Throught for the evening...

I was predestined to choose to make this post. You chose but were pre-destined to read it.

The Foxtel Lap Shameless Plug

<shameless plug>

Hi all,

I have joined the Deloitte team to run in the FOXTEL Lap which supports the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, dedicated to helping children live happier, healthier lives.

I'll be running/walking for 30 minutes on the Deloitte/Eclipse treadmill to complete as many 100m laps as I can, on Friday 17 Oct, 2008, in Victoria Square, Adelaide.

Please support my run by making a donation here: http://www.foxtellap.com.au/goto/sponsor. All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

For more information visit www.foxtellap.com.au

The FOXTEL Lap is proudly supported by FOXTEL, Nova, NAB, Eclipse and Virgin Blue.
Many thanks,

Jonny
</shameless plug>

Please sponsor me!

A lot at steak

Last weekend I had a bucks weekend here in Adelaide. As apart of the awesome and very fun weekend we were very Australian and went to the 'Ned Kelly's Retreat' restaurant in North Adelaide. Saturday was a day of firsts for me. A day where I did several things I'd always wanted to do. Including.... eating a 1 kilo steak. It was AWESOME!!! 

'Euroa Kilo Steak' - Medium-Well done with Gravy.

Thinking about it however, I can see many parallels between eating a kilo of steak and getting married.

1. It's takes ages to arrive. Which is good and bad. Whilst you are excited and impatient while waiting, the reality is that any sooner and it would still be raw and not enjoyable at all. 
2. The closer you get to it arriving (6 weeks today!) the faster you want it to arrive. 
3. When it finally arrives, you realise the enormity of whats about to happen and wonder if you've bitten off more than you can chew. 
4. You start, and it's all you've imagined and more. Juicy, tender and you savor every moment.
5. Despite the amazing beginning you realise that it is a marathon and not a sprint. You're in this for the long haul, come what may. 
6. You're a little way in and it keeps getting better! Despite the initial excitement wearing off, it's still delicious and nourishing. 
7. You have tough patches.
8. Despite the tough patches & the taste being a little different to how it was at the start. You're still glad you did it.
9. You get towards the end and you wonder how on earth you made it this far. But deep down you know it was through persistence, patience, a lot of hard work, and encouragement from those around you. 
10. It's something you only wish to do once!

And Finally:

It is satisfying. Immensely more so than you ever imagined. It is wonderful and beautiful. 

Tiarnees 21st!

I've just had the most awesome week! It was my beautiful fiancees 21st birthday on Wednesday & so to celebrate she's had a 4 day celebration! 

After work on Friday I got all dressed up (shirt & tie) & took Tiarnee out for a (suprise location) dinner at the Mt. Lofty Summit resturant. After a deceptively large piece of Atlantic Salmon & a top shelf LL&B we admired the view of Adelaide for a couple of minutes in the cold and then drove back down to my place. The suprises there continued when I had my first ever attempt at a mud cake iced and decorated along with her present. (See photo) I might add that the attempt at the cake was VERY successful. It was a very fun night.

Then last night was her party at a pub in Adelaide. Again a fun night with a good parma* some more yummy Cheesecake Shop cake & even some time on the D. floor. As well as catching up with everyone! 

So Happy Birthday Tiarnee! This year is going to be the most amazing of our lives!! So far!

*I will most likely never have a great parma ever again. The reason? No parma anywhere I've seen has come close to matching the $10 Bunny Pub parmas had back in 1st year Uni. I'd be scared if I ever saw a chicken that big in real life....

Time well spent

This is my first post in 2.5 months and I've done 4 posts since March. Not that nothing has been happening for the past 5 months, quite the opposite. You wouldn't know it from this blog but not only is the date for the big day finally set, it's only just over 2.5 months away. It's actually all a bit surreal. After going out with Tiarnee since the beginning of 2005 & being engaged since July last year it's hard to believe that it's almost here.

I've grown so much in the past few months & yet such growth only makes me painfully aware of the growth still to come. I've lost weight, through a (generally) healthier lifestyle. It seems getting paid to sit on your butt in front of your computer is healthier than doing it voluntarily at Uni. God has been teaching me an awful lot about myself. I've almost adapted to living in Adelaide, the traffic lights still annoy the you-know-what out of me. I still think it's ridiculous that it takes me 15-25 mins to travel 4.5 kms (That's right Melbournites, I can afford to live that close to the CBD) every morning& that it's no slower to ride my bike than catch the bus. The excitement & responsibility of becomming a husband both scares me to death and gives me a reason to get up in the morning. Over the last few weeks I have and am confronting issues that I've been ignoring and running from for almost half my life. I've started playing squash again. I've won 1 of my first 4 matches. This week I learnt a fair bit about Microsoft SQL Server 2005 & stored proceedures. Oh & did I mention I'm planning a wedding? Invitions are currently under construction.

It's great running through life having little idea as to what I'm doing, but knowing that God does.

My aim is to start posting fairly regularly again. There's plenty going on that I could blog about, and when I was posting regularly, there were actually people reading what I had to say. The amazing thing is that this is true inspite of the fact that I was just a bored Uni student back then.

Before and After

I posted an image last year showing how far apart Tiarnee & I were. Doing it 'tough' as a 'long-distance relationship'. I can now do a before and after to show how things have changed.

BEFORE

AFTERThere's so many things I could say (& hopefully will with some organisation) about my move to Adelaide. But this is the awesome thing that stands out amongst them.

Long Time No Blog

It's been over 2 months since my last message here & as a result my blog traffic has died. SO to the person from:

Domain Name		people.net.au ? (Australia)
IP Address		218.215.59.# (SWIFTEL COMMUNICATIONS)
ISP		SWIFTEL COMMUNICATIONS

Thankyou for your interest in my blog. I'm not quite sure why you've been visiting up to 3 times a day for the last month (at least) waiting for an update, but I appreciate your interest! This is a shout out to you. I admire your persistance. I also wonder why you would check so often?

Hope in Adelaide III

For any lingering doubters out there I offer 2 more pieces of evidence that Adelaide is indeed struggling for its own identity and is copying the superior state to it's east.

1. Flinders St. Yep. That's right. There's a Flinders St in the Adelaide CBD. Again a poor imitation of it's namesake in Melbourne.
2. At State Youth Games on the weekend we (Bordertown) be-friended a cool bunch of people from the Hawthorn Church of Christ. The people that named this place either had no imagination or, more likely had come from Victoria and were trying to emulate the awesome place they'd just visted.
   

Hope in Adelaide II

I have blogged before about the Melbournisation of Adelaide, and after living here for 2 weeks I've noticed some more signs that indeed Adelaide is confused about its own identity. Some days I wonder if I ever left the Garden Sta ergh.... Place to Be.

What else have I noticed? Names. For starters, I live in a suburb called 'Fitzroy'. That's right, Fitzroy, SA. Not to be confused with the Melbourne suburb and former AFL club of the same name. I'm fairly sure that Fitzroy in Melbourne would've been around for longer than Fitzroy in SA. I thought it slightly odd at first, but then I realised that I got off the bus some days at Victoria Square. Thats right. Adelaides most central park, just opposite the GPO is called Victoria Square. You can't miss it. It has a tram line running right through it. It's funny, because there arn't any SA parks in Melbourne. Surely these two are just co-incidence right? Perhaps, but consider this. As far as good places to eat in Adelaide go there are 3 spots to choose from: Rundle St, Glenelg & wait for it........ & no I'm not joking MELBOURNE ST! Yes that's right, one of Adelaides best eat out strips is Melbourne St. Next time you are in Melbourne, ask your friends if they wanna go eat out on 'Adelaide St' & see what response you get.

A Big Change

Broadband Speed Test Results

Test run on 24/02/2008 @ 10:13 PM

Mirror: TPG
Data: 15 MB
Test Time: 12.03 secs

Your line speed is 10.42 Mbps (10417 kbps).
Your download speed is 1.27 MB/s (1302 KB/s).

I moved down to Adelaide yesterday, and start my new job tomorrow. I've gone from living 600+ km from my fiancee, to living less than 3km from her. Oh, & did I mention I've got ADSL2+?

Life is exciting!!

Mud Soccer

I went along with the Kaniva Youth Group to Mud Soccer on Friday night. It was a really top night with 20-25 youth coming along and getting dirty. The field (or 'pitch') was 15m wide by 25m long and was 20-30cm deep in mud all over. It was made on a mates farm with the use of bore water & lots of it.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about the whole night for me was that over 20 youth showed up. There is only approx 100 school age teens in Kaniva and so somthing like 20% of the youth in town went to Youth Group on a Friday night. I think churches in Melbourne or even Adelaide would be overwhelmed if 20% of the 12 - 18 year old age bracket showed up on any given Friday night.

When I was a kid...

A good friend of mine (Anthony) made the observation to me the other day that at some stage in the (very!!!) distant future my kids will be swimming in a lake somewhere and I'll be able to say to them "I proposed to your mother under a jetty." Where upon they will acuse me of being stupid or making the whole story up. To which I will reply to them, "No, I proposed under the edge of a jetty in a dry lake." After their laughter/ astonishment has subsided I'll be able to say a line that I have been waiting my whole life to say.

"Back when I was a kid it never rained. Not like it does now, you kids have never seen it really dry. We used to make jokes about it being this wet!"

The above lake is currently dry for only the second time in recorded history. (~120 years) The special location was underneath the jetty shown above.

Reverse Seachange Learnings - #2

Observation #2 - Balls

Adelaide has balls.

Reverse Seachange Learnings - #1

I'm currently moving from my home at Kaniva to Adelaide. So you might say I'm moving from one 'backwater' to another. 'Backwater' it maybe, but I'm still moving from a town populated by 800 people, to a town populated by over 1,000,000 people. So over the next few weeks I'll be blogging about observations that I've made about life in the 'big smoke'. (Although, again Adelaide barely qualifies)

Observation #1 - Jonnys principle of 'safe turning'

While in Adelaide last week I noticed a strange phenomena while driving in and around the city. I observed a pattern of traffic behavior not written about in any driving manuals or tests. I observed that the safe distance required to turn a corner at any given intersection increases/decreases directly in proportion to the distance from your nearest CBD. I also believe that this relationship could be modeled mathematically, if I was that way inclined.

Basically while a 50 meter gap in traffic is ample in Adelaide, to pull out in front of someone that close at Kaniva is rude and would be considered dangerous.

Stay tuned for more observations....

21

So I'm officially an adult now. All grown up. Responsible. Mature. Educated. You know, all those things that society expects me to be.

I had my 21st party on Australia Day which was good fun. Approx. 50 people came, so it wasn't too huge. But the engagement party was the big one, so that was ok.
Speeches were given by:

1. Graham - (father of a couple of my mates) said some really nice stuff about the friendships I've had with not just his kids, but others in the area.
2. Tiarnee - Congratulated me on everything I'd achieved to date & reminded me of the big future I have in front of me& encouraged me to take opportunities as they arise. Was really nice and personal without being too gushy. Not that I would have minded.
3. Dad - his favorite memories of my life & how I'm entering the big bad world now.
4. Me - I thanked everyone for coming, especially the non-locals for traveling. I also stated about how my 21st was worth celebrating, because after 21 it is all down hill and everything that is good that can happen to a guy is happening to me this year. Because:

• I'm starting work.
• Getting my own place and furnishing it with my own stuff.
• Getting a really good job and my own money.
• Getting married.
  
• I'm still young enough to enjoy all the above.

I then said something serious about how lucky I am and how I've been so blessed with everything around me.

Can life get any better than this?

The Death of Innocence

Well after a couple of months in the blogging wilderness I'm back on the cusp of so called "Adulthood."

It's been an amazing couple of months in which so many things have happened.

The first was that I finished my Bachelor of Information Technology, so in May I'll be able to have the letters B.I.T. after my name. Exciting stuff.

After leaving Ballarat on election day I drove a truck almost non-stop (full-time +) until New-Years. This gave me some badly needed money to tide me over until I start work on the 25th of February. I wonder if O-week at work will be anything like O-week at Uni.

I also managed to spend at least half of the above earnings on a 3-day trip to Adelaide with Tiarnee. The money was spent on furniture for my flat that I was lucky enough to secure in a prime location just north of the city. It really is the perfect spot, only a 10-15 minute commute for me to work, a 5 minute (or less!) commute to see Tiarnee, and for her, is walking distance to her bus route to Uni. So because she is moving in later in the year, she wanted a say on the table and chairs, fridge, and Queen-Sized bed that I (we!) ended up purchasing. 'Discussions' were had, but the fact that we where still on talking terms for the trip home really did bode well for the future.

The last 2 weeks saw our family with an exchange student from NZ. Jacques was a Protea turned Kiwi who was really good to show around the place, and even came to Ocean Grove with us. That is where we've been for the last week. In Ocean Grove relaxing, playing tourist in Melbourne & did I mention relaxing? Oh, & cheering for Marcos Baghdatis.

In summary, those people that told me that "remember this time, school years are the best years of your life" where oh so wrong. I hated school. But I'm loving now. God is amazing to me, and I seriously sometimes wonder if it can get any better. Did I mention I'm turning 21 tomorrow?