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.