For my birthday in 2006 Badda Baz surprised me with a trip to Edinburgh. I must say he was very good at hiding the surprise even when I’d slip the odd “so where are we going this weekend” in every now and then. He was even still quite coy when I asked him what I should pack - bikini? Er, no. Oh :( I mean, yay! (Obviously). But when I asked whether or not I should pack my passport, the cookie crumbled. We’re staying in the UK! And where have I been wanting to go? You guessed it. An end of [View Full Entry]

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The spoilt chap that I am, for my birthday this year CK bought me a drive of a......... Monster Truck!!! In fact she bought me a Red Letter Day where I had to choose between driving a rally car, a ferrari, a hovercraft, a nobel, a jag.... it was such a hard decision! But in the end I figured, "how often will you get the chance to drive a real life Monster Truck?" I chose the 4 wheel steer, American built, 6.5lt Chrysler engined Mud Zerella :-) It was a great day out! We had lunch at Matt and Faiths, then [View Full Entry]

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The summer of 2006 was nothing but fun, fun, fun. And what better way to end the summer than at the closing parties in Ibiza. Bex, Bindy, Juicy, Adrian, Anna, Matt, Baz and I made our way there at the end of September. We were staying in the Jet Apartments in Playa d’en Bossa on East Coast, so called because we were right under the flight path. The planes left some pretty funky sounding jet streams behind them in the wee hours… We were there for 5 days and had planned to party for 3. We had tickets to a night [View Full Entry]

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We could only go to one festival in 2006 and with Glasto taking a year off, we chose Global Gathering. The biggest weekend dance festival in the UK. Matt, Faith, Andy, Rena, Janelle, Macca, Benny plus all the friends of friends all came along for the ride. And we celebrated Andy, Janelle, Matt & Baz’s b’days there too. The weather was gorgeous all weekend, we couldn’t have hoped for better. Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Erick Morillo, Roni Size, Sasha, Paul Oakenfold, Groove Armada, Fatboy Slim, Pete Tong, Deep Dish, Plump DJs, Stanton Warriors, Krafty Kuts, Shapeshifters, Hed Kan [View Full Entry]

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For our first anniversary we decided to celebrate by taking a couple of days off work and visiting the city of luuurve. We arrived quite late on a Wednesday night and found our hostel pretty easily. We were staying quite close to Sacre Coeur so that was naturally the first stop. Next up the Tour Eiffel, yes we climbed to the top. But everything is quite tiny from up there. Just “co-incidentally” there happened to be an evening bike tour leaving from the South leg of the Eiffel Tower and Barrie had been all up for a bike tour. I had [View Full Entry]

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Good night out after the races [View Full Entry]

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Day at the races to farewell Adrian and Anna [View Full Entry]

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We flew out of Sydney on Easter Sunday, headed for the green green grass of home! After 2 weeks of relaxing, eating, drinking, hanging out, the next 2 weeks were to be a bit more full throttle :-) We arrived in Auckland to a typically cloudy day. Nothing like the perfect blue sky we had just left. But that's why it's called "Aoteroa", Land Of The Long White Cloud, ah? We were met by Paul and Maryanne at the airport, who very kindly lent us their car. We quickly visited Sarah, Nick, Tonia, Dave, Georgie and Theo, before heading back to [View Full Entry]

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So in order to get my Visa changed from a Working Holiday to a Work Permit, I needed to leave the UK. We decided to do 2 weeks in Sydney while the UK authorities did their part and then 2 weeks in NZ while the Kiwi's did their part. We flew out of London on Emirates to Dubai for 2 hours, then Bangkok for 1 hour, and touched down in Sydney about 7am. Charmaines mum picked us up, got us cleaned up and then straight to Yum-Cha for brunch! After lunch it was time for some shopping and then a quick [View Full Entry]

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After Baz’s long weekend introduction to snowboarding in January 2006, he was keen as a bean for a full week of burning thighs, aching backs and bruised bums. So in March 2006 we rallied the boarding troops - Sim, Si, Kent, Kirst, Matt & Faith - and chose our destination… Zell am See, Austria. There’s not a lot I can say. It was a wicked trip and everyone had a ball. Early morning wake up calls by Si and Baz were followed by morning yoga stretches to enable us to stand upright and hobble our way onto the slopes. Faithy had [View Full Entry]

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