ahh.. back home again and it feels like i never left. vancouver was a lot of fun even though it was cold most of the time i was there. really glad that i decided to take a coat despite toronto having 21C plus temperatures the few days before i departed.

most of the trip was spent catching up with my pseudo australian friends. i met up with jen a couple times for lunch. the first time was at a place right by the water where we ate burgers and drank beer and had fun with the waiter who made fun of us for the silly things we were saying. does anyone who doesnt live in vancouver use the expression "its a gong show" ? i dont. the other time we went to granville island and had perogies and curry and it was excellent. almost kinda like going to the vic market, but different. we walked all around the buildings on granville island which i missed the first time i went there myself.

i caught up with jeremy to go for beers, belgian, at my request, somehwere just outside of downtown vancity. i cant remember teh name of the street, so um, i guess it doesnt matter. that place was good even though there was like 87 extremely loud asians sitting at the table next to us for most of the time we were in the bar.

i met a bunch of carolina's friends, family and work mates so that was all good. her soon to be sister in law came over from the island to go to queens of the stone age with us. i thought about going back and going to the vicoria show too, but uh, i didnt. it was fun with rebecca there since we stood up front on the rail, then squeed like fans girls during and after the show. yep, never too old to do that.

i met up with clayton and gitta a couple of times. they live off robson street so it was near everything. the first time we went to the cupcake store (sofaking awesome). i only had one cupcake but easily could have finished 4 or 5. its on denman is you live in vancity and have never been. get there.
the second lunch date with them was the day of liam finn's show and their friend steph came too. i ended up going back to new west before the show cause i think carol had to do something somewhere before we could go.

liam was awesome. EJ was not off her face drunk like the last time i saw them play in melbourne. they played a little community centre hall in west van that looked like a church form the inside without the religious memorabilia. the ceilings were high and we sat in pews and the acoustic were fantastic. every other person had a pearl jam shirt or hoodie on. i did not.

after departing vancouver we (carol + me) went down to seattle for flight to mars. we stayed at grant's house so got to catch up with him for a little bit too. we did some shopping and wandering in capitol hill and we ate at dick's. actually we ate in the car since someone didnt want to stand at the counter. as a joke we went into hot topic and i contemplated buying a belt. i didnt, and days later somewhat regretted it when my pants kept getting too low in the goddamn mosh.

prior to the flight to mars show, we met up with a colleague of carol's who is also a big PJ fan, but being decades older than me had seen the who & zepplin in the 70s etc and had many good concerts stories. we kept saying how you have to go to europe to do shows cause the crowds there are so much better than america. its probably wrong ot give advice to someone my parents age.. anyways.

flight to mars and the hendrix tribute were great. at one point during the shadow reunion i looked over to the side of the stage and thought that guy looks like duff mckagan. then the guy who looked like duff was putting one one of mike's guitars. yah, it was him, and they played a couple ramones songs. very cool. i was so tired at this show which took away from it a bit.

i left seattle the next morning to go do some queens of the stone age shows in canada. during the trip i flew alaska air and west jet for the first time. i went back to saskatoon < insert runnin' back to saskatoon joke here > something i never thought id do. i learned that the cities in the prairies are not as far apart as i thought there were, even though we still flew. josh homme is my homeboy. ok thats a lie, but he did dedicate infinity to me in winnipeg :D and i heard era vulgaris 4 times. woo. more on this later..

and while i was gone is was sonia, andrew, lara and asal's birthdays.. who's combined age is more than 100, whatever that means.

happy mother's day to my mom, who is now asking me when i am going to grow up.

and, THANK YOU TO CLAIRE WHO SENT ME ANZAC BISCUITS BECAUSE SHE IS SO AWESOMELY COOL. YEEEAH!

its be a slow week, sort of. i get email from people who i guess are bored at work. its random chat stuff that everyone does. a frequent question seems to be "hows your week been?" completely genuine. in general every day of my life has been more or less the same since last october. get up waste time online, do some thesis work, waste time by cleaning, maybe a bit more work, get a snack etc. why the fuck am i not done my thesis yet then huh? two months off thats why. december and january dont count and moving around the world did not happen at the snap of my fingers. anyhow, it seems like i dont do much.
yesterday i did make progress.. and finished the mental revisions of another thesis chapter, which i then emailed to my supervisor along with two other sections and of course no response. i did get a little excited when i finished them and thought that i may start the next bit right away. i went to the gym instead.

on the gym front, i got new shoes on wednesday night. i tried those out last night and they are heaps better than the previous pair. i need to modify the previous pair with insoles or something because they were way too expensive to throw out. i get to the gym, amped about my new shoes and my stamina dies at 20 minutes of running. one day off and i just cant handle it anymore. that was disappointing but oh well.

the funness on the pearl jam dot com servers this week was totally expected. lol. that was another reason for procrastination. im glad i have time to sit here and hit refresh of 20 minutes, yay! thank you for knocking years off my life. i had to go take a walk on wednesday arvo. not really funny, but ironic.. i do get anxious about things like buying tickets, getting to the front of GA shows, etc. i had the same chest pains on wednesday morning that i was getting from massive stress and anxiety in november.

i was more excited yesterday for nin dates, since trent will be playing in my city. and, proving once again that i should move to alberta, the prince of darkness is playing calgary and edmonton. even though i despise arena shows, i looked up how much it would be to fly out west, as i would so much rather stay in my own country than have to go to america. toronto --> edmonton, calgary --> winnipeg --> toronto is a thousand fucking dollars. $997 to be exact. i dont like any band that much. then i shifted the dates 3 months forward and got $630 on the same flights/route. further proof of 1. my hate for air canada 2. that flight prices are unpredictable.

ive been "home" for three weeks now.. my former flatmates are vacating the apartment this weekend as they move on from melbourne. apparently the weather took a turn for the worse as autumn is upon them and its been cold. theyre heading up to brisvegas where it is a mild 28 at this time of year. that whole life is so very far away. weird feeling indeed.

here a few reasons why flying australia domestic, across the tasman, and new zealand domestic are infinitely better than flying in north america.

1. food/ drinks are free
2. the flights leave on time
3. despite a pending mechanics strike on qantas, there are no interruptions to the scheduled flights
4. the beverage cart on air new zealand is referred to as "the bar"

im in queenstown at the moment, adrenaline capital of the world. the south island is awesome, very picturesque. queenstown is where people go for "the snow" and i imagine in the winter it would be pretty nice to relax and ski and do winter sports. seeing as it is currently summer, there is no snow on the tops of the mountains.. the remarkables are out my hotel room window. we are so far south that the sun sets at 10pm. crazy. even more so because i am not in this time zone properly yet.

some of yesterday and today was spent trying to figure out what time it is at home. auckland is two hours ahead of melbourne. that means its 18 hours ahead of toronto and 21 hours ahead of vancouver. or 6 and 3 when one works the other way and subtracts a day. or take the short cut and add a clock application to firefox like i did. i know what time it is in 8 different cities. just for fun.

today/ tonight we took a gondola ride up a mountain and had a nice view down to the city and water below. there is a bungy jump tower at the top of the mountain. its set so that when someone jumps off the platform they free fall down the mountain. no bridges with water below like in all the movies. jumping off the side of a mountain seems slightly more intense than jumping off a bridge over water. i had just eaten a feast of a dinner at the restaurant at the top of the mountain, so i had an excuse not to try it.

for the second time in a week i am sunburned. woo awesome, i am red. it was a bit much of me to think that new zealand actually has an ozone layer and i would be okay on a somewhat cloudy day. no. wrong. i have a farmer's tan line too, how horrible. at least it will now even out all the (dis)colour from last week.


the remarkables


queenstown from above

so much for getting to see my mom on NYE, her flight out of SFO was just canceled and now she will be here a day later than planned. shes getting a full day in san francisco now, and the day that does not exist crossing the international dateline will be december 31st! no ringing in the new year at all.

edit:
the official reason for the delay on the UA website is: "Schedule change due to Aircraft Servicing". i heard through my dad that the plane got out to the end of the runway, then turned back because something mechanical was wrong. what a tease to be about to take off and go back to the terminal. the air conditioning was not working when the plane left the gate, and still wasnt working when the engines revved. ive been on planes like that and its hot as. but it always works when the plane is pushed back.

the flight across the pacific wasnt even close to full. i doubt one that bypasses decemeber 31st will be either. i learned a whole bunch of things about UA in the last hour, including not to fly them. the JFK flight goes through LAX to SYD and the ORD flight goes through SFO to SYD. then the plane from the JFK route continues to MEL.

i know of someone else who had this cancellation happen to him transiting in SFO. funny how the two airlines that bypass america completely are both star alliance but its united that fucks up leaving their own country. on the way home my mom has the AKL to YVR direct flight. fun times. i would fly that route with confidence too.. air new zealand are one of the few airlines that at this point do not service any of their aircraft in asia. hope it stays that way.

fricken fuck. ive played travel agent all week making the bookings for my mom and i to go to NZ in janurary. it turns out i am the master of the internet cheap everythings in my family.

we knew the date we were going to arrive in NZ, im going over on a one way ticket to match up with the first leg of her trans-pacific flight. i had thought maybe i would stay around and hang out in NZ for a while when this was first talked about so i didnt buy a return ticket initially. doesnt look like thats going to happen so i could have purchased round trip back then. then my mom changed the AKL-LAX flight, so shes going home on a different date what what was originally scheduled. if i had booked a return ticket i would have had to pay to change it, or lost it. its a good thing that i didnt, and i knew that at the time. but, now flights are $650 USD one way across the fucking tasman. most of them route me through sydney, where id have to change terminals on a 1.5 hour layover. ok, its not heathrow, but its a 10 minute taxi ride to the other terminal in sydney and it takes time and too much effort. like fucking hell im going to sydney and then a domestic flight to melbourne.

the cheapest fares on all the direct flights are sold. the full fare economy is only $300 cheaper than business class. heh. it is a four hour flight.. if im going to have to pay that i might as well drink champagne the whole way, yah? all the flights on stopovers from LAX/SFO leave AKL first thing in the morning. this is more than half of flights over the tasman, from what i can gather. i want to sleep in and see the city before i go seeing as i have a late checkout at my hotel.

expedia is being a tease too. it comes up with a price then takes it back when i click on it.

fyi, for anyone interested expedia .com .ca and .com.au all give you different prices.

how messed up is this:

Dec 20 to Jan 6

Melbourne -> Los Angeles -> Toronto $3900 AUD (return)

Melbourne -> Los Angeles -> London Heathrow $2800 AUD (return)


over a thousand dollars cheaper to cross ANOTHER ocean!?!? what higher power (jedi?) is it that does not want me to be home for Christmas?