I’ve also been going through our wardrobes and realised that we may have too many clothes. Hilarious considering we left Perth with a backpack each, but not surprising considering I’ve been home for a refill and my lovely family sent us an awesome care package I think we have over 10 pairs of jeans between us – which is proving difficult to fit into the little box that we call a room. Doesn’t help that our jobs require business dress that has all be purchased in the last few months!

Exciting news is that we are both looking at offers that include sponsorship! Hello another 3 years in London with the possibility to extend! I’m excited about the prospect of not returning to Australia and he is over the moon about it. Of course this means the chance to find better accommodation which will hopefully solve the storage issue. And hopefully a better oven… I do need a few tools to rock out at this position!

I must admit that it seems an extreme case but who hasn’t had their own parent/s or a friends try to friend them through facebook with comments like “this is a good way for us to keep in touch” or “i am your mother”. Like the reason that you gave birth to someone means that they should ‘friend’ you – in fact I think most people would want exactly the opposite.

Like it or not older generation, facebook is used by your daughters and sons to share their social lives with friends. How often do your offspring show you photos taken of them at parties (often drunk or under the influence of other substances, missing items of clothing or in odd poses, sometimes a combination…) or tell you about their latest hookups, relationship stories or breakups? Are you really that desperate to know their latest record in bejeweled or what they are doing on mafia wars?

Now consider the fact that your beloved child cannot control what their other ‘friends’ post and that basically you are asking for a full view of their online social life. Is it a surprise that your child refuses to ‘friend’ you? Have you been told that ‘oh i don’t use that anymore…’ or ‘weird, i haven’t gotten the request’? I know people who have left facebook rather than friend their parents. So congratulations Mum/Dad on making your child give up a part of their lives rather than let you in. Maybe you need to take a look at yourself and realise, ‘hey I don’t/didn’t particularly enjoy sharing every part of myself with my own parents… maybe I should give my child some privacy’.

I’m one of the lucky ones who’s parents wouldn’t try to join Facebook and that if they did wouldn’t be upset over my refusal to friend them. I do have a sister who wanted to know why she can only see my ‘limited’ profile. I had no qualms about telling her it’s because I use facebook for things that I don’t want her to be part of. But I’m still amused at when I come across another article about why children on facebook won’t friend their parents – the stats on people leaving while older members sign up speak for themselves!

A few weeks ago I was having a bad run of luck with jewelery. First my chain broke – I noticed straight away and carefully tucked the pendant into my wallet. Next I thought I’d lost my ring…

I was also having a really long week at work and it looked like I couldn’t go to Greece. There were a few issues with the place we were living and basically I was feeling tired and grumpy. Roll on the friday night.

The gorgeous boyfriend had spent all day preparing to make sure I had a great weekend. There were drinks, snacks, a lovely dinner and cupcakes. He had snuck down to the shops and bought me a new chain for my pendant. While shopping he picked up some very sexy red wine coloured silky short shorts and a matching black tee. He also picked up some other fun items I’ll spare everyone the details…

We didn’t really leave the house all weekend but I walked into work on Monday looking a lot more relaxed. He managed to top it all off sometime the next week when he found the ring I though I had lost forever. Isn’t he fantastic?

The company in charge of my current contract is so impressed with my work that they have asked to extend it. I’ve also taken on some software development, interface design, software testing and report design work – everything is fun and exciting because it’s new and I get to learn something every day. I actually got to sign off on the first piece of documentation yesterday, and they loved it!

There have also been significant developments with the gorgeous boyfriend. It’s like he has turned over a new leaf! He has found a full time position that values him and he comes home from work full of discussions and enthusiasm. It’s with his favourite company and they are keen to let him work his way up. They upped him from a weekender to a full timer before he had even finished training!

Of course he is still looking for development/design work (and has a number of interesting offers in the works) and if everything keeps going well we will be in a position to do something we’ve been wanting to do for a while now – start putting together a house deposit!

Our relationship couldn’t be described as anything short of fantastic recently. He has found so much drive and energy and it feels so good to see him so motivated. He has really taken control of his life and is now making sure that he is going to be happy. It’s like we are in the ‘new couple’ phase all over again

Of course October brings another benefit for us. We no longer need separate VISAs – if one person can get a decent VISA then the other is eligible for a spousal VISA!

With the possibility of both our jobs leading to California we are more excited than kids at a birthday party!

Basically we are going to work here for as long as the UK lets us – be that in London, or Essex or wherever  (I say Essex because I nearly accepted a job there). The aim of this is to save cash – so not a lot of holidaying (although we will fit in as much as we can I’m sure) and a fairly mediocre place to crash. Eventually we should have a lovely little stash between us that will go directly to a house deposit. Shuddering at the idea of Perth (yawn!) we will be tossing up between Melbourne and Brisbane – if anyone has any cool ideas about this I’d love to hear them, so drop me a line.

The advantages of this plan are quite numerous, and yes, the goregous boyfriend prefers the idea of Damien growning up with an Aussie accent, rather than ‘a snobby or crass pomme’ one – his words, not mine.

Of course it’s all off if one of us manages to land a job in his version of working Mecca – Cupertino! Then we will be rushing to do whatever it takes such that both of us can chill out in the sun, with all the tech advantages from a company he adores. I’m a happy camper; I love the sun!

After booking not one, but three journeys we decided to trawl the net and see what other people thought. Imagine my horror (and amusement) when I found a post from Jonny Orr. I read it, almost doubling with laughter, from the floor because I couldn’t stand, to Justin who was quietly freaking out.

Never one to pull out, we arrived at the Prague bus station ready to ride to Munich. Surprisingly it was fairly good; the bus wasn’t crowded, the driver spoke a tiny bit of English and we had a fairly good nap, arriving on time in Munich. After that we felt a lot better, that is, until we tried to go from Munich to Amsterdam.

So we arrive at the station and the ‘bus’ is actually a tiny minivan. The driver manages to convey that we will be swapping to a large bus at some point in the future. We all pile on, and luckily the luggage just fits. Then we start driving… didn’t take the gorgeous boyfriend long to start being his ‘gorgeous’ self. “She is stealing us” he proclaims loudly from the back. As other passengers start to giggle, I get him to promise that he wouldn’t start his favourite game of ‘nationality sterotyping’ – the one that got us some very dirty looks on the EuroStar to Paris.

Sure enough, not 15min go by before he announces “Looks like we are all going to Dachau.” All it took was a glare and a firm “hush” for him to say “what? it’s like I named a concentration camp or something…” When I confirmed that, yes, Dachau was a concentration camp, he did manage to button his lips and get a decent nap in.

So we finally got dropped to a bigger bus in the middle of nowhere. The driver did not speak a word of English but we didn’t mind, happily got on board and then started driving towards Amsterdam. It wasn’t until we arrived in Frankfurt at midnight that we realised we needed to change buses.  Worse still, the driver had our transfer ticket, but because we printed it on the same page, he was refusing to give it to us!

I tried to negotiate using some pathetic German and then luckily a young English guy who spoke almost fluent German stepped in. After arguing for a long time he still refused to give us the other half of the page. Just as he was leaving (and we were panicking about being stuck in Frankfurt), he rudely tears mine in half and gives me my ticket. Would he give the gorgeous boyfriend his? Absolutely NOT!

In spite of this we did make it on the bus to Amsterdam. The bus itself was badly overcrowded but it was an OK journey to the station. The worst was, of course, yet to come; Amsterdam to Luxembourg.

We started out thinking this was the best journey yet. We had the backseat to ourselves, the bus only had a few other people, it was the cheapest ticket (at 11 euros) and after watching a couple of episodes of Two Pints while drinking Diet Coke and eating chippies I thought this might be ‘the’ way to travel. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!!!!! Enter Drunk Man. Who walks the entire length of the bus, passing numerous empty seats. Who walks straight up to me and starts speaking in rapid Flemish. Who is spraying spittle while he talks. Gesticulating at my bags on the sea. That’s right, he wants to sit with us…

So I reluctantly move my bags across, allowing him to sit in the middle seat, between me and the gorgeous boyfriend who is sleeping. Justin proceeds to wake up and ask the guy, then mime to the guy, that he would prefer to sit next to me, giving the man access to the back corner. Little did we realise this is exactly what he wanted. Out comes the 2L of coke, the travelling mug and an entire bottle of mysterious, strong smelling alcohol. It just got worse from there. He managed to drink more than half the bottle in about 30 min. Then he started talking to us in Flemish. Then he got angry that we wouldn’t talk with him. Drunk, smelly and rude is a nicer description than he deserves.

I’ll spare you the details of the next hour, suffice to say that we were very glad to get off the bus in Luxembourg. This experience is up there with the night we had snoring man and angry man, and the night some random horny *naked* guy decided to try and jump in my bed.

More travelling adventures later

I decided to finally replace a little piece of technology that he holds firmly close to his heart – the Nintendo Wii. After selling his Aus Wii because we moved here, he will finally get to play his way to Mario Kart Champion. Of course I couldn’t resist to get Wii Fit back – who doesn’t love that Step class? It’s very addictive!

Hopefully this will take his mind off his poor little iPhone that is being posted back to my Mum to get fixed. Yes, sad but true, the iPhone is a sad Apple that needs to go to the doctors. Never fear, we are coping with sharing a mob for the mean time and hopefully his little buddy will be back in his hands soon.

In other news, the castle is finally built and everyone (but the boyfriend and I of course) are moving on in. Pics will come later for those who are amused at the idea; or you could just drive by for a laugh. Surprisingly it doesn’t look too shabby, so hopefully it doesn’t become a recognisable icon of the area!

I’ve recently moved into ‘da bush’ and while at the local park on the weekend was amused to see the locals getting their gear off to catch some rays while I sat quite comfortably in jeans. It appears that the sun shines so rarely here that it is worth sitting in the park in a bikini all day just to get a few miserable glimpses of the sun. 

Of course returning to the gloom of London has other advantages. We have a place to stay which includes the benefits of our own bedroom and bathroom, even if it is little more than a box. And… I’ve joined the local library!!! Yay, more books for me!

For those who have been waiting for photos – I have finally finished sorting the metric tonne of images and I’m slowly migrating a few good ones to facebook. If you don’t like the online stalking feel then you should drop me an email.

Organising a return trip to WA from Meribel through my insurance company was a literal nightmare. Suffice to say, they weren’t happy when I asked to travel 5 days after surgery. After jumping through numerous hoops I did however manage to get back to the little ski village that I called home for a season. Even managed to catch up with Tye and get a good tobogganing session in!

After rather clumsily exiting the season (more details on that at a later date), we decided that 4 months of the French were not enough and returned! Only this time it was Paris which I consider a lot easier for the English speaker. A couple of amazing days at disneyland really helped set the tone for what has been (so far) an incredible journey across Europe and America.

The gorgeous boyfriend (same status atm ) has sadly missed what I consider some essential *childhood* moments. I say childhood because I’m pretty sure that’s the age group Disney was targeting. The best moment had to be his face after getting off our first trip on Space Mountain II. If you have met him, imagine he has just managed to drink about 1.5L of good beer, eat an amazing dinner and then you just told him that he can go buy that Mini. He looked stunned while also being incredibly excited – cutest expression ever. The cuteness factor was amplified by his behavior after the Tower of Terror…

Sadly we did have to leave the magical kingdom and return to a more ‘traditional’ travelpath. Paris was pretty cool; it’s got a tonne of monuments, a couple of wicked museums (turns out I managed to absorb some of that Art knowledge) and this giant tourist tower that gets lit up at night.

This tower has a nice little replica, called the Petrin Tower, in Prague. Of course we stopped off in Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco on the way. It was my chance to earn the brownie points with a nice 9 course dinner for the boyfriend’s birthday (check out the herbfarm in Washington if you ever get the chance). Topping it off with an Omega and Adrian for company meant it earnt the “best birthday ever.”

So now we are in Munich after an overnight bus trip from Prague. Spent the day riding around and enjoying the English Gardens. Off to the Schloss Neuschwanstein tomorrow which should be a blast and then to Amsterdam! And yes, he does insist on calling it Hamsterdam.

Backpacking we might not be, when you consider we call a taxi if we ever need to get our bags any serious distance, but we are still having enormous amounts of fun. I can happily say I will never stay in a hostel again, would kill for my own bathroom where I feel clean without wearing thongs, and hate having to pay to use the toilet, but I’m still stoked I came. Sorry to those who love Perth but it was so dull there! Both of us agree that we could NEVER go back.

Finally, photos are up

Skis are fun; they are easy to take on and off. Skiing is fun; you fall over once or twice to begin with but by the end of the week you are looking out for jumps because it’s fun to feel like you are flying.

Snowboarding… well the boots are a lot more comfortable. I’d imagine that they feel much better than ski boots after a full day on the slopes. I say ‘imagine’ because I’m never going to be able to confirm this – at least not this season. I made the stupid mistake of gaining way too much confidence on a snowboard, way too early. So as I spectacularly made my way towards the end of a green run, twirling around on my board, trying to switch between my toes and heels, faster and faster, I inevitably fell. On to my knee. Closely followed by my wrist. 

The pain wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I even managed an attempt at straightening my, now severly mangled, wrist. Then, after carefully rolling into a standard sitting position, screamed for my gorgeous boyfriend to come get me. As much as I wished it was a false alarm and that I had only sprained or dislocated my wrist, I suspected it was broken. The odd shape, pain and lack of  movement when I tried to twitch my fingers were a bit of a giveaway.

So I am typing this one handed. Turns out I fractured AND dislocated my wrist. And that it needed surgery to fix. Four metal pins are holding my pathetic joint together while I scoff painkillers. The worst part is that all I can think about is how much longer until I can strap on my skis and go flying again. Sadly – not any time soon.