public geekery

geektron 2000
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday came around again, after a very busy week solving all the world's problems I was very much in need of a drink, but forced to limit myself to below my normal alcoholism levels due to the fact that I was On Call this week.
So after work we headed down to our new favourite little bar, E55 on Elizabeth street, for a few choice beverages. It's a very good bar, with cheap prices, good service, and jam packed with cool people and good music.
The other aspect of the bar, it's internet cafe persona, also came in handy when the On Call pager went off, because I was able to pull out the laptop and connect to work and sort out the problem, upload a quick snap to flickr, then go about my business :)
Of course it was a very public display of geekiness, but you get that on the big jobs :)

right pub, wrong place

shoulder to cry on
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday night was pretty much a non-event. Having spent the entire day trying to fix an urgent problem at work without much success, I wasn't really in the mood for much, so I went and had two drinks down at Yak, Managing a very quick catchup with Lee, who just got back from a holiday in Europe, having got engaged and just having had a birthday there was a bit of catching up to do and not really much time, so we'll need to catch up a bit more at her birthday dinner next weekend. Then I went back up to work, then went back down to meet Bec and her former flatmate Rachel and went with them and Joe and Pommie John to Cherry bar. After another two drinks there everyone went home and I went back to work to keep slugging away at the problem. After working until 11:30pm I finally gave up and went home, anticipating a long day at work the next day, but when I woke up the next day I had a little brainwave and also got some suggestions from a colleague and managed to get it all fixed up without going in to the office, much to my joy :)

Friday also brought a piece of happiness in the form of my prizes for that photo competition. Some new sunnies, new goggles, a 2-day lift ticket and a voucher for some Mountain Designs gear. So on Saturday, after being reprieved from a day of gloomy work in a chilled computer room environment, Joe and I went into the city to do a little shopping and I bought a new jacket.

Saturday night saw us out in the city to catch up with Clare, Peta, Erin and Nikki. Joe and I met up in the city a bit early and went to check out a bar called e fifty five on Elizabeth st, some place that DJ mudgutz was always keen on, which turned out to be a pretty good place. Underground, nice crowd, good bar staff, great music, cheap drinks, and apparently free wireless internet as long as you're there drinking.

On the way to the bar we ran into a guy on the street who was looking for some directions to a particular hotel that he had accommodations for but had forgotten the address. We spoke for a minute or two and he was a bit drunk, having just gotten out of Goulburn jail after nine years, and was having trouble finding the place he was meant to go to. He had it written down on a piece of paper but had the paper wadded up in his pocket and it had gotten wet at some point so it was basically just a big wad of slightly discoloured paper with no chance of getting an address of it. He seemed a pretty happy drunk, not even a hint of violence or danger, even after learning that he'd just gotten out of jail. I think he was a little disappointed we weren't more scared, and he'd obviously spent most of his freedom so far in the pub and only left when his money ran out, so we each gave him a few dollars to get a meal. I hope he found his hotel, he didn't seem to be comfortable out and about on the street, seemed a little nervous and kept repeating himself, but I'm sure he'd have found his hotel, as we were only a block away at most.

After our time at e55 we went off to meet up with the girls at Pugg Mahones. We get to the bar and find it filled with a Uni Football team in an advanced state of loudness, singing along to the two guys playing guitar and belting out aussie pub classics. A bit concerned about the size of the pub, the lack of our friends and the lack of a dance club upstairs as described to us, we finally get a hold of the girls to discover that the "going out in the city" actually translates to "going out in carlton" and that there are in fact two Pugg Mahones. We jump into a taxi out to Carlton, very happy to be out of that place, and wind up at a much better version of the same pub, with a band playing modern dancy hits interspersed with a DJ placing some decent tracks without too much top 40 :) The girls are all there with a bunch of other friends and we all settle in for a fairly large evening.

Later on our friend Sean joins us, as he's down from Brisbane for the weekend, and despite not having met the girls before they were soon all hitting it off like old friends. Overall it was a pretty good night, lots of silliness and fun and drinking of drinks :)

Sunday was a fairly lazy day, waking up at lunch time and then going over to watch a movie with Kate. She was over in Box Hill house sitting for her boyfriend Nick while he was off on some flying trip around the country, and her previous lunchtime engagement had fallen through so she invited me around for a catch up and to watch Young Adam on DVD. It was good to see her as I hadn't seen her much in the last month and was missing hanging out with her. The film was interesting, a rather morbid tale set on the Scottish canals following the life of a man working on one of the barges during the 40's, played by Ewan McGregor. All the scenes were rather pale and dreary and Ewan ended up having sex with just about every woman he came into contact with, to the point where we were joking that it was Scottish Soft-Core pornography. It was quite a good film despite that as the story was quite interesting, and it took a while to work out if he was having flashbacks or fantasies every time he drove the barge into a tunnel. It was also very good to see Kate again, especially since we are catching up on Tuesday anyway to see a film :)

flickrmeet

s2art stage #1
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Today was another Flickr Meetup for members of the Melbourne Flickr Group, meeting at what we've dubbed our unofficial home, Transport at Federation square.

It was a good day to be sitting around drinking and chatting and taking photos, and I managed to catch up with the guys and meet a few more of the flickr crew. They're a pretty good bunch of people and we usually have a good laugh.
There was a funny moment when some girls sitting near us seemed to take up a little 'camera fever' after we'd been all snapping away and they started taking photos of each other with their mobile phones, only to look up and realise that 4 photographers had joined them and took a photo of the pair, which made them laugh :) The funny part was that one of them was a photographer as well and had her own flickr account :) small world, she made it to the flickr meetup and didn't even know it ;)

stellar

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was pretty busy, with a trip down to Williamstown for a bit of a photo shoot and some fish and chips, and then later on that night Joe and I went in to Stellar Bar to listen to some friends DJing.

It's a really good bar and Mike and his mate are really good DJs, happily throwing in all sorts of weird tracks like a remix the the theme from "Different Strokes" that we heard the last time we went or the remix of the theme from "The Muppet Show" that we heard last night. Not something that you would think of off the top of your head as a track to play, but they worked really well nonetheless :)

friday shenanigans

children today worship a new god
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last friday was another usual day, where much time was dedicated to drinking of alcohol. Now, this friday we had an official occasion and everything, since one of the team at work was moving to a secondment in another section and another member had just become permanent, so don't panic, it's all official, we were celebrating. :)
Given the nature of the evening we didn't even hang out at Yak, but instead went down to Manchester Lane with a fair sized crew to have some drinks down there. The night progressed well and ended up with Joe, myself, Clayton, Kathryn, DJ Mudgutz and Matt as the stayers, lasting until we were all quite silly-drunk :)
Clayton was very funny all night, happily walking up to complete strangers and asking to take their photo, usually very attractive women. It must be something about being married :)

quiet weekend

woodchop
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This weekend was fairly quiet. With me on Lates and Joe in Sydney there was no real impetus to go out and get drunk on Friday, so instead I had a couple of quiet drinks with a colleague who was down from Sydney and then headed home at a reasonable hour.

Saturday I was ken to avoid any entanglement with the footy Grand Final, so I decided to head off to the Royal Melbourne Show and see if I could find a few photo opportunities. The show was quite small this year, particularly because of renovations occurring on the main showgrounds, so only half of the showground and grandstand were actually available, the rest being fenced off. The show itself has only a few things worth seeing, the events such as woodchopping, equestrian, dog showing, livestock judging, etc. Then the showbags, which as a kid were the main draw of the show but as an adult can be seen for the garbage they are :) Lastly the show has all the usual array of carnival rides and games of chance. Every tent had its own tout with a microphone hooked up to their PA shouting out to the crowd about how their game of chance is the best to play and how they are the ones giving away all the big prizes. As a rough count I saw about 6 'water race' games, about 4 basketball hoop games, 3 'magic ticket' games, 3 laughing clown games, a few ball toss games, one shooting game, and that's about all. :)
A highlight was overhearing a carny explain to a pair of twenty-somethings how the laughing clown game works, and the smirk on her face as she wondered the same thing I did, how you get to be 20+ years old without ever seeing the laughing clowns before :)
The rides had a few new faces this year, basically all working on the round-and-round-up-and-down principle, and most of the same old things like dodgem cars (three sets) ferris wheels (two) and roller coasters (two) were still there.
I went back later in the evening for some night shots and basically photographed everything there was to shoot at least twice :)

Sunday was spent on the couch watching crappy tv :)

Late shift

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Been on the late shift all last week, which gets kind of boring towards the end of the week, but at least it gives me the chance to wander arounf the city shooting some night shots, which is becoming a bit of a tradition with me when I work lates.

Woo Hoo, I am a Weener!

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I have won a photography competition! Woo Hoo!
This photo has been judged Best Action Photo from amongst 1500 other images vying for Best Action, Best Landscape, Best Personality and Best Overall photo in the Victorian Alps. The Competition was run by the Vic Snow Report website and winners were just announced and I won Best Action!
In true Scootie style, I just submitted some entries and went about my day, not really thinking about it, even when their mail systems stuffed up and lost a few entries and we had to resubmit, and even after they sent out an email saying the judging was delayed etc, I didn't really think about it, because frankly, how could this really apply to me? In fact I didn't even notice I'd won, but was asked by a colleague "did you win an amateur photo competition" to which I replied "I don't think so" because I couldn't think of any I'd entered. Turns out another KPMG person had entered and was keen to see if they'd won and one of my friends was looking over their shoulder at the time and recognised my name.
I'm pretty happy that I won (still a little stunned) because I am very proud of this image. I had to stand in the snow for hours, freezing my fingers (and ass) off, despite wearing gloves (yes, shooting in ski gloves, I love my gloves, they rock, but that's another story) and I was shooting on Manual exposure and Manual focus, because the action was too fast for the camera to react properly, and I knew I'd gotten some really good shots at the time, and had a few "Eureka" upload moments when i put them on the computer. Add to that the fact that I nearly lost all these images when my HD crashed!
Also, in other related coolness: this ski trip I had come to the conclusion that my goggles were stuffed, as the foam was finally going, and they tended to fog up now, and also that my sunnies were in need of replacing, as they were slightly scratched (titanium lenses, very hard to scratch) and the rubber joints were disintegrating, and the lenses were out of position and needed to be refitted, and especially the fact that I lost them on the way home, all added up to Scootie spending some hard earned moolah on new eye wear before the year was out. But no! for Scootie has just won some prizes, including new Bolle sunnies and Goggles. Now technically, I'm an Oakley man, but who in their right mind would knock back free sunnies? not me, that's for sure :)
So there you go, lucky to get the shot, lucky to keep it, lucky I was able to resubmit it, and lucky to have won, luckily winning something I really needed!

Of course, my luck is now officially all used up :) But you get that on the big jobs.

Earthdance 2005

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was a special day, with the arrival of Earthdance 2005. Earthdance is a global event where simultaneous events are held in over 200 cities in over 50 countries, where everyone is dancing to the motto: Give Peace a Dance.

The Melbourne event was held in Fed Square and attracted a few thousand people by the time the day was over. The weather looked a bit iffy at first, and even rained a bit earlier in the day, but this didn't really do much to discourage us hard-core types :) Sure, a few people drifted away when it started to rain but most of us just tucked down a bit more into our coats and stayed where we were. I don't even think the hackie-sack game was even interrupted by the rain, although they did change to a dryer hack when the rain stopped.
Overall the day was fantastic, really good music, lots of good people and a pretty good mini-crew of flickrites. Joe was there of course, as was DJ Mudgutz and I even met up with WenDee from flickr too :)
The highlight of the day for me was seeing some of the costumed capers that are quite common to this event and to Earthcore, such as three people dancing on stilts, two dressed as trees and another dressed as a mermaid, dancing around a large sun while red painted jugglers danced with them. My favourite of all these was three girls 'breaking free' from their urban confines, dressed in ragged suits and ties that had started to become entwined with nature, sporting leaves and tree branches, all the while elevated on stilts made out of milk crates. One of them is pictured here and they were obviously having so much fun it was infectious :)

The Music was top notch and the dancing great fun and we just had a blast. Being the neo-flickr event that it was, we even ran into s2art as we were walking away, as him and his wife Nikki were heading out to dinner for Nikki's birthday. They were going to Transport but we suggested it might be a bit loud with all the DJing going on and that they might try elsewhere. :)

Friday again

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last friday was fairly standard fair. Started at Yak for a few beverages, managed to convince my team mates to come along for one or two and also met up with DJ Mudgutz which is now considered normal and won't be commented on especially.
We had a few at Yak and then headed off to The Long Room to meet up with a few friends of Mudgutz's, which turned out to be rather attractive women, so we stayed for a drink or two there until the overpowering scent of pretentious people (not our friends, but most of the other people there) was too much and then skedaddled home for a fairly early night.

a warm house is a happy house

kate shakes her booty while the cardinal entertains the foreman sisters
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night was the evening of Tania's housewarming, and quite a big night it was :)
Tania has bought a nice flat in Kew, just near the Cotham Rd/Burke Rd corner, which is a very roomy, 70's built, two bedroom apartment, with quite a nice view out towards Doncaster.

The party officially started at 8pm, and we arrived not long after that, a bunch of us having met up at The Palace beforehand (Mick, Joe, Steph, Dan & Cath). The party itself was fairly small, with us, Tania, Katrina, Kate and her new boyfriend Nick, and some friends from Tania's work, etc, all in all about 16-17 people. The party started with the usual amount of milling around in the kitchen, then slowly but surely headed towards a mad dance party in the lounge room :)
The party steamed on, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

It was good to finally get a chance to talk with Kate's new boyfriend Nick. I'd technically met him at the Sexy Party but we hadn't really chatted that much. He's a pretty cool guy and didn't seem too phased at being thrown it at the deep end and being grilled by so many of Kate's friends :)
After much drinking and much dancing, the official party ended up about 1am, with taxis called to ferry away the party guests, leaving myself, Joe, Tania and Andrea (from Tania's work). We decided that we needed to go out and headed into the city to Brown Alley where Joe and I had planned to go to hear Superpitch DJ.
We arrived in good stead and had no trouble getting in due to Joe having arranged for a spot on the guest list. I hadn't been to the club before and I was pretty happy with it. The layout is a bit weird, with only a tight spiral staircase between the three levels, but we hit the main dance floor downstairs and there was plenty of room to manoeuvre. Not long after arriving Tania and Andrea left, looking for some 80's music, so Joe and I stayed on and later met up with Becy and some of Joe's other friends from the In The Mix forums.
The music was great and we danced until about 5am when I was finally too tired and had to leave. We jumped a cab home and I spent a very lazy sunday at home surfing the net and loading songs onto the iPod mini I'd bought the day before (they're cheap now that they're being discontinued in favour of the iPod nano)

Another Friday passes

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Yet another friday, passed into oblivion this week, as all time goes once it's been used, it's destroyed, forged into the ashtrays of the future, or whatever happens to time when it's used up.

The day turned into an amusing end, with a little more time spent at Yak and Lustre with some of the usual crew. The original intent of the evening was to spend more time with Peta and Clare, as we hadn't really caught up in previous weeks, merely been at the same places, so Lustre was designated as the official meet point, with intention of heading to The Lounge or to Loop later on. But, as Robert Burns wrote, The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, and we actually started out at Yak. There were various reasons to do with the timing that Clare finished work, and the need to meet Mick and Steph and 'Teen in a place easy for them to find, and so we started at the usual, where we were joined by Clare, Peta, Mick, Steph, Mudguts (from Flickr), and more than one or two alcoholic beverages.

We moved on down to Lustre at about 6pm, and who should we run into down there but Felicite and Sarah, almost like a mini copy of the previous week at Lustre :)
So we settled in for a few more drinks, and were joined over time by Erin, Stuart (Flickr), Dean (had been working late) and some friends of Clare and Peta's. After a few hours the crew started to break up and go their separate ways, so Joe, Mudguts and I eventually headed over to De Biers for a few minutes to say goodbye to the girls. It was very hard to maintain to Mudguts the concept that we hardly ever go there when we greeted by one of the barmaids like long-lost friends (she used to work at Yak), and also happen to be up on the photo wall of fame (the manager and Joe went to high school together), so I don't really think he believed us :)

On the way home I did the usual drunken stop at Macca's, made more difficult by the occasional spouts of torrential rain from the severe thunderstorm we were in the middle of, and while walking back home I spied Mick, Steph and 'Teen over in The Bridge having a drink. I popped in for a quick pot and then went home and managed to get some very nice lightning shots off the balcony.

The funny thing was that with all the people that ended up showing up, we didn't really get much chance to catch up with Peta and Clare :) oh well, maybe next time.

Te Kotahitanga

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last Saturday was the New Zealand Te Kotahitanga (Unity) Festival at Federations Square, including the launch of the Te Karangatahi Waka, and due to the fine efforts of fellow flickrite Kiarobro, we were on the list as official photographers for the whole day's festivities.

The day started early with preparations for the arrival of the Waka, a hand crafted boat which were traditionally used to move between the islands and invade other territory. The crew of the Waka disembarked on Federation dock and were greeted by the elders of the Wurrundjeri tribe, the traditional owners of the site.

Later the day saw a whole lot of New Zealand and Polynesian/Maori celebrations, including some traditional dancers and some more modern fare.

There was also an attempt at the world record for the most people performing a Haka outside of New Zealand. The previous record was 505 people, and this event had over 2000 registrations, so they are likely to be awarded the record after Guinness scrutinise the video of the event.

It was a great day and we took a lot of photos, that are to be cut to a DVD and given to the organisers, but otherwise we've gotten some fabulous stuff for Flickr :) I really enjoyed myself, despite being a rare aussie in the crowd, everyone was so happy and having a great day that even my cheering the Wallaby's was met with good natured boos and hisses :)

So you've decided to move to Melbourne

(this is something I just whipped up in am email, to tease a friend who we're trying to convince to move to Melbourne from Canberra)

Congratulations on your choice of moving to what many refer to as "The World's best everything ever". In order to smooth your transition into this multi cultural melting pot that is the great City of Melbourne, the following questionnaire has been prepared to help us, help you.

Please be sure to answer all questions as it is necessary to fully profile your Melbourne experience to meet your needs

Desired Future Living Area:
(a) Central: CBD, Melbourne, North Melbourne, East Melbourne
(b) East: Richmond, Hawthorn, Camberwell
(c) South: St Kilda, Brighton, Elsternwick
(d) West: Footscray, Kensington, Williamstown
(e) North: Carlton, Fitzroy, Brunswick
(f) Non-Cool: all other locations

Originating Area:
(a) Melbourne Outer Suburbs (section (f) above)
(b) Country Victoria
(c) Other: Please don't specify, we're not that interested

Reasons for travelling to Melbourne:
(a) Always wanted to move there
(b) Work transfer, plus always wanted to move there
(c) Backpacker, plus always wanted to move there
(d) Homeless, plus always wanted to move there
(e) I've always been a heavy drinker

Marital Status
(a) Married, but looking
(b) In a relationship, but looking
(c) Single, and interested
(d) Single, and easy
(e) I've always been a heavy drinker

Please also rate the following sports on the scale provided:
Footy (the good one) - Really Great \ Great \ Good \ Willing to learn
Footy (the meathead one) - OK \ Stupid \ Pointless \ I support the All Blacks
Footy (the round ball one) - Good \ Boring \ Confusing \ I Don't watch SBS

Please also rate the following beer brands on the scale provided:
Tooheys - OK\ Poor \ Bad \ Very Bad \ Just Like Emu Bitter
Four X - Really Bad \ Very Bad \ Extremely Bad \ Never tried
Carlton - Great \ Good \ OK \ Good \ Great
Boags\Cascade - Great \ Great \ Great \ Great \ Good

Please indicate which of the following activities you are likely to participate in while in Melbourne:
Drinking Heavily - Yes \ No
Watching Footy - Yes \ No
Riding Trams - Yes \ No
Going to Fed Square - Yes \ No
Visiting the Shrine - Yes \ No
Driving up and down Chapel st - Yes \ No
Going out to clubs/bars - Yes \ No
Going down laneways to drink - Yes \ No
Eating Chinese food - Yes \ No
(please note that a 'No' answer to any of these does not automatically
preclude you from moving to Melbourne, it merely means we may need to
interview you further)

and after skiing?

Birthday Girl
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

So what have I done since skiing? Well, I spent a week at home sick. I won't go into the details, but whatever I had, you definitely don't want. It was one of those things where I didn't even have any appetite, so I didn't go out and shoot photos or anything because I didn't have any energy. I think that from Sunday night until the following Saturday I at the sum total of: three serves of toast, 5 biscuits, and about 10 potato chips. That's it. So I spent the whole time on the couch, or doing a little work from home on the computer, although the motivation was very poor indeed.

I had a pretty negative attitude all week, especially since my external hard disk died on the way back from the snow, so I didn't have access to any of the pics I took until Georgie burned them to DVD for me (I'd kept a copy on his laptop). Even without pictures to upload, all of that time should have led me to a frenzy of flickr activity, but to be honest, I was completely unmotivated to do anything except sit on the couch, half asleep, watching DVDs.

The next week was a bit more exciting, being back at work and all :) although it was actually a lot better, what with being actually able to eat and everything :) The week was ok, started getting my socialisation back on track, went to dinner with Kate on wednesday night, to a nice little Thai place near her, although I forgot we were supposed to be going to dinner so I brought over some chips, much to the amusement of her housemates :)

Friday I was up to my usual antics, drinks at Yakbar with Joe, Peta, Clare and John, where we were joined by fellow flickrnaut DJ Mudgutz. We had a few drinks at Yak and then moved on to Lustre lounge to meet up with Felicite and the crew for her birthday drinks. While we didn't officially meet up until Lustre lounge, I actually accidentally met up with them at the ATM between bars, which was funny because they didn't realise they were standing behind me until I turned around. As well as Felicite we also had Dean, Bec, Julia, Paul and Sarah, plus the crew we dragged down from Yak.

We had a number of very fine drinks, although I was on call so I had to curb my beverage intake somewhat. After some time at Lustre we headed off to get some noodles at a very good (and very friendly) noodle shop next to Robot and The Deanery, and then headed over to Pony, and since the music wasn't what we were looking for we headed to Loop. That's where I left the crew, as I had a photog gig on Saturday, but more about that in the next entry :)

Skiing 05

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, the time for the annual ski trip to Falls Creek has come and gone, so I thought I'd better get around to posting an update. This year's trip was pretty good, with a few variations on the regular themes, enough to keep things interesting. The crew this year was as follows: Myself, George, Sharon and Adrian Hillier with their kids Zach, Cassie and Jade, Chris and Danielle Cawood with their kids Tamara and Nathalia, Chris and Tamara Stillwell with their kids Colin and Cayley (and pet rat Angelina), John and Jo Novak with their infant son Nicholas, Phillip and Liz with their son Nathan, and Warwick and Jackie. So that's 14 Adults, 9 kids, and one rat.

One of the variations on this trip was that we had the majority of our groceries and alcohol delivered up to our lodge for us by the supermarket in Mt Beauty. This meant that we didn't have to lug a whole lot of boxes of food and drink up through the oversnow and seriously reduced the amount of gear we had to carry up and back. Another variation was that George and I caught the bus up the mountain from Mt Beauty, along with the Cawoods and Novaks. This is something the Cawoods have done in the past because they haven't had a car themselves (they live in Perth, and fly in to stay at Chris' parent's place in Albury and get a lift down to Mt Beauty). We did the sums and it turned out to be cheaper for the two of us to buy bus tickets and park in their undercover parking, than it was to pay for a week's resort parking and chain hire, not to mention the fact that we didn't have to fit chains and trudge through the snow to the car. The only slight drawback was waiting half an hour longer for the bus on the way back home, and that was really because we booked our oversnow early enough to allow for delays. Also, this year, due to the large number of people, we had actually spilled over into a second lodge, which also gave George, me and the Cawoods a place to escape when it all got a bit too busy at the main lodge :)

The skiing itself was very good, Sunday we arrived during a clear sunny day, with lots of snow on the ground and blue skies overhead. Monday was our first day of actual skiing and despite the heavy falling snow, high winds, occasional sleet, and near total whiteout near the top of the mountains, the snow was pretty good and we got a decent morning's skiing in before deciding to go back to the lodge and give in to sanity :)
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were all bright clear days, blue skies and sun, excellent skiing all over the mountain, and to be honest, some of the best days I have had in the mountains. I was very happy with the snow, extremely happy with my gear (especially the new ski pants that were warm and dry in the blizzardyness and still cool enough on the sunny days. I skied my favourite runs at the Summit, powering down the steeps like a absolute champion. At least until my thighs were burning and my knees were calling me all sorts of bad names, when it was then time to return to the lodge (a short ski away) for much needed refreshments :)

Tuesday night was the first part of the extreme sports (apart form skiing itself) that we would get to witness this year, where some motocross riders were putting on a show of jumps and tricks in the snow outside our lodge. This was the second year they'd had this event and it was till a lot of fun to watch, especially the big finale which was one guy doing a backflip followed by fireworks, which seemed to be going off just outside our lodge, needless to say we are very happy with our choice of accommodation :)

Friday it rained and I did not ski, instead we sat in the lodge and watched DVDs, played games with the kids, and watched the rain try to wash away all of our beautiful snow.

Saturday was lightly overcast, but mainly clear, a bit cold, which meant the snow was excellent, and it was another day of great skiing.

Saturday evening saw the Big Air competition on the summit slopes about 300m in front of our lodge, with a large number of skiers and snowboarders going over a 55 foot kicker jump to compete for prizes such as Biggest Air, Best Trick, Best Costume, Best Old School trick, etc. I went out and stood in the snow for a few hours to get some good shots, and was chatting to the kids next to me and generally having a good time freezing to death in the snow at night :)

Sunday was the day to come home, and just as well since it started to rain again and was not the most pleasant of days to be in the mountains, so we left :)

as requested

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

As requested by Peta and Joe, here is the 'breast shot'.

Peta was going on the prowl later, so stopped by Yak for a few drinks first. I was helping her to determine the effectiveness of her top in attracting men. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Sunday

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sunday was filled with a great variety of activity and emotions.
The day started (at 12pm) with a BBQ around George's place. Some old friends of ours were in town from Perth for a while and took the opportunity to arrange a big get-together of all the old gang from the late 80's :)
As it turns out, most of them have been spending their time having children :) lots and lots of happy children. It's quite funny, because you don't really think about it, until you're in one room and realise that 1-3 kids per couple, and 5 or so couples, ends up being a lot of kids :)
Can anyone ever truly say that kids aren't cute? I guess it's a survival trait or something :)
The whole thing was excellent, and I was able to spend a lot of time catching up with people and seeing what everyone's up to. The food was sensational, thanks to George's three skewer spit, so it was spit roasted lamb and chicken and home-made dips :)

Sunday evening I went to see a movie at Fed Square with Kate. It was part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, and it was a film called Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire and is a documentary about the UN General who lead the peacekeeping force into Rwanda and was there at the time of the Genocide portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda.
It was quite an open portrayal of an extremely disturbing incident in history, where human beings performed inhuman acts to one another, and Dallaire was tasked with doing something about it without being given any of the things like authority and manpower that he needed. Dallaire himself is quite a likable person, and you can't help feeling his frustration and horror at what was happening around him and his inability to do anything real about it. It eventually led to his breakdown and he is still not completely recovered, but it was heartening to see the reception he received in Rwanda, where the people there were clearly aware of how much he was actually able to do, despite him personally discounting them compared to what he felt he was required to do. Kate and I had seen Hotel Rwanda and so we were very interested to see something more factual. Hotel Rwanda itself was a very good film, and did give you a sense of the atrocity that was going on, but at the end of the day it was a fictional piece, based on reality, whereas this film was a documentary of Dallaire's return to the country on the 10th anniversary of the genocide.
Needless to say it wasn't a "fun" movie, but it was very moving, and made me get a little angry at myself for not really paying enough attention to what was going on at the time. I guess this sort of thing happens a lot, but that doesn't make it right.
Anyway, I think it's an important movie, and it helped to improve the characterisation of Dallaire after Nick Nolte's version of him in Hotel Rwanda, although that wasn't too far from the truth, it didn't do the man justice I think.

flickr-meet

flickr-meet
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was the day of the first Melbourne Flickrmeet at Fed Square. This was a great event, with a really good bunch of flickrnauts showing up and chatting away, talking about cameras and photography and flickr, but also talking a lot about Melbourne and every other possible topic under the sun. There were a few cries of "Geeek!" (mainly from ziz) but all in all they're a pretty cool bunch of people. I think that I would be happy to have any of them in my circle of friends even if we didn't all have the photography/flickr thing in common. Those in attendance were Donina, Oz Lomo, WenDee, make.money.fast, The Cardinal (aka Joe), F o u t u g r a p h e, ziz, barbfi, Eyecatcher, lonely radio and s2art

I had a great time meeting everyone, I think we need to do it again. next week :)

YAF @ YAK

clare and peta
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday saw some traditional drinking shenanigans :) It started out with a few drinks with Clare and Peta at Yak. I hadn't seen Peta in a while so it was good to catch up a little. The girls were heading down to De Biers afterwards, as they were very keen to get some gentlemanly companionship and De Biers has never disappointed them before. Come to think of it, I think I recall Kate and Kerry doing the same thing back in April, specifically targeting De Biers for this :) After Yak I headed out to The London in Richmond for John's birthday drinks, managing to get extremely drunk by 11pm and catching a taxi home with Joe. :)

midweek malarkey

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Did you realise that I seem to start most of my blog entries with "Last weekend" and follow with "haven't seen them in a while"? It's almost as though I only exist on the weekends, and that I never catch up with anyone. My week tends to be filled with work and discussion of work and stuff around work and spending time with people from work, near work. It has been my intention from the beginning to not discuss work to any great extent, hopefully not at all, within this blog. So that's a large part of my week already taken away from blogspace, and the rest is mainly weekends and drinking. This week for example, I actually spent some time on Monday night with Joe going to see the Spirit of Tasmania and did a big shoot of the boat, beach and port.

bollywood ball

bollywood
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night was the night of the annual KPMG Ball which is usually filled with pomp and pageantry, and this years was no exception. My date to the ball was Leah, who wanted to go along and wasn't a social club member, so wasn't interested in paying $150 for a ticket when members and their dates only pay $85.
The theme for the ball this yeah was "Bollywood" so the room was decorated like a Bollywood musical and almost all of the entertainment was Indian themed, including some traditional style dancers, some modern dance numbers, some traditional music and one snake charmer/dancer that was quite interesting.

I have been to the ball seven times over the last nine years, and it's generally a lot of fun, although like anything, it depends on who you hang out with :) This ball was probably the second best one I'd been to, and I had a significant amount of fun and managed to catch up and have a dance with some people I hadn't seen in a while. I had a great time dancing and chatting and laughing it up with everyone.

The one part of the entertainment that wasn't really Bollywood themed was the dance music. The DJ played a bit of Indian styled dance and then when the 80's cover band came on it kinda blew that out of the water, so it went straight to western dance music after the first 80's set. :) The band was the same as last year, and a really good 80's band for a dance gig, playing all the old favourites like Jessie's Girl and Mickey :) The DJ was pretty good too, playing mainly mainstream dance, but not any of the super super cheesy numbers that some clubs play, so it was deemed 'acceptable' by me :)

Everyone seemed to be having a good time and I finally ran out of steam at about 1am and headed home. It's always a long queue for a cab at Crown, so I usually walk up to flinders st station to get one. It's always a fun experience walking around the city in a tuxedo, for some reason everyone looks at you funny :)

late shift week

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last week was fairly low key, having been on late shift all week, which usually makes me a bit slow around midday and cranky all week, at work anyway. One benefit is that come 8pm, I'm wide awake and ready to go, with enough energy to be out and about for a few hours easily. This has of course lead me to do a couple of night photo runs, walking around the city looking for shots and generally just wandering about. I finally managed to get some shots of the flames at Crown Casino that I'm happy with, and generally just made a nuisance of myself around town, looking like a tourist and taking photos of things that normal people don't take photos of. :)

A lot of time was spent in the rest of the week doing some html coding for the Flicky Awards for Excellence in Photography on Flickr (of course)

Friday night started out fairly normal, with the usual plans to only have a few drinks, not have too large an evening, etc. It began with meeting Joe and Steph down at Yak for a few drinks after I finished at 8pm. It was good to catch up with the both of them, as Joe has been on convalescent leave after his ear operation two weeks ago, and I don't see Steph as much as I used to, since she used to be my flatmate :) We had a few drinks and a bit of the usual chat and laughter, although the crowd at Yak was quite loud, and managed to get all caught up. Then it was off to Pheonix to see Kate and as it turns out to partially rescue her from an ex who was making eyes at her, another guy flirting with her, and a girl who was after the ex making a point of ignoring her :) So we breezed in and they left and we all had a bit of a laugh about it :)

eight years

mid-mallow
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sunday was my neice Courtney's eighth birthday, so it was time again to venture down to the family in Rosebud.
The day was pretty good, there were two activities planned, bowling and rollerblading, both promising to add up to a big photo op, plus the usual amount of general silliness that manages to associate itself with the Sandars family, and believe me, Courtney is no stranger to silliness :)
I have to admit that there were times when the squeals of 5 little girls was making me wish I had ear plugs, it was still a lot of fun, despite having to scramble at the last few frames to not get beaten at bowling by an 8 year old :)

of babies and babes

look, in the sky, it's a bird!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday was a pretty busy day, and yet not one filled with photographs, which is kinda weird for me, but there you go :)
The socialising started early when Kim, Shaz and Max met me for lunch. We had a pretty funny time, taking a few funny photos of Max and trying to work out what the heck he was trying to look at :) still don't know for sure, but probably colour and movement of some kind :)
The evening started off slow but ended up quite well, especially since I spent it in the company of a group of very beautiful women. :)
After work I twisted Kathryn's arm to go down to Yak for a drink, where we were joined by the incandescent Kate and her friends Georgia and Fran. All four of these women are truly beautiful and I was very aware of the fact that I am a lucky man to have hung out with them :)
We started at Yak and then went to St Jerome's, Cookie and Crofts. A great night, spent with some really cool chicks, and I didn't take any photos at all, still not sure why :)

big fish, little fish

upside down jelly
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was made special by a trip to the Melbourne Aquarium. I had been looking out for something to go that would make a good photo opportunity and realised (after seeing Kathryn's shots of diving with the sharks) that the Aquarium was well suited, since it was in out of the rain and might work well with my handy-dandy 50mm lens. I had been there before ages ago and was disappointed by how hard it seemed for friends to get good photos, as the light is too low and I wasn't interested in using the flash, unlike the hordes of tourists trying their luck and wondering why they have a big white spot in the middle of all their pictures :)
If you haven't been to the aquarium I suggest you give it a go, it's pretty cool, and has some really creepy little creatures :)

Friday night hijinks

a well co-ordinated millsy
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last Friday was yet another night spent in the confines of Yak :)
This one was a bit special thoguh, as it was international ex-KPMG night :)
The initial piece of ex-Capers escapades was that Daimo was finishing up, so his farewell drinks were held in the estemed location of the corner of the bar at Yak.
Also on the cards for the evening was a visit and catch up for some other famous ex-Capers crusaders, firstly miss Lee, come to visit from the wilds of Altona where she's working at the moment, although I didn't get much of a chance to speak with her, she managed to catch up with Clare and Kylie and a few of the old crew, she seemed to be having a good time, but I'll need to catch up with her again sometime, as I was catching up with a lot of people that evening. :)
Included in the catch up were Narelle and Lisa, former Capers cohorts whom I was very glad to see again. I haven't seen these guys for a very long time and was having a lot of fun getting drunk with them and listening to Lisa's voice get more high pitched the drunker she got :)
Also had a bit of a catch up with s2art from Flickr and introduced him to Joe. They already knew each other, just hadn't actually met :)
The evening devolved into drunkenness rather quickly and I was even able to take the tram home, things finished up so quickly :)

Max

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Popped around the Berley's place today to meet Max, the baby formerly in her belly and now in her loungeroom. Max is, of course, a bit of a cutie, very quiet and attentive and makes some very cute faces :)

Bonding Session

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday night saw another work social club function at Bond bar in the city, however we first started off at Yak to catch up with an old friend who was in town for a short time. This was also a good oportunity for me to get a bit drunk so I could handle the free beer that was going to be flowing at Bond without cringing for the first few hours (not a huge beer drinker).

The paty at Bond was going full swing by the time we got there, with a large number of people crowding the bar for the free drinks, and the bar staff scrambling to keep up with demand. I had a pretty good night snapping off a few pics, then loaned my camera to Kiarobro who then proceeded to take some very cool shots and also chatted to a lot of people who were interested in some portrait work. He ended up handing out all of my cards to those who were interested, so I hope we end up with some photo shoots out of it. I'm very keen to work on my portrait skills, and if they're willing to be subjected to our cameras in return for a few nice shots, then it's a win-win situation :)

Birthday Boy

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night was a celebration for Sean's birthday, and a very large evening it turned out to be. It started about 6:30pm when Joe and I rocked up to Sean's house, where some other friends of his were congregating. So we met Carl, Jeff, John and The Captain, with Doug and Lincoln showing up a bit later. I had met Doug once before, and have known The Captain for a while, but hadn't seen him for ages.
The night started innocuously enough, we were all just sitting around, listening to sean's music and talking crap as we started to drink ourselves into the night.
As the evening wore on we started to devolve into a more raucous group, with more silliness occuring as the minutes ticked away until we realised we had better go out before we wrecked the place :)
The next stop was The Night Cat in fitzoy, to see a friend's band, Relax with Max, bang out a few tunes. We bopped along there for a bit, having a few more drinks, then after the band finished up we danced a little to their DJ, but it was decided to find somewhere more amiable. We strolled off around the corner to Bar Open, where I was immediately accosted by some very cute girls to take their photos, which was pretty cool for me ;)
Joe got hit up for a free beer by another chick, but I don't think it hurt him any :)
Then afetr a few drinks it was off to St Kilda and the bar Traffik on gray st. The bar was ok, a bit 'trendy' for their own good, but the drink prices were ok and the music was fine for dancing, although the DJ was crashing a few mixes, which is rarely helpful to your mood. We ran into a few people we knew there and had a bit of a boogie, and then headed off when they closed at 5am :)
The next stop was Bubble in the city, which was a bad idea made worse by the fact that we didn't get in. We stuffed around for a little and then the group broke up, with one bunch going back to The Captain's place to hang out and one group staying at Bubble to meet some friends that were coming. Joe, Doug and I went further into the city to try some more clubs. We showed up at Altitude just in time for them to close, then stepped across to Billboards, which was also just closing. :) As we stood outside Billboards we saw Nathan and Chris from Yakbar, so we went off with them for a quick drink and a catchup and then all went our separate ways home.
It was a fantastic night, full of fun and games and all sorts of shenanigans, and much fun was had by all.
Sunday morning, well, that's another story of pain and regret, where the alchoholic hero of the previous evening reveals itself as the villain of the story, but you get that sometimes ;)

upstairs

isles of glass
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

been spending a bit of time up on the Rialto observation deck this week, taking photos of course. So far I've managed to get a few very good shots up there, including some time in the fog, waiting for it to clear.
It really is a beautiful place, especially at night, with the lights of the city and suburbs. There's something quite magical, when standing up there on a crisp clear night, looking out, watching the suburbs sparkle a little, looking over to the port and seeing literally hundreds of flashing blue, red and yellow lights with no detail of what they are attached to. Looking down at the cars and trains moving around nearby, and out at the streams of lights making up freeways and major roads.
Go there at night, they're open until 10pm most nights, 11pm Friday and Saturday. Take a date, wear warm clothes, go on the cold nights so there's hardly anyone there :)

Spencer St

hi tech
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I think this sums it up. I case you weren't aware, there is a redevelopment running at the moment on the Spencer Street railway station in the city. This station is one of the main rail hubs for the city, handling suburban and country trains, passenger and freight trains and also acts as a hub for buses. The design involves some very advanced engineering and design, with a very distinctive 'metal wave' roof that is intended to generate a large open space for the platforms, similar to large stations in europe.
Of course projects like this are all well managed, teams of people meeting every week, going over the issues and determining an action plan to resolve them efficiently. Kind of like all big projects I guess.
Whereas in reality, all sorts of stupid stuff gets forgotten, like making a proper sign to redirect people to the platforms :)

Rose's birthday

neck it
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night was the night of Rose's birthday party. It was a pretty good night, got a chance to catch up with a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while and also managed somehow to get very drunk. I think it was the alchohol.

red noses

froggy
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday was red nose day, so a bunch of the service desk guys at work were getting into all sorts of red nose silliness and shenanigans. Which is good, shenanigans are good, silliness is good. it's all good. :)

DILO

blur-te
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Tuesday was another DILO on Flickr (Day In the Life Of) so I spent a bit of time out and about taking photos, trying out a few new locations and grabbing some new shots of old locations.
I've also spent a bit of time this week watching Coupling, which I rate as my favourite TV comedy show, along with Black Books and Spaced, it's a show I can watch over and over again and it still makes me laugh out loud.

Who's queen?

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Just a quickie blog to talk about something funny that happenned last night. I went to the Astor with Kathryn again to see Beetlejuice and The Goonies, which was a lot of fun, as both movies are timeless classics.
We sat up on the Balcony as we usually do, which has this flat railing thing in front about 15cm wide that people sometimes rest their snacks or what have you, and at the end of the second movie, as the credits weer rolling, the cat who lives in the theatre, often seen lounging on the antique couches in the foyer, strolled along the balcony rail, looking as though it owned the place and was upset that all these noisy people had come ti disturb it. Which is probably exactly what it was thinking. :)

barlife

giant squid and the masai
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This weekend was very much a blur of bar life. Friday started at Yak (of all places). It started when we ran into an old colleague, Les, on the way to the bar, so he popped in for a few drinks and a few old stories, then another ex colleague Lisa popped in for a catchup drink, and then later another more recently ex workmate Bec showed up with a friend, Mona, from work. We had some good chats with all the involved and managed to get fairly well drunk before going our various ways. I headed off to the Croft Institute where Kate was hanging out with her friend Craig and a few assorted 'film types' who seemed ok but later were found to be a little into their own work and not really much deeper than that. We then progressed onto Loop for a few more beverages and I decided i'd be better off leaving, and taking a few drunken photos on the way home.
The bulk of Saturday was spent in the flat, watching bad TV, flickring and then escaping the bad TV by re-watching some old Coupling episodes (Coupling, like a lot of british TV comedy, rocks. Still makes me laugh uncontrollably after many many viewings).
Saturday evening was an interesting one. Firstly Joe and I headed down to Southbank (cameras in hand) to go to a birthday party for a friend of ours at a trendy-esque bar on the river past Jeff's Shed. The bar (Alumbra, don't go there, even Citysearch think they're over the top) was feeling a little self-important I think, they took a booking for a Birthday party and refused to allow a guest list, told our friend that they start to get strict on the door at about 10, then proceeded to get strict about 8 and even felt 'sorry' for us that we didn't have a guest list. They were obviously trying to generate some coolness by seeming exclusive, and trying to reduce the male/female ratio to somethign a bit more balanced, but weren't willing to state it out loud (which is smart of them, as we'd 'equal op' their asses) and simply told us there was 'nothing they could do' they even told Diana (the birthday girl) that they couldn't guarantee they'd let her boyfriend in. Apparently the place never got that busy, stupid bastards. I was also keen to point out to the bouncer girl that knee high white leather boots didn't really suit her (or anybody for that matter) but it wasn't worth it.
We wandered off down the dock and took a few more photos and then went down to St Kilda to join some crew at the Prince of Wales hotel.
At the pub were Bec, Felicite, Dean, Paul and Sarah, basically the usual St Kilda crew, and not surprising since Bec now lives about 100 meters behind the pub :) We were having a good time, a bit of silliness from Felicite and Bec as they'd had a bit to drink and are usually capable of cracking me up with their silly hijinks. I also spent a bit of time talking to Boaz, an old friend who works security at the POW, who steers clear of the 'not with those shoes' type of security and more towards the 'got some id?' and 'I think you've had enough to drink' type. Which is much much better :)
Sunday was another lazy day at home, watching a bit more Coupling and then later on going to meet Kate to see a movie.
We went to see A Good Woman, which is based on Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and is a very funny film. Afterwards we went to Brunetti's to have some Coffee/Coke and catch up a little, reading some snippets of poetry from a book she'd just written, a rather pleasant evening.

parking

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I've been hanging around in carparks a lot lately. For some reason they seem to produce a lot in the way of interesting shots.
Something about the way they're constructed, low ceilings or bare concrete, fluoro lights, red pipes for sprinkler systems, polished concrete floors, plain paint, black, white, cream.
Even their exposure to the elements is interesting. Multi storey buildings with an exposed roof let you get up close and personal with the other buildings, and gives you a different angle on the steets.

The Canberra Connection

Hydrant
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This past long weekend was spent in Canberra, checking in on The Canberra Connection and making sure Mick get's his fix of Kingsley's Fried Chicken.
We went up there for Usha's Divorce party, celebrating a very happy occasion that lead to a large number of hangovers on Sunday morning :)
Drove up to Canberra on Friday with Kate, which was as much fun as an 8 hour trip can be in the pouring rain after a long week at work :) we had a fun time singing along to cheesy music in the car, and she didn't object too much when I stopped at Holbrook to take photos of the submarine buried in the ground :)
While in Canberra I stayed at the home of Therese and Edmund, who are very nice and generous people, and they treated me very nice, cooked me breakfast and didn't get too upset when I interfered with their dog Sammi's training by playing with her when they were trying to get her to be still :)
Saturday was raining too much to take photos outside, so Mick, Edmund and I went to the Australian War Memorial to avoid being trapped shopping with the womenfolk ;) Therese's brother Martin was not so lucky, as he's just moved out of home (that morning) the girls dragged him around all the homeware stores to determine what he needed. Poor guy :)
Saturday night was Usha's party, with a large crowd in attendance, and a good time had by all. At one point the guest of honour had to retire due to drunkenness, but soon rallied and got back into the party :)
Sunday was a good day to be at Therese and Edmund's, as they made steamboat for lunch, and a whole bunch of people came around for us all to tuck into some very good food. Tender morsels of meat, fish, seafood, cooked in a spicy Tom Yum soup. The only problem was working out when to stop, I ended up eating for about an hour and a half :)
Sunday was a very nice day, so after lunch the guys went off to play golf and I drove around the city a little and took some photos. Sunday night was off to Steph and Katrina's parents house for a big roast dinner.
Now one of the cool things about Canberra is that they still have fireworks on Queen's Birthday weekend (which was this weekend, for the overseas readers, I know it's not the actual Queen's birthday, it's just a holiday thing) so Ger had some fireworks and we let them off. Never mind the fact that we weren't actually in the ACT, as the suburb they live in is over the border in NSW, we let them off anyway :) Steph was pretty funny, as she was not very comfortable around the fireworks and was very keen to move away when they went off, a process that often involved fleeing in panic :) The funniest part was when one of them flew up and over the neighbours fence into their yard, Steph and Katrina's mum laughed so hard I thought she might be going to pass out. We were all laughing ourselves silly at that stage though :)
Monday was fairly boring, mainly involved with driving home, this time with Katrina in the car, the both of us laughing at the people driving who were too competetive to let anyone pass them, but too scared of speeding to actually go over the speed limit by more than afew kph when overtaking to get back in front, so they'd come up fast behind, pull out into the next lane, then drift past at a miniscule rate :) morons :)

Weekend Hijinks

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, the week is almost over, with very little time spent at work, only two days out of five, with the rest spent doing ITIL training (which was pretty cool)

Off to Canberra this weekend for Usha's Divorce party, so I won't be posting any pictures or Blog entries, but there'll be a bunch after I get back.

I've also received the Diana camera that I bought off DRP, so I'm taking it to Canberra to see what sort of shots I can come up with. Should be fun :)

In other news Berley has had the baby! :)
Baby Max was born late Thursday afternoon, weighing in at 3.5kg, Mother, Father and baby doing well, and hopefully she can finally ask him if he really sent her those emails from the womb. ;)

Training

Canine Couriers
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I'm at a training course this week for ITIL Service Management Essentials. It's going pretty well so far, and of course I like the fact that I'm not at work. It's also located down near the shrine, so I'm spending half my lunch break taking photos. The other half of my lunch break was spent eating the free lunch, because it's free, you know? :)

Bec and Deepdish

toto and the cardinal
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night I went to see Starwars again with Mick and Steph, and then we met Katrina and Tanya for dinner at Penange Coffee House, where everyone had Laksa Lemak except me. Apparently it's the best in Melbourne, so if you like that, check it out, it's on Burwood Rd near Swinburne.

Later on we went over to Bec's new house in St Kilda, just behind the Prince of Wales. We had a fun night, me, Joe, Steph, Bec, Lorna, Felicite and Dean, sitting in her new loungeroom just talking crap as per usual :) They're such a good crew, I'm a very lucky person to have so many good friends, pretty much everyone I hang out with is a really special person.

Later that night Joe and I went to see Deepdish at the Metro. The music was fantastic and we thorougly enjoyed ourselves.

Dance parties can be very high in serendipity, lots of times a random piece of luck occurs that shouldn't normally happen. There also seems to be habits that we form when we're out at these parties, so we end up dancing in the same sorts of locations all the time, we don't conciously end up up the front, or off to the right, or whatever, but somehow manage to end up in a similar location for particular types of music.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. One the left we have Toto (I'll explain the nickname later). Now we haven't seen toto in a while, over a year I think. An we didn't know he was going to this particular gig. But we used to go out on the same crew years ago, so we have the same dance patterns, the same feel for where to be on the dance floor. So in the middle of the gig, in a crowd of a thousand or so, I turn around and Toto is dancing behind us. He hadn't noticed us before, it's just where we ended up and where he ended up. I know it just sounds like a coincidence, but it has happenned many many times. In fact one of our friends, Doddsy, went through a stage for a dozen or so gigs where he always just stumbled over us :)

Toto is so named because he plays soccer at a local club, as does his older brother. His older brother used to wear red soccer boots and got the nickname Dorothy, so when his younger brother started playing at the same club...

What I did on my autumn holidays - Friday

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

The day itself was spent in repose. In slackness reposing my ass on the couch all day, which is fine and acceptable and anyway it's not your job to judge me! ;)
It was actually a strange and unusual friday for me, because I didn't drink, owing to the need to travel out to a party at East Malvern, I decided that driving was going to be easier all round.
Dropped into Yak to catch up with a few of the guys, meet Kathryn's other sister, then off to East Malvern it was.
The party at East Malvern was Mitch's birthday party, and it was a chocolate fondue party! All deserts, no main meals at all. Some great cheeses, some quince paste (which I absolutely love!) and lollies, biscuits and fruit to dip into the fondue. The food was very yummy, and there were three puppies at the party running around amongst the guest's legs all night, which was very funny to watch :)
I also had a chance to speak with a friend of Mitch's that just bought a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, which is the top of the line Digital SLR from Canon, and even got to fire off a couple of shots. Man, that's one snazzy camera. On the way back into the city afterwards I snapped a few pics at a music shop near the Rivoli, as evidenced above :)

What I did on my autumn holidays - Thursday

peek-a-boo
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Thursday was Zoo day. I went to the zoo a couple of sundays ago with Joe but we didn't get time to visit all the animals, so it needed a bit of a re-shoot.
Two of the areas that I was especially keen to try and photograph were the Reptile and Frog exhibits. It was pretty hard to get the right shot sometimes, but the varieties of frogs and reptiles is amazing, and I could easily stay there for ages just looking at those guys. Some of the frogs were only as big as a thumbnail and one of the Giant Pythons could definately swallow a small child.
The Zoo rocks, go to your local zoo right now :)

What I did on my autumn holidays - Wednesday

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This was the official lazy day of my holidays. It wasn't scheduled as a lazy day, but basically when i got up I couldn't be arsed doing anything else :)
You know how it is, youw plan for something, make some decisions about how things are going to go and then procrastinate your heart out until it's far too late to do anything at all :)
Spent some of the day watching movies, spent some of the day watching episodes of Family Guy, and basically doing stuff all. Got caught up in Flickr a bit, although I'm still well behind in all the photos I 'should' be looking at, but I'm staying afloat :)

Some good news is that I won the bid on Duane's auction for a Diana camera. Duane is one of my flickr friends that is a bit down on his luck at the moment, so he's selling off a bunch of his stuff to try and get back on the up. Included in this stuff was a bunch of old camera gear, including an unused Diana, still in the box.
Now the appeal of this is that it's almost impossible to get a 'perfect' picture with this type of camera. The lens is made of plastic, the bosy usually leaks a little light, so it creates some very interesting images and I just can't wait :)

What I did on my autumn holidays - Tuesday

High Voltage
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Tuesday was another good day, as most days are when you don't have to go to work.

Met up with Kate for lunch, down in Southbank near her new employers premises. We had a very nice lunch at The Malthouse (I had bangers & mash) and then I wandered around taking a few photos, as I have a tendency to do.

What I did on my autumn holidays - Monday

blurred and bright
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, I've been on leave all this week, so in theory I've had heaps of time to update the old blogerino, but then again, here we are :)

Monday was a pretty easy day, slept in ofr a bit and then went into the city to shoot some photos, most of which didn't really make the cut :)

Monday evening I went to the Astor with Kathryn to see a movie. The original plan was to see Flashdance, but in reality, it wasn't playing, so we ended up seeing Fame instead. Now, Kathryn hadn't seen Fame before, but had really enjoyed seeing some 80's movies the other week that she hadn't seen before, so was still looking forward to it. I had seen Fame before, but was willing to 'take one for the team' as it were. The movie was ok, still the same movie, and Kathryn even asked at one point "Why would they all go dance in the street like that?" so her soul is safe. The second movie playing was Breakdance, which Kathryn also hadn't seen, and I believe I acted in true friendship to ensure that she still hasn't seen it.

rack off!

rack off!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Definately an action packed weekend, big nights both Friday and Saturday, each followed by lots of eye and brain work Saturday and Sunday in s2art's Photoshop Workshops, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone interesting in doing more with their photographs, I got a lot out of it, although I expect I'll spend a lot more time working on my photos now :)

Cath's 40th was really good. We have a lot of good nights out, but this was one of the best parties I'd been to in a while, with a lot of people I hadn't seen in ages, and even some cheesy dancing :)

superstar dj

superstar dj
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last night at Yak was a special occasion, with Hayley working her last shift. Hayley has worked at Yak for some time, since her father Mark took over the ownership of the place. Hayley is a pretty cool girl, and will be moving on to run her own place, so we'll probably pop down there once it's open :)

Today was also a good day, as it was the first day of s2art's Photoshop workshop. I wasn't sure how much I would get out of it on the first day, if it was going to be a lot of time covering the stuff I already new, but we went straight into some interesting work and pretty much the whole day I was learning new bits and pieces, and tomorrow looks promising too.
But tonight it's off to The European Bier Cafe for Cathy's 40th, so that should be a bit of fun.

bored

bored
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Here's some news for you: Late shift gets boring :)

So what are we supposed to do? well, one option is to spend our time on flickr and blogging, so I'm doing that, but it's not as much fun when you're sitting at work doing it.

This weekend is looking pretty busy, I'm spending Saturday and Sunday in a Photoshop Workshop, Learning a bit more about manipulating my images so they come out how I want them to. Saturday night is Cathy's birthday party at The European, so that should be a bit of fun, and next week I'm on holidays!
yay hooray for me! :)
I have no fixed plans, probably going to spend some time on the couch watching movies, and some time on the computer looking at photos, and I'm hoping to spend a lot of time out and about taking photos until my eyes bleed from accidentally hitting them with the viewfinder. Which I did last night for the second time in my life. It hurt less this time, maybe I'm getting used to it, becoming accustomed to ramming a piece of black rubber into my eye.
Ooh, I wonder if there's a club I can go to where people will do that for me, perhaps Georgie can help me out there...
And here I am blogging about boredom when Kate sends me an SMS saying that she is waiting for a Tram and that she's bored. Small world :)
(small and sometimes boring)
Not that YOU people are boring, but you aren't around at the moment, so I'm bored.
I'm the chairman of the bored.
(as per Iggy)
that's all
end transmission.

Late shift = Night Shot

Flinders Lane North
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, I'm on the late shift this week, so that means skulking around the city taking night shots. The only difference this time is that I'm so far gone on this photography thing that I'm brining the tripod in with me on the tram so I can still use the SLR :)