I don't care how geeky they look, I'm getting mud guards for my bike!

Come for The Pink Floyd Experience, stay for the Toowoomba Experience!

Two weekends ago, Sandra, Kirra, Laiken and I ventured into Toowoomba for a Saturday eve of awesomeness and awakening (shell we say). We left Brisbane on the Saturday afternoon, and arrived a couple of hours later at our Motel. This Motel really was like one of them stereotypical American style Motels, where it looked like the mayor of the town would be in one of the rooms being attended to by one of his mistresses, and there was a murder in that room other there, and two people were currently planing a robbery in another room, and the swimming pool was in the middle of the complex....in the middle of the car`park! Sadly, that last one was all too true!

But the main reason that we were there was to see The Pink Floyd Experience at the Empire Theater. In short, they were pretty dam awesome, pretty decent cover band. Pretty tight. They did about an hour and a half of mixed songs, then after the intermission (and a few more drinks for me), they did their main event....Celebrating it's 40th anniversary, they did the Wish You Were Here album in it's entirety, (Pink Floyd's best album), before finishing off with a few other classics.

Just to get an idea of the epic light show:

The music was awesome, but my files are too big to put on here.

After the (3 hourish long) gig, Sandra and I weren't done for the night. So we decided to stay out for a few and see what Toowoomba had to offer. Well to summarize, Toowoomba is a fairly largish town about 2 hours west (inland) of Brisbane, the biggest of all the surrounding mining towns, a place where not too many tourist will venture to, so locals can get over excited (aka annoyingly clingy) to a random Englash guy and random German girl in their bars....Urmmm, it was an experience, I'd compare it to a night out in Bitterne or Millbrook. Never the less, we still had a fun night, even if we did have to endure the same repetitive story of how violent Toowoomba prison can get.....trust me, I didn't even ask, but that didn't stop me being told!!!!

But honestly since my last post I haven't really been up to too much, definitely nothing to really write home about, which makes writing this blog a little harder. But please stay tuned, I promise things are gonna get better, May's already shaping up to be a good month.
Still waiting on our visas. We spent most of the last weekends (since my last post) house hunting (there was one Saturday where we viewed 7 places), and on Saturday we move into our new gaff, in New Farm (pretty much the suburb we're living in now). I will be living with two German girls aka I will never be right again!

Oh and this guy took up residency in our front garden:

My netbook finally completely broke...finally....I may or may not have knocked it off my counter one time too many.....

Time for a replacement: My new Blog Maker:

But first having to take all the old files from my old netbook...a lot of music there!

And I finally got to watch a Saints game on a big screen...just in time to see Saints beat Pochettino's record from last season, against Pochettion's Spurs.

Seriously, my next post will be a more exciting read! Hold on tight!!!

This one's for you Gramps

I didn't really know how to start this post, I couldn't decide whether to start it by writing about my Gramps, or to start how I usually start it and just go on with my ramblings. So as it was easier to type first, I thought I'd take my usual route and bore you with my ramblings first!

OK, well again, I'm just filling in gaps here. Urm, since my last post from writing about our holiday, it's just been weekend trips here and there, a long with massive up and down struggles with my sponsorship visa. Long story short (really long story short) after weeks of: "my company are gonna sponsor me", "my company aren't gonna sponsor me" (that sometimes changed on a daily basis) my company have decided that they want to and can to sponsor me on my 457 visa...And I found out today, that as of yesterday, our application has been sent to immigration, and as of yesterday, Sandra and I have been on our bridging visas (a bridging visa is a visa between visas, you go on whilst immigration make a decision on your visa application, whilst you are still in the country). To go along with my application I can have Sandra on my visa as a dependent, so to boost our case we registered our relationship with the Queensland government! But again, more on that to come, hopefully I can have more definites on my next post...how long have I been saying that fore now!?! Well I have been told by immigration (not my company) that applications take around 2-3 weeks to process.

OK, so a run brief run-down of my last few weekends (six weekends), maybe in picture form:

Weekend 1:
Starting from the weekend after Sandra and I returned from North Queensland. My friends James and Alice were up in Queensland and heading to North Stradbroke Island for a friend of their's Valentine's Day wedding. So we thought we'd head over to meet up with them on the Sunday, I managed to get Rosie and Tash to tag along (and give us a lift to and from the ferry port) with Sandra and me. Whilst we were on the ferry, however, James texted me to say that they were leaving in the next couple of hours. So we didn't get to catch up with James and Alice, but it did give us a great excuse to head over to Straddie for a day. Pretty sweet, chilled out day, pubs, beaches, keno, plus we saw turtles and dolphins along the day!

Weekend 2:
Towards the end of the following week, and Queensland was hit with a cyclone. It didn't actually hit down this far south, but we had some heavy heavy HEAVY rain down here on the Friday and into the Saturday. This did effect mine and Rosie's weekend plans of heading to Mt Barney National Park for the weekend, but instead we opted to go indoor climbing on the Saturday (which has now become a regular thing) and headed to Mt Barney on the Sunday. And upon arrival we discovered that Mt Barney National Park was closed due to the cyclone. And although the actual Mt Barney walk was definitely closed, that didn't stop Rosie and me from walking Yellowpinch Summit and beyond (with views of Mt Barney).

Lenny, Rosie's new buddy

Mount Barney
We will be back for you!

Lunch stop

Weekend 3:
Saturday: Noosa

Sunday: Comedy Show, as part of Brisbane Comedy Festival. I took Sandra, Jeff and Nina (our housemates) to a show which had several comedians over a couple of hours. There was some really good comedians in there. Then Jeff took us all to dinner.

Tash, Rosie, Sandra, MJ, Bertoldi, and Shazzy on one of Noosa's beach.

Brisbane Comedy Show

Weekend 4:
The Saturday consisted of Chris's 1920's Prohibition themed Party, and the Sunday consisted of being drunk, then being somewhere near the Gold Coast but across the New South Wales boarder...I dunno, some awesome little beach....I think it was called Frog Beach!?!?

Shea, Amber, Laska, Chris, Sandra, me and Terry

Bertoldi, MJ, Rosie and Tash

Weekend 5:

Obi Obi creek, climbing and swimming and jumping. Sandra's first ever climb, and all without a rope. Now, it wasn't the hardest climb ever (although I really cannot comment much, as I'm learning that as I get older my fear of heights is getting stronger), but Sandra nailed it, it really was her first climb, and really without a rope!

We finally took out the (sort of) GoPro that Sandra's parents sent her, but I haven't had time to sort the pictures yet, so STILL yet to see how good it is! 

We headed out that Saturday night, and as a result, really didn't achieve too much the Sunday

My average Saturday night out,...obviously!
Rosie, Sandra, me, and Martha
There you go Gramps, with with a load of foreign chicks!

And finally, Weekend 6: Rosie's 30th birthday weekend:

On Thursday evening 6 of us headed up to Noosa North Shore (which is a small island, about 1 minute from the main land (yes, that's not a typo, it is only about 1 minute away)) to stay at a house that Rosie had hired for the weekend to celebrate her 30th (which was on Sunday). By the Friday evening, that number had grown to about 16/17 people.

 A Quick glance at the house

Getting to the beach on Friday

Coops taking Sandra, me and MJ out onto the beach on Saturday afternoon

And that's that! Aside from that, and work. My evenings have consisted of boxing (I've actually joined a club with Terry now), and we've (me, Rosie, Tash, Carol, and now Sandra too) starting doing climbing down Rock Sports. I haven't taken any pictures of us whilst we're down there, so if you're interested then here. I actually managed to finally convince Sandra to come down last Tuesday (after her climb at Obi Obi the previous Saturday) and now she's keen as, she's looking at getting shoes and other gear. She was even doing the walls with overhang last Tuesday. So proud!

First shout out to my Gran, Happy Birthday for the other week. And another quick shout out to Rysta 924, Happy 30th Birthday for the other week. Sorry that I couldn't be there, but thanks to all that uploaded pictures, it looks like you had an awesome night! I had a drink in your name....then several more just for me!


Finally:

Gramps and me at his 80th back in June 2013.

My sister, Gramps, me and my Nan

Sadly, on Tuesday 10th March, my Gramps passed away in his sleep in his hospital bed, at the age of 81. I won't go into too much detail on my blog, but it took a long while for it to sink in for me, what with being so far away. We were lucky (in a sense) that we knew, before he died, that he didn't have too much longer left, so I was fortunate enough to phone him and talk with him, and to tell him what I thought of him and that I thought the world of him (not that he didn't already know)! And thanks to modern technology, and my sister's finance, Andy, he was actually able to take his mobile phone with him, and I was at the funeral via Skype on Thursday. That's when it become real to me. Anyway, in short, thanks for everything Gramps, I miss you and always will, but above all, I love ya loads mate. We will speak again soon.

I want to finish off this post with a poem, originally written by unknown, but this was the poem that my sister, Nicole, and my cousins, Rob, Andy and Phil read at Gramps' funeral on Thursday. And I really like it:

Smiling is infectious

You catch it like the flu

When someone smiled at me today

I started smiling too

I walked around the corner

And someone saw me grin

When he smiled I realised

I had passed it on to him

I thought about the smile

And then realised its worth

A single smile like mine

Could travel round the earth

So if you feel a smile begin

Don't leave it undetected

Start an epidemic

And get the world infected.