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.

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!!

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....

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?

Hope in Adelaide

I was in Adelaide on the weekend for probably the last time (for the next few years anyway) as a visitor. Scary as that fact is, a brief moment of confusion would later calm my fears as I realized that maybe Adelaide won’t be so bad after all. I was confused because I was waiting for a bus on King William St, (Melbournians, think Collins or Bourke.) & lo and behold a tram rattles on past me. I got some serious déjà vu and as a tram rolls past the start of Rundle Mall. I wondered for a second if I was in Melbourne.

But alas, I was not. I was still on King William St just opposite Rundle Mall. For those who don’t know, the 1 remaining tram line in Adelaide has just recently been extended so that it runs the full length of the city, instead of half way. This was a revolutionary thing for Adelaide & the idea of tram lines in the busiest part of the city was a difficult one for many to swallow. But it is slowly being accepted. They haven’t quite mastered the art of turning right across tramlines yet, but all things in time.

This tram line may only be a small extension, but it gives me hope for the future. Any step which makes Adelaide more like Melbourne is a positive one. Perhaps, just maybe some South Aussies are starting to see the light. Today, it’s tramline extensions. But who knows? Tomorrow they may build freeways through the city, or waste large amounts of money on abstract architecture. (ala. Fed Square or ‘Southern Cross’) Adelaide may even get to host major sporting events.

A Peak at The Future

This time 1 week ago I had just finished a delicious $12 meal on O'Connell St & was strolling with Tiarnee through North Adelaide marvelling at some of the obscenely large houses that exist there. It was a great weekend, where we could just hang-out for once without the pressures of 'seeing' & hanging around our family. We could actually just 'live' a little bit, we didn't have to squeeze 2 weeks of catching up with each other into 48 hours. It was nice.

I also got to have a bit of a look through my future work-place. It was very cool. Don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but I'll be programming something, most likely web-orientated stuff(hopefully!) in Java or C#. The corporate world looks to be a very different world to the one I'm used to. I don't think I'll mind being at the bottom of the food chain (corporate ladder). Oh, & I DON'T have to wear a suit to work. Standard dress in the office is jeans and T-shirts. Which I'm very happy about. Almost as awesome as the dress-code, is the fact that I might be getting flown to Melbourne one weekend and put up in Crown-Towers to attend seminars and stuff. Food, flights, accommodation etc. included. Hopefully it happens!

Anyway, the weekend came at just the right time. Reminded me not to get too bogged down at Uni, and that yes, after all these years of study I'm finally working towards something tangible.

Not Yet Anyway

I was digging through my rarely checked Hotmail account just now when I found this, sent to me a couple of weeks ago by a reformed South Australian. Seen as how I'm moving to Adelaide next year, I thought I'd go through them to see how South Australian I hopefully am not yet.

I'll bold all the ones that apply to me

YOU KNOW YOU ARE FROM SA WHEN.............

• You have been to Glenelg and got extremely sunburnt
• You know what fritz is
• You say plaaaant not pleeeent
• You have the same friends from high school
• You can't go out without seeing someone you know
• You really miss the old Sizzler cheese bread!!!
• You like ugg boots, not moccies
• You have a very strong opinion on Lleyton Hewitt
• You have been to one of the following lookouts: Stirling, Mt Lofty, Penfolds Rd, Sunnyside Rd, Eagle On The Hill, Montefiore Hill,Windy Point
• You know what Fruchocs are.
• You believe that anything that has ever breathed or moved in Adelaide air is 'Adelaide's Own'.
• You're well aware that for one month of the year, it is impossible to travel from one side of the city to the other, and during this period you will acquire a passion for V8s, a love of the arts, appreciation for world music, and expertise in food and wine.
• You pour Farmer's Union Iced Coffee on your breakfast cereal.
• You will never forgive Melbourne for stealing our Grand Prix. Never.
• You know how 'dance', 'pool', 'castle' and 'graph' are SUPPOSED to be pronounced. - NOTE: YEAH, the only one that has an 'r' sound in it, is the word that actually contains that letter.....
• You get offended when people from Western Australia call SA part of the "East Coast".
• You insist on calling AAMI Stadium, "Footy Park".
• You say a Pie Floater tastes great just to maintain your street cred.
• You believe that other states' time zones are not good enough for us. - I believe the inverse.
• You acknowledge that, while half of our state is uninhabitable, you know that it's still the greatest.
• You think the 'Tiser has no journalistic integrity whatsoever....and yet you still read it every day.
• One word: Haigh's - Never been there, heard they're really good & probably will when I move there.
• You buy your CDs from shabby "Big Star" outlets
• You know that Victor Harbor is the only place to be for Schoolies.
• You forgave the Chappells for the 1981 Underarm Incident purely out of South Australian patriotism.
• You have a unfettered love of either Crows or Port to the complete exclusion of the other.
• You know the people out on the Torrens are either tourists or rowers. No one else would go near that water. - That sounds strangely like the Yarra......
• You think the Festival Centre is a wonder of modern architecture. -HAHA, Like Federation Square..... *Sarcasm*
• You console yourself that, despite all our faults, at least South Australia wasn't built by convicts.
• You can leave work at 5:15 and miss "peak hour traffic" -Bull, it's always peakhour because they havn't thought of building Freeways yet.
• You can have a grin at the fact that Adelaide's second name is "City of Churches"
• You're not scared by Aboriginals walking around Adelaide in speedos and gumboots - That guy was (is?) a legend......
• Your 'sports gurus' are KG and Cornesy
• You either live on one side or the other of the great divide (Gepps
• Cross intersection)
• You're aware that everything is not just good, it's "heaps good"
• You still claim Anthony LaPaglia as an Adelaidean cos he worked in a shoe shop in Rundle Mall once.

A Future Beginning

"You're a white-collar worker, YOU'RE TURNING liberal!" -Tiarnee

"I can't believe you're joining the corporate world" - Sus

Only the most avid of my readers (Read: Aaron & Sus) will have noticed that back in March & April, I alluded to travelling to both Adelaide and Melbourne. I didn't however allude to the fact that these two trips were very much related. Apparently, I did well enough in the inital group (& personal) interview to warrant a second look. The second look was in Melbourne, where I was asked a series of programming questions and asked to work them through on a board. I honestly thought it went ok without being brilliant. I was told then & there that I would hear either way within 2 weeks. That was almost a month ago.

Since then, I'd all but accepted the fact that I hadn't gotten the job. That was ok, it is after all only June, which is heaps of time to find other stuff. I did however want to put the whole idea to rest in my mind, an email and 3 working days later, I get a 9am phone call from mum. I have recieved a big manilla envelope in the mail. She starts reading, I sit up in bed, no longer in the drowsy half-asleep mode I was when she rang.

I been offered a positon as a 'Graduate Software Engineer' with this company.

I found that out on Wednesday, but it's only starting to sink in now. While I type a blog on company time in my current job. I'm the most blessed guy going around I rekon. I'm in constant awe of Gods faithfullness to me, inspite of my non-faithfullness to him. He has had every step of my life planned, and never failed to silence my own doubts about his ways.

I'm going to be a 21 year-old Graduate Software Developer. It's amazing. My future is starting now, who (God) knows where it will end.

I'll leave you with this quote:

13I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:13