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 :)