Ted Frog's Tokyo Brog

Singapore

2010-10-06T12:56:00.005+09:00

Look at this guy looking literally over edge of a skyscraper

Had a day in Singapore after surfing in the maldives. The new casino had just opened and its hotel had an infinity pool up on the umpteenth floor of its skyscraper hotel looking over the city.

Insane

Hours of Serenity

2008-08-02T19:52:00.004+09:00

A duck

Hours of serenity. The lagoon over the road captures sunsets which make for impossibly easy photos.

A far cry from the death ray stares my Medussa has been dispensing the last few days for some unpardonnable sin which this unwitting sinner committed. From the sheer number of lines snaking across her forehead a negotiated peace is out of the question.

January swell

2008-03-22T18:24:00.006+09:00

We had a swell this January that was brown board shorts material. After a surf in which I was absolutely packing the dark ones I decided to take the camera out and join the audience. This couple were standing at one end of a pool south from our place. The waves were actually crashing fifty metres away at the other end of the pool.
With waves the size of mountains exploding on the rocks before her, Lani shows all the focus of a five year old and fixes her attention on a swing in a park

2008-01-08T16:34:00.002+09:00

Just as I finished uni for the year some friends came over from Japan. I think I enjoyed all those cliched touristy places more than they did.

The war office and child at the Opera House

Father's Day

2007-10-01T20:34:00.000+09:00

Sunset from the jetty over to the Basin

September 1st with winter already drawing to an end, the girls took me over to a little spot called "the Basin" for a Fathers day picnic which Lani proceeded to monopolise.
The experience of living in the vast urban sprawl that is Tokyo has given me a real appreciation of being able to escape...stuff. So whilst perhaps not being the "in" place to be, it was pretty bloody nice in my books.

Hours of serenity

Mum ponders the meaning of life the universe and everything whilst Lani makes preparations to nail dad with a chunk of dead jelly fish.

City Rail

2007-09-06T21:00:00.000+09:00

I haven't written of late as there's been nothing to grumble about but things've changed.

Took a train the other day and it was an hour late so I wrote an asked for a $4.4o refund for my ticket. The City Rail Business Operations Manager writes back to me saying that even though he was sincerely mine he couldn't give us a refund as it was law that they could cancel trains or do whatever jolly well pleased them.

Incredulous! What business I ask you can do this?? Sell you product then swap it for something else. They may as well say...well you can buy a ticket but don't expect things to run on time cause quite frankly we'd be jolly well surprised ourselves if they did.

Why is it only the government can enact laws that give themselves an excuse not to pull their finger out?

Pasha bulker

2007-06-22T15:13:00.000+09:00

Shots of a tanker grounded a fortnight ago just north of Sydney after a monstrous storm.

Ma sent me some shots taken from the tanker while it was still out in the storm in the process of being grounded. Look at that swell....it's jolly huge.

That top shot gives it all a sense of scale. The tanker absolutely towers over the beach after it had been grounded but then look at the volumes of water washing over the deck below.
Cook must have been off his jolly rocker setting off to find the world in his little tin pot junk.

National Parks

2007-06-12T20:23:00.000+09:00

Australia being in the middle of its worst drought in recorded history and the images splashed all over the news this weekend were of death and destruction dealt out by floods caused by the huge storms to hit Sydney over the weekend.

The caged tiger is released

Having been inside for far too jolly long we took Lani down to a national park in Sydney. It said it was 15,000 hectares. If my brain serves me right that means it's just shy of 150 square kms of bush and rivers...i can't work out how all that could be in Sydney...maths! The space here still staggers me. I guess it's like women...you're not supposed to understand them, just appreciate them...

Study

2007-05-17T19:37:00.000+09:00

She who wears the pants in this house insisted we pop up to the beach last weekend as she needed to put her head down and get some serious study behind her. But between the distractingly perfect surf, the dopey wildlife, and an overactive four year old... she didn't get a great deal done. I'm really appreciating being able to escape the crowds though. I still can't believe you can get down to a beach here on a weekend and the only dopey pelicans I have to think about are real ones...no twits on bikes weaving through crowds or old ladies who sole talents in life lie in cooking and their ability to get in the way.

Asked what my wife and I are both seriously good at, what we are both brilliantly talented at and I would probably say day dreaming...so here she is practising her gift...about to be rudely interrupted by a bit of cold winter swell.

Emerald Beach

2007-04-08T08:35:00.000+09:00

Better late than never. About two months ago we went up to a little town called Emerald Beach about 600km north of Sydney for a few weeks of sun, surf and mouth wateringly crap food.

Look at all that space

With not a soul in sight and absolutely no regard for the shame that she was about to heap on the family, Lani took it upon herself to act like a complete idiot. We had wildlife coming out our ears.

Kangaroos infront of our tent, dolphins out in the surf most days, it was nice to get back into some nature even if it was a bit dirty.
Went to a local aquarium which operated at a completely different level of efficiency to the ones we went to in Japan...some of them were amazing...but they let you feed and play with the wildlife in this place so Lani got right into it.

Home

2007-03-18T19:31:00.000+09:00

Lani and grannie at Dee Why

We've been thoroughly enjoying being back. Here we've been down to beach infront of our place for grease ball fish 'n chips dinner and Lani who is absolutely soaking up the space in this country can't keep herself out of the water.

Tokyo Disney Sea (again)

2007-03-11T18:58:00.000+09:00

From a freeway inthe centre of Tokyo

One of the things...perhaps the only thing... I swore we would do before leaving Tokyo was to visit (again) Disney Sea on a week day when there weren't so jolly many people to disgruntle me. The effort that some people must have put into making this place look real is just remarkable.

Looking over the Mediterranean harbour

There's Europe land without those hoighty toighty Europeans, America land without all those whacky gun totin' 'mericans...

The American waterfront after the rain

For the price of an entry ticket we stuffed ourselves on the haute cuisine that is Disney burgers and saw the world. Sarcasm aside it's quite an experience.

Lani and Nobuko enjoying the cultural experience.

Goodbye post

2007-01-18T00:36:00.000+09:00

A goodbye post is not complete without a list. So 'ere we go ....Goodbye:

1. pushy Japanese grandmas...I'm your game no longer.
2. point cards...my wallet has been purged.
3. crazy old men on bikes ... would you bloody well look where you're going.
4. service with a smile...even if your're just pretending to care.
5. sweet peach behinds.
6. peaceful people.
7. noise.
8. conbeenience...my work, my wife's work, two big shopping malls, four train stations, my daughter's day care are all within 10 minutes walk from our place.
We'll be back in Australia Jan. 24. Helloooooo beach and surfing.

mochi and the mafia

2007-01-07T23:41:00.000+09:00

Mochi: an altogether too doughy, grossly gluggy mass of rice eaten as new year's treat in Japan.

Apparently six people the wrong side of sixty choked to death on mochi this new year's period in Japan. It makes headlines every year.

The media make it known with great monotony that dastard Chinese criminals are behind most crimes...wonder how they'll put the spin on this one.

Saddam

2006-12-30T22:09:00.000+09:00

Saddam Hussein has been killed because killing is wrong.

Who's going to kill the guy who killed Saddam. It's all so morally screwed I reckon my four year old could see through it.

Blocked toilets

2006-12-06T23:27:00.000+09:00

I caught my daughter preparing to fill the toilet with paper last week and exploded at her.

Similarly tonight I find her in the company of an overflowing toilet with a look of complete bewilderment in her eyes. She could see the storm brewing and she came out with "Lani no playing....Lani biiig poo did it".

So here we are...It's one am and I'm trying to make myself understood to a plumber with shit all over his hands...in Japanese.

Fish 'n chip shops

2006-11-30T15:32:00.000+09:00

Met up with a friend of my wife and her Canadian husband last weekend. Took the kids down to a kids amusement park. A whole floor of a department store was packed with kids bouncy castles, slides, go carts, and the likes. Lani had an absolute ball...pun not intended. It's hard to find places in Tokyo where a kid can just let her down and be a kid.

Anyway this couple who were back here in Japan for just a few weeks said it took them about six months to readjust to Canada. I tell you what I feel that way whenever we are back in Australia. Reminds me of a British mate who back in England in holiday and hankering for some good ol' English food went down to a fish and chip shop. Not really liking fish all that much he fortunately found a cheese burger on the menu and promptly ordered it.

Upon hearing the order the guy says to him "wot...ya com ta fish 'n ship shop, 'n ya order a cheeseburger???" incredulously. And my mate goes..."well it is on the menu".

Can't wait to get back for some greasy fish and chips even if the waiters don't kowtow enough to this most respectable customer.

Tokyo Disney Sea

2006-11-21T13:59:00.000+09:00

A group of friends organised an outing up to Disney Sea for Nobuko's birthday on the weekend. I had never been there before so it was quite a surprise. Through the entrance you can see the volcano which was built up 50-100 metres above the rest of the park and had flames pouring out the top at night complete with booming eruption sounds all over the park.With the Japanese eye for detail it was so damn well done. There were some streets there where you could really lose yourself and start to believe you were in Europe somewhere or in Arabia depending on which "land" you were going through.

Toko, Ricca, and Kumi...getting far more excited than my three-year-old daughter.

Drink driving

2006-11-10T15:06:00.000+09:00

Reading the news here the other day I happened upon an article about a temple or shrine somewhere in the country that had taken it upon itself to educate the public about the dangers of drunk driving. Which is all fine except that according this article it had only just recently dawned upon the all knowing priests in charge that after re-education, visitors to the shrine should perhaps not be given free sake in a little paper cup to be knocked back before going home.

Wonder what mind bogglingly stupid things the tourists are struck with in Australia?

A completely unrelated temple...actually I think it was a castle we visited years ago in Nagano.

Parks

2006-11-01T22:33:00.000+09:00

For want of something to write about, here are a couple of shots of moi, Lani, and the old bird....who happens to resent being called "the old girl"....taken up in a park in Tokyo.
The parks here are rubree. Huge, well planned, with rubree rines of trees. A complete contrast to the colourless mess of mismatched buildings that make up Tokyo.

Nationalist nuts and baked potato trucks

2006-10-19T11:28:00.000+09:00

I was walking home from work last week passing one of the offices up the road from our place when I came across a four or five police cars complete with police officers swarming. Apparently last year this company had sold stuff to North Korea which went into their beloved leader's nuclear bombs. And so in response to this a right wing van had taken it upon itself to smash down the gates of this office in protest.

The reason I write about this is because we got a message at work from the Japanese police which apparently was faxed to as many companies as they could find that employ foreigners. The gist of the message was that halloween is coming and foreigners are noisy. So this year they are going to crack down on foreigners at halloween parties disturbing the peace.

A foreigner creating a Halloween disturbance

This reason this got on my goat was I've never seen, been (to) or heard a halloween party since I've been in Japan. What I have heard though is all manner of vans every day like the one in the video above that drown out the jumbo jets above our apartment. Baked potato vans, second hand goods vans, political vans, right wing vans, vans flogging washing poles. What makes things worse for us is we live up on the first floor so every time one of these things idles past with the loud speakers up on its roof we have to stop conversations, pause DVDs as the speakers are literally a metre or two from where we are sitting or standing.

Lani and Nobuko raising hell on halloween...up in Ginza, Tokyo

Visa approved!!!

2006-10-11T22:45:00.000+09:00

After four and a half months of deliberations the Australian government has agreed with me that my Japanese wife isn't a terrorist, drug runner, and poses no real threat to national security. The little woman got her visa approved for Australia. This means that, as long as this North Korean fruit cake with a fetish for ridiculously oversized grandma glasses keeps his cool, we should be back in Sydney around the end of January. Can't wait to go for a surf.

Maid cafes

2006-09-26T23:22:00.000+09:00

I've been meaning to get down to a maid cafe here for months now for the food of course. For a year or so now they've been all the rage with the young folk...cafes where cute chicks dress up in french maid outfits and pretend to like you as they serve you drinks.

It seems though that my time is running out as the mayor of Tokyo has come up with a completely new and utterly devious ploy to win votes. Following the advice of zillion dollar think tanks he has decided to attack crime.

His brilliant ploy to cut murders, theft, and save the kids from drugs is to ban French maids from handing out pamphlets on street corners. Prepare yourselves to watch the crime rate plummet.

I should add these photos come from google images as...well...I haven't been up to one of these places yet.

Holidays

2006-09-18T22:04:00.000+09:00

Spent last week on a small island called Yakushima about a thousand kilometres or so from Tokyo.

You think of Japan as being a pretty small place but that's just something the locals rote learn at school to repeat to the tourists. It's actually an archipeligo that stretches a few thousand kilometres in length. So it took a few flights and a couple of hours to get down there.

Surprisingly Japan has the highest proportion of forests as a percentage of land area out of all the developed countries. And in JapanYakushima is famed for its forests which reputedly contain trees over seven thousand years old. It also gets a ridiculous ten metres of rainfall a year. Here's a shot of she who must be obeyed crossing a rope bridge through an old forest in the rain....sucking in the nature.

The same cannot be said of Japan's beaches. I've seen figures stating that 80% of Japan's coast line is concreted. They have a fetish of fantastic proportions for the stuff. Every time we jumped in the car we saw concrete mixers racing off to fix nature, repair broken beaches, and crooked coastlines.

The old girl and Lani breathe easy in this shot cause the coastline behind them which had fallen into a state of complete disrepair had been repaired.

We found a lovely little set of hot pools on the coast. This old homeless looking guy with fungus all over his toe nails comes down as I'm getting in and tells me to take my kit off before I get in.

He then, to my complete exasperation, drops his gear and bends over easing himself into the pool and in the process reveals to all a pair of much too low ruby red dog's balls swaying in the gentle noreaster. He plonks 'imself down dog's balls, arse and all. And to top it all off he goes on to give me a lesson on personal hygiene...showing me how to clean myself. Anyway the following day we went there again but as you can see a typhoon swell was affecting the pools somewhat. At least it cleaned out the bits and pieces from his fungus and dog balls.

The hotel we stayed in was lovely...this was the view from the window...better than dog's balls in a noreaster anyway you look at it. It was a really nice hotel.

The Big Pick

2006-09-08T14:57:00.000+09:00

How often do you come across people on the train who you think should be confined to a nut house? Sometimes you begin to wonder whether they've shut down the nut houses here and given them all free train tickets.

Here are a few of the more bizarre stories.

Filmed by a friend on the way to work who sees the same guy every morning. How good is the other guy at pretending he doesn't notice?

This guy spots me on the train at the other end of the carriage. He makes a bee line for me, stops inches from my face. I think he's going to absolutely flatten me. Then with all the conviction and emotion of an opera singer he belts out the ABC song inches from my nose. The wierdest thing was I'm in the middle of the carriage looking around at 20 or so other people and no one batters an eyelid. no one looks at me....as if this sort of thing was normal for god's sake. speechless.

This guy playing airdrums with full sound effects out really loud all the way from Shibuya to our station....10 or so minutes. Again no one shows any astonishment. No one even damn well looks.

A lady sits down next to a friend from work. Pulls a pencil out of her hand bag, then a box cutting knife and proceeds to violently sharpen the pencil. Shavings flying all over the place.

I'm going down some escalators into the subway here. I notice a woman looking over my shoulder. I turn around and see a the long black hair and the uniform of a school girl. I look at the face and I'm greeted by a toothless grin of 60 year old man....in the school girl's uniform.

A friend has been out for an all nighter and is waiting on a platform in Tokyo at about 5am. This homeless guy appraoches him and out of a plastic bag pulls a massive dildo. He must have found it in the rubbish somewhere. Then with a face splitting smile on his dial he pops the thing in his mouth and starts sucking on it.

I'm on the train and at the next station on gets this old guy who is holding and caressing a teddy like it's a new born baby. They are dressed in matching outfits. No one looks.

A guy running up and down the carriage hopping about with arms flailing all over the shop...pretending he's a monkey...with full sound effects. Not even one sideways look of curiousity from his audience.

It's not so much the nuts that are the shock it's more the fact that I'm the only one surprised by this behaviour. Experiencing such insanity and apparently it's so normal it's not worth a turn of the head for the other 20 people in the carriage. Gets you thinking if everyone thinks this is normal who's really lost their marbles. Me. It's a surreal situation.

Engrish

2006-09-04T21:59:00.000+09:00

These are all things my students have said in class...explanations in blue.

I was fishing then I shouted out "I got arse"...I got earth....a snag.
Did you get up this morning?...what time...I thought the student was having a go at me.
Teacher: Good morning, how are you?
Student; who happens to be an economics professor: I've have already passed one lesson so my brain has been sufficiently stimulated.
I hate sex...insects
Teacher: May I help you?...this was a shopping role play.
Student: Yes I'm looking for my husband's pants....pants for my husband.
Discussion question: have you ever hurt yourself badly?
Student: I've got a urethra.
What does your wife look like?
She has long hair on her back side....at the back.
What does your wife look like? My wife has a brown eye...
Do you feel like chinese (food). Do you like feeling Chinese?
Student asks me...Am I dressed? (overdressed)
I am much more vigorous than you. I have much more big arse than you.
At the end of the lesson...I'll clean the white board myself...I'll clean myself.
Student apologising for almost being late....Sorry I almost got laid.
Milt was just a character's name in the book. Student is puzzled and in all serious asks me...What's the meaning of Milt...according to my dictionary "Milt" means fish sperm.
Talking about the student's wife's cooking ...mmmm my wife tastes nice. .
Student walks in on crutches....was laid up for ten days..I got laid for ten days.
Trying to describe kiwi fruit....ummmm it looks like hairy balls.
What do you do when you're sick?If I get sick I touch my boss...get in touch with....

How can anyone maintain a facade of sanity when you are bombarded with the likes of this everyday I ask you?

Registration office

2006-08-28T22:26:00.000+09:00

Took three different lines to arrive at a station whose name I still can't pronounce down in Yokohama today. Futamatagawa eki...give me strength.

I was greeted with amazing efficiency at the registration office though...had to go to about 7 or 8 different windows to complete different forms. Needless to say it was a bit confusing finding my way around but the lady at each window just pointed down to the floor where there were lines of various colours painted. Each time I was to follow a different colour line to the next window. This was the test.

With literally thousands of morons crowded into a building with multi coloured noodles as their guide it was complete bloody chaos.

When I'd reached the end of my last noodle I found my self in a lecture room with 200 or so other perplexed people. The lecturer came in and told us to sit. He then pulled out a very important looking stick which he proceeded to use to point to lots of impressive looking numbers for a two hour ramble on "road safety". He should have been completely demoralised as half of his audience had their heads down on their desks asleep and the other half so zoned out their eyes were focused on the backs of their own skulls. He delivered the lecture with great gusto though and we were all more road safety aware.

Fireworks

2006-08-23T23:33:00.000+09:00

Went to a fireworks display on the banks of the river between Tokyo and Kawasaki last weekend. Fireworks were a bit blah ....the people experience has always been far more interesting for me at these displays.

They have about 20 or so diplays thoughout the Tokyo area over summer. All on the banks of rivers and beaches they are like a religious moment on the Ganges with absolute bloody hordes of fireworks nuts descending on them all.

Sandwiched like sardines and boggle eyed, each member of the tin enlightened the next with their deeply philosophical interprations of the display. ooooo it's a cat. Aaaaah it's green. Oohhhh it's so pretty.

A mate from work was going to go down with us but his highly tuned pair of female feelers picked up on the fact that she who must be obeyed wanted a romantic evening evening on the banks of this concreted river, alone as couple in crowd of a million spectators. Romance.

The reason we really went down there was to show Lani the fireworks. I don't know how she managed it but 10 minutes into it she bloody well went and fell asleep. Quite a feat as at times it is a bit scarey...they explode them so low here that at times the cinders actually touch the river so you are quite close to it all.

Tokyo

2006-08-14T21:45:00.000+09:00

They say that if you draw a circle stretching out 50km from Tokyo station, on a weekday, there will be anywhere between 30 and 35 million people. Almost double the population of Australia in one city. There are stations here through which a million people pass through a day. a million.

Concrete. Ridiculous amounts of it. Buildings. Erected with no thought for their neighbour, in competition with each other for space and attention, attractive is not usually a word one would use to describe Tokyo. To be fair though I guess the same could be said of suburbia in Sydney.

Anyway you do get these little oasis' where someone has actually pulled their finger out and tried.

Saturday we got a call from Nobuko's family to say that g'ma was on her death bed. We raced up to the hospital and were met outside by the rest of the family to be told she was on the mend. But then we went up to her room and well...I guess no 93 year old is going to look hot in her nighty with tubes coming out of every imaginable orifice. There was a definitite communication breakdown though somewhere along the line. I'm still not sure whether she's sick or fine.

The locals tell me that Japanese couples have this learned ability to communicate without words but they are so disfunctional here communication wise that sometimes I am left in complete awe.

Anyway the photo above was Nobuko and her cousin communicating in this lovely little restaurant after the hospital visit.

The mobile phone debacle

2006-08-04T00:10:00.000+09:00

Today I was reminded of something mind blowingly frustrating that happened years ago. Thought I'd get a mobile here cause they are so cool ...you can watch tv on them, listen to music, they can double as remote controls if u can't find your tv control. Some phones can even... if you're in a noisy place and having trouble hearing what the joker on the other end is saying to you, if you hold them up to your head... make your skull vibrate at frequency X so that you can hear joker Y on the other end as clear as day. amazing.

So some time ago I thought it was time I got one. Went down to the local mobile shop. Upon entrance and having been bowed to and welcomed the appropriate amount of times I approached second sales assistant Sachiko and requested a new mobile phone. The sales lady in great deference proceeded with oh most honorable customer this earth worm of an establishment thanks you for granting it the favour of your custom and asks to see your respectable ID...They have this function in their language here which serves to lift others up and put yourself down or visa versa. Anyway I said certainly here's an internationally recognised document; my passport...earthworm. After taking it to the back of the shop and holding a veritable conference with her superiors she apologised that as international as it was they still don't accept it. I'm sure my eyeballs almost exploded with disbelief. She went on to request my "alien card"....which is a card all foreigners have to carry that proves to everyone, once and for all, that foreigners aren't Japanese.

I said it's at home I'll be back.

Got back an hour later. Second sales assistant Sachiko's superior took one look at it and said your names are in a different order on your passport and on your alien card....which one is your real name??? huh?! After a moment of stunned silence while the proverbial tumble weed passed through the room I stammered out a ..they're both my "real" names. The order's just different...and anyway my passport was no good wasn't it? huh? huh? Son of a pox mucked earthworm...I pointed out to him.. To which he said he'd have to call his boss in Nagoya to check which way to write my most respectable but misplaced name. With great deference I pointed out that he could just write my name any old goddam way and indicate the family name in bloody brackets for example. After a great show, for in Japanese there is no "no", of sighing and hissing and arrring ...i realised the game was lost and said I'd be back.

After a two hour lunch I went back and got my phone.

It was at least a month later, when I received the bill addressed to a certain "Stefanm Ark Freeman". That made my bloody blood boil.

Disneyland

2006-07-31T00:38:00.000+09:00

After putting it off for years we decided to visit Tokyo Disneyland....guess it was one of those things to be notched up as an experience.

The whole place functioned like clockwork, amazingly well organised. And with a fanatical army of street sweepers sporting squeaky clean colgate smiles ready to swoop on any discarded scraps it was as clean as all hell too.

The most fun part from my point of view was Splash Mountain. For those of you who don't know it you gently float along in a fake log raft kind of thing along the top of a mountain with soothing music in the background and cuddly characters popping here and there to say hello. Then when you are suitably relaxed and lulled into a sense of security there's a series of what feel like vertical drops down waterfalls....it goes damn fast...which is probably the whole point of it.

Anyway what happened was Lani was tall enough by about a centimetre to go on the ride. So she unwittingly skipped along the path , hopped into the raft with a great huge grin on 'er dial. Literally seconds later however, after the first drop, she was packing the darkies big time...."da da daddy...la la lani no like this one ....lani go home now". You can't just hop of a roller coaster in mid flight though. You get the picture. She enjoyed the other rides but was bit more knowing.

King Mickey
One thing that has taken a long time getting used to here was grown adults going off their trolley over kids characters. There's unwritten quest for everything cute and cuddly here.

I think even Lani was somewhat disconcerted to see grown women arms flailing above their heads, running across the tarmac, all to touch King Mickey.

Led Zeppelin

2006-07-29T19:14:00.000+09:00

went to a Led Zeppelin copy band concert up in Shibuya ...one of the centres of Tokyo the other night. The Japanese are famed for having an amazing ability to copy things down to the most minute of details. So it was something close to deja vu when this band decided to copy a concert of Zeppelin's, originally filmed in the 70's in Madison Square Garden. The hair, the lighting, the costumes, the band members moves were all copied impeccably. What was completely and utterly dumbfounding though was when they proceeded to copy the improvisation from the original concert.

It was daaaamn good though...something I think may be only the Japanese could pull off with their absolute and almost bordering on anal attention to detail.

First post

2006-07-28T23:05:00.000+09:00

Non an altogether inspirational title for the first entry but for the technologically challenged with greater things pressing down on me it'll have to do.

I've decided to start this for those of you who are interested in my extremely exciting life and for the rest of you who just want to keep in touch. It's been about six years since I left lots of friends and family behind in Australia and so I thought I should get off my sweet peach behind and make an effort to keep in touch. So here we are...