me. You would have thought I was still in college with all the stuff that was jammed packed into 10 days ...
drinks after work (Th), the Ekka (Fr), Brekky Creek (Sa), Sunshine Coast (Su), Gold Coast (We), Brisbane Lights Tour (Th), gambling (Fr) and finally clubbing on Saturday night. The only nights off were Monday & Tuesday. Hopefully with the weather be crappy this week, it'll be a nice and relaxing week at home.

Casino Royale

Joe, Trish & I head to the local casino on Friday night after drinks at work for a little gambling and some dancing at the crappy dance floor in the casino. Not sure how it happened, but I left the blackjack table $90 richer than when I sat down. I'm no Cooper, but I thought I didn't do too bad for my second time playing blackjack at a casino.

Thursday Night Lights

On Thursday night fifteen of us from work went on the Brisbane Lights Tour around Brisbane. The major attraction of the night was the trip to the top of Mt. Coot-tha for dinner. After the dinner we were shuttled around to different spots around Brisbane to enjoy the night-time views. My pictures didn't turn out that well, but others did, especially the couple of pictures taken by CK.

A Day at the Coast of Gold

Yesterday our group went down to the Gold Coast – which is about 40+ minutes south of Brisbane. Along the way we stopped off for breakfast in Yalata to have some meat pies. It might sound disgusting, but they were very tasty. For the first couple of hours at Surfer's Paradise we just hung out on the beach, tossed around the football, and just enjoyed the day off. Oh yeah, we had Wednesday off for a Brisbane public holiday!! Don't be too jealous because I don't get Labor Day off in a couple of weeks. After lunch we headed down to Miami Beach and then just drove around town. Later in the afternoon we went jet skiing in the local bay and it was an absolute blast. I've been before, but never on anything as manly as these Sea-Doos - 1500cc engine, 130 horsepower. Our guides estimated we were probably going 65-70 kph (about 40mph). Other than making the turns, I kept the jet ski at full throttle ... it was an absolute rush. Since Surfer's Paradise is a pretty cheesy, albeit fun place, we decided to do a cheesy dinner and eat at Hooter's. We were able to convince our waitress that it was Apple the cow's birthday, so the waitresses sung Happy Birthday to her. It was a fun day and a great way to finish off these last several days of fun. Now I just can't wait to catch up on some sleep ... enjoy the photos.

License to Drive

I drove a car today! Without any accidents and problems. Even though I almost ran a red light within the first 30 seconds and about went the wrong way at a round-a-bout, I thought I did pretty well today. I mean, I came back with as many passengers as I left with and that's a good day in my book. After a while in the car the driving started to become almost second nature to me. The best part of the trip was that as we pulled into the apartment complex, a police car pulled up behind us. I guess it's shady for four guys in baseball caps to be riding in a car together. After interogating me on whether I had been drinking (I hadn't) and whether we had weed in the car, they let us go. The reason I was driving is because Jeff, Joe, Craig, Donna & I took Donna's car up to the Sunshine Coast to check out the beaches. The weather didn't fully cooperate with us laying out on the beach, but we were able to visit a couple of beaches and take some good photos.

Up the Creek Without a Paddle

On Saturday several of us from work went to the Breakfast Creek Hotel for the "best" steaks in Brisbane and some of us showed up in better shape than others. Once we finally got around to eating the steaks, I ended up disappointed. Granted, the steak was good (I had an eye fillet) but it wasn't great. In fact, I had an eye fillet on Thursday night after work at a pub which was better than the one I had on Saturday. Another special thing that the Brekky Creek does is serve XXXX beer out of a wooden barrel - the XXXX Brewery only produces 27 wooden barrels a day and the Brekky Creek is the only pub around who serves the beer out of wooden kegs. Here are the pictures from the day

A Night at the Ekka

On Friday night a group of us from work went to the Ekka. The easiest way to describe the Ekka is a county fair on steroids. The night was definitely a good time. Within the first minute of stepping foot inside, we decided to play a carnival game and against all odds, Jeff won a stuffed cow in a game of darts. We named the cow Apple (see the picture) and have decided to take her wherever we go and take pictures of her with us.

A couple of things I learned while at the Ekka:

1. Bumber cars are called Dodge 'em cars
2. Corn dogs are called Dagwood dogs
3. Cotton candy is called fairy floss
   
   
   

Big Trouble in Little China

Last night Maunsell (my company) took those of us working on the project who are employed by them out to a seafood/Chinese dinner in Chinatown - there was about 35 of us, which represents about a 1/3 of the project staff. I was a little leery at first about having seafood at a Chinese restaurant, but it turned out to be a good dinner. Being that this was an authentic Chinese restaurant, the only utensils provided were chop sticks and being someone who’s never used chop sticks before, it was an eventful experience. But by the end of the night, I sort of got the handle of it and was actually using the chop sticks to eat rice. So it only took me travelling 9000+ miles to learn how to use chop sticks.

Kangaroo - The Other White Meat

The five of us Americans headed down the path to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary today. We were suppose to take the ferry down the river to the Sanctuary, but a little misread on my part this morning meant we took the bus instead of the ferry. The Koala Reserve is the world's first & largest koala sanctuary - there's currently over 130 koalas in the park at this time.

I was able to hold a koala and feed kangaroos today ... it was a pretty cool experience. I took a ton of pictures and a couple of videos, so check them out. A couple of videos and a lot of the pictures are of us feeding the kangaroos. The koalas and the kangaroos weren't very active, but we were still able to interact with the kangaroos while we were feeding them. I didn't see any dingos eating any babies tho'.

It's a little perverse, but we had kangaroo for dinner tonight (and it's actually red meat, not white). I have to say it was quite tasty. Hopefully we didn't eat this poor guy's cousin.

A Quick Take On My Update

Sorry about the lack of posts recently.

Everything is going well here in Brisbane … my apartment is nice (I ‘promise’ I’ll post some pictures of it this weekend), the people are friendly, and my co-workers are great. Having a good group of people to work with has definitely made the transition easier. The nice thing about this project is that there’s only a couple of people that I closely work with who are from Brisbane – so the majority of the people in the office are either from different cities in Australia or from a different country. So it’s easy to do something after work or on the weekends because everybody is new to the area and without significant others. The four of us (me, Oranit, Joe & Lorenzo) from the Chicago office are living in the same apartment complex and there's also a guy from Boston (Jeff) who's living there too. So there's been a lot of meal sharing and hanging out after work, which has helped curb some of the isolation feeling that is easy to experience.

A group of us is heading to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary this weekend to pet some koalas and feed some kangaroos. So you should see some pictures unless something goes terribly wrong.

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!

I take full credit for the recent success of the Cubbies. Ever since I left for Australia the Cubs have been on a roll and current sit in 1st place in the Central Division - take that Cardinal fans!!

Strange Brew

Last night a group of us from work went on a tour of the XXXX Brewery. The brewery’s been around since the 1880s and has been serving Queensland beer every since. A little factoid: the brewery’s original name was XXX (ThreeEx) because of the quality of the beer. Back in the day, monks use to mark the wooden casks with an “X” to show the quality of beer. So the original beer produced back in the 19th century had XXX quality, whereas now they produced XXXX quality beer. The picture to the right is Mr. FourEx – the brewery’s logo. Click here for some pictures of the night.

Men at Work

For those of you interested in what I'm actually working on down here, click on the link to open a pdf of a newsletter that got sent out across the US to all DMJM Harris (our sister company) offices.

DMJM Harris Newsletter