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