Swimming with Sharks

For those who have been so lucky to receive my recent mass mailing, you will know I'm currently training for a 2K ocean swim in February. To help everyone follow along and support me and my two friends who are taking on this challenge, I've created another blog. This blog will help everyone follow our training and see our progress towards our fundraising goals.

The link is as follows: http://teamsharkbaitoz.blogspot.com/

My personal fundraising goal is to raise $2000 for Cure Cancer Australia, so any support people can give is not only going towards a great cause, but is helping me achieve my goal. Anyways, I won't post too much here but I do want to let people know to check the other blog to see what's been going on. :)

Halloween Flashback...

This year I decided to take a flashback to my childhood for my costume. For some reason this year I really wanted to do something where I was wearing a wig... after a quick internet search I found the perfect costume - Rainbow Bright!

For those who don't remember, Rainbow Bright lives with all the Color Kids and are in charge of all the colors on Earth. She rode a white horse named Starlite and defeated the Kind of Shadows. (I must admit I got a bit of help from Wikipedia on the flashback) The moral of the story is that she is cool, and I got to wear a blonde wig. :)

Long Weekend Mayhem

Firstly, I must apologise because I've been completely slack at updating the blog lately. Work is going well, I'm settling in with the routine after being there for just over a month. Aside from that there hasn't been much exciting going on in my life. However this last weekend was eventful enough that I felt it warranted a blog.

This weekend was a bank holiday so we had a much desired long weekend. A few friends and I decided it would be worthwhile going camping. There is a place about 2.5 hours north called Stockton beach which is good for camping and you can do a bit of relaxing. Things were looking great aside from a poor weather forecast. The drive up was a down pour of rain until just before the beach, when it stopped. However things wouldn't stay positive for too long... not even 10 minutes onto the beach and our truck was stuck.

About 30 minutes later (and luckily we had two cars) we were on our way to trying to find a suitable place to make camp. To set the scene a bit more... Stockton Beach is about 35 K long and is more than just your standard beach. Behind the waterfront bit there is a series of small dunes with some sparse bushes, then behind those dunes there are some serious dunes. Thing Sahara like desert on the water front and you'll have an idea of what it's like. We ended up finding a place in the first set of dunes around 10:30 and began setting up camp. By 12:30 we had a camp fire going and were enjoying some beers.

All was going well until about 6AM when it became very windy... then rainy... then the wind and rain increased.... and continued. The wind was strong enough that my tent was blown completely flat, and destroy the tarp covered area with all our food. So this meant we had to try to move the tarp to an area which could withstand the wind and rain.

This misery continued until after lunch when we made the executive decision that with the weather not changing we would pack up and leave. As you can imagine packing in the rain and wind was as pleasant as waking up to it... So we then left to go to a house one of the guys has south of Sydney - a house with a roof, beds, shower, and toilet.

After another 4 hours of driving we were in shelter and able to begin the process all over again. :)

Needless to say the next time we have planned to go camping and the weather report looks disastrous we will rethink our plans.

No more Soccer...

With my new visa there is a statement which says that Deloitte will be the only company which I will work for. When I initially read this I didn't think much of it, but started thinking more about it as I debated on putting myself back on the schedule for soccer officiating... luckily I asked the question because it would be a breach of my visa if I do. I'm of two minds in regards to this... on one side I'm sad because I enjoyed that work and seeing the kids, etc. On the other hand I no longer have to worry about waking up at 6AM on a Saturday to potentially go run around in the rain and mud for 2-3 hours.

So I guess I'm stuck with just consulting and having my weekends free to play. :) Mean while, work is going well and I'm starting to get my feet under me a bit more so things will just keep getting better.

Back to the Grind Stone

Yesterday was my first day with Deloitte Consulting and things have started out amazingly. Everyone is super friendly and happy to help with anything I need assistance with given the fact I've been thrown into the deep end in a way. I had an interview with my client yesterday and my first day of meetings today, so I am hitting the ground running.
It is definitely a different situation than what I experienced at BearingPoint, where my first couple weeks were spent doing online training courses to begin to understand the organisation and how it operates. Whereas with a smaller office things are much more at my fingertips and if I have any questions I can ask anyone from the business analysts to the partners for help.
My client is a massive public sector organisation which is undergoing a public private partnership much like one of my projects in Virginia, so things are a bit more familiar. The most important thing is that things are going well and I'm enjoying things so far. With having a smaller area covered the teams are much more social which will be nice for gaining a larger feeling for the organisation outside of my project team.
Anyways, it's late and I should be going but I wanted to put a post up to give everyone an update.

Sunsets, Shopping and Cherry Chip Cake

Once upon a time I lived in Phoenix - the city of (relatively) inexpensive housing, endless shopping malls and breath taking sunsets... and now that I no longer live in the city which has a typical temperature of 100+ F on summery days with extreme dryness, I can see how people say it's hot. When I got off the plane I definitely felt as if I was hitting a brick wall of hot air and I immediately started sweating profusely. That was Saturday night, it is now Tuesday night and I think I've finally stopped sweating.

The last few days have been a whirl wind. Sunday we cleared out my storage unit and I was able to take a blast from the past and saw some of the old things my Mom kept for me. Old Halloween costumes, sports memorabilia, and general randomness. This made the process of getting ride of the majority of my things much easier as I was able to clearly see what was worth keeping and what was not. The things which I'm keeping will find their new home in either a closet or garage of my parent's new house in Dallas.

Monday I was able to get in a run, some pool time and 9 holes of golf. Today was spent shopping, which is always fun. I must admit that I am proud of myself because my reasonable gene came out when I realised it was a bit silly to be buying jeans when it's going into summer in Sydney. So I mainly hit up all the great summer sales. :)

Today was rounded off with my parents and I having my birthday cake - albeit a bit early, but I'll place money on not being able to find cherry chip cake in Australia. For those of you who are unfortunate to not know what cherry chip is I've taken some pictures to go along with my description. The best way to describe it is to picture a moist vanilla cake with bits of dried cherry freckled throughout. Now obviously the cherry bits aren't real cherries, but the taste more than makes up for this.

Tomorrow the plan is to get in some pool time and indulge in some margaritas and Mexican food. Then its back to Sydney and straight to work. Its been great to be back in the states but I'm looking forward to getting to work and having a bit more stability in my life (aka a paycheck). :)

The obligatory birthday shot, unfortunately (or fortunately) we didn't have any candles

If you look close you can see the specks of red - this is all the yummy goodness, and yes that is cherry frosting (duh!)

My special plate which has been used at virtually every birthday or special day in my family

This is the view from my parents house, it's a gorgeous view and even if they do say the sunsets haven't been as good w/ the weak monsoon season - I still think they're great!

So much for travelling....

The 6-8 weeks that I was told would take for my visa to be approved ended up being a whapping 3 days! So it's a bit good news bad news. The good news is I get to start working more than a month earlier than expected - yay for a paycheck! The bad news is I won't be able to get around to see the fam, but also good news as this means I might be able to justify coming back for Christmas or the holidays. So I'm very happy I hadn't booked any of my domestic flights yet as I was able to very quickly change my plans so that I leave for AZ on Saturday and back to Sydney on Thursday.

Aside from spending my time rearraning flights, I've spent the last couple days playing with dogs and babies. Below are some pictures from my friend's wedding and my gorgeous nieces. Enjoy!


Hanging out with some of the girls before the 30 minutes+ of toasts began

Ryan and his ladies in teal

Sabrain, Jenni and I

Kirsten (my brother's wife) and I went to do some work in her classroom and brought the girls along. We setup some of the desks as a 'coral' and they enjoyed 3 hours of playtime in a new place. This provided the prime opportunity to take some pictures. :)

Mary hanging out

Lila hanging out - this is one of the rare moments she wasn't boosting herself up on the desks to see what was going on outside the coral

Hanging out, during a long day of play at school

This is a piece of randomness which I had to take a picture of... this 'taco van' styled pig was in a very posh shopping area and asking for its picture to be taken. Gotta love Seattle!