Play football at lunchtime and have this happen.  It makes for fun walking…..

Yet another Labour Day public holiday missed because of travel to Australia.  I worked out that I have had one Labour Day public holiday in the last six years because I’ve worked for companies based in Australia and they don’t have the same holidays and seem to organise things for this week 🙁

Here’s what I’m up to over the next month:

• Sunday 26th October – Fly to Sydney for a sales conference in the Hunter Valley
• Thursday 30th October – Fly back home
• Wednesday 5th November – Fly to Sydney with Vic to watch the Phoenix play
• Saturday 8th November – Fly Back home
• Thursday 13th November – Fly to London
• Sunday 16th November – Fly from London to Prague for a technical conference
• Thursday 20th November – Back to London for a few days
• Monday 24th November – Fly from London to home
• Wednesday 26th November – Get home! yay!

Phew………

Cool!  I’m sitting here watching the cycle road race at the Olympics and the cyclists are going through a place called Badaling just outside of Beijing.  That’s where I visited the Great Wall of China in ’91.  I even recognosed the carpark after all these years 🙂

I’ve finished (at last) reading James F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy all in one go. Six volumes each at more than 600 pages in paperback form!  Naturally I read it on my Sony Reader and what a great read it was!

It was a strange series mixing sci-fi with a lot of afterlife/spiritual threads mixed in.  The 3600 odd pages flew past and the the ending drew all the different story lines together brilliantly.

42 – that’s how old I am today!

My day has been spent “working from home” and looking after a sick wife and 3 year old – to be fair it was quite nice looking after the family.

Besides my new MacBook Pro Vic bought me a harmony universal remote that I can program on the PC.  The boys also bought me a Wii Fit which Max and I had a hoot setting up tonight 🙂  I’m a very lucky man…

Not so lucky is the fact that I’m off to Melbourne for another week on Sunday 🙁

I’ve moved to the dark side!  This is my new toy – 15″ Macbook Pro.  I’ve had it 12 hours and am still trying to figure out how to do the basics but am enjoying the un-learning/learning process.

This was a great weekend for football (soccer) results:

• My masters team won 1-0 for our first win of the season
• Max’s team won their “little dribblers” game 6-1. He also bought his first set of boots.
• The Phoenix won an exhibition, Chinese earthquake charity match 6-2. Vic and I took Max and Elliot along for their first Phoenix game – Max enjoyed it and Elliot was over it in about 20 minutes 🙂

Max and I also had a great bonding moment this afternoon as we sat there cleaning our boots together…..

I’m absolutely knackered after 4 days of training and having to use my brain.

The first few days were HBDI related with the second day being particularly hard work.  We then took what we had learned and did two days of presentation skills training.  Out of it all I have three DVD’s showing a meeting and two presentations.  They should make for interesting viewing, maybe even for Vic! 🙂

That’s all really – I’m in the Air New Zealand lounge in Melbourne looking forward to getting home. Unfortunately the flight doesn’t get back to Wellington until 12:20 in the morning 🙁