A photoblog and other things

Well, this is sort of weird. I’ve actually got to the point where I have now booked my flights to both the consulate in Melbourne for my visa and for the actual trip to the US. The visa interview is on the 27th July and the day I fly out is the 30th July. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for all the stuff I want to get done, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve organised transport of my guitar, amp, computer and extra clothes via air freight to the US but I still have to organise a place to live as well as a rental car. Most of this is handled by other people though, so it should be ok.

Check this out though – when I was looking at the distance between Fort Lauderdale (where I will be landing) and Plantation (where I will be working), I saw something that was a little too close to home. This was from a mapquest map search:



Did you see it? Down near the bottom – Riverland! That’s the same name of the area where I grew up in South Australia. Weird.

I’ve added all the (sort of) non-incriminating pics from my farewell to my webshots account, which you can find here. Yeah, I felt compelled to write comments for each photograph, and I really was running out of ideas.

Holy crap I had a great time at my farewell party last night! Thanks to all of you who came along (you know who you are!) One of my mates got some pics from the night so when I get access to them I’ll post some of them. My rollerskating party farewell was held at the St Clair recreation centre in Woodville – which turned out to be an awesome venue. Parking turned out to be a bit difficult because 500 or so nerds were also having a LAN party in another part of the building. Actually, calling them nerds is a bit tongue-in-cheek really because since I’m an engineer/programmer of sorts you could probably technically claim that I am a nerd as well. Ahh well. Put it this way though – I’d prefer to fall on my arse ten times more than I did at rollerskating last night than go to something like that. The whole LAN party thing just doesn’t appeal to me.

Getting back to the rollerskating farewell. The theme of the night was late 80s/early 90s which was about the time I went rollerskating when I was living in Loxton. A few people got dressed up for the event, but I didn’t expect many people would since we were heading into town afterwards. I think I benefited from having another change of clothes because for the two hours of skating that I had scheduled I went hard the whole time, which showed up as gross sweat patches. Apologies peeps. I think I fell down over 10 times, partly because I couldn’t see what I was doing with the Whoopi Goldberg-like hair piece I had on, mostly because I ain’t the best skater. My right hand is absolutely killing me today, but, I’ll consider all of it as practice for Florida 🙂

So, with the theme I had to have some appropriate music. Here is what was played:

Aerosmith + Run DMC – Walk this way

MC Hammer – You can’t touch this

N-trance – Stayin’ alive ’95

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Give it away

De La Soul – Ring Ring Ring

Boogie Pimps – Sunny

Madonna – Material Girl

En Vogue – My Lovin’

Roxette – Dangerous

2 Unlimited – Tribal Dance

Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby

Michael Jackson – Beat it

Jon Bon Jovi – Living on a prayer

Belinda Carlisle – Leave a light on

Crystal Waters – 100% pure love

Deee Lite – Groove is in the heart

Dimples D – Sucker DJ

EMF – Unbelievable

C+C Music Factory – Gonna make you sweat

Heavy D – Now that we found love

Huey Lewis and the news – Hip to be square

Janet Jackson – Black Cat

The KLF – Last train to trancentral

Will Smith – Miami

PM Dawn – Movin’ on up

Salt ‘n’ Pepa – Push it

Stevie Wonder – Superstition

Technotronic – Everybody dance now

Van Halen – Jump

Ab Logic – The Hitman

Eurythmics – When tomorrow comes

Ok! That’s a bloody long list. Some songs I forgot to include were:

Survivor – Eye of the tiger

East 17 – House of love

The A-team theme song

Maybe I can include them in a 3-hour long rollerskating session?

After the rollerskating session I got changed out of my skanky clothes and headed to the Botanic (I just love that place!!!). I had a wicked night and I hope everyone who came along enjoyed themselves!

Check ya.

It seems that yet again my application for an L-1 Visa has been delayed. I got my application package back just after lunch today with a big fat yellow Visa rejection slip on the front. The application was rejected because they could not fit me in for an interview before I was due to leave – I think I’m about to set a record for my company in that I’ll have the longest Visa application time ever! My interview has been scheduled for the end of July now, which bites even more considering the interview is supposed to take all of a minute. Eh, I guess I should be happy enough that I will eventually get there.

In the previous post I was musing on how I was going to get everything done in time. Well, now I have more time to see people before I leave, but when things start happening Visa-wise I think that’s always going to be a rush.

I think I’ll just go watch SpiderMan 2 (Lego version) again.