Old Musings - November through December 2003

Kia Ora,

Thought this would be a good time to add some more photos of my other home - Christchurch.

Not sure why, but I've also added a Furry Felines section and a photo of an active volcano (well, not right at the moment) that I flew over on the way down here.

That's it.

Now get back to work people.

Gidday Mate,

It's 0800 hours. Visibility is 50+ km. Altitude 33000 feet. Bearing, well roughly East-ish.

Yup. I'm on another plane. This time its destination NZ. Unfortunately, a direct flight to Christchurch was uneconomical this time of year, so I am having to make a little detour through Auckland instead. That's not too bad - if it wasn't for the fact that I had to catch the train to Sydney at quarter to four this morning. :(

I guess this also marks the end of another working year for me. I finished it off by doing as little as possible. There were some expense forms that needed to be filled out, but I made sure that I avoided managers as much as possible to preclude the possibility of being given something at the last minute. I am glad to report that this tactic appears to have worked. :)

So, besides actively avoiding and and all work, there is not much to report from the last few days. At some stage I did go as red as a lobster (serves me right for jumping straight off a plane and strutting around town in the middle of summer without any sun tan lotion) and I did squeeze in a game of squash - but nobody really wants to hear about that.

Oh, and one last thing. Just thought you all had to know this; the can of Coke that I'm currently drinking - comes from Thailand. Not sure how or why that was significant, I just thought that it was odd that a flight between Australia and New Zealand was serving Thai Coke. Some random thoughts that crossed my mind on this subject:

• Is it cheaper to fly Coke all the way from Thailand to serve on flights to NZ rather than going down to the local supermarket?

• Is the Thai government trying to flood the international market, selling its excess Coke at below cost?

• Does Thai Coke taste better?

• Is the Coca-Cola company trying to cover something up? The ingredients are after all, listed in Thai, in the Thai script. So I know that the can contains 15 somethings of something - but for the life of me, I don't know what.

• Is Qantas trying to reduce the weight of their aircraft? This can only contains 325ml, instead of the normal 355ml in an Australian can. By my calculations, assuming that there are say 200 cans of Coke on the aircraft, the take-off weight of this Boeing 767-338ER will be 6kg lighter. This would lead me to assume that the cans were shipped, rather than air freighted to Australia - otherwise the 6kg saved on the flight to NZ would be negated by the air freight from Thailand to Australia.

• Why do I care?

Bonjour,

Another weekend, another excursion. This last weekend, my manager was nice enough to give me the Friday and Monday off, so I decided to make the most of it and go and visit Jeff and Angie again in Fredericton, New Brunswick (Canada!).

My last trip to this neck of the woods was in June, just as they were in the middle of a heat wave breaking record highs. This time however, I went in the middle of winter and was looking forward to a good amount of snow. Previous emails had indicated that snow had fallen three or four weeks earlier, so I guess I was a little disappointed not to see the white stuff piled up on the sidewalks 3 foot deep already. Instead there were just the dirty grey patches of slush left after most of the snow had finished melting.

My disappointment didn't last too long though. On Saturday night, a storm front that had recently plagued New York finally made its way up North to Canada. It started snowing. And snowing. And snowing. All up, it snowed from about 2am Sunday morning through to dinner time, leaving a good 9 inches of the white powder to play in. Of course I made the most of the opportunity by making a small little fort - doesn't everyone?

I thought this was great stuff. Well, right up until Monday morning when I found out that my flight home was cancelled. Apparently planes don't like taking off or landing on tarmacs which have a nice layer of ice on them. Not to worry. A quick call on the phone, and I was booked on the first flight out on Tuesday. (6am - ugh). It didn't snow for the rest of my stay - and I think that the temperature may have actually climbed enough for the snow to melt slightly (it was -11 degrees Celsius, 14 Fahrenheit for most of the weekend till then), so by the time the flight left the next morning the runway was perfectly clear.

I finally arrived back in Dallas around lunchtime. Only 5 hours late for work - but who's counting? ;-)

Thanksgiving is over, so let's roll out the Christmas decorations!

It is amazing how quickly the people around here switched from one holiday to the next - just look at some of the houses that were decorated over the weekend.

Gobble, gobble, gobble!

Not exactly the safest words to say this time of year. The Americans over here are frying up turkeys like there's no tomorrow. Yes, people, today is Thanksgivings day. Although I can't really say why they are giving thanks, I am all too happy to have today and tomorrow off, resulting in a nice little four day weekend.

So, plenty of time to finally get an update out with plenty of photos.

And here it is...
First up, the Texas Stampede Rodeo.

I popped in on the last day it was on. They had the finals for each of the events. Stuff like bull-riding, bucking horse and calf roping were the order of the day.

To top things off, a Sheryl Crowe concert to conclude.

Cool.

OK, second up - trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. City bright lights, wedding chapels and the odd casino or two. And yes, unfortunately I have to report that I too caught the gambling bug. By the time I had left, I had lost more that I care to admit - USD $2.45. I know I have a problem, but I'm working on it.

All up, LV is a rather intriguing place. No matter where you look there are bright flashing lights, billboards advertising the latest shows (Seinfeld, Penn & Teller, Celine Dion, Lord of the Dance etc, etc..) and places offering the 'loosest slots in town'.
While in the neighbourhood, why not drop in and see one of the natural wonders of the world - the Grand Canyon? Sure, why not. And while I'm at it, why not go check out one of the modern wonders of the the world - Hoover Dam.

(Off topic - but boy was I peeved to find out once I got home that I dust on the camera's sensor. This resulted in a number of big blobs in the sky for most of my photos. Luckily these are digital shots, and it isn't too hard to edit them out, but none-the-less still very annoying!)
Finally, if you still want some more photos, I've places some miscellaneous shots in the 'United States' section.

Last month's blurb has now been filed away here.