The one with the Unexpected and Extended Maiden Voyage

During my 2 and a half months off I was called back to the new boat due to some delays. This was it's maiden sail as a construction vessel so I wasn't as annoyed as I should have been (plus I was probably wearing quite a butt groove into the couch). A one week journey became a three week struggle to have all the systems up and running before we sent her on her merry way to Africa.

We had a number of problems with quite literally all of the systems not functioning correctly. Even one of our Thrusters decided to pack it in and had to be fitted out with new electrical wiring. The crane was doing things it was not supposed to and the A&R winch was taking a week longer than the 24 hours it was supposed to take to set up and get working.

It soon became apparent that we would be racing the clock to be home in time for Christmas. As we entered the final week we began to see a light at the end of the tunnel. This moment of joy was short lived however due to what was described on TV as "the big freeze" moved in. Yet again the UK was surprised that there was a downpour of snow during winter and it's unpreparedness became an issue as all of the Airports began to close.

I finally got off the vessel in Las Palmas (to a blazing 33 degrees) that was rather tempting to stay if it wasn't for my girl being stuck back in the UK. I ended up rolling the dice and jumping on a flight to Madrid. This was a fifty / fifty chance on being able to take the booked second flight back to London. Unfortunately I was not allowed to check any luggage all the way through due to the fact all flights to UK were cancelled.

We touched down in Madrid quite late and I was not confident of making the flight if it was even running at all. Waiting at the carousel for what seemed like an eternity I saw the next flights boarding time creep past me. When my bag eventually came through I ran up to the check in to be greeted by a very relaxed lady who was in the middle of a conversation with her collegue. She gingerly took my ticket scanned it into the computer and sent my luggage on its way. What surprised me the most was we had zero conversation so as I asked if my flight was still going she smiled said thank you and turned back to her friend.

By this time my departure time had passed so I legged it through customs towards my gate. On my way to the flight I saw a queue about one hundred metres long that led into a sign reading "Flights to be re-booked for the UK". My fear was soon eased when I got to my gate to be greeted with a line of people boarding. Once on the plane I was rather surprised to see the flight only a quarter full but certainly glad for the extra space.

After the flight I got in quite late but still had a day of shopping left to get my presents (there is only so much you can buy on the internet for your girl) and arrange a massive feast that would last us 4 days of the holidays.

I guess it was one of those times where all the cogs come together but one little hitch could have sent it all into a downward spiral to a very un-merry Christmas!

The One with the Parisian Birthday

The girl took me to Paris for my birthday for a glorious game of rugby, lots of wine and a kilo steak. We arrived to a couple of hours of light snow fall before heading out for dinner at my favourite restuarant 'Cafe Du Commerce' where I decided to tackle the gigantic kilo steak. It wasn't long before I was engulfed with the meat sweats but pushing on I dominated it into submission.

The next night was a pleasant surprise where the Wallabies once again showed what they are capable of by destroying the 6 Nation champions (59-16) in a display of form they surely need to carry over next year to be any hope of lifting Bill.

The One from the Canyon of the Crescent Moon

"Da na na naaaa...... da na naaaaa"

The whole way down the valley I had the Indy tune bouncing throughout my head. It was inspiring to come across such a magnificent rock carving that is the Treasury. Unfortunately only a penitent man shall pass and I was unable enter but I figured that it was for the best - the grails powers cannot be taken past the sacred seal...

The One from the Dunes

The girl and I headed for our middle eastern expedition. Our first stop was in Dubai where the girl was unfortunately working. This enabled me to stay in the hotel pool during the day to frequent the in-pool bar for some delicious cocktails. After a couple of days the girl had finished her wheeling and dealing so we headed to visit one of my mates from school in Qatar.

It was rather amusing to arrive to Doha amongst a bunch of sheets and tea towels in my shorts and pluggers but it was good to see the Mack was picking us up in the same attire.

The Mack took us out for possibly the only thing to do in Doha - cruise the dunes. We trekked our way to the inland sea. It was actually on the border of Qatar and Saudi Arabia so in essence we were about a 500m swim from a very painful death. It was crazy to see the locals head down some of the freakishly steep dunes sideways before righting themselves to drive off at the bottom.

We went for a local meal where I was able to sample some delicious 'baby camel'. After we went to a hotel to devour some cocktails - interesting you have to take a passport to prove you are not from the country to be able to booze it. It is safe to say we devoured a reasonable quantity, including a number of very strong rums prepared by the Mack on our arrival home, before my memory dims - although I woke up the next day around midday still very drunk to the sound of the Macks 2 year old daughter berating him, "Bad Daddy!" And the hangover I got later that afternoon I was inclined to agree!

The One with the Cuter Nephew

I had decided not to rush back to Sydney for the birth of Kai because (what I told everyone was) of offshore commitments and the fact he might be late (how right I was). The real reasons were that I figured all babies are ugly when they are born and really need to grow into their skin and who remembers anything after the birth – everyone is excited about the new baby and I don’t get all the fuss I deserve.

I can now assure you he has shed the unwanted ugly new born syndrome and seems to be a little cutie. Time will tell if he has the ability to grow the chick magnet features his uncle paraded around for so many years but the force is strong with this one so I have high expectations. So in light of all of this I best arrange my travel plans back to Sydney to commence his seduction to the dark side....

The One from the back deck

Currently being stuck working out in a container on the back of my new boat (here is the view from my desk) I have come to appreciate the simple pleasures of my soon to be ready office - including a very good stereo system. It is in the last 6 weeks of construction before handover and we are not allowed into the accommodation for another 3 weeks. This is ok because I have been put up in a decent hotel and all my meals are paid for up front (as opposed to having to expense them and claim them back later which as anyone else who has to do this knows – blows immensely).

Anyone who works with me probably knows how much I need my music on to be able to be productive. Usually in the London office I have my very comfortable head phones to cut out the office banter and zero me in on my work. Unfortunately I do not have the luxury of my headphones out here so I have just been playing the music through my laptop speakers. They are very ordinary and I have decided to compile a list of tracks that should never be played this way:

Hail Hail – Pearl Jam
Plush – Stone Temple Pilots
Comfort Me – Pacifier
Anything by Faith No More

I must say however that Orbital and Chemical Brothers sound particularly good!

The One on the New Boat

I have arrived in Holland for the final stages of the fitout of the new boat I am working on. I moved into this new role for a couple of reasons - to be able to move to New York with the girl (no need to elaborate on this opportunity) and also to have some equal time off (I am sick of cancelling holidays or leaving them early because of changes to the schedule).

I am liking the Netherlands because I don't pay Norwegian prices for beer. The food is awful and it is raining but I as long as I am not getting over charged for booze it is ok...

The One in the Oldest Restaurant in the World

During our Spanish tour we dined (twice) at the oldest restaurant in the world. The ambiance was excellent, the suckling pig devine and the wine very agreeable. It is called 'Botin' and in the heart of Madrid. My recommendation could not come high enough and all I can say is sample it for yourself to experience what cannot be described by words.

The One introducing Kai (nee Benny Jr)

Those following my blog my remember a certain bet my sister in law made with me last year at Oktoberfest. The choice of name for their first born child will be made by me - Benny Jr. I was very skeptical at the time whether such bet would be honoured (can anyone imagine my brother agreeing to this one?) but such was the amusing nature of the bet a fair few people had been calling him (unknown sex at the time) - Benny Jr. So it became no surprise to anyone when the gelfling was born that they indeed would not uphold the bet and decided to go off with a very different direction - Kai John Gilkes. I suppose I cannot begrudge the little fella for his parents misgivings, however I will be sure to tell him in the future at some stage. Otherwise he will end up reading it here anyway....

The One with the Vomiting Gelfling

Got back from Nogland last night and was in the process of trying to clear immigration when a very unfortunate event happened (well not for me). Lucky I was in a fast moving line which I pride myself on being able to pick. I usually see how many desks are open in each line and make sure the immigration officer manning the desk are not smiling (= chatty to people) or frowning (= scrutinise the passport of anyone withour ginger hair). Avoiding queues with families is another handy tip as they are never prepared when they reach the desk and the smaller the children the more likely the immigration officer is likely to try and have a talk with them. As such my theories came to fruition when I heard a lady a couple of desks over ask for the family with "the little girl" to come and be let through. As I turned my head to see why she would be saying that I saw a poor gelfling maybe 5 years old with a gush of vomit pillowing from her mouth. Had I not seen it from my own eyes, from the amount that came out, I would not have believed it was entirely from this child. I doubt a tanked up bogan after a night on the lash, full of booze, a kebab and portion of chips would have come close to this amount. Never the less I continued to move on satisfied that my knowlege of British immigration was absolutely flawless and proceeded to leg it home.

The One with the View

So I am back offshore - getting towards the end of my trip. We just moved to a new location overnight. Opening the window blind in my cabin this morning I was greeted with this sight. A drill rig on location about 100m from us. Being a BP job I wasn't too keen to hang around this at all, so we finished up as quickly as possible and hastily made our exit!

The One with the Photo of the tiny..... um.... Boots?

You know when you think up something in your head but don't really follow the thinking through to the end? I posted something the other day about my diary from our trip around the world when I was about 6 or 7. It is a very good read and a laugh. For some reason I mentioned though that there was a picture my parents had of me as a child that I probably should have kept to myself. Never the less I am a man of my word, so here it is, me in the Buff.

Notice the size of the boots that are almost fitting me. They are my dads....

Not really sure what I was looking at here. Maybe my parents decided to finally tell me I had no pants on?

The One with some interesting speeds

The girl and I drove up to the Lakes District for a weekend away. I had borrowed the cuz's Audio A3 Turbo which despite being a diesel - has some zip. The funny thing about London is there are numerous locations for speed camera's (not necessarily an actual camera at the spot). When you get out of the city and onto the motorway it appears that you can choose to go whatever speed you want. The reason I say this is because there is a distinct lack of camera's and actual speed limit signs. Supposedly you are to know the motorway speed limits before you travel but we thought it rather odd they wouldn't have a sign along the whole route.

The thing with being an Australian is we are used to dealing with kms. Unfortunately the brits have not taken on the metric system fully (perhaps a reluctance to go for anything invented by the French) so distance and speed is measured in miles. The distance doesn't really seem to throw you however the speed aspect does. The difference between a couple of kms and a couple of miles is significant and it is quite easy to rack up some excessive speed when overtaking.

Without a doubt BMW owners are hoons. I did a fair share of passing on the journey however if there was one constant - I was frequently being passed by BMW's and can't recall ever passing one myself. There was the odd Lancia, Merc or fellow Audi driver that cruised past but not in the quantity of the beemers. In fact I use the term "passing" lightly because they quite literally flew past. The sleek sedans, top off convertibles and even the poxy 4-wheel drives head their feet made from metal!

(Interestingly H+ has a BMW and I can imagine her passing quite a few people on the Motorway).

The One with the Norwegian play

Trying to culture myself up, the girl and I decided to go to a play by Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwrite, called "Hedda Gabler." This one starred Rosamund Pike as the heroine, which certainly increased my interest in the play. I have to say her performance was superb and if the girl wasn't the hottest thing since sliced....um.... toast? Then she might have some competition.

The story itself winds along with a steady pace before an almighty fast paced climax that took everyone by surprise. I would highly recommend this play on the proviso it is well presented with some decent acting. A good lead is also a bonus!

The One stuck in Nogland

The day the girl and I flew back from Aus we went straight into work. This seemed like a reasonable idea at the time (especially after we secured business seats) until after catching up on a few emails I got called into the bosses office. "Norway wants you to fly over tonight" was her opening statement and I could see she was reluctant to force me to go. Not really thinking it through I decided to leave my comfy bed for a couple more days and headed for Norway.

This turned out to be a critical error as the day I landed that unpronouncable Icelandic volcano, blew its muffin top. Not realising the impact to my next couple of weeks I found it mildly amusing that I was stuck in Norway with barely a change of clothes and not much on the agenda. The next day it was brought to my attention that our offshore crew was stuck in London with no way to get over to the boat that was moored in the North of Norway. About this time the cogs in my brain were starting to grind and I realised that we would probably have to be the likely candidates to reach the boat.

This didn't really worry me until we realised how big Norway was and that the flights here were also grounded. "No problem," said our accomodating hosts, "we have hired a bus for you to get up there."

And so began our lengthy bus ride from Stavanger to Kristiansund. To add to our misery 2 clients were added to the passenger list. We later found out that ironically both drivers were themselves from Iceland. Fortunately they had a sense of humour about it all.

We got about halfway when we stopped for some water at a nearby creek. I decided to get out of the bus and was greeted by some exceptionally cold snow. I only lasted outside the bus long enough to notice that a hose had broken and the water they were refilling was spewing out under the bus. Another stop for a couple of hours while this was fixed was certainly not appreciated.

We continued the rest of the journey without much more drama to finally reach the vessel some 20hrs later. Once we arrived there I was greeted by a 12hr night shift in which a blizzard had decided to keep our morale at all time lows.

The one with all the dinners....

The Girl and I were at the parentals consuming a vast amount of booze. The bro and sis in law were there too and it wasn't long before the baby shots were brought out. Unfortunately for me there is a classic of myself wearing nothing but a pair of cowboy boots and shirt. All I can say is it must have been damn cold that day! (Note: by popular request if my parentals scan and send me the photo it will be put up on this site - I just hope they have stopped reading this thing....)

Moving forward after the photo show we found my old diary from the trip my parents took me on when I was a wee tike. This trip was 2 months around Seppo homeland and the UK. I remember large portions of it when reading back through but I was quite surprised the quality of detail in my early years.

It was quite amusing to read through the matter of fact description of what happened - probably a quality far removed from my current writing style of comedy and embellishment. The brutal honesty and descriptive sentences were certainly hilarious however only to be outdone by my sign-off on the majority of entries:
"and then we had some dinner and then we went to bed."

The One with the Awesome Kebab

The thing about living away from your home country is missing the subtle things. Sure you can pretty much get vegemite everywhere and Selfridges now stocks Kraft Mac and Cheese (my mouth waters everytime I say it), and even the Australian shop in Cov Garden has a vast range of things you never new you missed until you see it on the shelves.

One of the many things I didn't realise I was missing in London (until a very long Saturday drinking session) was a late night Kebab. Alas it wasn't until the last night of my visit back to the motherland that I managed to end an epic boozing day with a hearty feast. And what a feast - I think I added every ingredient and sauce that I had ever sampled on a kebab. Then the final act of my grand feasting accomplishment was to be laced in the hottest curry sauce they could offer.

The thing that makes the Aussie Kebab so much better than any attempt by a British Kebab is the range. If you think it will taste good on a Kebab an Aussie place will most likely have it. When you ask for a Kebab in London they quite literally make you a kebab without asking what toppings you want except for maybe the choice of 2 sauces. When you start saying what else you want on it they look at you with a grimace and keep doing it there way.

UPDATE: I have now found myself a fairly good kebab shop in South Wimbles - not quite a big range yet (although he is taking my advice and trying to add more) but he likes to sort out exactly what I want.

The One from the Hulk's Wedding!

The Girl and I were back in Aus for one of her good friend's wedding. I best explain the title before we go any further. When we are out on the sauce, she likes to do a very convincing impersonation of the Hulk. Not a likeness in the looks department but a rather severe Hulk roar to anyone passing unexpectedly by. It is hilarious to see it in action.

After the ceremony, in between a few photo ops, I took the opportunity to ask the bride for a Hulk. In sporting fashion she brought her arms up in a flexing of guns motion and gave out an almighty "Roooooooaaaaaaarrrrrr!" The Hulk in a wedding dress - that was possibly the highlight of the whole night. But alas it continued on with lots of booze, funny speeches, crazy dancing and a rendition of the Kings of Leons "Sex is on Fire" played out on a Ukulele.

The Jerked One

From now on I am Jerking everything! Anything that needs to be cooked is now going to be jerked first.

The One with the Attempted Bribe

At lunchtime on Tuesday I nipped out and invested in a nice blender that I required for margarita's and my jerked sauce, (before the jokes fly I will let you know how both of these turn out later).

Leaving work I was surprised to see quite a few Police vehicles outside. They usually have a few come down to send youth's through metal dectectors to search for knives. They have one or two vans but this day there were at least four that I could see.

Rounding the last van that I noticed had "dog squad" plastered on the side I saw a policewoman closing the rear doors. Being in a friendly mood I asked the lady if I could pat the dog. She turned back to me and quipped, "Why would I want to let you do that?" Not wanting to be put in my place, I jokingly replied "Oh come on I will give you this blender!"

The woman looked at me briefly and then turned and opened the door. To my disappointment the van was empty. She turned back to me and asked "Are you trying to bribe me?"

I gave a quick shake of the head and made a beeline for the station. I wasn't really sure if she was joking with me but I hadn't wanted to find out.

The One with the Scooter Cover

During my morning jogs I have had to take a detour towards the end of my usual route due to a lack of light along one of the paths. The dirt path goes along a little woodland and is not quite even enough to risk the challenge. The new route is the same distance although it goes down a very empty street containing a couple of cars and a lone scooter right at the end.

During one of my jogs down this road (and for no apparent reason ) as I got towards the end of the road I changed my course and jumped the scooter. It gave me a little surge of adreneline which helped motivate me for the last km. Strangely enough now this has become a regular occurance and after the jump I usually throw my hands in the air and scream a boisterous "DRAGO!" That is until one stormy morning.

The rain was pelting down and I was in a rather miserable state. I proceeded with my usual routine towards the bike, a few stutter steps before the leap, before halfway though the jump I felt me feet catching on something. Luckily enough I managed to land on my feet unscathed with nothing but a bruised ego. There was a loud bang and I turned around to see the bike on its side. The owner had put on a cover (probably to protect it from the inclement weather) which was now masking what probable damage I had caused.

I looked around to find no commotion and hastily continued on my way. I figured the guy probably would think the wind blew it over during the night. My thoughts were confirmed the next day when I passed the scooter secured to a pole. I haven't got the courage to give the scooter + cover a go yet but will keep you posted when I do.

The One with the Irwin Killers

During our time in the Caribbean I decided to take a break from my sun lounge and go dabble with death. It surprises no one to find out that sting rays have an adversity to leaving Australians alive. The girls had arranged a rather nice sail out to a sand bar where the action would commence. I was particularly calm until the stingrays came - not for the fear of the rays but for the hysterical screaming that was emitting from the girls.

The rays themselves were rather tame and circled us with almost a disinterest. We were able to pick a few of them up. The skin had a very hard and slimey texture but the creature itself commanded a delicate touch. I was very aware of the barb towards the end of the tail but it certainly didn't look like it wanted to cause us any harm.

I was a little taken back at the size of the males - we all took them for babies. Not sure the reason the females grew much larger but that is your moment of knowlege for the day!