A Draw – All Whites Best Ever World Cup Result

I have to confess I am not much of a sports nut (except for motorsport), for the most part I am very much a fair weather supporter and only care or watch a particular sport if NZ is doing particularly well.

The current NZ team that is doing very well is the Football/Soccer team, The All Whites. This is the first time in 28 years they are playing at a World Cup, and last night they earned their first ever point at a tournament with a draw against Slovakia.

To watch the match I went down to the office FIFA Fan Fest site at Darling Harbour, to join with ~2,500 fellow supporters to watch the match. The balance of NZ Supporters to Slovak supporters was probably 10:1, however, the Slovaks know how to chant and cheer on their team while the NZ supporters are passionately quiet.

That was until the 93rd minute of the game when NZ scored and leveled the game 1-1. Personally I have never screamed so hard in my life and my ears are still ringing even now from the amount of noise that was generated as a result of celebrations of the goal. The last few seconds of the game following the goal were not heard as the NZ supporters continued to scream, yell and dance while the Slovak supporters who had been so vocal all game when quiet.

It was a lot of fun to be around people so passionate and it is a pitty that NZ never seems to put on public gatherings like this to support its teams, instead people are confined to their couches at home watching Sky, or at the local pub.

Vivid Sydney

Last night on the way to watch the All Whites game at Darling Harbour I detoured through the Opera House to see the sails of the building be lit up as part of the Vivid Sydney festival of light.

The different patterns and shapes projected onto the opera house are awesome and poor photos from my cellphone simply don’t do it justice. If you are in Sydney go and check it out.

Four Days in Cairns – Tropical North Queensland

I have just spent the last four days on holiday in Cairns and the surrounding area.

During this time I saw, did, and ate:

  • Ate Crocodile, Emu, and Kangaroo
  • Ate Crocodile Curry
  • Went on the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway over the Barron Gorge to Kuranda
  • Bought Mango wine
  • Went on the Kuranda Scenic Railway back down the Barron Gorge
  • Climbed the Red and Blue Arrow Circuits behind Cairns and saw a wild Wallaby
  • Went on On The Wallaby tour into the Tablelands visiting a number of waterfalls, cycling about 15km and canoeing down a river where we saw Spiders, a Tree Kangaroo, Platypus, Turtles, and a whole lot of other cool wildlife.
  • Went hunting through a riverbed to find rocks that can be used for face painting.
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Byron Bay and Nightcap National Park – 48 hours in Paradise

It is not often I will call a weekend away Paradise, normally awesome, cool, wicked, fun, great, brilliant would suffice but in this case Paradise is the only word that can truly describe just how much fun and enjoyment I had.

I flew to the Gold Coast on Saturday night with a friend, got picked up from the airport and driven the 50km south to Byron. The best thing about Saturday night was the rain, it is still very odd to be living in a country where rain is a rare commodity and when you see it falling you smile.

Sunday was spent hiking in the Nightcap National Park. Initially we were meant to just walk a 7.5km and 4.5 hours on the Minyon Loop Track to the base of the Minyon Falls and back up. Problem was despite stopping for around 30 minutes for lunch we managed to complete the track in two hours.

Minyon Falls

Rather than waiting 2.5 hours for our transport back to Byron we decided to head up to Rummery Park Camp Ground via Boggy Creek Track. This took an hour and once we had stopped again for food and wildlife spotting we decided to head up a fire break to try and spot Cape Byron and its lighthouse.

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Getting USB Browser Mice to work in Vista

I have had this issue with a number of mice and a number of different computers now. Some older USB mice will not work when you plug them into Windows Vista. What happens is a dialog appears saying installing software and then fails saying unknown device.

The fix for this as I just found out this morning is quite simple:

  • Click on start
  • Right click on computer
  • Select properties
  • On the left side of the dialog that comes up select device manager
  • Scroll down the list of devices to the known device
  • Right click and select Update Driver Software
  • Select chose from a list of drivers
  • Select Human Interface Device
  • Select HID compliant mouse
  • Click okay and the mouse should now work

Simple. And Windows had the drivers to make it work all along! Sometimes Windows does some really simple things wrong and as a result is just so frustrating. It is a mouse it should just work!

Little bird big city

I have now been in Sydney for 11 days and every night I have planned to blog about the first few days here and every day I have been too tired or too busy. Tonight I am in the too tired camp but have decided to force myself to give an update and get over and done with it.

I arrived in Sydney two Saturdays ago at 8.30 in the morning, after leaving Auckland at 7am (which meant a 3am get up time for the flight). We arrived into Sydney at the same time as about 10 other flights which meant it was chaos trying to get our bags and get through customs. In the end it took close to an hour and a half to get out and into the rental car hire queue. The rental car I got was a 2009 Toyota Corolla and by far the smoothest and nicest car I have ever driven.

The first few days in Sydney were spent getting my new flat/apartment set up. It is amazing how much money you can spend in just getting the basics – like food, cooking equipment, and basic furniture. In between all this chaos I also managed to do a few things that got me to see a bit of my new home these included:

  • Going to Opera in the Domain with a friend who I had not seen in 9 years.
  • Going to Hillsong Church
  • Going to Penrith – driving at a speed limit of 110kmh is a new experience.

The second part of my first week here was spent sorting out things like insurance and the like. The most interesting part of this was sorting out Medicare where I had to make a signed legal declaration that I had moved from NZ for good and was living in Australia for the next few years – the guy at the office didn’t seem to believe me even though I had all my uni forms with me! Thought I was some crazy kid on holiday. I also managed to get a cellphone and internet set up. After terrible customer service from Optus I went to Vodafone who set me up with this awesome mobile broadband USB stick which is faster than my old wired broadband in NZ. Although a much smaller data cap so I have to take care about how much data I use.

My second weekend in Sydney was spent having fun in the rain as some of the heaviest rainfall in years hit the city. On Saturday I went out to Bondi Junction shopping mall. Bondi Junction is massive. Imagine the Albany Mall and times it by 2 just for the ground floor, and then make it seven stories high. There is something like 450 shops in the mall. And you know what. I walked through the entire mall and only went into 2 of them! They were nearly all clothes shops – the last thing I need when I am trying to get set up for uni on a budget. On the Sunday I decided to look through town and found this most amazing hobby store in the QVB mall called Hobbyco.

Monday and today was spent at Uni. There is nothing that exciting to report here about my course – Mostly what I was expecting with a few minor hiccups around enrolment. What is amazing though is the size of the campus. Having come from Massey Albany with only around 6000 – 7000 students it is so weird to be on campus with close to 50,000. There is a sign at the front gate that welcomes the 9,000 new first year students! Almost twice the numbers of the entire Massey Albany campus.

The one thing that I will get sick of very quickly, and already am, is having to catch the bus to campus. I have not had to use public transport in years and while the Sydney transport network is far better than Auckland – I love the underground trains, the buses remain as noisy, as crowded, as bumpy, as slow, and as annoying as ever. Given that I have no plans, or money for a car for around a year I guess it is something that I am going to get used to – I just wish there was a train to campus rather than a bus!

P.S. I may have used to complain about the humidity during summer in Auckland but it is nothing compared to heat here. Last night was 25c overnight it makes it so hard to sleep!

First Trip to Sydney (2020 Re-Edit)

Flight over was good, the plane before us was cancelled (due to the infamous 2009 Australian Dust Storm) so we ended up with a 747 to take us over because of all the people.

Despite a few bumps leaving a very stormy Auckland everything went smoothly.

And even better I have free internet in my hotel room.

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