BigIdiotStick

Confessions of Non-Outdoorsman (Part 1 of 2)

2012-01-23T17:39:00.004-05:00

As all my dear friends know, from the minute I was broughtinto this lovely world (complete with my rat-tail and purple track pants) Ihave long been a practitioner of all things relating to the outdoors. Whether it be camping, hunting, or hostingmud wrestling matches with grizzly bears and aging strippers in my backyard, I havealways been one with NATURE. Well atleast that is what I would tell the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad if we allhappened to be trapped together in some remote location.

The fact is from the time I was birthed I have been afraidof everything outside of the comfortable confines of a brick and mortar house(and many things inside those walls). From a very young age, my mother actually thought I was going to grow upto have some serious mental issues (seriously!). She could not take me out of the house withoutme screaming and crying as every little critter scared me. Mosquito. Brent cried. Ant. Brent Cried.Grasshopper. Brent Cried. Bee or wasp. Brent went into hysterics and probablyhad to be heavily sedated with whatever drugs happened to be nearby. Brent seesa black child. Proclaims to his mother that he must have drank too muchchocolate milk. Add to this the fact that the sound of a truck on the roadbehind our house would send me into a fit/hysterics, well let me just say thatmy mother and father would have every reason to think that they were going tohave to admit me to some kind of home for kids who are pansies.

This fear of all things NATURE is something that stillplagues me to this day. My favouritestory is one that takes place a few years after my initial introduction toinsects and black people, and is a tale my father still loves telling to thisday.

So the story goes, one day after dropping me off atpre-school, my dad, not normally one to notice the acute things in life,noticed that all the other kids were chasing me around the playground and I washustling as if my life depended on it. Turns out, they were chasing me with a worm, which in turn caused me tocry like the little Sally I am. Now, justimagine, seeing your son being hightailed by a gang of 4 and 5 year oldhooligans holding a worm on a stick and your offspring running and balling hiseyes out as if he were being chased by a pack of rabid hyenas. Well, I guess my old man found it as funny asthe kids, cause he left me there to presumably die a slow and agonizing deathat the hands of that slimy 4-inch invertebrate.

Somehow, I managed to survive that dreadful morning sometwenty-something years ago, although I must confess I have never overcome myfear and hatred of all things pertaining to NATURE. As I became a bit older (and no more wiser),I discovered more things that I am afraid of. When my sister and I would go on frog and toad hunting expeditions, Iwould make her do all the "hunting" as I was petrified that thelittle toads were somehow going to cause me bodily harm if I came within threefeet of them. When I would go fishing atmy grandparents' cottage, I would never do anything aside from hold the rod inthe water. Put a worm on the hook?Forget about it! And what about if I actually caught a fish? Well thank god someone else was there, causethere was no fucking way that me and my sweet-ass mushroom cut hair-do weregoing anywhere near that half-pound sunfish! And how about swimming in any kind of water that is not a chlorinatedpool? Forget about it! Maybe you like getting your toes bitten offmy guppies and tadpoles, but I happen to like my metatarsal bones to be intact,thank you very much!

There you have it, I am afraid of NATURE. I admit it, and must say it feels good to getthat off my chest. Last year, I tried toreverse this trend by taking part in the "sport" known asfishing. I figured since I had moved tothe NWT, which is one of the greatest places on earth to fish I should try andreconnect with NATURE. To say it was afail would be a massive understatement. But more on that tomorrow.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, yes I am still petrifiedof bees, wasps, hornets, and anything that flies really and am still actively tryingto figuring out life's other great mystery; How come I'm still so pale afterdrinking thousands of litres of chocolate milk?

New Year, New Blog Format, Same Boy-Man

2012-01-18T17:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I made it! And by made it I mean I have officially survived a year living in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. Some men gauge their level of success on how much money they make, graduating from elite schools, or solving world problems like hunger and cancer. Unfortunately, I am not one of these overachievers and have thus resigned the high point of my life to this: I can now list on my future resumes that I worked for over twelve months as an "Arctic restaurant server". I'm not sure this will get me very far career wise, but then again I'm not sure I could really digress any further from my current situation. As I write this, I cannot see more than a few feet out my window and The Weather Network informs me that it is currently -34°C outside with wind gusts of 83 kilometres an hour. Oh, and I did I mention that it is dark out in the middle of the afternoon? Yes, it is safe to say that living this close to Santa Claus' headquarters is not for everyone.

Having said all that, I must say that the last year is one I will remember for a lot of good reasons. First and foremost, moving to the Northwest Territories led me to my current "romantic" situation, with my girlfriend of over half a year, Colleen. Without getting too sappy, I will just say that we both worked together at the restaurant I am employed by, although she now currently works at the bank in town. We get along quite swimmingly (kind of scary, actually) and my life is the least dramatic it has been since I started sprouting pubic hairs. Some people might call this boring, well I prefer to think of myself as an aging veteran who has rounded the corner on his sometimes over-the-top past. Gone are the days of constant public urination, blacking out in public for half the night (prefer to do it at home now) and not knowing why I'm sleeping on my parents' front steps in a t-shirt in the middle of winter. Yes, I am a reformed citizen of the socialist nation of Canada. Well, for the most part at least. I still have my moments, as anyone who has seen some of my girlfriend's scrupulous pictures of me can attest to.

One of my other goals when I first moved here a year ago was to attempt to save some semi-serious coin for the first time in my life. Well I have had success in the past saving in short spurts, this was usually to fund trips to places like Europe, China and Australia, where my capital quickly evaporated living life in the fast (and sometimes sloppy!) lane. Upon my arrival here last January, I was debt-free and ready to save. I did find that I was good at saving, but I also found that I was still pretty good at partying. I also took a month off in April, where I went back home for my friends' wedding (amongst other things), which cost me about $6000. Factor into this the fact that I was not working for a month, and well ya, you kind of get the picture. Having said all that, it was a great trip and it's always fun to catch up with old friends. This was quickly followed by some more saving through the summer months upon my return. At the end of the summer, my girlfriend and I decided to take another trip down south, which saw us visit a slew of exotic locales in the Yukon, British Columbia, and Ontario. The month off work cost me around the same amount as my previous excursion, but again it was fantastic, with memories I will cherish forever.

Since Colleen and I returned from our last trip in mid-September, I started to focus on saving money much more than I did before. I put aside a set amount each week into my savings account, which I have so far not touched. While I do not live frugally by any means (very hard to do up here with the high cost of things), I have definitely cut down on my "public drinking/fraternizing" if you will, and allow myself a beer/alcohol allowance each week (still more than I spend on groceries!). With all that in mind, I feel I have done a fairly good job of saving money the last few months, and am eagerly optimistic that I can keep the good vibes rolling!

On that note, I will say that I will be blogging a lot more regularly this year, although my posts will be significantly shorter than they have been in the past. I have discovered that at this point in time I do not have the discipline to write lengthy entries, and will therefore instead focus my energy on writing shorter pieces on a more frequent basis as opposed to posting a long, rambling blog after every other lunar eclipse!

All the best to everyone in 2012 and remember to stay classy.

~Brent~

Wednesday, May 11, 2011- No Heat, No Stove, No Hot Water, No Problem! (Inuvik Part 4)

2011-12-23T03:33:00.004-05:00

Before moving to Inuvik, Northwest Territories, two of the more intriguing things that I worried about were what my living conditions were going to be like and what the hell did people do for entertainment around these here parts in the winter! Well my friends, I shall attempt to address these not-so-pressing questions, in this my final "introductory" blog to life above the Arctic Circle.Before moving up here, one of the "perks" of the job I was promised was my own one bedroom apartment, complete with all the furnishings that one could ask for. On top of this, my employer subsidizes half of our rent, so I thought it would be a pretty much straight forward winning session! Well this notion I had drummed up in my tiny brain was quickly shot down, as upon my arrival in the -30°C temperatures the first thing I managed to notice was that there were two service trucks outside of my new apartment. My boss casually informed me that they had been having some "issues" with the heating in the building. Not exactly the first thing you want to hear upon arrival in a place like Inuvik in early January, but my options for a place to live were pretty limited. With that in mind, I unpacked my two suitcases that possessed all of my worldly possessions and attempted to settle into my new apartment.Myself and the new apartment had issues right out of the gate. While the apartment was a fair-sized one bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and bathroom, it was apparent almost immediately that she (yes, my apartment is a female for all intensive purposes) and I would not always be seeing eye-to-eye. As I started to settle into the new pad, I quickly discovered that there were some issues with my apartment that were not going to be patched up anytime soon. First, was the aforementioned heating. Turns out there were some major heating issues throughout the whole building. Let me tell you, there is nothing at all appealing about having to watch TV with your full "outdoor" gear on, or sleep with your parka on. In addition to my heating that probably worked less than 20% of the time, I also had a oven that did not work and three out of the four burners on my stove were not working at times either. Factor in that my toilet also ran non-stop and my television was a complete piece of shit that made everything look like it was from a television show set on Mars and you have all the makings of a legendary apartment. Oh, and did I mention that my "fully furnished" kitchen came with exactly ZERO pieces of kitchenware. Not even a fuckin' spork I tell ya! Most of the problems with my apartment I came to live with, and I addressed the heating issue by purchasing a small space heater, which it turns out was a terrible idea as it was more than doubling my hydro bill and was mildly effective at best! Those first few weeks I must say I was definitely questioning what the hell I had gotten myself into. Luckily, things in the living department took a sudden change for the better...After surviving not only the coldest and darkest month of my life (we were getting at one point less than four hours of sunlight a day) I was randomly told one day that an apartment had opened up on the bottom floor of my building, which were considered the "premium" apartments as they were built in the last couple of years. A far cry from the apartments on the top two floors of the building which resembled the crack dens you might see in 70s blaxploitation films, shag carpeting and all. Since I had the worst apartment on the block, I was thus given the keys to a new place and let me tell you it was like night and day! While it had a very similar layout to my original apartment, it was far more modern, had a much larger bathroom, all new appliances, and even came with kitchen supplies! I must say, I have settled into my new apartment quite nicely, and having heat definitely doesn't hurt either. The only major problem with it is the fact that I often times have no hot water in my shower. Now I have done many things in my life that are pretty joyless (see: agreeing to let women pluck your eyebrows while intoxicated), but taking an ice cold shower when it's -40°C outside might definitely take the cake. I contemplated complaining about this, but given what I had just moved from I figured it was best to keep my pie hole shut. Having said all that, it is now the middle of May and I have settled in quite nicely, my hot water is not quite as fleeting as it once was and I can say my apartment actually feels a little bit like "my home" now. A touching story, I know.Now on to the more pressing issue of WHAT THE FUCK DO PEOPLE DO FOR ENTERTAINMENT IN INUVIK? While I wish I could tell you some romantic tale of me cooking moose meat by an open fire, but the reality is that our main source of entertainment up here revolves around drinking heavily and making asses out of ourselves (or is that just me?). The busiest spot in town on any given night is the only real bar/pub in town called "The Mad Trapper". If you ever want to see an eclectic crew on a dance floor, than this place is your kingdom. On any given night, you can see people as old as eighty working on their dance moves beside kids who are barely of legal age to drink. All this, while Lady Gaga or Eminem plays over the sound system, makes for some ridiculous moments to say the least. Add to this equation the fact that they have also have a cover band (they come up from the south and usually stay for about two months at a time) playing every night and my friend you've got yourself a proper venue for a nightly hoedown! As mentioned, the crowd at the "Trapper" as its affectionately known is very wide-ranging, with a good mix of locals and southerners alike and people of all ages, shapes, and colours. To say that I've had only a few rough nights there would be like Pamela Anderson saying she's only nibbled on a few wieners. The only other real social/drinking venue in town aside from the pub and the restaurant where I work is "Shivers Lounge", which is conveniently located right across the hallway from my place of employment in the ground floor of the Mackenzie Hotel. While I do go there on occasion, it's not usually to get loser pissed. It's the place to go when you want to watch the UFC pay-per-views or maybe just have a quieter/more reserved night. As it is quite expensive to drink up here at the bars (and at home for that matter) we usually have a pre-party at someone's apartment in our building. These are quite easy to bring together, as almost all of the restaurant staff live in the same building. We also used to have a good amount of after parties that would usually run until like 6:00am, but these have slowed down as of late due to noise complaints from other neighbours, that in turn leads to us being given final warnings before being evicted and thus having to go live at the Inuvik Homeless Shelter. While the shelter might make for some interesting stories, I'm not too keen to move in there just yet!Other than the aforementioned hobby of professional partying, most of my other past times generally tend to be the same as back home. I spend a lot of time stalking people on Facebook, watching TV, reading and when I feel really energetic, working out (sorry for the bad mental image ladies)! When I'm not working, I also tend to hang out with my friends a bit and occasionally some of the gentlemen arrange for a game of poker, which almost always involves me losing a nice chunk of my pay cheque. The only really "northern" winter activity I have experienced since being up here was that I got to go out snowmobiling a couple of times thanks to my boss being generous and letting me borrow one of his brand new sleds. I must say this was super-awesome fun, even if I did fall off the sled once going 60/mph and found myself doing multiple somersaults beside my sled as it drove away from me and witnessing my life flash before my eyes! Never one to be deterred by near death experiences, I forged on and had must say some of the scenery I saw in the bush surrounding Inuvik was some of the most spectacular I've seen anywhere! Aside from the sledding, I don't venture outside too often except to get from Point A to Point B using the old heel-toe express. I was supposed to go dog-sledding (the big touristy thing to do here in the winter), but ended up putting it off a bunch of times and will now wait for next winter until I try to tame the wild mutts.From here on out, I shall try to add a blog update as I see fit, which will probably be every few weeks unless something crazy happens that I feel I should document. Before that though I will first post a couple of blogs that will document my trip home in the month of April that will document amongst other things a bachelor party, rave, 4/20 rally, wedding, trip to Florida, and a bunch of other shenanigans. Thanks everyone for reading and be prepared....my next blog might be slightly ridiculous!Cheers,~Brent~

Monday, May 9, 2011- If Only I Had The Balls To Kick Drunks Out. Wait, That's What Girls Are For! (Inuvik Part 3)

2011-12-23T03:31:00.000-05:00

As is to be expected when dealing with one, Brent Moreau, I have become quite lazy over the last two and a half months and this has in turn led to a blog output of exactly zero. Now, I know that the world basically hinges on every single word I write, so with that in mind, let me get back to my tales of Arctic life.Well it would be nice to think that I came up to Inuvik just to check out the sites, the reality is that I am a man who possesses no financial wealth and therefore had to work. As previously mentioned, I was hired over the phone by way of an internet ad, so both my employer and myself were going to be in for a bit of a surprise. I knew that it was probably going to be a bit different than working as a waiter down south, as let's face it, restaurant clientele in Toronto varies slightly from that of a town that is currently buried under snow and twenty-one hours of daily sunlight in the middle of May. After settling into my apartment, I was immediately put to work the next day and proceeded to work a healthy amount of hours right of the gate which I think was most beneficial for getting back into the groove of things.One of the things that first struck me as amusing at the restaurant was the fact that almost everyone, and I mean everyone employed there was from somewhere other than Inuvik. Apparently I am not the only who thinks moving to one of the coldest and remote places in Canada is a novel idea. Of the eight people who are employed as servers/waiters, I am oddly the only who hails from the great province of Ontario. There are three girls from British Columbia, one from Nova Scotia, and another who is "local" but spent a chunk of her youth going to school in British Columbia. The other two male servers, consist of one dude from Quebec and a man is who is somewhat of a local legend by the name of Ernst, who claims to be 69 years old and hails from the beautiful alpine nation of Austria. Aside from Ernst, the other seven wait staff all fall between the ages of 20-30 years old and aside from the occasional melee at work, we all seem to get along pretty well. In addition to the wait staff, both of the managers/owners are from the Ottawa area and like the servers, the cooks seem to come from every corner of Canada as well. I think when it's all said and done, we have between 20-25 employees and to my knowledge there is only one person (a dishwasher) who is actually a true local. It's safe to say it's an interesting mix of people and we all somehow come together to make the restaurant function at a respectable level 95% of the time! (Yeah, we have our occasional days where shit hits the fan at about 150km/hour). As with any job that doesn't come with a guaranteed salary, I was obviously slightly worried about what my take home pay would be like. It's one thing to read numbers online that guesstimate what you are going to make in a month, but it's a completely different thing to actually have that money in front of you. One of the things that immediately appealed to me was the fact that at my new place of employment we did not have to pool our tips with the other staff. For those of you who have not worked in the service industry, this basically means that we get to keep whatever tips we make. Traditionally in most restaurants, you have to give anywhere from 1.5%-4.5% of your total sales amount to the restaurant at the end of the night, which they then divide up between the kitchen staff, hostesses, bus boys, etc. So for example, if I worked at Red Lobster (delicious!) and sold $1000 worth of food for the night, I could expect to hopefully make $150 in tips if everyone tipped me around 15%. At the end of the night, I would have to give $30 to the restaurant, assuming my tip out was set at 3%. So, while I may have generated $150 in tips, I would only go home with $120 of it. Having said all that though, our tip percentages on bills in Inuvik are generally lower than those found to the south, so it kind of works out to be about the same amounts anyways. Back home, you would generally be super-pissed off to ever see a tip below 12-13% on your bills. Up here, it is not uncommon for people to tip you nothing on bills. I can't even count the number of times I've had bills totaling hundreds of dollars and watched as the customer leaves you no gratuity, or if they're feeling generous a tip in the 1% range. When I first arrived up here, that kind of stuff used to really piss me off and anger me, but I quickly learned to laugh at it and just accept it as part of being an "Arctic Server"! Now, having said, there are a lot of people up here who are very generous with their tips and tip far better than 99% of the population to the south. At breakfast it is an almost daily occurrence where you will encounter someone who will tip you over 100% of the bill ($20 on a $9 bill is the common one). While, I may think these people are slightly crazy, it is genuinely appreciated, and really helps to offset all of the people who sit there and wait for their thirteen cents change! Having said all of that and without getting into monetary figures, in conclusion I am actually making more money on a monthly basis than I was told I would be when I was hired so I have no complaints. Now if only I could learn to unlove alcohol, gambling, and just general wasting of money, I might actually be able to save a little scratch while I'm up here! But seeing as how none of those are probably going to come to fruition, I guess I'll have to settle for having a good time instead!While the job is generally pretty uneventful and similar to serving anywhere else, there are definitely some moments up here that make me shake my head and wonder "what the fuck?" out loud! The most obvious thing in Inuvik that I can say I've never encountered on a regular basis before is the amount of heavily intoxicated people who come into the restaurant. It doesn't matter if its 8:00am on a Monday morning or 7:00pm on Friday night, people up here generally like to get fucked up! I can't even begin to count the number of drunks we have to refuse service to. Most of them tend to take the news okay and leave the restaurant without incident, although there are always some who won't go without a fight. I generally have a tough time kicking people out as I'm a pussy, so I often times will get my female coworkers to do the dirty work for me. Below is a quick list off of the top of my head of some of the more memorable customer experiences I can recall (both drunk and non-drunk) from my first four months serving up here:- I remember one incident where a heavily intoxicated gentleman decided to call one of my coworkers every name imaginable until she called the police to get him escorted off of the premises. Needless to say he wasn't one of the "happy drunks" and women don't like being called "c**ts" in front of other customers.- One guy was so drunk on a Tuesday morning, that after refusing him service, I let him use the bathroom and on the way out he got lost in the restaurant and couldn't find the entrance. Did I mention our restaurant is small and rectangular?!- I once had to help a homeless man out of the restaurant, as he was severely drunk. After aiding him up out of his chair by giving him a helping hand, I was told by a fellow worker to never touch that man's hands as it is apparently common knowledge that he frequently urinates all over himself and in particular his hands. Haha.- The strangest table I can recall was during Sunday brunch, when a family pulled me over to their table and asked me my name. After giving them my name, they asked if it was okay that they prayed for me. Not wanting to offend, I obliged and next thing I knew, I had six people holding hands in a circle in the middle of a busy Sunday brunch thanking Jesus for my awesome service! I just stood there like a tool not really sure what to do!- Sadly, my celebrity sightings in Inuvik are pretty limited and generally constitute serving the mayor and his cronies a couple of times a week. Other than that we have managed to serve a German film crew and a gospel choir group from Toronto. All rather fifth rate celebrities if I say so myself!- Lastly, this past Saturday I had three kids in their early twenties who were all heavily intoxicated come in for breakfast at about 8:00am who it appeared had been up all night drinking. One of the two girls basically asked me what I could "do for her" at the table. I told her that oral sex on the job is usually frowned upon by management. Shortly thereafter, the really drunk dude told me I looked like Jacob from "Twilight" to which I replied, "If I looked like Jacob from Twilight I'd be having a lot more luck with the ladies. You are clearly quite drunk my man!" They then proceeded to light up one of those fake cigarettes designed to help people quit smoking right in the middle of the restaurant floor! It was around this time that I just gave up...Although it may sound a bit nuts at times, I am genuinely enjoying working up here and all the characters make it that much more interesting. Despite my stories, most of the people here are pretty classy folks and cause no trouble at all. The work crew is pretty solid and I look forward to what should hopefully be a pretty busy summer season full of lots of tourists and locals alike. I'm sure there will be lots more stories of the interesting clientele that make Inuvik, well Inuvik!Good times all around. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there and keep it classy people.~Brent~

Sunday, February 27, 2011- When You Start Buying Your Cereal In Bags… Well Let’s Just Say You Can Only Go Uphill From There (Inuvik Part 2)

2011-02-28T19:40:00.002-05:00

After stepping out of the plane, it was official; I had arrived in Inuvik, and I was officially (okay, maybe not officially) a resident of Canada living north of the Arctic Circle. Upon disembarkation from the plane, the few other passengers and I hustled into the airport where I was greeted by my new boss Joe, who I’m guessing was able to pick me out with relative ease. Having only spoken to my new employer over the phone and through email, he was nothing like I imagined him looking like. For some reason that I’m still not sure of, I had drawn up this picture in my head of a short bald man, when in fact he was about 6’6” and had a full mop of hair! Can’t say I was even close on that one. With my fictitious portrayal now blown to shreds, we loaded up my life possessions/two suitcases into his bright yellow Hummer and headed into town for the grand tour. Since Joe has been living up here for around twenty years, he was able to give me an ample tour of the town and all that Inuvik has to offer. We drove around for the better part of an hour and I was shown many of the businesses and amenities on tap in this, the hub of the Western Arctic. Since I have now been living up here for just under two months, I shall attempt to pass on the little that I have absorbed about the town so far.

The first thing that surprised me upon driving into town was just how sprawling Inuvik is for a town of 3,300 people. I must admit, I was expecting a town with a couple major roads and maybe one or two really small subdivisions. Well it is true, that there is only one major road, Mackenzie Road, it’s safe to say that the outlying houses seem to stretch for a fair distance in every direction. Many of the houses are brightly coloured and are of the modular construction variety. Apparently, the houses were first painted these colours because the powers that be felt it would increase morale and happiness amongst the Arctic dwellers during the long, dark winters. Now, maybe it’s just me, but seeing a purple house is generally not going to make me any happier. All it’s going to get out of me is a confused look and some self-questioning like, “how much weed did that dude smoke when he decided to paint his siding?” In addition to being brightly coloured, most of the building foundation structures are built on piles of rock, which prevents the permafrost from getting at them and turning the ground to mush. Another bizarre feature that you don’t see in your every day down south subdivision is large conduit boxes that run through the whole town and seemingly connect every home and business. The conduit boxes measure probably about two feet by two feet and sit a couple of feet off of the ground. Much like the foundations of the buildings, these conduits which contain various pipelines such as water, heat, and sewage are built above the ground to avoid the many problems that the permafrost poses.

Since Inuvik is considered “the gateway” to the Western Arctic and also happens to be the largest populated town in the area, it serves as both the commercial and administrative capital for the area. While it is a small town, it is remarkably the third largest populated town in the Northwest Territories, trailing only the capital Yellowknife (pop, 16,000) and Hay River (pop. 3,600). Since both of those communities are significantly further south, Inuvik is by default the capital of the Arctic region. It acts as the main hub for a number of outlying native communities, with such exotic names as Tuktoyaktuk, Aklavik, and Paulatuk. This in turn means we have a relatively modern and well-equipped hospital, a whole slew of government buildings, a library, a golf driving range/small course, cross country skiing facilities and a recreation centre that rivals and is in fact bigger and better than most of the ones you will see elsewhere in the country. The recreation centre has a hockey rink, squash courts, curling rink, fitness centre, various banquet rooms and bars, and the icing on the cake; a swimming pool complete with fake palm trees! And that’s just the stuff I know about. I’m sure somewhere in the complex they’ve got some sort of hidden bat cave or an evil petting zoo complete with sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads.

In addition to all of the social services on tap, the town is also home to a number of businesses. On a national front, the one bank in town is a CIBC, so your options on that front are pretty limited. Inuvik also has a Rexall Pharmacy, Home Hardware, and my personal favourite, a KFC/Pizza Hut Express. Other than that, most of the businesses to my knowledge are locally owned, or at least unique to Northern Canada. Some of my personal favourites, include establishments with names like Arctic Digital, Arctic Foods, and Shivers Lounge. There is definitely an underlying theme to a lot of the names, and it is a general rule that if the name of the business doesn’t relate to the cold weather, it has to somehow tie-in to the fact that in the summer we are known as “the land of the midnight sun”.

One business that is truly unique to Inuvik has no name (at least to my knowledge), but the man who runs it is somewhat of a local legend. He goes by the name, “Bill The Fruit Man”, and pimping produce to the locals is his racket. Now as I understand it through talking to co-workers and such, this fellow Bill drives his 18-wheeler big rig down to Vancouver (I think about 3500km each way) and fills his truck to the tits with a wide assortment of produce and groceries. It takes him about ten days to complete the round trip and when he gets back, he sets up shop in a parking lot on the main street and his truck is converted into a makeshift store if you will. The word on the street was that he had much better produce than the local stores and at far better prices. So one day a few weeks ago I headed down to visit “The Fruit Man”, and I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. As promised, his prices were much lower, his produce was respectable (a lot of it in this town is pure grade-A shit), and the novelty of doing my grocery shopping in the back of a big rig was pretty sweet, if not a little bit chilly.

On the opposite end of the fruit truck spectrum is the Mecca of all stores in Inuvik and many a northern community, the aptly named North Mart. Yes, it’s actually called North Mart. The best way to describe it is a poor man’s Wal-Mart. It sells a wide variety of stuff, from electronics to clothing to groceries. The only difference is that everything is about two to three times as much as you would pay for it in the south, and it is usually of two to three times poorer quality. Most of the shit you buy there, makes you realize why people shudder and gasp when they purchase products featuring the famous, “Made in China” tag. I purchased a number of household items there when I first arrived, and it’s safe to say that you couldn’t find crap this bad in the free section of your local Salvation Army back in Toronto.

One question I am often asked by the curious citizens of the south (everywhere is the south from here) is how much stuff costs up here. To put it bluntly, A LOT OF FUCKIN’ MONEY! It goes without saying, that the main staples of my diet are Kraft Dinner, Mr. Noodles, canned beans, canned tuna, and no-name Froot Loops. After scanning a recent receipt from my grocery shopping expedition to North Mart, here are a few prices:
Milk (2L) - $7.04
Apples- $5.69/kg
Bananas- $6.35/kg
Ruffles Potato Chips- $4.59
Pepsi Max (2L) - $3.69
Becel Margarine (454g) - $5.69
And these are just some of the things I actually do buy. Other things that are way out of my price range include things like Delissio frozen pizzas (almost $20 if I’m not mistaken), Tropicana orange juice (2L, goes for almost $10), and don’t even get me started on the name brand cereals. Safe to say, I now purchase cereal that comes in a bag, not a box, a bag. Yes, I have arrived in life!

Aside from North Mart, the next busiest place in town, or the busiest depending on the time of week, and one that I am fond of donating to is the Inuvik Liquor Store. Located off the main drag, the store is pretty unassuming, with not a single window and two steel doors that would not be out of place in Kingston Penitentiary. One can only assume that the lack of windows and Hulk-proof doors are to prevent break-ins. Drinking is seen as a professional sport up here, and well athletes need fuel to keep up their athletic endeavours (great analogy, right?). Or on the other hand, maybe they just don’t want people to see the price of beer before they get in the front door. My first visit there, I could hardly believe it, a 12-pack of Bud was $32! No, that’s not a typo. Beer generally costs just under $60 for a 24-pack of the cheaper varieties. If you feel like drinking something like Corona or Heineken, well my friend you better take out a second mortgage on your house! One other comical aspect was that if you want to buy cold beer out of their fridge they tack on a “cold surcharge”. This amounts to $3 for a 12-pack and $1.50 for a 6-pack. Clearly, I’m in the wrong business. Despite beer prices being almost double what they are back home, I was surprised to see that liquor, wine, coolers, etc were only slightly more expensive than they were in my past life. I have recently tried to drink more spirits and wine, but I almost always end going back to the barley. Safe to say that old habits die hard, or in this case die hard with a northern pricing premium tacked on!

Until next time, stay classy and much love to everyone…

~Brent~

Thursday, January 13, 2010- I Think I Took A Wrong Turn (Inuvik Part 1)

2011-02-18T17:16:00.002-05:00

So, where to begin…that is the question. Let me first start by saying to everyone who has asked over the last couple of months that NO I am not crazy and secondly my fingers, toes, and testicles have not frozen off; yet. For those not in the know, I Brent Moreau aka BigIdiotStick have moved to what many people refer to as the end of the earth, or as it is formally known, Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada (population 3,300).

The first and most obvious question that people have asked me over the last couple of months is why move to one of the coldest and darkest places in the world when you have a perfectly good job at home in the Greater Toronto Area, and all your family and friends are here? The honest answer is, I really don’t know! After returning home in mid-November after spending a year in Australia, I quickly returned to my previous occupation in Toronto working as an Industrial-Commercial carpenter. Within a few days of returning to work (or possibly even a few minutes) I promptly remembered why I left for Australia in the first place; I hated my job and wanted to do something different! Now there’s nothing wrong with construction, in fact it is a very, very lucrative career depending on who you work for, but at the end of the day after five years of doing it I actually dreaded going to work. It was a career I fell into as a 21 year-old through a friend and subsequently became a job that was hard to leave as the money was good. Due to my not following up on my college education, I was left with very little other career options that paid well, with male prostitution clearly out of the picture as my balls were starting to sag. On top of my lack of job love, I was also newly single, coming out of a three year relationship and suddenly found myself with a lot of time to think about ME and what I wanted to do (selfish, I know). Add to all of this that I really had no possessions anymore as I had sold or got rid of most of them before I went to Australia and you have yourself a man with very little ties outside of his family and friends.

After deciding that a “life change” was needed, I started browsing internet job sites to see what was out there for a useless twat like me. Almost immediately I started looking at a few jobs in the restaurant-service industry, as that is the other area outside of construction where I have worked fairly extensively since I was a teenager. After visiting a few websites and looking at a ton of jobs both in the Toronto area and abroad, I decided that a move was definitely in order if I could make it happen. I thought long and hard about applying to a few upscale restaurants in the Caribbean that were hiring, but for some reason I kept going back to this job posting for the position of “Server” at a restaurant located in some place I had never heard of called Inuvik. After doing some quick research on the internet, I soon discovered that Inuvik was about as far north as you can go in Canada and still have some semblance of civilization and modern life. For some reason (still unknown to me) I thought this sounded like a fantastic opportunity to not only visit, but get to fully experience a place on earth, and in my own country, that very few people ever get to. So, with these visions of grandeur in my eyes, I sent off my one and only resume with the hopes of hearing back; preferably from a man who lived in an igloo and wore a seal skin coat.

Within a few days of sending off my resume for the position of server at a restaurant in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, I received an email from the boss, Joe, stating that he was interested in hiring me. After a few emails back and forth, mostly consisting of me asking ridiculous questions about living in the Arctic we arranged for a phone interview. The phone interview went according to plan for me, and I was offered a job after a lengthy conversation. Joe told me to think about it for a few days, but I already knew that I was going to go, as I was on the brink of suicide at my other job (3+ hours a day of commuting in GTA traffic will do this to a man). During our conversations and emails, Joe explained to me that I would be making $12/hour in addition to tips and would be subsidized half of my $1000 rent, meaning that for $500/month I would get my own fully furnished apartment in the building right next to the restaurant. This also meant that I wouldn’t need a car, which was a big bonus, as I am no longer a big fan of spending all my cash on automobiles. Also, I was told that on days when I was working, I would be entitled to free meals at the restaurant which would go a long way towards keeping the grocery bill to a minimum. Lastly, I was told that for every year you work, you are entitled to one free round trip flight (just pay the taxes) anywhere you want to go in the world, as the boss amasses a ton of Aeroplan Miles through the business and uses them to give his employees these flights. I immediately informed Joe that I would need to have some vacation time in April, as one of my best friends was getting married back home and he said that would be no problem. With the last of the small kinks sorted out and most of my questions answered, I saddled up for my last few weeks of construction work that would take me through to New Year’s Eve and started counting the days. Thankfully, before I left for the balmy -40°C winter temperatures of Inuvik on January 12th, my family went on a Caribbean cruise at the start of the New Year that served as a final farewell before Brent Moreau descended into what would probably be a cold, dark winter above the Arctic Circle.

When the morning of my flight finally rolled around, I gathered up the last of my belongings and had my Mommy take me to the airport. I had learned a day prior that the airline I would be travelling on from Whitehorse to Inuvik only allowed their passengers 44 pounds of luggage. This is a far cry from what most major airlines allow you to travel with (100 pounds), and does not lend itself well to people like myself who are moving or relocating. After some careful consideration (I decided I did not need to pack my solid lead balls and novelty cocaine bricks) I managed to get my luggage down to seventy-odd pounds and felt I could not go any lower. I knew I would be hit with a luggage surcharge, but the fact is a brother needs his clothes! With that in mind, I said so long to my mom and boarded the first of my three flights around 4:00pm, this one bound for Vancouver. After arriving in Vancouver, I had a layover for a few hours before my short flight up to Whitehorse, the capital city of the Yukon. I tried to sleep for a bit in the airport, but when this failed I decided to partake in my second favourite activity, eating cheeseburgers and drinking beers. Finally around 11:00pm local time (2:00am Toronto time), I boarded a 50-seater plane and headed further north than I had ever been in my life! We arrived with little fanfare as the last flight of the night coming into the small Whitehorse airport, and I had planned to just sleep in the airport, as my Air North flight to Inuvik was departing first thing in the morning. After everyone had collected their luggage and loaded into their cars and taxis, I was informed by the sole airport employee that they would be closing up for the night. At this point I started to have a slight internal panic attack, as I had no fuckin’ idea what to do and all other forms of human life were now long gone. Here I was in the Whitehorse airport at 2:00am with nowhere to go and my plans of crashing there for a few hours now foiled. The gentleman working not-so kindly informed me that there were two hotels about 800 metres away, and seeing as how I wasn’t exactly in south Florida, sleeping outside the terminal was not a wise option. Next thing I knew, there I was in all my glory, lugging almost 80 pounds of luggage down the road in the middle of the night to some overpriced hotel that I would only be staying in for a few hours. Oh, and did I mention that it was -35°C outside!? I ended up having to pay $120 for a hotel room that I spent a total of less than five hours in, and they didn’t even throw in a complimentary hooker service or even a continental breakfast! My first taste of “northern inflation” as I like to call it.

The next morning, I was up bright and early; although this time I was able to get a free shuttle to the airport and not have to worry about trudging through the cold with my luggage. After checking in and paying for my excess baggage, it was time to load the plane. I was not really sure what to expect, although it was safe to assume I wasn’t expecting a plane with personal entertainment units and flight attendants in revealing skirts. Low and behold, Air North apparently has the oldest fleet of turbo-prop planes still out there. The plane had space for about 25 people and came complete with interior wood paneling, ash trays, and the smallest seats you have ever seen. I’ve been on some pretty dodgy aircraft in my life, but this was definitely near the top of the list. The flight to Inuvik was a few hours, although we first had to stop off in Dawson City, Yukon, which at one point used to be one of Canada’s largest boom cities during the Klondike gold rush in the late 1800s. Now, Dawson City is a small town of just over a thousand people, but has established itself as a major tourist destination in the summer months, with over 60,000 people visiting it every year. Hell, the place even has a casino! Well the town may be booming in the summer months, the same cannot be said for its airport in the winter, which was the size of a large bedroom. It was official; I had arrived in the north. I’m not sure when it hit me first, when I was standing in the “airport” that was little more than a derelict log cabin or when I was sitting on the runway in Dawson City on a plane with no heat on and temperatures approaching -40°C. Despite both of those making convincing cases for my true arrival, I think it was upon departure from Dawson City, when I was on the plane with only six other people, consisting of a lady who worked with a dog sledding company and a family of five people who were travelling on to an even more remote Native community. Yes, I had arrived in the Arctic!

After taking in some spectacular scenery from the plane on the descent into the airport in Inuvik, I had feelings of both nervousness and curiousness going through my tiny brain. I had never been further north than Edmonton before and aside from a bit of internet research had no idea what to expect, as nobody I personally knew had ever lived in such a place. With that in mind, I stepped off the plane and headed out into the great unknown…

Sunday, January 9, 2011- What’s Your Club’s Policy On String Belts?

2011-01-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

Thursday morning on the cruise ship brought a welcome relief to me. I was waking up without the slightest trace of a hangover, the sun was shining and we were docked in every banker’s favourite place, George Town in the Grand Cayman Islands. Kiel unfortunately was not feeling up to the task of trekking around the island, so I headed out with Nat, Jeff, and my mom. The four of us ended up hopping in a cab and heading over to the main beach, where Jeff and I promptly left the ladies to lay in the sun as we headed out for greener pastures. After a quick stop off at a Wendy’s (very Americanized island) and an internet café to check my emails (internet on boats = really expensive and slow to boot) the two of us found ourselves settling into one of the local watering holes sipping away on Caymanian beer. A few brews and a couple of complimentary Jager-bombs later, it was safe to say our Thursday was headed in the right direction. After sauntering back to the beach to round up the Moreau ladies, we cabbed it back to the boat loading area. On our drive, our cabbie provided us with some great knowledge of the island and I was surprised to learn how tough it was to find work there right now, as apparently even they were not immune to the Global Financial Crisis. Couple that in with the fact that a hurricane wiped out a few of the major hotels a couple years prior, and let’s just say the Caymans aren’t quite the utopia that everyone thinks they are. Once back on the ship, Jeff, Kiel, my dad and I made our way to down to the showroom for some afternoon Bingo. Due to Kiel’s persistent heckling of the DJ all week, we had amassed a monster stack of free Bingo cards in addition to purchasing some. Sadly, we did not win any of the games, although in one game that featured a prize of $300 I was the first player in the room down to one number, but ended up losing like the big donkey I am. With my Bingo defeat still fresh in my mind, I stuffed my face with another amazing dinner before settling back into the old routine of post-dinner gambling and drinking. Since it was Thursday, this meant it was the second night of the blackjack tournament that still saw Kiel on top of the leader board from night one. Jeff and I both took another crack at it, and I ended up getting lucky early in the night and found myself in first place. If my score could hold on for a few hours I would be playing in the finals at 11:30pm that night, although seeing as how it wasn’t even 9:00pm yet chances are I was going to be tuned by the time the finals rolled around. With that in mind, Jeff, Kiel, Nat, Jenn and I played a little poker and some roulette to try and kill the time before the finals. Somewhere in all of this, Jeff decided to get absolutely annihilated and had to be put to bed by his loving and I’m sure totally understanding girlfriend Natalie. When the dust finally settled, Kiel and I both made the final table of the winner take all ($500) blackjack tournament. I qualified in second and Kiel just snuck in the last/seventh spot. At the final table, we had a fairly big crowd watching us, which only fuelled mine and Kiel’s ridiculous drunken banter. Before we commenced, Kiel and I agreed to split the money if either of us won (bad idea Brent!). Well to cut a long story short, seven hands of blackjack later I was the blackjack grandmaster of the ship and was $500 richer. After exchanging high fives and congratulations from people I didn’t even know, I looked over to see Kiel waiting to collect his share. Using the power of mind control, I managed to talk him down to only taking $200, which left me with a cool $275 after tipping the dealer $25 for dealing me the best cards ever! Feeling like a champion, the party posse headed over to the nightclub, where things quickly got sloppy. The club was pretty popping that night by ship standards and Kiel quickly jumped into the mix. Now something I failed to mention was that Kiel had somehow lost two belts that week and had to resort to wearing a shoestring tied around his waist to hold his pants up. We liked comparing him to Nelson off of “The Simpsons”, because I am pretty sure he is the only other person (real or fictionalized) to ever pull this stunt. Add in that Kiel was drinking a 60oz of contraband vodka out of a two-litre pop bottle with his shirt tucked in, and you have yourself one helluva mess on the dance floor. While Kiel was dolling out his vodka to anyone who could drink it (male nursing students and such), Natalie had since run into her old high school friend Kellie who had started buying her shots. Next thing I knew, Natalie could barely walk, and Kellie, Jenn, and I along with a couple of other people had to literally carry Natalie and all her dead weight up two stories of the ship to her room. Toss in the fact that she was wearing a skirt and I was trying to hold her up, there was a good chance there was some ass exposure going down on the Eurodam ship. I got quite a few stares from people who thought I was some kind of creeper, which I reassured everyone with, “it’s okay, I’m her brother!” After dropping Nat off (and literally dropping her a few times along the way), the rest of us made our way back to Northern Lights, where sure enough there was Kiel, flaunting his string belt on the dance floor like it was a heavyweight championship belt or something!

The next day was to be our last on the ship, and we were given a rude awakening in the form of some gnarly waves rocking the boat and everyone’s stomachs. In fact, that morning while I was trying to shower I ended up falling over, which was a combination of the boat rocking and my equilibrium being totally fucked! Nat, Kiel, and Jeff were hurting even more than me, and according to his own blurred report, Kiel had spent the previous evening sleeping at the ship’s Piano Bar after the club had closed. With not much going on, I ended up spending most of the day rolling around in a chaise lounge chair before the Bingo grand finals in the late afternoon. After gathering up the complete stockade of Bingo cards we had amassed over the week (almost forty), I headed down to the Bingo room and prayed that somebody would show up to help me, as my dabbing skills aren’t that sharp. Luckily, I randomly ran into my parents who agreed to help me and the lovely Floridian Jenn happened to saunter by and was forced at gunpoint to help me out. Just as the game was about to get under way, Kiel even managed to get out of bed, so we had ourselves an official Bingo party! Unfortunately, like all previous attempts at Bingo we didn’t have the magical card and had to leave empty handed. Hey, as long as we all had fun that’s all that matters, right? Wrong! Winning is everything, and to quote Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first your last!” I never thought until now how much this quote applies to Bingo. With the taste of defeat still firmly in our mouths, my parents and I went out for one more fancy-pants dinner. I made sure to savour the food, as it was probably the best grub I was going to be getting for a long, long time! After bidding my parents adios and discovering that no one else in our party was up for any form of socializing due to the previous nights over-indulgence, I met up with my best cruise friend in the whole world Jenn and ended up hanging out with her the whole night. I received a world of knowledge on such things as Harry Potter, Call of Duty, what pharmacists really do, and plethora of other useless knowledge that I shall try and retain in case I ever do make it on to Jeopardy. We managed to make time to say adios to a few of our cruise friends, namely Donna The Soccer Mom/Roulette Stud and Adam The Honorary Moreau/Male Nurse before calling it a night as we were all set to disembark early the next morning.

Saturday morning we all arose bright and early, as it was time to start heading back to reality and out of the world of cruising. I must say, like most things on the ship, they had a very efficient system for getting everyone off in an orderly manner. After everyone was off, the six of us made our way to the airport in Miami as my mom and dad along with Nat and Jeff were going to be flying home. Luckily for them there were open seats on stand-by, and not so luckily for me and Kiel this meant we had to take the SUV on another 30-hour drive back to the Great White North. Prior to leaving the airport we decided to take I-95 home instead of the I-75, which we had taken on the way down, as it was apparently the faster of the two routes. Well it would have been faster, except for the fact that I had to pull over about ten times to sleep because Kiel was almost always too tired to drive. This led to me doing about 85-90% of the total drive up through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. At one point, I even had to pull over for a few hours and nap at a rural gas station in West Virginia, where I was certain we were going to get raped “Deliverance” style. After enduring some bad weather (turns out we were just ahead of a major, major snowstorm) and scary Southerners, we ended up pulling into our lovely home in Bradford, Ontario a mere 29 hours and 2700 kilometres after leaving Miami International Airport. It was nice to be home, although it was going to be short-lived as I had exactly two days to ready myself before I departed on my next adventure, Canada’s Arctic.

With our voyage complete, in summation I must say I had an amazing time onboard Holland America’s Eurodam. The crew and the ship were awesome as were most of the people we met! Special shout-out to my parents for taking us on the cruise, and I can honestly say our first family vacation in over ten years was probably one of the, if not the best vacation I’ve been on in the last ten years (and I’ve been on a few). So people, show your parents some love! I’ll leave it at that.

Lastly, thanks to anyone who checks my blogs, I love hearing from people who read my garbage. Even if you think it sucks, admitting to me that you read it still puts a smile on my face. Having said that, stay tuned as I have now moved to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories (really fuckin’ far up north!) and there are sure to be some tales forthcoming. Ever wondered what it’s like to be a waiter at a restaurant at the very end of the earth? Didn’t think so, but I’m going to tell you anyways! Until next time, keep your class intact you classless sandbaggers,
~Brent~

Wednesday, January 5, 2011- Lonely Island Was Right, Fuck Land I’m On A boat Motherfucker!

2011-01-25T22:00:00.000-05:00

Not shockingly, my first sleep on Holland America’s Eurodam ship was swiftly followed by my first hangover on the aforementioned ship. When I was finally able to move my lifeless body out of bed, I discovered that it was already close to lunch time and that there was a large amount of room service piled on the floor in mine and Kiel’s room. I also found a receipt for $50 that said I had pre-paid for a pub crawl the night before, but I would be lying if I said I fully remembered purchasing it. I was also puzzled to discover another three orders of room service in the hallway outside of our door, which I eventually learned were the work of Natalie and Jeff who had KO’ed the previous night before their food showed up. Since I was not feeling too hot, I could not even think to stomach any of the five left-over meals on offer and instead got my ass in gear and headed off the boat to the island we were currently docked at known as Half Moon Cay, which if I am not mistaken is a private island in the Bahamas owned by the cruise line. Upon my arrival on the island, I quickly started canvassing my way through the few thousand people on the beach in hopes of finding someone in my party. Luckily it only took about ten minutes before I was able to locate them. Apparently, everyone had already been there for a few hours, which either means I am a really weak drunk or I just drank way more than everybody the night before. After taking a dip in the crystal clear ocean waters, Kiel and I ended up hanging out on the beach like a couple of gumbas listening to house music on our IPod boom-box, while everyone else went back to the ship. Naturally, our music combined with our stellar good looks kept all forms of human life away from us, which was fine by me given my poor health. After making our way back to the boat, I took a side trip to the onboard gym to try and bring myself to life. It seemed to have a positive effect, as I was once again primed and ready to party the night away after that. After some early evening drinks and another lovely family dinner, it was time to get back into the full swing of things at the casino and nightclub. As would become routine on the trip, we started the night at the roulette table where we would usually meet up with Jenn and Donna and see the same assortment of people who were just as big of degenerate gamblers as Kiel and I. Kiel, Jeff, and I also decided to take part in a blackjack tournament that was going to be spread out over two nights. It had a $20 buy-in and was basically a tournament to see who could put up the highest score through seven hands. After two nights of qualifying rounds, the top seven players would all reconvene for a $500 winner take-all final table on Thursday night. Anyways by the end of Monday night, Kiel was in second place while Jeff and I were in sixth and seventh respectively. We would have to wait until Thursday (night two) to see what happened! After mowing down a bunch more drinks and thinking he was king shit, Kiel started telling the two Ukrainian blackjack dealers that we was going to marry them and how gorgeous they were. This event went on in front of my mother who had since shown up, which was quite comical to say the least as Kiel was just sooooooo polluted. After several marriage proposals, Kiel eventually gave up on trying to secure a mail order bride and instead went back to his muse from the night before; the 36 year old English woman, who I swear was probably closer to 45. Anyways, it didn’t take long before her and Kiel were grinding each other up on the dance floor in the nightclub, much to the delight of Jenn and I. By this point, I think Jenn and I were both almost in tears watching from a booth as Kiel tried to work his magic, pimped out in his “Ron Paul” shirt, gold necklace, and gaudy rings. The young-Caucasian-Canadian-dance-floor-pimp-train. Truly a sight that everyone must see at least once before they die. The night concluded with a whole whack of us on the dance floor, dancing to the same tunes that the DJ would play every night. And my award for most random couple on the dance floor (and believe me this wasn’t your typical nightclub crowd) had to go to this gay couple we had befriended who were both named Steve and Steve. All I could think about the whole time was how awkward it must be screaming out your own name in bed. “Ohhhhhhhhhh Steve!!!!!!!!”

Tuesday, I was awoken by Natalie who had a pretty random encounter in the form of an old public/high school and dance friend. As she was sitting on the pool deck that morning, a girl by the name of Kellie that we used to go to school with recognized her sitting there. Long story short, Kellie was now working for Holland America as a dancer and we had apparently watched her in a show without even realizing it (they wear tons of makeup and we were sitting far away). All I can say to that is it’s a small world after all. All randomness aside, our family had planned to have a hot tub party the day before so that’s exactly what we did at lunch time. After securing one of the hot tubs on the pool deck, Kiel, Nat, Jeff, and I (parents decided to not get wet) had it on lock down for a few hours. With Kiel and my mom ordering buckets of beer like they were going out of style, it didn’t take long for us to start feeling fine. We eventually made some other random friends who we allowed into our “hot tub circle of trust”, most notably a cool dude named Adam who was a male nursing student from South Carolina. By the end of the trip he had worked his way up to honorary family member, which is no small feat by any means. By the time the middle of the afternoon rolled around (and the $200 beer tab for Kiel and my mom), most of us were starting to get a little woozy and decided to pack it in for a while. Not Kiel though. He decided to stay and tub it out for a bit and somehow in his drunkenness lost one of his precious Joe-Pesci-in-Goodfellas-style rings in the bottom of the hot tub. With the help of some strangers, he was eventually able to find it and decided to reward them and himself by purchasing everyone shots. This was around the time my dad found him, barely coherent and had to drag him back to our room before he completely drained his bank account. This is in turn led to Kiel jumping on my head while I was trying to have a nap and my cursing out of the drunken bastard. We were pretty sure that that would be the end of Kiel for the night, which was unfortunate as I had already purchased him a pub crawl ticket in my drunken generosity a couple of nights earlier. This worked out well for Nat who ended up being able to take advantage of his misfortunes. With Kiel asleep for the night (or so I thought), I went and put in a quick shift at the casino before Nat, Jeff, and I made our way to the top level of the ship for the pub crawl. We ended up meeting up with my new best friend Jenn as well as some of the other random people we had so far befriended. The pub crawl itself ended up being more of a sprint, as it was only one hour in length and featured stops at five different bars, each serving up one fairly strong drink (long island ice teas, martinis, screwdrivers, etc). As you can imagine, by the time a couple hundred of us arrived at the final stop (Northern Lights nightclub) everyone was feeling quite good and in the mood to celebrate our victory. Unfortunately for my wallet, they also offered half-price drinks at the final stop for the first 45 minutes or so, that led to me at one point carrying a tray of ten or so vodka-Red Bulls. What can I say, I’m a bargain hunter! While we were all chatting away in the club, who emerges out of the shadow; none other than Kiel Fuckin’ Moreau! He had freshly risen from his drink-induced afternoon sleep and was ready to go again. With that in mind, he delved right into his thermos and my tray of drinks and promptly made his return to the dance floor. By this, the third night, Kiel had become somewhat of a legend in the nightclub, and the DJ knew him by name and what songs he was going to request (Deadmau5, Pauly D, Daft Punk). All in all, another terrific night onboard the Eurodam, with a great cast of associates and characters.

The next morning our boat docked for the day at Ocho Rios, Jamaica and unfortunately for my aching head, Nat, Jeff, Kiel, and I had all planned to go and visit Jamaica’s number one tourist attraction, Dunn’s River Falls. The falls are basically this long ass set of small waterfalls, cascades and rapids that you slowly walk up through with the help of a guide. Immediately after getting off the boat in Jamaica, the first thing you notice is that everyone is trying to sell you something or lay some kind of hustle on you. While it is somewhat comical, it is annoying more than anything else. It was the main thing I hated about the Dominican Republic when I went there a few years ago and it quickly soured me on Jamaica. Eventually we made our way over to Dunn’s River and completed our walk up the waterfalls with a billion other tourists in about an hour or so. It was most definitely a unique thing to do once, but the novelty of it quickly wore off on me (or maybe it was just my pulsating head). Following our successful waterfall climb and subsequent dealings with the Jamaican hustlers we made our way back onboard the ship and I headed straight to the gym to try and make myself feel better. Not too sure if I was successful, but it gave me enough strength to get to the family dinner and swear off heavy drinking for one night. That night, Nat, Jeff, and I decided to take it easy on the booze, but Kiel decided he needed to keep the party going. After making the requisite stop at the casino and playing a bit of roulette, blackjack, and poker, the three of us along with our honorary guest Jenn decided to check out the stand-up comedy act in the main theatre that night. It was some dude by the name of Al Lubel, who has appeared on both Leno and Letterman, although I’m still not really sure how. He had to be one of the least funny comedians I have ever seen and I’m pretty sure by the way he kept repeating his name he was more coked out than Paula Abdul on Season 5 of American Idol. In fact, Jeff ended up getting so mad that him and Natalie jut walked out about three quarters of the way through the show. Since Jenn was the only person amongst the few hundred in attendance who found it funny, I was forced to stay until the end and witness Al Lubel, the middle-aged man with a Jew-fro take off his shirt and play the piano for his grand finale. Shocking. Having gotten no laughs out of my system for the night, Jenn and I headed over to the nightclub where we were sure we would find Kiel. And wouldn’t you know it; there was Kiel on the quietest night of the week, the only guy out on the dance floor. Occasionally some poor unsuspecting man or woman would happen onto the dance floor and Kiel would quickly grab their ass or grind with them. Yes, he was even ass-grabbing the male DJ at times. This led to far better comedy for Jenn and me than any “professional” comedian could provide, although like Al Lubel, Kiel Moreau could not fight the urge to have a one man no shirt party. Just classless I tell ya!

Sunday, January 2, 2011- And The Award For Biggest Liquor Store Purchase Of 2011 Goes To…

2011-01-22T18:28:00.000-05:00

With Montreal and Australia in my rear view mirror, the next stop on the Brent Moreau-likes-to-spend-all-his-money-on-travelling-express was to some far off and exotic lands in the Caribbean Sea. Yes, it was time for me to pop my cruise cherry! There comes a time in everyone’s life when they must take that fateful plunge and join the world of cruisers. People have long been trying to sell me on the benefits of taking your vacation on a giant boat but for some reason unbeknownst to me, I have never hit the high seas in style. That was until this past month, when my parents decided to take myself, and my two siblings Natalie and Kiel, along with Nat’s boyfriend Jeff on a cruise. In addition to it being my first cruise (everyone else going had already been on at least one), it was also the first time the whole Moreau clan had taken a vacation together in over ten years if memory serves me correct. Having said that, five Moreaus and one honorary Moreau all in one place can only mean one thing: chaos!

New Year’s Eve, my parents, brother, and I set out from our residence in Bradford with the dubious goal of driving to Florida with little or no stopping. Normally, our family would fly stand-by as my mom and sister both work for Canada’s two major airlines. Since it was the holidays, we had to drive down to the Sunshine State Griswold style. Natalie and Jeff had purchased full price plane tickets for the following day and would meet us at our hotel the next evening, as Jeff had the urgent matter of going to a Canada World Junior hockey game in Buffalo. After packing the four of us into a Dodge Journey and about twice as much luggage as we probably needed, we set out around lunch time and were lucky to get good weather for the entire first day. We ended up taking the I-75, which required us to cross the border at Windsor-Detroit and then drive on through the great states of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and then finally into Florida. We all took turns driving, and I can officially say I had my tamest New Year’s celebration ever (but memorable), driving through Tennessee probably listening to some hillbilly radio station! We ended running into some crazy rainstorms during the middle of the night, which prompted my mother to stay awake all night and attempt to give my brother and I driving instructions as if she was being paid a dollar for every pointer she gave us. Not surprisingly, cause let’s face it men are awesome drivers, the Moreau brothers powered through the storms and next thing we knew it was the early hours of the morning and we were just outside of Atlanta looking to fuel up. Well that was the plan at least; until I saw a few shady looking dudes start to make their way towards our vehicle as soon as I pulled into the gas station. Being the fearful white man that I am, I ended up hightailing it out of there and pulling off at the next exit, which fortunately just featured a couple of drunk sluts who looked like they were out of a Ludacris music video and gangsters in the gas station who clearly had a bit too much to drink on that night, which is how it should be on New Year’s Eve.

To ring in the first morning of 2011, we stopped at an IHOP for breakfast like the true American patriots we are. After filling our faces with some good ole American grub, we set about covering the last six or so hours from the north of Florida down to Fort Lauderdale where our ship would be departing the following day. On the drive down, I felt like a little kid as I stared out the window spotting all the gators resting on the banks of rivers just off the highway. I figure that I probably spotted at least fifty, and every time I would excitedly try and point them out to my father, he would look out the window and inform me that he could not see them. This went on for a good hour, and after a while I just gave up and concluded that without his Dollarama glasses he truly was in full on Ray Charles mode. Having gotten my gator fix, the four of us finally arrived in Fort Lauderdale in the late afternoon and quickly realized we had no idea how to get to our hotel. After driving around for a bit, my dad pulled over and asked at a gas station where the Westin was. After getting directions that led us right along Fort Lauderdale’s main drag during the height of tourist season and an excruciatingly slow drive, we pulled into a Westin hotel; only problem was we were booked into the Westin hotel on the other side of the city! After almost two extra hours on top of our already grueling 27 hour commute, we finally made it to our hotel for the night and got settled in. My Dad and Kiel quickly went on a booze and food run, and the four of us settled in with some drinks and a “Dog The Bounty Hunter Marathon” on A&E. Natalie and Jeff eventually arrived from the airport around midnight or so, and the six of us all snuggled into the one hotel room for the night in anticipation of our big cruise the next afternoon. Sidenote: In all honesty, I don’t remember much after Natalie and Jeff arrived because I decided to take a prescription strength sleeping pill (had been having a lot of trouble sleeping) and I apparently went for a walk to the lobby to look for a vending machine and fell out of my bed amongst other things. In conclusion, it must’ve been one hell of a sleeping pill, or the Americans are catching up to us Canadians and making their beer stronger. Chances are it was a little of Column A and a little of Column B.

Sunday morning I awoke from my drug induced slumber and was ready to conquer all that Holland America Cruise Lines could throw at me! Our first order of business though was to again hit up one of America’s fine breakfast institutions. This time though it was Denny’s that would be getting our attention. More importantly than Denny’s though, we had to go to the liquor store and load up on alcohol to take on to the boat. Now for those not in the know, the general rule on cruise ships is that all of your food is included in your price, but you generally have to pay for all of your alcohol and soft drinks. Now this was naturally a major concern for us, so we contacted Holland America to see what their policy was on brining your own alcohol onto the ship. We discovered that we were allowed to carry on as much wine and champagne as we wanted, but that you could not bring on liquor or beer. So, being the wise guys that we are, we decided we were going to risk it and just try hiding tons of beer and liquor in our luggage. When it was all said and done, I believe we had nine or ten three-litre boxes of wine to carry on, about 60 cans of beer in hiding, ten fireball shooters, and last but certainly not least, five or six sixty ounce bottles of rum, whiskey, and vodka. Oh, and did I mention we only we were going to be on the ship for six nights?! Sick, I know. The only other majorly important purchase we made was our large thermoses, which we would use to house or illicit alcohol on the ship and carry around with us everywhere we went. Let me tell you, if those girls in high school who have to look after pretend babies took care of those things the way we held onto these thermoses, well let’s just say there would be a hell of a lot of better mothers out there. Back at the hotel, we distributed all of the booze throughout our luggage and then made our way over to the cruise terminal, which was an adventure in itself. Six people in a crossover-SUV with about five hundred pounds of luggage is a sight for sore eyes. I’m pretty sure we just buried Natalie in the trunk under some suitcases an hoped she wouldn’t die during the fifteen minute drive over. Thankfully, she was still alive when we got there and we all managed to get on the ship hassle free. Having never been on a cruise ship before, my first impression after walking on was, holy shit this is ballin’! I had a feeling it would be nice (it was a five-star ship), but hot damn I was pretty sure I was in love. Kiel and I checked into our room, which was larger than we thought it would be. Natalie and Jeff’s room was right next door to us, and my parents had a room one floor up, as they were staying in a balcony room while the rest of us just had a window room with an awesome view of the lifeboats! After exploring the ship for a bit and making some rounds, we were all convinced we would be in for a fun time. We got some good news a short time after when all of our luggage arrived at our rooms with ALL of our booze still inside. Success! One of the most amazing perks had to be the fact that the ship also had free, unlimited 24-hour room service. Naturally, we ended up abusing this quite a bit over the week and were threatened to be cut off as we kept ordering food when we were drunk and passing out before it arrived. After checking out the ship’s amenities (pretty standard cruise ship stuff), Nat, Jeff, Kiel, and I met up with my parents at the Rembrandt dining room for dinner. Kiel was already pretty drunk by this point, but hey that’s the thing to do when you’re 21. As mentioned, I had never been on a cruise before so the food came as quite the surprise to me. We were able to eat amazing dishes featuring things like salmon, duck, lobster, and tons of other shit you just don’t see at anything but the nicest of restaurants and at the highest of prices. It was really nice to all sit down for a fantastic dinner, but I knew Kiel had two things on his mind, to get drunk and hit up the casino. After bidding the parental unit good night, the four of us headed back to our rooms to start getting our drink on. Nat, Jeff, and I went and checked out some song and dance show on the main stage while Kiel bee-lined it straight for the casino tables. Shortly after the show, the three of us made our way down to the casino, where Kiel was already locked in at the roulette table, and the two of us would become a mainstay fixture over the next week. With our thermoses firmly in hand, we nestled in at the roulette table with a small amount of cash and quickly started socializing thanks to the help of our friends at the liquor companies. Fortunately, I started shadowing “Donna the Soccer Mom’s” bets and was up a bit of cash. By this point, Kiel was already well on his way to trying to wheel some English bird who was probably twice his age and was there playing with her mother who looked to be about ninety-five on a good day. Guess you can’t fault the kid in the effort category. Also by this point, another younger lady in the form of a hot Floridian by the name of Jennifer had somehow started giving me betting tips. Okay, maybe she felt slightly forced to after my brother introduced himself by grabbing her ass numerous times. All in all, I’m pretty sure we all ended on the plus side for the night (ass grabs not included in the final tally), which was a great start to the trip. After packing it in at the tables, Kiel, Donna, Jenn, and I headed over to the nightclub, Northern Lights, and proceeded to close it down although by that time it was already pretty late. Suffice to say, I would be feeling it the next morning when we pulled into port in the Bahamas, but sometimes you just gotta keep on rolling!

Sunday, December 12, 2010- What is Montreal Most Famous For; Georges St. Pierre, Bagels, Or Club Super Sexe?

2011-01-15T20:36:00.002-05:00

Not long after returning home from Australia, it was time once again to get back on the travelling trail, as I cannot seem to sit around for too long before I start to go stir crazy. To combat this problem, I had purchased tickets to a UFC event for my friends Mike and Jenny as a wedding present while I was away and unable to make an ass of myself at their festivities. Looking back, it seems that it was probably a win-win situation, their wedding was drama free and we all got to go to Montreal for a weekend to watch a bunch of grown-ass sweaty man roll around on top of each other in a huge cage. I had actually purchased six tickets for the event, so poor Jenny had the pleasure of putting up with not only her new husband and me, but my friends Ryan, Dan, and Adam.

Friday afternoon, we all set off on the six hour drive down the 401 from Toronto to Montreal after work. Mike ended up driving his wife, Ryan and I, while Adam and Dan drove separately in another car. One thing that is almost always a guarantee when you drive to Montreal in the winter is that you are going to get shitted on by Mother Nature and this drive was no exception. I’m pretty sure shortly after leaving Mike was wishing he had not volunteered to drive as he had to deal with both rain and snow, not to mention the sights of dozens of cars in the ditch along the way just to rattle your nerves that little extra. We did manage to make it to Montreal in one piece though, just a little behind schedule and with a solid dose of Ryan’s stories of wading through the online world of dating! By the time we got checked in and met up with Adam and Dan it was after 11:00pm. Random moment of the weekend had to belong to Mike, when he discovered on an ice run from the room that his cousin was staying in a room directly across the hall from theirs and Mike had no idea he was even in town for the weekend. Speaking of ice runs, we had little time to waste due to our late arrival, so we promptly started up the hotel-room-drinking-party and followed it up with a trip to Burger King shortly after 2:00am. Wanting to keep the celebration of good drinks and awesome food going, we tried to get into a few bars, but everyone had locked their doors or was closed. This left us with only one option in the wee hours of the morning: casino. Jenny, Mike and Ryan decided to pass and retired to their room, while Adam, Dan, and I jumped in a cab and made our way over to the poker room at Casino Montreal. The three of us ended up hanging around for a few hours as we slowly went from drunk to sobering up with a hangover which is not the greatest feeling in the world while you’re still awake. Adam ended up being the big winner with a profit of a few hundred dollars, while I won like $90 and Dan lost a bit. It was kind of ironic actually, since Dan is a really good poker player, whereas as Mr. Adam and I are hardly legends on the felt. After Adam cashed in his new pension plan, the three of us headed to back to the hotel around 5:30am, dreaming of what awaited us the next day at the Bell Centre, UFC 124: GSP vs. Koscheck.

Adam, Dan, and I did not get out of bed until sometime around lunch the next day, although I do recall Ryan banging on our door at some ungodly hour like 10:00am and trying to get us to go out with them. When we did finally get up, the three of us went out for breakfast at one of the famous all-day breakfast places on Ste. Catherine Street. Let me just say that those Frenchies know how to do an all-day breakfast up in style! After our feeding frenzy we met up with Ryan and Mike who had been out on the town all morning with Jenny and had already had some beers. Ryan had also spent a couple hundred dollars on authentic GSP clothing and was currently wearing his GSP headband around the city like he was the second coming of the Karate Kid. While we were trying to find a watering hole that would accept grown men in headbands, we were accosted by two ladies on the street that jumped out in front of us and asked us if we knew how to drive. Not sure how to respond, I think all five of us just kind of stood there silent before they explained that they had jut smashed up their car trying to parallel park and would really appreciate it if one of us could do it for them. Well before you could say fender-bender, there was Adam in some stranger’s car on the busiest street in Montreal trying to parallel park the metal beast. Eventually he got the car parked, but not before all of us stood there laughing hysterically. I thought they might reward him with a BJ or at least an HJ, but in the end all he got was an old-fashioned thank you. Shortly thereafter, as we were making our way down the street, we walked past Canadian UFC fighter Sam Stout. None of us even noticed, except Ryan, who in a delayed reaction yelled out, “Hey Sam!” after he was already a hundred feet past us. This in turn led to Sam turning around with a confused look on his face and us all laughing because Ryan was so proud he had spotted him out! With a couple of awkward moments behind us, the five of us finally made our way to the restaurant/micro-brewery, Three Brewers. We all ordered jumbo one-litre glasses of ale and proceeded to indulge. Apparently Mike and Ryan had already been to another location of the same restaurant that morning and had been drinking these jumbo beers, so I’m pretty sure by the time they got done they were feeling pretty good! We also discovered that sitting beside us in the restaurant was a group of people including Josh Koscheck’s (the American challenger in the main event that evening) wrestling coach from high school and some of his other teachers and people from his hometown. Ryan ended up talking their ears off as only he can, and we wished them luck in the main event that evening, although we all knew GSP was going to kick his ass, no luck needed! After dusting off our beers, we headed back to the hotel to wake Jenny up from her nap and start and our pre-drink. We headed down to the Bell Centre around 6:00pm and the six of us were all in our seats for the start of the preliminary card. Without doing a full recap of all the fights, I will say it was an excellent night for the Canadian fighters on the card and it was a pretty solid night of bouts. By the time the main event rolled around, we were all feeling pretty good after spending a few hundred dollars between us on $12 glasses of Molson Export. Some might even say Mike was feeling a little too good, as we had to wake him up for the last fight of the night and I’m pretty sure he has no recollection of it! Oh well, as long as he had fun (or thinks he did to the best of his memory), that’s all that matters! The main event of GSP vs. Koscheck provided the desired result for 99.9% of the people in the building, with Koscheck getting his ass beaten down for five straight rounds, much to the delight of all of us goofs wearing GSP headbands. Following the action-packed night of fights, Mike, Ryan, and Jenny had seen enough (especially Mike) and decided to head back to the hotel. The other two and I took this as our cue to continue drinking and our first stop was some Irish pub we stumbled upon. While we were drinking, one of the waitresses came over and asked us where we were from. We weren’t sure why she wanted to know and she would not tell us why she needed this information. After enough pestering, we told her we were from Bradford and she quickly disappeared. A couple of minutes later, another waitress surfaced, but this time it was a girl who had gone to high school with us and dated one of our old friends back in the day. She informs us that she had sent the other girl over to see if we were who she thought we were. In fact, we were just who she thought we were, some drunk idiots from her hometown! By this point, Adam was getting quite restless though and wanted to go to everyone’s favourite Montreal institution, Club Super Sexe aka one of Canada’s premier adult entertainment clubs. Since it was a fight weekend, the place was jammed with patrons and smoking hot strippers, and we quickly settled in at the first table we could find and ordered and $60 bucket of beer, which we were told came with a coupon for a free lap dance. What the waitress failed to mention was that the strippers were all bitches and none of them were having anything to do with “free lap dance” coupons. This in turn made Adam quite the angry fellow as he attempted to find a lady respectful enough to take his coupon and make him a happy man. He never did find that lady of his dreams, but what he did manage to do was snore at a ridiculously high volume level that night and attempt to keep me awake despite my alcohol induced stupor.

Sunday morning, Dan and I awoke to the sounds of Adam in the bathroom making the most violent puking noises I have EVER heard. After we were up and about and getting ready to head home Adam was just laying motionless on the bed. Before I went to meet up with the other three and catch a ride home, Adam did manage to have his second puking rally of the day, which not surprisingly was no less dramatic. After leaving Adam in the capable hands of Dan and wishing him good luck, I headed on my way back to Ontario with the seemingly more sober Mike, Jenny, and Ryan. Just to make our drive home fun, Mother Nature again decided a snow storm was in order. This was no deterrent to Jenny though who commanded her husband to take her to the bagel shop to pick up some “real” Montreal style bagels. To my knowledge, this was the first time I had ever had one of these contraptions and I must say they were pleasantly delicious (thanks Jenny!). The drive home was again slow, like the drive there, but not as slow as Dan’s as he had to apparently pull off the highway on at least one occasion to let Adam the puke machine go to work. In conclusion, Molson Export does not sit well in the stomach on long car rides and the French should be ashamed of it being their beer of choice.

All in all a great weekend, and after now attending three UFC events, I must say they are the greatest sporting events on the planet to attend (no bias, okay maybe a little).

Until next time, stay classy citizens and keep on keeping on.

~Brent~

Thursday, November 18, 2010- Chapter 38. The Final Australian Chapter. Nooooooooooo!!!

2010-12-28T21:35:00.001-05:00

My last week in Australia started off a lot like my first, feeling like shit and in dire need of Advil. Kiel and I awoke on the lovely morning of Sunday, November 14th and decided that since we had a few hours to kill before our overnight bus ride down the coast to Sydney, some exercise might be in order. And with that energetic thought in our minds, we joined the English girl Kate from our dorm room on a three hour round trip trek to the Byron Bay lighthouse. It also happens to be home to the most easterly point on the Australian mainland (translation: it’s one of the first places in the world to start off each and every lovely day!). Of greater concern though was making sure Kiel did not die during the excursion, which contained an abundance of hills and the thermometer clipping off at a fairly high temperature. After much suffering and longing, the three of us made it back in one piece, with Kate obviously in considerably better shape than the Moreau boys. Once we decided that we had had enough exercise for the day, we chilled out at the hostel until about dinner time, before making our way to the bus stop. From there, it was a long, boring, overnight twelve hour bus ride down the coast to Sydney and what would be our final destination before making our way back to Canada. The ride itself was pretty uneventful compared to some of the ones I’ve had, with the main highlight being Kiel snoring at a decibel level that would make his father proud!

Monday morning we pulled into the Sydney bus station around 6:30am and trekked over to our hostel (Wake Up! [8/10]), although it I think it would have been more appropriate to call it a hotel, as it was the biggest f-in hostel I had ever seen! We were told that since they were at a high capacity, we could not check-in and this led to us watching TV in the common area until 11:00am. When we were finally allowed to get into our room, we quickly showered and got dressed and attempted to make the free guided walking tour that our hostel was offering that morning. It seemed we spent a bit too much time beautifying ourselves and ended up being a few minutes late. The two of us tried to find the tour group out in the streets, but almost immediately it started to torrentially downpour. Kiel and I were having none of the rain, and for once (out of about a million times) our tardiness paid off! Instead of getting educated on Sydney in the pouring rain, we spent the afternoon milling about the hostel before going to the hostel’s bar for dinner and eventually returning there later at night to get our drink on. Apparently the staff weren’t too fond of us “getting our drink on”, as we both received our walking papers. Kiel got tossed for starting his own no-shirt party, and I’m pretty sure they kicked me out just for being an ugly motherfucker. Bastards!

The next day started like way too many of ours, in a haze, surrounded by a bunch of dudes in a dorm room, wondering what my forehead did to deserve this feeling. But, seeing as how crying gets you nowhere, I sprung to life and decided it was time to show Kiel the sights and sounds of beautiful Sydney. The two of us spent the better part of the day exploring the city on foot and taking in such attractions as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, The Rocks, King’s Cross and Kiel’s personal favourite, the Botanical Gardens. I won’t bother explaining most of these things because if memory serves me correctly I did that about 856 blog entries ago when I first arrived Down Under. It was a solid day of walking, and it was clear that the only way to reward ourselves was to get sloshed on goon at the hostel before heading out on the town. Taking the recommendation of one chap in our room, we ended up at a spot called The Gaff and wouldn’t you know it, it was wet t-shirt competition night with all the slutty backpacker chicks! Now I know I should be focused on other things, but all I could do (aside from laugh hysterically) was think that these girls were some poor guys’ daughters. Then again, I’m sure people have seen me over the years and thought to themselves, “man I feel sorry for that guy’s parents”! Sometime during the evening, I decided to leave Kiel and hit up the McDonald’s where I somehow ended up in a pretty heated debate with a group of Finnish guys about who the best hockey players were to ever come out of their country. I’m pretty sure I won with Jaarko Ruutu, but one can never be too certain. This somehow led me and the Finnish chaps to head back to the club, before I eventually left after deciding it sucked and I couldn’t find Kiel. Follow this up with a long ass walk home on my own as I was out of cash, and you have the makings of a pretty average Tuesday night in Oz.

Wednesday morning arrived right on time, and with it, my last full day in Australia. Kiel and I again spent the day just strolling about the city and taking it easy. We made the decision the day before that we weren’t going to do anything too crazy on our last night, as we were staring down the barrel of a 24-hour commute to get home the next day. That evening, we headed up to King’s Cross (action central in Sydney for clubs, hookers, and all that jazz) and found a pub that had been advertising a weekly poker tournament with a $20 buy-in and $10 re-buys. Kiel and I signed up, grabbed some frothy ale and sat down with about 25 other people who found this to be a good form of entertainment on a Wednesday night. Long story short, the two of us made it down to the final four with the top three paying out. I believe the payouts were something to the effect of $90, $180, and $350. Sadly Kiel ended up finishing in fourth place, while I made it to the final two with a big chip lead over some French guy. Naturally, I buckled in the end and had to settle for second place, although after covering both of our buy-ins, re-buys, and beers for the night (so far) we were still up a bit of money. With my small profit in hand, Kiel and I headed to one of the many shady strip clubs that helps to give King’s Cross its reputation as the premier red light district in Australia. The place we ended up going to was definitely up there with the shadiest joints I’ve ever seen. We were hustled in by some dude who was coked out of his mind and charged us $20 each to get in before we were scammed $10 each for a beer. Then the dog-ugly waitress refused to give me my change and kept it for herself. It was around this time that we decided we would drink our one beer, sacrifice our cover charge and get the fuck up out of that joint! Oh, and did I mention the strippers were dog-ugly? Just class I tell ya! We closed out the night by spending what little of my profits were left at an Irish pub, before returning to spend what I imagined would be my last night in a hostel for some time to come.

Thursday morning we were up bright and early to catch our shuttle to the airport. The flight home was pretty uneventful. We flew from Sydney direct to Vancouver before flying on to Toronto. Seeing as how Sydney was sixteen hours ahead on the world clock, we arrived on Thursday night in Toronto despite the long flight. After one of the longest days of my life, it was certainly a welcome relief to see my Mom waiting for us at the airport! As much as I love travelling, I love coming home just as much and seeing my family and friends, cause at the end of the day, that’s what matters most in life!

Having said that, and before I get too emotional here (single tear anyone?), I just want to thank everyone who read any of my blogs. For those that read one paragraph, right on up to people who read multiple entries, thanks a bunch. Honestly, hearing people tell me they read my notes makes me happier than a pig in shit! Lastly, cheers to everyone who was a part of the stories that have taken place over the last 58,485 words. From my Melbourne crew at Medici to the warriors working out in Dingo and everyone I met in between, I must say it’s been real. Last but not least, thanks a lot to Leeanna and Kiel for putting up with me during their stays on the other side of the world and my roommates/parents for letting me back into their home!

Until next time, stay classy and remember the world’s a big place...why not explore it?

Saturday, November 13, 2010- These Don’t Taste Like Regular Cookies To Me.

2010-12-21T21:49:00.000-05:00

Thursday morning I woke up early for no good reason and pretty much just rolled around in my bed for hours thinking about Bob Saget’s greatest television moments. Unfortunately, I could only recall about two or three and they all occurred on “Entourage”, so it ended up being a slow morning in the thoughts department. Since Kiel was again showing no signs of life, it was up to me to make things happen. I hit up the tour desk and booked us on a couple of excursions. The next morning we would be going on an all-day bus tour to a town called Nimbin, which is basically like the Amsterdam of Australia but on a much, much, much smaller scale. I also booked us into a surfing lesson for a couple of days later, as I had been now been in Australia for a year and had yet to touch a surfboard! Very un-Australian, I know. When Kiel finally rose from his stupor, we made our way down to the beach to take in the beautiful 25 degree weather and beaming sunshine. We set-up shop with our IPod and speakers like a couple of Portuguese soldiers and just took the day in. Regrettably for Kiel, he didn’t listen to me when I tried to warn him about the strength of the Aussie sun and how different it was from Canada. I offered to lather him up (sickening image, I know) with sunscreen to which he refused and in turn paid for it the rest of his vacation with the nastiest burns this side of “Backdraft”. I’m not exaggerating when I say his back was fire-engine red! After working on our skin cancer, we ended up spending the rest of the day and night chilling in the hostel, doing such productive things as playing Pac-Man and ping-pong. And then it happened...After five nights of straight partying, Kiel finally crashed and went to bed at 8:00pm without a single drop of beer or wine. I must say, it was an impressive run, but for someone who was claiming he was going to party for twelve nights straight, well let’s just say shit was weak! After Kiel and all the three year-olds around the world went to bed, I ended up hanging out and having a few bevos with some Dutch dude who claimed that his friends called him “Sanchez”, despite the fact that he was whiter than Casper. In addition to his peculiar nickname, he also happened to be a former semi-professional “Call of Duty” of player. Take in to account the fact that he was major pot head on his way to work in the weed capital of Australia, and you have yourself one interesting night of conversations.

The next morning, Kiel had to wake up bright and early (and he actually did), as it was time for us to do the epic tour to the town of Nimbin. What is a Nimbin you ask? Basically, it’s a town located a couple of hours inland from Byron Bay, where people are allowed to sell marijuana pretty openly and the coppers turn a blind eye to it. It’s the only such place like this in Australia, and a once dying dairy town now has a thriving, yet still technically illegal industry, based around shady drug dealers and hemp shops. We had arranged to go on “Jim’s Tour”, which features an amazingly knowledgeable hippy dude and bunch of people in their twenties and early thirties out for a day to get baked and ride around on a school bus listening to the likes of Afroman and Led Zeppelin. The first stop of the morning for our bus of thirty or so people was a liquor store for everyone to load up on beers for the long day ahead. Always a good call before 10:00am! Following a pretty lengthy drive and some crazy tunes, we rocked up to the town of Nimbin which was for lack of better words a one-street town. Everyone piled out of the bus and went their separate ways for an hour or so. Almost immediately upon descending into the town, Kiel and I were harassed by dudes trying to sell us their product. We elected to check out some of the hemp/bong shops first before deciding to pick-up off some guy outside a pub who looked like he hadn’t showered in a few days. On the main drag we also encountered an old Aboriginal woman selling “special cookies” at a rate of three for $20, which was another purchase we just couldn’t refuse. After downing our cookies and seeing all the non-existent sights in the shithole that is Nimbin, we made our way back to the bus and were headed on our way to some nature spot to chill out for a bit. At least that was the plan, until about half-way there the bus driver had to pull over because some dude in the back of the bus started tripping out like mad! He was pouring water all over himself and saying, “I’m that guy aren’t I”!? Golden moment number one! After calming him down, the bus got back on the road, but was forced to pull over a few minutes later when said dude had to get out of the bus and started puking on the side of the road in plain sight of everyone. Golden moment number two. Naturally, I took this as an opportunity to take some funny pictures of him. After vomiting like mad, Captain Trip-Out then decided to lie on the road in front of the bus. Golden moment number three! Eventually some of the other passengers managed to scrape him up off the middle of the highway and he ended up spending the next five hours KO’ed on the floor of the bus. With the drama all sorted out, it was time to relax and kick back, so our driver Jim took us to a small lake/nature park (with a great history lesson on the way) where he treated us to a delicious lunch. Then again, I’m pretty sure anything would’ve been tasty at that point. Our last stop on the day-long dube-cruise was at a big waterfall with a swimming hole, where Jim encouraged everyone to jump in and go for a swim. Kiel, decided to go for a dip, while I opted to stay high and dry. Boo yaa! It was around this time that I thought to myself that letting a bunch of people who’ve been using cannabis all day jump off big rocks into a deep, murky pool of water is probably not the safest thing to do. But, on the other hand Jim’s been doing the tour for a long time so what the fuck do I know?! After returning back to Byron Bay around dinner time, we hit up the Subway for some eats and then got back on the nightly alcho-express. This was naturally followed by a visit to Cheeky Monkeys, where Kiel proceeded to dance his pants off, act like an idiot, and somehow still get the attention of people of the opposite sex.

As expected, the next day we slept in until close to lunch time, which thankfully for us, all other six people in our room appeared to have the same agenda. Once we got our act together and had a little chow, it was time for our surf lesson in the afternoon. Kiel and I were joined by a chick, Katelin, who was staying in our room and felt the need to make us look like the amateurs of all amateurs. Once the instructors rounded everyone up from their accommodations in the surf bus, they took us all out to a beach called Lennox Head, which was a bit outside of Byron Bay. The reason for this was that not only was the beach a bit quieter, but apparently had better waves for rookie-biotch surfers (see: Brent). After getting our group of fifteen or so all stretched out and semi-comfortable with our boards on dry land, it was time to ride the waves like a champion. At least that was the plan. Mostly what followed was a series of wipe-outs and me drinking loads of salt water. A few times I was able to catch a wave, although most of the waves were about the same size as the ones you can generate in your bathtub with a solid fart. It was a pretty shameful affair, and Kiel even had to retire early due to “nipple rash”. Most of the peeps in the group were only able to get a decent ride when the instructor’s helped with a push-off at the beginning, although that usually didn’t work either. For the most part it was just a bunch of stunned tourists, acting like, well stunned tourists. After deciding the life of pro surfing wasn’t for us, Kiel and I headed back to the hostel to get our dinner and drink on (something we could turn pro in). This was again inevitably followed by our third visit to Cheeky Monkeys in four nights and the official death of my liver and wallet.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010- I May Be Able To Drink, But I Sure As Shit Can’t Abseil!

2010-12-16T23:40:00.000-05:00

Following the debacle that was Kiel’s first night in Australia, we were both clearly feeling the effects as neither one of us was able to get out of bed before 1:00pm. Myself in particular was in rough shape, as I could not stop shaking, always a good sign that your body is up to the task. When we finally did manage to get out of bed after lunch time, Kiel and I decided to do what I had done the day before, walk aimlessly around the city and just “check it out”. Having been in Australia for so long, a lot of it was kind of lost on me, but Kiel on the other hand took every opportunity to point out how beautiful of a city Brisbane is and how gorgeous all the ladies were. I’m still not sure what he liked more, the city or the women, but I have a pretty good idea. After taking in most of the sights, including the downtown, the Story Bridge and Southbank, we headed back to the hostel where Kiel attempted to cook us a dinner of chicken and rice. Somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong and the next thing I knew, Kiel had filled up the entire kitchen and common area with smoke and there were fifty people all hacking their lungs out. I tried to hide and pretend I didn’t know him, but it seemed that everyone in the place wanted to kill the two of us, that is if the smoke inhalation didn’t get to them first. Later in the evening, Kiel decided that he wanted to go out and party. This was all fine and dandy, except for the fact that my body was on the cusp of a total breakdown and my liver may have exploded if I consumed any booze. With this in mind, I left Kiel at the entrance to a club called “Family” that had gay night every Sunday night. He didn’t seem to mind, and just waltzed in on his own, in what has to be one of the weirder club drop-offs I have ever experienced. With Kiel dancing and wheeling away in the gay bar, I decided to head back to the hostel and watch “An Inconvenient Truth” on my laptop, all the while breathing in the filthy stench of the German brigade that was parked in my dorm.

Monday morning I woke at a fairly decent hour, which is more than Kiel could say. With Kiel nursing a hangover (this became a common theme during his time Down Under), I set out to try and go on the guided walking tour which I had attempted to do a few days before. Unfortunately, the douche bag who runs the tours decided to not show up again. Really good business practice I must say, although on the positive side it did allow me to call up the XXXX Brewery and arrange to do a tour there. For those not in the know, XXXX is one of Australia’s best known and tastiest beers, and is far and away the most popular beer in the great state of Queensland. As my tour was booked in relatively short time, I had to hustle my way across the city and learned that I would be the only person on the brewery tour. Since it was only Monday morning, I guess this was slightly acceptable, although I did feel a bit weird being escorted around this huge factory on my own. The tour itself was actually quite informative and well put together, and if anything I must say there was too much information! During the tour, I was informed that the brewery was closing early that day for a private function and that upon completion of the tour I would only have half an hour to “hang around”. Oh, and did I mention that in that half an hour I HAD TO drink the four complimentary pints that were bestowed upon me as a paying customer. Well let me tell you, after downing four pints in a half an hour I had one of the better Monday morning buzzes of recent memory! Seeing as how I was slightly tipsy, I felt it would be in my best interest to walk the two kilometres back to the hostel to give myself a chance to sober up a bit. Naturally I also had to down a ten pack of McDonald’s nuggets, cause let’s be real, McDonald’s is the shit when you’re shittered! When I returned to the hostel, I was relieved to see that Kiel was still alive after his gay bar soiree the night before and was ready to dial it up for another night. The evening started with a little pre-drink consisting of Kiel’s new favourite drink, goon. I have never seen anyone who drinks wine (and cheap wine at that) at such a crippling pace. I tried to warn him, but as usual my words fell on deaf ears. A few drinks later (or a lot if you’re Kiel), we made our way down to Birdee Num Num’s where Kiel almost immediately started arguing with some random guy about the negatives of universal health care. From what I can tell, it started off as a friendly argument, but quickly escalated to the point where I thought Kiel might be in for some fisticuffs. Thankfully, the moron’s friends who Kiel was chirping with got him to calm down and we were able to go about our business of trying to win some money playing Bingo. In the first game of Bingo, Kiel somehow managed to beat everyone in the bar and scored a cool $50 that was promptly put into the “five extra jugs of beer” fund. What made this feat even more impressive was the fact that I’m pretty sure Kiel was borderline blind drunk when he won! By the time the next game of bingo came around, all of our score cards were soaked in beer, which made playing impossible, but made drinking and having a good time a very acceptable thing to do instead. As you can imagine, the night ended with us being blind drunk and making our mother proud! I can now officially say I got hammed twice in one day, which is a feat I don’t think I have accomplished since my days of heavy cottage going a few years ago.

The next morning it was business as usual for the Moreau brothers; sleeping in and feeling like shit until after lunch sometime. That afternoon I had booked us to go abseiling in the city at a place known as Kangaroo Cliffs (scary name, I know!). Quick heads up on what exactly abseiling is; it’s basically just rappelling down a rock wall or cliff. I like to simply describe it as the opposite of rock climbing. After making our way over to the cliffs with our instructor and going over the safety procedures, I decided that Kiel should go first as I was too much of a pussy to go. Kiel was shaking like crazy the first time he went over the ledge, but I have to give him credit he did it and made it to the bottom in one piece. I, on the other hand, well that’s a different story. On my first attempt, I slowly backed up to the edge of the cliff and had my feet dangling over the edge ready to go. It was around this time that I didn’t listen properly to the instructions and lost my balance and footing and swung off the cliff in my harness and smashed up against the rock walls. While I was hanging there scared out of my mind, I looked up to see the look on our instructor’s face that said something along the lines of, “holy shit, what just happened”. All I could think about was the excruciating pain in my arm and my elbow that was bleeding everywhere. Eventually I managed to get back on track and rappel down the rock face. My ego and elbow may have been a bit bruised but I did manage to get down the wall three more times afterwards (Kiel did four more) before we decided that we could no longer walk up the gruelling stairs to get to the top of the cliffs. Thankfully, the rest of our abseiling went off without any injuries and I must say it was an awesome experience, despite my near death experience. After dressing my wounds and getting my game face back on, Kiel and I headed to Birdee Num Num’s for some pub trivia that night. Our team ended up finishing in third place out of about fifteen teams, although I must confess we did cheat a bit by sending Kiel up to the dorm room to look up answers o his laptop. Unfortunately, it was winner take all and we did not do enough cheating, so the only thing left to do was to drown ourselves in our sorrow. And by sorrow I of course mean beer! Kiel ended up leaving the bar later that night as he said he felt like dancing and apparently somehow ended up at ANOTHER club that was hosting their gay night. I was starting to sense a recurring theme, although it may have just been his luck. After Kiel left, I felt it would be a good opportunity to call my parents in my inebriated state and give them an update on how their two favourite sons were doing. Thankfully, they didn’t pick up the phone and instead I left them a solid rant of a voicemail before tucking myself into bed.

Seeing as how I managed to make it to bed long before Kiel the night before, I inevitably had to shake him to life the next morning as we were scheduled to make our way by bus to Byron Bay, which was a three hour bus ride down the coast. While roaming about the hostel that morning, I noticed a sign on one of the doors that said, “Google Bilderberg Group”. Immediately I knew this must’ve been Kiel’s handy work and asked him about it. He informed me in a fit of laughter that he had returned to the hostel the night before at about 5:00am and proceeded to put that sign up, along with another one that said “9/11 Was An Inside Job”. My guess is the second sign was quickly taken down. Regardless, Kiel was quite proud of himself and his efforts to get his message of anarchy out there. The sign master and I made it to Byron Bay by the early afternoon, but not before Kiel was having a sick attack in the bus toilet. We somehow made it to our hostel (Nomad’s Byron Bay [8.5/10]) in one piece and again were sleeping in an eight-person dorm. With Kiel resting up at the dorm, I decided to check out the town and do some grocery shopping. Byron Bay is one of the most well-known places on the tourist trail in Australia. It seems to walk a very fine line, as it is big enough that it has all the amenities you need, but small enough that it still feels a bit like a hippy community, which it is famed for being. It also happens to have excellent beaches and a moderate year round climate which makes it a haven for backpackers. It’s one of those towns that also happens to party seven nights a week thanks to the large number of travellers! For dinner, Kiel ended up cooking us some delicious burgers on the barbecue, which we happily washed down with some beers followed by the good ole goon. This in turn was followed by a visit to the semi-famous backpackers bar, Cheeky Monkeys. We ended up rocking out there for a bit before I got booted for texting, yes texting, on my phone while I was waiting for Kiel take a leak. I pleaded with the bouncer outside to let me back in to try and find my brother, explaining that Kiel did not have a phone and I wasn’t sure if he knew how to get back to the hostel. Eventually my begging worked and the bouncer let me in, but only after he held my passport hostage sp that I would swiftly return. I never did find Kiel, so I instead decided to make myself feel better by eating a steak wrap. Let me tell you, it was a classy wrap and definitely made my night that much better. Delicious with a capital “D”.

Saturday, November 6, 2010- Mother Of God, It’s Grizzly Adams. Nope, Just Kiel Dancing Like A Lunatic.

2010-12-15T23:11:00.001-05:00

Wednesday morning it was time to keep the amusement park express moving and we promptly took our Season’s Pass to one of the Gold Coast’s most well-known parks, Sea World. Being the amusement park superstar that I am, the first thing we did upon our arrival was attempt to see as many of the shows as possible. Within the first few hours, I had managed to drag Leeanna along to the sting ray feeding, the penguin feeding, Happy Feet in 3D, the dolphin show, Pirates Unleashed, and last but certainly not least the Fish Detectives show starring what I can only presume are some of the smartest sea lions in the southern hemisphere. After some gnarly $10 hot dogs, we decided what better time to check out the few rides on offer than with a full stomach. Luckily for my gastrointestinal tract, none of the rides on offer were overly intense and we safely survived the one roller coaster, a flume ride and a small Jet Ski coaster called Jet Rescue that Leeanna loved so much she made me ride it three times! Other than those three, the only other “ride” on offer if you will was the Sky High Skyway which was basically a ski lift ride over the park that was more my speed. The real stars at Sea World though are the animals, and there was definitely no shortage of them. In addition to the ones we saw in the shows, we also tiger sharks, bull sharks, baby dolphins, and Canada’s most beloved export, polar bears (lazy bastards)! There were also some good hands on experiences, as you were allowed to pet giant sting rays and touch things like sea stars and star fish. By the end of the day, it was safe to say that we were both wiped out and had taken enough videos and pictures to make a bus load of Japanese tourists proud! In fact, I was so gassed that I almost didn’t notice when my lasagne almost burnt down our hotel room. Now that would’ve been a story!

November 4th was to be Leeanna’s last full day in Australia, and try as might I could not convince her to come to the water park Wet ‘n Wild with me. Being the 26-year old loser that I am, I decided to head to the water park on my own, as I could not in my conscience let my pass go to waste. Turns out, Leeanna probably made the right decision by not going, as it poured rain the entire time I was there and to be honest, a no-shirt party in the rain by yourself at a water park is just not as cool as it sounds. There was one notable slide at the park that I must mention, the Aqualoop, which reaches speeds of up to 60 kilometres an hour and takes you almost completely upside down. It was the most intense water slide ever. End of discussion. Look it up on YouTube if you don’t believe me. In the end though, I ended up staying less than two hours, as the weather was shit, lots of slides were closed, and many of the ones that were open required multiple riders at the same time (insert Brent feeling sorry for himself). Feeling dejected about my bad day at the water park, I marched my ass back to the resort and proceeded to help Leeanna pack all her shit (and lots of mine that I was forcing her to take), for her flight home the next morning. In honour of our love of the great Australian institute, the Pancake Parlour, we decided it would be fitting to have some flapjacks for Leeanna’s last supper. Naturally I had to order the all-you-can-eat with a beer on the side, and was left feeling like a beached whale afterwards. We capped the night off with a visit to the arcade (I’m not cool, this I know), where we proceeded to play such awesome games as Deal or No Deal, Arcade Basketball, and Guitar Hero. Not exactly the most thrilling last night, but by that point, she had seen it all and done it all! Plus as a bonus, we were able to use our arcade tickets to scoop up some pretty sweet souvenirs including a classy golf ball set! After taking a cab home because I had lost our bus tickets (and later found at home damn it!), we forced ourselves to drink the rest of the alcohol in our fridge, as we would be checking out in the morning, and let’s be real you can’t let that shit go to waste!

Friday morning was a bit of a rough start as I had to get up at 6:00am, not an ideal time to wake up when you were drinking and went to bed after 2:00am. With that in mind, I did manage to see Leeanna off to the airport and wish her safe travels from the comfort of my pyjama pants! So as Leeanna’s journey came to an end, mine was just getting warmed up, as I still had to survive close to two weeks with my younger, harder partying brother, Kiel. After packing up all of my stuff at the hotel I called home and was informed by my mom that Kiel would not be arriving that day as he had intended, as he had not been able to get on a flight out of Vancouver. With that in mind, I took the short bus ride to Brisbane and checked into my eight person room at the hostel (Bunk Brisbane [6.5/10]). Since this whole trip began almost a year earlier, I had not had to stay in large share rooms as I had been travelling with my girlfriend, who thankfully enjoyed privacy. But since my brother wanted to save money, meet people, party, and make an ass of himself in the bars, he had convinced me to stay in larger rooms. It looked like I was off to a bad start on my own; my room was full of a bunch of German dudes who looked like they were living there and had some really rank smelling clothes and stuff spread out everywhere. Since I had a day to kill on my own before my brother showed up, I decided to indulge in my addiction and headed straight downtown for the Treasury Casino. I ended up settling in at a fairly social $2/$4 No-Limit table that had a good assortment of characters. There also happened to be a couple of Ontario boys at the table who I got along with quite well. In a total six degrees of separation moment, the one guy, Sonny, asked me where I was from and when I told him, he proceeded to name drop my sister’s best friend as someone he knew! Next thing I knew, it was the middle of the night and Sonny and I had pounded back a ton of beers and were both somehow up a good amount of money. Next thing I knew, it was almost 5:00am and I had been playing for over fifteen hours straight, without eating or doing anything other than drinking, gambling, and urinating! My last hand of the night saw me get it all in pre-flop with three other players with me holding pocket aces. Naturally, I lost, but for once had been smart enough to pull some money off the table so I wouldn’t go broke. In conclusion, after fifteen hours, I had broken out even, although if you count the beers I bought with my chips I was probably up over $100 (Brent’s version of math). I decided to reward my efforts with a 5:30am drunk-as-a-skunk visit to McDonald’s for some breakfast before returning to my room. As luck would have it, in addition to the terrible smell in my room, there was also an ugly trollish-looking German girl sleeping on the top bunk of my bed, who looked like some kind of ugly Gremlin mutation. She kept staring at my drunken ass like she wanted to kill or eat me (are Gremlins allowed to eat at 6:00am?), and to make matters worse decided to roll around on the top bunk all morning like some kind of Parkinson’s inflicted baboon. God save me.

Shortly after I sauntered in from my gambling and drinking binge, I decided that sleep was going to be impossible. With that in mind, I dragged my ass out bed with less than two hours of shut eye. Kiel was scheduled to be arriving some time that morning, but I had no idea when and was pretty certain he would forget to call me. Taking that in to account, I decided to head out and take my drunk/turning into a hangover body out into the world. I made my way to City Hall where there was supposed to be a walking tour of the city on offer, but after waiting with a few other people for over half an hour, it was clear that the guide was not showing up. Being the go-getter that I am, I decided to organize my own one man walking tour and checked out most of the sights in Brisbane by myself. Feeling confident after a few hours of walking that I had covered most of the bases, I returned to the hostel, when low and behold, Kiel Moreau is standing there in the lobby with a beard that would’ve made Grizzly Adams proud! For most people, this may not seem like much, but as long as I can remember Kiel has always been clean-shaven and/or unable to grow anything but a few pubic looking soul patches on his face. It was clear; he was now truly a man. After setting him up in our room, we went out for some afternoon beers to catch up on life and all that I have missed in his life back home and vice versa. After walking off our afternoon delight, we headed to our hostel’s bar, Birdee Num Num (the one good thing about the hostel), for some more beers and pizza. Shortly thereafter, I am pretty sure we were both slizzored, and the last thing I remember was leaving Kiel on the dance floor dropping some ridiculous moves before I stumbled back to my bunk bed for the second night in a row. I’m pretty sure it was around this time that I had an epiphany... I was going to be in for some rough nights in the coming week.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010- Some People Sleep With Women, This Body Prefers Bed Bugs.

2010-12-14T14:54:00.000-05:00

The day before Halloween (FYI: trick-or-treating is not a big a deal in Australia), was a day of highs and lows on the monetary front. First, the negative. After calling home that morning to talk with my brother and try and get his visit sorted out for the following week, I became embroiled in a discussion with my all-knowing mother who informed me that I MUST go to the doctor’s office and get my full-body-consuming bites looked at. Seeing as how I was still doped up from the three anti-histamines mixed with booze that I had consumed the night before, I gave in to her demands from the other side of the world. I had become quite proud of my streak of almost 365 days without seeing a doctor, but alas it was to come to an end. Leeanna escorted me to the doctor’s office, where I paid $65 for a two minute visit with the doc, who told me what I already knew, that they were probably bug bites. What a fucking genius! He cut me three prescriptions; one cream, one steroid, and one itch relief pill, and what do you know my pockets where another $75 lighter. The moral of the story kids, don’t sleep with bugs in your bed. Hot women and strippers; okay. Bed bugs; no dice. With my day already costing me a bit more than I had anticipated, I caught a break when Leeanna and I went to go mini-putting at King Tutt’s Putt Putt. Luckily for me, the guy at the counter wasn’t too swift (at least as far as mini-putt men go) and he decided to give me change from the $50 bill that I never handed to him. Therefore, we got a free round of mini-putt and about $30 handed to us for a nice tidy profit of $50. If only all mini-putt courses did this, they wouldn’t struggle so much for patronage! In the end, Leeanna and I ended up tying the first game with me naturally winning the second in a landslide, because let’s face it I am an animal with a putter in my hand and I really wasn’t trying the first game. To celebrate my victory, Leeanna and I headed back to the hotel, where I forced her to make me a BBQ by the pool and think about all that she did wrong on the mini-putt course!

Sunday morning I woke up very early, which had become a common theme for me, as the bug bites all over my body made it extremely difficult to sleep for long periods of time. With Leeanna still in a coma, I decided to take a very long beach walk and to book an early Sunday morning haircut. Upon my return home, I was still feeling extra spry and for the first time in my life (yes, life) I tried to make bacon and eggs. Needless to say it was not a total disaster, but if someone even tried to charge me $2 for that in a restaurant I would tell them to shove the burnt bacon up their ass. Next up on the busy day’s agenda was to head over to the suburb of Southport by bus and try and find a discount shoe factory store I had read about. I guess somehow, I just figured that we would stumble across it, but alas it was not to meant to be. Eventually Leeanna convinced me to give up and we ended up walking around forever trying to find a bus to take us back to the part of town we were slightly more familiar with. Luckily, the bus route back happened to take us right by a huge mall (although sadly it did not have a discount shoe factory store), where I proceeded to significantly update my wardrobe for the first time in almost a year. I ended up spending a few hundred dollars on three shirts, two pairs of shorts, a pair of shoes, some books, and my personal favourite, a Buffalo Sabres windbreaker that was on special for $10. I somehow doubt that Sabres merchandise sells too well Down Under, or anywhere, Buffalo included for that matter. This was not to be the end of our shopping though, as that evening we went out to all the Asian-run souvenir shops to purchase some last minute shit, I mean souvenirs, for Leeanna to take home. Still not feeling we had spent enough money for one Halloween, I treated Leeanna to one last “classy” dinner in Australia at some restaurant called Sage. I must say the food was excellent and all that jazz, but if there is one thing I will not miss at all about Australia, it’s the poor customer service you generally receive in restaurants. More than anything, I think this can be put down to the fact that it is not a gratuity-based business like it is in Canada, and this in turn causes waiters to not really give a fuck! Aside from the dodgy service, it was a tremendous meal, which we unfortunately had to walk off when we arrived back at our resort to discover that the power had gone out! Nothing settles a steak and beer quite like a solid stair climb at 11:00pm!

The next morning with our power fully restored and me not being allowed to cook, I went on a mission to try and sort our income tax and superannuation (pension) situation. From talking to other backpackers, we believed we would be entitled to a large chunk of our taxes back, which sounded pretty enticing as we had both been taxed close to $4500 each in the last fifteen weeks. We made our way over to an accountants where were promptly informed by some moron that we were not entitled to a refund because we were non-residents and would in fact owe money. I knew that he was wrong, as we were residents for tax purposes, but I could not be bothered arguing, so I just gathered up my stuff and out we went. Unfortunately, this led us to have to contact taxback.com, a website that specializes in backpacker tax refunds but also charges ridiculously high rates. Seeing as how we were running out of time though before Leeanna left the country, we had no option and set about making things happen. In the end, we learned that we would both be getting refunds estimated in the range of $3500, but that was after taxback.com took their fees which I believe were close to $400 each for the two of us! In addition to paying the highest ever rate for a tax return, I believe I also set a record for the most money spent in internet cafes in one day, with $20 being spread over three locations trying to figure out our taxes and my brother’s travel plans as he was due to arrive from Canada later in the week. Now that our taxes were all sorted, we could relax and that night we went to where Brent always goes to let off steam, the casino. Apparently, Jupiter’s Casino was the place to be on a Monday night, as the place was insanely busy. The money wheel was six people deep all around and you could all but forget about finding a decently priced blackjack table! Now I’ve been to Las Vegas numerous times, and believe me, the casinos there don’t look anything like this on a Monday. After having a few drinks at the bar, Leeanna and I ended up playing a bit of digital blackjack and roulette before packing it in for the night after we lost all our early profits but were still even for the night. One other random side note from the evening was the copious amount of Asian people consuming loads of alcohol. As someone who frequents casinos, I know that there are tons of Asians in casinos all over the world, but for the most part they are not large drinkers. On the Gold Coast, it seemed I had entered another world. Totally random fact, I know, and one hundred percent useless to the forward movement of this blog, but I somehow felt it necessary to mention.

Since we were starting to run out of time on the Gold Coast, Tuesday morning was time for us to do the one pre-requisite thing you must do when you visit the area; hit up the amusement parks. Leeanna and I decided to purchase a Season’s Pass for $100 which would give us unlimited access to three theme parks for a year, although we really only needed it for the next three days! It was well worth it though, as admission to the park we were going to that day, Warner Brother’s Movie World, had a price tag of $70 for one day entry! Movie World can best be described as a much smaller version of Canada’s Wonderland, although it definitely had better props and characters throughout the park with Looney Tunes being the overriding theme. Most of the rides were named after movies, such as the Lethal Weapon roller coaster, Batman Sling Shot, Wild West Falls, and our personal favourite, the Superman roller coaster. Superman was actually quite unique in that unlike any other roller coaster I had ever been on, it shots you at the beginning of the ride and you accelerate up a super-steep hill, instead of the slow descent you usually encounter on roller coasters. There were also some good shows that we saw during the day, including one featuring bunch of Hollywood stunt car drivers doing some crazy tricks in their cars and jumping through fire and shit like that. We also caught the “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” 4-D show, and for anyone wondering what the fourth “D” is, well it’s pretty much just water being shot and misted at you from the back of the seat in front of you. Either way, it was a great day, although the two highlights for me had nothing to do with rides. The first was early in the day when I discovered frozen, chocolate covered bananas. Simply put: delicious. The second, which was funny for everyone but me occurred when I was standing in line to get my Season’s Pass picture taken and a giant, and believe me I mean giant, spider fell out of an overhead vent and landed in my hair! At first I thought my hair was brushing up against a plant or something behind me, but I quickly noticed a giant arachnid scurrying down my body. This led me to jump around like a mad man and let out a loud series of expletives in front of a large number of young children. Let’s just say that if my mother was there she would have threatened me with the bar of soap like it was 1990 all over again. After my traumatic experience with the spider that day, it was nice to finally see my bites going down a bit that night, although the girlfriend didn’t seem to notice, as her Kardashian addiction was now in full overdrive and she could not get enough Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney. Okay, maybe I watch it too!

Friday, October29, 2010- Steve Irwin. Half Man. Half Legend.

2010-12-10T00:26:00.000-05:00

After barely surviving a bird attack the night before, Leeanna and I were up bright and early on Tuesday morning for our tour of the world famous (okay, Australia famous) Fraser Island. Now what exactly is Fraser Island you ask? Well, the long and short of it is that Fraser Island is the world’s largest sand island and is the reason Hervey Bay has become such a major tourist destination on the east coast. Our tour bus picked us up bright and early, at which time we found out there would only be six people on the tour that day, us and a group of four seniors! Apparently, the tour company had booked out 24 of their 30 available seats for a group, but when one of their two buses went down, they had to cancel the group. Enter the six of us! While one bus was in the shop, the one we were riding on didn’t look much better. The bus driver informed us that the air conditioning was not working and the 4-wheel drive was acting up. In addition to that, there was a huge crack in one of the windows on the side door. Now, I’m no expert on driving on sand islands, but I’m pretty sure 4-wheel drive is almost a necessity. Upon arriving at the island after our ferry ride over, the six of us boarded into our bus and were headed to one of the island’s famous lakes, when low and behold our bus got stuck! The driver tried feverishly to get the car down the sand road but to no avail. With 2-wheel drive it just wasn’t happening! I was starting to get the impression that it was going to be a long day. Having given up on the idea of visiting the lake, the driver escorted us to some of the island’s other attractions, including a shipwreck, rainforest walk, Eli Creek (creek you can walk through with really clear water), and the Pinnacles (goofy rocks with a bunch of crazy colours and shit). All very marvellous stuff to look at, although it would have been better with the comfort of air-conditioning between stops. Everyone who has been to Fraser Island knows that it is also famous for its large population of dingoes. Naturally, since everything went so swimmingly for us, we managed to spot exactly zero dingoes all day, and instead had to settle for seeing about 5000 dead birds that had all washed on shore and had apparently died during their migration due to a massive storm. After making it through most of the day on our sub-par tour, our driver randomly decided during afternoon tea that our bus was no longer safe enough to drive across the island because of the crack in the door window. Talk about the icing on the cake! We were then informed that we would have to flown off the island by some bush pilot that they were summoning to come rescue us. Low and behold, an hour later a plane is landing on the beach (yes, the beach!) and a pilot emerges wearing dirty clothes and no shoes. Not what we all had in mind, but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers. Next thing we know, the six of us are boarding the plane and taking off down the runway, sorry I mean beach. The people who were on the tour with us were really pissed off and vowed that they were going to file a complaint with the company. I on the other hand found it all quite comical and was trying to look at the positive side by remarking that we had at least gotten a free scenic flight over the island! After safely landing on an actual tarmac runway, we were met by a waiting taxicab that escorted us back to our accommodations and far away from the barefoot pilot. That night, the owner of the hostel, Gary, asked us how our tour went and I could not resist telling him about all the mishaps. Turns out, Gary was also quite pissed off and vowed to call the company the next day and try and get us a refund. The tour may not have gone as planned, but I must say it was one day tour I was not going to be forgetting anytime soon!

After checking out of our hostel the next day, it was off to the bus station to catch a ride down to the swank town of Noosa, which is located on what the Aussies call the Sunshine Coast. It also happens to be close to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo, which was the main reason we were going there. I’m pretty sure Leeanna’s whole mission in life (other than to have a nice base tan) has been to visit the Australia Zoo, so there were no ifs, ands, or buts about us going there. That morning, as we were about to board our bus, we ran into the senior from our tour the day before and learned that they bitched to the company and ended up getting their money back. They insisted that I call right away (which I did) and wouldn’t you know it, Miss Leeanna and I were on our way to each receiving a $165 refund! A nice turn-around from the day before I must say. With my smile still on my face from receiving my refund, we arrived in Noosa and checked into our hostel (Noosa Backapackers Resort [8/10]). We spent the remainder of the day walking around town and checking out all the mega-huge houses owned by the rich and not-so-famous before heading over to Noosa National Park to participate in Brent’s favourite activity... nature walks! I must say, at least we were rewarded by seeing one koala in the wild on our nature walk and some remarkable coast line, although I’m sure to Leeanna it’s all the same shit as nature walks just ain’t her bag! That evening I promptly felt the urge to order pizza and beers and put on ten times as many calories as I had burned off that day. I also started to notice that my body was getting quite itchy and was covered in bites. Can you say bed bugs anyone?

The next morning, we were back on the tourist trail, determined to spend our hard-earned Australian dollars. It was off to the aforementioned Australia Zoo (home of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter), which has grown from a rinky-dink reptile park to one of the busiest and most well-known tourist attractions in the country. Seeing as how it’s located in the middle of nowhere though, we had to catch the complimentary shuttle. This was no ordinary shuttle bus though; it was one that played episodes of the Crocodile Hunter non-stop! Crikey! The zoo itself was actually pretty standard, and if anything I must honestly say it was a little small (especially for the inflated admission price). Most of the animals on display were of the Australian variety, with the exception of some of the more famous animals, such as tigers, elephants, etc. What they lacked in size though, I must say they more than made up for in other areas. For starters, the assortment of things dedicated to Steve Irwin, in addition to lots memorabilia and artefacts was truly great to see. Also, the zoo offered lots of interactive shows and feedings. We watched the tortoise feeding (insert own joke), the otter feeding, got to pet koalas and kangaroos, and even got to feed an elephant some fruit. There is nothing quite as comical as watching an elephant eat fruit, especially when people are feeding it into its trunk like it’s a god damn assembly line! Aside from all of this, the thing the zoo is most famous for is its Crocoseum, a 5000 seat amphitheatre where they perform live shows featuring crocodiles, birds, elephants, and an assortment of other creatures. I ended up volunteering and somehow being picked to participate in the bird show. I had to stand up in front of a few thousand people and make ridiculous bird noises and wave my arms like a knob. Apparently, some birds were supposed to fly over and land on me, but instead they decided that they had had enough of this shit and decided to fight the power and flew out of the stadium! This promptly led to a trainer running out of the Crocoseum to track down the birds and me standing there looking like a complete jackass. Oh well, at least I still got my free magazine for participating! After rounding up a large assortment of Crocodile Hunter souvenirs, we headed back to Noosa, where we spent the evening strolling the immaculate streets and eating gelato. Very Brad Pitt, I know.

Friday morning it was time to head on to the what would be the final leg of Leeanna’s OZ journey, the Gold Coast (think a cross between a poor man’s Las Vegas and Niagara Falls, with some gorgeous beaches thrown in for good measure). After wolfing down the world’s best free hostel breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, and sausage, we headed to the bus stop and were on our way. The bus had a short layover in Brisbane, during which time I had to make a visit to the pharmacy to try and get something that would aid the itchiness being caused by the hundreds (no joke!) of bites that were now all over my body. The bites appeared to be getting worse by the day, but despite all this, Leeanna pointed out that we had gone a full year with having to visit a doctor between the two of us. Knock on wood. Knock on wood. After pumping some over the counter meds into me, we made our way to the Gold Coast and checked into our resort (Surf Parade Resort [9/10]), and man was it nice to not be staying in a hostel! Our ocean view room featured a balcony, flat screen TV, Jacuzzi, a separate bedroom, pull out couch, and a full kitchenette. Believe me, as happy as I was to not be staying in a hostel, Leeanna was ten times happier! Seeing as how we were going to be staying for a week, we loaded up on booze (duh!) and groceries that night before spending the evening relaxing in our “resort room” and watching reruns of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” all night. I use the word relax quite sparingly though, as the bites all over my body were now all consuming and I felt the only thing to do was to take a large quantity of anti-histamines!

Monday, October 25, 2010- Is It Wrong To Fart Directly On Another Man’s Gentials?

2010-11-29T14:40:00.000-05:00

After suffering through another painful night of crows crowing and possums menacing about on top of my tent, I could not have been happier when the ferry pulled ashore just after 10:00am. To say that the final leg of our “vacation” had gotten off to a bumpy start would be like saying the Toronto Maple Leafs are a terrible hockey team. It was painfully fuckin’ obvious! After sprinting on to the ferry and running around naked in celebration of getting off the island, we enjoyed the ride back to the mainland and caught a bus to the closest city, Rockhampton, which is affectionately known as Australia’s “beef capital”. Quite the claim to fame, I know. Eventually we made our way to our hostel (Rockhampton YHA [7.5/10], and were pleasantly surprised to see that we had our own free-standing unit. Turns out, the hostel had purchased a bunch of these modular units that were used as athlete housing for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Hell, it even came with Olympic pictures on the wall and an official certificate stating that some amateur athletes had taken a shit in the same toilet I was now about to defecate in! After spending the afternoon lounging about, Leeanna and I headed to the biggest tourist spot in town for the evening, the Great Western Hotel. The Great Western is really unlike anything I had ever seen or heard of before; a western style steakhouse and bar, with a giant indoor rodeo arena attached to it. They apparently run some pretty big rodeo events here, and every Friday night they have practice bull rides which are open to anybody to come and watch. So, seeing as how it was Friday, Lee and I crushed some steaks, enjoyed some cold beverages and proceeded to watch kids, teens, and adults of all ages attempt to ride the ferocious bulls. In all fairness, some of them weren’t that scary and were comically pathetic. For the most part though, it’s safe to say that dudes who ride bulls are some of the toughest sons-of-bitches on the planet (if you don’t believe me go watch the PBR on TV). All in all, it was a good show, but I just could not stop wondering how in the hell you get into bull riding in the first place?

Saturday morning we both woke up feeling the effect of one too many drinks the night before at the rodeo. Seeing as how we’re troopers though (and had to check out by 10:00am) we rounded up our gear, left it in the luggage storage and made our way to the local shopping complex, as we now had fourteen hours to kill before our bus to Hervey Bay that night at midnight. Seeing as how there is not a whole lot to do in Rockhampton, we spent the day at the mall and did a bit of shopping before catching a screening of the surprisingly good Ben Affleck movie, “The Town”. Later in the afternoon, I also happened to have this feeling that I should double-check our bus tickets. Well, wouldn’t you know, Brenty-Boo in all his wisdom had bought bus tickets for the night before. After calling the bus company and confirming that I was in fact a dumbass, I had to shell out another $100 for tickets that night. So with our new bus tickets, we made our way over towards the bus stop around dinner time and had to spend four hours hanging out in a McDonald’s, followed by another hour in a gas station restaurant. Best day ever! Finally at 12:15am, our bus arrived which was to be taking us south down the coast for six hours to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island. Leeanna and I were both looking forward to a good night’s rest, but let’s be real that would just be too easy. Within a minute of sitting on the bus, I started to notice that there were cockroaches everywhere. Fast-forward a couple more minutes, and after not telling Leeanna about my discovery, she screams that there are cockroaches crawling all over me and my knapsack. Upon further inspection with my trusty flashlight, I discovered that there were in fact hundreds of cockroaches everywhere on the floor and wall of the bus. No one else seemed to mind/notice, but we sure did and promptly moved from the back of the bus to the front. There were still some roaches at the front, but not enough to deter me from grabbing some sleep. Pretty sure Leeanna spent the entire six hour bus ride observing the behaviour of everyone’s favourite insects, deciding that this was a much safer option than dozing off like myself and the rest of the passengers who were bound to all die at the merciless antennae of the cockroaches.

After somehow surviving our bus ride, Leeanna and I rolled into Hervey Bay around 6:00am and I thought it was only fair that we should reward ourselves with a trip to McDonald’s while we wait for our shuttle bus to the hostel. After devouring our meals, it dawned on me that I had now eaten three meals at McDonald’s, one at KFC, and one at a greasy steakhouse all in the span of a mere 38 hours. Some people might be disgusted by such a statistic, but I felt I had reached a new high that day. No man should be able to function after such a stretch, but there I was feeling like Tommy Lee circa 1986. After checking into our hostel (The Friendly Hostel [9/10]), grabbing some groceries, and then booking our skydiving and Fraser Island tours for the following days, it was time to catch up on some much needed sleep in the form of nap time. If there’s one thing I love more than Mickey Dee’s, it’s a solid afternoon siesta. Feeling energized, that night we decided to take some bikes and head down to the beautiful beach front esplanade. Although it is very touristy, I must say it was well-maintained and a gorgeous place to go. It has a great trail system and some stunning views of the ocean. We followed up our little exercise session by settling in with a box of goon (see: cheap 4L box of wine) and some reality television, which let’s be real is the perfect Sunday night in anyone’s book.

October 25th. Yes, that shall officially go down in history as the day Brent and Leeanna decided to jump out of a plane. On that note, we were woken up earlier than planned that morning by a hostel employee who informed us that our skydiving would be commencing earlier than intended, as the weather patterns were changing and they wanted us to go before lightning had a chance to strike us down. With no time to think about what we were doing or second-guess ourselves, we were promptly taken to the local airport and given a safety briefing by a dude who had jumped out of a plane like 10,000 times (no joke!). Still not feeling anymore optimistic after the safety briefing, it was now or never. As luck would have it though (for me at least), the plane we would jumping from could only take one instructor and one skydiver at a time, so somehow we came to the conclusion that Leeanna would go first and me second. With that in mind, I made my way to the landing spot along the beach with another employee, while Leeanna was taken up to 14,000 feet! Next thing I know, a small speck is falling out of the sky at a rapid rate above the ocean and it magically turned into a small speck with a parachute. After safely landing on the beach, Leeanna seemed to be in shock that she had done it and quite frankly I was in shock she had done it! The same girl who had refused to do any kind of adventure sport during our time in Oz somehow just jumped out of a plane from 14,000 feet! Next up, it was my turn to go, so we made our way back the airport. While we were waiting and getting the plane ready, they showed us a video of Leeanna’s skydive which was comical to say the least. It featured some excellent shots of her drooling with her eyes closed. Turns out, she’s not as brave as I thought! With that in mind, I told them not to worry about filming me to save myself the embarrassment and the instructor, pilot, and I loaded up on to the plane. The plane takes about 20 minutes to get up to the desired elevation, which unfortunately gives you lots of time to ponder everything that can go wrong. Apparently, when I get nervous, I also have a tendency to fart. Now this isn’t a big problem in public spaces, but when you are in the world’s smallest airplane with a man strapping you to his chest and your asshole is pressed against his genitals, well you can see where this might cause some problems. I did everything in my power not to laugh and prayed that my instructor would not just throw me out the plane on my own into the ocean. Hands down, one of the five most awkward moments of my life! To get back on track, all the farting in the world doesn’t matter once that door on the plane opens and it’s time to rock and roll. Next thing I remember, after my fart and the door opening, was falling towards the coastline with my heart racing and some major breathing problems! Despite this, I do remember us getting some magnificent views of Fraser Island (the world’s largest sand island) and thinking that it would have been much more convenient to fart out here. After a 60-second freefall and a breezy parachute ride, we safely landed on the beach and I crossed one more thing off of the bucket list. With our adrenaline fix clearly taken care of for the day, we spent the rest of the day relaxing and booking the remainder of our accommodations for Leeanna’s time in Australia. For an evening activity, we decided to take a nice leisurely bike ride again, although this idea was quickly nixed as I became a victim of a magpie swooping. For those not in the know, a magpie is a bird about the size of a rotund seagull that is very territorial during its breeding season and takes to swooping at the backs of people’s heads that come into its territory. Sometimes they just graze you, as if to say, “get the fuck out of here, I warned you”, but other times they well actually connect with their beaks or claws and do some damage. Luckily I just got grazed, although it did scare the shit out of me and cause me to fall of my bike like a jackass. Lesson for the day: skydiving fun, small black and white birds dangerous.

Thursday, October 21, 2010- I Admit, Possums Are The Scariest Creatures Ever

2010-11-25T19:23:00.001-05:00

The 18th of October would mark our final day in Dingo. As much as I was excited to get out on the road again, I must also admit there was a small part of me that was sad to leave. I mean, the thought of possibly never making another works burger almost brings a tear to my eye. My last shift was pretty uneventful, although I did remember to take my camera to work so I could take pictures of all the ridiculous burgers and shit that I make on an average day. While work was okay, my laundry turned out to be quite an expensive affair as I put my $250 IPod through the washer. Just in case anyone was wondering, yeah, IPods are not very water-friendly! That evening in honour of our departure from Dingo, we decided to have a few people over to the house for drinks. Next thing I knew, it was 3:30am, and we were still pounding beers and realized Leeanna and I had to get up at 6:30am. Always seems like a good idea at the time.

As expected, after only three hours of sleep and a nice drink session, we naturally slept in on Tuesday morning. This in turn caused us to have a very frantic morning as our housemate Dan was scheduled to drive us to a place called Rossyln Bay. After saying our goodbyes to Liz and Andy at the house, we loaded into the car with Dan and set out on our 200 kilometre drive back to civilization (or so we thought). That morning, Leeanna and I were scheduled to catch a ferry out to a place called Great Keppel Island, which is a fairly large island, located right on the Great Barrier Reef about 15 kilometres off the mainland. Of course, on our drive we had to run into construction delays, so I spent most of the morning stressing if we would make it to the ferry on time. Somehow, we made it with; no word of a lie, less than a minute to spare, which if you ask me shows some pretty good time management skills. I mean, how many people do you know can time a 2.5 hour drive to the minute? That’s what I thought! After saying so long to Dan and running onto the ferry, it was nice to finally settle down and start to enjoy our “vacation”. Well at least that was the plan. My life never seems to follow its plans too well. After reaching the island in one piece, we quickly discovered that there was nowhere on the island to buy groceries or alcohol. Thankfully we did have a few snacks and light meals we had packed or else we would’ve been really S.O.L. After wandering about the island for a bit and somehow getting lost, we eventually found our accommodation (Great Keppel Island Holiday Village [6/10]). We had booked ourselves into a “tent” style room, which consists of an actual tent with a double bed and two night tables in it. Slightly different I thought, I mean, a tent with a double bed in just doesn’t seem to invoke that “nature” style feeling. After checking in, we headed out to explore the island, and what a beaut it is! As mentioned, Great Keppel Island is located right on the Great Barrier Reef, and from a beach point of view has to be one of Australia’s great hidden gems. There are probably less than a couple hundred people on the whole island, and if you want you can have a beach all to yourself. As Leeanna and I were strolling along that night, we happened to see a guy fishing right on the beach who looked like he had a monster catch. After he struggled for a good fifteen minutes, he finally reeled in a fair size sting ray. It was around this time that someone else fishing there mentioned that the day before someone had caught a tiger shark in the exact same spot. Now I don’t know about you, but when someone is catching tiger sharks on beaches that I’m supposed to be swimming in, alarm bells start going off in my head. That evening, I set out to make us pasta for dinner (MasterChef Moreau!) and with a great stroke of luck ran into a guy in the kitchen who had just gotten married. No, that’s not the good part. The good part was, the wedding party had an abundance of alcohol (I had none) and this kind scholar was willing to sell it to me on the cheap. Twenty dollars later, I had myself a bottle of rum and we were set for the night. Unfortunately, the power went out that night at about 9:30pm, which would end up being a reoccurring theme every night (no one told us this when we checked in). So all we could do was drink in the dark and hide in our tent from the possums which were lurking everywhere and causing a ruckus!

The next morning we awoke bright and early, as the birds make sure you wake up at 4:00am. Now normally I love nature, but I hate fucking crows! These things just would not shut up, and I must say put a big damper on the start of the final leg of our Australian journey. After finally going back to sleep for a bit, we awoke at a more human time and made our way down to the beach to try our hand at some water sports. We both signed up for the “Great Day Out” package, which was supposed to include a tube ride, use of a catamaran, snorkel gear, and a kayak hire. Because it was so windy, we were unable to go tubing or use a catamaran, so we had to settle for kayaking and snorkel gear. After perfecting our paddle strokes, Leeanna and I set off in our kayak for a beach on the other side of the island. Let me just say, to anyone who has never kayaked on the ocean; way more difficult than on a lake. I mean between the waves and the man-eating sharks, it’s quite a task. Once we arrived safely at the beach, we attempted to snorkel a bit, although this was thwarted by Leeanna’s fear of water, some dodgy equipment, and my general fear of tiger sharks. Instead, we opted to lie on the beach and get burnt to a crisp, like the pasty white folk we are. That night, we decided to reward our hard day of tanning and paddling by having some drinks at the only pub on the island before making our way back to the resort. When we went back, we tried to sit out on our little deck in front of our tent, but we were constantly being harassed by possums. Most people would just ignore the possums, but I’m a baby and felt I would be much safer curled up in my tent. Like the night before, the power went out at about 9:30pm and the resort went quiet...except for the sounds of possums and birds. Despite my fears, that night I made a run to the community kitchen to grab some food, all the while being careful not to be ravaged be a five-pound possum. Upon my return to the tent I realized I had left the door to the kitchen open, which is a big no-no! Next thing I know, Leeanna and I can hear possums banging around in the kitchen, but I was too afraid to leave the tent and do anything about it! Finally after what felt like an eternity, I grew a very small pair of testicles and decided to venture out into the darkness with my cell phone flashlight. Sure enough, possums had been banging around the kitchen and just everywhere for that matter. Luckily, a girl who was inherently much braver than I came by and shooed away the possums as if they were nothing. All the while, Leeanna and I nearly shit our pants trying to walk to the bathroom, as every noise we heard we thought was a possum out to get us! Eventually, I returned to my bed like a coward and cried myself to sleep having nightmares about possums dressed up like the cast of “Glee”.

Thursday morning, we were again awoken by the painful sound of crows crowing at 4:00am. After my near death experience the night before with the possums, I was in no mood, but alas here we were trapped on this island. It ended up raining pretty much all day, which sucked because we were supposed to go tubing which we had not been able to do the day before either. We ended up just hanging about most of the day and nursing our third degree sunburns from the day before. Around dinner time when it finally stopped raining, we went from some nature walks, although Leeanna is not too keen on walks these days due to my poor navigational and walk-time-estimation skills. That night we went to the pub for dinner as we were effectively out of food and we decided that we were also just fed up with the island! We would be on the first ferry out in the morning. At night, it was more of the same, with the possums strolling around the resort like they own the place and me being terrified I was going to get my eyes gouged out every time I walked to the bathroom at night!

In all seriousness people, Chuck Norris doesn’t kill people; possums do.

Monday, October 18, 2010 – Life In Dingo. A Classic Tale

2010-10-18T12:32:00.000-04:00

As you may have gathered from my first couple of posts on this booming town I live in, there is not a whole lot to do/see/experience in the town of Dingo. Why Dingo even exists is a mystery to me, but I guess I can see the purpose. From what I can tell, our roadhouse derives most of its business from truckers and workers stopping off before heading into the coal mines that are scattered throughout Central Queensland and people stopping off who are going other, more exciting places and just need a quick break!

The actual town itself though is a pretty meek affair. Located just off of the Capricorn Highway (so named because it runs along the Tropic of Capricorn), Dingo is a sleepy town consisting of about 150-200 people. Of this population, a good percentage is foreigners who have moved here for work or are temporarily working here, such as Leeanna and I. At the roadhouse, we’ve got a wide assortment of nationalities including Canadians, Brits, Irish, Americans, Kiwis, Swedish, Dutch, and of course lots of Aussies as well. It seems to me that most of the locals work at one of the two sawmills located in town that are the primary employer in the area. Other than that, there seems to be quite a few people who work in the mines, which pays quite well and usually has people working on something like four-on, four off or eight-on, eight-off, etc.

Most of the houses in Dingo are of the “Queenslander” variety, which as far as I can tell, loosely means “shitty, open air style houses with little insulation that are built on stilts in case it floods”. I’m not sure if this is the literal translation, but I’m pretty sure it’s got to be something close to that. In regards to the rest of the town, there are only a handful of public buildings, including a library the size of my bedroom that’s open two days a week; a small one-room pub that would not be out place in some Australian outback joke; and a general store that is well a general store. Outside of this, you’ve got an elementary school that houses 30-odd kids divided into two classes: Kindergarten to Grade 3 and Grade 4 to Grade 7. I’m guessing the kids all become pretty good friends, as there’s not a whole lot of selection available to you on the “friends” front. The only other structures of note that come to mind, are the two aforementioned sawmills, a couple of tennis courts, a race course, and a rodeo ring/horse jumping course. Yes, somehow in a town of only a couple hundred people we have a full-on racecourse and a proper rodeo facility!

After reading that, you’re probably asking yourself, what the fuck do people do for entertainment in the this place, Brent? I mean, besides drink at the pub and lick the backs of toads for hallucinogenic side effects.

On the home front, we watch a lot of DVDs, and boy do I mean a lot of DVDs. Once a week, Leeanna, Dan, and I borrow the roadhouse’s ute (see: small Australian pick-up truck) and cruise into the town of Blackwater that is about 45 minutes away. This trip usually consists of our grocery shopping, renting an ass-load of DVDs and on occasion getting a haircut that would make Jim Carrey’s character in “Dumb and Dumber” proud. Sadly, this outing to the small, mining town is usually the highlight of our week, because let’s be real, what’s more exciting at the age of 26 than a good ole Thursday afternoon grocery shop followed by a trip to the video store to rent some of Meryl Streep’s greatest hits? Nada.

A couple of other popular pastimes amongst the ranks here are our weekly poker games and the occasional tennis match. Due to the large number of bored travellers and workers, assembling poker games has usually not been too difficult as most weeks we draw between six and ten people, with me usually donating my money to someone else’s travel fund. Tennis meanwhile, has definitely been something I’ve enjoyed getting back into, as it was a major hobby of mine in my younger days. In the 15 weeks I’ve been here, I have played more tennis than I probably have in the last eight years of my life combined. Unfortunately for me, I still suck huge donkey balls, as evidenced by my choke performance in the Dingo Roadhouse Tennis League. There’s a good chance if my parent’s find out I lost a match, gulp, to an Englishman, they may trade me in for a box of used condoms or something to that effect.

On a less competitive note, another Dingo high point for me was being asked to go into the school for reading week to read to the kids. In all honesty I was actually quite nervous getting in front of a bunch of little kids, but luckily for me none of them seemed to care too much. They just wanted to know about such pressing things as polar bears, squirrels, and what types of snakes I had seen. I kept my trouser snake jokes to myself and soldiered on through the books. Following the readings I was presented with more tough questions, such as, “what’s your favourite page in the book?” Difficult one to answer made even more difficult when the next kids asks, “what’s your second favourite page in the book?” Are these kids for real!? Seeing as how Dingo is such a small town and I talk with a funny accent, my readings at the school made me an instant target for the local youth, who it seems all love saying hello to me and want me to play sports with them. This inevitably led to my multiple rugby showdowns against the kids and my getting destroyed physically by a 12-year old man-child. It was worth it though, as I now know the rules to rugby and can say I would probably be competitive in an under 10s league. Then again, I would probably still suck.

Other than our weekly trips to Blackwater, Leeanna and I have only really ventured into real civilization once, and that was when we borrowed the ute for a day and drove to Rockhampton. The first thing we did when we got there, aside from notice that they had traffic lights, was head to a fast food restaurant. This was promptly followed by an afternoon spent in the massive shopping mall and a lovely dinner at a restaurant along the Fitzroy River called Cassidy’s. It was a nice change, and during our fifteen weeks in Dingo it was the only thing even remotely resembling urban life we ever saw. Our only other day trip was when Leeanna, Dan, and I went to the Blackdown Tablelands which is a national park located just outside of Dingo. It’s really a beautiful sight, if not a bit odd, as there are a bunch of mountains rising out above some of the flattest land this side of Sydney. It features some gorgeous walks and lookouts amongst the mountains and some swimming holes as well. Dan was the only one brave enough to tackle the murky waters, as Leeanna and I were content to watch him swim while we ate our crackers and imagines what was lurking beneath.

The last notable thing that comes to my mind when thinking about Dingo is what every Dingo citizen lives for, the annual “Dingo Trap-Throwing Competition and Race Day”. This was held in October and it’s the biggest event of the year in the town and draws a few hundred people out the racecourse (only time it gets used all year) for an afternoon of horse racing, beauty pageants, booze guzzling, and my personal favourite goat-cart racing. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried people. The day was a lot of good fun and was highlighted by the annual dingo trap-throwing competition, which consists of people throwing something resembling a bear-trap like it’s a discus, all in the name of a fairly healthy $500 first prize. This event is a great source of pride for the town and I’ve even heard the words “world famous” thrown around, albeit very loosely. Despite this, my favourite event was watching the little kids strapped into chariots attached to goats and race them down the track like it was the redneck Kentucky Derby. A close second would have to be the country-dance at the end of the night, which provided me with some good laughs, although at that point it may have had more to do with the 20-odd beers I had consumed during the course of the day. All in all, it was a fun day out at the country races and I must say I am disappointed that I had to work during the rodeo the other night, as I imagine that would’ve been a bucking good time. Yes, I know, worst joke ever.

And on that note, it was with only the fondest (my choice of words, not Leeanna’s) memories that her and I must vacate the green pastures of the Dingo Roadhouse for the Queensland coast. It’s been real and I must thank Kiwi Bob the manager for providing us with an excellent opportunity to save money over the last little while. And thanks to everyone who’s made our time here enjoyable/bearable, it’s been real to say the least. So with that I say to Dan, Shane, Tom, Amy, Max, Elin, Johnny, Adam, Liz, Andy, Allison, Dan II, Tony, John and anyone else I may be forgetting thanks for the memories and good luck with your future endeavours and your escape from Dingo (or settling in if that’s the kind of thing you’re into)!

Sunday, October 17, 2010 – At Least The Rent Was Cheap

2010-10-17T10:00:00.001-04:00

One of the most attractive things to us about Dingo (aside from the town name) was the cost of our accommodation while employed with the roadhouse. Upon arrival, we were told that our rent would be $50 each per week. For those of you not so good with the numbers that worked out to $400 a month between the two of us, a steal of a deal no matter where you’re living. This helped greatly with the saving of travel funds, as rent was only one third of what we were paying in Melbourne and it was deducted right off of our pay cheques every week so we never really missed the money per se.

Darren, the owner of the roadhouse, has three houses that he uses for some of his workers. When we first arrived in the booming metropolis of 150 people though, his houses were all full, so for the first four weeks, Leeanna and I lived on the premises at the roadhouse in one of their motel style units. The room was like a smaller version of something you’d see at a lower-middle of the road hotel. While the room was clean and modern, with a TV and mini fridge, it was also very small, especially when there’s nowhere for you to go. Making matters worse was the fact that we were often working opposite shifts and on different sleeping schedules. But we made it through that first month and were thus moved into the “big, Queensland house” that we now call home.

When we were finally told that we would be moving into one of the houses we were more than ready to move out of the roadhouse accommodations. We moved in with an English bloke who also worked in the kitchen by the name of Dan. Dan, Leeanna, and I had become good friends while we all lived at the roadhouse, and often enjoyed such leisurely activities as tennis and drinking beer and drinking beer while playing tennis. Sadly, when we moved in, our four bedroom house was pretty short on furniture, consisting of a couple couches, an armchair, and a couple of non-functioning televisions. So like the troopers we are, we set out to round up some beds, a table, and some mismatched chairs from the roadhouse storage area. Naturally, Leeanna and I opted for two single beds, as if there’s one thing we love more than each other’s company, it’s sleeping on our own!

The last piece of the “make-it-a-home” puzzle was working out what to do on the television front. When we arrived, we were surprised to see that there were two fair size televisions in the house. Naturally, neither of them worked and we were forced to scrounge up a small 13” television from one of the other houses. In addition to this, our house had no television signal or DVD player, so being the criminal that I am, I permanently borrowed a DVD player from one of the roadhouse rooms. No one’s noticed yet. A few days later, we were blessed with good fortune for once when one of our co-workers found us a 27” TV in the electronics dump and picked it up for us for $5 after hearing about our sorry state of living. It goes without saying that since that time, we have watched an abnormal amount of DVDs and television seasons on DVD.

For the first while, there were only three of us living in the house, although we were eventually joined by a couple of young British guys, Johnny and Adam, who were big partiers. When they weren’t getting silly drunk, they were generally trying to get in the pants of these two German birds that worked at the local pub. It definitely changed the dynamic of the house, although it was not meant be, as they did not last in Dingo and headed back to Brisbane after only a few weeks.

For a while after that, there were only three of us in the house, although we’ve recently been joined by a nice Irish couple, Liz and Andy. They are definitely a lot quieter than our other housemates and are thankfully a lot tidier as well!

In addition to worrying about what kind of housemates we might end up with, a constant concern for pansies like Leeanna and I was what kind of critters would find their way into the house. We try and keep the windows closed most of the time, but things still manage to get in. We had one mouse living in our kitchen, but he eventually succumbed to peanut butter poisoning. Frogs and geckos are common intruders in the house, and I am proud to say I am turning into quite the capturer of amphibians. What we were really afraid of was cockroaches, but in the eleven weeks we’ve lived here, I have only seen one of the giant beasts. For the most part though, most of the wildlife we see has been outdoors. Dingo is overrun with cane toads and green frogs, which at night can be found everywhere patrolling the sidewalks. Leeanna had an encounter with a mob of kangaroos while she was out walking, although she became quite frightened and promptly ran away. My personal favourite sighting is when I saw a King Brown Snake, which is the second deadliest snake in the world. Luckily for the snake I was in a truck, or else I would’ve went Chuck Norris on his ass.

After all the wildlife sightings and roommates, one question remains, where’s the dingoes in Dingo?

Saturday, October 16, 2010 – Just Call Me Employee Of The Year

2010-10-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

Immediately upon our arrival at the roadhouse at 10am, Leeanna and I were given the option of starting work that day at 3:00pm. Bob, the manager, had a very strong selling point, and that is, “you’re here to make money, aren’t ya mate?” I couldn’t argue with that statement and therefore we jumped in headfirst. I was told that I would be working in the kitchen and Leeanna would be working on the counter. I almost had a heart attack when I was told this, as I can barely cook Easy Mac let alone trying to cook steaks and fish and other exotic greasy spoon cuisine. Bob reassured me that it would be easy, and it was just like working at a McDonald’s. One problem: I never worked at a McDonald’s or any fast food place for that matter! I did feel a little bit better though when we were told that we would be making $20.50/hour on weekdays and $28.50/hour on weekends, with overtime after 38 hours a week paid out at $30 and $40 respectively. Not bad for working at a gas station if I say so myself!

My first shift, everything seemed like a blur. Having never stepped foot in a kitchen before, it was all a little overwhelming. First thing I was shown is that all of our food is cooked on either a pizza oven, in a microwave, or in a deep fryer. The orders came in fast and furious, and I quickly learned that in this place cooking skills don’t mean shit! The biggest thing was knowing how to stay cool under pressure and how to multi-task and handle lots of different things at the same time. Luckily, all the guys in the kitchen were pretty decent dudes, so they were patient with me and passed on all of their roadhouse wisdom to me.

As ridiculous as it sounds, you would be surprised what you can cook in a pizza oven. We cook all of our burgers, steaks, fish, sausages, bacon, toast, eggs, lamb chops, etc through a pizza oven. It’s really quite easy and fool proof. Now I’m not gonna say we serve the greatest food in the world, but it is certainly edible and to my knowledge I haven’t killed anybody yet. When I one day have a kitchen of my own, I am now contemplating gutting the whole thing and just installing a pizza oven. When life gives you lemons, get a fuckin’ pizza oven!

On that note, the deep fat fryer seems to be a staple of every roadhouse in Australia. If you ever want to be turned off of eating greasy shit just try operating one of these for a few hours. The fryers get used to cook up a ton of gross looking shit I had never seen before that gets displayed in our “hot box” out front. The hot box is basically just a glassed in enclosure full of cheap, quick, hot food that people seem to flock to the Dingo Roadhouse for. Most of it was shit I had never heard of before such as Chicko Rolls, Corn Jacks, Kabanas, Pluto Pups, and my two personal favourites seafood sticks and crumbed sausages. It also has more traditional fare such as French fries, spring rolls, and sausage rolls. Just really nasty shit to put it bluntly. But Australians, and more specifically truckers speak with their stomachs and they say loud and clear that they love the hot box!

As the roadhouse, is a 24-hour facility, there are three different shifts that we were required to work: 7am - 3pm, 3pm – 11pm, and 11pm – 7am. The overnight shift seemed to be the favourite amongst most of the backpackers, as it was never overly busy and you got really good at making bacon and egg muffins (72 a night) and cold cut sandwiches (150 a night). So just a little FYI, if anyone back home is in need of a muffin/sandwich making man, while then I’m your guy! I worked a fairly even balance of all three different shifts, while Leeanna only worked midnights and afternoons. It has led to some really piss poor sleeping schedules, and I am currently writing this at 5am in the morning while drinking beer and eating cereal. On that note, there’s a good chance you won’t see me in a Weetabix commercial anytime soon.

While I mostly slaved away in the kitchen, Leeanna spent most of her days toiling away on the counter. It’s pretty much like working as a store clerk/cleaner/hotel receptionist/waiter all in one. I also had the privilege of being trained and working sporadically on the counter and must say it was much more enjoyable, and decidedly not as hot as the kitchen. In addition to the gross amounts of hot box food most truckers consumed, they also are apparently all big fans of the pornographic magazines. I’m pretty sure that the owner Darren would be able to put his kids through college just on his sales of magazines like Juggs, MILFs in Heat, and Black Tail! I’m sure it gets lonely camping in your trucks at night, but shit how much porno do you really need to own?

After it was all said and done though, nothing too crazy ever really happened at work. Most weeks we worked 40 hours, although some weeks we worked 48 hours and there were a couple of weeks where we only worked four days. Other than that, I did manage to burn myself a ton of times between the insanely hot oven and the deep fat fryer, with my best burn coming when I overflowed the deep fat fryer and the oil went through my shoe. It all happened so fast that I thought my foot was on fire, but I was lucky to escape with just two of the biggest burn blisters you’ve ever seen. I’m sure the customers out front thought that somebody had been shot, as I let out the loudest scream of “FUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKK” you’ve ever heard. Leeanna’s main entertainment came in the form of truckers hitting on her, and she even managed to get a few invites from the boys wanting to show her their trucks. What exactly “show you my truck” means is still a very debatable point.

With only two shifts left to go in the kitchen at the roadhouse, I can look back and say that I honestly had a good time working there and was also able to save a lot of money between the semi-decent wages and the total lack of places to spend the money. Now there’s only one thing left to do with all the money…head back to the coast and pump it right back into the Australian economy!

Friday, October 15, 2010 – Yes, The Town Is Actually Called Dingo

2010-10-15T01:58:00.000-04:00

After surviving my bungee jumping episode, I felt there was nothing left for me to conquer in life, except to watch a UFC pay-per view on another continent. So, that’s exactly what we did Sunday morning, as it was one of the most highly anticipated matches of the year featuring Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin. The previous day we had seen an ad in the local paper advertising that they would be showing the fight in one of the big bars in town so we headed over. It definitely seemed a little odd watching UFC live on a Sunday morning instead of a Saturday night, but needless to say the beer still went down easy and the chicken wings were greasy! After such a strenuous morning, a nap was in order, followed by a visit to one of our new favourite Australian franchise restaurants, Fasta Pasta. The name says it all, and not only is it quick, it’s delicious!

July 5th was to be our last day on the tourist trail, as we had burned through well over $12,000 in two months on the road and it was time to get some work in. Unfortunately we had to switch rooms for our last night, as the hostel was full, so we ended up shacking up in a 3-person room with some random girl. Before we could get back to working and such though, we had some unfinished business in the form of catching up with some friends we had met up in Broome, Jamie and Hannah. We had constantly been trying to catch up with them but we always seemed to be slightly ahead of them on the tourist trail. This just led to Leeanna and Hannah (sounds like the title of a TV show), becoming texting buddies until they finally arrived in Cairns just as we were preparing to leave. In honour of our finally meeting up, we decided that one last trip to the Woolshed was in order for us. To put a long story short, many drinks were had, an ass load of stupid photos were taken, and fun was had by all involved. At some point there may have even been some dancing on tables if my foggy memory serves me correctly. Naturally this was all followed by Leeanna and I being ignorant and undoubtedly waking up the poor girl in our room who I don’t think was going to be adding us to Facebook anytime soon.

The morning of our departure we had some nasty hangovers. Fortunately, we had decided to do all of our shopping and errands the day before so we were able to recover before making our way to the bus terminal to catch the bus that would lead us to the next part of our journey…the booming town of Dingo, Queensland!

As mentioned, by the time we arrived in Cairns, money was starting to become a thing of the past. Before we had arrived there, we had decided that we would try and look for work in that area, as it was warm during the winter months and there was a big tourism industry. Shortly after arriving though, we were greeted with the cruel reality that the jobs were few and far between as apparently every backpacker in Australia has the same idea, and that is to work in Cairns during the winter months. This also led to an abundance of low wages in the area, as employers know that a lot of travellers will take any work they can find. After talking to a few people and scouring the internet, I concluded that we may have to look elsewhere for work. Although neither of us really wanted to work on a farm, this seemed to be the next logical step as it seems almost everyone who travels Australia works on a farm at some point or another. But alas it was not meant to be. After calling what seemed like every major farm in North Queensland that hires backpackers, I was told that none had work and that I was basically shit-out-of-luck. Around this time, I no doubt started to worry and thinking that I may have to succumb to male prostitution, although I’m not sure I am pretty or fit enough for this occupation anymore. Leeanna and I started talking about the possibility of moving down to Brisbane and thus started looking for jobs online down there. During this time though, I was also scouring Gumtree (Australia’s version of Craigslist) for any jobs that caught my eye. We really did not want to end up in Brisbane, as this would involve finding an apartment, etc. Then, just as I was about to commit suicide, I found a job that seemed perfect for us. It read something to the effect of: busy roadhouse in Central Queensland, looking for couple to work on counter, kitchen, cleaning, etc. I sent off our resumes to a job agency and low and behold, the next day I was talking to Bob, the general manager of the roadhouse, on the phone arranging for Leeanna and I to start working.

Once we secured the job, we arranged for a bus down to what would become our new home, or bum-fuck-nowhere as I like to affectionately call it. The bus ride was a gruelling marathon that lasted over twenty-one hours and took us about two-thirds of the way down the Queensland coast from Cairns to Rockhampton. From here, we transferred buses and travelled another 150 kilometres inland towards the coal fields of Central Queensland. The bus driver kept half-joking with us and asking us if we were REALLY SURE we wanted to get off in Dingo. We assured him that we were ready for whatever laid ahead. Or so we thought.

What awaited us when we stepped off the bus was like something from another universe. Here, seemingly in the middle of nowhere was the Dingo Roadhouse, a 24-hour service station that also acted as a 13-room hotel, restaurant, convenience store, and all around mega-truck stop. The place was insanely busy, with a combination of truckers and travellers all queuing up to spend their hard-earned money. For the life of me, I could not figure out where all of these people came from.

Over the next few blog entries, I will try to describe briefly what life has been like in the town of Dingo over the past three and a half months. As I write this, we are down to our final four days of living here, and to sum it up, it’s been an experience, one that I will not soon forget (although Leeanna says she is going to try and suppress her “Dingo” memories).

Saturday, July 3, 2010 – Bungee Jumping, Rafting, and Binge Drinking. The Extreme Sports Trifecta.

2010-10-14T13:12:00.000-04:00

Due to the fact that when I first arrived in my current location of Dingo, Queensland I was very lazy and did not want to type out any journals, I fell very far behind on my entries. To top it off, about a month after arriving my piece of shit $300 netbook was laid to rest as it decided it no longer wanted to work. Thus, I have not written an entry in over three and a half months. So, I shall start off way back in the end of June in Cairns before I get into very briefly what has happened in my fifteen weeks in Dingo (fuck load of nothing). Without further ado, it is now October 15 and I shall take a trip back in my hot tub time machine to June 29, 2010…

Our first night in Cairns in the far north tropical part of Australia brought about one of the scariest moments of my life...seeing a cockroach that was clearly longer in length than an average male’s favourite appendage. I mean, I’m pretty sure the thing may have had teeth although I wasn’t ever going to get close enough to find out. Or so I thought. Early the next morning I awoke in my room thinking that a cockroach was crawling all over me. I saw nothing (except my heart beating out of my chest) and dozed off back to sleep. Shortly thereafter I awoke again and this time was certain that Mr. Cockroach was indeed taking a dump on me. After scrambling around the room, Leeanna and I eventually cornered him under our fridge and got him out after half an hour of looking like two of the biggest pussies in the world. If you had just walked in on us, you would’ve thought we had cornered a highly aggressive and venomous snake, or two, not a scared insect. What can I say; simply put I am one with nature. After our early morning fright, Leeanna and I made our way over to the scooter rental place and rented us some scooters. A wise man once told me that riding scooters is like riding fat chicks, it’s cool and fun as long as your friends don’t find out. Well let me say, I am huge scooter fan these days! After Leeanna got trained up on how to drive, we made our way out into the streets of Cairns and headed towards the rainforest outside of the city. Upon reaching the outskirts of the city, I promptly got us lost before we headed into the jungle to check out such sites as the Crystal Cascades (waterfalls and shit), Barron Gorge (big gorge), and Lake Placid (no not the one from the Samuel L. Jackson movie). By far the best thing I saw all day (aside from Leeanna riding a scooter in city traffic and being in sheer terror most of the time) was the sign warning of us “stinging trees”. What exactly a stinging tree does to you I don’t really want to know and luckily I never had to find out. That evening, we made our first trip over to the Woolshed Pub for dinner and drinks, which is a semi-famous place amongst Australian backpackers. As luck would have it, they were also selling mixed drinks that night at a rate of five for ten dollars, so it was all aboard the whiskey train. Next stop: Hammersville!

The next day consisted of a lot of recovering during the first half of the day. That afternoon we set out on foot to check out all that the city had to offer. We perused the esplanade and night markets before deciding that it was time for me to visit a barbershop. That night our hostel had a big barbeque that consisted of a whole bunch of good BBQ food, including everybody’s favourite overgrown rat meat…errr kangaroo.

Thursday morning (Canada Day) it was back to spending money like it wasn’t a thing in the form of a white water rafting trip. I tried desperately to convince Leeanna to come with me, but she was having none of it, so I headed out on my own. The tour company was really busy that day, so our rafting crew consisted of six boats with eight people each tackling rapids on the Barron River. The river was rated a Class III out of a possible five, so it had some okay rips, but nothing two crazy. The best part was seeing some guy go overboard on one of the other rafts and all the tour guides losing their shit trying to get this guy back in the raft as he was drifting down river. All-in-all it was a fun day out, although if I went again I think I would like to tackle something a little more dangerous. That day, Leeanna hit up the mall to get her hair chopped and for some retail therapy. For dinner we again headed out to the Woolshed Pub before making our way over to a joint known as the Rhino Bar for some Canada Day festivities. In honour of our great nation the bar had some Canadian themed games such as shooting a square puck at a makeshift goal with a children’s hockey stick. Needless to say, I’m a legend and was the only person in the bar to score multiple times and was rewarded with some free beers. I also finished second out of about 30-odd people in a heads and tails competition, although it was winner take-all so I was just another loser as they say. The club was full of Canadians and people wearing ridiculous Canadian apparel, although it got really out of control later in the night when they had “ladies hour”. During this power hour, ladies were entitled to unlimited free champagne. Apparently in Cairns this is a weekly open invitation for men to cross dress and get shit-faced for free. A very clever approach I must say, although I did manage to get lots of free booze just wearing my regular wankerific outfit. In conclusion the last part of the night I entered full on blackout mode, which was sadly displayed in the pictures and videos Leeanna and I had taken that night. I may not remember all of it, but it sure looks like I was having fun!

Friday was another one of those super lazy days I’ve become quite accustomed to. The missus and I spent the day chilling out at the hostel and the highlight of the day was going out the Woolshed for dinner and drinks, yet again.

As I was starting to run desperately low on money, I figured that I might as well spend the last of it wisely. The smartest thing I could think to do on a Saturday morning was go down to the Tour Desk and book myself into a bungee jumping session that afternoon. With reservations made, Leeanna and I boarded the “bungee bus” and made our way to the outskirts of Cairns to A.J. Hackett’s facility. A.J. Hackett is the guy who actually invented the sport and now has a handful of jump spots around the world, including New Zealand, Australia, and China. After arriving, Leeanna decided that she was not going to jump, so I was left on my own to throw myself off of a ledge towards the ground. Before even jumping, I decided to purchase five jumps instead of one, as one jump cost around $140, while the four extra jumps were only $100 more. When in Rome…or tropical Australia for that matter. My first jump, I was ridiculously nervous and kind of just timidly stepped off the edge and just started screaming my head off. Without question it was the most intense three seconds of my life! The following four jumps I tried a variety of different jumps, including; the reverse (go off backwards), reverse elevator (backwards with your elbows locked under your chin so you look towards the bungee tower falling away from you), and the pendulum (they dangle you off the edge backwards and keep pulling you back and teasing that they will let go). I can honestly say that each jump was just as terrifying as the one before and even after jumping five times I was still shitting my pants each time walking up the tower. After my jumps were done, we watched some of the videos and had a good laugh and I even bought some of the company’s pictures that is something I normally refuse to do on the principle of it’s always a rip-off. That night, after trying to wipe the adrenaline-inspired smile off my face we headed to the Woolshed yet again for some eats before hitting up the local movie theatre for a screening of the latest Twilight film. Yes, I watch awesome movies. I know!

Monday, June 28, 2010- A Wise Senior Woman At Uluru Once Told Me, “Pussies Can’t Wrestle”!

2010-06-28T06:29:00.002-04:00

By the time Monday morning rolled around, it was already time to leave Darwin and its tropical weather and head south to the centre of Australia, and more specifically Alice Springs and the world-famous Uluru/Ayers Rock. With that in mind, we picked up our next relocation van and headed out of the city. Our first day on the road was a short one though, as we decided to go on one of the famous “jumping crocodile cruises” that are well-known in the Northern Territory. After driving down some serious back country roads to get to the boat departure point, Leeanna and I were more than ready to see some crocs. So with that in mind, we boarded a small boat with about 20 people or so and headed out in search of wild crocodiles. It didn’t take long, and within minutes our tour guide had a massive croc jumping out of the water to grab hunks of meat off a stick. It was pretty hairy, as we were able to get right up close to the crocs and they were often smashing into the side of the boat. We ended up probably seeing about ten different crocs of varying sizes, with the larger ones being over fifteen feet long! After surviving the crocodile adventure, we nearly ended up in a really bad situation when we almost ran out of gas in the middle of the outback with very few cars around and no mobile phone reception. Somehow, after driving for over eighty kilometres with the gas light on and my armpits decidedly getting sweatier by the minute we managed to roll (literally) into the town of Katherine and put 60.5 litres of petrol into a 60 litre tank. Phew! As we arrived into town after dark, most of the caravan parks were booked up, so we headed about fifteen kilometres out of town to a place known as Springvale Homestead, which in addition to being a caravan park is also apparently the oldest homestead in the Northern Territory. It’s also home to tons of wallabies that seem to be everywhere, and I narrowly avoided running over a few of the suckers on my way in.

Tuesday morning we woke up and headed over to a billabong in the caravan park to check out some of the local crocs who lived there. We managed to spot one, which gave everyone a scare, although I was more frightened by the birds that appeared to be half turkey, half dove that were lingering nearby. Definitely some of the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen. Prior to departing Katherine that morning, the good ole girlfriend and I decided to take in a morning tour at the Katherine School of the Air. The school bills itself as the largest classroom in the world, as it covers over a million square kilometres. Basically it acts as a long distance classroom for kids living in remote parts of the country (cattle ranches, fishing communities, etc.), who connect to their teachers via satellite and internet feeds. It certainly requires a lot of discipline on the children’s parts, and I know that if I was going to school via satellite, I probably would have dropped out by senior kindergarten. Next on the busy day’s agenda was to call home for Father’s Day, which I was a day late on and feeling quite guilty about. Luckily my old man didn’t seem to mind too much as he has other kids and a wife who apparently love him more than I do. After departing Katherine with the weight of Father’s Day now off of me, we started heading south towards Alice Springs. We stopped for a quick break in the town of Matarenko (sp?) that was conveniently home to some lovely hot springs. I took a dip in the 34°C springs, although I couldn’t convince Leeanna to join me. What I did manage to do though, was sway her to drive a campervan for the first time. Fatigue has really started to cripple me lately while driving, so naturally it was time for the little lady to step up and man the ship. She did an admirable job, at least for a woman, and we arrived in the town of Tennant Creek for the night with our appendages still intact.

The next morning we woke up bright and early as we had a lot of ground to cover, namely about 1000 kilometres from Tennant Creek down to Uluru/Ayers rock. For those not in the know, Uluru as the local indigenous people call it is the largest monolithic rock in the world or some bullshit like that. It also happens to be the biggest tourist attraction in the Northern Territory, as let’s face it; people love to stare at gigantic rocks. The drive went off without a hitch, as we stopped for a short time in Alice Springs to seek some tourist advice and quickly stretch our legs. The drive itself was pretty boring to put it mildly, and after close to eleven hours on the road, I was quite happy to see Uluru and all that comes with it from the Stuart Highway. Since tours to Uluru have become such big business, there is a huge resort about fifteen kilometres away that has numerous hotels, shops, bars, and what seems to be one of the biggest and busiest caravan parks in the world. After settling in to our site and realizing we drank all of our booze the previous two nights, it’s safe to assume that the evening was a fairly tame affair of crosswords and staring into each other’s eyes longingly. Note: some details have been changed to make the writer seem like much more a romantic then he really his.

Thursday Leeanna and I were up at the crack of dawn as we had a full day of walking around rocks planned (Come on, who doesn’t love a good rock walk?). After packing up our trusty campervan, we drove over to the national park and promptly handed over $50, which has to be the highest fee in the world for admission to look at rocks. With that in mind we set out first to take a gander around Katja Tuta, which is another collection of gigantic rocks and such located within the park. We arrived there and took a nice 2.5 kilometre stroll through the rocks and gorges and ended up chatting lengthily with some old Australian dude who had competed in the 1956 Olympics for wrestling. The best part of the conversation though had to be when his sister (who was around 75 years old) told me quite directly that “pussies can’t wrestle”. Guess that explains why I was always on the tennis team in high school! Since we were now getting quite good at walking, upon arrival at Uluru I managed to convince Leeanna that we should walk the entire 11 kilometre track around the base of the world’s largest monolithic rock (I think that’s the claim to fame). Fortunately, we survived the walk, although we were pestered by flies to no end. At one point, Leeanna counted over 25 flies resting on my back, and I probably had another ten buzzing around my head and trying to nibble on my ear wax. On the unfortunate side, I did not experience any of the spiritual mumbo jumbo that supposedly comes from the rock. According to the Aboriginal people, Uluru is one of the most sacred and spiritual sites in the world. I’m still calling it a big motherfuckin’ rock. End of discussion. That night after our exhausting walks, we drove out to the designated car park they have in the park where you can go and watch the sunset over the rock. It really is quite magnificent as the sun setting causes the rock to change colours and provides all of us amateur photographers with a chance to get some amazing pictures. It was most definitely a great way to unwind after a day that saw way too much exercise for an out-of-shape wanker like me.

Friday morning I had to drag Leeanna out of bed as we had to drive about 500 kilometres into Alice Springs to return our campervan by the early afternoon. We made it with lots of time to spare, although we nearly took some damage when two dingoes (wild dogs) ran out in front of the van while I was driving at about 130 kilometres per hour. Luckily for the pooches I have cat-like (no pun intended) reflexes and I am only in the business of killing birds while driving. On that note, I have managed to drive over 10,000 kilometres in Australia and not kill anything... except for about 20-25 birds. The birds in the Southern Hemisphere seem to take great pride in nose-diving into my campervans and meeting a grisly end to their lives. After pulling into Alice Springs, we discovered we had gone over our kilometre allotment by about 200 kilometres and ended up having to fork out an extra $150. A great example of when trying to travel on a budget backfires! With our bank accounts significantly lighter from the fuel costs ($650 in under four days) and everything else that seems to be burning a hole in our pockets, we made our way over to our hostel (Toddy’s Backpacker’s [6/10]) that looked like it had been lifted right out of some 1970s porno film. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love wood panelling, squeaky mattresses and walls that are probably covered in cum shots, but it wouldn’t hurt to spruce the place up a little. I am also quite sure there were some hookers, or escorts as gentlemen like to call them, operating out of one of the rooms. With that in mind, we set out on the town that night to find the local institution/restaurant they call “The Overlanders”. Upon our arrival, we set foot into what seemed like a genuine throwback to the good ole wild west days, and the best decor I have even seen for an eatery. To try and be somewhat exotic, I ordered a “Bush Tucker” plate that came with samplings of crocodile, kangaroo, emu, and camel meat. I managed to throw them back and can say with the exception of the camel, they were all quite tasty. Leeanna on the other hand is a wimp (translation: likes to order the most expensive thing on the menu whenever I take her to a steak house) and opted to eat a filet mignon instead. All the food managed to stay down that night, which was aided quite nicely by the few jugs of beer we consumed thereafter to celebrate our arrival into the heart of Australia’s outback.

The next morning it was time to check out Alice Springs and all the booming metropolis of 25,000 people had to offer. The fact is, there really isn’t too much to do unless you actually head out of town. We made the executive decision to spend $7 each and check out the Royal Flying Doctor’s Museum and Tour. The two of us were educated in all things having to do with the art of providing medical services to people in remote areas, etc. I know, riveting stuff! The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping and going around taking pictures of goofy shit, like signs proclaiming “Men Only” and “Grog (Aussie slang for alcohol) Free Zone”. To get our party rolling that Saturday night, the two of us went on a hot date to do some cosmic bowling. As always, Brent won, because let’s face it, I’m a legend. This was followed by a trip to the hostel bar, for what was supposed to be a quick jug of beer at 9:30pm before we headed off to the room for the night. Instead, we ran into an Australian couple who insisted we head into town with them to the local hotspot “Bojangle’s”. Not wanting to be rude, I happily obliged and Leeanna and I were off to the races. Much like the restaurant we had ate at the night before, the bar was tackily/awesomely done up in a very cowboy theme. Naturally, we proceeded to get right fucked up and go back to our new found friends’ place at 2:30am, to watch their dog go crazy and do lots of goofy shit. And before you ask, yes I am actually 26 years old, as shocking as that may sound at times.

Sunday morning was a good reminder of why I don’t drink as hard as I used to do. Hangovers seem to get worse the older I get and my recovery time is bordering on a full day. Eventually, Leeanna and I scraped ourselves out of bed around lunch time and headed into town to check out the local markets and climb some big hill (ANZAC Hill) that provided us with views of the town and the surrounding mountain ranges. As we were both in fine form, this was more than enough activity for one day and we promptly retired to the hostel for the remainder of the day. We only re-emerged later that evening to go and check out the new flick, “Get Him To The Greek”. Must say it was quite an enjoyable little piece of cinema, although I still haven’t quite learned how to enjoy the Australian art of paying $15 to $20 for a movie ticket.

Monday morning it was time to pack up and get the hell out of the cool winter weather (highs around 20°C) of Alice Springs and head to the east coast and the tropical resort town of Cairns, where every day is generally a beautiful one. We not-so-sadly packed up our bags and headed to the airport to catch our flight. We had to connect through Uluru airport so we got one more prime look at “the rock”. From there, we had a two hour flight to the far north of Queensland on a near empty plane, as there were only 19 people on a plane that had a capacity of 115. Suffice to say, the Qantas service was top-notch!

And now, after falling way behind on my blogs for a few weeks, I can officially say I am caught up, again! Leeanna and I have just checked into our hostel in Cairns, equipped with our own balcony and what appears to be a lovely room. So on this most glorious of Monday nights with our beers in hand, I say to you, have a great Canada Day and enjoy the “northern summer”!

Monday, June 21, 2010- Breaking News: Darwin Has A Wave Pool! Stones Chip Windshields!

2010-06-27T04:10:00.001-04:00

Our first night of having our own beds in a campervan was met with an early rise as we were doing an 8:00am boat tour of the nearby Geikie Gorge. The boat tour provided us with some beautiful surroundings and photo opportunities galore. As we traversed the Fitzroy River on our boat, we managed to see lots of freshwater crocodiles resting on the banks and a large abundance of native birdlife (I sound like a nature nerd, yes I know). Add into this the fact that you were surrounded by rock walls hundreds of feet high on either side of you and you have the recipe for some great morning scenery. One of the craziest things about the far north of Australia is that for half of the year everything is flooded. In a pavilion they had markers indicating how high the flood waters rose to each year. Suffice to say that some years it rose over fifteen feet. In the rivers and such, the water levels can rise by substantially more and this naturally leads to no one being in the area for large chunks of the year. Following the tour, we hit the road again and promptly almost hit the largest lizard I have even seen. We also had some close encounters with wallabies (small kangaroos) and frequently saw cattle and horses grazing freely by the sides of the road. Apparently up here most farmers don’t believe in fences as they have cattle farms that are millions of square acres (no joke!). Naturally, this leads to the occasional cow ending up as road kill. I guess if you are after cheap steaks this is definitely the way to go. After arriving into the happening town on Kununurra that night, I concluded that the stone-chip I had picked up that day on the windshield would need to be addressed the following day as I did not have accident insurance on the vehicle. I was afraid/knew I would have to buy a new windshield, which on a van that size would probably cost as much as I had remaining in my bank account!

Arising on Thursday morning, I had one thing and one thing only on my mind, strippers. Actually I had my windshield on my mind and where to get it fixed. I ended up finding a joint in the town we were in that would do it for $80 that afternoon. Seeing as how the girlfriend and I had some time to kill before the windshield repair job, we went out of town to check out some place called the Zebra Rock Gallery. In short, we thought it was going to be the spot where we can see the zebra rocks, which are these naturally occurring rocks that not surprisingly had a zebra-like pattern. Turns out, the actual site (and only site place in the world to view them) was a few hundred kilometres away and was only visible for a couple weeks of the year when the tides were right. So, Leeanna and I had to settle for looking at the many inane objects they made using the zebra rocks. The highlight though was definitely getting the slice of bread they give you with your one dollar admission fee and feeding it to the hundreds of catfish in the lake. Yes, it was that exciting of a place. With our riveting morning behind us, we took our vehicle to get the stone chip fixed and I hoped they wouldn’t give me any hassle as it was not my vehicle and I am pretty sure you are not allowed to operate on fleet vehicles unless the company says so. Luckily, no one batted an eye and the chip was fixed with half an hour. We were on the road by about 2:00pm, although it gets dark at 6:00pm and this in turn led to a short day of driving. We stayed in some roadhouse town they call Victoria River, which left us with about five or six hours of driving the next day to get into Darwin.

Friday we had a pretty unspectacular six hour drive into the capital city of the Northern Territory, Darwin. While most of the capital cities in Australia have populations in the millions, Darwin has only about 100,000 people although this makes it far and away the largest city in the territory. In fact, it’s the only city in the territory. Just before arriving at the campervan depot, I smudged some mud over the spot on the windshield where the stone chip had been. There was also another stone chip in the corner of the window and I wasn’t sure if this was from me or somebody else. So, I gave that one an once-over with the mud and hoped no one would notice. Bizarrely, working at the campervan place was a dude named Max who used to work at the restaurant beside mine in Melbourne. He ended up being the guy who took care of my vehicle inspection and paperwork and he didn’t pick-up on the stone chips. I was home free! Our hostel turned out to be pretty average (Banyan View Lodge [6/10]), so with that in mind, we dropped off our bags, got showered up, and headed out for dinner. Cuisine that night came from a place known as Mitchelli’s Pizza that claimed to have the best pizza in Darwin. Seems to me to be a lot like claiming to have the best ice skating rink in rural Africa. Competition minimal. After dinner, we went to a couple of different local bars for some beverages and to watch the World Cup. Not surprisingly, all of the bars were just rammed with testosterone as the V8s (Australia’s version of NASCAR) were in town for the weekend. As you can imagine, drunk, ignorant, middle-age men were the standard for the weekend. I, unlike most people in the city that weekend behaved myself though and when we went back to the hostel we chilled out and watched some more World Cup games in the common area. Turns out an older gentleman (roughly 70ish) staying in the hostel took exception to us watching television at 1:00am and stormed out of his room in his tighty-whiteys and proceeded to tell us (in a very rude, profane way) to keep it quiet. Thinking that we were quiet enough and his outfit hilarious, the six or so of us watching television had a good laugh and went back to the boob-tube. Well, low and behold, a minute later the old fucker came storming out of his room again, this time with a mouth full of curse words and a porcelain mug. In short time, he whipped the mug at the wall over our heads, which smashed into a million pieces all over us. Mr. Underpants stormed out of the room, we were all in shock/laughing, and the hostel was going to have to find some new wall decorations. Best moment of the week, hands down!

After hiding in our rooms for fear that the crazy old man might throw some mugs at us, we eventually found our way out and into the city. After strolling the whole distance on Mitchell Street (one main street in Darwin, pretty uneventful) we made our way to the waterfront precinct. From there, we headed over to the World War II oil storage tunnels, which are basically exactly what they sound like, huge oil tunnels about fifteen feet tall and fifteen feet wide that run underneath the city. I don’t think they were ever used very much, but are an interesting attraction nonetheless. That night after dinner, we made our way back to the waterfront area, this time to catch a movie under the stars at Deckchair Cinema. Just like in Broome, Darwin has an old movie theatre that was all outdoors. While these wouldn’t fly too well in Canada, they are a great idea in a place like Darwin, where it “cools down” to 30°C in the winter! The film showing that night was “The Men Who Stare At Goats” with George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. Good to see a not-so-serious war film for once. Brings back fond memories of my childhood and my Dad forcing me to watch M*A*S*H* every night. Following the movie, the girlfriend and I bee-lined it for the pub to catch Australia’s second game of the World Cup. They had been thrashed in their first game 4-0 by Germany; so many people had already given up on the Socceroos. Australia ended up tying Ghana 1-1, which pretty much all but eliminates them from progressing forward in the tournament. To combat this, we drowned our sorrows in a few jugs of beer, which if all went according to plan would also help in my sleeping that night.

As most of the water around Darwin is not safe to swim in due to saltwater crocodiles and box jellyfish, the fine people of Darwin decided to build a wave pool in their waterfront precinct. Naturally Leeanna and I (ok, mostly me) wanted to splash about with all the kids and that is exactly what we did on Sunday. After rising rather late in the morning, we made our way down to the wave pool and proceeded to splish and splash all the live long day with our inner tubes. I did think about taking a dump in the wave pool to scare off some of the kids, but then decided that this might be a little cruel. This was really the only thing we did of any interest on Sunday, as I suspect we are starting to get a little “touristed” out and tired of constantly beating the traveller’s trail.

In totally unrelated news, Leeanna and I both appeared to have gotten attacked by either bed bugs, sand flies, or some other mysterious creature. We have both been itching like crazy for over a week now and our extremities are covered in bites. This in turn has led to some pretty sleepless nights at times and the anti-histamines we picked up seem to be only helping mildly. In conclusion, I would just like to state that I am in fact very itchy and hate all forms of flying bugs. Fuck nature.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010- This Ain’t Jap Town, It’s China Town You Asshole!

2010-06-26T03:14:00.000-04:00

As previously mentioned, our first day in Broome we were both running on empty due to our snore-a-lot roommate. But since we were seeing tropical weather for the first time in months we had little time to waste and promptly made our way down to Cable Beach which is the “famous” beach in Broome and just so happened to be around the corner from us. We spent a few hours just chilling out there and whatnot, as we had to take advantage of the 30°C weather (it seems, up until this point that we have been visit¬¬ing all of the cities in Australia that actually experience their version of winter). At the beach, I decided that a leisurely stroll was in order, and the next thing I knew, I was walking amongst fat, old naked people. Turns out, I had walked myself right into the nudist beach, although the hot chicks were nowhere to be seen. Just old dudes with wrinkly balls and women my grandmother’s age who somehow think it’s appropriate to weigh 400 pounds and sunbathe naked. Nightmares! After escaping the nudist beach with my shorts intact, Leeanna and I went back to the hostel and managed to arrange to get a room change. For the rest of our time in Broome, we were afforded a four person room with no one else in it, which was a lot better than sharing with the fuck-head they called Rodney. After resettling in, we made our way back to the beach where we had booked a sunset camel ride. Turns out the two things Broome is most known for are its camel rides and sunsets, so why not just combine the two? We ended up having a great time on our camel Amos and the sunset was tres magnifique! Hell we even got to feed our camel a carrot. What more can you ask for?

Saturday we decided to visit Malcolm Douglas’ Wilderness Park/Crocodile Farm. The only problem was that it was 20 kilometres outside of town. To combat this, we rented a little gas-powered scooter, which I almost crashed instantly the first time I got on it. Turns out you’re not supposed to put the throttle all the way down in front of a cement wall. This naturally made Leeanna a little bit nervous about hoping on but I was eventually able to convince her that I was a stud driver. Before heading out to the wilderness park, we stopped at the Japanese cemetery in town to quickly check it out. Broome has a long history of Japanese people living there, as the town is famous for its pearls and evidently many of the best pearl divers came over from Japan. After getting out to the crocodile farm in one piece, we paid our sickly high admission ($30 each) and made our way in. As soon as you go in, there are crocs just everywhere, both freshwater/freshies (not man-eating) and salt-water/salties (love snacking on humans). We took some time to check out the hundreds of different crocs and croc pens, in addition to a wide selection of other Australian wildlife such as an owl that barks, wallabies, dingoes, etc. I almost shit my pants walking by one of the chain link pens when a croc decided to lunge towards the fence at me! Leeanna found this quite amusing to say the least. What we and everyone else was really there for though was the crocodile feeding and tour. This was pretty entertaining, as the croc keeper or whatever you want to call him goes around to all the different cages and feeds the crocs. You get to see crocs fight for food, jump out of the water, and just generally do tons of crazy shit that would make any sane man a little bit nervous. We also all got to hold a baby crocodile and take pictures of ourselves with it acting like stupid tourists. After the tour we rode our scooter back into town, very much looking like Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels a la “Dumb and Dumber”.

The next day Leeanna decided that she wanted to sleep in a bit, while I wanted to ride around like a badass on my scooter before my 24-hour rental was up. I rode out to a place outside of town called Gantheaume Point, which provides some beautiful views of the ocean and cliffs and all that great stuff. It is also home to some fossilized dinosaur footprints that you can see when the tide is low at certain times each month. Naturally when I was there the tide was in, so I had to settle for staring at a concrete slab with replicas of the footprints. Really quite stupid, but naturally I took pictures of it anyways. After filling up the massive four litre gas tank on my sweet ride, I went back to pickup Leeanna and take her out to drive the scooter before it had to be returned. I managed to convince her to drive in a parking lot but that was as far as she would go. Pussy! That afternoon we discovered that they were having a free BBQ at the Broome Surf and Lifesaving Club down the street from us, as they were celebrating the end of some big Western Australia tourism campaign. It featured free hot dogs (I ate like 4, cause I’m a gluttonous pig), the most famous band in all of Broome (the irony), a reptile show, face painting, etc. It was good times all around and I had to go lay on the beach for a while afterwards to let the meat settle into the trunk. After meandering back to the hostel I decided, not sure if it was consciously or sub-consciously to get piss drunk around some strangers Leeanna and I were hanging out with. Turns out I started cussing a lot and making fun of them, which led the girlfriend to corner me as I was exiting the bathroom and drag me to the room before I really upset to uptights. Apparently I embarrassed her, but I just think the other people were all losers and had no sense of humour. Just sayin’.

The next morning I managed to drag my hung-over ass down to the bus stop and we made our way into town, or more specifically China Town which is the heart of the city. Turns out it used to be called Jap Town, but in keeping with the worldwide theme and not wanting to be racist I guess they decided to rename it. Our first tourist stop of the day was Sun Cinemas to take a gander at the world’s oldest outdoor picture garden. I believe we call such things movie theatres in Canada, but picture garden does have a nice ring to it, I must admit. After realizing we had forgotten the memory chip for our camera and no pictures would be taken today, Leeanna and I headed over to Pearl Luggers, a museum and tour on the history of pearling in the Broome area. To be quite honest the tour was shit as we had a rookie tour guide. This, combined with my throbbing head made the whole experience seem like the worst forty dollars I had spent in some time. After our education in pearling we perused what little there was to peruse in the downtown district of Broome before heading back to our hostel and getting ready to hit the road the following morning.

Tuesday morning I made my way out to the campervan place to pick up our newest ride which we would be taking to Darwin (about 2000 kilometres away). Just to clarify, all of our campervan rentals so far have been relocations, which basically means when a company needs a campervan moved from one city to another they will hire it out really cheap to you. Usually they cost only $5 a day and often times they will refund a small percentage of your fuel costs. The only catch is that you have to meet their deadlines for getting the vehicle from point A to point B and you often have a restriction on the number of kilometres you can use (thus limiting side trips). It is a great way to see the country from ground level, although it’s not as cheap as most people expect due to astronomical fuel prices and vans that seem to drink gas. Most of the vans use between 15 and 18 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres. Add into the equation that once you are outside the major cities, gas prices rise from about $1.30/$1.40 up to between $1.60 and $1.80 per litre. Since Leeanna and I have been doing relocations for the campervan companies, we drive different vehicle all the time. This time we were lucky enough to get a 6-man campervan that featured three double beds, a television, a bathroom and good amount of space for two people! Anyways, after swinging back to pickup Leeanna at the hostel and grab groceries we had a decidedly late start to the day and therefore only drove a few hours to the small town of Fitzroy Crossing. The one thing I must say you really start to notice in the northern part of the country, especially in the small towns, is the large number of Aboriginal (Native) people. Interesting fact, they (Aboriginals) have the oldest surviving continuous culture in the world. Another interesting fact is that they seem to dislike wearing shoes and appear to be afraid of dentists.

Friday, June 11, 2010- Brent And The Whale Shark. A Story Of Interspecies Love.

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The next morning it was back to the local tourism trail, although this time we had Zale as our personal escort. She decided that a day trip was in order to the world famous wine region known as the Margaret River wine region. It is located about three hours south of Perth, and is home to a plethora of wineries and other attractions. Our first stop of the day was at the Busselton Jetty, which is apparently the longest jetty (boat dock) in the southern hemisphere. I don’t think I could see the end of it from the shore. Unfortunately it was closed for construction, so after a quick stop it was back in the car. Our next stop was to one of the caves in the area. There are a handful of these gigantic walkthrough caves in the area that have now become major tourist sites. We decided to visit Mammoth Cave, which had a self-guided tour. I have never really experienced anything like that, and must say it was quite a unique experience. That natural construction and evolution of the caves is quite fascinating to say the least. We followed the caves up with a drive down to Hammelin Bay which is famous for its huge manta and sting rays which come right into shore. Unfortunately, the water was really choppy so we had to “settle” for some terrific camera shots and be on our way. We had much more important business to attend to anyways, as next on the agenda was the all-important winery visits. Zale had agreed to be the DD, which left Leeanna and I free to sample some of the regions finest wines. Our first stop was at one of the big wineries, Saracen Estates, where we settled in for a quick lunch at their brewery before purchasing some wine. When it was all said and done, we visited five wineries and a chocolate factory (had to satisfy Leeanna’s cravings!) and came home with a fairly solid bounty of wine. It’s pretty safe to assume that I drank a fair amount of wine that night before tucking myself in for a good night’s rest.

Leeanna finally got her wish on Sunday morning, as there was a “Twilight” marathon on the television. Sorry, actually it was her other wish come true, dolphins in the backyard. That morning for the first time since we had arrived there was a pod of dolphins swimming around the canals behind the house. We watched them playing in the water for probably a good hour before they decided to saunter off. After our little dolphin experience, Zale took us over to check out the condo building that Trevor is managing the construction of. We were given the grand tour of the building and got to see what 3.5 million dollars can buy you these days (apparently not too much). If you weren’t so wealthy, you could always buy the condos on the first floor, which started from a cool million dollars even. On that note, our hosts had arranged for some of their friends to take us all out sailing on their 40-foot yacht that afternoon. They really didn’t have to twist our arms too hard to make us come along. The boat was beautiful and featured a whole live aboard area down below, complete with a kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms. We saw a few more dolphins on our sail, and not so wisely Leeanna and I were even allowed to take the steering wheel for a short time. I inherently was more interested in the food w¬e were being provided with, so don’t go counting me in for a career change just yet. After our lovely evening sail, we hit up “New Asian Delights” for some tasty Chinese food before retreating back to the house (and my really comfortable bed) for my final sleep there.

Monday it was time for me to say my final farewell to Zale and company, as I was flying about 1200 kilometres north to the town of Exmouth, which is famous for giving people the opportunity to snorkel with whale sharks in the wild. I did get one more final appearance from the dolphins that morning in the backyard which was a fitting send off. Zale and Leeanna drove me to the airport and for the first time since we had been in Australia, Leeanna and I went our separate ways for a few days. She had no desire to do the whole whale shark excursion, so she decided to stay in the luxury of Zale’s apartment for an extra three nights. Secretly, I think Leeanna wanted to be rid of me for awhile, but I may never fully know the truth! After flying into Exmouth (population 3,000), our shuttle bus from the airport was promptly greeted by sheep all over the road. I had officially arrived in rural Australia! That afternoon I didn’t really do too much, as I just checked into my 7-person dorm (Potshot Hotel [3.5]) and aside from some grocery shopping I just lazed about and enjoyed the first tropical weather I had seen in a couple of months. I spent the evening hanging out some Spanish guy named Javier (as if!), who was some kind of champion swimmer in Spain or something to that effect. Somewhere in the broken English, I discovered that he had competed at the European and World Championships and that he was also doing the whale shark excursion the following morning. I tucked into bed fairly early that evening, as I was giddy with anticipation for the whale shark dive the next day. Sadly, my bed was uber-uncomfortable and I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to be getting much in the way of sleep for the next couple of nights.

The next morning I was up at the crack of dawn, as it was time to get down to business with the whale sharks. For those not in the know, whale sharks are the largest fish in the ocean, and can grow to over 30 metres or something silly like that. Most of them are in the three to six metre range though, but still quite sizeable nonetheless. Despite their huge size, they are very laid back, and only feed on microscopic plankton. This in turn makes it quite safe to snorkel alongside the gentle giants, who act as if you are not even there. Now that we have some background, let’s get back to the story. The tour company I was doing the excursion with picked me up at my hotel, and along with about 12 other people we were taken out to our boat for the day. After getting fitted out with wet suits and snorkels and given all the safety briefings, we did a nice early morning dive in one of the many coral reefs in the area. There were tons of fish that looked like they had just jumped off the pages of National Geographic and we also managed to find a sting ray. Around ten in the morning, the spotter plane took to the sky and began to look for any whale sharks in the area. This turned out to be quite difficult that day as there was tons of cloud cover which made it hard to see into the water from up above. In the mean time, we did manage to find some humpback whales and dolphins in the area that we promptly all ooohed and ahhhed at from the safety of our boat. Finally after a couple of hours a whale shark was found, which meant full speed ahead. We got all of our gear on and ready to go before being summoned into the water by our tour leaders. Hands down, there are few things as exhilarating as dropping into the middle of the ocean with just a pair of fins, a snorkel mask, and a giant whale shark. The first swim lasted for a few minutes, before the shark took off and jetted down to the deeper confines below. Over the next few hours, we managed to get in three more dives with the 4-5 metre whale shark, although by the end I was starting to feel quite fatigued (see: Brent is getting fat and out of shape). Sadly, the one child on our boat got stung by two jellyfish at the same time and it kind of spooked me as we had not been warned about the jellies. Sure enough after this little incident I did manage to see a few jellies in the water, which were waaaaaaay more frightening than the big fish we were staring at. That afternoon, our boat also happened to stumble across a giant sea snake that according to our guides is more venomous than any land-based snake. Not surprisingly, they did not let us dive with it! The rest of the day went off without a hitch (so long as you don’t count my seasickness into the equation) and was definitely one of my more memorable experiences so far in Australia. I spent the evening winding down in the television room at the hostel, listening to tales from some Australian fisherman and a crazy 50-year old lady who had just had a bad breakup and was now riding her bike around Australia. Each to their own. Each to their own.

Wednesday morning I ran into Javier, the Spaniard, and we decided to rent a car and drive out to Cape Range National Park. Cape Range happens to be home to the largest fringing coral reef in the world, although it is not nearly as popular as the Great Barrier Reef on the other side of the country. We also managed to round up Fred the Swedish dude and some French chick to come along for the excursion that not only provided us with extra company but also helped in offsetting the costs of the day out. On the drive out, I managed to spot my first emu (think giant ostrich) in addition to seeing tons of these giant termite mounds, some of which appeared to be taller than me. The four of us spent the day visiting a couple of different beaches and basically just snorkelled and laid in sun. Freddy boy managed to see a couple of reef sharks and some turtles, although naturally I never saw anything beyond fish and salt water that kept finding its way into my goggles. Javier and I also managed to find a fairly sizeable snake that was nestled in the rocks and we felt it necessary to poke with a snorkel fin to see if it was still alive. It was, and damn did it move fast! As we were driving the 65 kilometres back into town that afternoon, I got my first real taste of kangaroos and wallabies en masse. I reckon I probably saw over 150 of the little bastards who just seemed to be lining the side of the road in a great big procession. Shockingly, we made it back to Exmouth in one piece and the car was no worse for the wear. That night, I just sat around the hostel waiting for the Greyhound bus (no choice, as there were no flights for five days) that would be taking me on a 19-hour journey north to the tropical resort town of Broome. I walked to the bus station with some Japanese girl from my hostel and tried to engage her in conversation for what felt like the longest, most awkward hour of my life. Finally around 10:30pm we boarded the bus and were happily on our way to Broome, where I would be meeting back up with Miss Leeanna.

The 19-hour bus ride from Exmouth to Broome was pretty uneventful. Luckily, the bus was only about half full so I was able to get a pair of seats for myself. This is especially advantageous for my sleeping patterns, which basically consists of flopping around and jerking my neck in strange motions. Throughout the night, I am pretty sure the bus driver hit at least five kangaroos or similar sized animals, as I kept hearing loud thumps under the bus. I also glanced out the window a few times to see kangaroos madly dashing in front of the bus. The bus was also brought to a standstill once as a herd of cattle decided to lazily stroll into the path of the bus. Makes me hungry for a good ole fashioned angus beef steak. After rolling into Broome around 5:30pm I made my way over to our hostel which was located a bit outside of the city in the Cable Beach area. Leeanna joined me shortly thereafter and alas our reunion was complete! What a touching tale, I know. Since it was pitch black out by the time we got our shit together, we just chilled around the hostel, then went for a stroll to the beach and to a local bar.

Last night was Leeanna’s first time having to sleep to in a hostel room with other people, as we had to book a four-person room due to lack of availability of rooms right now. It turned out there was only one other person in the room with us, so we figured it wouldn’t be too bad. Little did we know that our roommate was a fat middle-aged tradesman who snored like a warthog, yelled and screamed in his sleep, and set his alarm clock for 4:30am so that he could “see his mate off”. Needless to say I’m writing this on under two hours sleep and Leeanna did not sleep all night. Put a bullet in my head please.

Saturday, June 5, 2010- I Got Crabs. And Damn They’re Scary!

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Since Leeanna and I were having such a great time relaxing and enjoying the lifestyle of the west coast, we decided to hang around for a while. With Zale and Trevor’s blessing, we decided another week’s stay was in order.

To commence the week, the girlfriend and I decided to do what we do best; be lazy. Since it was Monday, Zale and Trevor were at work which gave Leeanna and I free range of the property. Eventually, we decided to go and peruse the shoreline of Mandurah. This was followed by a trip to the bowling alley, where I thoroughly destroyed Leeanna. My scores were less than impressive, but more than enough to slaughter a woman. I mean after all, women ARE second class citizens. That night, Trevor’s nephew Lachlan arrived from the east coast. He’s a good bloke, about twenty years old, who is spending the next six weeks with them over his university holidays. So for the remainder of our time, the house would be more like a hotel, with the five of us living in beautiful harmony, or something to that effect.

After a few fairly relaxed days, Tuesday morning marked the arrival of that time (not Tool Time), tourist time! Leeanna and I grabbed the train into Perth city in the morning with no real idea of what we were actually going to do when we got there. After getting instantly lost (one of my trademark moves), I decided that we should check out something different to what we usually do. Every city seems to have zoos, aquariums, museums, churches, etc, but not every city has a mint/money factory. Thus, we arrived at the Perth Mint and took a tour and learned all about the world of gold manufacturing and how to make silver coins, etc. All very useful information, in case I ever decide to get into the business of printing my own currency. We followed up that with a trip to the Swan Bell Tower, which is basically just a small tower with a bunch of bells in it. I’m still trying to figure out why we paid $11 each to go up the tower, but that shall remain one of life’s great mysteries. Our last stop on the tourist trail was the Perth Botanical Gardens. I have become somewhat of an expert on botanical gardens, and can safely say that Perth has one of the more impressive displays in the country. It featured some great views overlooking the city skyline and an impressive treetop walk. Before catching the train home, we hit up a restaurant called Fast Eddy’s Diner for some chow. Let me tell you I have l have literally never seen a corn beef and rye sandwich come out of a kitchen so fast. Probably not a good thing, but I survived nonetheless.

Wednesday morning we arouse bright and early to catch the twice weekly shuttle bus from Mandurah to the Burswood Casino in Perth. The coach bus left at about 8:30am, and it’s safe to say that Leeanna and I were a bit out of our league; well at least from an age standpoint. Of the eighty or so people on the bus, there was only one other person who appeared to be under 65, and he was well into his 40s. Suffice to say, the seniors were no physical threat and we survived the day. It was actually a pretty fun day out, as our $10 round trip bus ride, also included a $20 buffet lunch (top-notch!) and $3 worth of gambling chips each. Factor in a bus trip that was an hour and a half each way, and you my friend have yourself a good deal. Over the course of the day, Leeanna and I managed to log some time at the blackjack tables, casino war tables, keno, video poker, and video roulette (our favourite). All-in-all, the day ended up costing me $100 bang on, as I decided to keep the bleeding to a minimum for once in my life. I must say it felt great to actually go home from a casino with some money in my pocket for once. Hell hath frozen over.

The next day, I was left on my own to visit Rottnest Island, as Leeanna had no interest in trucking along for my escapades. Rottnest is one of, if not Perth’s top tourist attraction. It is an island that is about 12 kilometres off the coast and is only accessible by ferry. There are very few motor vehicles (a few buses and service vehicles) and the primary means of transportation is by good ole fashioned pedal bikes. Also, outside of birds and reptiles, the only animal present on the island is quokkas. No what is a quokka you ask? Think of a massively overgrown rat that looks like a miniature kangaroo and you pretty much get the picture. Anyways, Thursday morning Zale dropped me off on her way to work all by lonesome self at the pier to catch the ferry out to the island. After arriving on Rottnest, I promptly purchased a bus ticket and rode the bus around the entire circumference of the island and took in all of the now typical amazing Australian views. Since this only took 45 minutes, and I had a full day to kill, my bus ride was swiftly followed by a trip to the bike rental shop and the snorkel rental company. Rottnest is also famous for its coral reefs and snorkel trails, which I figured I would explore. So I took my now getting fatter-by-the-day, out-of-shape ass and started pedaling around the island. I eventually arrived at one of the main snorkelling spots, only to find the beach completely empty. I decided to attempt to brave the waters on my own with my snorkel gear, but was quickly thwarted by the cold water and ferocious waves. I probably only made it out about 30 feet offshore, when I decided, like a little girly man, that I should turn back. Common sense told me that since no one was around for probably miles, it was in my best interest not to start drowning in the ocean. Anyways, after my failed attempt at snorkelling, I biked around the whole island and took a ton of “scenery” pictures. After tucking in for a nice lunch at the only pub on the island, I set back out on my bicycle to once again attempt to snorkel. In short, I again failed out of not wanting to drown on a beach by myself. Clearly, the $20 snorkel rental fee was money not so well spent and would have been a much better investment at the local bottle shop. Late in the afternoon, I finally managed to spot some quokkas in the wild/on the side of the road. I tried to coax them into some model shots, but my efforts seemed to be in vain. To sum it up, I was quite gassed after pedalling over 40 kilometres that day, and was quite relieved and ready to rest when Zale picked me up from the ferry that night. My fitness levels are now at an all-time low. Heart attack seems imminent. To complement my failing heart, Trevor decided to take the whole “family” out for dinner that night to this nice little restaurant on the Mandurah foreshore. Tasty food, and good company, not too much you can ask for in life.

After three solid days on the tourist trail, Friday was a “take it easy” day. Leeanna and I (mostly me) volunteered to cook dinner for Trevor, Zale, and Lachlan. Since we are such amazing cooks, we decided to make chicken fajitas, which were apparently quite foreign to Trevor. To my knowledge, nobody got food poisoning which as far as I’m concerned made the meal a resounding success. The highlight of the day though had to be checking the crab nets which we had put in the water the night before. To those not in the know when it comes to crabbing, basically you just put a net with meat in it in the water and wait for a crab to park its rump in it. You check your nets every so often and more often than not there’s a little bastard with pinchers in there just waiting to be boiled up. Leeanna and I ended up catching a few crabs, although I must ashamedly admit that we were afraid to grab it without Lachlan present. What a couple of pansies we are! We ended up getting our hands on the crabs for some photo opportunities, although we threw them back in the ocean as I am currently campaigning to head up the Australian chapter of PETA.

Monday, May 31, 2010- I Drove Across The Country. I’m Kind Of A Big Deal

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Last Monday, was a day I was equally anxious and giddy about, but also dreading to a certain extent. It was the beginning of what would be the most intense drive of my life. The plan was to drive from Adelaide in the southeast of Australia all the way to Perth on the west coast. Our campervan had to be in Perth by Thursday afternoon, so this left me with about 75 hours to cover just less than 3000 kilometres. In the summer months, this would be no problem as you have tons of daylight to aide your driving. In the winter (which it is in the southern hemisphere right now), daylight is limited to the hours of 7:30am to 5:00pm. Most rental companies in Australia will not let you drive your vehicle at night if you are west of Adelaide, as the animals (see: kangaroos, camels, wombats, emus) tend to come out at night and tend to wander onto the roads. Since Leeanna does not know how to drive a manual vehicle, this left me on my own to do the driving, and I felt like a fat-out-of-shape marathon runner preparing for something I had no chance at completing. That morning, we set out bright and early with our eyes firmly glued to the road in hopes of seeing tons of wildlife (and maybe some spear-wielding Aboriginals) on our adventure. Our destination was the town of Ceduna, which with a population of around 2000 people, is the last “major” town before you cross the Nullarbor Plain on your way to Perth. Anyways, we covered the 800 kilometres with no problems and astoundingly I only had to pull over and nap once the entire way. We set up shop in the caravan park for the night, although I was disappointed that all day we saw no signs of wildlife, except for a ton of road kill, mainly consisting of kangaroos and small rodents.

Tuesday morning we were back on the road nice and early again. Today we officially headed out into one of the most barren places on Earth. After you leave Ceduna, there are no towns for well over a day and a half, and the only thing resembling a population is the roadhouse “towns” which are generally every couple hundred kilometres. They usually have a population hovering around five people and usually consist of a gas station, restaurant/bar, motel, and caravan park. The other thing you quickly notice is how much fuel costs. Generally in the major cities right now fuel is about $1.25 per litre. In the outback, I paid as much as $1.80 per litre, which quickly adds up when your van uses 15 litres per 100 kilometres. During the day, we stopped off at the Head of Bight, which is famous for its large population of Southern Right Whales that breed there in the winter time. Unfortunately, the whales had not fully arrived from Antarctica, and there were only a couple that were really far off-shore. Instead of paying to see one whale that was really far away, we just drove about 100 kilometres down the road and took some gorgeous photographs from a free viewing point. We also finally saw some animals that were alive today, in the form of two dingoes (wild dogs). Other than that it was just lots of crows and lots of dead kangaroos that the crows were feasting on! That night, after driving about 900 kilometres, we settled on staying in the town of Caiguna, which was an experience in itself. It was just a truck stop out in the middle of nowhere with a gravel parking lot in the back that they called a caravan park. The bathroom doors had signs warning to keep them shut at all times as snakes were likely to try and get in. Oh, and it said all snakes in the area were poisonous, which made me sleep that much better at night!

The next morning, we couldn’t get out of Caiguna fast enough. Unfortunately for us, the previous day our fridge had conked out and we had to throw out lots of food. Who likes peanut butter and nutella sandwiches for three meals a day!? It’s bad enough that Leeanna and I are both terrible cooks, but without a fridge, we are really pressed to get creative with our cooking, or lack thereof. We drove across the Nullarbor (including one stretch of straight road that was 160 kilometres without a single bend) with little dramas, outside of almost being blown across the road a couple of times by the strong desert winds and me getting nervous every time a road train (see: extra large semi-trailer, usually a dual or triple) would be approaching me in the oncoming lane. I kept having this reoccurring thought that I would get swept in front of one, but luckily this never happened. We pretty much drove straight the whole day, only really stopping in the town of Coolgardie, which used to be a big gold mining town in the 1800s, but was now merely a shell of itself. It was very cool though with its wide main street and old buildings. I love those kinds of towns, like only a history nerd could. After another solid day of covering between 800 and 900 kilometres, we finally settled in the town of Merredin and were only about 260 kilometres outside of Perth.

Thursday morning we drove the last three hours into Perth and could now successfully say we had completed one of the most gruelling drives ever! We dropped our campervan off in the north end of the city and with the help of a kind bus driver navigated our way down to the ocean side suburb of Mandurah that was located about a 50 minute train ride south of the city. This was home to my mom’s long lost friend Zale and her partner Trevor. After being picked up by Trevor at one of the local pubs (always a good meeting point), we made our way back their unit. What awaited us was definitely a unique living experience. Turns out, much of Mandurah’s residences are built around a canal-like system of man-made waterways that empty out into the ocean. Very much like Venice, but instead of old crappy buildings, smelly water, and people everywhere it was the complete opposite. Trevor and Zale had a beautiful three bedroom corner lot that has views of the canals from every room (except the shitter) and lends its self beautifully to activities such as fishing, crabbing, boating, and dolphin spotting. Rough life, yes I know.

Friday morning, Leeanna and I were left on our own as Zale and Trevor both have full-time jobs. Just saying the words “full-time job” is now an effort for me. Anyways the girlfriend and I were left to explore the town and its surrounds. So we hiked it into town and took in all the sights that coastal living affords people. I tried eating tuna today for the first time in my life, and just like with the salmon a few months ago I miraculously survived! That night we took it easy and just stayed in and drank and ate pizza. Definitely two of my favourite hobbies, hands down.

Since Zale and Trevor are both boating enthusiasts, we were naturally going to be spending some time on the boat once the weekend rolled around. Turns out, Trevor owns both a sailboat and powerboat, but it is not currently sailing season, so that left us with the ladder. After driving over to Trevor’s other house in Mandurah (currently under renovation) to pick up the boat, we headed over to the sailing club to get it in the water and then get out to participate in activity known as time-trialing. Basically, it is all about trying to match pre-determined times around a set course and whoever loses the least amount of seconds over the course is declared the winner. During the day on the water, we managed to see a few dolphins which inhabit the area as well as a plethora of multi-million dollar mansions that keep me asking myself where I went wrong in life. I also managed to sneak in a nap in the middle of the 45 minute time trial, as let’s be real I can nap anywhere. All in all, it was a great day out on the water. The boating was followed up by an awards ceremony at the sailing club, which featured us finding out that we won first place out of the fifteen or so boats in the time trials. I like to think that it was mine and Leeanna’s dead weight that made all the difference. More importantly, it also featured alcohol and some tasty food. Unfortunately, a seven-year old child/hellion known as Isabella discovered Leeanna and I and proceeded to harass us for a good amount of time. I was told my nose looked like a pooh-pooh nose, whatever that means. After the sailing club, we ventured over to one of Zale and Trev’s friend’s houseboats for some more beverages before scooping up some Chinese food on the way home. Nothing says convenience like being able to pick-up your Chinese food by boat!

Sunday was scheduled to be another day of boating, which was just fine by me. We boarded the boat a little before lunchtime and made our way down the estuary to a restaurant known as the Ravenswood Hotel. The place was about an hour-and-a-half boat ride from the house, and when we got there, there were swarms of boats, cars, and people. The place was obviously very well-known in the area and I can attest that their burgers were top-notch. After spending a few hours there with some of Trev and Zale’s friends, we made our way back to the house for a nice relaxing evening of television, drinks, and nachos.

Monday, May 24, 2010- What Do You Do If The Car Catches Fire?

2010-05-29T20:18:00.001-04:00

After leaving the comfort and good cooking of Peter and Vanda’s place, it was time for Leeanna and I to hit the road. We had arranged to pick up our 2-man campervan on the outskirts of Melbourne and to use the next three nights to drive from Melbourne to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road. For those not in the know, the Great Ocean Road is a stretch of highway along the southern coast of Australia that is considered one of the most beautiful driving routes in the world. This inevitably attracts large amounts of tourists who can’t drive (like me) and therefore requires signs every few kilometres reminding people what side of the road to drive on. Anyways, our trip got off to a fantastic start when I couldn’t figure out how to even get out of the industrial area where we rented the camper from. Right after that, I got even more stressed when I couldn’t find the highway, and it was safe to say within half-an-hour of leaving the rental place, Leeanna and I were both uber-stressed. Once we hit the highway though, it was smooth sailing. The first day of travelling we took in the coastal towns of Torquay, famous for Bells Beach and its subsequent surfing competition and the town of Angelsea. As far as I can tell, Angelsea is only worth mentioning because they have kangaroos that inhabit the fairways of the golf course. A bizarre sight to say the least, but then again I’ve seen weirder. Our first of what I’m sure will be many nights in caravan parks was spent in another one of the coastal towns, Lorne. By the time we set-up shop it was getting dark (we are in winter in Australia right now so darkness sets in by 5:30pm most nights), so we just cooked, ate, had some cheap cask wine and went to bed.

The next day, we were promptly slowed down by a lengthy construction delay which had traffic at a standstill. Definitely something you look for when driving along one of the country’s major tourist routes. That day, we stopped a at rainforest walk called Mait’s Rest, although I did the walk on my own as boss woman Leeanna is still very skeptical when it comes to me and my nature walks. Guess I can’t really blame her, as I have led her astray on a few occasions. The highlight of the day was supposed to be when we saw the world-famous Twelve Apostles (big stone things rising out of the ocean), but I would have to say the best part of the day was when I almost made the campervan blow-up. After pulling over to quickly stretch my legs, I attempted to start the car up, but unbeknownst to me I was doing it in third gear. Needless to say the engine started smoking heavily, the entire van filled up with smoke, and I nearly shit myself thinking I may have just burnt out our clutch in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the van did start back up and I was able to get us back on the road, although with a slightly faster heartbeat. Night two was spent in one of the many caravan parks in the town of Warrnambool, which was effectively where the Great Ocean Road ended.

Our third day consisted of us covering as much of the driving between Warrnambool and Adelaide as we could, in hopes of a short final day of driving on Friday. We ended up covering a good amount of distance, with very little to report in the drama area. We stopped in some town that had a gigantic sink hole in the middle of it to snap some pictures and at a couple places along the ocean that seemed to be photogenic. We eventually reached our destination, Meningie. Word on the street is that Meningie is a great place if you love bird watching. Closest thing I enjoy to bird watching is viewing a chicken on a rotisserie, so you can fill in the rest of the details.

Friday morning we had a nice short drive into Adelaide (couple hundred kilometers). After dropping off our campervan that was miraculously still in one piece, we booked it over to our hotel, which was quite exciting to Leeanna as it featured “proper” beds and wouldn’t require her to use shared bathrooms and sleep in temperatures that were hovering between 5 and 10°C at night. Who says campervans aren’t fun? That night, I was in dire need of a haircut so I found some place called “Price Attack” that the guy working at the hotel had recommended to me. To sum it up, it was the worst haircut of my life, hands down. The piggish looking hairdresser, or beast with scissors as I like to call her, spent eight minutes (no joke!) cutting my hair and then charged me $30. To say she did a bad job would be doing her justice. I had to go back to the hotel and attempt to fix my haircut with my Mach 3 razor and a pair of scissors. I also enticed Leeanna into trying to fix my hair with me, but some things were beyond repair, such as my now missing sideburns and uneven buzz cut on the sides of my head. I really wish I wasn’t such a little bitch and had spoken up and told the hairdresser what I thought of her lack of scissor skills. Instead, I spent the rest of the night whining about my hair and overdosing on Italian food at some joint called Fasta Pasta. We spent the rest of the night watching cable TV, as this was a rare commodity for us since we had arrived in Australia.

Saturday morning we decided to hit up some of the tourist attractions in Adelaide, which seemed to be in short supply. First things first though, I had to pick up another campervan that Leeanna and I would be driving to Perth starting on Monday. Adelaide is definitely a city that is more known for its regions around the city, than for the actual city itself. There are vast wine regions and other quaint towns around the city. Even though we now had a vehicle, we elected to take it easy and stay in town as we had just done a lot of driving and were going to be doing a lot more. On that note, we checked out the Australian Wine Centre, the Botanic Gardens, the Art Gallery of South Australia, and the South Australian Museum. Pretty run of the mill stuff, but I will say the one good thing about most of Adelaide’s major attractions is that they are free! For dinner that night we did what we always do: go to a pub, eat a cheeseburger and wash it down with a beer. In related news I’m going to be featured on the next season of “The Biggest Loser”. Following dinner, we headed over to an Irish pub where they had a cover band that seemed to be quite fond of Melissa Etheridge songs. Yes, I can ashamedly admit I enjoyed it, although I don’t think I’m going to be purchasing any Melissa and k.d. CDs anytime soon. Also, I would like to thank the bar staff for forgetting to charge me for the pint of beer and margarita (unfortunately, I still spent $60 at the bar). Things like that always make my night that much better!

The next day was pretty typical weather-wise of what it seems to be like lately no matter where we go in Australia. Cold, rainy, and windy, aren’t things most foreigners associate with Australia, but believe me they are a fact of life in many parts of the country come winter time. That morning Leeanna and I did some shopping to prepare for our road trip that would to be commencing bright and early the next morning. Hands down my star purchases were Oprah’s biography written by Kity Kelley and a CD featuring a band called Jimmy and the Parrots that was essentially a Jimmy Buffet cover band. For $4 you can’t really complain though, no matter how bad it sounds. That afternoon I killed time just walking around the city taking pictures. For dinner that evening, we decided that we wanted Subway. So we went a driving quest that took us 45 minutes and visits to three different Subways before we found one that was open. I’m gambling that Australia has the highest Subway to person ratio in the world. Never have I savoured a submarine sandwich like the one I ate that evening. God, I love a good sub.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010- Brent and Leeanna On a Horse Farm. Enough Said

2010-05-28T04:47:00.001-04:00

Our last day in Melbourne saw both of us working at our jobs, as we are both poor and need money to travel, so we had to work right up until the end. My last shift at the Medici was pretty unspectacular and mostly consisted of me slacking off and counting down the minutes until my retirement. I even managed to get in trouble a few times for being a chatty Kathy! Anyways, a few of us at work, including the boss, had planned to have some drinks at The Lounge Hotel which was conveniently located next door to the restaurant and had the same owners. This quite obviously led to mucho free drinks, although in keeping my promise to my girlfriend, I did not get “retarded” drunk. After closing down the Lounge Hotel, myself, Kurk, and Kristen decided to hit up the Crown Casino for some more drinks and to find our friend Nick. We never did find Nick, but I did manage to find the bar and place one last bet on the roulette table. Ironically I won that bet, something that seemed to elude me the entire time I was in Melbourne. Oh, the cruel irony.

Saturday was official move out day, which naturally for me meant time to sleep in and see how fast I can pack up my bags and rush to the train station. After not-so carefully packing up our knapsacks and throwing out lots of stuff that we could not take on the road with us (we are backpackers after all!), Leeanna and I boarded a train to the super-happening town of Seymour located about an hour’s ride north of Melbourne in rural Victoria. Totally irrelevant to the story but I managed to spot two mobs of kangaroos from the train window. Woot woot! Quite obviously, this trip had a purpose, and that was to catch-up with my parent’s long lost friend Vanda and her partner Peter. My parents/roommates, Dawn and Brian, had met Vanda and her sister Zale about twenty-five years ago when they were travelling Europe and had become fast friends. This friendship inevitably led to my parents visiting Australia and Vanda and Zale both visiting Canada on separate occasions. Although everyone lost touch over the years, thanks to the magical world of Facebook all were able to reconnect and what do you know next thing Leeanna and I are meeting Vanda at a train station and mooching accommodations off of her! I was hoping Vanda would be holding a sign saying Mr. Moreau, like the limo drivers at the airport, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. After picking us up, our new hosts took Leeanna and I out for a bite to eat at a quaint little country store and restaurant before taking us back to their horse farm, which to put it bluntly was in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere! There was nothing but horses and cows as far as the eye could see. In addition to about twenty horses, they also had three cats, two dogs, a cockatoo with a broken wing, and wide assortment of turkeys, chickens and roosters. This place was hands down the most country thing I had seen this side of a Toby Keith concert. Leeanna and I were introduced to the horses before being treated to a delicious dinner featuring a lamb roast. This was promptly followed by Vanda, Peter, and myself polishing off six bottles of wine (Leeanna wasn’t in much of a drinkin’ mood) and probably talking about nothing relevant at all.

Sunday morning, Leeanna and I were woken up at 4am by the rooster. Apparently Vanda and Peter can’t hear the thing, but it is super fuckin’ annoying and went on for over two hours. The worst part was that the rooster didn’t even sound like the rooster in the movies, but more like a dying swan (or what I imagine a dying swan to sound like). When we finally did get up and about, Vanda took us to a proper country bar/restaurant that was about an hour away from their homestead. We quickly learned that their house was close to nothing, with the exception of other farms and livestock. We had a nice lunch at the foothills of Mount Buller, surrounded by pictures from some Kurk Douglas movie that made the area famous (something about Snowy Mountain). The restaurant also featured a fair bit of Ned Kelly memorabilia (think Australian Jesse James, and not the Sandra Bullock one!), as he was from the area and his gang had robbed banks nearby. That night everyone but Leeanna packed it in early, me because I tire easily, and Vanda and Peter because they had to get up at like 4am to take their horses to the track in Seymour for training.\

Sunday night we slept a lot better as we were able to obtain a fan that we set-up near our heads to drown out the sound of the rooster that I was convinced we should just shoot and use as snake bait. That morning, Peter showed me my first proper venomous Australian creature in the form of a red-back spider. It was pretty uneventful, as the spider was about the size of a dime and met a swift death at the hands of Peter’s pocket knife. Apparently, their property is rife with a wide assortment of creatures including various poisonous spiders, brown snakes (highly venomous), kangaroos, wombats, and even koalas. While we were regaled by our hosts with their stories of snake encounters, dodging kangaroos on the road, and koalas walking around their front porch, Leeanna and I were unable to find any of these critters and instead had to entertain ourselves with the horses. Must have been the cold weather, or the fact that the animals don’t like foreigners, I’m still not sure which one it is. Also that morning, Leeanna and I took the ATV (4-wheeler) for a boot around some of the horse stables, during which time Leeanna was convinced the horses were going to try and attack and us and rip us to shreds. Not surprisingly, this never happened and we lived long enough to go out to lunch and to do some shopping with Vanda and Peter in the booming metropolis of Euroa. It was another hick town that was made famous by Ned Kelly, but had a ton of charm and the most ridiculous dilapidated hotel-bar that we went into for kicks after lunch. I happened to run into the owner, who happened to be about 196 years old and told me she was going to get the bar all fixed up nice. I’m pretty sure she’s been telling customers this since the 1920s. When I told her I was from Canada, she replied, “let me guess, ‘Sleepless in Seattle’”! I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Seattle was in fact an American city and that I hate Meg Ryan movies. God bless her soul that lady. After returning to the farm that night, we had some delicious chicken kiev which we promptly followed up with some heavy drinking and chatting yet again. This would have been a good idea, if not for the fact that Vanda and Peter were supposed to get up at like 4am to get the horses ready for the six-time weekly trip to the track!

Naturally, everyone slept in the next morning, as multiple bottles of wine followed by little sleep will tend to have this effect on people. The girlfriend and I were scheduled to pick-up our campervan in Melbourne later that morning, so we hitched a ride into Seymour with Vanda and Peter. After what I’m sure was a torturous drive to the track for Vanda (see head pains), we were treated to some behind the scenes workings of thoroughbred racing. We watched a few of the horses go through various training runs and defecate frequently before being whisked off to the train station and saying our goodbyes. It was sad to say goodbye, especially when we had been treated and got on so well, but as they say in Bollywood the show must go on!

Next up…the road trip from one side of Australia to the other, or as Leeanna calls it “FUCK MY LIFE!”. (Her life, not mine, I love this shit!).

Friday, May 14, 2010- Who Needs Friday/Saturday For Partying When You’ve Got Sunday-Thursday?

2010-05-14T01:54:00.001-04:00

Well, it’s been an interesting five-and-a-half months in Melbourne, but alas the time has come for me to take my show on the road. Living here for the last five months has definitely been interesting, and if you ever told me I was going to live in such a small apartment with another person (see: Leeanna Lorbert) for such an extended period of time I would have called you bonkers (or probably something with a few more expletives). Alas, my lease expires today and I am currently writing this as I wait for my real estate agent/slumlord to come over and sign me back my bond money, although I probably owe him a good chunk of it for my unpaid water and hydro bills (was hoping he’d forget). It has definitely been trying at times, with no air conditioning during the at-times brutal summer heat and now a barely functional heater in winter, which is causing me to freeze my ass off at night as the temperatures hover between 5°C and 10°C. Never thought some of the coldest sleeps of my life would come in Australia. I mean fuck I’m from Canada for god’s sake, eh! Aside from all of that, it’s been a fun few months here and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

But now, more importantly, the update on what’s been going on the last few weeks…

After not really partying/socializing too much outside of my inner circle, okay just my girlfriend, things definitely took an uptick in the last few weeks. This has in turn caused a downward trend in my monetary gains, but another uptick in the good times category. Three weeks ago, I finally was able to convince Leeanna to come and hang out with some of my work buddies, although I’m still not sure she knows what to make of it. Myself and two co-workers, Antone and Kurk showed up at my apartment after work one night and proceeded to get Leeanna to come out with us as we were having a quasi-celebration for a couple of Irish girls, Zoe and Leah. One had just quit work that night and the other was leaving town to continue her travels/flee Melbourne’s winter. After getting a nice drink on at our apartment with the cheapest wine possible, we piled in a cab and booted it over to Bar Open (some “alternative bar” as the kids call it). We met up with the rest of my workmates and proceeded to drink heavily. After the closing of the bar, some of us still weren’t ready to go home yet so we found a bar that was still in business. Yup, it was the gay bar once again, and Leeanna was now officially a convert. Highlight of the night was me and the girlfriend laughing our asses off as we watched two dudes passionately groping each other right in front of us. That and having to take a piss with Antone watching my back and vice versa. Can never be too careful. Word on the street is that all homosexuals are predators. Either that or I’ve got a small penis and didn’t want anybody to catch on. I’m gonna go with the ladder.

The next morning was a rough one to say the least. It was a holiday Monday (Anzac Day, similar to Remembrance Day) and we had purchased tickets for the big Aussie Rules football game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) between fan favourites Carlton and the defending league champions from Geelong. Leeanna and I somehow managed to drag our asses out of bed and grab some greasy McDonald’s before heading over to stadium to join the other 72,000 fans. The match ended up being pretty one-sided with the underdogs from Carlton thrashing the heavily-favoured Cats, much to the delight of the fans. It felt very much like being at an American football game, with the one exception being that Australian rednecks (or as they call them here, bogans) have a thing for waving flags of all different shapes and sizes at their sporting events. On that note, Aussie Rules football is the one popular sport on this side of the world that I can genuinely say I enjoy watching. The same cannot be said for cricket, rugby or kangaroo races.

A couple of days after the footy match, I returned to the MCG on my own to take in the National Sports Museum and a tour of Australia’s most famous sporting ground. As expected, the tour was pretty much all right over my head and irrelevant to me, as I am not much of a cricket fan and had no idea what my tour guide was talking about. The one tidbit I do remember is that in the painting of the “first ever cricket match” which supposedly took place in Australia the artist painted in a small American flag. Apparently this was a sign of protest by him, as it is thought in some circles that the first ever cricket match was played between the U.S. and Canada. Now you know. The Sports Museum and Hall of Fame was pretty standard stuff, with a pretty cool section on the history of the Olympics. Other than that it was pretty Aussie-centric and as far as I’m concerned the only Australian athletes that matter are the ones playing on the PGA Tour and washed up Aussie Rules players who go on to become placekickers in the NFL.

The following Monday, things got a little out of hand, at least for somebody as old as I am. After finishing our shifts, Cam and I were sitting around having our one free alcoholic drink that we are entitled to after work. That night, there happened to be some guys in the restaurant installing some carpet, and the bright idea dawned on me that we could just walk into the restaurant and borrow some beer out of the fridge. Fast forward a few drinks and about one hour and the both of us were pissing off the waterfront ledge into Victoria Harbour. With all of our new found alcohol-induced wisdom, we decided to catch a cab downtown to the Rooftop Bar. Unfortunately they would not let me in, as they said I was dressed too “casual”. Since when is beat-up sneakers, an over-sized sweater and cargo shorts not considered classy clothing? Anyways, we piled back in the cab and headed to the one place that’s always open and doesn’t give a shit if I’m dressed like a wanker….the Crown Casino. We had a few more pints at the bar upon arrival before Cam as usual wanted to gamble. We hit up the $5 blackjack table and promptly started losing. This was briefly interrupted by Cam knocking over a full pint of beer onto the felt table and the dealer having to summon his manager to get the felt squeegee followed by a hair dryer. Needless to say everyone else at the table was not amused and went to gamble their money away elsewhere. Cam and I sat there like a couple of stooges watching the dealer give the table the once over with the hair dryer for a good 10 or 15 minutes before resuming our losing ways. After this I promptly returned to my place of residence, a mere four later than I said I would and was rightfully so chewed out by my wife (this was without me even mentioning that I went to the casino!). Pretty sure I shrugged it off and hit the sack. That’s how I roll.
Last Wednesday, Leeanna and I went to check out my friend Antone play/sing/rap in his hip-hop funk band, Unleash the Nugget at a club called Miss Libertine’s downtown. It was good times all around, and I must give props where props are due, they are a pretty solid live outfit. Reminds me of just how pathetic my rap skills were back in high school! Haha. A bunch of my other co-workers also decided to attend, and we had a jolly evening of drinks set to a hip-hop soundtrack. Leeanna thought they sounded a lot like Gym Class Heroes, and I must somewhat agree, although I think Antone’s chances of dating Katy Perry a la Travie are pretty limited.

This brings us up to this week, and as per the last little while, the week started early, namely Sunday night. After a long shift for everyone at Medici restaurant (it was Mother’s Day, one of the busiest days of the year), we had to give our co-worker Mimmo a proper send-off as it was his last shift before he ventured onwards. Mimmo provided us with a shit-load of comic relief at work and was constantly saying “mamma mia!” much to both the chagrin and amusement of a lot of people. We had always tried to get him to come out drinking with us other nights but were never successful. Well Sunday we were successful and man was it funny. A group of us started at the bar next to our restaurant called the Lounge Hotel as our boss very generously gave us an open bar for an extended period of time. A few us made the most of this opportunity/abused it and got right tuned. After they closed up/cut off our free tab (truly awesome thing to have), we piled into a couple of cabs and headed to Bar Open to keep the good times rolling. Mimmo started getting pretty ignorant and at one point was trying to seduce everything with two boobs and vagina in his sight using his fresh-off-the-boat accent. This inevitably led to a gang of guys wanting to knock his face in and the rest of us trying to make sure this didn’t happen. How Mimmo made it home in one piece and on to a plane the next day, I may never know. What I do know is that I awoke the next morning, err afternoon, on Cam’s floor and was the victim of a famous end-of-night Brent blackout. We vegged out and watched UFC 113 (Machida vs. Shogun) before gearing up for another fun night of work!

That brings us to last night and the first of my two send-offs (supposed to be going for some more drinks tonight), featuring the affable bartending team of Cam and Nick. I had to work late, and they are both unavailable tonight so it was somewhat of a going away for me. At least that was the plan. By the time I met them at the bar after work, they were both heavily into the doctor’s sauce and there was no way I was ever going to catch up. So I actually behaved myself and can safely say the most interesting thing I did was try potato cakes for the first time, which appear to be some sort of Australian invention that is half giant french fry and half mutated/low-grade hash brown. I eventually made it home, although I was a half an hour late on my self-imposed curfew of 1:00am (had promised earlier in the evening). Understandably this upset Miss Leeanna as she had to work this morning and led to me finding a pillow and love note in the hallway of our apartment building. Love notes is what they call those things, right? Long story short, I weaseled my way into the apartment and did my best to explain that poor time management is just something that comes with the territory when you’re associating with a male Moreau. End of discussion!

That brings us up to today, and my final shift at work, which is forthcoming this evening. Should be good times! It sounds strange to say it, but I actually will miss working at the Medici and all the interesting characters I’ve met there in the last few months. It’s been one hell of a ride, and not always a smooth one, but in the end I can say it was a pretty decent place to work and contrary to some of my past blogs, I was treated pretty well, always paid on time, and got tons of free food and drinks. So I gotta show some love to the whole Medici crew, both past and present: Cam (Biggie Smalls), Antone (I got your back in the stall), Nick (sloppiest drunk ever), Zoe (section 2, what!), Leah (probably more sarcastic than me), Michelle (best drunk shift ever), Veenu (hands down my favourite Sri Lankan), Kurk (sometimes likeable asshole), Kristen (just babysit Kurk), Ben (as if someone from France plays ice hockey), Rosie (too nice for your own good, be mean), Majd (second best pizzamaker I know), Adam (I think Cambodian was the answer for you), and Mimmo (fuckin’ legend!). Everyone else it’s been real and all the best in your future endeavours…

Next up, visiting my parent's friends and a road trip. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, oi, oi!!!

Friday, April 23, 2010- Unfortunately, The Hot Tub Was Not A Time Machine

2010-04-23T01:09:00.000-04:00

So, you want to read a crazy tale about drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Well my friends this is not the blog for you today. Life has been pretty much as I expected it to be as I got older over the last week, routine with little in the way of surprises (still waiting for when the time comes to where adult diapers). Definitely the highlights of the last week for me have included purchasing a new watch battery, doing my laundry, getting my haircut, losing money yet again in a poker tournament, and buying a bunch of shit/souvenirs to send home when I leave Melbourne. Yes, folks it’s been that kind of week. In related news though, the countdown is on, as it is officially t-minus three weeks until Leeanna and I hit the road and head west. We have not officially decided where we are going to go from here, although I have it pretty set in my mind that I want to drive all the way to Perth (about 3500km, I think). We shall see though, as it is all tentative at this point, and let’s be real here the boss lady makes the final call on any decisions.

Although not too much has gone on lately (Leeanna’s now working full-time and our schedules are quite different), we did manage to get away for a day a couple of weeks ago thanks to my parents and grandmother back home. They gave Leeanna and I some money for my birthday and instructed me (from the other side of the world mind you) that I had to use the funds for something productive. Apparently paying bills and buying overpriced groceries doesn’t count as productive. So we used the money and arranged our own self-guided day trip to the Mornington Peninsula.

The Mornington Peninsula is about an hour and a half south of Melbourne, and is a popular spot for daytrips from Melbourne. I got up bright and early (by my standards, this falls between 9am and 11am) and headed over to the car rental place to pick up my super-economical car. I was instructed quite thoroughly by Leeanna to make sure I got a GPS system, as our last trip I decided to forego this and we got lost numerous times. Naturally, by the time I got there, all the GPS systems had been loaned out for the day, which resulted in the nice man behind the counter lending me a map book for free. Quite the helpful fellow he was and was definitely a classy Aussie as he told me two great Canadian things he had recently discovered; “Trailer Park Boys” and “The Tragically Hip”. I did not have the heart to tell him that he was a few years behind the curve on both of them. Anyways, we set off and made it down to the Peninsula without any real problems (except for almost crashing the car). Our first stop of the day was at the Ashcombe Maze and Water Gardens, a place that had all of these huge garden mazes and crap like that. It was mentioned in all of the guidebooks, but ended up being pretty uneventful and overpriced. I mean, fuck, how many hedge mazes can one man go through in a day!? From there, we drove over to a pick-your-own strawberry farm. It was the first time I can ever remember taking part in this activity, which is really ironic as I worked at three farms over the course of a few years that all had pick-your-owns. After a solid half-hour of picking, we retreated to the gift shop/restaurant for the best snack ever, chocolate fondue with strawberries (apparently the fine art of fondue still exists in this part of the world)! I’m not sure who enjoyed it more, me or all the 5-year olds around me eating the same thing. Next up on the whirlwind day tour was the Port Schnack Lighthouse and park. Basically we walked around the beach and cliff boardwalks, took some nice pictures and then headed on our way. I also can say I finally saw some totally wild kangaroos today, although they were both the victims of automobile accidents, and one was fairly decomposed. Not sure if this counts as a wildlife sighting, but I’m chalking it up as a score regardless. After driving around the area for a bit and grabbing some pub fare for dinner in the booming town of Portsea, we took the Brent and Leeanna show over to the Peninsula Hot Springs. The facilities at this place were amazing, featuring a ton of different geothermal pools, ranging in temperature from freezing cold to an unbearable +45°C. Most of them were in the 36°C-38°C, range which is ideal tubbing temperature (believe me I know, my friends and I used to think of hot tubbing as a sport). The whole place was beautifully landscaped, and the pools/spas were very spread out, which allowed for a good level of privacy/quietness. There was even one bath that reminded me of the grotto at the Playboy Mansion, although instead of smoking hot models it featured middle-aged Asian men taking pictures of themselves. You can’t win ‘em all. I would most definitely recommend this place to anyone who travels to this area, as it is a great way to unwind after a hectic day. From there, we drove home with only minor detours, and the day was generally considered a success as I only almost got us killed one time in the car!

Anyways, all you Canucks enjoy your forthcoming summer and remember, hot tubbing and beer equals a way cheaper way to get drunk than just straight drinking. Science my friends.

Thursday, April 15, 2010- Please Kind Sir, Let Go Of My Testicles

2010-04-15T02:44:00.000-04:00

As I write this I can officially say that I am in my last month of living in beautiful Melbourne, Australia with my final rent payment being submitted yesterday. No, I will not be going home to enjoy the lovely summer weather in Toronto, but instead shall hit the road for a while with the girlfriend before settling somewhere else (namely somewhere warmer!) in the country until such time as our visas run out in November. We are leaving Melbourne for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that this is one of the coldest part of the country in the winter, and well we are fast approaching winter! In addition to that, I have become very restless in the city and have pretty much seen and done everything I want to do around this joint. On that note, I did manage to get up to some shenanigans in the last three weeks….

At work, I was constantly being badgered to go the casino and play poker with some of my coworkers. I would inevitably always be putting this off as I suck at poker and life in general. Well a couple of Sundays ago, I finally took the plunge and along with my coworkers Antone, Cam, and Leah, decided that there would be no better time for some bonding than after work on a Sunday night. Before heading over to the casino, Antone and I stopped by my place as I had to grab my money and inform my girlfriend of my Sunday night plans. As expected, this did not go over that well as she had to work in the morning. I was told not to come home until after she had arisen at 7:30am the next morning. Well, guess it’s going to be a long night at the casino! Long story short, we headed across the street to the Crown Casino to play some poker and I decided that heavy drinking was also in order, seeing as how it was Sunday night/Monday morning. The four of us had good fun at the poker tables and lounging before Antone and Leah (both on the losing end of poker, like I) decided at 4:30am that sleep was in order. After seeing them out to the taxi cab, Cam and I decided to head back in to play some roulette. Unfortunately the not-so-nice doorman informed us that we were too drunk to enter the premises. He told us that if we went up to the 24-hour food court and had some McDonald’s he would let us in. So we did just that! And man was it delicious. Upon trying to reenter the casino, another, different, security guard again stopped us, this time telling me that he had just kicked me out of the casino not even five minutes earlier. I explained to him that this was not possible as I was at McDonald’s because his coworker MADE me go there to sober up (don’t wear a backwards hat, it has too much thug appeal). Anyways, they eventually let Cam and I back in, and he proceeded to win money ($500 for the night) while I lost a bit more at the roulette table. We finally sauntered out around 6am, and since I was informed earlier in the evening not to enter the apartment and awake sleeping beauty, I slept in the hallway outside of our apartment until I heard Leeanna’s alarm clock go off. Guess that’s my punishment for being a jackass; well that and having to work the next day which was far from an ideal situation!

On a much tamer note, for the last month or so, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival has been going on at various venues around the city. And if there’s one thing I love more than a Lady Gaga camel-toe, it’s stand-up comedy. The festival is one of the two or three biggest in the world, much like Just For Laughs in Montreal, only much bigger. Leeanna and I had the pleasure of taking in three shows (all fairly big Australian comedians), all of which were quite good. We saw Tom Gleeson’s Get It Into Ya! (8/10) at the Vic Hotel which was a small venue, but was an excellent show from a very seasoned comedian. Also, we saw Josh Thomas’ Surprise! (7/10) at the Comedy Theatre. He is one of Australia’s hottest young comedians, although I thought his act was a bit dodgy and not funny at times. His biggest problem to me seemed to be that all of his jokes were about the exact same thing, being gay! Lastly, we saw one of Australia’s more popular TV personalities, Dave Hughes’ Retro at the Palais Theatre in St. Kilda (9/10). He definitely brought his A-game, and had the crowd of over 3000 people busting-a-nut laughing. There was also a large number on international comedians here, although I didn’t get a chance to catch any of them, including Pauly Shore (had to work), Arj Barker aka Dave from “Flight of the Conchords” (sold out the night I tried to get tickets), and Tom Green doing his first ever stand-up tour. Ah well, there’s always next time, although by the next time I make it back to this festival I will probably be wearing adult diapers while being driven around in a Gray Line coach tour bus with my roommates, or as I like to call them Tom, Bruce, and Gerry from Scenic Acres Retirement Home. I can’t even begin to imagine what Pauly Shore will look like by then!

This Sunday that just passed was a scary reminder of what happens when I get let off my leash by my girlfriend, which I do not advise her to do too often. Sunday night I decided to again go out with some of my coworkers, although this time it was not meant to be a gambling expedition, strictly a drinking expedition. I was again informed by the boss woman to not disturb her during her sleep as she had to work in the morning, which is fair enough, as I guess some people still do work normal hours. Anyways, after determining that my best case scenario was going to be sleeping on someone’s couch and my worst case would be sleeping in the streets of Melbourne, I headed over to Leah’s house north of the city to get drankin’ with the casino crew plus a few more including Nick, Claudia, and Max from work. After some pre-drinks, we headed over to some Latin bar where I started to consume alcohol as fast as I could. Next up, we ventured into unknown territory for me….a gay club! Seeing as how it was the only thing open in the area on Sunday night, we were left with very few choices. Before I even entered the club, the bouncer said to me (clearly not looking flamboyant enough in my NFL hoodie and Avirex jeans), “you know this is a gay club”, to which I replied, “you’re open though, right”? Needless to say, the first thing the seven of us saw when we walked in was a bartender with a handlebar moustache, no shirt on, and leather poor-boy cap. Fuck me! Shortly thereafter in my wisdom, I decided to go to the bathroom on my own. This led to a man grabbing my balls as I walked past him down a narrow hall and him letting out a gay flirtatious laugh. I’m pretty sure I was too stunned to do anything. For some strange reason, I then decided to take a piss in the trough –style urinal, although I made sure my back was quite turned so that no man would see my miniscule penis and attempt to lunge after it in gay lust (I do this in all public bathrooms who am I kidding?). Shortly after my bathroom incident, I purchased seven pints of beer at one time and abruptly thereafter blacked out for the remainder of the evening. Apparently we took a taxi into the city (we were a fair ways out) and went to the casino (no fear I was broke at this point), before returning to Cam’s house where I awoke on the couch with no fucking clue how I got there. In short, I had the worse hang over of my life on Monday night at work and shall for the remainder of my days on earth promote responsible drinking. Whatever, at least the first part of the last sentence was true.

Friday, March 26, 2010- Nothing Says “Classy” Like Your Panties On The Floor Of A Macca’s

2010-03-26T01:16:00.000-04:00

The weekend after arriving home from Tasmania was expected to be a fairly routine event for Leeanna and I. Most weekends consist of the both of us working on Friday, and then me working like a chump on Saturday and Sunday. Things took a considerable change when on our way to Krispy Kreme on Saturday morning for some low fat snacks; we looked up and saw that the sky was blacker than Chris Rock’s ass. Within minutes of arriving at the donut shop, the winds started whistling and hail the size of ping pong balls started dropping out of the sky. The storm quickly escalated, and soon the winds were whipping around everything (chairs, signs, pieces of buildings) and between the crazy hail and the now torrential rain, I felt like I might very well be living through “Dante’s Peak 2”. Leeanna and I remained trapped in Krispy Kreme for a couple of hours, but finally ventured out even though it was still raining, as I had to go to work. We returned to our apartment building to find that the entire first floor was flooded up to our knees and it literally looked like there were miniature lakes on the streets surrounding our building. There was debris everywhere in the streets and it was truly the craziest storm I had ever seen. Naturally, the elevator in our building was out of service due to the flooding, which is brutal for us as we live on the 15th floor aka the top floor. That night on the way to work, I saw some of the extensive damage first-hand. The train station had parts of its roof cave-in; all trains and trams had ceased service in the greater Melbourne area; the football stadium around the corner from my work had a couple of massive holes in the roof, where the ceiling had just come crashing through; hundreds of buildings had flood issues; and to top it all off, there were hundreds of traffic accidents and tons of people in the E.R. who had been injured by the hail. In the aftermath, many media outlets said it was the most intense flash flood/storm in decades in Melbourne. In related news, it took our dick-head building managers six days to get our elevator fixed, which when you live thirty flights of stairs up, equals six days of feeling like you would rather be bunking up with Rupert from “Survivor”.

Outside of the flood a couple weeks back, nothing too crazy has been happening. Last week, we decided to take a day trip out to the suburb of Williamstown, which is a nice little sea-side village. Unfortunately, within five minutes of arriving a seagull took a huge dump on Leeanna’s face and shirt. I was laughing hysterically, while as you can imagine the girlfriend was quite pissed off. The best part of the whole ordeal was the fact that she didn’t realize at first that in addition to being crapped on, on her shirt, she also had a nice white streak down her face! Classic! Aside from that, the day was pretty uneventful. We also hit up Chapel Street for the first time. It’s basically just another famous shopping street in Melbourne (there’s no shortage of them), although the only shopping I managed to do was for a pitcher of beer.

On the sporting front, football (Aussie Rules) season has just started here, which is far and away the biggest sport in Melbourne. It might not quite fill the gap of the NFL and NHL, but it sure beats rugby and cricket. On a personal sporting note, I have not been able to better my personal best bowling score of 170. My goal before I leave Australia at the end of the year is to be able to bowl a 200 game. This is definitely why I came to the other side of the world; to perfect my ten-pin game. Sadly, on the poker front things have continued much the same way they have for the past couple of years for me. I did not play online for a couple of months, primarily because I never had the internet in my apartment (been using internet cafes and Wi-Fi spots). Well that all changed a couple of weeks ago and was promptly followed by a small deposit. I quickly lost the money and immediately thereafter blocked all of my accounts, thereby not allowing me to deposit anymore money online while I’m in Australia. Also, after not gambling at all for the last couple of months, I decided that I needed a Crown Casino fix (yes, like a drug addict) and recently played three tournaments ranging in cost from $50 to $125. I did not make cash in any of them, although I do own the distinction of playing well (something I don’t do too often anymore) and being rewarded by having the card gods fuck-me-up-the-ass (pardon my French!). Needless to say, I will probably play a few more tournaments before I leave Melbourne, but after that I hope I don’t see a casino for quite some time.

In unrelated news, earlier this week it was my birthday, and like most holidays I will admit it just is not the same without your family. It’s also not the same when you have to work all afternoon and night, but that’s neither here nor there. Leeanna ended up buying me tickets to see Dave Hughes (one of my favourite Australian comedians) next month, which should be an enjoyable affair. We also had cake in the apartment, but for the first time in a long time, I did not kill off a large quantity of brain cells on my day of birth. I would also like to thank my parents and grandma for their birthday cash donation, which I have assured them I will be using for day trip next week and not spending on online pornography subscriptions.

Yesterday, in our never-ending quest to get out of our shit-box apartment, we bought tickets ($50 each) for the first of four days of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. Because it was only the Thursday (four-day event), we only got to see practice runs and qualifying rounds for a variety of different types of motor cars and racing series. Near the end of the day, they did do one cool demonstration where they had an F1 car against a V8 Supercar (think Australia’s version of NASCAR) and a traditional street car racing around the track. It was amazing to see how fast the F1 car is compared to these cars and how loud they are! In fact, as I write this from my apartment, I can hear the cars zooming around Albert Park and I live a few kilometers away. It would have been nice to go on the Sunday for the big race, but I need to work and tickets are atrociously priced (cheapest grandstand ticket is $300 if I’m not mistaken). All in all it was a fun day, although I did get ridiculously burnt on my kneecaps and forehead. How my kneecaps got burnt over other more prominent areas I shall never know, especially since I spent more time eating and drinking in the shade then I did in my grandstand seat!

And lastly, just a couple of random things…

Work is going fine. I continue to hump my serving job, although it has gotten a bit better the last couple of weeks as I have been able to get a few more hours due to the departure of the head waitress and assistant manager, who are currently creating babies somewhere in Thailand as we speak, and shall continue to do so for the next couple of months. Leeanna continues to work part-time at the dental office, although she has been told that she should be getting full-time for the month of April when one of the other girls will be gone on her vacation. If all goes according to plan, this will be quite financially rewarding for the girlfriend and make her the chief breadwinner of the house, err shoebox.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking down one the busier streets in Melbourne when I was mildly assaulted by an Aboriginal youth. I was just minding my business, listening to my iPod, when these two teenagers who were clearly cracked out came up to me and got in my face. One then decided to give me a good shoulder-check/shove which I just ignored and kept on my way. He kept trying to provoke me. He was lucky I’m a pussy/pacifist, because a lot of people would have turned around and kicked the shit out of him! At least now, I can say I’ve had some true contact with “real/Aboriginal” Australians.

And then there was McDonald’s, or Macca’s as 99.9% of the population calls it here. While Leeanna and I were out grabbing a late night snack last weekend, there was an incident where the very slutty woman behind us in line had her panties fall out of her purse. She didn’t notice at first, but the guy behind her in the line sure did and proceeded to announce it quite loudly. The woman in the short mini-skirt proceeded to pick up her panties and put them back in her purse, because let’s be real no one wears underwear anymore. I mean how else are you gonna have sex on the dance floor and allow classy gentlemen easy access to your vajayjay in the fine establishments of Melbourne? And, yes I just used one of Oprah’s words to describe a vagina. My downfall from teenage rapper to middle-age white man is complete.

Anyways, stay classy and hope everyone has a terrific Easter weekend. Oh, and to all my man friends on my hockey team….GO BOOZEHOUNDS!!! (Pretty sure most of you are illiterate and can’t read this anyways!)

Monday, March 22, 2010- How To Really Fuck Up A Mini Vacation!

2010-03-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

Having now been living in Melbourne for just under four months, life has become rather routine, or as routine as I will allow my life to get. Living in the heart of such a large metropolis definitely has its perks (activities, events, drinking spots, homeless people, and homosexuals in abundance), but every so often one finds the urge to want to escape. So to combat this problem, back in January I decided for Leeanna’s birthday I would give her a post-dated trip to Tasmania if you will. So a couple of weeks ago we finally got the details all sorted out and made the trek down to Australia’s version of Keswick, Tasmania.

After ironing out all the details, we decided that we would leave for Tasmania early on a Tuesday morning and return on a Thursday night, as Leeanna had to work on both the Monday and the Friday. This made for some very hectic scheduling, but I being the slice of awesomeness that I am, concluded that this would be an adequate amount of time to see what we needed to see. The plan was to fly into Hobart (the capital city of Tassie), stay there for the first day and night and then rent a car and drive out to historic Port Arthur and up to Launceston (other major city, about 2.5 hours from Hobart) where we would fly out of on Thursday night. That was the plan, yes my great plan for our romantic whirl-wind tour of the exotic island of Tasmania.

But here is how it really played out…

Our flight out on Tuesday morning was scheduled bright and early at 6:00am, which meant waking up before 4:00am in order to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. I was able to grab a few hours sleep the night before, but I’m pretty sure that Leeanna had almost no sleep at all and was quite frustrated. Anyways, we boarded the shuttle bus to the airport and on the way it hit me, “fuck, I forgot my driver’s license”! In my dozy state that morning I had forgotten to pack it, which therefore was going to render it impossible for me to rent a car. This dramatically changed the outlook of the trip and how we were going to get about. The flight to Hobart was pretty uneventful, minus the three Irish guys behind me on the plane drinking beers at 6:30am and taking about the escort service they had just opened up (true story!). After dropping our bags off at our hostel (Central City Backpackers [6.5/10]) in the city centre and grabbing some breakfast, we headed over to the local Information Centre to book a group tour to Port Arthur the next day and a bus up to Launceston the following evening. All of this ended up setting me back a few hundred dollars, although it was all my fault for not packing my license. This trip was decidedly becoming a lot more expensive without that little piece of plastic. So as not to totally empty out my bank account, I decided that we should head out to Mount Wellington for the day to do some nice, casual nature walking. After catching the public bus out there and consulting with one of the local’s about what route to take, we set out on our climb to the summit, which was 1200 metres above sea level. It ended up being a fairly tough 3.5 hour climb almost exclusively uphill and was made worse by the fact that we were ill-equipped as we did not have proper clothing, any food, or any beverages. All we had was each other…oh and an empty paper coffee cup to fill up at the one tap half way up the mountain. Leeanna kept frequently wanting to quit and turn around, but me being the asshole boyfriend that I am made here continue on. She responded by sitting down/stopping every few minutes and trying to thoroughly test my patience. When we finally did reach the top, we were quite gassed and all I could do was laugh because 99% of the people at the top had driven up there, no doubt more than a few of them in their rental cars. After hiking down (with a lot less stops along the way) we finally made it back to the base for a grand total round trip time of around six hours. Both of us had extremely sore legs and would continue to feel the effects for the remainder of trip in Tasmania. That night, we went out for dinner at a place called the New Sydney Pub, which was a fairly typical smallish-busy Irish pub. We were supposed to go to some joint call the Republic Bar that my friend/co-worker Anthony’s dad owns. Since we could barely walk though, we had to opt for the Irish fare close to the hostel. Also, I was a bit sketched out about it being his dad’s bar, as this was Tasmania, and any Aussie worth his weight in salt knows that it was very likely his dad could have also been his cousin, brother, and family pet all rolled into one.

Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to catch our tour bus out to Port Arthur, which can best be described as Australia’s version of Alcatraz. The drive out to Port Arthur was a couple of hours and featured some stops along the way to take pictures of things like cool rock formations, scenic coastlines, and a village where every house had a nametag on it that had the word “do” in it (ie/ Do Nothing, Doo-Doo, Mountain Dew, Douche Bag, etc.). Once Leeanna and I and our tour bus full our senior citizens arrived at Port Arthur we were free to roam about the grounds and give ourselves a history lesson, which proved to be quite a chore for Leeanna and I, as both of us had legs that felt like cement blocks from the day before. Port Arthur was basically a place where they would send criminals who had reoffended in Australia, which was quite a dubious distinction since the whole mainland of the country was made up of criminals at that time in history. Most of the buildings there now are fairly decrepit, but the history behind it all is quite fascinating. We were also given a guided walking tour and a boat cruise around the very scenic harbor, which all added up to one very educational day. After sleeping on the bus the whole way back to Hobart, we hopped on another bus to make the drive up Launceston as that is where our flight was leaving from the next morning. The drive featured a whole lot of nothing, save for some sheep. We arrived in Launceston at around 7:30pm and checked into our hotel (yes, a hotel for once!) (Batman Fawkner Inn [8/10]). Next up we headed over to one of the local establishments that was serving pitchers of Carlton Draught on the cheap. Between and 8pm and 9pm they were $8, between 9pm and 10pm they were $9, etc. Needless to say, a few hours later I smuggled a full pitcher out of the bar that I promptly stashed on a street corner while I went in search of food. After some delicious wedges (cannot actually verify if they were delicious as I was intensely drunk at this point) the girlfriend and I made our way back to the hotel and scooped up my pitcher that was still resting peacefully in the street. And then…BLACKOUT!

Thursday morning, I woke up with one of the worst hangovers of my life. I was buck-ass naked which meant something was wrong as I always wear clothes to bed and felt like I had just been sat on by Rosie O’Donnell. When I finally was able to move a couple of inches, I saw my still full pitcher of beer staring at me from across the hotel room. Sure seemed like a good idea to steal it the night before! I slowly made my way to the shower/toilet and started to try and get ready for the day. During this time, the dude who runs the hotel came to the room and told Leeanna we had to check out, as I had not surprisingly overslept the checkout time. After finally getting my ass in gear, we decided to not follow through on our original plan of doing a tour of the James Boag’s Brewery (one of the more popular beers in Australia). I felt that this was in the best interest of all, as the sight or smell of beer would have been enough to send me into a vomit-inducing state. Instead, we headed over to Launceston’s most popular tourist attraction, “The Gorge” which features the world’s longest chairlift and some gorgeous scenery. Naturally we went for a ride on the chairlift, and I can now knock another thing off my bucket list. Pretty sure “ride the world’s longest chairlift” was right up there with “read every R.L. Stine book ever written” on my list. After walking back to our hotel, we were again thoroughly spent, as our legs were still feeling the ill effects of our mountain hike and I was still feeling the effects of draft beer. We decided to pass the afternoon away in one of the local parks that curiously had a large display of Japanese monkeys that kept Leeanna quite amused. After the monkeys, it was nap time in the park, followed by a trip to the airport and then back home to the comfy confines of Melbourne.

All in all, the trip ended up costing me a lot more money than I had anticipated because of my own stupidity. I can now say a couple of weeks later that I am none the worse for it, and can laugh rather heartily about my time in Tasmania.

Author’s note: No, I did not see any Tasmanian Devils, although I think I may have seen a dead one on the side of the road. We were going to visit the Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary, but this was thrown out the window when I was unable to rent the car.

Monday, March 1, 2010- The Randomness That Is Life Down Under

2010-02-28T23:25:00.000-05:00

As previously stated in my reports to the Pentagon and Chief Obama, this will be my last blog of playing catch-up and trying to remember stuff as it happened in the somewhat distant past. So without further mumblings, here in no particular order are a bunch of words that shall have no effect on human-kind as anyone knows it.

First and foremost, I have to give my shout-outs to all of the Canadian athletes who competed at this year’s Olympics. It was truly a great thing to watch, and our country, athletes, and hospitality were widely praised by all involved in the Australian Olympic coverage. My only gripe was the rather bizarre incident this morning involving the gold medal hockey match between the States and Canada. Instead of airing the game live at 7am local time Monday morning, they started the telecast at 9am with ten minutes left in the third period. And then after the game, they decided to show the whole game in its entirety starting from the beginning with everyone already knowing the outcome. Rather shitty, but other than that the coverage was good and a pleasant surprise to my usual viewing of Crocodile Hunter and music videos from INXS and Kylie Minogue.

Now a complete 180° turn. Since moving into our digs at 146/546 Flinders Street, the Boss and I have seen many holidays come and go, none of which I have reported on for the sad reason of most of them being fairly uneventful. Christmas was spent with us making chicken and instant mashed potatoes as we do not have an oven to cook a turkey. Pretty sure it concluded with us watching the Tim Allen Santa Clause movies on the tele. New Year’s was even less climatic, as I had to work all night at the restaurant in order to put food on the plates of my wife and three kids back home in El Salvador. Sorry, I forgot I wasn’t supposed to mention my illegitimate love children and their whore-of-a-mother in this blog (No disrespect to my non-existent Hispanic fan base). Valentine’s Day was also fairly uneventful, as just like New Year’s it’s a big one on the restaurant slave calendar and involved a whole lot of serving up third-rate pasta dishes. Leeanna had to settle for an early morning V-Day breakfast at the Pancake Parlour (I’m classy like that). One holiday (at least she’ll have you believe it should be recognized as one) that I was forced to take off work was Leeanna’s birthday. We started by going out for a nice dinner up on Lygon Street in the suburb of Carlton, which is famous for all of its restaurants. After downing some tasty steak and two litres of wine we made our way over to the bar Young and Jackson downtown for some awesome cover music and a whole lot more boozing. Let’s just say $200 dollars later I was doing somersaults in the apartment, while leaving our passports in the hallway of the building for no good reason. I also thought I had lost the keys to the apartment and Leeanna made me believe she found them out in the middle of the street a few blocks from our apartment. I believed her, and the truth didn’t come out for a few days, that I in fact had given the keys to her earlier in our very hazy evening. Wine + Jager + Beer + Midori + Vodka = Fine Form. My parents must be proud. Lindsey Lohan ain’t got shit on me!!!

I would also like to state that I survived the hottest night ever in Melbourne (okay, in 100 years) with no air conditioning in my apartment. The temperatures in Melbourne vary greatly in the summer months, with some days in the teens and windy (today) and some reaching up into the forties. Back in the summer of 2009, they had a stretch of close to a full week where the daytime temperatures were pushing close to 50°C every day and led to forest fires across the country and hundreds of deaths if I’m not mistaken. Luckily, this year we have only had one such day so far, where it reached a daytime temperature of around 45°C. Needless to say, I thought I was going to die, and it only got worse at night, as the temperature only dropped slightly below forty, thus making it the hottest night in over 100 years in Melbourne. What can I say; I was a part of modern history, right up there with Martin Luther King Jr. Seriously though, if you want to test your survival and relationship skills try sleeping on the fifteenth floor of an apartment building with no air conditioning, a shitty $10 fan, and no air circulation. Never have I enjoyed multiple cold showers and shrinkage quite so much in my life.

Now it’s time for a totally random story to be inserted in my tales, which I thought I should include because I can. Keep in mind that this all happened in under ten minutes. To begin, Leeanna and I had been enjoying a couple of beverages at the Crown Casino and were also stalking this trans-gender man-woman-transsexual-ladyboy for our amusement. After watching her/him for sometime try and pick up some unsuspecting dudes in the sports bar (not the best hunting grounds for these types I hear) we set about on our three minute walk home. Upon exiting the casino, we witnessed a total “Cops” moment as there was puke all over the sidewalk and about ten coppers arresting and attempting to subdue this crazy white trash woman. She was flailing around and giving it to them while her boyfriend or husband looked on in his clearly drink and drug induced fog. As we set on towards the apartment, we somehow befriended this really drunk guy from Tasmania and started chatting him up. As we crossed a really busy intersection, Mr. Too-Drunk-To-See-Straight just walked right out into oncoming traffic totally ignoring us at this point and came within a hair of getting engraved in the asphalt right before my eyes. A group of police officers on the other side of the road patrolling the area started giving the guy shit and tried to ask him what the fuck he was doing. At the same time the officers were attempting to corral the drunko, someone in the hostel window above where the cops were standing on the sidewalk decided to dump a pail of some liquid (think/hope it was water for their sake) out their window and directly onto the pre-occupied officers below. I am not sure if it was intentional or not, but Leeanna and I found this quite amusing and the cops were pissed. All-in-all it was an entertaining ten minutes that I am thinking of turning into a short musical, entitled, “Ladyboy, White Trash, and The Patrolling Pigs” (just a working title).

Lastly, I must briefly touch on my short-lived construction career in Australia. Serving in a restaurant in one of the more touristy areas of Melbourne has allowed me to meet people from all over Australia and the world. I do get some Canadians and Americans, and naturally our accents draw each other to inquire about one another’s circumstances, not unlike a mighty humpback whale’s mating call. Not sure if that analogy made any sense at all, but whatever I’m all jacked up on Monster Energy drinks as I write this. Regardless, one such customer from Cambridge, Ontario told me that he was in Melbourne on business, providing his expertise in building ice hockey rinks. Turns out, they were building the future home of the Australian Winter Olympic Training Facilities not far from where I was working. The gentleman came into the restaurant a few times (at this point aware of my carpentry background back home) and kept urging me to get in touch with the carpenters on site. I proved to be a little skeptical, as I did not really want to work construction in Australia, as I am lazy and did not want to go through the grind of having a “regular” job. With a couple of days off at my other job and some nudging, I finally went into the arena and was introduced to the Irish man who would be my boss for the next four days. I told him I did not have any tools yet, as I had not been working as a carpenter in Australia. He said it was okay and that I could just buy some in due time. I was able to score a free pair of work boots off of the Canadian supervisor as he was going home the day I started and recognized that I was probably living in poverty from my job at the restaurant. A very kind gesture nonetheless. Anyways, I was put right to work and ended up working eighteen hours my first day! Over the next four days I worked a total of close to fifty hours in addition to working at the restaurant two of the nights. The whole experience was really fucking weird to put it bluntly. I mean, here I am, this Canadian guy, working with a crew made up of all Irish guys who are here on work visas (Ireland’s economy has shit the bag and there’s no work for tradesmen there), building this world-class hockey rink and training facility in Australia. In the end, I was so burnt out by Friday night and never called my boss Flann over the weekend. He never called me either, and I decided right then and there that I was done with construction for the time being. I sure as hell didn’t come to Australia to work myself into an early grave. I got the rest of my life back home to do that! In the end, the people in the office paid me ($28 an hour, which was a pleasant surprise!) no questions asked and I haven’t heard from anyone in the company since. In conclusion, the extra money from those four days has come in quite handy and if I feel myself slipping too far into the lower reaches of society on my pittance of a restaurant wage I can always attempt to find a construction job. Oh, and I can add, “Australian Winter Olympic Training Facility Builder” to my resume. No big deal.

On that note, I am off for another shift at the oh-so stimulating restaurant this evening, before we have to get up bright and early at 3:30am to catch our 6am flight to Hobart, Tasmania in the morning for a short vacation.

Also, with God as my witness, I herby solemnly swear to never make fun of Sidney Crosby’s moustache or facial hair growth again! Put the kid on a stamp, and let’s declare February 28 as a national holiday.

Much love everyone, ~Brent~

Thursday, February 25, 2010- My Life Of Crime

2010-02-24T22:16:00.000-05:00

This will be my second last blog where I am playing catch-up, as I have been for the last two-and-a-half months. I freely admit this has been due to sheer laziness and the fact that I would rather watch Dr. Phil and Oprah. I hereby solemnly swear to myself that I shall make a valiant effort to track my travels/life week to week in Australia rather than trying to remember events months after they happened. On that note, Leeanna and I are going to be taking a 3-day trip down to the island of Tasmania (yes, where the Tasmanian Devil is from) next week and hopefully I feel energetic enough to write a report upon our return.

In the mean time though…

Due to the fact that I make very little money at my job, I must admit I along with my girlfriend (okay, mostly me) have turned to petty crime in an attempt to save money Down Under. First and foremost, we generally never pay for the tram services which travel all over the city and cost between $3 and $4 per ride. Your tickets only get checked if an inspector comes on the tram, in which case you will be fined $160 for not having a valid ticket. In the last few weeks Leeanna and I have started to ride around with blank tickets (inactivated) you can buy from 7-11 convenience stores that you don’t activate until you put them into the machine on the tram. We simply just never activate them and figure that if we get caught we will play dumb with the tram inspectors, as we are just “tourists” and didn’t know any better. For the first couple of months we lived here we would just buy tickets occasionally, and luckily the one day we were checked we had both randomly decided to buy tickets as we were heading north of the city into uncharted territory. Other than that, Leeanna has been checked one time on her own and again luckily she had a ticket (couple months ago). We haven’t purchased a legitimate ticket in weeks though, and I am curious to see what is going to happen to us the first time we get caught. So far I reckon the total savings on tram tickets to be well over $200, and the tally only grows by the day! CRIMINAL!

Another scam I am running on the regular is trying to pocket tips at my place of work. Normally all of our tips are supposed to go into a jar at the front of the restaurant, where it is then divided amongst the employees on a week-to-week basis. I generally get less than $40 per week which is totally ridiculous considering the amount of tips I generate sometimes (especially on weekends). I suspect the owners pocket a lot of the money and give more to their “favourite” employees. I try to grab whatever I can out of my bill folds if no one is looking, although since the holiday season my direct tips have gone way down. Most nights I leave with nothing, although there are still the occasional nights where I can pull down anywhere from $1 to $35. A lot of luck of the draw with customers, etc as tipping is the exception and not the rule here. All-in-all I reckon I’ve been able to pull down an extra few hundred dollars in my time at the restaurant through “tip-pocketing/jamming tips in my pocket when no one is around” which I have no doubt pumped right back into Melbourne’s bar and restaurant economy. Sadly, the other night I also stole some cutlery from the restaurant for personal use at home. I have been trying to steal drinking glasses and plates as well, but so far have been unsuccessful at finding an apt moment to smuggle them into the backroom and into my backpack. Sad and pathetic, yes I know. CRIMINAL!

Probably the activity I am most ashamed/proud of is the one I pulled off the other day. It all started when I had to go buy a new pair of shoes for work as my old pair had become worn out. I trekked over to the Big W (think Wal-Mart) and found a pair I liked for $36. In a brief moment of genius/absurd cheapness I decided that I would switch the price tag on the shoes with that of a pair that were only $16. I figured no one would ever catch on (unless they were watching the security cameras) as I would casually go through the self check-out and be on my way. The one thing I didn’t count on/remember from my time at Home Depot is that the self check-out machines recognize the weight of items, and the shoes I was purchasing were a lot heavier than the ones I had stolen the tag off of. Sure enough, a cashier had to come over when I had an “unexpected item in bagging area” and started to have grandeur visions of spending my night in Australian jail for trying to save $20 on shitty work shoes. After what seemed like an eternity (was probably 5 seconds) the cashier looked in my bag, saw that they were in fact shoes I was buying and promptly fixed it up for me. I breathed a sigh of relief; giggling to myself the whole way out the store thinking about how pathetically low I had just stooped in my quest to save myself $20. CRIMINAL!

My last great scam is not really so much a scam as much it was an observation I had made over time and seeing the opportunity to capitalize on said observation. The last three weeks Leeanna and I have been going to the movies on Tuesday afternoons at the Crown Casino. The last two weeks we bought tickets from the box office on the lower level and noticed that when you go up the escalators to the theatres there was no one checking tickets. Sure enough when we went to the movies again this week (“Shutter Island”, awesome film!), we scoped out the top of the escalators and saw that no one was checking tickets. Therefore we just walked right up casually and tried to figure out which of the eight theatres was showing “Shutter Island” (they don’t have a display outside each entrance telling you what’s playing inside, as it normally tells you on your ticket!). We found it by following what looked like the type and size of crowd that would be watching that film and voila, we were in like sin! I reckon I may try and do this all the time during the weekdays when I go to the movies, as it isn’t possible at night as they employ their ticket-checkers. CRIMINAL!

Anyways, I must be off to go and hit up every 7-11 store in the area (there’s like 15 within a 10 minute walk of my apartment) to load up on Monster Energy drinks. They are having a one day sale, where they are selling them for $1 each (limit of 8 per customer, per store), which is a great deal considering they normally sell for $4.30 per can. I’ve already bought 8 this morning and definitely see some more cans on the horizon this afternoon! I love caffeine! I’m sure Leeanna will be amused when she gets home from work.

On that note, if anyone doesn’t here from for a while, just assume I have been locked up in jail for petty crime and should hopefully see you in twenty-five to life!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010- What’s Scarier Possums At Night Or Paying $17 To Watch A Dan Aykroyd Film?

2010-02-24T00:12:00.002-05:00

Let me tell you there’s nothing quite as bizarre as watching a Canada-U.S. hockey game with Australian commentators. Ok, maybe there is, but it involves midgets, latex, and furry handcuffs. In all fairness they did telecast the recent epic hockey game here on free-to-air TV, and only resorted to Aussie commentary during audio difficulties. All I can say about that is that they were much more humorous than Pierre McGuire at times, especially since their ice hockey knowledge is about as extensive as a desert winter. Needless to say, the Olympics have garnered tons of television in Australia and have succeeded in actually making me somewhat miss winter in Canada. Outside of the obvious coverage of the Australian athletes, Canadians seem to receive the second most coverage here, with the descriptions surrounding how much Canadians love ice hockey being of particular amusement to me. The way the commentators describe it here, you would think every Canadian immediately went out in the backyard and shot themselves and their whole family after the loss to the United States. One major point of controversy here was when the host of the coverage made “gay/flamboyant” jokes about American figure skater Johnny Weir. The story ended up being picked up all over the world and led to a comical prime-time interview between the two where they kissed and made up (not literally, but they did discuss interior design!). Aside from all of this, the coverage of the games has been pretty good here, and allowed me to watch and beam proudly for my home nation from afar. GO CANADA!!!

Contrary to popular belief though (held by my girlfriend and family), I do other stuff besides watch sports all day. Some quick blurbs on some other stuff Leeanna and I have done recently…

Sunday, I took Leeanna to the Good Vibrations Music Festival (The Killers, Basement Jaxx, Busta Rhymes, Gossip, Kid Cudi, Naughty By Nature, Gym Class Heroes, Armand Van Helden, DJ Craze, Salt-N-Pepa, and many more) which was in the north end of the city at the Flemington race course. Tickets were priced atrociously at $150 a piece, but I felt it was a win-win when I bought them for the girlfriend for Valentine’s Day, as I also wanted to go and this presented me with a good excuse to shell out and buy the tickets with my hard-earned restaurant cash. Unlike in North America where touring large-scale music festivals are all but dead, all-day outdoor festivals still seem to draw large numbers here across the country. In the end, the weather ended up being perfect and because of the ridiculously long line-ups for alcoholic beverages, I ended up not drinking one drop of booze all day…that is until I came home! During the day, we spent most of our time at the second stage/Roots stage (there were five stages spread out over the park) and got to watch full sets from Kid Cudi, Gym Class Heroes and the legendary Busta Rhymes. They all put on good shows, and the audiences were fantastic. Also, we took in most of Naughty By Nature’s set as we stood in line for hot dogs, but they generally sucked balls. We made it over to the main stage for The Killers headlining set, which was ok, if not spectacular. They seemed to be a bit on the unenergetic side, which was understandable given that the lead singer’s mother had just passed away the week before (causing them to cancel half of their Australian tour). All-in-all though, it was a good time, and I can now say I’ve been to a big Aussie music festival, complete with large numbers of homosexuals and metrosexuals and people just generally dressed in some of the most bizarre fashions ever. Men here seem to be overly comfortable with each other in public and they all have a penchant for wearing slip-on shoes and other footwear that looks like it was purchased from the discount bin at Giant Tiger.

A couple of weeks ago, Leeanna and I also managed to get out of the city for the first time since we had moved here which was a very much welcomed reprieve. We rented a car for the day and drove a couple of hours out to Phillip Island. For those who aren’t in the know, Phillip Island is a world-renowned tourist attraction where hundreds of people sit in amphitheatre style seating every night along a beach and watch a bunch of penguins waddle ashore. Getting to the island proved to be the biggest adventure of all, as I got lost several times along the way (decided to save $10 and not rent a GPS), and turned our 1.5 hour journey there into a 3 hour tour. Believe me though, the false/craptacular directions all of the locals kept giving me did not help one bit. After finally making it to the island in the early afternoon, we had a full day to kill before the penguin parade at 9:00pm. First thing on the busy day’s agenda was to head over to the Nobbies Centre, which was basically a viewing area to see the sea lions lazing just off sure on the rocks. Wait, maybe they were seals. Either way, we were not able to really see much as the animals were not around, so Leeanna and I ended up just going for a stroll through the coastal rocks and eating some overpriced chips and chili sauce. Next on the agenda, we went over to a koala sanctuary where we were able to get pretty close to a bunch of koalas, wallabies and some other wildlife. There was a boardwalk constructed well off the ground that allowed to you get up close to the koalas in their natural habitat aka high up in the eucalyptus trees. As much as I wanted to steal one for a pet (even if they do poo while sleeping), I resisted and ended up just letting them be. Following that, we took a break from the wildlife and headed over to the chocolate factory/store. We got really hungry in a hurry, bought some overpriced local chocolate, and away we went! The last attraction to check off of our list was the Churchill Island Heritage Farm, which was slightly ridiculous. It was basically like a re-creation of a pioneer farm and small community. The farm did provide me with some amusement though, as they had a talking bird (obviously it had an Aussie accent) and a horse with a penis bigger than anything this side of an NBA locker room. We also took a long-ass walk around the island and were generally scared shitless by anything that flied or made a buzzing sound. What can I say; Leeanna and I are one with nature. After grabbing dinner in the town of Cowes (very cool, surfing/tourist town on the northern part of Phillip Island) we made our way over to the Penguin Parade. It was crazy busy and just seemed to be the most ridiculous animal attraction ever! Hundreds, if not thousands of people sit in this sort of concrete amphitheatre seating along the beach front and wait for these little penguins to march inland every night as the sun goes down. The penguins, slowly but surely emerge from the sea and make their way to their homes/sleeping quarters in the hills along the coast. It takes the penguins quite some time to complete this nightly journey as many of them constantly go in and out of the water (fear of birds eating them, as they are very small penguins) before making a mad dash to their hillside retreats. The whole thing seems quite comical, but is definitely something worth checking out if you’re in the Melbourne area. We were able to drive back to the city without getting lost, although it ended up taking me over an hour to find a gas station and then somewhere to park the rental car for the night before I took it back the next morning.

Last week, we also had the chance to take in an overpriced experience that they do all over Australia aptly titled “Movies In The Park” (we ended up seeing the Dan Aykroyd/John Belushi classic, “The Blues Brothers”). It’s a really unique set-up where they show movies in the Botanical Gardens six nights a week during the summer, complete with bats flying overhead by the hundreds and the city skyline in the background. It was pretty cool, as they allow you to bring your own booze and food onto the premesis. It’s rather pricey to get in though, as they charge you $17 per person to sit on the grass and another $7 per person for a beanbag chair (a requirement for comfort reasons). I almost never made it out alive though as halfway during the movie I got up to urinate. Seeing as how the bathrooms were a solid two minute walk away I decided I was just going to pollinate one of the local trees. Well it turns out there was a sizeable creature (guessing possum, maybe a giraffe) lurking nearby that decided to violently hiss at me before it ran within a foot of me and straight up the tree. I almost had a heart attack and definitely sprinkled a little urine onto my clothing (did not mention this to girlfriend afterwards!). Good times all around, even if I am forever scared to pee on a tree again!

Later in the week we went back to the Royal Botanical Gardens during the day to take in the scenery and walks. It was very beautiful and featured some interesting plant and tree life from around the world. They also had a very well laid out war memorial that was both appeasing on the eyes and informative. Luckily this time around no possums made any moves for my junk, so I returned home to my shoebox-in-the-sky unscathed, ready to tackle Melbourne yet again!

Friday, February 12, 2010- I Admit, I’ve Never Been To The Hockey Hall Of Fame

2010-02-11T22:47:00.000-05:00

One thing I can say about Melbourne that I don’t get the chance to say about a lot of places I visit is that I’ve actually been able to visit the vast majority of strip clubs in the area (and there is a lot). Wait scratch that! What I meant to say is that I’ve been able to visit most of the tourist destinations without cramming twenty things into one day. I guess this is a luxury that is afforded to you when you live somewhere. I find it funny, because here I’ve visited most of the major sites, while back home in Toronto I haven’t been to a lot of places that most people go when they visit Toronto (ie/ Casa Loma, Hockey Hall Of Fame, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince’s [or is it just Prince?] Toronto Residence, etc, etc). But then again, I guess that is true for a lot of people, as at home you tend to fall into your daily routine rather easily without putting much thought into visiting said places. I know I fall into my routine rather easily, kind of like an overused washer at a Laundromat. Pretty much consists of eat, sleep, work, masturbate, repeat. Eat, sleep, work, masturbate, repeat. Wait, who am I kidding there definitely needs to be another masturbation thrown into my life-laundry cycle. I am an alpha male after all. In conclusion there’s lots of shit to do in Melbourne. Here’s some of it as described by Sir Brent Moreau, of the Bradford Moreau clan.

One of the more unique things Leeanna and I had a chance to do was to take in some of the action at the Australian Open. We were fortunate enough that we were able to scoop some tickets for Rod Laver Arena (the main arena) during the second day of the two week tournament. We got to watch both eventual champions in action (Roger Federer and Serena Williams) and were also both able to successfully take naps in a capacity crowd arena. Let me tell you that there is nothing better on a Tuesday summer afternoon than Roger Federer, catching some shut eye, and overpriced sausage rolls. We also checked out some of the action on the outside courts after the main draw had ended, but seeing as how I was as over-tennised as Gary Busey is over-medicated, this all seemed to blur together. We literally had like sixteen hours of tennis on TV every day. I watched more tennis during the two weeks of the Australian Open then I have and will for the rest of my life. Andre Agassi would be proud. Now if only he would put that wig back on.

Leeanna and I have also the opportunity to take in every type of tourist transportation available. There is a free tram/streetcar that runs around the city centre (where we live) aptly titled the “City Circle Tram”. We use this quite frequently to travel the city and seem to mesh in well with all the Asian tourists and fat under-dressed Americans. There is also a bus called the Tourist Shuttle that takes people around Melbourne for free. One day out of sheer boredom, Leeanna and I decided to ride it for the entire two hour circuit. This was clearly one of the more ridiculous things I’ve done in recent memory, trailing only the time I decided to eat twenty-five caffeine pills because I wanted to see what it would do to me (It almost killed me if you must know, and was a bad decision I made like six years ago. So beat it!). The wife and I were also fortunate enough to see the city on a river cruise, although as far as river cruises go it was far from one of the better ones I’ve been on. Cruising through industrial docklands and past big freight ships just doesn’t seem as impressive as it does on Discovery Channel. All I can say about the Melbourne River Cruise is that thank God I had a two-for-one coupon, because quite frankly I could have cruised the Holland River in Bradford and probably had just as much fun (and seen some three-eyed fish).
Many people often associate Australia with an abundance of wildlife on land and in the water.

Naturally the Aussies make sure that they have lots of zoos and aquariums to capitalize on this and take full advantage of us tourists willing to pay to see things like sharks and wallabies. Seeing as how we live across the street from the Melbourne Aquarium, we eventually visited there, even despite the fact that it cost over $30 to get in. They had a very impressive penguin display and there shark exhibit was one of the better I’ve seen in my travels. We even stuck around to watch the “Sharks After Dark” show. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get the lights in the aquarium to go out, so the show kind of sucked and I imagine the sharks were going to have to wear their nightshades to bed that night. We also visited the Melbourne Zoo which to me was a bit of a letdown. I was expecting it to be like the best zoo ever, but instead it was a fairly standard run-of-the-mill zoo. The biggest problem was the fact that there were so many people there, making many of the exhibits hard to see. Couple this is in with the fact that there were screaming kids everywhere and the monkeys kept giving me the evil eye, well you get the picture.

In the first couple months, we also the chance to do a lot of other stuff that doesn’t really warrant me mentioning too much about, mostly because I am very far behind on my trip updates. Therefore, I shall try to keep this brief. We visited the Melbourne Observation Deck, which is basically just a poor man’s version of the CN Tower. It has since closed down to the public, as it has been sold to a private group and there is a taller lookout point in Melbourne now called the Eureka Skydeck. Why every city has to have a really tall building that tourists go up and look out I will never know. Why I keep shelling out money to go up them is also a mystery. We’ve also had the opportunity to check out some free stuff in the city worth quickly mentioning including St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Immigration Museum (gentleman let us in free as students even though we offered to pay), Luna Park/ St. Kilda Beach (worst amusement park ever) and the AC/DC Exhibit which showcases tons of the band’s memorabilia and recounts the complete history of the band. AC/DC first started gigging in Melbourne way-back when and it is often referred to as their home town. I know most of my friends count them as one of their favourite bands ever, and if you don’t like AC/DC well you should just go listen to Michael Buble you patsy communist!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010- Anyone For Bowling? No. Egg Pizza It Is Then

2010-02-09T21:56:00.002-05:00

Captain’s Log (21:00 hours): It is currently so hot my testicles feel like they’ve been glued to my inner thighs. My girlfriend and I sit here, with our twenty dollar fan blowing hot air, watching episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” that already aired in Canada last year. This is what I left the comforts of my roommate’s house (and by roommates I mean parents!) for, to experience Australia and all of its beautiful glory/heat/stereotypes! Well, that and the fact that I wanted to run away from real life and all that is associated with it.

Turning a complete 180 degrees though, life has been pretty eventful during our first two months in our own habitat. Sure we sleep with a mattress on the floor with my head practically resting against the refrigerator. And I mean yeah, who wouldn’t complain about sleeping in +40°C heat? But if there was anything I could change I can honestly say aside from my hairdresser and small bank account, there isn’t a thing! So what exactly has happened over the last little while to Brent the Former Town Drunk and LeeBee the Drama Queen? Stay tuned to my next three blogs to find out, or if you wish, surf on over to TMZ.com for some much more entertaining celebrity news involving Perez Hilton and K-Fed on Celebrity Fat Club.

As when you settle anywhere for more than a few days, rituals start to become a part of your life, whether you like it or not. One ritual/favourite activity Leeanna and I have developed is our love of bowling. More specifically I guess you could say my love of bowling and Leeanna’s love of nice bowling shoes and a solid air-conditioning system. Over the last little while we have been bowling a bunch of times and I feel as though my game has been steadily improving. In fact last night, I bowled the best game of my Australian career with a gorgeous 164. Slap my ass and sign me up for the PBA!

Another activity I started to enjoy a little too much was poker. It was very easy when I was bored to just walk across the street to the Crown Casino and the southern hemisphere’s largest poker room. After many sessions with varied results, I decided that if I hit $1000 in gambling losses in Australia I would cease to play poker anymore. Well, I hit that plateau and true to my word have not stepped foot in the poker room in a few weeks. It’s been tough, I won’t lie, cause if there’s one thing I love more than ice cream and beer it’s poker…wait scratch that I mean my girlfriend…no wait, it’s pudding. Banana pudding is my one true love. End of discussion. Looking back, poker has been a lot of fun in Australia and even provided me the opportunity to play against a few people who were on TV and introduce my girlfriend to the game for the first time. God bless the Crown Casino!

On the cuisine front, Leeanna and I are both really plain eaters. Translation: we both eat a lot of boring fast food, processed food, and shit I bring home from work. Melbourne is one of these world-renowned cities for its restaurant and café scene. On that note, I’m pretty sure the most exotic thing we’ve eaten is pasta and steaks. Sooner or later I’m going to convince Leeanna to purchase kangaroo filets which we stroll past every week in the grocery store. I imagine it to being similar to eating venison, although I have nothing to reference this against and it is probably just wishful thinking more than anything. We do go out to the occasional restaurant not-named McDonald’s or Subway, most notably the Pancake Parlour. It’s this joint that reminds me of Golden Griddle back in the day and serves delicious breakfast food all day and night. Nothing hits the sweet spot like a stack of pancakes and a blueberry float. A few weeks ago, Leeanna and I also had an overwhelming urge for some good old fashioned chicken wings. Apparently wings aren’t that easy to come by in Melbourne. Eventually after some tough internet research (yes, I had to research where you could find chicken wings in a city of four million people), Leeanna and I found a place about a half an hour away. Well they weren’t the greatest wings, and the fact that they only had three flavours was a little suspect, it did hit the spot. More often than not though, we eat pizza that I bring home from work. Nothing helps you pack on the weight like pizza five nights a week. Yummy! On a semi-related note, I have discovered the deliciousness that is egg as a pizza topping. It now ranks only second on my list to pepperoni, or as the Aussies call it, hot salami. Bon appetite!

One great thing about relocating to Australia as opposed to a non-English speaking country is the fact that I can still go to the movies (foreign films were only cool to me when I was in film school). One down side is the fact that many movies come out here a lot later than they do in North America. In fact, last night we just saw this new movie they released here called “Cool Runnings” starring John Candy and a bunch of Jamaicans bobsledding. Word on the street is that this movie came out like fifteen years ago. On a more serious note we’ve seen “Avatar 3D” (8.5/10), “The Lovely Bones” (7/10), and just today watched “Invictus” (8/10). Movies are not a cheap affair here, as most theatres charge $17-$18 for general admission and they all have VIP screens that charge anywhere from $25-$40. Can you say ridiculous? At least they still have Cheap Tuesday, although their discount day costs as much as our full-priced admissions. In related news, since I dragged Leeanna to see “Invictus”, word on the street is that I will have the privilege of taking in the sure to be best movie of all-time next week “Valentine’s Day”. I’m sure that will be one to remember. I mean how bad can a movie starring Ashton Kutcher and Taylor Swift be? Really!?!?!?

Friday, January 22, 2010- And The Award For Job Of The Year Goes To….

2010-01-22T21:33:00.001-05:00

It has been quite some time since I last posted a blog entry, and this can be attributed to a few things. First and foremost, I am just really lazy and am starved for motivation sometimes when it comes to writing. I mean as therapeutic as it is and all, I really would just prefer most of the time to veg out and read a book or stare at people I don’t really care about on Facebook while reading the latest UFC news. Also, life has been pretty tame since Leeanna and I moved into our own apartment. We have kept drunken orgies to a bare minimum (neighbourly thing to do), and the highlight of most days consists of watching “David Letterman” and “Malcolm in the Middle”. No one really wants to read about my episode-by-episode recaps of Aussie soap operas, do they? Enter the life of Brent Moreau, loser extraordinaire.

Pretty much as soon as we moved into our apartment at the beginning of December, Leeanna and I decided that we better get some jobs as money was evaporating at a rapid rate due to my cocaine addiction and her penchant for eating over-priced cheese spreads with gourmet crackers. Despite this, I was rather slow to jump the gun and it took well over a week before I even looked at my resume or helped Leeanna put hers together. Eventually I got around to typing up some bullshit and forging my girlfriend’s resume a bit for her and we started our job hunt online. Both of us applied for jobs exclusively online, as we are both afraid of going into places and talking to people. Yes, I’m a big pussy and I’m well aware of it!

As mentioned, we tweaked Leeanna’s resume a bit to include some work in the restaurant business, as she had never actually done this type of work before. Other than that I kept it pretty honest, minus the fact that I changed the dates on all her other jobs and noted that her list of extended family members included Abraham Lincoln and Heather Locklear. She applied for a bunch of different jobs in a wide range of fields including restaurants, office work, dental assisting (which she went to school for) and even working as one of those ladies who gives “happy ending” massages. Unfortunately they said she wasn’t “Asian” enough for the last job. Long story short, the boss as I like to call her ended up getting hired on as a part-time dental assistant (19 hours a week), which was great for her. She was starting to get really worried because initially she had gotten no call backs, but in the end it all worked out. Shortly after getting hired, she got a call for another to job to ironically work at the ice hockey rink (token Canadian, no doubt) where the professional Melbourne team plays, but ended up taking a pass when they wouldn’t budge on the availability. She makes $23 an hour, which is an almost 250% increase to what she was making back home and seems to enjoy all the folks she works with. The only downside is that whenever she comes home from work she bitches about how she thinks they’re going to fire her because she isn’t knowledgeable enough and blah, blah, blah. Anyone who knows Leeanna though knows that this is par for the course and I eventually usually change the topic or just pretend that I now only speak Swahili.

As mentioned, my girlfriend has a job that she likes, gets paid relatively well to do and doesn’t have to work too hard; I on the other hand have none of these problems. I get paid really shitty, hate most aspects of my job, and am always looking over my shoulder and being forced to do work even when there is no work to do. But first the back story, of how we arrived at such a dire situation.

After thinking about it for a few days, I decided that I did not want to work construction in Australia (which I do back home) and sent out a handful of resumes to some local restaurants instead. I realized that this would ultimately mean a big pay cut, as serving jobs in Australia are not as good as back home due to the whole issue of tipping not being common here. At the same time though, I would not have to wake up early most days and would be able to work in a relatively laid-back environment, or so I thought. Of the five or so resumes I sent out, I ended up hearing back from two restaurants, who both agreed to give me a one-night trial run. The first one was an ultra-classy steakhouse/seafood place in the Crown Casino complex called Rockpool. It was run by some world-famous chef and I had to wear a tuxedo jacket and everything! The way everything was run was totally alien to me, and to put it bluntly, I shit the bag. I just did not fit into this ultra high-class dining experience and it showed. I knew I wasn’t going to get the job long before the stuck-up bitch manager called me back two days later and interrupted my card game at the casino to tell me that she didn’t want to train someone who is not making a career of it/foreigner and that they had also given someone else a test run who was better than me. Normally this type of news would bother me, but I really didn’t give a fuck as I hated the place anyways. In between those two days, I had agreed to a trial at the other restaurant which was a middle of the road type Italian joint called Medici. I seemed to fit in okay there, and it was much more similar to what I was used to back home. The restaurant was very fast-paced and seemed to have a staff that I could get along with. Needless to say, I got the job at Medici and started immediately. The place is run by a Lebanese family who rule it with a sometimes iron-fist. They tell me that I work too slow and aren’t impressed with me. I generally reply by not shaving for work, not tucking in my shirt or wearing my proper uniform. After 6 weeks I can honestly say I hate the fucking place. I only make $16 an hour (not good in a country where minimum wage is $13.50) and I am expected to bust ass the entire time I’m at work. If we’re not busy I have to clean like a Molly Maid on speed. It’s horse shit I tell ya! And to top it all off, we (the serving staff) are expected to pool all of our tips into the tip jar, but meanwhile I have never gotten a dime extra from the cheap fucks. From what I can see the owners basically pocket all of the tip money. I try to pocket whatever tips I can, but it is very hard, as the owner is always lurking around the place like some kind of Lebanese godfather. Generally I get less than $20 most nights in tips and some nights not a dime. Meanwhile, the tip jar is overflowing (hundreds a day), and that doesn’t even include all the tips people leave on credit and debit cards. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Guess that’s why the restaurant hires a lot of foreigners so that they can take advantage of us. The one positive is that after every shift I am allowed one free beer and can take home either a pizza or serving of pasta. This has definitely helped out with the grocery bill, although I am still one bitter little man when it comes to my arch-enemy, Medici. In conclusion, I will probably get fired, as sooner or later I’m sure I will get caught stealing MY tips. If I don’t, I may just stick it out until the middle of March when the lease comes up on my apartment. God only knows.

Anyways, enough work talk (on my way there right now) as my next blog will focus more on touristy stuff and life adventures in and around Melbourne. Until next time, stay classy and drink ‘til you can’t think! And despite the negative tone of this post at times, we are actually having a jolly good time! Jolly good indeed!

~Brentski~

Sunday, December 20, 2009 - I’m Shipping Off To The Far East (Not! I’m Already There)

2009-12-20T21:14:00.002-05:00

So Leeanna and I are now entering our third week of living in our one room apartment and no one is dead yet, although I have on occasion heard her mumbling to herself in her sleep. She keeps saying something about a plastic bag and head and strangulation and my name all in the same sentence. Must be preparing for a magic trick or something; beats me. Anyways, in the last few weeks I have learned quite a bit about myself and my surroundings here in Australia. In actuality I haven’t really learned anything but have “noticed” some things.

1) First and foremost I can’t for the life of me figure out why Burger King is called Hungry Jack’s. It truly is mind-boggling. To my understanding, Burger King is called BURGER KING everywhere in the world, even in New Zealand which you could practically hit with a cricket ball from Australia if you were so inclined. Blows my fuckin’ mind, really does.
2)Which brings me to possibly the worst pastime this side of Crazy Bones and POGS; cricket. Most of the other popular sports in this country I can at least take an acute interest in such as rugby, Aussie Rules, and surfing, but for the life of me I just can’t get into cricket. From what I can tell the matches go on for days at a time and none of the parties involved ever seem too enthralled by the “sport” to which they are partaking in. I mean I wake up in the morning and cricket is on and when I go to bed that night, the same game is still on TV.
3)Because of the large number of tourists here, no one seems to know what side of the sidewalk to walk on. It is generally accepted that in most countries you walk on the right, although here it is opposite, just as the driving is. This seems to be lost on a good percentage of the humanoids around here and I always seem to find myself swerving all over the sidewalk like some kind of drunken monkey.
4)Beer prices here are atrocious. For starters, at the majority of the liquor stores in the city you can’t get most of the beers in anything larger than a 6-pack. Maybe it’s just a North American thing, but isn’t it easier to buy beer in cases of 24 or 30? Generally for an average lower-priced beer it costs about $16 for 6 beers. If they are available in 24s, the cheapest you are generally going to find them for is about $46. True fact: I was at the store tonight and observed that a 6-pack of Corona costs about $25. Shit, for that price they should include a high-class hooker that cuts your lemon wedges in a thong bikini and gets them into the bottle using only her tongue with her hands tied behind her back.
5)In relation to the above fact, I have noticed that I am starting to get fat. I am not sure how this is, as I walk everywhere and generally heal-toe it a few kilometers per day. I am developing what the mean kids in school used to call “bitch tits”. Guess I better stop eating tacos for dinner every other night. Yeah, that and stop drinking. Might adopt a little African orphan while I’m at it.
6)Having travelled to a variety of large cities both in North America and Europe, I have seen my fair share of homeless-people-with-crazy-drug-dependencies-who-need-to-groom-and-smell-like-my-sister’s-feet, but Melbourne takes the cake. The homeless people here seem to be just fucked right of their tree for the most part and often provide Leeanna and I with some humor/fright on our walks later in the evening. My personal favorite was the other night in Hungry Jack’s. The one homeless dude who smelled like a defecated on raccoon had a green toenail that had to be about 3-inches long. On top of this, he could barely stand-up and right after he got his burger went out and took a snooze on the sidewalk.
7)Television has become a large part of my life due to all my free time. As previously mentioned (even though no one reads this), we only get four channels so I have had time to observe the same shows over and over. One weird thing is how all the big morning shows intersperse infomercials with their regular programming. It’s like watching Good Morning America or Canada AM with 50% of the show talking about the Sham-Wow and Snuggies. This can be super-irritating when you’re trying to consume your Coco Puffs and OJ. Also, the number of wildlife shows on TV here is simply staggering. Needless to say, I am very well informed on such things as emus and rare mountain kangaroos. If anyone wants to know what to do when your pet koala has cancer I can direct you to a good vet. Lastly on the tele front, some shows I have rather started to enjoy that I wasn’t into that much before I left home include Californication, Parks and Recreation, The Office, and How I Met Your Mother. The ladder is a really big hit with me and the lady friend.
8)And one final note: I cannot get over how many Asians there are in Melbourne! I don’t mean this in a racist way, just more of a shocked kind of way. The Chinese and Indian communities here are borderline overwhelming. I don’t think there is a non-Chinese student in any of the universities in the city center. In fact, when we went to the movies last night, I was half expecting them to start dubbing it in Mandarin. What, I’m just sayin’! On that note, if there are any big-time fans of Indian or Chinese cuisine, this is a must visit city for you. Or if you’re lazy, you can just take a walk a through my apartment building and get all the smells from Beijing to New Delhi.

Until next time, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And remember, stay classy and don’t drink and drive. Until next time, cheers!

~Brent~

Tuesday, December 8, 2009- How Someone Survived Two Years With Me I Will Never Know

2009-12-08T00:03:00.001-05:00

The 2nd of December is a day I am not allowed to forget as I might be subject to such things as female-on-male violence or getting my testicles chopped off. Judging by that, you can guess it was my second year anniversary to my lovely girlfriend Leeanna, who in actuality has not committed an act of violence against me in quite some time. Anyways, to get back on track with my tall tales here, we arrived by bus into Melbourne at about 7am after a lovely 12 hour voyage that involved some guy talking very loudly on his cell phone for a long time, a Matthew McConaughey movie, and no one getting their head-chopped off a la Greyhound (sorry I just had to). Upon landing in our new city, we tried for over an hour to figure out what tram we should take to get to our hostel. We never did figure it out correctly, but we got there through a solid combination of smarts and prostitution. After dropping our bags off at our hostel (Victoria Hall [7.5/10]), we took a stroll through the city to get our bearings in what we were hoping would be our future home. We went for quite the walkabout and took in such sights as Federation Square, Rod Laver Arena (tennis, Australian Open), the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, and other stuff that I’m sure no one cares about. As we were sitting on a bench enjoying the sunshine that afternoon, a little birdy decided to give me an anniversary present in the form of a big shit on my shoulder. Leeanna was quite amused as I tried to claim back my now defecated on shirt. That night we went out for dinner to a place called Mama Parma’s and had what is apparently a Melbourne signature dish, the parma. It is basically just breaded chicken or veal that is then topped with a variety of pizza-style toppings. It was quite delicious, although we could not even eat half of it and apparently there is a law in the state of Victoria that does not allow you to take home your leftovers. So sad! Apparently this is due to a lawsuit a few years ago, something I figured would have happened long ago in the United States.

Thursday, after much deliberation and really no research we decided that we were going to make Melbourne our temporary home for the next 3 months. We spent a good part of the day browsing the internet for apartments with not much luck, as most realtors are not willing to let you sign a rent contract for anything less than 6 months. We ended up going to look at one apartment that was located right in the heart of the city and was priced right at about $1200 a month fully furnished. Naturally the apartment was a super-tiny 180 square feet. We told the agent we would give him a call back about his shoebox. For a nightcap, the wife and I headed over to the Ed Hardy Bowling Center (this country seems to rather enjoy Jon Gosselin’s brand of choice) to do some stylish 10 pin bowling. Unfortunately they were full though, and we ended up going to a very similar joint around the corner called Striker Bowling. It was equally chic, with a nice bar, nice lanes, and a great atmosphere. I guess bowling is a lot cooler here than back home. Following our sad attempt at recreating “Kingpin”, we headed back to the hostel to the theatre room and started to watch “Hancock”. In short, the movie sucked and we went to bed.

The next morning it was much of the same, as we perused the internet for apartments and made some calls. We didn’t have much luck, but decided to go and check out one place later in the day. Before that we went over to the Melbourne Gaol (jail, to us Yanks) which was located directly across from our hostel. It is actually one of the top tourist draws in the whole country. It is the oldest jail in Victoria, and has been home to its fair share of top-notch criminals. Amongst those, by far the most well known is Ned Kelly, the Outback Outlaw, who has been portrayed in movies by none other than Heath Ledger and the world’s ugliest man, Mick Jagger. At our apartment viewing, there were a shit-ton of people there, and although we liked the apartment, figured we didn’t have a chance as foreigners and just decided to give up on it. After much discussion about whether or not we wanted to live in a share-house or just get our own pad that would be significantly smaller and danker, we decided on the latter. Luckily (or maybe unluckily!), the first apartment we had viewed was still available and we agreed to meet the realtor to get the paperwork done. As night fell we went out for a nice Friday night sidewalk pasta dinner and stroll through the downtown district before retiring to our ultra-noisy hostel room. Gotta love paper thin windows and walls when you’re located on a busy thoroughfare!

Saturday the 5th of December, 2009 shall officially go down in history as the day that Brent Moreau signed his first real estate papers (aren’t you proud Mom and Dad?). Prior to our meeting with the real estate agent, we headed over to the Melbourne Museum which is apparently the largest museum in the southern hemisphere. I have noticed that things in Australia love to claim they are “the largest in the southern hemisphere”. It was very similar to the Royal Ontario Museum, although it was cheaper to get in ($8) and was much more advanced technologically with regards to interactive exhibits, etc. At 2pm we headed over to OzAsia (no joke) Realty to sign the papers for our big 3 month lease. Everything went okay and we were now the proud renters of 180 square feet on the 14th floor of an old building at the corners of Flinders and Spencer Streets. Our “fully-furnished” apartment consisted of a small bathroom, a futon that doubles as a double bed, a 13” TV with 4 channels, a table that doubles as the TV stand, 2 folding chairs, a small wardrobe, and the world’s smallest kitchenette that includes a microwave, mini-fridge, sink, and minimal cutlery. That’s it folks! Oh, and I did I mention that it is 180 square feet including the bathroom? Haha! That afternoon, Leeanna and I did our first ever domestic shopping for such exciting things as cleaning products, pillows, sheets, and tea towels! We were able to equip or shoebox for under $100 and celebrated by eating Subway yet again for dinner. That night to break in our new place we watched the epic film “Titanic” that was airing on one of our 4 channels. And no, this is not a joke!

Sunday marked another first: the first time I ever grocery shopped with the intent of my long-term consumption in my mind. Now I know why my Mom bitches about how much food we eat. One of the things I have yet to figure out is why produce costs so much in Australia when everything is grown here. Our afternoon consisted of a nice walk along the river which is a minute from our apartment and a stroll through the Crown Casino to check out the facilities (you can guess where this is going). After some delicious gelato (Italian ice cream for those of you who are less cultured) we returned to catch the last bit of the Australian Open golf event on TV. That night I was unfortunately itching to go gambling, as I now literally lived not even 5 minutes from the Crown Casino poker room. Unfortunately things did not go as planned (never do lately) and I lost $500 in the course of about 3.5 hours playing 2/3 No Limit Hold’em and 10/20 Limit Omaha. I have concluded that I just really suck at poker now. I have gone from a few years ago being a fairly successful (and profitable) low/mid-limit player to a bad, losing player with no confidence in my game. I’m like a horse that’s too old to race; I need to be taken out to pasture and shot. That might be a bit harsh but you get the idea.

Today (Monday, the 7th of December), shall be my last official daily entry for a while, as we are now settled down in our apartment and shall attempt to live a somewhat normal life for a while. Bank accounts and tax file (same as SIN numbers in Canada) were the order of business today! I will post weekly updates of what’s happening Down Under with Leeanna and I, as well as my thoughts and opinions on the culture or lack thereof. Again, thank you to everyone who reads and stay classy!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009- Off To The Dunes To Break My Coccyx!

2009-12-07T01:57:00.002-05:00

The next morning I awoke after a good night’s sleep (same can’t be said for Leeanna) and headed over to take a dump in the toilets. Sure enough, up in the rafters there were two possums watching me drop the Cosby kids off at the pool. I was fine with this until one of them started coming down the wall into the bathroom and almost fell. Want to talk about shitting yourself! That afternoon, the bird whisperer and I had an appointment to go sandboarding. The area we were staying in is home to the largest coastal sand dunes in the southern hemisphere. Sandboarding is basically tobogganing down a huge sand hill at a very high rate of speed. It was awesome good fun and reminded me of all the good times I had in my youth with my GT Snowracer. Our driver also took us offroading in the dunes and to the beaches to search for pippies aka giant clams. And for all you Napoleon Dynamite fans, unfortunately there were no broken coccyx’s occurred at the dunes. Geez! That afternoon in my ass backwards kind of way of doing things we drove back north through Port Macquaire and all the way up to Coff’s Harbour (7 hours north of Sydney). We arrived late at night so we just went out to grab a late night dinner at a small Italian restaurant. After this we went to one of the local pubs to grab a few brews around 9pm. Leeanna started talking to this guy who was the lead in the local theatre production of Oliver and then one thing led to another and we were hanging out with the whole cast and crew. Well when it came time to shut the bar down around midnight, we were given permission to stay and drink all night/morning after hours. We ended up partying with the drama freaks (awesome group of Aussie’s actually!) until about 4:30am and then stumbled back to the hostel. It was around this time that I could not remember (was too shit-canned ) the combination to get into the hostel (Aussitel Backpackers [7/10]) and tried breaking in through the pool entrance. When all else failed, we waited for someone eating an early morning snack to let us in. Biggest shit show of life!

Saturday was a complete write-off as we were both about as hung over as Kirstie Alley after an all-night post-Jenny Craig binge. We didn’t get out of bed until the mid-afternoon, and the most productive thing I did before the dinner hour was take a 15 minute swim in the pool. For supper/breakfast we grabbed some Subway (they are making a killing off of Leeanna and I on this vacation) and then headed over to Park Beach to watch the sunset, which judging by all the cars is a very popular pastime in the area. Yes, and for those of you wondering I’m going to start writing romance novels very, very soon.

So we arrive at Sunday the 29th of November, almost two weeks since I left home and I haven’t been killed by any oversized insects or my girlfriend for that matter. This morning we packed up our belongings into our rented Corolla, programmed Susan and headed about 45 minutes inland to the small town of Bellingen and another hostel (Bellingen YHA 8/10). We came to this town because of its proximity to Dorrigo National Park, which is home to some of the most accessible rainforest trails in the world. Leeanna agreed to hike some of the trails with me today, although she said this was the last of our nature walks. I agreed because I’m a big pussy, but I still had the last laugh as I made her struggle up some quality hills. As far as free attractions go it was definitely an amazing thing to see, although I would have really liked to see a python. All I saw was stupid wild turkeys and lizards that look like small snakes (see: skinks). Leeanna the domestic goddess that she is made me my first home cooked meal in a while, Old El Paso tacos. God bless cheese and ground beef! And then I visited the bathroom.

Monday, was to put it bluntly a pretty much nothing day. It was our last day with our rented car, and instead of going somewhere new for the night we decided that we would just be lazy and chill in the happenin’ town of Bellingen for. I did nothing all day, except for browse the internet and watch this giant lizard roam around the property that apparently lives in the tree close by. The highlight of my day was for sure going shopping and buying lasagna at IGA for dinner. The night consisted of sitting around, drinking, and playing stupid games involving sports teams and the alphabet with a couple of English guys that I could barely understand. Exciting, I know.

So now, the 1st of December has arrived, and well there’s no snow and it’s warm out. Sorry to rub it in folks! Our car was due back in Sydney at 1pm, so we awoke bright and early around 6am so that we could hit the road by 7 and hopefully make it back on time. Naturally, I was brutally tired the whole drive, as vacationing is a very tough job! I ended up having to pull over a total of 3 times, once for a solid nap and because of this we ended up not getting back into the city until after 2pm. This inevitably led to late fee on the car and proof once again that I fatigue more easily than anyone this side of Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. The previous day we had looked at the comparative cost of flying to Melbourne and taking an overnight bus. In the end, we decided to take an overnight bus as it was a bit cheaper and would give us the chance to bond (oh and not pay for a hostel for one night). While we waited for our bus to depart we just hung around in Sydney, and did what we do best, eat crappy food and surf the internet. Our bus departed at 7pm and was scheduled to arrive in Melbourne the next morning at 7am. Judging by the people waiting for the bus, I must still assume that only crazies, drunks, and poor folks (students, backpackers, welfare cases, etc) use this form of transit outside of major urban centres.

Friday, November 27, 2009- I'll Do One Koala Burger!...Or Not!

2009-12-03T04:10:00.000-05:00

The next day I woke up on the floor in my room, with puke on my sleeve and the worst hangover on my mind. I am pretty sure I was still drunk as I made my way to the shower and eventually lugged my ass to the train station. The wifey and I caught a train to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains which is a couple of hours outside of Sydney. We checked into our hostel (The Flying Fox [5.5/10]) which was full of hippies and gypsies. After some rest, we took to the town to partake in some very Australian activities such as eating Domino’s Pizza and shopping at K-Mart. I know, we are very exotic! That night while I was taking a quick stroll through town on my own around 11pm or so, I came back to the hostel to find a bunch of people out front. After asking Leeanna what was up, it was revealed that some big fat greasy pervert/thief was going up to the windows and peeping in or maybe trying to steal stuff. Good times all around.

Monday we arose bright and early as we were rip-roaring ready to go and take in all the sights of the Blue Mountains. We headed down to the shop to buy our tickets for the hop-on-hop-off trolley, only to find out that it would be raining all day and the entire region was covered in the thickest fog this side of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Regardless, we boarded the bus with all the camera-happy Asians who insisted on pissing the driver off with their questions and demands about where and what to see. It was like watching a really bad game of broken telephone. Leeanna and I ended up hiking a few trails in the rain and trying to see The Three Sisters, although it was mostly a waste of time, as none of the pictures turned out and we couldn’t see shit. After the disappointment of The Three Sisters, we headed over to Scenic World, where we took a ride on the world’s steepest train down into the rainforest. After strolling through the rainforest at the bottom and getting even wetter, we took a ride back up on a cable car that cut through all these mountains. Only problem was it was so foggy it seemed as though the cable car was taking me on a one way trip to heaven through the clouds, which I knew was in fact not true as I am clearly going to hell along with Dustin Diamond and Milli from Milli and Vanilli. Although we didn’t get to see much, I know from the overpriced postcards I saw that this area is definitely worth checking out if the weather is right.

So after we awoke from the second sleepless night in our hostel (room was too quiet/no fan, outside was noisy/train goes by the hostel and rattles the fuckin’ thing numerous times a night) we took the train back into Sydney where we had arranged to rent a car. This may seem like no biggy, except for the fact that in Australia they drive on the other side of the road and outside of the major downtowns most traffic lights are replaced by roundabouts. To combat this, the rental company charges foreign drivers an extra $5 a day (guess we suck at this opposite driving thing). With no idea what we were doing, we loaded our gear into our rented ’09 Corolla and told the GPS to take us 400km north to the coastal town of Port Macquaire. I don’t know about you, but if I’m learning to drive in a new country, nothing does it better than a 5 hour drive in the rain when you’re tired. At first, I was really scared and hit a couple of curbs, but now other than the occasional guy giving me the “fuck-off” sign in a roundabout I seem to have mastered the art of driving on the other side. I must say though that without my friend Susan (yes my GPS has a name) I would be totally up shit creek. After arriving and checking in at our hostel (Ozzie Pozzie Backpackers [8.5/10]), we did a whole lot of nothing. That night, the owners had a BBQ with all-you-can-eat sausage which I took full advantage of. It took Leeanna a little longer to warm up to the sausages, as the resident senior prankster/lounger Phil told her that some of them were koala sausages that he obtained from the local koala hospital after the koalas died. Mmmm…tastes like chicken.

Up until Wednesday, we had really seen very little in the way of wildlife outside of a few dozen very large cockroaches and a few thousand flying-fox bats. That was all about to change very soon. First things first though, in the morning we went to the mall and purchased a mobile phone, which we figured would probably be a good thing to own considering we would be doing a lot of driving over the next week with Susan and the gang. Next stop was a nature walk through this massive park in the middle of town. At first all we saw were more flying-foxes, which quite frankly just aren’t what I think of when I think of Australian wildlife. But as we made our way through some eucalyptus trees we were fortunate enough to spot two koalas lounging in the same tree. Now I know I sound flaming gay when I say this but they have to be the cutest animals ever. Right up there with porcupines in my book. We managed to keep our animal sightings rolling and saw some turtles, exotic birds, and a big lizard on our walk through the forest. Next on our action-packed agenda was to head over to the koala hospital, but not before a visit to the driving range. It was a really bizarre driving range, as you drove the balls into water, but it was a really small pond so the only club you could use/they had was a pitching wedge. The pond had a bunch of targets on it that if you hit you could win prizes like a free dinner cruise, free bowling, $50 cash, etc. Long and short, Leeanna and I hit a combined zero targets. Following our Tiger Woods like performance, we headed over to the not-for-profit koala hospital. There, they had tons of koalas from all over the area that are rescued from things like dog attacks, forest fires, car accidents, etc. I really wanted to steal one, but thought better of it once I saw how sharp their claws were. After a lengthy romantic walk along the beach that night (I’m a regular Casanova what can I say), we headed to the local cinema to take in the flick New Moon. Not nearly as good as the first movie, but then again the fact that I was watching it in a theatre that looked like it may have been the first one ever built in Australia back in the 1700’s may have contributed to my overall review.

Thursday, we back-tracked down the eastern seaboard to an area known as Port Stephens and more specifically Nelson’s Bay. We stayed in one of the more unique hostels (Melaleuca Backpackers [8/10]) I have ever had the privilege of staying in. It was very outdoorsy and reminded me of a cross between a nature retreat and the Swiss Family Robinson set. The place had a domesticated kangaroo, domesticated wild birds (oxymoron, yes I know), dogs, possums, koalas, and I’m sure tons of other critters I don’t even want to think about! That afternoon we headed over to Nelson’s Bay and took a ferry to see the dolphins. The dolphins swam with our boat for a while, amazing me and all the little kids around me watching. I tried snapping about 15 pictures, but none of them turned out. Guess that’s what happens when you use an $80 camera to try and capture high speed porpoises. After our dolphin adventure we went out for dinner at Hog’s Breath Café before returning to the “country” hostel. Leeanna had a lot of trouble sleeping that night as she is paranoid about all of the different things that go bump in the night. Needless to say she came running into the room in the middle of the night and woke me up and told me that the birds had chased her into the bathroom and then things got worse in the toilet as there were two possums waiting for her in there. I’m pretty sure I just rolled over and went right back to sleep.

Sunday, November 22, 2009- The Goon Got The Better Of Me

2009-12-02T08:28:00.003-05:00

So I arrived in Sydney, Australia, last Wednesday after almost 36 hours of travel. I left Toronto at about noon on Monday afternoon and caught a WestJet flight to Vancouver. On my flight there were several members of the B.C. Lions football team who had just defeated Hamilton in a playoff game the day before. I’m not sure if this really counts as a celebrity sighting, seeing as how I could not name any one of them and most guys on the team work another job in the offseason. Ironically, that morning my sister who works at the airport had checked in the majority of the team and complained that they were acting like asses on the plane and not sitting in their assigned seats. So even if they aren’t legit celebs, at least they know how to act like it! That night, I had about a 10 hour layover in Vancouver before my flight to Sydney. Unfortunately for me, the airport had free wireless internet and I lost over $500 playing online poker while waiting for the mothership to carry me off to space, err Australia.

My 15 hour flight to Sydney was pretty uneventful, consisting of lots of TV watching, very frequent urination (why, I don’t know) and a bit of sleeping. Upon landing on what was now Wednesday morning, I took the airport shuttle to my hostel (The Original Backpackers [7/10]) and grabbed a quick nap, although this proved difficult to do as my body was not used to the 16 hour time difference and the fact that it was +35°C. And to think that it’s only spring here! After my quick little siesta, I headed out into the city for a quick stroll around and then decided that I needed to go the casino. On my way to the casino I walked past a guy who I could’ve sworn was a former pro wrestler from the tag-team the Nasty Boys. After arrival at the very nice Star City Casino, I made my way to the poker room and deposited a couple of hundred dollars into the local economy. Note to any poker players going to Sydney: the rake is atrocious and for the most part the players, myself included are not very good. Upon my return to the hostel, I logged on to my computer and the main article on Yahoo! Australia was how Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair had gotten into a scrap at the Casino that day while promoting an upcoming event. In the picture, Hogan was being led away from the stage by the guy from the Nasty Boys I had seen earlier in the day. Super celebrity spotter Brent in full effect! That night I drank my sorrows away with a couple of dudes from Ireland and Germany and vowed to not visit a casino for a very long time, or until I get to Melbourne, whatever comes first!

Thursday morning, I had to get up bright and early to catch a ride to the airport to meet my girlfriend, Leeanna, who was coming in from Auckland, by way of Los Angeles, by way of Calgary, by way of Toronto! Somehow in the chaos that is that airport I managed to find her and corralled her back to the hostel. After we got settled in our room, we took a stroll around much of central Sydney and spent part of the afternoon around Darling Harbour trying to determine if there were more Asian or British people in this country. Either way, Australia is very much like Canada in regards to the fact that it has a massive immigrant population. Ironically, that afternoon after I had told Leeanna about my D-list celebrity sighting the day before, we walked right by the guy from the Nasty Boys along with Jimmy Hart and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake. Talk about scoring the ultimate early 90’s wrestling jackpot! That night we took it pretty easy and just chilled in the hostel courtyard with some cold beverages and chatted up these two broads from Germany who I’m almost 100% certain were the biggest lesbians this side of the Indian Ocean. And no fellas, they were not the adult film kind of lesbians, more like the schnitzel-eating kind with hairy armpits (No, I did not inspect).

Friday consisted of our visit to the world-famous Sydney Opera House. We walked there through the Royal Botanical Gardens, which is a fantastic green space right in the heart of the city. The craziest thing about the gardens was the fact that there approximately 25,000 bats living there, which could be seen everywhere in the trees. And these weren’t your standard run of the mill bats, but rather Flying Foxes which more closely resembled baby elephants in size! Needless to say the bats are killing all the trees in the park, and the government is working on a massive relocation project for the bats. The Opera House and Sydney Harbour were as expected, although one unique thing was that they had the stage set-up for Australian Idol outside the Opera House. We watched the recitals for a while, as they were preparing for the grand finale this weekend, although sadly Ben Mulroney was nowhere to be seen. Leeanna and I also checked out The Rocks, which was the first part of Sydney to be settled by the Europeans in the late 1700’s. That night, our hostel had a BBQ which was delicious and we ended up hanging out with the German Muff-Diving Team again over post-dinner drinks. That night we found a cockroach in our room that Leeanna killed on the wall and a couple more came scurrying out of the common bathroom. I was able to get one of them, but his mate scurried into someone’s room. Welcome to Australia!

Saturday was when the Brent of old came creeping back in. That day was our first official day of really not doing much of anything, which is sometimes a good thing. We took a leisurely stroll around the city during the day and just chilled with the wide assortment of Irish, German, Israeli, Canadian, Scottish, American, and everyone else under the sun that night. Early in the evening, I decided that Leeanna and I needed to get rid of all our booze as we would be leaving Sydney the next morning. We had almost a full box of goon (Australian slang for a 4L box of wine) and 12 beers. Add into the mix a few x-factors (some whiskey, it was a Saturday night/party night, McDonalds) and you arrive at the end of the night which consisted of me and another guy ditching Leeanna in a McDonalds for no good reason (I was blacked out at this point). Apparently my very pissed off girlfriend found me trying to get into the hostel a short time later, but I was too wasted to know how to use this new technology they call a “key”. In conclusion, I went to the room and puked up my McChicken combo and Leeanna got all drunk-emotional and called her Mom on the other side of the world and told her I had food poisoning and was throwing up everywhere…So that’s what they call it now, eh?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009- Vegas, Chicago, and Cubs, Oh My!

2009-11-29T21:40:00.002-05:00

So where to begin? Well first off all let me just say that I am back and my cheeseball writing will be in full effect. If you don’t like, you can go and read a novel about vampire lovin’ (or if you’re me just go and watch the movies instead. Respect to Edward Cullen, just sayin’). Now to get back on track…

I am currently writing from Sydney, Australia surrounded by beautiful oceans and koala bears galore. And by oceans and bears I of course mean German tourists and people who have a bad habit of saying “cheers” so often you would think Ted Danson was the unofficial Prime Minister of the country.

Anyways, quick back story before I go on. For the last two-and-a-half years I have documented most of my travels that take me both far and not so far (my general rule is more than five hours driving constitutes a worthy vacation blog). So I have generally spared people reading about my escapades in locales such as Niagara Falls, upstate New York, and the ever exotic Toronto! On that note though, I did get a little bit lazy and failed to write anything from my last two trips. So before I start typing in Australian (slight variation of English), you will be forced to read about some of the other shit I did, but was just too lazy to type this summer. So, in brief…

Back in July, LappDance and I went on my second trip of the year to lovely Las Vegas to catch UFC 100 and the UFC Fan Expo. All in all nothing too crazy happened by Vegas standards. Lapp kept getting hit on by women that were all hookers, but it usually took him the better part of an hour to figure this out, but such is life when you’re looking for love in the Hooters Hotel and Casino. On the gambling front, I clocked a nice win of close to a thousand dollars the first afternoon playing poker at Bellagio, but by the end of the weekend had given most of it back through poor decisions, usually involving lots of booze. As far as UFC was concerned, well anyone who watched the event can tell you it was awesome (see: best ever!). Lesnar and GSP both kicked ass, so my life was relatively complete. After the event on the Saturday night, I immediately waited for Ryan to fall asleep (we had a tough one the night before getting killed by everyone and their brother at the beer pong tables at Excalibur) and then promptly went over to MGM Grand to play some poker. I stayed awake all night thanks to various Red Bull concoctions and went to the airport the next morning drunk as a skunk and wired off my face. And as if the doctor told me last week I drink too much and it causes liver damage. What an uneducated idiot!

In August, my girlfriend, another couple and I went to Chicago for five nights of pure tourist attractions. I can’t really remember what happened and what we did and when, so I will just list random things and give them a ranking on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being totally crap, like the kind of thing you do with someone you don’t want to ever talk to you again; and a 10 being super awesome, almost akin to the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. Far-fetched, yes, but not totally unattainable, just unattainable anytime soon. So in no particular order:

1) Eat a deep dish pizza (6/10). Tons of places all over the city to do this and it really is an almost uniquely Chicago experience. Only problem is the famous places are all packed, and all the cheese on the pizza gave me exploding diarrhea.
2) Tour of Wrigley Field (7/10). The Cubs weren’t in town that weekend, so we had to settle for the tour. A great stadium with a lot of history (I still liked Fenway more), but it was a bit pricey and I just don’t like National League baseball teams.
3) White Sox vs. Yankees at U.S. Cellular Field (8/10). Great newer stadium with a good atmosphere, something that has been lacking in Toronto for the last 15 years. The fact that the peanuts were delicious and I was able to purchase a foam White Sox finger made it all the more enjoyable.
4) Architecture Cruise (7/10). One of the things that everyone who goes to Chicago inevitably does is take a cruise through the rivers that run through the city on one of the many tour operators. Very interesting and full of great sights to see, but it was a bit repetitive and any boat without a pirate show and/or burlesque act must by law receive no higher than a 7/10 on the Brentski® ranking scheme.
5) Lincoln Park Zoo (5/10). This place was way out of the way and well it does get props for having free admission, it was far from a world-class zoo. Leeanna was less than impressed with me that day, as I recall I made her walk over 14km that day, mostly to and from the zoo. Oh, and then I made her walk the ENTIRE zoo circuit and see every single animal, obscure mountain goats and all.
6) Get harassed by homeless men (9.5/10). By far the most memorable part of the trip was some of the funny encounters we had with homeless people. One guy summed up best when he chased me and Leeanna down a side street late at night and said “Yo, slow down! Why do all white people think we’re going to murder them!?” Needless to say I was quite frightened, but keeping true to my spirit I did not give him cash, but did cave a little bit and gave him a can of beer. Another favourite move of the homeless folks of Chicago is to play the role of the “homeless black war hero”. Sure seems to be a lot of vets living on Michigan Avenue. Now, if they actually are all vets, I deserve to rot in hell.
7) Buy $5 bottles of wine from 7-Eleven and drink in the hotel room. (8.5/10). I mean who doesn’t love doing this on vacation? Cheap wine and TBS movies = Jackpot!!!

Now, enough living in the past, up next Australia bitches!

Chapter 1- If You Were 1/16th Native You'd Understand!

2009-05-29T18:30:00.001-04:00

This strange little planet we call Earth that we all inhabit is full of peculiar people full of different ideas and opinions. We also tend to have ‘rites of passage’ if you will, that we all seem ready and eager to conform to. Inherently these tend to be either motivated or set into motion by our race or religious background. There are many cases of this in North American society, for example, for a young Jewish person it might be their Bar or Bat Mitzvah; for a young North American Italian it may be the first time they are introduced formally to a relative who is associated with organized crime; a young African-American might feel like a man the first time he slam dunks over top of the rich white kids from the suburban prep school; and for a Portuguese teen, it may be that first day on the construction job where he will work for the rest of his life.

Myself on the other hand, well I was born a pretty much normal, boring suburban white kid. Therefore, I have only one rite of passage, and it involves drinking copious amounts of booze and ending up in a police car. My background is such that I cannot trace my roots back on either side of my family outside of the great country of Canada. Now, I know what you are thinking, “That’s impossible”! Well let me tell you that you are in fact wrong Bruce (I have a thing about calling people generic names like Bruce, Doug, and Dikembe. And for this I apologize). As great is sounds, the whole being one hundred and ten percent Canadian is not all it’s cracked up to be. I mean I have never in my life been able to cheer for a country in the World Cup of Soccer. Do you have any idea how agonizing this is? So my first twenty-five years of life have therefore been spent rooting for whoever was playing against Portugal, Italy, or Brazil. Such is my pathetic life.

Despite this entire lack-of-family lineage, I have discovered a few things over the years. First and foremost I have a French last name, so there is some French in me. According to my grandparents we also have some Native blood in the Moreau clan. Natives are generally associated with a few things in this country: living on reserves, not paying taxes, huffing gas, and generally getting drunk as fuck. Unfortunately for me, I am still forced to pay taxes and am not eligible to live on a reserve. This leaves me only two options, huffing gas and consuming so much alcohol that I piss myself (another story for another time). I’ve never really liked huffing gas all that much, as I found it made me kind of woozy and I kept hallucinating that I was seeing the characters from that PBS show Today’s Special. Mostly it was that mannequin that was supposedly a security guard and that talking rat named Muffy. Really I mean what kind of dignified talking rat puppet would let someone name them Muffy. Anyways, getting back to the point here, I suffer from a problem that many people of the Squaw (I think this is a pretty racist Indian word, not too sure on that one) background suffer from. What is this you ask? Well to put it bluntly, I get so retardedly drunk that the stupidest shit imaginable happens to me.

So there you have it. I’m a putz. Admittedly, people have used harsher words to describe me, but we’re going to stick with that one. It just sounds so smooth coming out of the mouth, putz... putz... putz...putz...putz!

This is just the beginning though, as ahead I will attempt to rehash some of the more ridiculous moments that have occurred in my life over the last seven years or so.

Farting On a Double-Decker Bus Is Straight Ignorant- Las Vegas- March, 2009...Part 2/2

2009-04-03T16:39:00.003-04:00

(Pictured: The craziness that is Fremont Street...on a Wednesday night!)

Wednesday morning, or should I say about lunch time, we arose just in time to make it down to everybody’s favourite restaurant named after a former Miami Dolphin/winner of best actor EVER for his role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Dan Marino’s. Only the finest cuisine at Hooters Hotel and Casino! After breakfast, we managed to saunter on over to the Luxor Hotel to check out the Titanic exhibit. I was a little sceptical at first about paying $30 each to see some artefacts from the ship (not like I had choice, women rule the world) but it ended up being pretty awesome. In addition to the hundreds of artefacts recovered from the ship, they also had re-creations of various parts of the ship that you walked through, including the third class area (steerage, as Leo called it in the movie), grand stairway, and other areas. The tour also had the largest piece of the Titanic ever removed from the ocean, that I would have to estimate was about the same size as that world’s fattest man I see every night on Discovery Channel in the same stupid one-hour special. Lou and I killed of the rest of the afternoon just browsing and gambling our way through Luxor, Excalibur, and Mandalay Bay. We attempted to go the Shark Reef exhibit at Mandalay, but the line-ups of little kids and people like me who don’t seem to grow up seemed to stretch forever! We finally met up with Mr. Clean and Drunko around dinner time and swiftly made our way over to the bus stop to catch “the Deuce”, which is the bus that takes you to Fremont Street/ the old part of Vegas. The bus was a double-decker packed to the point where it was standing room only on both levels. My brother Drunko saw this as the perfect opportunity to let the dirtiest of dirty farts go. I’m pretty sure everyone around was either dead or near death, and the guy behind me who looked and acted like Soulja Boy was recording the whole thing. Slightly ridiculous, yes I know. Once we disembarked from the now foul smelling bus, we took in all Fremont Street has to offer. In the last few years, there has been a major revitalization of the area, and the entire street is now covered with a canopy that is actually a giant screen, where they play light shows every hour on the hour at night. I know it sounds bizarre, but it is something that you would have to see to believe. Aside from the light show, I bought some of the nastiest food you could ever imagine in the form on deep-fired Oreo’s and deep-fried Twinkie’s from Mermaid’s Casino. Delicious! That night, Mr. Clean also made his best investment of the trip, when he bought a “grow-a-girlfriend”. While, Clean and Drunko went off with Lou for a bit (I later learned they all tried to go the strip club, but cover was too much) I had the opportunity to take in the Poker Hall of Fame at Binion’s. Yes, I do love poker that much, and I am a nerd. After I hooked back up with Mr. C and LouLou, we went and pissed away about $100 playing the “big wheel” at the Four Queens for a couple of hours. We failed to find Drunko (somehow got lost), and eventually the three of us just went back to our hotel for the night, but not before Clean tried to climb a palm tree at the bus stop in front of like 30 people and severely scraped his legs and both of his arms. Ahhh, the power of alcohol and all its wisdom!

The next day, I made my way down to the Sports Book in the morning, in hopes of duplicating my success in betting on college basketball from a year earlier. It was not meant to be, and I ended up going 0 for 4 on my sports bets. Next, I made my way back to Bellagio, this time with enough money to buy into the 15/30 Limit Hold’Em game they were spreading. At one point within being there only a couple of hours, I was up over $700, but promptly took some bad beats and ended up leaving ahead like $8. After my not so profitable gambling experience I headed back to meet up with the Mrs. Drunko wanted to know if we wanted to pre-drink before dinner (this was at 4pm). I told him that he might need to find some new hobbies and that Lou and I were heading out for dinner at Planet Hollywood. On that note, we caught the bus over to Caesar’s for a romantic $100 dinner at Planet Hollywood, which was beautifully accented by the movie props and cardboard cut-outs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. That night, Mr. Clean and Drunko went to the hypnosis show that Lou and I had already seen. Later on, we all met up with the intention of going to Dixie’s Dam Bar, which was the new bar they had opened up inside of Hooters. The only trick was that my brother and Mr. Clean had to go ahead of us, as Jr. was using my ID, and I thought it might be a little suspicious if two Brent Moreau’s show up at the exact same time. So after giving our two padres a head start, Leeanna and I made our way down, only to discover that the place was dead. We could see in through the frosted glass, and decided against paying the $10 cover to join Mr. Clean and Drunko at SausageFest ’09. Unfortunately, we could not get a hold of the other two, so we just ventured out on our own to Diablo’s Cantina for some brews. While we were out on the strip, we happened to see the same homeless guy we had seen the night before on the other side of the city. He was easily recognisable due to his scruffy attire but near-new Nike sneakers. For some bizarre reason I just found this to be the greatest thing ever! Our next and last stop before heading back to the hotel was at the 24-hour Subway to indulge in my new favourite snack, a Spicy Italian sub. Make sure you get it with Italian bread, white cheese, onions, parmesan cheese, and chipotle sauce. It’s to die for, and I recommend at least one day as a part of a balanced diet. All this eating clearly tired out the ole GF, but I was born to live so I decided to stay up until after 4am playing blackjack in the casino.

Friday was home time and was pretty uneventful. We went for one last breakfast at Mr. Marino’s where we met up with Mr. Clean who had just returned from the Gun Store. I played a little bit more blackjack, and then it was off to the airport to catch our flight home.....and play some slots! You gotta love how McCarron Airport has slot machines all over it. Only in Vegas baby! Anyways, we got back to Buffalo after midnight, and rolled into the booming suburb of Bradford at around 4am Saturday morning.

On that note, another journey successfully completed. So long, amigos and would someone tell summer to hurry up and get here!

Don't Get Hypnotized, Or You'll Look Like An Ass - Las Vegas - March, 2009...Part 1/2

2009-03-30T17:19:00.002-04:00

(Pictured: Me and the other two dudes, living large with our gold medals and clown noses.)

So, it’s been a while since my last travels, as I’ve been in trade school, and it will probably be a while until I get to travel again, as I am so broke it’s ridonculous! On that note, I decided to take another pilgrimage to my Mecca, Las Vegas! This time though (unlike the last couple times I went)it was more about good times and less about gambling my life away, as I would be joined my girlfriend Lou, my friend Mr. Clean, and my constantly drunk/why aren’t you guys getting drunk brother, Drunko.

Originally, Lou and I were scheduled to travel on stand-by out of Toronto on March 22, but due to the fact that all of the flights were full, we took the plunge and paid full price to fly out of Buffalo. On that note, I arose Sunday morning with a dastardly hangover (my birthday/a country bar/lots of shots/Garth Brooks/Russian cab driver) but was a man on a mission to get on that plane. We made it down to America’s armpit, errr Buffalo a bit early, so we grabbed some grub at the Anchor Bar (albeit not the original one, the one in the airport). For those of you who are not grease-connoisseurs like myself, they are the inventors of the buffalo chicken wings which kind of makes them a big deal. Due to sandstorms in the deserts surrounding Las Vegas, our flight was delayed for a couple hours. I found this to be the perfect opportunity to catch up on all my celebrity gossip thanks to the fine people at Star magazine. That Jennifer Aniston, what a bitch! Fast forward a few hours, and we arrived in Las Vegas about 9pm and cabbed it over to the classiest hotel of classy hotels, The Hooters Hotel and Casino. Believe me, for under $40 a night it was well worth it! Later that night we tried to get into the restaurant in our hotel, Dan Marino’s (yes, that Dan Marino), for some 25 cent chicken wings between the hours of 12am and 6am but the line-up was too long. So we did the next best thing and went to the 24 hour Wendy’s, bought some booze from the souvenir shop, and called it a night!

Monday morning, we had to move rooms as we had booked Sunday night on a different reservation than the rest of our nights. I`m sure that this probably did not make the wife happy, as she now had to go from having her own queen bed to sharing a bed with hairy legs (could be worse, could be excessive Sasquatch back hair). After that, we headed over to the legendary/very old/ghetto Tropicana for their Island Buffet. We spent most of the afternoon wandering the strip, and stopped in at the Planet Hollywood Casino (used to be Aladdin, got renamed/bought out, just like Hooters did with the San Remo) for some blackjack lessons for Miss LouLou from yours truly. After we made it back to Hooters, I played a little bit of 1-2 No-Limit Poker, which is the only poker game they spread there other than their daily tournaments. To call it a poker room would be a vast over statement. They have two tables tucked away in the corner. I lost a bit of coin but nothing to write home about. That night we had bought tickets to go and check out the show Dirty Hypnosis: Unleashed at Krave/Planet Hollywood. It was what it sounds like, a dirty hypnosis show. Lou was one of the unfortunate people who volunteered to get hypnotized for over an hour, and believe me it worked. Without getting too graphic, let’s just say some of the HILARIOUS stuff the guy had her do included smoking invisible weed, thinking her breasts were growing about 6 feet off her body, making her think she had a male appendage, and my personal favourite, where he gave everyone on stage a balloon and told them it was a sex toy and to describe it (let’s just say the words “fourteen” and “inches” came into her description. I’ll leave it at that. Awesome show though and highly recommend it. Fuck the Blue Man Group and Elton John. After the madame kind of snapped back into it, we went back to our hotel and met up with Mr. Clean who had just gotten in on his flight from Toronto that night. We did a little in room drinking, went and played some blackjack, and then decided to try Dan Marino’s again for the wings. We did get in for the wings, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure they were the reject wings that Hooters scraps during the day. Terrible.

That morning a mere 4 hours after I went to bed, I hear a loud knocking on my door at 7am, and low and behold it’s Captain Clean, all rip-roaring ready to go for the day. I told him to fuck off and not to bother me until after lunch. I ended up getting up a couple hours later, and went over to the Bellagio on my own to hopefully play some 15/30 Limit Poker. Unfortunately, my bank card was acting like a dick-head, and would not work, so I was forced again to play some 1-2 No-Limit. I took a small win, but again, nothing crazy. I promptly made it back to Hooters a bit after lunch time, and low and behold my brother Drunko had showed up from Toronto, just waiting for me to give him my extra ID (he’s 19, I’m 25. I can grow facial hair, he can’t). All four of us decided to head over to New York New York, and ride the roller coaster. We bought a family pass for $56. Yes, that’s right, for four of us to ride a roller coaster once it cost about $70 Canadian! When in Vegas. We followed that up with a solid session in the children’s arcade where we won cheesy gold medals and clown noses for all (Thanks Clean)! At 6:30pm we had tickets to see the live show “The Mentalist”. It was pretty cool, and was basically a mind reading-magic-illusion show. I can’t figure out how they do that shit for the life of me, but then again I guess that’s supposed to be the point. For more info, just google “Mentalist” or “Gerry McCambridge”. The guy had his own CBS special and stuff like that. Next up on my agenda for the young night was to play in the Hooters nightly poker tournament. Long story short, there ended up only being 9 players and it was winner take all. I made it to the final two with the chip lead (about 60% to 40%) and we decided to split the money as I was absolutely shittered (see: drunk on free beers) at this point. I took $300 the other dude took $200 and I promptly went over to the Hooters restaurant to meet up with Mr. Clean and Lou and drank some more. I’m sloppy, I know.