Boycotting the company's pizza day

...aka Pay day, or as it's now known "inconsiderate pigs" day! Just a spat of how something that's meant to show gratitude, just looses all of it's meaning when this is what a boss calls his staff. But I'll have more on that on a future topic for my travel log! Basically, in short, when people ask about how things are going, I chose to just bypass the work conversation and go onto talking about the other awesome things that are going on in my life....

....So on that note!

Well I promised more, and more is what I have done! Starting with Mackay, a town where I never want to live, ever, but had the pleasure of spending my long bank holiday weekend, or Queen's birthday weekend (England, please take note!). We had Kirra and Amber round here on the Friday night for films and Vegan Mexican (I know!, but it does work, and well actually). We probably stayed up a bit later than we should've done, as we had an early start to get to Mackay. I think we got up before 6 (which is early for a Saturday), got an Uber to the airport, with a very chatting driver, and set off on our flight up north....

Awesome views, flying over Brisbane,
New Farm in the middle of the picture, our house is in that picture!

Makes 12km look like noting!
I wanted to add this picture as it shows my whole bike ride to and from work. You can just make out the Gateway Bridge (near the middle of the picture), and my company is across the river. And New Farm is at the right of this picture, as the river bends up, it's just to the right of that

Arriving in Mackay offered us slightly different views!

We arrived in Mackay about 9:30 in the morning. Dan (who I used to go to secondary school with, and with whom I haven't seen for just over 3 years) picked Sandra and myself up from Mackay airport, and we headed back to his crib to catch up with Zoe (his now wife, and whom I haven't seen for just over 4 years). We chilled at there place for a bit, before heading out in the Jeep and checking out some of the local beaches and areas that Mackay has on offer.

Our mode of transport for the weekend. It did get a bit bumpy in there at times!

The Eimeo Pacific Hotel bar

Dan being entertained by Banjo

Saturday night we just chilled out, ripped down Banjo's (unused) dog house and burnt it down, drank beer and ate pizza, and booked ourselves on the forest flying (flying fox) for Sunday morning...

Me, Sandra, Dan and Zoe

A quick training zip.
Before doing the real deal...

Maybe not the most exciting video in the world, but it's always fun to play with the GoPro!

But it's me flying through the rain forest's tree tops!

Plus it sounds really cool!

We spent Sunday in Eungella National Park, which is located about an hour and a half inland (west) of Mackay.

Araluen Cascades in Finch Hatton Gorge

This was about as close as we got to spotting any platypus

...but we did see plenty of turtles!

The view from Eungella Chalet, taken from the first actual bar garden that I've seen in Australia.

Lucky Banjo, I don't get belly rubs like that!

On the Monday Zoe had work, so Dan, Sandra and I headed out to Cape Hillsborough, which was my highlight of the weekend, from a location point of view. The areas surrounding the beach were amazing. Plus there were walkways that took you to look outs....but better than that, there was caves and rocks to climb up and scramble through, off the beaten track.

The view from Andrews Point lookout

Wedge Island

Flying back to Brisbane on Monday evening presented us with some issues. We arrived at the airport at about 5 in the evening, for our flight at 6. Upon arrival we were told our flight was delayed by 45 minutes, no biggie. Only to find out shortly after this that our flight had been completely cancelled. A whole , sold out, plane load off people left the terminal and headed to Jetstar's check in desk. Fortunately we got near the front of the queue, and managed to be 2 of only 26 people to get transferred onto the flight heading towards the Gold Coast (the other passengers would have to wait until the following morning to get flown back to Brisbane). I later found out that evening, this is why our flight was delayed (Dad, please don't ride this!). So anyway, great we're on the 6:45 flight to the Gold Coast, not so great when that flight gets delayed "indefinitely". Apparently that plane took out a bird, so Jetstar needed to fly in an engineer from Cairns to approve take off of our flight. We ended up taking off from Mackay airport around 11. In the end we took off so late that they had to fly us to Brisbane, as the Gold Coast airport was closed. So I suppose that it kinda worked out well for us!?.... but it's all good, Jetstar had us covered whilst we were stuck in the Mackay Departures Terminal:

Wow, thanks Jetstar, a whole $8 to spend in the airport each! I wonder what we can get

Finally....

...Oh....maybe not then!

Of subject here, but on my weekly food shopping trip:

Coles new microwave range, and at $11 each! Wow, what's not to like!

Dolphins, turtles, wallabies, kangaroos, and even whales. Just an average winter's day on North Stradbroke Island.
We were meant to head to Straddie Island on Saturday for Kirra's birthday, but Sandra was ill, so we traveled over on Sunday to meet all the others there. And as far as wildlife goes, I've never seen so much on 1 trip to Straddie. I've seen a whale once before whilst I was there, a few years ago, but this time we saw two schools of whales. We arrived at these rocks at Point Lookout, overlooking the sea, where a group of three people were sat. They had been waiting there for 3 hours in the heavy rain and the cold winds, and they saw nothing. That was until we showed up. Now it's not because we showed up that their day got better, but at the moment that we showed up, so did all the whales. Pretty amazing views. I obviously couldn't really get any awesome pictures of the whales on my iPhone, sorry:

Wallaby

Where we were looking for whales....

...see!
And we actually did see two schools of whales.

And Kangaroos to finish the day off!

Been getting more into my boxing. Last night was my first spar with head guards on, so I wasn't really sure how it was gonna go down (as in, how hard punches were gonna fly). Urmmm, it went down pretty well overall I think, just a small bruise under my left eye, which can't be that bad as nobody has noticed it or mocked me about it today. Afterwards people in the group were saying how much I've improved, so maybe I did better than I thought. Even Terry said how good it was....after first telling me "well that was sh...". I mean I really still have a lot to improve on, but I'm getting there slowly. It was the first time I got any notice there really, last time I spent any decent amount of time with Adam  (one of the trainers at the PCYC club) I'm pretty sure I P'd him off with my abilities, or lack there of, trying to follow the drills he was going through with our group!

And after many trials, and tribulations, and sort of joining gyms, and quitting gyms, on Tuesday evening I finally actually joined a gym for real. I paid an actual joining fee, and signed up for 12 months, and I'm actually quite excited about this one. think 24hr fitness

Also, thanks to all for the feedback and ideas for my blog. I really am looking to take this to the next stage, so keep any comments coming in please, all are greatly appreciated. I will slowly be setting up a new blog page, so my page address will change soon, but I will keep you all updated on that! And to prove that I am listening to you guys, the back ground has been changed (as per 66% of commenters' requests)

As always, thanks for reading (see, look how appreciative I really am!)

Travelling the world Vs. Living the other side of the world

For a while now I’ve been wanting to write something a bit different in my blog, actually talking about travelling as opposed to just listing my recent endeavours. I wanted to start off by comparing the difference of actually travelling compared to living somewhere different to home. Some of the points may be pretty obvious, but to people that don’t travel too much (aside from the odd two week holiday here and there) there really is one thing that you don’t realise: The longer you live in that one place, it really isn’t too dissimilar to what you do in your home village/town/city. When I phone home at the moment and people assume that my life must be so exciting and crazy cos I’m living in Australia, I’m sorry to say but at the moment I’m doing the same as you, riding to work every day, gym, food, sleep, and living for the weekend! But there’s surely more to it…..

My biggest problems are, after a (long) while of travelling I kinda can’t wait to get some routine back in my life. When I am in Asia that feeling comes to me a lot lot quicker than when I am in Latin America. I like to know where my supermarket is, I like to sign up to a gym and keep regular exercise and classes going, I like to feel like the local as opposed to another backpacker. But on the flip side, my problems are that I do get bored pretty easily, I really get over doing the same thing day-in day-out, really quickly as well. I have just passed the one year mark since I left England on my second travel stint , with two months of that being in Indonesia, and the rest of that time being here in Brisbane, Australia, and typical me, (as I mentioned in my last post) I had my sponsorship visa approved for Australia (again) at the beginning of May, which allows me to stay in Australia for four years, now don’t get me wrong, I am more than happy to have been granted this visa and it really is the best thing for me to have right now, but pretty much from the moment it was granted the itchy feet started kicking in…..I think I’m just not really ready to settle anywhere just yet. But that aside, aside from the “negatives”’ I wanna dig a bit deeper into the two, but through my eyes:

Travelling the world:

What could be better than travelling all over the world?....A new view from your bedroom windows every other morning, new food, new people, new cultures, maybe even new languages every couple of weeks! I could give the flat out simple answer to that question and say “nothing”, nothings could possibly be better than all that! I mean, even if you get bored of your current surroundings you just pack your (never completely unpacked) backpack and move on to wherever the chicken bus takes you…..?.......surely this is what people mean when they talk about freedom. And I for one truly believe them, both from my own experiences and from hearing other travellers’ stories.

I have been very lucky that I have managed to travel around a large portion of the world. I left England back in September 2010, and between then and April 2013 I managed to visit 22 countries across 4 continuants, very varied amounts of time. And prior to that, I have been on many other holidays/trips. So I feel that I have seen a fair amount of the world, from one extreme to the next! I personally love the thought of constantly moving, as mentioned before, I do get a bit restless a bit easily. But I love the thought of checking out a place for a few days, soaking up the vibe of that place, trying the food, a crazy activity or to do whatever your new/current location has on offer, and then moving on again to a different scenery to do the same again…but different!

Come on, how many travellers watch An Idiot Abroad” with Karl Pilkington as he complains about everything that’s going on, and just think to themselves “holy shit, I’d love to be in his position, get to try all these crazy, new and far out adventures, and to top it all off, SOMEONE ELSE IS PAYING FOR IT” – That’s the dream right!?!

Living the other side of the world:

Again, I have been very fortunate that I have been able to live in several locations scattered all over the world. All the places I have lived have been English speaking, and have been in “the first world”. I am originally from a small town, of about 14,000 people, which is located about 6 miles out of the city of Southampton, in the heart of the south of England. I grew up there, I went to school there, and until I was 24 and left England to travel the world, I have lived there all my life. Since then I have lived in the centre of state capital cities in America and Australia, and small towns in America, New Zealand and Canada…I have also lived and worked up a mountain in New Zealand (I always have to get that one in there). So like I said before, I am very fortunate! There was one exception to all of this, and I have lived on an island resort off of the Island of Lombok, an Indonesian island, and although it was an experience, it really wasn’t as fancy as it initially sounds.

There’s something about living in a completely new location. I love the feeling when I’m no longer “English Mike”, but I am just “Mike” (or “Mikey” as everyone everywhere seems to call me after a short time (no complaints here)) the local. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not tryna distance myself from being English, no no no, I am English through and through, Fee-fi-fo-fum…., but what I mean is when you actually are part of the community! Not only do you get to see that place for what it is, but you feel include. Plus you get to see more of that area, and the surrounding areas, which can usually offer so much, and so much more than any average backpacker will see or experience. Plus you get to be a snob about the area…or you feel you can slate it a bit more! It’s your home, and that’s what you do, but will get on the defence when others slag it off!

Plus the friends I have here (or elsewhere) when I live and stay in a place, they become family. I’m still in contact with my friends from several corners of the world, from areas that I have lived/am living in. And it’s nice to know people are genuinely happy when you’re coming back or staying a little longer, or upset when you’re leaving. I don’t do it to upset you, it’s just nice to know that I will be missed. I don’t say this to brag in anyway (“I have more Facebook friends than you!” etc etc), I just say it, as it’s a positive outlook on looking at being stationary. You have friends through and through, and not just over the excitement as they are travelling too. But on the flip side of that, no matter where I am in the world now, and no matter how happy I am in my current situation, there is always people somewhere else that I am missing.

Travelling the world Vs Living the other side of the world:

In the words of Steve Merchant (not a great travel philosopher, I’ve just been watching a lot of “An idiot abroad” recently) “I myself have travelled and I genuinely believe that travel broadens the mind”’ so overall, gun to my head if I could only do one of the two, I would always have to pick the obvious choice, I would pick to just keep travelling, there’s always more to see, the rest never ends, as whilst I’m stationary I get restless. I love the feeling of wondering around a new town and have no idea where I am, people used to find it funny when I said that I spent my afternoon/morning/day getting lost, and they found it crazy when I told them I intentionally do it, and I know I’m not the only one that finds this to be exciting. I remember when I was in north Chile (just over two years ago), and we were staying in the small town of San Pedro de Atacama, so Claudia, my friend from Switzerland, and I hired bikes and set out to find a lake using an extremely crudely drawn map. The long and short of the story is that we never did find that lake, we got extremely lost looking for it, extremely lost in fact that we ended up in a cactus field, a field that got so dense with cactus before too long that we couldn’t ride through it, we had to walk our bikes through it whilst our legs were getting cuts all over! It might sound strange, “how the hell did you end up in a cactus field!?!?”, but trust me, we had to find our way back to the main road somehow, and we’d got too deep in to it by this point! We did eventually find our way back to the main road (and then from there we eventually ended up back in Atacama), but we sat and had lunch on that road, with the desert around us, and the mountains in the background upon a blue sky canopy, and although I would have obviously loved to have made it to that lake and had a swim, the adventure of finding it and being lost was the real thrill to me! The lakes, or the peaks, or the waterfall bases, are usually the rewards at the end of your adventure. Now for example, here in Brisbane, or back home in Southampton, when I go for a bike ride, I just head from home to work! Exciting, no!

Also, the more I travel the more people I get to meet, and cultures I get to experience. I also get more opportunities to be reunited with friends from all over. Staying stationary means I get to stick with one group of friends, moving around means I get to hang out with all of them!

In the ideal world, I think I would love it if my blog (or some other form of travel writing) was my form of income, I love to write about my travels, but I love doing my travels more, if these two things could somehow be my life…..well, as a “writer” I’d actually be lost for words if that was to be my fate! So this is something that I want to and will pursue more, I’ve had few things come up over the last couple of weeks that having given me more inspiration to try and make this a (hopefully maybe) possible reality. Hopefully more on that to come in the real near future! I really believe that the last 5 years have been the best of my life (so far) the places I’ve explored, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve encountered, and the knowledge gained. I don’t want it to stop really, at least not any time in the foreseeable future. Speak to most travellers, and they will tell you that as soon as they arrive in a new place (or even before that’s happened) they’re already planning the next adventure or 2 or 3 in the back of their minds, and that’s me! But I do love to share my enthusiasm for travel with others, and that’s why I love writing this blog, and why I always get excited when people ask me for advice or help with their future plans…but as always, my main advice for someone considering doing some travel of their own, “Do it!”

Of course there is the third option, Being at home!:

It’s the best place in the world, I love it, I love to complain about it, I love being there, I love to get out of it! It really is as simple/confusing as that! It’s who I am, and why I am the why I am!

I do have to ask a favour from my readers, no pressure here, if there’s anything you do or don’t like about my blog or my writing style/format please feel free to leave a comment, or get in touch with me directly (for those who know who I am) it would be greatly appreciated as I would love to improve the reading experience for you all. I also plan on writing more travel topics like this one, so if you have any topic ideas that you would like me to attempt writing about then please suggest them to me. Thanking you!

And as always, thanks for reading.

That point in your life when you realise that the song that’s been stuck in your head all day is in fact your washing machine’s tune!

OK, so I know I promised that May would be a much more exciting month when than April…and well I was half right there. A few plans got cancelled, but still more went on in my life when compared with April, for starters, immigration went ahead and granted mine and Sandra’s 457 visas…good times, a load off of both our minds! We have moved into our new apartment, we're in a suburb called New Farm now, which isn’t too far from where we were before in Teneriffe. And May’s been a month of birthdays and leaving parties. We actually had 3 35s 3 Saturdays in a row (the last one we just randomly met when we were watching the Saints Vs. Aston Villa game, but still 3 for 3!). I've joined and quit the odd gym here and there, and made some good use of some free Personal Trainer sessions. And there's been one leaving party.

But I'll get started with the beginning of May. May started pretty wet, there was a massive down pour on the first Friday of the month, with a fair few floods around Brisbane. That rain put a bit of a damper on Jeff's birthday evening, but most people still showed up and the party still went ahead. The following day, feeling a little worse for wear, the sun did decide to shine, and it made moving day a hell of a lot easier. We spent the morning packing ALL of our stuff and cleaning the room, before we loaded up Jeff's car, and he took Sandra and our stuff to our new abode.

That wasn't even all of our stuff, 

Jeff - "you'll just need to fill your backpack",

"ermmm, I think we've accumulated more stuff since we moved in in August!"

But we did leave a nice empty room!

Moving house the only way I know how!

Our new complex

Our freshly made bed

With our very own, small balcony

Our room on the right, with Martha's on the left

And our (recently discovered) own (on site) pool!

We have since been on several shops and the place is starting to become a lot more homely! Even though it was fully furnished, we were still missing some stuff.

On with the rest of May. I actually got 3 punctures 3 days in a row on my bike on route to work, so I was late 3 days in a row. So I actually took pictures the third time it happened, "You're the boy who cried "puncher!"" - trust me, even I didn't believe it!

More things of mine falling apart....this time it's my trainers....now that's new!

Terry's 35th
With a Vietnamese lunch....

...And lead into a night in the Valley

Brian's Open Mic Night = Free beer!

There was a random Digital/Games festival going on at Brisbane Power House, but apart from these cool things, there wasn't really too much going on whilst we were there....

...But later on that day I did, somehow, manage to convince Sandra to come watch the Saints game with me...and whata game!

Sandra said that she was "happy the other team scored at least one goal, otherwise it wouldn't have been fair"

And the weekend before last, Shazzy had her leaving do, this is at the Paniyiri Greek Festival, in West End. A long night shortly followed.

ALix, me and Shazzy, this week on the 3rd of our "LAST" Tuesday night climb nights, this time in Crank. Before Shazzy moves down to Sydney, today.

I dunno how happy she'll be about me putting this up here, cos she was doing so well with it until she "Ffffffffff.........k!"
but TOO LATE now!
Rosie performing one of her Uni projects`last Thursday

And to finish May off was another birthday, but this time not a 35th. Saturday, just passed, was Superman's 26th birthday, and for it she did a bowls day/dress as ANY film character you want. Great shout, great day!

I was at the bar!

Happy Birthday Grimace!

I apologise for taking so long getting this post up, we've only just got internet in our house after being here for nearly 5 weeks. In fact, that's how long it's taking me to get this post up, the heading is actually in reference to the tune from the washing machine in our old house! And I also want to mention that I've enjoyed hearing snippets from Mum and Dad's holiday in Spain this month, but I've enjoyed missing the photo clip show presentation of their trip even more! But also, Happy Birthday to the both of you, I'm glad your cards from me arrived in the post on time....aka.....they arrived before you were back from Spain!

And last Tuesday was one year since I left England....AKA, one year since Sandra lost her freedom!

And that was May! Done! Bring on June.....well, I know it's already started, I'm talking about the fun stuff though, the bank holiday weekend trips to Mackay, the Straddie Island/Kirra's birthday trips, the road trips with Rosie now she's finished uni, etc etc etc! But.....

...I have to do this!!!