Taipei airport and last post for this long trip

Currently sitting in the Taipei airport waiting for my 11:40 pm flight to start boarding. Then sit through an 11 hour flight... I had a good last couple days in Bali, enjoyed the rest of the meetings, had some great food, and enjoyed dad's birthday. It was just too damn hot to tell you the truth. I walked outside and I immediately started sweating, it was so painful to just be outside.

Well, I am going to grab a quick bite to eat and prepare myself for this long flight. In less than 13 hours I will be in the good old U.S. of A. Hopefully I will see you all soon, and thank you for following along on my adventure.

Uneventful flight out of Brisbane into Bali

Not a whole lot to report, a nice 6 hour flight out of Brisbane and into Bali. I walked off the plane and got hit in the face with 100% humidity and a blazing sun. While I am not complaining, seeing as I am in Bali, I will say I do not handle heat very well, so I have been doing my fair share of sweating. We had a lovely dinner by the beach and had a whole lot of good conversation. Today was mainly business meetings for Ferno. It is really cool to be able to see the different aspects of the company and all the different products. It is also so cool to meet so many people from so many places! I am currently listening to the Ferno Italy managing director with his very heavy Italian accent. As for tonight, there is not a whole lot on the docket, product demo and testing time, happy hour in our room, dinner by the pool, and lastly a massage at 9:30. For now that is all, I will do my best to snap some pictures and upload them, but I don't know if my camera can handle the humidity

Last post in Australia!

Hello boys and girls, I just got back from a weekend trip to Melbourne. It was great, I stayed down town in the heart of Melbourne, so I got to see much of the city life. I went to the Melbourne Museum, which if you were unaware, is one of the best museums I have ever been to. There was so much to see and so much to do. I spent 4 hours there and still did not see everything. Oh and did I mention it was free for students? Awesome!
I went atop the Eureka Skydeck, which is the highest public viewpoint in the southern hemisphere at around 950 feet.


It was really cool because there were about 25 peep holes that you could look through that were positioned on major buildings, parks, bridges, and various other things around Melbourne. So it was nice to look out from that height and know exactly what you were looking at.

I also spent some time with an older gentleman and his wife who live on the outskirts of Melbourne. He went to Culver back in the day and was nice enough to invite me over to his house for a night. It was a whole lot of fun. We had an excellent meal, delicious wine, and great conversation. The following morning I made my way to Monash University to meet up with a guy that I did the orientation program with in Cairns. I had not seen him since July, so it was good to catch up with him and talk about the different things we had done and the differences between the schools. Later that day, I made my way back to my hotel for an easy night before my early flight the next morning.


Well, this is my last post that I will do while being in Australia. The next posts will come to you from Bali!!!

South Stradbroke Island

This past weekend I spent the night on South Stradbroke Island with Gordon family. They have a house just off the water that they spend a couple weekends at every year. It was beautiful! The house opened up almost completely to let in all the fresh air. We went for a jetski ride and I got thrown off the tube (they call it a biscuit...) by Tom. We did a fair bit of fishing, and of course I came up empty handed on every adventure we had with poles. One of the best parts of the weekend was the last two hours or so we were there, we went out on Mr. Gordon's sail boat. It was a beautiful boat that was a replica of one that he used to sail in Dubai. He even let me skipper it, it was amazing and relaxing! I will work on finding out exactly what it is.

The rest of the week I did not do a whole lot, I had a final on that Monday and another one on Thursday. But now I am finished with classes till January 11th, or whenever Miami goes back to school after Christmas break.

I am currently sitting on a train on my way to the airport for my flight to Melbourne, so it would take forever for me to upload pictures. So when I get another chance to upload pictures I will be sure to do that.

In other news, I will be touching down in Cincinnati in less than 10 days! See most of you then!

Update: The beautiful boat was a standing lugsail yawl rig.

Microsoft SmackDown

So today I went to an event that my school was putting on. It was a geeky event sponsored by Microsoft. There were a couple of different speakers talking about a couple of new and exciting projects. First, Xbox Kinect. Which if you do not know what it is, look it up. It is a super cool motion sensor that you hook up to your 360 that allows your body to become the controller. A cool demo video is below.


We also got to look at and play with the Microsoft Surface computer. It is this really cool interactive table computer. And if you just so happen to be in Las Vegas, there is one in the Hard Rock hotel's bar that you can use to order drinks for yourself and other tables. But there is so much more it can do, which you can check out in the video below.


Also we got to see and play with the new Windows 7 phone. Which, I know a lot of you are kind of sketched out about seeing as it is a Windows phone and in the past they have done worse than awful. But it was super smooth and really good looking. And since I have two other videos already in here, lets go with another one. This is the Windows 7 phone ad, quite realistic if you ask me... silly crackberry users.

A stop at the Australia Zoo

So I know this post was posted just a couple minutes after the previous one, but I knew if I did not do it now while I was sitting on my butt doing nothing it would never get posted.

Sooooo, I finished classes and had no idea what to do with all of my new found free time. So I browsed the all knowing Google and found the Australia Zoo to be just an hours drive north from me. Figured, "Hey, why not!?". So I jumped in my car and went for a lovely drive up north to the Sunshine Coast and enjoyed some wild life. I was amazed though when I first arrived that the first exhibit I had to go through was the "American Alligators"... I was kind of at a loss for words, I came all the way to Australia and I am now looking at some alligators. Oh well, got passed them and saw all sorts of fun things, a Tasmanian Devil, a REAL bearcat (Cincinnati), and the most active little otters. I picked up a couple presents for some of you characters back home and was on my way.


After the zoo, I mad a quick stop off at a go cart track and had a couple fun laps. Then took my scenic drive home. A simple easy weekend with no dramas. This week, there is a Microsoft sponsored event called SmackDown on Wednesday that I am quite excited for, and on Saturday I am going to to the Gold Coast to hang out with some new people I met. So I am quite looking forward to that!

Until then, enjoy the increasingly colder weather back home, it is starting to get hot down here.

Quick flash back to Adelaide!

Last we talked, I was riding a bus to Kangaroo Island. I have since returned from my Adelaide and Kangaroo Island trip and am happy to report I had an amazing time! When we got to KI we went on a nice safari like tour, looking at kangaroos, koalas, and other cute and cuddly animals. We had just a lovely time!


For instance, the picture above was taken in one of the shops we stopped into. A tour guide was just walking around with this bag and set it down. Then a little baby kangaroo popped his head out and said hello. He was cute as could be!

We wandered around the island for a while checking out sea lions and New Zealand fur seals and all sorts of other fun animals. Then we went to this area they call the Remarkable Rocks. Limestone had busted through the earths surface and over time, the elements wore it down in a weird way. It was really unbelievable.


After KI we went to the Barossa Valley. Which is one of the more famous wine regions in Australia. We tasted a whole bunch of wines and picked up a couple bottles. All in all, my journey to Adelaide was complete... except I did not get to see any penguins :(


Ohhhhh and I also forgot to mention that we went to a "professional" basketball game while we were there. To be honest, it was quite a sad showing, more of a mix between high school and D2 basketball... But a great experience none the less.

Beach Monsoons and a little trip to Adelaide

Good morning all, I am coming to you from a tour bus heading for kangaroo island. But more about that later. I have to update you on what I have been up to in the 12/13 day break I have taken once again from my blogging persona.

Last week I went out to Morton Island with a couple people from Ferno. We took our 4WD cars out to the beach and did some wonderful beach driving even though the Brisbane area had their record rain fall recorded in October in just a mere 3 days. So it was a reallllly rainy and windy weekend on the island to say the least. On the bright side I got to meet a whole bunch of families that I had been looking forward to meeting, and i got to do a whole heap of beach driving, which was nice to get used to again.



Minus the outrageous rain and wind, I had a great time. We played lots of poker (I came out even) drank plenty, and had some great food.

This weekend I am going down to kangaroo island to see some sea lions, penguins, and walruses. It should be a great time, and I will be sure to put pictures up as soon as I can!

Retun from my first spring break

Last we talked, I was preparing to leave for my spring break. First stop, Ayers Rock aka, Uluru. My bags were lost when I got there, but that was no big deal, I got them later the following day and got $60 from the airport, so that was nice. I took a beautiful motorcycle ride to the Ulgers (another rock formation out there) then rode over to Ayers Rock to get a couple pictures. I thought about climbing some of it, but since the only shoes I had were Sperrys, I decided against it. It was a beautiful clear day and made for a great ride (sorry mom and Mari the 4WD got booked before I could sign up)

The Ulgers


Ayers Rock

Other than those two big rocks, there is nothing out there... I am really glad that I was only there for two nights.

After the big rocks it was on to Fiji!!!
It was soooo hot and humid there i could hardly believe it, it was like a Culver summer. I stayed at the Hinton Resort and spa, it was so pretty! And it was on its own private island!

View Larger Map


This was my view while I was having breakfast.

To say the least it was a beautiful, peaceful, and relaxing spring break! It was also nice because I had no internet connection, so other than my daily calls from Mari, I had no contact with anyone outside of the island.

Hopefully I will be updating soon, this weekend I am going to some sand island for a weekend of 4WD and fishing, so that should be plenty of fun!

AHHH! I have my highs and my lows

I know, I know, it has been almost 2 weeks since my last update, and currently I dont have my new pictures uploaded to my computer, but I do have a couple I can throw at you.

Quick recap of the festivities and events of the recent past. Two weekends ago I was back in Sydney with Rogelio and his amigos. I was there for the All Blacks vs. The Wallabys final Tri-Nations game. It really was a blast, due to the consensus of half the group I ended up wearing an All Blacks jersey.



The game was amazing! The All Blacks were down two trys and two extra points with 15 minutes left in the game. It appeared to be a blow out, but then the All Blacks had a surge and pulled ahead by 1 point with 2 minutes left. It was crazy stressful.


Just a photo of the whole group after the game.

After the game I had another first time experience. We went to this club called "The Club" (a little arrogant, I know, but it was jam packed and had a line out the door). We got to skip the line and did not have to pay the $25 cover. We sat down at our reserved table and got bottle service. It was outrageous! We had a lot of fun despite our lack of energy after the game.

(the guy kind of ruined the crappy cell phone picture, but no complaints.)

On the Sunday night in Sydney Rogelio and I went over by the opera house and saw this crazy man doing some kind of dance with a big back hoe (the video is on my camera card and will be uploaded later). But more importantly I got the shot I have been dying to get, the picture as if I was at the dentist office in Finding Nemo. It was pretty cool.


All in all, it was an amazing weekend. This quick post was just to hold you over for a couple days as I need to finish one more assignment worth 40% of my final grade. I am visiting Ayres Rock and Fiji this weekend and the following week for our "Spring Break". So depending on internet access I will update as I can. And to put a smile on your face for the remainder of the week, this is a picture that we took on our walk to one of the bars on Friday night in Sydney.

This a bum passed out on a bus bench with a beer bottle by his face. His glasses are a little reflective, but they were like goggles! This was taken around... 10:30-11:00 at night.

Till this weekend, enjoy yourselves!

River Fire!!

Ok so, the premise of River Fire is that everyone goes to the river banks and gets drunk then watches the city shoot off fireworks. There were thousands of people as close to the river as they could possibly get.

Now fireworks don't get me very excited seeing as I was spoiled with Kings Island fireworks every night of the summer with a fantastic view from my back yard. But River Fire had something entirely different to offer me. They had something called a dump and burn! It is when a fighter jet flies over the Brisbane River (quite low mind you) and is burning a stream of fuel behind it. It was so cool to see first hand. The video below does not do it much justice seeing as it is just a ball of light moving across the sky, but it was really cool.


There were some cool fireworks that they were shooting off of a bridge too. Which is something I am not used to. So yeah, that is River Fire, and it was really cool.

Mt. Coot-tha

Just yesterday I took a little drive in my 6 wheeled car (as pictured above) to Mt. Coot-tha. It is a mountain just outside of Brisbane that overlooks the entire city

There were some amazing driving roads on the way up, blind corners, S bends and dips that I really enjoyed driving. At the top of the mountain they had a bar and restaurant, but I did not stop and have anything to eat, just took my pictures and continued on my beautiful drive. There were also the three main news stations on my drive up, so that was cool to see where they were and that they were all so close together.

Other than that little adventure I took no other news. Just River Fire tomorrow (after my Business Law exam) and Sydney next week. I will be sure to update soon after River Fire and try and upload a video of the dump and burn.

What an awful weekend

So this past weekend was absolutely awful! Thursday is technically when my weekend starts, and to start my weekend I had to leave my one and only class early because I did not think I would be able to make it through the entire thing.

It was a nice day out, partly cloudy, with a temperature around 68 degrees. As I was barely stumbling back to my apartment at 10:45 a.m. drenched in sweat. I felt horrible, I considered jumping into the Brisbane river on the way back just to stop the pain, and to put that into perspective... there are sharks in the water that was 35 feet below the bridge. After making it back to my room I downed a couple bottles of water and ran through the shower. I slept for as long as I could in the direct line of the air conditioning only to wake up once again drenched in sweat.

I had a temperature of 99.9 the first night I took it. I drank more water, slept a full night and took some advil only to wake up the next morning with a temperature of 101.4. I could not win, I stayed in bed the entirety of the weekend either sweating or getting horrible shakes. On the bright side, I think I lost 15 lbs... mainly because I could not eat.

Things to look forward to.
1. Getting a different car for a temporary time tomorrow. It is a 6 wheeled car (not a duely truck). I will be sure to include pictures on my next update of my new driving conquest.
2. River fire this weekend. Heaps of fireworks over the Brisbane River, and they do a dump and burn with a jet fighter. Which is when they drop a stream of gas from a fighter jet and they burn it as it falls. I hear it is crazy cool.
3. Turning in my Marketing project on Russia!!!

I am a negligent blogger

So, after a two week hiatus I have returned to you with some exciting news... well, not really, just the run of the mill travel update. Two weeks ago I went to a local rugby league game with some guys from Ferno. We had just a lovely time watching the game, eating some good food, and enjoying some refreshing libations. On a sad note, our team lost quite badly, never-the-less, a good time was had by all.

Just this past weekend I ventured to Sydney to do some touristy stuff like the harbour bridge and the Opera house. I met up with some Culver people (Rogelio Lemarroy and Alex Bell) and had an awesome time with both of them. Alex was my very well prepared tour guide, taking me to Bondi beach and the Blue mountains, as well as some fantastic downtown Sydney driving tours. While Rogelio and his friends refreshed my spanish all weekend with some crazy cool clubs and some mind boggling delicious kebabs. This past weekend has easily been the best weekend I have had in Australia (Katie, yours was a close second). It was nice to see some familiar faces even if I had not seen them for years before this past weekend. I truly can not wait to go back in three weeks for the last tri-nations game and enjoy the city once again.

And once again I am tired of Blogger and am not going to bother to try and figure out how to upload pictures and just provide you with a link

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31294706&l=3c98e710b6&id=1170720024


Elin, as promised, posted before midnight my time

New Zealand ski trip

This past weekend I went to New Zealand for a little skiing. A simple 3 hour flight over, stay in a hotel and drive up the mountain the next morning and hit the slopes. I landed in Christchurch thursday night then got up early the next morning and drove to Methvan about an hour and a half away. Again, I am making this a little easier to reference...

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It was a lovely and simple drive. Checked into the hotel and headed strait for the slopes in my makeshift ski gear; which was comprised of sweat pants that were under some track pants, and a Culver hoodie under my North Face. Worked out pretty well to tell you the truth. After my two days of skiing I drove back to Christchurch and went to the pubs to watch the All Blacks v. The Wallabies (all blacks won).

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31264596&l=e7c264445f&id=1170720024

The following morning I got up and headed out to the Antarctic Centre to look at some penguins and what have you. They were quite cute, some of them had little booties on because their feet got blisters and they had trouble walking. Then we took a ride in this Antarctic vehicle that could do all sorts of crazy things, like float and propel itself in the water, drive across 2 metre gaps and go up and down crazy inclines.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31264610&l=5fe835233b&id=1170720024

That is really it for the NZ adventure, next weekend I am going to Sydney to do all the touristy things, so I will be sure to take pictures of that.

Also, sorry about the copy and pasting of the links... Blogger is starting to aggravate me.

5 1/2 hours later and I am in Armidale

This past weekend i decided to take a drive down south to Armidale in New South Wales. And for those of you who can't be bothered to open up google maps i have done the hard work for you.

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I went down there to visit a friend of mine from Miami. She (Katie) is down here doing chemistry research at the University of New England. Since she was leaving the following weekend i felt it would be necessary to drive down and experience another part of Australia. It was a long 5 1/2 hour drive but my goodness was it pretty! It was kind of like a combination of driving through the Indiana corn fields and the rolling hills of North Carolina with mountains in the distance. Just mind blowingly beautiful.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31244753&l=7ef83621a0&id=1170720024
(side note, i have spent the last 30 minutes trying to get this stupid website to let me upload that picture but it had no desire to)

I arrived there around 7 pm on friday and Katie's roommates (local Australians) were having a BBQ and asked me to join. Katie was one lucky girl i tell you, her roommates cooked every night and it was always fantastic. Any hoo, we went out to one of the two bars in the town and hung out for a little while. It was a much different bar scene than i was used to but that is the point of traveling places right?! The following day was rainy and gross, but we went to this huge gorge. There was this 100ft (estimation, may be more) waterfall.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31244738&l=858ae35873&id=1170720024

That night we hung out at Katie's house and taught her roommates to play quarters, with actual quarters. so that was alot of fun, by the end of it the two roommates were so competitive that they were screaming and going crazy if they lost. After that, it was just a long drive home. So there is my weekend!

Next weekend i will be going to New Zealand for some skiing, so be sure to tune in for that update!

First week of school and Tri Nations game

So, I have completed my first week of school and it went over very well. I had one class a day except for Wednesday i had two and friday i had 0! Their schedules are set up with one lecture per class per week and one tutorial or practical per lecture per week. The classes seem fine so far, no complaints yet, i really enjoy my Emerging Technology class because we just talk about computers, cell phones, different cool web sites to go to, and software. So it is right up my ally.

On saturday i went to a Tri Nations rugby game. The tri nations matches are, obviously, between three nations; Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The matches are in a round robin format, so they all play each other once. the game did not start till 8 pm though, so it went for a little while. It was really cool though. We saw the Australian Wallabies play "SA Rugby" (that was there name apparently). The Wallabies won 30 to 13 so that was good to leave the stadium with a win under the local belt. And that for the most part is all i know for now. Have just started another week of classes so that is boat loads of fun! And i may be doing a little bit of traveling this weekend, but it has yet to be decided.

First day of school! First day of school!

Now I know that all of you have been patiently waiting by your computers hoping i will update any second. Well wait no more, the time has come. (what i mean by that is sorry about the 7 day delay and i will do my best to make the intervals between posts shorter)
My first day at Uni (wow, im so hip using aussie lingo) went a little like this... woke up at 10 a.m. with the thought that i would get over to campus early, wander around and make sure i knew what i was doing and where i was going before my 1 pm class. but alas we all know i am not that motivated... so instead i woke up at 10, made some easy mac for breakfast, finally unpacked, set up my school email(again... finally), and then began downloading Finding Nemo. Well when i did finally set up my email, i had a couple (47) waiting for me in my inbox. So i sifted through them and found one that said the first tutorial class for my monday class was canceled due to there was nothing to work on till after the first lecture. So, my day starting at 1... turned into my day starting at.... 5. What a rough first day i will say. I will tell you what i have already started to like this.
Going to school is slightly different here...obviously. For one, i walk to class across a sweet bridge, second, the syllabus are like 11 pages long, and lastly, the profs introduce themselves by their first names.... and that is it. there is no Dr. Tim Rollins... just Tim. so that took me for a little bit of a loop, but other than that it seems all fair.
in other news, i got a couple new flat mates. two from Dubai, which i rarely see. and one from Boston. so that is all good and fun. and i believe that is about all i have for this installment of the blog. Continue to wait anxiously by your computers and i will not fail at keeping you on the edges of your seats.

I forgot I came here for school

so the other day i went over to the school to get my ID card and all that fun stuff. What i forgot was that i had to sign up for classes... ugh, why cant this just be a long vacation?! I had a bunch of classes ok'ed by QUT and Miami so i had plenty to choose from, it just came down to the days i wanted to be in school. And as most of you know, i am not a big fan of friday classes (or classes at all for that matter) so i did my very best to have friday off. once that was accomplished i thought... i wonder if i can have a 4 day weekend? Turns out i cant, The best i could do was out of class by 12 on Thursday, so a 3 1/2 day weekend is not bad at all. I have signed up for Business Law, Emerging Technology, Marketing, and Australian Society and Culture. So i should have a fairly easy schedule, minus the two business classes.
Yesterday we had to do a whole bunch of orientation things and have them tell us not to binge drink, and dont get raped, and make sure we go to class. the normal bit you get when you are a freshman. the only difference was that this meeting took 4 hours.... with no breaks. and all international students. so that got old real quick.
Well, the only new news is that tonight i am going on a Brisbane River Cruise with all the international students. So that should be a whole bunch of fun. There is a meal, bar, and dance floor all on the boat. I doubt i will be bored, so i will do my best to find my camera and take some pictures.
Thats all for now folks. Enjoy your night/day

First day driving!

ok, sooo, i drove my sweet car today. I have decided to name her Gertrude; and she is quite beautiful! I took her for a drive today with two of my other friends. We just got on the M1 (highway) and started driving towards the beach. We got distracted by a sign with a manatee on it and wanted to go see it. We failed, but ended up finding a wildlife reserve and got to see a couple of wild animals in the the wild. We saw a wallaby, a kookaburra, and some other crazy random birds. then we made our way home and that is the night. Any ways, yesterday i went to school and got my classes figured out. I have class Monday thru Thursday, but i finish at noon on Thursday. so i have a 3 1/2 day weekend. so no complaints there. Other than that, i really have not done anything exciting. I have just been walking around the city trying to get to know everything around here. I think things are going quite well, i like my apartment so i got lucky there. This city is beautiful and so much fun. it reminds me a lot of Toronto, Canada. It is very clean and orderly, but there is some decent night life. Tomorrow a group of us are going to the Sunshine Coast to do some surfing. so a nice early morning drive up north to some warmer weather for some surfing then back again later that night. So that is all for right now, i will be sure to let you know how my surfing fiasco goes.

ok, i tried to upload some images... but it did not work. so make sure you check them out on facebook

Great Barrier Reef

So, our second to last day in Cairns we went on a little boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef. It was a two hour boat ride out on a big dual hull sail boat. Our first stop was at some bird sanctuary island that the reef was right by, so we were boated to the island then snorkeled out to the boat to get ready for our scuba dive. And i really do mean scuba dive. I am an non certified scuba novice that they let go down 35 feet for about 30 min and scuba the reef. Oh and did i mention that this dive was a mere AU$70. So that was realllly awesome! we then went to a second area of the reef where i just snorkeled. there was a slight problem with the whole day, it was mad crazy windy, like gusts of 40 knots. But it was the GBR... so i got over that quite quick. any ways, after our 2 1/2 hour boat ride in we got back to the hostel and hit the sack because we had an early morning the next morning. We flew out of Cairns at 10 with breakfast at 7. There were a couple problems with the taxis as we were trying to leave, finally got to the air port where they tried to charge me $200 to check my bags because i could not show proof that i came from the states. As if my passport and accent were not enough. found my original tickets and finally got around that. Slept the entire flight to Brisbane. Arrived here is Brisbane and got into our rooms, only to find out that the previous tenant has yet to move out. And the lady helping us at the counter was not exactly doing that... so, after trying to explain what she had done wrong (nicely of course mother), i got moved to a different room temporarily. And i will be moving back down to my original room shortly. Had a wonderful burger just down the road from my building and am currently waiting on my phone to get here. And if you have any desire to call me for an absurd price, my number you need to call is +61449874509
so there we go, and off to the next adventure, i will be sure to try and get some pictures up the next time i am on my own computer and able to upload them.

Held a Koala and pet a Kangaroo

So, got up nice and early this morning and went to breakfast. Nothing exciting, just some toast and peanut butter. Had the option for some vegimite but decided it was not time yet. We had our second session for how we are going to be living in Australia rather than traveling here... so that was a little depressing. But after that we went out on this rainforestation thing which was pretty cool. I hung out with some kangaroos and even got to hold a koala, i also had a snake draped around my neck... but that is no where near as cool as the other two. And i would love to put up some pictures to show you all but at the moment i am not able to use my computer and the ones i am using do not allow me to upload pictures from external drives... damn you internet cafes!!! We took a ride in this boat called a duck or something. it was an amphibious vehicle. so- half of it was on land and the other half on the water. mainly looking at some crazy plants and what not. I am just about to go learn how to play cricket. so im pretty pumped about that. so for now, you all will have to do with this short little post and wait until i have another adventure or am able to upload photos.

Sorry it took so long

Sorry i have not posted in a while, I have just been trying to enjoy every bit of japan that i can.... and i have found that computers have no place in that when you want to walk around a beautiful city like Tokyo! Anyways, did a lot of fun stuff since my last post. I went to dinner with Mari's friends from her old school. We went to a place where you cooked your food on a hot griddle right in front of you, kind of like hibachi places, except you do the cooking. so that was really cool. I also spent a day with Nita-san, who works for Ferno Japan, we went to Mt. Fuji and took a scenic boat right around a beautiful lake. then we drove up a mountain a little bit and we bought eggs that were black... they turn black when they are hard boiled in the hot springs on this mountain. In my opinion... they were better than normal hard boiled eggs, but i digress. We also saw a shrine and a temple (Mari told me the difference but i cant remember what it is). Those two were pretty cool, we threw some money at Buddha, waved smoke over our head, and go a fortune out of a drawer.
On my last day, mari and i went and did these photo booth things that are at like carnivals and what not in the states... but they are HUGE in japan. Huge as in, it is sunday and we have to wait in line to do these picture things. Then we went to the busiest intersection in the world, the one they drift through in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift"... sooooooo cool, and to top it off, i saw a Nissan GTR go through the intersection.
i then had to say goodbye to that lovely girlfriend of mine and make my way onto a 9 hour flight. The plane was smaller than the first flight i took... so that made sleeping impossible seeing as my knees were in my chest and the back of the seat in front of me was in my face. But i survived to make my connection which was delayed. And i finally landed in Cairns, Australia, checked into my hotel (only $20 a night... awesome!) and i am just about to go grab a bite to eat. so you all enjoy your day because i sure as hell am enjoying the 80 degree sunny with a slight breeze Australian weather.

I wore a big robe

SOOOO... two days ago was not really all that exciting... just went to a couple cities that i can not pronounce the names of, shopped around a little bit. Found out an important fact... i am in fact too large for this country. Everything they have is just too small for me... if you are larger than an average size American... you are screwed. But I am not all that worried. The more exciting day was yesterday. First we took this awesome monorail to another city i can not pronounce. When we got there we went to this amazing Toyota show room. It had a bunch of Lexus and Toyota cars obviously... but it had past cars, present cars, and prototype future cars. I saw my dream car there, the Lexus LFA (pictured above). So that was a nice little treat to have. After the Toyota show room thing we went to an Onsen... which is a big bath house. You go into this big temple thing and take off your shoes and they give you this big robe thing which you change into. Once in your big robe, you go into basically a mini city within this temple building. There are shops, restaurants, and massage parlors. It was awesome. Mari and I got a massage, I did a doctor fish bath, which is when you put your feet into water with a bunch of fish in it and the fish eat the dead skin off of your feet... it was a really cool feeling but still kind of weird. Then we went into the bath rooms. You go into this huge room completely naked, sit on this little stool and bathe yourself with soap and all. then you wander around and sit in different mineral baths that are different temperatures and what not. It was so relaxing. I sat in the sauna and sweated for a little bit, went in the outdoor baths and finished with my favorite bath in the place... the cold water bath which was about 18 degrees Celsius. After our baths we had dinner at one of the restaurants within the onsen. And i will tell you what... the concept of a mixed drink is lost on these people, but no worries, we worked through it. By the time we left the onsen it was 10:30 and time to head home. I was so relaxed though. If you ever have a chance to go to an onsen in Japan i highly recommend you get over your fear of nudity and go to one. It is so relaxing and and quite an experience.

oh and feel free to post comments with questions or anything, i will gladly answer

Akihabara

Quite the day yesterday. Went to the Imperial Palace and wandered the gardens. It was quite hot though. And there were a lot of old people moving verrry slowly. After the Palace, Mari and I went to the Sony store, which is an 8 story building that has a whole bunch of Sony stuff in it. From old tech, to current tech, to future tech. On the top floor they had a 200 inch 3D tv that you could watch clips of the current world cup on. that was really cool... but of course we were not allowed to take pictures, so I have nothing to show for it. We also went to a little Nissan show room that only had the Nissan Leaf, but was cool none the less. Then we went to Akihabara, which is the technology district. So I was in heaven. I just wandered in and out of all these stores with 7, 8, 9 floors of pure tech. It was crazy. The main reason we went though is because my camera broke halfway through the day... so that was sad news. Thankfully though, I found a new camera in Akihabara. 14.1 megapixel, 5x digital zoom... oh and did i mention it was about $75 cheaper than what i would have paid back home. so now i will have really good pictures to post up.
Mari and I made our way back to my hotel and got some dinner. I dont remember what exactly they are called... but basically they are octopus balls. Bits of octopus, some lettuce, and breading that is fried then topped with Japanese mayo, fish flakes, sea weed, and sometimes cheese. Needless to say, they were fantastic.
Well, i believe that is all, going to grab some breakfast now and start the day.

First Night in Japan

14 hours of flying, 8 hours of sleep, and 3 movies later i touched down in Tokyo. Most of yesterday was a blur seeing as jet lag tried to claim my night (which i would not allow). Got off the plane, claimed my bags, worked my way through security, customs, and immigration and onto a train to my hotel. i have never ridden more public transportation in my life. It was one train after another after another. Once i got to the hotel mari and i went to get something to eat... sushi of course, and i forgot to take pictures of the meal, so sorry about that. then we met up with some of her friends and went out to a club for a while. Around 1:30 i grabbed a taxi home and wandered up to bed finally after a long day.
Just an FYI...
1) commercials over here are the best thing ever
2) The toilets are CRAZY!! (picture to follow)
3) Girls really do dress up in little princess outfits and fairy outfits like in the movies

The night preceding the leave

Current time... 3:29 am June 18, 2010 and in about an hour I will be driving to the airport for my flight to Tokyo. Now I know that this is not in Australia... but I am going to see Mari. Finished packing... kind of, just have my carry on to finish up, and I am on my way. I have a 2 hour flight over to New Jersey, then I have a 14 hour flight over the top of the earth to Japan arriving Saturday at 2 pm... long day of flying, but going to see Mari, so it will be worth it. Any ways... I will of course start taking pictures and upload them as soon as I can. kk believe that is all.