OMG! NY2012! WTF?!?

I figured it out!

It wasn’t until certain events transpired that I realised just what I could do with Mr Blog over here. Ever since the Female Companion Unit (FCU – Lozzatron 6000) joined me here in Hong Kong, this blog has seemed like nothing but a giant pain in the arse due to the fact that I’ve now got someone handy who can listen to my constant stream of verbal waste, instead of having to barrel it down the interbutts at of you people.

I have however had – astonishingly – more than one person mention that no longer blogging is a bullshit approach to staying touch, so with lots more ado, I propose to utilise this here blog as a repository of all of those things in my life that don’t involve the (now) fiancée, or any potential wedding-related malarkey. That way, I can poison Facebook with all of that goo until my heart’s content & anyone that’s unfortunate enough to read my status updates can just live with it. For all of the other stuff that’s happening in my (admittedly, not that exciting) life, Very Confusion shall be the place go!

New Year’s resolutions:

1.       To get back on the dancefloor. Oh yes. White males on the dancefloor.

2.       To do a lot more of that nightmarish circuit training until I have at least one matching pair of abdominal muscles (hecklers welcome). And to refer to my arms as either ‘my guns’ or ‘the twins’ until people tell me to go away & do a push up.

3.       To get over to China as often as possible & play some actual golf. Not 4 beers & 130 balls at the driving range over a one hour period, but actual golf. On a golf course. Should be hilarious.

Also, to get married, but this blog need not worry about that.

So, now I have a new purpose for this blog, let’s see how it pans out. The horror & hilaritude of moving to a new country has pretty much worn off, so I’ll stop paying out on Hong Kong (for the most part). And although I still miss my friends & family back in Oz, this is home now, so I’m not some kind of adequately remunerated, depressed vagrant anymore either.

We’re moving into a new year people! It’s the 21^st century & laser bikes are here! Well, not really, but let’s repurpose our blog & see how the rest of the future turns out, shall we? I’ll log my successes & transgressions on the road to becoming a more well-rounded human being & my utilisation of all of the facilities, opportunities & good times that Honkers & the rest of Asia has to offer before life gets turned upside down again one fine day soon!

Here’s a photo to remember me by throughout this festive season:

Love you all to bits & I wish you the very best for this Christmas, in your New Year celebrations, & for the year ahead. Year of the dragon! Whazzah!

So, England huh? The land where the sun never shines, the people are miserable little Mr Hankys, shuffling from puddle to puddle swaddled in black trench coats, chewing on week old Yorkshire puddings that taste like two week old cardboard & no one ever smiles. Nope, never been there.

This is apparently, unseasonably warm weather for England, but by god is it nice. Every day her has been at least 24 degrees, sunny & just plain old fashioned bloody delightful. The produce on this little island is for some reason some of the freshest I've ever had, the billion migrants that have come into the place must have spiced up the kitchens no end because by &large the pub & restaurant food is excellent. The British 'cask' beers - beer that comes from micro breweries all over the countryside & is stored & delivered in little wooden casks - is so good it would give a corpse a taste for drink. What else? Oh, the shops here are all filled with things I like. That may be a product of having only walked into shops that look like they have things in them that I like & that there's a trillion of them here....but anyway, the fact still remains.

In short, this place is really giving me a good idea of why 9 million people have chosen to call it home for so long. There's a lot of culture, a lot of colorful people, and a shittonne of stuff to do. Watched Les Miserables yesterday as we just felt like it. Where the hell else in the world can you do that? (It was really good, & very faithful to the book for anyone that's wondering).

Oh, also: Paris. Anyone that hasn't had a good look at Paris yet, I suggest you book a holiday right now & fix that as soon as possible. It is like a poem that isn't crap, but you get wine & food covered in butter along with it.

Anyway, back to the England. Currently on a high speed train to Bath, of all places. It is evidently a nice countryside town in the .. Actually, I have no idea what direction we're traveling. Go look at a map if you're interested. But we're going to that place now. Hopefully, this will involve a good crack at the Roman baths, a jaunt over to Salisbury, & I really, really want to get a look at Stonehenge, which is apparently fairly close by. Only time will tell how this weekend works out, but it has the potential to be a good one. And the sun is STILL FREAKING SHINING! So awesome.

Well, all for now. I know this is a crap travel log, but a) I don't have a proper computer at the moment & this iPad is a pain in the balls for doing real tasks, b) it's more fun doing other things, c) I can't upload any photos at the moment as they're on my phone & it's a giant dickaround getting them on this machine. Besides, all I'm doing is gushing really. I think my view of Europe is horribly skewed by the insanely happy people I keep encountering, the postcard weather, & the utter lack of work I always have to do. Hoping to come back to London in January in order to put paid to that.

Apologies for the typos, the train is rocking around like an ADHD kid with red cordial & a flask of amyl nitrate.

Until next time!

One down, seven to go

Well, that was three & a half days of lounging, chilling, more lounging, more chilling, & taking advantage of the 60 minute sliver of sun we had to hang out by the pool. Next stop, Paris. Well, actually, next stop is an uncomfortable as hell seat in a little AirAsia plane all the way to Paris on what is sure to be an entire night of no sleep, butt pins n' needles, & a whole bucket o' jetlag. But whatevs. We're on holiday.

Also, screw you, Alfy: Langkawi is freakin' awesome.

Having a grouse time.

The end.

Actually quite confusion...

Getting ready to leave & have finally squeezed out the last big brain dump of work before our Euro-jaunt begins, so I'm actually getting kind of excited now! With a reasonable list of destinations over a very reasonable chunk of time, I reckon this holiday which begins in t-minus 53 hours is going to be an absolute ripper.

Been getting a few Hong Kong willies out of our system in the lead up to LOLEuroBomb2012 (working title), so we've had a couple of big nights, a massive number of giant meals (including a small mountain of dim sum), a peek at the mid-Autumn festival lanterns, & a whole lot of complaining about the freakin heat. I swear, its so bloody hot here that I could glue air particles together just with the goop they're leaking into the atmosphere all up in here. Euw.

Anyway, just wanted the excuse to stick up a few photos & say YO to all'y'all before f*cking straight off into the horizon for a FULL CALENDAR MONTH of fun &/or adventure. Oh, & apologies to those of you whom I don't work with who have already seen all this on Facebook already. So anyway, check us enjoying the balmy Hong Kong nights with countless alcoholic beverages!

Night #1: Phil's B'day celebrations & beer drinking challenge

Looking pleasant during an actual beer drinking challenge. Mark of a true man.

Looking mildly wiped out during a beer drinking challenge. Fairy 'nuff I say.

BEEEEERS!

The rest of the photos from this night are a bit messy, so *scene deleted*

Night #2: Random night with no purpose that turned out awesome

Out at Blckbrd, on Lyndhurst Tce

God knows where this is. It's DARK.

I love this camera. Luscious lips, or just weird?

A simple misunderstanding over...I dunno...eight gin & tonics...?

But everyone was friends in the end.

Is this a test shot? Anyway, observe: Wine.

My boss being delightful & flipping us off while taking a shot. Look carefully, we're grimacing in the background.

I have NO idea what happened here, but I'm 80% confident it didn't involve pants removal. This comforts me. Mostly.

Want some mint with your mint juice?

Back at Joyce is Not Here. This is a bar you are ALL coming to when you visit Hong Kong.

Drinkies at Joyce. Always awesome.

As well as heading out on the town, there's been time to squeeze in a little bit of culture. It's the mid-Autumn festival today, so we 'beat the crowd' & went to see all the lanterns set up in Victoria Park on Sunday night. There's fire dancing, dragons, palm reading, plays, etc. on Monday & Tuesday but Hong Kong being Hong Kong, we figured there would be about a trillion people there so we decided to get in early. It was still crowded as a hell, but realistically, it wasn't any worse that Causeway Bay train station on any given day. In any case, it was cute & fun, & seemed kind of old world in a way. There was carnival music playing & lots of lights, & funniest of all, zillions of little kids running around confused & excited & freaking out over the newness of everything. Anyway, enjoy the pics.

Mmmmmm fish...

Lots o' lights over lots o' people

This big fish had lots of little fish

Man, I seriously love this camera. How good are those colours?

Checking the fish lanterns

Bit busy this pic. Too busy. Also, that chick on the right obviously didn't like being photographed. Well, you're on the Internet now love. FOREVER.

Causeway Bay & its 87 billion shoppers.

This was handmade by 2 old masters of lantern making. Not sure if that would pay so well, but they did a great job. It rotated & everything. Very cool.

Got a light?

Loz turns her head & the big fish goes all Cassius 1999 disco-crazy.

These will be the last pics from HK for a while, as we're off to Europe on Thursday arvo. I'll make sure to do a few updates & get busy with the photo uploading whenever I can so you can all perceive the radness of Europa from your desktops. Prepare to enjoy. Jealously.

A tiny wave from a great distance

Y'all. Not much has been happening here lately as you're no doubt aware. It's a combination of having a mountain of work to get through & my rad girlfriend finally having moved to Hong Kong! Woot!

So yeah, haven't had much time to update the blog considering that I now actually have someone to speak to instead of wandering around my apartment from wall to wall muttering to myself & unleashing my thought spasms onto the computer.

Next few weeks will involve (hopefully) a trip or two to the beach, which will definitely warrant a write-up considering I'm STILL yet to head down to any beach other than to get picked up or dropped off for something. I think this is fairly remarkable given that I've spent the last 6 months on this ISLAND, which really is GURT BY SEA. Sound familiar? Yeah, well, unlike Australia, here you can't drive in any direction for more than an hour or two without dropping into the ocean, so I am rapidly running out of excuses not to visit it. Anyway, so that's one thing. Then, there's a couple of shopping trips for random clothes & some shoes, which probably won't make for the most exciting narrative. But the reasoning will! We're off on our European vacation in just over two weeks time. It's going to rock harder than an actual piece of stone & is going to be one full calendar month of fun, adventure, shopping, sight-seeing, many reunions, one wedding, at least three major piss-ups, non-stop eating, the occasional guilt-driven exercise session, the odd massage & spa treatment, & a whole bunch of chilling the hell out. Oh, & a shittonne of planes, trains & automobiles.

Honestly though, right now I'm thinking less about the destinations & more about the dumb accents I can pull, so we've got Mick Jagger or Rumpole of the Bailey for London (situation depending), with the occasional Alex Turner segueing to Vicky Pollard. Bath is going to be all about Bourke from Trapdoor: "Ooh, get back in there you 'orrible slimy little critter you. No! Not up in there, ooh, 'e's not gonna be 'appy about that, 'e isn't" so on & so forth until I get told to shut up. Italy is so easy, it's a choice between Godfather or ultra-fruity gondolier. Going to have a blast with that one & just hope I don't get beaten up by the locals or my travel companions. France, I may be mildly merciful & put on the Marcel Marceau at times, which can possibly be ignored for short periods, but other than that I'll be Gabrielle Gateau or whatever his name is because his accent sounds completely fake anyway. I still hold that he's from Coonabarabran & just did one semester of uni in Paris. My only real concern is Prague. I have no idea what those people sound like. The closest I think I've got is The yugo accent, where you just deepen your voice & say 'fuckin' at the end of every sentence fuckin. But I may have to research that one to maximise the amount of stupid I can squeeze out of it. Fuckin.

Anyway, that's me for now. Looking forward to a month of R&R & hilarity & taking the piss out of most of Europe & probably driving my girlfriend insane at which point I might stop. For a while.

Hopefully, I'll post an entry before we head off, but if not, keep any eye out for photos. There will be many.

L

My Destroyer

Most of you know the history of my shoulder. For those of you that don't it pretty much goes as follows:
1997 - Ow
1999 - Ow
2003 - Ow
2003-2006 - click click click click
2006 - Ow
2006+ - Click flop spriong ting click click squish click

...you get the picture. And it has been kind of semi-useless since time immemorial.

Now, I decided that, given I'm overcompensating for it & my back is starting to do strange things & I'm certainly not getting any bloody younger, I would actually do what I should have done all along & I went to see a physio. He was unreal. He hurt me. He hurt me so much, but afterwards I felt as if my shoulder was almost like a proper shoulder again. Amazing.

He gave me a follow up appointment, a bunch of exercises & a little massage ball. Sweet.

The massage ball however. Holy freakin flying Jesus on rollerskates, the massage ball. This little bastard of a thing is the most horrific object I've ever touched in my life. I am really, really not one for massages. At the same time as being a bit of a wuss I am super ticklish so I get a double whammy of dontfuggintouchme!!!! Every time a masseuse comes anywhere near me. Even in Thailand, the lady was all 'ha ha ha, white wussy man', until she started getting genuinely pissed off because I could hardly stand her touching my damned neck.

Anyway, the reason for this nearly pointless post is the brutal (gentle) agony (massage) that this freaking ball assails my shoulders with when I use it. The trick is to lean up against a wall with this spiny horror lodged under your shoulder blade & then work it like a kodiak bear against a maple tree on a hot day. My big issue is I didn't think I would feel much. So I get this ball, wedge that shit under my 'bladez & then go to work. The walls in my place are pretty much all plaster & paint like a normal hourse, but in the kitchen it's tiles. Bonza. No potential markings. No stress that I've only got about two feet of clearance, this is a massage, not a rock concert. Down, right, up, lefaaaaaaack! The thing hit the far right side of my shoulder blade & some kind of instantaneous message flew into my brain that said KICKYOURCUPBOARDFALLOVERSHITYOURSELFSQUEALLIKEAGIIIIIIIRL!!!!

So fortunately I didn't shit myself, but the rest...yeah, I pretty much did that. Lying in the yoga-favourite "prone, bruised pretzel saluting the fridge door" pose, I thought:
Note to self...mind that you brace for the whole nerve ending thing.

Good. I'll remember that.

Behold, my destroyer:

The global conspiracy to disenfranchise the project analysts of the world travelling to semi-discrete locations that are obliquely pegged to non-related major currencies that have taken a subsequent bumming due to a protracted history of financing debt solutions with further debt under a groaning, unsustainable twin-party dictatorship playing a populist & exponentially more risky game of chest-puffing, brow-beating, name-calling chicken.

Or,

Ow, my wallet.

Seriously. What the f*ck is going on with US Dollar? I’m watching my Aussie debt grow as I pay it off. Not happy. Like, at all. These twats in Congress had better come to some sort of positive agreement over the next week or two or it’s going to actually affect me. Me! OMG!

Whine over.

Hope you're all having a lovely week.

Good for me!

Yay. Two reasons. One a sardonic 'good for me', you go get 'em simple kid chug on the chin & throw a strained glance over their shoulder at any grinning onlookers. The other, an actual thing that is potentially actually good for me. *gasp*

Firstly, the boring thing. I may have blamed Sauran's evil 'The One' toasty prematurely. I still believe it was the final catalyst for the tempest of evacuation that almost destroyed me, but it has now come to light that it may not have been the only thing that caused it. I've been drinking that milk they sell here, which apparently comes from the Kowloon Dairy. Now, I don't know who has or hasn't been to Hong Kong, but I can assure everyone out there that there is no goddamned room whatsoever for a friggin' dairy in Kowloon. This is a Google image of Kowloon:

Daisy?

Daaaaaisy!

DAAAAAAAISYYYYYYY!

COW-loon? I bloody well think not.

The point I'm trying to make is that I'm not 100% sure where Kowloon Dairy milk - or any of the local milk for that matter - comes from, but an educated guess would say China. Where the melamine lives... So consequently I've since cut it out of my diet & already I feel like I'm going to turn into a fat, happy, healthy white bastard within the week. I believe that this will genuinely be good for me. The end result is a little unfortunate though...um...through a series of isolated incidences I've.. And I'm not a total wanker or anything. I have to stress this. I mean, you people know me. I'm a bit weird maybe. And I do wear a trendy scarf when it's cold & stuff. But I mean, I don't ride a fixie or wear a trilby. I just cut my hair today so I'm not emo. Never have been emo. I'm not. You know. Oh, f*ck it. So anyway, I'm now drinking soy instead of cow's milk & drinking white wine instead of beer. What?

Jerks. So judgmental.

Subject change.

Wow. Awkward.

Next thing that is more of a 'good for you' thing is... Oh my GOD! This is such a trendy wanker thing to do. Balls! Really should have written the post the other way around. *groan* Whatever. My mum thinks I'm cool, so you can all just get bent. So I've build a DIY twin reflex camera. It's way retro & all that crap & yes I think it's cool & yes I'm going to use it & yes, you're still looking at me in that way. What? Are my stripy leggings out of place? Is my satchel covering the logo on my ironically kitsch t-shirt? Okay, I've just got to move on. Artists are always misunderstood in their time anyway. I'm an individual. Just like the rest of them. Breathe...

Let's start that again.

I have built one of these puppies. It was an enormous pain in the rectum to build & took me around 3 hours all up. I swore A LOT. I mean, I do that, but I really swore like a whole bunch. And I didn't even hurt myself. I think I just drank way too much coffee whenever I set to it which gave me the yips, the shakes, & a big dose of the hurry-the-#@&%-ups. Also, I only found this website after building the damned thing, which has cheerily informed me that I've made at least two horrific mistakes along the way, but I've already jammed a roll of film in there, so let's see what happens first & then I'll take it apart & start my barrage of bilious billingsgate at this gormless inanimate plastic once again if it turns out that I have indeed screwed the proverbial pooch. The Chinese-only instructions were a joy, by the way.

Kitted out. Ready to rock.

OOoooooh good! I love chinese writing for it's ability to convey detailed information to me in the most convenient & understandable way possible!

Hooray! A shoddy, but complete job! Also, two surplus screws...

Anyway, I'm going to be taking it out here & there so I'll share the photos with y'all. I have to actually take it to a place & have them developed! You believe that? My mind almost exploded with the atavistic thrill of it all until I remembered that it involves, time, effort & ongoing expense to do that sort of thing. Not to worry! I have visions of cloudy, softly framed shots with all that lovely colour throwing that odd perspective you see so often in Holga enthusiast's photos. Like a kind of thick-lined cartoon bas relief. But realistically I'll probably end up with a whole bunch of really shit photos instead. Time will tell I guess.

More to follow on Luke's so-called 'lomo' adventure. Jeezus, you need to say that one clearly down the phone line... No no! No! I said lomo! No, LOMO! L - O - M - O!

Death Sandwich

Net result of Wednesday's toasted sandwich adventure: two days at home. I've had it all, man. The squirts, the squits, the trots, the terrors, the runs, the spurts, & surprisingly, the squeaks. And let me tell you, for the ultra-lazy out there, I'm sure sitting down a lot is your bag, but toilet seats should not be your first choice. Those things send your legs to sleep if you're on 'em for too long.

That sandwich can go to hell.

Now that you're all sorry you ever started reading this, here's some very random photos from a week or two ago that I just felt like sharing. They were taken at a restaurant that specialises in spider crab. Tasty, tasty tasty spider crab. Something that sucks is that I can't remember precisely how to get there & even if I could, the name of the place & entire menu is all in Chinese, so I'd be pretty useless anyway. But, oh my word was it ever good. Their sushi & sashimi was awesome, but the crab. Oh mang...the crab...

Crab shells big & small. Lots of 'em. That light fixture? Crab shell.

Mo' crab shells. Lots mo'. This place was like what a hunting lodge would be if hunting chinchillas with dynamite was considered okay. The walls were chockers with victims.

The table cloth was some kind of scroll-holding ninja stalk bird laying a five point palm exploding heart technique on a dog turtle monster. Makes sense to me.

The world's greatest crab claw. Was a meal in itself, but pretty much only constituted around 5% of what we ate. Hhamazink.

Get thee hence to Hong Kong, people. But avoid the sandwiches at Gourmet. Not cool.

My East meets West morning so far...

Found a new breakfast place. Hate hate hate hate hate breakfast cereal so I’m usually only able to force musili down my throat about 3 or 4 days a week, which leads to me buying breakfast a lot of the time. Generally I’m hitting Pret a Manger way hard as they’ll give you a coffee (okay coffee by HK standards, which means most big city Aussies would look like they’d just stepped in something & that something squished between their toes if they drank it, but I think I smoked my tastebuds when I was younger so it’s okay for me) & a roll with egg & roast tomato or ham & cheese for $30 Hong Kong dollars! Bargain! So that’s been great, but that has become slightly old after a while. Got to work this morning & thought to myself, ‘Self. If I have musili again today I’m going to try to drown myself in the bowl. Screw. That. Peasant Food.’ Thinking thinking thinking, couldn’t think of a single thing to eat that wasn’t either Pret or Congee. HMMMMMM, conundrum. Then on the way to dropping a suit off at the cleaners I noticed a place I’d never been in before. The word Sandwiches loomed brightly in my field of vision. Mmmmm, white man food. Nom nom nom.

“Do you guys have sandwiches?” (I ask excellent questions)

“Aah, yes.” Points to afore-mentioned sandwich sign

“Haaaam sandwiches?”

“Yes of course”

*little squeal* “Ahem. Okay, ham & cheeeeese sanswiches?”

“No problem. Toasted?”

“Oh god yes.”

“$22 please”

“OMG that’s awesome.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Here’s $30.”

Excitedly I jumped front one foot to the other waiting for my toasted ham & cheese sandwich & creeped out the other patrons, grabbed the ridiculously large paper bag the lady handed me & raced back upstairs to devour my catch.  Dive into the bag, tear open the alfoil(?) & OOOh yes I...wait, wtf? Why is there salad on my toasted sandwich? And why is it crying? There was capsicum, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, the works on this poor enflamed toasty. It was the saddest, wiltiest salad in Hong Kong as it had just had its ass cooked to hell. Sigh. Chinese-Anglo fusion weirdness strikes again...

Oh well, bugger it. It wasn’t Bolognese on rice or soup noodle KFC, so I was on a win there. I chowed down on this thing in a big way & it was actually really tasty. But it was just like everything else ‘Western’ in Hong Kong. It was just a bit....different.

Spines are for losers...

So as it turns out, Dragonboating is a real festival about actual stuff & not just an excuse for Northern Territorians to splash each other & get on the piss. Who would've thought?

It's (traditionally) the Tuen festival. Ostensibly it's about a guy who was so patriotic & so shitted off about the way things were going back in the day that he turfed himself into a river. Because that is totally the way that politics operates...actually, has anyone told this story to Sarah Palin? I think someone should get on that asap. So anyway, the festival goes along the lines of there being these little cakes that people eat on this day, which used to just get thrown into the water so the fish wouldn't eat this guy as he was such a hero, & then (apparently) Dragonboating came about due to it being ridiculously messy & noisy, & is supposed to be an attempt to make all the fish crap it & swim away so they again don't eat this dude. Not sure what part of this festival makes this guy exist in every ocean & estuary through the whole of Asia at the same time & also be somehow floating in the water without decomposing or getting a proper burial & what makes the fish only really want to nibble on him once a year, but hey, who am I to judge?

So that's the bit that every knows. Dead guy, cakes, drums, paddles, etc. Well, that's my version anyway. If you want the boring, boring 'proper' history click this so-called factual link. The hilarious subtext of this festival however, is that it's become an opportunity for the gay community to get out & pink it up a bit. Some genius in recent history decided to give this myth a bit of a  fruity revision & claimed that this guy Tuen Ng was actually bumming the Emperor! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! I thought that was a complete pisser. Way to keep a secret for like a thousand year only for someone with a vested interest to somehow uncover it at  conveniently liberal time in human history. I'm all for the rainbow movement, but seriously people, let's not start on that slippery slope. Buddha was gay too! John Wayne wore frilly neglige!!! Aaah, cracks me up.

So what it comes down realistically, is that once a year there's a Dragonboat festival & people being people, this has become quite competitive. So Stanley harbour hosts a corporate Dragonboat Racing Carnival wherein a whole raft of companies gets teams together of varying levels of seriousness who vie for like about 9 different divisional crowns & a fleeting blast of glory. For the rest of us, it's a day on junk boats downing beers & acting like rubes. I'll let the photos do the talking for this one, as I actually managed to take a bunch of them, but just so everyone knows, I've taken out all of the ones that could be considered even mildly incriminating. There were no shenanigans of a sexual nature & no one made a giant arse of themselves, but given that this was a work event I'm not allowed to take photos of nor mention hilarious things like how people were hurling cans of beer to beggars on neighbouring boats, how people dived from the top of our junk into the ocean & we had multiple escapees to the playboy yacht. Whoops. Also, I wasn't drinking, so this - as per a number of events in that long, long fortnight - was both eye-opening & difficult to maintain. Especially in that heat.

Oh, & just a word of warning, I have included every photo of myself in here & all of them are hideous. Sure you're all used to it by now, but just in case you're eating or something...

Day at the beach anyone...?

Ooooh, that's right. Hong Kong is CHOCK FULL OF PEOPLE!

A guy with wings drawn on his back & a bunch of pandas. Of course. And what's with that guy on the right? Looks like he's really trying to get rid of something...

On the speedboat. To the party junk! 

Me (slacker) with Darran, one of our Dragonboat crew. 

Junk after junk after junk.

This is the starting line of the races. We had a pretty good view from where we were.

The nabAsia gang. All on their best behavior at an early afternoon point.

Stanley Bay & some lovely tropical sun/cloud action.

A HOT guy. 

Neighbours, two boats over. She's not there now, but there was this bird who seriously leaned against that big aerial things for like 3 hours without moving. It was really weird.

The Playboy speedboat! YAAAAAAY!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

Actually, I have to stop here because this shit is hilarious. I couldn't work out who it was, but every time this Playboy speedboat came anywhere near our yacht someone from our junk would lean over the side & start yelling "SHE'S GOT AN ADAM'S APPLE!" over & over again. I'm sorry, but that is just out & out funny. Anyway, on with the show:

OMG so hot sailor boy.

The Dragonboat crew enjoying a drink after their race was all done. How'd they do? No one had any clue whatsoever.

Oh! Another race kicks off! I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident those guys closest to us won. Look at 'em go!

Everyone ran out of enthusiasm for my camera. Was reduced to photographing myself.

Luke oversees proceedings. Luke owns the sky. I guess.

Can't believe I actually managed to get a shot of the starter gun going off. Thing was a friggin' howitzer. Check that funky smoke plume. 

I tried to photograph the last half of a race, but instead I just got a guy who seriously looks naked from this angle...

And our question was answered. Like real Aussies our team came 3rd! YEAH! But just to make everyone feel better it says '2nd runners up'. Ha ha. Lame.

It's toward the end of the day. You're sick of seeing drunk white people. You just want to go home. It's hot. F*ck it. You get down to your jocks to sail. Rock on man. Rock on. 

Asian tug boat. Or it's a huge mechanical duck with a bunch of ugly ducklings. Not sure.

A kick arse tropical sunset. This is impossible to get sick of.

My head wrecking the scenery. 

The funniest outfit of 2011. I nearly peed my pants when I saw this.

...we're going to Stanley!

WOOHOO! We're going to Stanley!

At the end of a long day, the street party starts! Go the Dragonboat festival!!!

So next year, I'll be doing two things differently:
1. I'll have a drink
2. I'll take part in the actual race. It destroys your spine as you're only paddling on one side, but hey, what's a few vertebrae between friends, right? Spines are for losers anyway.

Only took me about four weeks to write this, but better late than never!

Cheers!