Arriving at Meleka Bus Station (which has been moved from the Lonely Planet prescribed positon) for the first time on my trip I found myself not knowing quite how to get the next place, and not knowing if anyone around who would understand me. Fortunately after getting on the wrong bus a couple of times, I managed to get pointed to the bus to take me to the city (stupid tourists). I spent a couple of days in Meleka, partially just to chill out and take things easy, and partially to kill time, because I wanted to have my stitches out [View Full Entry]

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No sooner had I said good by to Dom, i started talking with an American girl, Deborah. Turned out that she had studied pretty much exactly the same sort of Engineering course as me. We got along pretty well, so on a whim and a prayer I decided to head up to Malaysia with her the next day. We decided to head to this island off the east coast called Tioman. We arrived in Mersing en route to the island, where we met up with Nick (British), Daniel (Swedish) and Kelly (Canadian), and then headed to Tioman the next day. Tioman [View Full Entry]

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I left the safety of Australia, on an all night flight to Singapore, arriving at 4am. This wasn't such a good idea, because I'll too tall to sleep on flights, and NOTHING is open at 4am. I waiting till 6am for the first train into the city, and met up with a German guy, Dom, who was on my flight. We found the first open place to sleep (which was a bit of a hole) and crashed for a couple of hours. My first experience in Singapore was buying a new camera. It doesn't work the same as NZ. The prices [View Full Entry]

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My work here is done. I am finally finished with the vending machines. I have to mention my day, where I visited 16 machines, 13 of which on foot (they were all in the CBD). It was kinda like orientering, with vending machines! I have had afew days in Sydney, although I am getting itchy feet to get going. It is probably good for me to be still for a while. I've done a bit of reading, and should really do some more on the places that I will be going to next. The other day I did abit of a [View Full Entry]

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Just cause it gave me the chance to get in before everyone else!!!! I managed to track down where I could vote, and cast a special vote ('cause I'm special). Now all I've gotta do is track down a bunch of New Zealanders playing election night drinking games in Sydney! And we get to start 2 hours earlier in the day than you! [View Full Entry]

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Fortunately for me, there were some vending machines in Canberra, so the company paid for me to drive down there, and stay for a couple of days. Unfortunately my camera was bung, so I'm rather lacking on the photos! I was rather disappointed that I didn't see ANY Kangaroos or other wildlife, not even in the roadkill form. I actually haven't seen a single kangaroo in australia, I think they are probably some marketing ploy to fool foriegners - just like drop bears. I liked Canberra, I think it's the engineer in me. It is a planned city, and pretty much [View Full Entry]

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Over the weekend Angela, Nick (her boy), Anne-Marie (her flatmate) and I went out to the Blue Mountains. They are called the Blue Mountains, because they are covered with eucalyptus trees, which give off a vapour which gives a blueish tinge to the region. My camera didn't take too nicely to this tinge, and proceeded to crap itself (See photo). This does provide me with a great excuse to go shopping for electronic gizmos in Singapore however. The weather was slightly less than ideal for our trip, However the effect of being up amongst the cloud was rather breath-taking. Seeing mountains [View Full Entry]

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As some of you may know I am spending another 2 weeks in Sydney working for my old company (the vending machine one) installing the software I developed. It is a wee bit draining, and rather repetitive work, but they are paying me contract rates, and covering all of my expenses, so I can't complain too much! I has been an interesting way to see Sydney. I have had the chance to go into a lot of different work places, and meet a number of different people. They also paid for me to hire a car and go to Camberra, which [View Full Entry]

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I also attended a protest against a Conference of the world's top 300 CEO's, which was organized by Forbes. This was also quite disappointing. I didn't really get the feeling that the protest was a popular movement, but just a group of a few hundred students, anarchists and other disaffected groups of people. The group of people marched to the Opera House, where the conference was being held. However the Opera House had been completely fenced off, and surrounded with hundreds of cops (who probably out numbered the protesters). Some people started swinging on the fences, and eventually broke [View Full Entry]

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Over the weekend I attended the Sydney Social Forum. In all honesty I was a bit disappointed. It did provide an interesting insight into how things are in Australia. Their government is WAY worse than ours on things like refugees and the war in Iraq. Most of the sessions just seemed like a bit of a talk-fest, with no real talk of action which could be taken immediately. Many sessions were about plans of how the world could work (grand socialist schemes) which didn't seem to place any focus on the implementation. The turn-out of 300 people seemed a little low [View Full Entry]

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