Queensland!

Queensland is booked! As part of my sisters extremely late 18th and 19th birthday present, and Christmas presents that I have missed over the last few years, I have combined them all into one to form a very late but really awesome present of paying for her trip to Queensland =)

Also, believe it or not, I have silenced my critics and have managed to have it all booked and organized an entire month before we plan to go... I am on fire!  It will just be my sister and myself going for a small 5 day trip staying at Port Douglas (Cairns, Queensland, Australia) which is right by the sea and the closest point you can be to the Great Barrier Reef =D

We managed to secure a package which includes a full day trip to the reef, and another full day of a rain forest trek and crocodile spotting tour, sweet indeed.  It is booked for the 26th of this month which is one week before we go back to Uni so it will make for a perfect getaway before the working year begins.

I end this with an open suggestion, nay, a challenge, nay, a demand for you, the reader, to book yourself a holiday of any kind.  No no noooooo... stop with the excuses, I don't care that you have work and 'can't just take some days off' or 'I can't afford to right now, maybe mid year'... to that I say phooey! (I was surprised spell checker passed phooey as a word lol).

It only costs like $100 for a 3 day camping trip or a stay at a caravan by the beach... take a Monday off, set off Friday night or Saturday morning and there you have it, a few days that barely disrupts your life but can improve it in countless ways.

Work to live, don't live to work!

I expect to be reading about your awesome holidays soon =)

Bonsai Tree: The end

It has been a long journey for my budding Bonsai Tree... but in Bonsai Tree years it was just a blink of an eye.  He started off with humble beginnings, sitting in his green box with instructions that didn't make sense and was written for the northern hemisphere (I live in the southern).  I found a place for him in my office drawer and didn't expect to see any results for at least a month.  Within the week he had already shone through.

Things got a little freaky from here on... he seemed to be growing too well and I suspected bonsai drug abuse, but alas he was going well and that's all that mattered I guess =)  My spirits were high to see him going so well, wouldn't be long now I thought.  And just as I predicted he was soon ready for the big day, the transplant!  I felt like how a parent might feel when their first child starts their first day at school (or something along those lines I am sure lol).

I had such high hopes for it.

I had plans of shaping him so he would have a branch sticking out to the side, one that I could hang a miniature tire swing from and little bonsai mushrooms could grow around the base... and I could have some bonsai people who live in the base of the tree, then when their technology advanced they would figure out how to build a bonsai tree house for the bonsai tree.  Eventually they would figure out how to clone the tree and would start a bonsai tree forest to form a bonsai civilization with their own bonsai way of life, but then rival bonsai clans would war and drop bonsai nukes and before we know it the whole bonsai forest is suffering from bonsai radiation and they would all turn into bonsai zombies and it would be the bonsai zombies versus the bonsai non-zombies but there would be no where to hide because all this is happening from within my office drawer which I don't open very often and then one day I would open it expecting them by this stage to have bonsai space ships but instead they are all gone...

Instead... we didn't even get the chance to see a bonsai zombie apocalypse, I didn't even get to see a branch.

And do you want to know the reason for this injustice? Nothing!  They died completely for no reason (well 1 I killed by accident... but the others were perfectly healthy lol).  After I transplanted them I gave them some sun, ample amounts of water (some colleagues at work argue too much water, but they're just jealous of my green thumb)... I even moved them to the stairwell to grant some humidity... all in vain!

I warn you readers, the next image below may be shocking to anyone who is a bonsai lover/liker/sympathizer/distant admirer... or basically anyone who has a heart that hasn't turned to stone:

He had such promise... maybe his drug problem finally caught up to him.

Well, that's that, nothing more to say really.  The moral of the story?  Well, don't do drugs comes to mind, sure you might grow really fast, be the coolest seedling in the pot for a while, but think about it, who are you really impressing once you start to swivel and die?  No one kids, no one.

On the upside at least I don't have to worry about a burial.

Update: Fun fact!  The word 'bonsai' was (including the use of the word bonsai just then, and then another just then) gives a total of 23 times!

What the f*** Blogspot!?

Well, as many of you would of been expecting there should of been part three of the epic that was the retelling of the crazy messed up time spent at Surfmoot... with the equally crazy and messed up event of me trying to escape Surfmoot.

When I say escape, I am talking 'we sat, planned and then executed said plan of bringing all our stuff from our tent to our car, unpacking said tent and escaping late at night via car without the rest of the crew even noticing we were gone!' kind of escape.  It was one of my favourite stories ever as it really seemed too insane to be true, but I can assure you it was.

Today is actually the 19th of February, 2010... you will notice that the first 2 parts of 'Escape from Surfmoot' were actually posted the 28th of January.  I have spent the last 3 weeks writing it, I wanted to tell it in the best way possible.  While the first part of the story got great reviews from my readers, with the second getting not as good but you could tell was going to lead to a great finale, I was freakin' excited to the max to post the final part which would explain what the entire story was indeed about... escaping from Surfmoot.

Today, I finished it... it was a ridiculous length (4 pages) so I was going to cut it down a bit, and split it into 2 parts... as I was reading it then, getting ready to split it into 2 parts, I made a typo.  Ok, easy fix, a quick control + z (the shortcut for undo) will whip it right back to where it came from, booyah!  Hmm, one control + z wasn't enough, lets press it again.  But alas, it appears quite a few letters were out of place, so an onslaught of control + z's took place in rapid succession until... THE WHOLE FUCKING POST WHIPPED CLEAN!

Woah woah why did that happen!?  Oh no, quick redo redo!!!  Where the fuck is the redo button!?  OMG EYES HURRY UP AND FIND ME THE REDO BUTTON!

However my brain clicks on... I knew what was about to happen next... every few minutes blogger thinks it is being smart by AUTOMATICALLY SAVING your post at whenever the hell it feels like... my eyes flick just a fraction downwards and to the left...

'SAVING...'

'Draft is now saved at 11.45pm'

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

BACK BUTTON GO GO GO!!!

YES I WANT TO LEAVE THIS PAGE!

I frantically mashed the back and forwards button on my browser... eventually it returned back to the editing page of the 'Escape from Surfmoot - The Escape - Part One'... the blank editing page.

No way on my watch am I going to loose that... I am in I.T, let's outsmart this shit!  Google, come to me, quickly, I am in need of help!  Google is basically my twin brother, we can pretty much on instinct know exactly the right thing to say to each other, especially in times of need and uncertainty.

One time at work, our internet went down for the day... I had no fucking idea what I was doing!  I didn't know how to do anything!  I kept trying to work and I'd get stuck and I'd automatically just open up Firefox to go google something and then BAM I remember that the internet is down... Hmm, I wonder why the internet is down?  What model is our router?  Let's google that model number for some troubleshooting tips... oh crap just remembered, the internet is down and I can't google... Martyn, since the internet is down, can you come over here and help me with this please?

"Yeah sure man... ok looks like you'll need to do this... but I can't quite remember what it is called, one sec" proceeds to open up the browser and attempts to google something... it takes us both a solid 10 seconds before one of us says 'oh yeah, the internet is down'.

It was like a messed up episode of the Twilight Zone... with time travel, a paradox and a catch 22 thrown into the mix.

I googled and googled to retrieve the post... but sadly to no avail.  My 3-week-in-the-making post is lost for good.

Why the hell did control + z undo the ENTIRE post?...

This is for you Blogspot, enjoy.

UPDATE: Well, after some experimentation to try and re-create control + z whipping clean my post error... it appears there is actually a redo button on the little menu bar... if only I hadn't pressed the 'back' button on my browser during my panic attack it could of all been avoided lol...