Spring time in Melbourne

The guy who lives down the hall looks like John Malkovich.

The football season is over and the cricket has begun. Fremantle didn't even make the finals so i started to go for Geelong mostly because when we were travelling they seemed to be the only team on telly and they were the 2007 champions. Me and Gerald went to the MCG to see them play St. Kilda in the finals series. it was very one sided and although the MCG is amazing and there was a crowd of 75,000 there the atmosphere was pretty flat. Geelong only lost one game all season and as expected they got to the Grand Final where they met Hawthorn. Donal McGoldrick is a mate of mine who is sort of from Newry. His da was a bank manager and the family ended up in Newry. i know his brothers from university in Coleraine and when Donal moved to Leeds to study, I invited myself over to stay with him. He's been out here for 6 years. He got caught up in the Bali bomb in 2002 on his way to Australia. Him and his brother Garrett were in the bar across from the Sari club and were luckily only grazed in the explosion that killed more than 80 people. Donal gave an interview to the Daily Mirror afterwards and his famous quote was that they were in this bar drinking with some Belgians before they went to the Sari Club and "...only them belgians were drinking so slowly..." they would have been in it. When Donal was in Leeds he trained as a nurse and, typical Newry, a few stories started to filter back into the town about Donal walking into one of the hospitals, full of injured people and offering his services, working round the clock attending to the injured. I asked him about this and he reminded me that he's a psychiatric nurse and couldn't put on a plaster.

Anyway, he knows a lot of people out here and we were invited round to a Grand Final party at his friends Ben and Laura. It was a great days craic with men, wome and children piled into their big spacious living room of their beautiful house watching the "footie". Now I've watched a full season of this game I feel qualified to say it's an alright game not as good as Gaelic and nowhere near as good as soccer. hawthorn upset the odds and beat geelong so thats maybe why I have the hump with it and we played nintendo wii all evening. it was better after the people with the children left because they were just too good. Also Ben and Laura have foxtel which is like sky at home and I got to watch Liverpool and Everton which was a bonus.

Last weekend we went to the horse racing. it was Guineas day at caulfield and the beginning of the spring carnival leading up to the melbourne cup on 4th November. it's a public holiday over here. Gotta love a state that gives you a day off for horse racing. if you don't know Australia is divided into seven states and each one has it's own government so really they are all like separate countries....with the same prime minister. you think thats confusing, you should see how they work out the finals series in the AFL. The horse racing is a big deal in Victoria and a lot of people get dolled up for the occasion so I treated myself to a new suit and Emma got her slap on, I took the racing pages out of the paper in the library at work and picked my horses for the day. We got off to a bad start as we didn't get there in time for the first race but the horse i was gonna back won. I had all my horses written down in a notebook and pointed out that although i didn't put the bet on I had it written down so morally I won. That was the highlight of my tipping as I didn't have one winner all day. This gay guy who lives near Ben and Laura had 3 winners including one at 60/1. he was just picking horses by names or the colour of the jockeys gear while i'm sitting studying form. Great days craic though.

We managed to sell the van as well. we got a few hundred dollars for it which was good considering it wasn't even going. We're gonna fly to Sydney on 22nd December and we're staying in Manly for 2 weeks and will take in the Harbour Bridge on New Years Eve which should be spectacular. Manly is supposed to be lovely, it has a beach so thats good enough for us. We also have a wedding to go to while we're in Sydney. Maura Magee is a girl from Courtney Hill in Newry who I know from An Ghaeltacht when we were at school. She lives out here now is getting married just after crimbo and has invited us to her wedding. We're really looking forward to it. After Sydney we have a week in Queensland on Airlie beach. it's on the Whitsunday Coast and is close to the Great Barrier Reef. It's gonna be the wet season when we go up there in January and there is a good chance it could rain but we thought we'd risk it anyway. Then we fly home on 13th Janauary from Sydney via Hong Kong and Zurich in a 29 hour flight which i'm not looking forward to at all. I can't sleep on planes. Emma could sleep on a clothesline.

hard to believe we've been out here 9 months. It will be good to get home and see everybody, go to Friar Tucks for a chicken burgers and super chips and watch football at a reasonable hour. We went to a recruitment function a few weeks ago for Emmas work. There was a recruitment company who have an office in Ireland and they were recruiting people to work in Ireland. They gave us all a goodies bag and in it we were delighted to discover a packet of tayto cheese and onion each. They were only free state tayto, free stayto, but they were lovely. They don't make crisps like that over here.

So we're gonna be working flat out til we leave in december. My work is going well. I started with about 7 other people Steve is a chinese guy who sounds like he learnt English from an Apple Mac voice program, a girl from Peru called Patricia who always agressively asks me "when ju go home?" she doesn't mean it, it's just her way. Manasi is from India and she loves food and Will Ferrell films, there are two chinese girls called Maggie and Rebecca who are always whispering, i tell them this is how rumours start and then there is Jim who is from Geelong. It's good craic, I enjoy it. The Aussies who work there full time have got me eating vegemite (bovril) and lammingtons (chocolate swiss roll with coconut on top).

Emma is away with ones from work this weekend and I'm away to play golf in Albert park tomorrow with Donal and Ben. it's supposed to be 29 degrees. On sunday night when Emma comes back we're going to see Stevie Wonder. it doesn't get much better than that.