I've Made It To Tasmania!

Dear Diary!
Well I had just finished writing up a really nice long entry for you to feast your eyes upon, when the power in the Cyber cafe I was sitting in went off. The whole of Salamanca in fact seems to be affected by the power outage, though its now back on here at Dad's apartment. I'm taking the safe way out this time, writing it on my laptop then I'll copy it onto my little USB flashdrive. No power will get to it then!
So, what's been happening take two:

Saturday I got up at Sarah's place nice and early and drove home, finished drying my clothes and packing my bag. Then Sarah and I went for breakfast/lunch (I hate the word brunch with a passion) at Mission Bay. Yummo chicken breast washed down with pancakes and a bit of a walk on the beach. Then Sarah drove me out to the airport! Bye Bye Sarah and bye bye Auckland.

My flight from Auckland to Sydney was nice and fast, no major delays or anything. The food you get on the plane these days isn't really all that bad either. I had a menu of 2 things to choose from (some shite with peas in it, or Chicken breast. You'll never guess which I picked) and it was really tasty. The only slightly annoying thing about the flight was the lady sitting next to me. She asked me a whole bunch of questions, but it seemed she just wanted to hear someone talk. Usually when someone asks you a bunch of questions it's so that they can tell you all about their lives, no so with this lady. She hardly spoke at all apart from asking me stuff. I got a bit werided out after a while, it was a very one-sided conversation.

I made it into Sydney with plenty of time (about 5 hours) before my flight down to Hobart was due. I passed the time by trying to hack into the Sydney Airport Wireless network they have setup, but after about 30 minutes I gave up. It was very well secured. I thought I'd better give up though because I got to the point of trying to hijack other (paying) people's connections, I thought I'd probably get in trouble for that so I put my laptop away and went and checked into my JetStar flight. After check in I still had another 2 hours until my plane was due to fly so I wandered around the place, watched a bit of the Sydney vs. The Brisbane Bears AFL match on TV and read my book. Finally it was time to fly, I got in line pretty quick because with JetStar you don't get a seat number. Whoever gets on the plane first gets to pick their seat. JetStar wasn't too bad, though it was a bit annoying to be asked often "Do you want anything from the cafe?" They asked all the time because the JetStar onboard cafe isn't free.

Finally I made it to Hobart, had a quick chat to Dad and then went to bed!

Sunday I got up nice and early and had breakfast, then me and Dad went out to pickup Nan Harman. She's currently staying in a nursing home while Auntie Liz and family are on Holiday in Queensland.
We bought her back to Dad's place for the day, so I spent the day talking to Nan and Dad, plus we also went down to Muirs for lunch (Have to love the Muirs marinate!) with Janet and her kids.
Sunday afternoon we also watched the Geelong Cats (My AFL team) play the St. Kilda Saints (Dad's team) in a really close match. Thankfully the cats came out winners in the end by a very narrow margin. Carn The Cats!!

Last night I went to visit Rob, Denny, Miley and Toby. Miley has grown up so much in the last 7 months it's amazing. When I saw him at Christmas he could kind of utter some basic words, now he points at a picture of an apple and goes "Apple!" and "Doggy!" etc. Toby is also very cute, it's a shame I'm not going to get to be his godfather. Turns out that I have to be baptised to be able to be someone's Godfather and I have never been baptised. I could have got it done on the day but it's not really me. I was looking at the little booklet "For Godparents" and I realised just how tied up it is with religion still. It suggested that I should pray for my god son every day, I should have a modern up to date copy of the bible handy and I should know all these bits of the ceremony off by heart. When Denny realised I wouldn't be able to be Godfather she rang up Anthony (Rob's brother) and he's agreed to do it, he'll make a great Godfather. I'll just have to be unofficial godfather/beer drinking mentor.

Today I'm told it's the coldest day in Hobart in about 30 years and that does not surprise me at all. It's so icy cold outside still, there's hardly any sun and I'm freezing! Walking around Salamanca you see people with gloves and beanies, the sort of gear you'd associate with being up in the snow. Damn it's cold!
I haven't really done much with my day so far, this morning I started on the task of getting all of Dad's Beatles CDs onto my iPod. It's a slow task but I've already done about 7 CDs. Only 20 or so to go!

I'm now back in the Internet Cafe, hopefully the power will stay on this time (though it's all backed up anyway). I just had a nice lunch with Rob Fleming at Irish Murphies. It's still freezing damn cold and now to make it even worse it's raining! Bugger!

The End!

--TiM