this part isn't about me.

When I told people I got a job in Airlie Beach, I said it was close to Cairns. I think we drove about 1000km, and now we're in Cairns.

Have seen heaps of waterfalls and rainforests and other awesome stuff. Probably in a fair amount of trouble from the big bosses down in Brisbane cos I kinda skipped town without asking. However, I did just work 12 of the last 14 days. These included Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve (til 9), New Years Day (from 7am) and a bunch of other stuff that wasn't really that fun.

I think all shall be good.

Brummmm.

Failing that, if I couldn't have the real deal a Bufori La Joya.





If that was too hard I suppose I'd settle for a Morgan Roadster or Plus 4 but it would have to be one of the brutal four-seater versions to facilitate rollage with maximum homies. Also they're bigger and therefore more bad fucking ass.





BRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM RUM RUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

-cecil

new manager arrived last night. I have given him a crash course in how to do some stuff I half know, now I'm going on a short holiday. We're heading up to Magnetic Island and the general Cairns region. Should be sweet.

Go to Worlds again.
Win an even at Nationals for Footbag
Do more travel and have adventures booked for the next year
Learn Spanish
Meet more friends
Use Couchsurfing more (hosting/staying)
Travel again for work
Keep in touch with all the awesome people I've met this year
Not get punched in the face by a bouncer
Go to shows regularly
Have a good time

My aim for the year was to read a book for each week of the year. I didn't quite make it, but I made some solid progress, I came pretty close in the end. I'm going to back myself and say I'm going to be able to do it next year.

1. Occy- Mark Occhilupo & Tim Baker- 309 pgs
2. On The Road- Jack Kerouac- 291pgs
3. Five Months In A Leaky Boat- Ben Kozel- 419pgs
4. Love In The Time of Cholera- Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 348pgs
5. Going Solo- Roald Dahl- 210pgs
6. The Riders- Tim Winton- 377pgs
7. Bad Boys- Roy Masters- 320pgs
8. Dopeland- John Birmingham- 258pgs
9. Sleeping Around: A Couchsurfing Tour Of The Globe- Brian Thacker- 379pgs
10. How To Beat The Australians- Richard Beard- 236pgs
11. How To Drink Absolutely Everything- Ben Canaider- 239pgs
12. Down Under- Bill Bryson- 427pgs
13. High Fidelity- Nick Hornby- 245pgs
14. Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World- 380pgs
15. It’s Only A Game: A Life In Sport: John O’Neill- 386pgs
16. Neither Here Nor There- Bill Bryson- 256pgs
17: Inside George Orwell- Gordon Bowker- 434pgs
18: A Long Way Down- Nick Hornby- 257pgs
19. A Clergyman’s Daughter- George Orwell- 263pgs
20. American Hardcore: A Tribal History- Steven Blush- 302pgs
21. Tolkien: A Biography- Michael White- 250pgs
22. Into Thick Air- Jim Belusha- 316pgs
23. The Surgeon of Crowthorne- Simon Winchester- 207pgs
24. Of Mice And Men- John Steinbeck- 120pgs
25. Notes From A Small Island- Bill Bryson- 379pgs
26. The Autobiography- Eric Clapton- 364pgs
27. Stephen Clarke- A Year In The Merde- 383pgs
28. No Logo- Naomi Klein- 458pgs
29. Betrayed By F. Scott Fitzgerald- Ron Carlson- 220pgs
30. The Firm- John Grisham- 421pgs
31. Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia- Susanna Fullerton- 369pgs
32. All Ages: Reflections on Straight Edge- Beth Lahickey- 223pgs
33. They Came To Murramarang- Bruce Hamon- 132pgs
34. The Great Railway Bazaar- Paul Theroux- 379pgs
35. The Moon & Sixpence- W Somerset Maugham - 217pgs
36. Fever Pitch- Nick Hornby- 239pgs
37. Hells Angels- Hunter S Thompson- 273pgs
38. The Runaway Jury- John Grisham- 484pgs
39. One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich- Aleksandr Solzhenistyn- 143pgs
40. Bert Brown of Papua- Garry Saunders- 205pgs
41. Tim Winton- Breath- 265pgs

I am also midway through

DH Lawrence- Kangaroo and John Kennedy Toole- A Confederacy of Dunces. They will be included in my list for 2010, once I finish them.

So last day of the year. Doesn't seem like a full 365 days since this time last year, but obviously it has been. This year has been pretty amazing, I finally got to go overseas and I've met some great friends this year. There have been some pretty good albums come out this year


1. Alexisonfire- Old Crows, Young Cardinals
2. Evergreen Terrace- Almost Home
3. Break Even- The Bright Side
4. Templestowe- Cimmerian
5. Poison The Well- The Tropic Rot
6. I Exist- 3 Nails and A Book of Flaws
7. Polar Bear Club- Chasing Hamburg
8. Hopeless- Dear World
9. Mastodon- Crack The Skye
10. Hoodlum Shouts- Horses and Human Hands

Favourite shows, 2009

1. Midnight Oil- Royal Theatre, Canberra
2. Every Time I Die, Poison The Well, Evergreen Terrace- The Espy, Melbourne
3. Dillinger Escape Plan, ETID, PTW- The Forum, Sydney
4. Break Even, I Exist- Tuggeranong Youth Centre, Canberra
5. Propaghandi- SO36, Berlin
6. Bleeding Through, Between The Buried and Me- Albert Hall, Canberra
7. Misery Signals- TYC, Canberra
8. The Amity Affliction, We Are The Ocean, Hopeless- TYC, Canberra
9. Comeback Kid, Verse, Against- Albert Hall, Canberra
10. The Abandonment- Bar 32, Canberra

I planned on getting this done by the end of the year, which is tomorrow, so I may be pushing it.

( 2006 )

I had a bit of a rough day today, I think the low point was when I looked on the website and our hostel ratings had gone down, making it the lowest rating in Australia. Today however, it was meant to be my day off, but I was a long way behind so I did some work, I did it up here on my computer, so it was good as I had no disruptions or anything, and I caught right up to where I should be.

In the morning I got a call about staying at the Hook Island Resort, we're going to stay there on the 10th, free of charge. I think it's going to be awesome. It looks so relaxed out there. You can get free kayaks and snorkelling gear also.

Another good news story was the fact they've hired a fulltime guy to be the manager up here. Me being up here was always just a temporary thing, and it's a big weight off me that someone will be up here in the near future. He arrives next week so I'll be doing some training with him, which will make things easier for me, probably means I can do a few trips out to the islands and stuff as well.

Thinking of changing my flight home so that I spend a night or two in Brisbane, I really want to go see Polar Bear Club, they're playing with Break Even and The Gifthorse, that's something I'd be super keen to see.

So the year ends tomorrow. I've got to work til 9pm then back up early, do a bunch of end of year, end of month, etc reports. Can't say I'm terribly excited by the prospect. Will probably drink some beer and have a meal in between. I just started listening to Polar Bear Club recently, I'm really enjoying their most recent album "Chasing Hamburg". Break Even are one of my favourite bands, they're alway good to see and the Gifthorse are sweet. Such a sweet combo. They are playing shows in Brisbane on the 20th and 21st, so if I could get to both of them, that would be pretty great.

So my 2004 entry probably missed a lot of details, it was a pretty crazy year, that really reflected on my studies. I really just didn't give a shit at all. I don't know if that really changed all that much the next year.

( Let's go back to 2005. )

Back to the current times.

At work, early start again. Had the day off yesterday, first day off in quite some time. Went out Ocean Rafting again. I bought Francisca the trip as her Christmas present, she really liked it. We had a pretty great day together. After the trip in the boat to Hill Inlet lookout and Whitehaven Beach, we did two snorkels. The visibility wasn't quite as good as the last time I went out, and didn't get to see quite as many big fish. I bought one of those disposable underwater cameras this time, hopefully the photos turnout sweet.

Haven't really done so much the last few days, been pretty busy with work. Have a bunch of paperwork to catch up on and I am NOT excited about that. Yuck. Going to make a new post and continue going back through the decade.

2004

This was a pretty sweet year. I got to see a lot of bands. I moved to Canberra to begin uni, however I was going up to Sydney almost every weekend to hang out with my friends. I went to Brisbane a few times...firstly to see Korn, Fear Factory and Static X. I was rich so I splashed out and stayed in a hotel. It was a bit of a weird experience staying there. Somehow I didn't miss my plane, it had to wait for me to get on. I came incredibly close to spewing on the plane.

One weekend we saw Full Scale four days in a row...Sydney, Newcastle, Mona Vale and Wollongong. Me, Ferrit, Nikki and Brooke made the trek to all of them. This was first year of uni, so I met people like Doug (hey man can I look at your textbook) and Thommo (oh you live on old res too and study sports management...we're friends now).. I lived on old res all year, lived a general uni life...hung out with Leigh and Dana and Ben in the first part of the year. This year was my first Stonefest....Groove Armada played and it cost $15.

Brooke and I followed Frankenbok around on the Army of Darkness tour (Sunk Loto, Full Scale, Frankenbok, 8 Foot Sativa). This was when I fist met Rock n Roll Joel. He had driven from Adelaide to Coffs Harbour just for the show. What a rager. It was also when I first met Karina, I had been talking to her online and asked her if she could pick Brooke and I up at the airport, and then she offered to drive us to Brisbane as well.

I was still heavily into rollerblading as well. Midway through the year I started getting back into footbag, I had a couple of years off from taking it seriously. I still hadn't got lavers or a proper bag, but I was taking a real interest in it again. HYGS (Have You Got Style), came to Canberra. This was a pretty amazing day. Most of the rollerbladers in Australia came out. Lizzie's boyfriend at the time stacked on a 900 down the Belco library stairs, smashed his face in and broke his nose. Tristan was a maniac. Gary was the local hero. I barely see any of those guys any more.

I went to Brisbane again, Butterfly Effect were playing a secret show...this was the night where Kelly and Karina clashed heads "oh my god I love this song" they went to hug and smashed their heads together. "It's ok I'm training to be a doctor". Turns out this girl was a first year student, 18 years old.

On my 20th birthday we went to Sea World, it was really great. That was a pretty sweet trip come to think of it. That year I went to Hardcore 2004 and saw Parkway Drive (as well as Shotpointblank, Mindsnare, Miles Away) for the first time. At the end of the year I started going to more hardcore shows in Canberra, saw A Stab in The Dark a bunch of times and Stronger Than Hate play their last ever show.

Most importantly I saw MACHINE HEAD for the first time. I got to meet them and that was pretty amazing. They played such a sweet set. I didn't even mention the Big Day Out, I went twice in Sydney, it's the best I went to...such a good day...Fear Factory, TBE, lostprophets, Muse, Poison The Well, Thursday, Metallica. It was these couple of days where I met people like Brooke and Kelly and a few others who I would spend the rest of the year hanging out with.


My Pop died at the start of 2004. That was a pretty sad way to kick off the year. At the end of the year I went on a trip to Perth with Leon. That was a pretty good time. Ever since I've been saying that I really want to go back to Perth...it's been 5 years. I think I'll get there next year.

Merry Christmas all. I have begun my Christmas at work, not too big a deal, a lady came in wearing a silly Christmas hat. It's not going to be very busy today, I'm certain of that.

Went over to Hayley's place for a few drinks last night. Pretty much every travel company in the region gave us a bottle of wine. We got into some of them last night. Was just really relaxed. Their place is flash, it's a very new apartment. Nice place. It was a good way to spend Christmas Eve up here. Not a big party night, but nice chilled chats. I left at 12.01, so it was officially Christmas when I was gone.

Talking to the family for Christmas on the phone.

I've seen a few people do a bit of a summary of their decade, year by year. For the first 5 years I don't have my lj to look back upon and reflect/verify, I might make an attempt to cover the last ten years. The transition from angst ridden teenager to succesful manager guy...

( So let's start with 2000 )

( 2001-2003 )

My morning started a lot earlier than I wanted it to. I stayed up pretty late last night. It's pretty hard to sleep when there is a nightclub which plays the same shitty songs right next door. I can hear it loud and clear in my room. I also swear I heard some jerk running up and down the stairs outside, making a lot of noise. I went out to investigate, but no one was around, maybe I am just going crazy and hearing things.

This morning I got a call from a backpacker, telling me no one was at reception and they needed to store their bags. One of the girls was meant to start at 6.30, it was 7.30 by this time. Disgruntled, I got dressed, still half asleep went about doing some work.

By 9 there were 2 girls on, I was back out of the office, won't return until 5. That is the closest thing I have to a day off this week. Just spent a good long while in the swimming pool we have here in the hostel. Felt so much more relaxed once I finished. Going to head down to the next town to get some stuff from the shops today I think. The shops in town here are horrendously expensive (that's what happens living in a tourist trap).

I'll also try to get another footbag session in today. I've been playing most days, and been playing quite well. Worlds are looking likely to be in the US (San Francisco is looking more and more likely), I'm pretty keen to make it there this year.

So I guess I should go outside and get these plans into action.