Last post from USA

Well here I am sitting in Philadelphia airport, waiting for my flight to London to board. This is my last post from America. It's been an amazing time, I've met some great people, had some experiences I'll never forget, and I have been very blessed.

Off to London now for 25 hours, then Singapore then home.

Can't wait to come back to America...whenever that is!

Vegemite banned in the USA!!!

I don't usually post news stories, but u gotta check this out. The funny thing I'm in the USA and I have vegemite! Does that mean I'll be arrested !!!

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20623973-2,00.html

Disney World !!!

Well my time here in America is drawing to a close. Only 2 weeks :( I have been away with the band for 10 days. We managed to get down to Florida this time. While we were down there we managed to get free tickets to Disney World. Somehow AB pull the free Disney Parks everytime!

So Disney World is actually 4 theme parks in 1, Magic Kindom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom and MGM Studios. We started off at Epcot centre, the one with the big ball. We were quite excited to be there, you can see from the video...




After Cruising round there for a few hours, we headed off to the Animal Kindom. It was like a Disney Zoo. They had set up a real African like wildlife park, it was a cool tour. Didn't get to go on many rides round there cause we had the other parks to go to.

Up next was Disney/MGM studio's park. It was
basically like Movie World on the Gold Coast. It had rides associated with movies, or TV shows. First we went to the Indian Jones Stunt Show, the one with the big rolling ball. Well Swanny and I jumped round like a couple of twits and managed to get ourselves as extras in the stunt show. We had to dress up in Arabic clothes and just follow director doing some crazy actions, heaps of fun!

The other great ride in MGM was the Rock n' Rollercoaster. It was a complete rollercoaster but it was set inside, it was awesome. We cruised round a bit more and then made our way back to Epcot to see the fireworks. We didn't make it to the Magic Kingdom, but I was told it was like DisneyLand California...been there done that :)

Here's my pics from the day http://picasaweb.google.com/wngreenway/DisneyWorld.

Oh yeah so we played some in Florida and did some stuff. Had a couple of long days of driving to get home.

Looking forward to coming back Australia, and catching up with all my friends....and seeing U2 !!!!! I'll be home early November, so send me an email if u wanna catch up.

Lazy Boy

Well I've been a very lazy boy and haven't updated my blog for 2 months...my bad :(

So much has happened in that time. I came back to America to spend some more time with Alabaster Box. I have had a chance to tour round a few different states in America this time. We've been to Georgia the most, about 5 times. Would you believe I'm making this post from a hotel room in Valdosta, Georgia. Thankfully we're off to Florida tomorrow, yeah !!!! I think we may get a chance to go into Miami.

I also had a chance to go Chicago. Had a great time there and met some cool people. It is a really great city. Much cleaner than New York City, I'd love to go back there again. It's currently Fall (Autumn) over here. It's great to be somewhere that actually has seasons, you don't really get that on the Gold Coast. The leaves are starting to turn yellow and red, and they are falling off the trees. I also had a chance to go to Memphis and check out Graceland, Elvis' mansion.

Well I'm coming home in early November. I had to get out of the country any way cause my 90 holiday waiver is running out. Plus I've been living out a suitcase since May, so it's time to go home and have a rest and then spend sometime figuring out what is next.

I have been very blessed over the last 6 months. God has done all of it so I will have to give the glory to him. I've been to some places I never thought I would. He changed my life and my circumstances over night. Hope to post again before I leave.

NYC Pics

http://picasaweb.google.com/wngreenway/NYC

Check it out !!!

Rome photos

Well it has been quite a while, since my last post...well overdue. I have started my Rome entry but laziness has crept in and I have yet to finish, so I thought I'd start with something else. So here is some of my pictures from Rome:

http://picasaweb.google.com/wngreenway/Rome

I'll try and finish my Rome blog soon.

I also went to Hillsong London Sunday night just gone. It was awesome, great to be in a meeting with a few hundred enthusiastic christians. I did have a bit of a revelation that night though. You just can't walk into church, you have to line up. So I walked to the back of the line (300m later) and joined the queue.

Just after I joined the queue I saw a homeless man walk up to some people in the queue, they ignored him, and so did I. A few moments later, I realised what I had done. Here I am waiting in line to go to church and I can't even spare a few dollars for a homeless man. I felt sick and ashamed, my one opportunity to show someone the love of Christ and I ignored it. What use am I if I can't even show one man some love, while I'm lining up for church.

So I sat through the meeting and enjoyed the night as I could. After church I walked out and crossed the road to get some food. Then I noticed this young lady sitting on the side of the road, so I stood to the side and watched her for a moment. She didn't look unclean, and she didn't have old or ripped clothes, but she looked very upset, like she was just about to cry. I watched her as many people walked past, people I had even just gone to church with.

I thought to myself "I'm not going to let this happen again", so I walked over to her and started talking to her. Asked her if she was okay, if she needed any help. She said she was homeless, and was begging for some money to stay in a hostel. She need 20 pound to pay for the week. I felt compassion for her and I told her that I would pay for her accomodation for the week. So I gave her the money and asked if I could walk her to the hostel. So she walked me to her hostel. We chatted, exchanged names, and she told me a little about herself.

We got to the hostel and she went in and paid and came back out again (I was kinda relieved cause I thought she might have been ripping me off). She said thanks and started walking off again. I asked what she was doing and she said she's off to beg again cause she needed more money to pay for another week in the hostel so she can apply for assistance from the government. I asked her how much she needed, and she said 19 pounds.

I stood there thinking to myself, "I've come this far I can't give up now". So I gave her the last 20 pound note in my wallet. Some may think I am crazy, but she seemed to me to be telling her the truth. So I had given her £40 which is about $100 Aussie Dollars, which is hard cause I'm not earning any money at the moment. But I gave it to her any way, with some faith and hope that in the long term this would help her. So I gave her the money, and she went in and payed for the following week. She came back and thanked me, and I prayed with her, and she went back in to get some sleep.

So I just want to encourage everyone about what we are called to do as Christians. It's so easy to lose sight of what we are called to do in the midst of going though our everyday lives. Remember the simple things in serving God. And if you have time pray for a young English girl with a cockney accent called Leah. Pray that God will open up doors of opportunity, and that other christians will come across her path to help her.

Want to give God glory for this, I am just his humble servant.

Green-e in NYC !!!

Well I've just gotten back from Rome, but I haven't had a chance to put up my NYC trip details, so here we go...

I flew from Nashville Monday morning to Chicago airport for a 2 hour stop over, just enough time to see Australia get beaten by those dirty Italians, well that's a bit harsh, but it was a shame to lose that game.

Any way got my transfer to the city, and caught a shuttle into the Hostel that I was staying at in NYC. I was staying 2 blocks from Central Park on 103rd st and Amsterdam. So I ditched my luggage in my room and headed straight down to the Park to check it out. I walked round for about an hour. Central Park is huge, so I didn't get to see all of it, but I got the general idea. There were open grassed areas, then there were baseball fields, lakes, and woodland areas, with creeks and bridges and so forth. Did not do much else that night, just got some dinner, and went to sleep.

The first stop for the next day was the American Museum of Natural History. Located in a 4 storey historic building, it was definately a highlight of my NYC visit. I started off with a visit to the planetarium, which is a huge dome inside a glass building. The next 3 levels were made up of different exhibits. Mostly stuffed animals behind glass windows, but also exhibits from different ancient cultures and a dinosaur exhibit. Now it may sound boring but it was really interesting and quite enjoyable. I definatley enjoyed the animal exhibits. Each one had amazing scenery painted behind the animal which really made it stand out. I spent about 4 hours there and would recommend it to anyone visiting New York.

That afertnoon it was off to the filming of the Letterman show. I was lucky to get a seat 3 rows from the front, and apparently I got some TV time in the shows introduction...for a few seconds. It was great being in the crowd, I'd give that nights show about 7/10, it was entertaining, but not the most awesome experience of my life. I was very lucky to have the opportunity to get on the show. After the filming I trekked round the city and saw a few sights including the United Nations Building, and the Rockefeller Center. There is an observation deck up the top, so I went and checked that out. I got an awesome view of the city at night time including the Empire State Building. After that I was exhausted from a big day so I went back to the hostel.

Day 3, Wednesday, started off with a cruise down the Hudson River. There were some fantastic views of the city from the ferry, but the highlight was definately cruising round the Statue of Liberty. It's not as big as I thought, but it was awesome to see one of the icons of America. Next was a walk down to the World Trade Center site. It was quite a solemn mood, as you realise the scale of the destruction from the 2 buildings. Next it was down Wall Street and then to Battery Park, the bottom point of Manhattan Island. Another great view of the Statue of Liberty. I rested there for 30 mins (actually fell asleep sitting up straight on a park bench), then headed off to Chinatown, and Little Italy. Chinatown was pretty dirty and ugly, but Little Italy, was beautiful, clean, and looked authentic.

So I got some dinner in Chinatown and headed back up through Times Square to the new Apple Store on 5th Ave and 58 St. The outside is a glass cube with a glowing apple symbol in the middle and the store is actually underground. It was a cool, funky store, I'm actually thinking of "switching", the new macbooks' look great.

Final day in New York...or so I thought, was spent with a morning trip up the Empire State Building. The visibilty was limited to about 3 miles, but it was definatley worth the visit. Read some interesting history about New York, like a 1/4 of Manhattan Island was made out of landfill, and the Dutch bought the Island off the American Indians for about $24 and a bottle of Whiskey. Had a quick look through Macy's (largest department store in the world) then back to the hostel to get my shuttle to the aiport. While we were queing up to board the plane they announced that our flight was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats for a flight the next day. Which was prefect for me cause I was going to have to wait all day for my sister to pick me up from the airport. As an incentive to give up your seat the airline was offering...

• Accomodation in a hotel,
• $500 worth of United Airlines Travel vouchers, and
• A business class upgrade on the flight the next night

The last one was the clincher so, I had my extra night in New York in a hotel near the airport, just a quiet night after a few big days of walking round. I spent most of the last day in the Business Lounge at JFK Airport watching sport :)

So I had an awesome time in NYC. I didn't mention things like eating breakfast in a diner, or getting pizza, but I had the New York experience !!!

Amazing Day !!! Updated with pics

The morning was pretty normal. I started planning my trip to New York, I only have 3 days, so I thought I'd figure out where I wanted to go and which day. Around lunch time Sam recieved a call from The Late Show with David Letterman - so you'll need some background info first. About 3-4 weeks ago I looked on the internet to see if I could get on the David Letterman Show while I was in New York. So I filled out the online form and waited for them to call. Nothing for the first few days, so I kinda forgot about it...until today !!!

So Sam gave the phone to me. I spoke to a woman who told me I had to call someone else and answer a trivia question about The Late Show correctly to get the tickets. So it's me, Sam, Smalls and Mez in the Smalls house. We instantly go into an excited panic, well maybe it was just me, to try and figure out how to answer the trivia question. Not being huge fans we called a few other people to help us out. Chris, Sam's mate from Day of Fire was on speaker phone to help us if we need him. So it came down to the big moment when I made the call......only to get a voice mail, dang it !!! (my fav new saying) We tried again to no avail. The third time we got through. So she first asked me how many times a week I watch the show, I said "at least twice....", obviously a blatant lie :) So then she asked me the trivia question....Now Sam had already Googled some triva questions regarding The Late Show, and they were on the laptop beside us.

"Where does Rupert Jee work?" was the trivia question that came down the phone line. "Who the what is that?" I thought to myself, so I got her to repeat the question. I stumbled a bit, so she said "It's just round the corner from the studio"

"The Deli, it's the deli" said Sam.

"The Deli", I said.

"That's correct, you've got tickets for The Late Show with Daid Letterman", she replied.

Yes Yes Yeeesssss !!!! I got my ticket, I was so stoked, I was jumping around all crazy and everything.

But that's just the start of the cool things :)

There's a moment in life when a boy becomes a man, and this was my moment......or so Bretta kept telling me. Yes that's right it was time to go shooting !!!! I have never shot a gun before, so this was my big chance. We went out the back of the place where Brett and Narn are staying. Vince Emmett who produced Main Attraction has a big property out the back of Franklin, TN. So me, Sam, Bretta, Josh and Vince's Dad went out the back to shoot some guns. We started off with a .22. They had a couple of shots before they handed the gun over to me :) I carefully lined up the target and softly put my finger on the trigger....BANG !!! The gun went off. I was surprised by how easy it was to pull the trigger.




We ended up shooting 4 different guns, my favourite was the pump action shootgun, baby that was cool! First shot had small pellets in it, the second was a slug, and I felt that thing kick when I shot it. It put a hole the plank of wood I was aiming at :)



Last but not least to finish off the night, we bought some fire crackers, and set them off in the dark. Heaps of different ones, including rockets, my personal fav. It was like we were little kids, I had a great time. I don't know why they are banned in Australia.

Well that finishes off an awesome day. Watching Australia play Croatia tomorow, I really hope we get up, it would be amazing to get to the next round of the World Cup.

Go Australia !!!

David Letterman Show !!!!

Well just got some great news, I've got tickets for The Late Show with David Letterman !!! I'm off to New York next week for a few days. I put my name down to get tickets for the show about a month ago. Well they called today. I had to answer a trivia question about the show, which Sam Hatch helped me out with (he Googled some stuff). So on Tuesday afternoon I'll be at The Ed Sullivan Theatre for the recording of The Late Show with David Letterman! I'm so happy to be in the audience, it's going to be a great experience!

Nashville

Well I realised that I haven't blogged in 2 weeks, gah !

We stayed at a couple more places before we got back to Nashville. Omaha, Nebraska was the first place after Colorado. I guess your average kinda city. We met up with Randy Maricle there, AB's manager. We played a church there (whatever night of the week). After the show we played a game of cricket with some of the people in the church. We had to show them of course, but we had a great time playing it with them. The next day we played at a bookstore. The owner let us pick out a CD each for free. I picked out the Mat Kearney CD, and bought a CD from a fairly new band called Red Umbrella. I guess they are a combination of Travis, Stereophonics and Coldplay.

Next was up to Des Moines, Iowa, for another book store, I think. That was just a day there, then we drove to Nashville during the night.

Most of the guys live around Franklin, which is about 40mins south of Nashville. It's a cool little area. It looks like Currumbin Valley, but with a few more people living there. I wouldn't mind living here, it is beautiful. I'm staying with the Smallbones. They have a small office area to the side, and I just sleep in there.

The weather is quite hot during the day, and the humidity can get high. It's now 7 here and the sun is still well above the horizon, I guess the sun sets about 8:30, so it's great to stay up and hang outside. They also have firebugs here, which is really cool to see.

So last week was just spent hangin out and doing some work. We watched the Australia v Japan game on Monday. It was so great to get a win in our first world cup game for however many years.

Early Friday morning we drove up to Ichthus festival in Willmore, Kentucky. AB played on the Worship stage at 1 pm. About 100 turned out which was pretty good considering no one had heard of them.Delirious? played that night. Their set was not as "rocky" as I've seen before, so they weren't amazing, but it was still good to see them. After that we went to the local college to play a dodgeball tournament. On a preivous Ichthus tour AB played some Dodgeball with the other bands, so the festival organised a dodgeball tournament for us to play in. Basically anyone could enter a team to challenge the Australian team. "Captain Swanny" set up a myspace page, check it out...http://www.myspace.com/australiandodgeballteam. Well we basically played 17 games straight of dodgeball, we came out the winners 12-5.

Forgot to mention that the dodgeball finished at 1am, and we had to get up at 6 the next morning!!! AB played mainstage at 9am Saturday morning, first band of the day. They got a pretty good crowd for that time of the morning. I got to use one of the new digital yamaha desks (PM5D to be precise, 24 aux out, awesome!!!!) to mix their in ears, so that was a great experience. Spent the rest of the day surviving the heat. That night Audio Adrenaline played. They are on their last tour, so it was great to see them for the last time. Also got to see Chris Tomlin, who wrote How Great is our God. He was awesome, some great good, praise and worship songs, I'd like to get his album.



After Audio we packed up all the merch and Sam, Swanny and I started the 3.5 hour drive home from Willmore to Nashville. Got home early morning, went straight to bed. Got up late Sunday morning, and headed out to Vince Emmett's (AB's producer for Main Attraction Album) house to watch the recorded game of Australia v Brazil. Needless to say I was disappointed by the 2-0 loss. I was hoping to get at least a draw, but our boys played execptionally well. I think there's a chance we could get to the next round. Vince has an amazing property right out the back of Franklin. On the way home Smalls drove me past a few sights of Franklin. The Newsboys recording studio, Rebecca St. James' studio, Michael W Smiths studio, the studio were DC Talk recorded Jesus Freak, Delirious' producers studio. So basically it was a tour of the christian artists studio's.

Which leads me to today. Had a great sleep-in...up at 12:40 :) Sam and Chris (Sam and Moo live with Chris and his wife, Chris is the bass player from Day of Fire) came round. We went and got some burgers for lunch and then off to the park for a spot of frisbee and fishing (not done at the same time of course). The amazing thing was we each managed to catch a fish :) Just played some basketball with Smalls, so I think it's time for bed.

Audios

Vail Colorado..beautiful

I am curently sitting in the Library of a beautiful hotel in the city of Vail, Colorado. We have had 2 big days of driving, but have seen some amazing sights and have been very blessed.

So I wrote my last post at 1:30am Saturday morning. Well I had to get up at 5:15 that same morning to leave. I managed to get a bit of sleep. We had a whole day of driving ahead of us. We left San Louis Obispo and headed east towards Nevada. There's some beautiful scenery out the back of California, we passed this stretch of country packed with mini oil pumps, it was really cool.


Next was on to Las Vegas !!! We only had 2 hours there, so Me, Swanny, Sam and Bretta ran round like chooks with their heads cut off. We managed to see about 4 different casino's. We checked out the sights, it was really cool, everything big. Boy it was hot out there, I'm sure I lost some kg's just running round.

We left there and drove through Arizona and then on to Utah. Saw some amazing desert scenery.



We stopped in some cheap hotel for the night. we got there about 1:30am. Had a good sleep in till 10 am.

Another day of driving today, but not as far. Headed in to Colorado...wow !!! It's not winter here, but it's still beautiful ! Driving through winding canyons covered with tall trees. We arrived in Vail about 4:00pm. The church we played at tonight are putting us up in this resort. Man it is awesome, we have these really posh looking rooms. During ski season they charge $580 a night, but they know someone here, so the church is geting it real cheap. We have been really blessed on this trip, free San Diego Zoo, free Disneyland and now this awesome hotel in Colorado. There is a running river just outside our room, ahh the serenity.

Well time for bed, want to check out some of the area round here before our half price buffet breakfast :)

Busy...Busy...Busy !

Been very busy with AB the last few weeks. We are currently staying near a city called San Louis Obispo, about 4 hours North of LA. We are driving out to Vail, Colorado tomorrow and staying there a few nights (I think). It will be an all day drive, but we will be stopping in Las Vegas for an hour or 2 to have a look around and get some lunch. Swanny and I haven't been to LV yet, so we are really looking forward to it.

A few cool things have happened since my last post. Unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to get access to a computer, so I'll give you some short details here.

2 weeks ago...
We headed down to San Diego Zoo. Our friends in LA Chris and Kym and their kids Kylie and CJ came down with us for the day. We started off with a train ride down the Californian coast to San Diego. I kinda reminded me of Kingscliff, nice beaches with small coastal towns every once in a while. The zoo itself was pretty big with a great variety of animals. Top mentions go to the Pandas, Polar Bears and the Apes. All very cool. So yeah we had a great day cruising round there.

Earlier this week...
I went to Disneyland !!!! About 8 of us went to Disneyland for the day, and we all went for free !!! One of the people we were staying with knows someone, who knows someone that works there, so we were able to get in for free. Sam Hatch has been to Disneyland 5 times, and has never paid the entry fee, how's that! Nothing like free entry to the greatest theme park on Earth. It was everything I ever dreamed of. Most of us reverted back to a child like state for the day (Swanny was already at the child like state). It was great having Matt, Mary and Isaac there. Man he is a cool kid, he was good the whole day, like for 10 hours.

So went spent the day at Disneyland and California Adventure Park, which is another theme park next to Disneyland, but it has more thrill kind rides. Best ride at Disneyland was Space Mountain, which is a really fast Rollercoaster, except it is inside, so your going really fast in pitch black...it was really cool. I also got a photo with Mickey Mouse, which sounds lame, but I thought it was cool. Swanny and I had a good time cheering at the girl who played Ariel (The Little Mermaid) in the Disney Parade. She gave us big smiles, a few cheeky waves, and blew us a kiss...she was prety hot...for a Mermaid ;) We stayed for the fireworks at night also, so it was about 12 hours actually at the park and about 14 hours all together for the day. I'm so glad I got to make it to Disneyland, it really made my trip.

Yesterday...
We left LA, and the people we were staying with. They have been so great to us and it has been awesome staying with them. We stayed at 3 different houses, and each family has been awesome to stay with and spend time with. We had a couple of BBQ's and a few Boys Pizza and Poker nights. The band will see them in a few months again, but I won't, so I will miss them. They welcomed me back anytime, so I would love to take up that opportunity.

But now a big drive tomorrow...actually I have to get up in 4 hours, so I better get to bed. It's a bummer I haven't been able to put up more info. But I guess that's what happens when your a fully fledged road dog on tour with a band :) I will try and put some of my holiday pics up somewhere, watch out for a link.

Time for bed
Peace Out!

Trip USA...Day 14 Hollywood

I'm posting this a few days late. Well 4 days to be precise. Saturday we (Sam, Moo, and I) went to check out some of the tourist sights round LA. First we drove to Santa Monica Beach. Man the highways are great, sometimes they are 5 lanes wide. If you drive at the right time of day you can cruise round at 120km/h, which is the speed limit.

Our first stop was Santa Monica. It looks similar to the Gold Coast. We came off the highway a bit north of the city and drove round for a bit looking at the beaches. It was quite over cast that morning. In fact most days here in LA are overcast atm. I guess it's more the smog than anything, There's heaps of it! Imaging standing at Burleigh hill and not being able to see Surfers, it's that thick. So we checked out some of the beach but it's wasn't real cool, just cold and overcast.

So we headed down to Santa Monica. That's where the have the pier with the ferris wheel and small amusement park. It was much better down there. The sun was out, it looked like a beautiful Gold Coast day. So we went down the pier and walked around. There were food places, artists, street entertainers, and a small amusement park. We tok some photos and walked round for a bit. We then headed up to the main part of the city. It reminded me of Surfers, but it much better. No cheapo shops, no nightclubs. 3rd street promonade was like Cavill Ave, but heaps longer. Heaps of street performers and cool looking shops. We started watching one guy. He was African-American and kinda had a dance show, but got the crowd involved. He was the most entertaining out of all the others. Towards the end of the show he picked me and 3 other guys out of the crowd. We basically had to repeat all the dance moves he did, it was cool to get involved.

So after cruising round there for a few hours we headed off to Hollywood. On the way we went through, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. We didn't stop to get out but we got some pics. Our next stop was Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood Blvd is the street with all the stars on the pavement. We cruised down there for a mile or 2 (I was looking for Natalie Portmans star), until we came to the theatre's where they have the movie premiers. And it just so happened that there was a premier on that night. It wasn't really a big one. A Disney show called High School Musical was having it's DVD launch. There was the red carpet, and the lights and camera's, so it was cool to be there at that time. Unfortunately we didn't know anyone in the show. Sam recognised a guy from Starship Troopers, but that's about it. So we blended in and pretended to know what the whole thing was about.

After hanging round there for a while we cruised up to a shopping centre that had a great view of the Hollywood sign. We took a few shots then headed back to the car, it was starting to get a bit chilli by now. It was really busy round there, more street entertainers, people walking round with pythons charging to have a picture with them, people dressed up as movie characters also charging for a pic. It felt like the whole LA experience.

After a long day we headed home. We had some In n' Out, which has the better burgers out all the fast food chains, for dinner, which was about 9:30 at night. My eating schedule has been put outta wack since I've been here. We eat at all different time of the day.

Well that's it for this post, I'll put up some more later. Had some good pics, but didn't get a chance to put them up cause we keep losing the wireless connection that we are stealing from some dude down the street :)

Trip USA Day 9....10,000 CD's

AB picked up a delivery of 10,000 Love on the Radio CD's today. We spent the day unpacking 3,000 of those CD's, puting them in to piles of 30, cutting down the orginal boxes, and then repacked the 30 CD's into the cut down boxes and then tapped them up. Here's some pics....all in a day's work.

That night we had boys night at Dan's place. We a pizza and poker night, Texas Holdem' was the game, fake money of course! Nothing like a bunch of fella's round for a night of poker. It was down to Bretta and Smalls, when the night finished about 11:30. I made it to the last 3, not too bad considering I've hardly ever played. Swanny receives the dumbest player award for consistently not knowing how to play the game. All in all it was a bit of fun for boys night

Trip USA...Day 7 errr 8 - Early to bed

I wish !!!

I'm still having trouble adjusting to the time difference, so it's 1:50 am Saturday morning and I'm still wide awake. Thought I'd put a quick post in. Had a good morning, and relaxed in the afternoon. AB played at a youth group tonight and it went well again.

I've mixed at 3 shows now, and the response that AB gets is amazing, everyone, young or old gets into it. It's great being involved, I get to crank the music really loud, it rocks out and not one person has complained yet !!!

Well day off today, no plans yet, might go to Hollywood, and Santa Monica Beach, or maybe check out MI 3. Oh talking about movies, I saw The Beachwarmers the other day for $3.50...that's right $3.50 for a movie! It's got Jon Header (Napoleon Dynamite) in it. Wasn't too bad, just a few laughs, more like a feel good movie.

Peace Out!

Trip USA...Day 6 - The Box Rox

Well, sitting here at Dan's place with some of the AB crew. They played at a church last night, and a school this morning. Both went really well. We are just relaxing at the moment, man I could get used to this band life !

Trip USA....Day 2 - Yo Momma!

Monday 1st May

Couldn't much sleep the first night, was still up at 3 AM. Finally managed to get some sleep in Lauren's pink room (shudder!). Woke up at 11 quiet refreshed. Just relaxed for the day, watching TV with Lauren she was at home sick. We watched a show on the MTV channel called Yo Momma! It's hosted by the Mexican guy on That 70's Show. The show is basically about going round to different hoods and finding the people with the best Yo momma so fat...jokes and other kinda insulting jokes. MY favourite ones for the show were:

Yo momma so fat she uses peanut butter as mouth wash!
and
Yo momma so ugly she is starring in the next MTV show Pimp my face!

Well it was funny at the time.

Went to my first baseball game Monday night, LA Angels v Oakland Athletics. It was cool going into the stadium, getting hot dogs and nachos for dinner. They do all the stuff you see at the movies, the songs the chants, they even had chicks with t-shirt firing guns like on the Simpsons episode.

Unfortunately there was only 1 run scored in the whole game, so I got a bit bored, maybe my next game will be a bit more interesting.

Trip USA...Day 1 - Chicken and Ribs

Well finally made it here to the US. I'm posting from a friends house in Glendora, a suburb of LA, about 40 miles from the coast. Quite nice out here, looks like the average suburban house you see in American movies. Heaps of trucks everywhere, the American kind.

My flight was not too bad, Bris to NZ was 2 hours, watched Chicken Little. 2 hour stop over in Auckland, plane left a bit late. 12 hour flight, got through it okay, nothing special, got a few hours sleep. Arrived at 1pm, Dan came and picked me up, and we went straight to get a BBQ chicken and ribs meal for lunch. Okay NOW I feel like I'm in the US. Chicken and ribs were great, with a side of gravy on rice...what the !?!

Staying at friends of AB's - Dan, Brittany and Lauren. Went to Their Church service and ended up playing drums in the youth band !!! 6 hours off the plane and I'm playing already :) It was a good night.

Just been relaxing today, didn't get much sleep last night, was still awake at 3 AM, Finally got to sleep and woke up at 11 AM. Going to a baseball game tonight, looking forward to that. Can't wait to catch up with AB.

Last day of school...err work

Today is my final day of work at Emmanuel College. I've had a great 4.5 years, and have loved being involved in such a great school. 1 week till my OS trip starts. Going down to Canberra on Monday to get my UK Ancestry Visa, so I can work in the UK.

My adventure begins Sunday 30th, when I leave for LA. Looking forward to spending some time with my friends in Alabaster Box, and seeing the sights of the US.

Plane Tickets Booked

My plane tickets are booked for my OS trip !!! Fly out of Brisbane 30th of April, get to LA same day same time :) Looking forward to going to the US, my first time ! Well time to head home, get ready for AGMF...oh yeah it's my birthday tomorrow also, woo hoo !!!

4 Weeks till World Tour

Only 4 weeks till my World Tour. Getting really excited, trying hard to do work, spend all day chatting to work mates.

Made Redundant

Well I've been made redundant at my job :( well my position has. So I'm going to take sometime off and do a bit of traveling. Hopefully this blog will become my travel diary, and people will check it out. i'm going overseas, to America first and then to England. I'm going to hang out with my friends in the band Alabaster Box in LA, mixing the sound at their shows. Then I might head inland a bit, to see some friends in Louisville. I also want to make a stop into New York. Then I'll head over to England to see my sister, and I'm also throwing up the idea of touring round Europe....boy that would be nice :)

New Office 2007 UI screenshots

These are amazing new screenshots from the new Office 2007 UI. Finally Microsoft is making a beautiful product.

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Video: Intel's Version of the Origami (very cool!)

Check this video out of Intel's UMPC.

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Mastering Ajax, Part 3

Part 3 of an excellent tutorial about the basics of AJAX. From IBM Developer Works

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Music Practice

Had musos practise tonight at church. Steve MacCullum from Dominica Sound come to do some sound engineering. Had a good night, learned a bit about EQ, plus he fixed up the sound at church :)

CSS Positioning

To use CSS for layout effectively, it helps to know how it's used to position page content. This article gives an overview of the methods and rules that govern visual rendering in the CSS2 specification. It also points out some things to watch out for.

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Good Night

Just checkin' some email on a Monday night, some interesting posts from digg about web development, CSS and AJAX stuff I'll have to read up on. I'm really getting into the web dev stuff.

AJAX Design Patterns

In this tutorial we describe how to build a modularized architecture to create complex AJAX Applications. Unlike most of the AJAX tutorials we focus on the design and implementation of a whole application and not on the low level details.

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First Post

This is the first post for my blog. I'm at work and I'm checking out the whole blogging thing.