Biggest Loser... Literally!

Well, I suppose we should all be congratulating Adro for "winning" Australia's first series of Biggest Loser, the show that teaches everyone that if you can't loose 15kg in a week you deserve to be treated like crap by your teammates.

The reason I say "winning" is that some might question why exactly Adro made it into the final. Throughout the entire series of biggest loser, they did the standard vote-one-out-per-week, and once they threw out two at once.

So that begs the question, when they got down to the final three, how was it fair to bring everyone back into the house and end up selecting one person (Harry) to rejoin the competition? Make a note of the fact that they have been outside for several months in some cases, I'll come back to it.

So anyway, Harry comes back and whips everyone as he was only voted out by strategy and not by weight loss. Suddenly everyone is extremely resentful that he is here (the other three ACTIVELY snubbed him) and he decides to take the hard line that people are just upset because they know he is going to win.

Naturally, Harry doesn't go below the bottom line, and he is joined by Kristy who for some unknown reason has been awarded immunity indefinitely by the shows producers, and as a result Adro went home (as he was not just a bigger threat than Fiona, lets face it... he was the ONLY threat).

And then there were three... but what's this? Cheating in the house? It turns out Harry and a few others brought in Vitamin suppliments into the house, but the others there didn't have access to them. Lets ignore the fact that these people have had months of access to all sorts of stuff the housemates didn't, good and bad, but suddenly we are saying that some vitamins are going to help them to a miracle weight loss? So, what do they do? They invite Adro to come back to the competition! (Ummm... if it was really cheating why didn't they just kick Harry out?)

But you might think to yourselves, Adro snubbed Harry for reentering the competition, and generally made a big fuss about how unfair it was and how he didn't think anyone should have agreed, so surely he wouldn't say yes. No no, he is going to put his money where his mouth is, and make a point by refusing, right?

God no, he doesn't even blink before saying yes, and we are off to the final four for the first time in Biggest Loser's short short history. It was pretty close between Harry and Adro, but somehow Adro managed to drop just that little bit more and take the prize.

Of course, Wal is the actual winner as the person who lost the biggest percentage, but since this show should have been called the Biggest Backstabber rather than the Biggest Loser, he was thrown out the second he was eligible to be voted out.

In case there was any doubt...

...lets have a look at the new starts of Big Brother 06 (and the women they are attached to).





Of course, nothing could sum it up better than the BB website itself. Let's have a quick look at who they put into the house. Between announcing that she is the "horniest person in the world" and suggesting that opening a bottle of wine is similar to brain surgery, they must all be high-fiving in the BB control room.

Oh, and amusingly, it looks like you can now get access to Adults Only stuff 24/7, for a premium of course. It does beg the question though, if you going to pay $40 just to see some 19 year olds boobs, why don't you just throw in the towel and subscribe to a proper porn website, rather than just the soft porn BB website?

Big Bra-ther

Oh, the wit!

Umm... yeah, anyway...

I realised that I had been very remiss in the absence of my Big Brother Australia commentary, a long standing tradition which starts today.

Along with many australians, I watched in horror last Sunday as Channel 10 trotted out twelve vat-grown samples of australian youth, in all their plastic-chested glory. Now, don't get me wrong I enjoy Big Brother Uncut boobie shots as much as the next perv, but even I baulk at this shameless attempt to get some sex filmed live in the BB house. Do they honestly think we don't notice when they put in a group of buff young guys desperate for a beer and a group of skinny young sales reps and promo models, most of which are in no danger of drowning if you follow my meaning.

Their one concession seems to be the 36 year old 'hippy mum', who is still extremely samey when compared to the other cardboard cutouts (her going to get a huge boob job specially for the show with her daughter probably helped there).

And that brings us on to the world shattering world first for the show. 36 year old Karen is there in the house with her doe-eyed daughter Krystal (how pissed are the guys in the house going to be when they realise that Busty St Clairs mum is there keeping an eye on them?) It's a mildly interesting twist I suppose, but not as interesting (or as ambitious) as the twins in the last series.

All in all, I don't think BB06 is looking so hot right now, which ironically seems to be conversly proportional to how artificially hot the group of idiots we are presented with are.

Out with the old... in with the new?

Just 7 short days until Open House Day, when our place will be put on the market. It's exciting, but at the same time we are fairly nervous about the whole thing. Almost everything is ready, but we still have a bit of packing etc left to do before next week.

As you can see, we have had the photographers through, along with the floorplanners and the writestuffabouters to get all the marketing side of things ready to go. You can see the full fruits of their labours here, although I have no idea how long that will stay up.

Meanwhile, Suzy and I went out today and had a look at a few places. We revisited a nice house in Dulwich Hill, that we first saw about 6 weeks ago during our first foray into the 2006 house market. We could really see ourselves living there, its a great house and doesn't need anything done to it, we could move straight in.

The reason it is still there six weeks later, after being passed in at auction, is that they expected to do much better than the market dictates. When we first saw it, the agent quoted mid to high 500s, but that was obviously well short of their expectations. Suzy caught it with a price at one point (635k), but the adverts have returned to pricelessness. When we spoke to the agent today, she 'confided' in us that they would settle for 620k, having bought for 610k a year ago, and since putting in about 50k of work. God knows how accurate that is, but I can say that the kitchen is clearly new, it has ducted air con and generally appears to be in excellent condition.

Anyway, it is certainly tempting, and while that is right up the top of our price range, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility and for a house like this that really doesn't need anything beyond a coat of paint, we can seriously think about making an offer. If we go down that route, the risk lies in getting a bridging loan, and hoping that our place sells quickly. Fingers crossed!

Decking debacle - update

Well, I suppose I was being a bit naive, but I had this picture of the belt sander doing a perfect, even job on the deck, and the whole process taking about 20 minutes.

Naturally that wasn't even remotely accurate, with the sanding being quite a bit of work and not as even as I would have liked. It is done now though, and this morning we put the first coat of new oil on top.

I am hoping it doesn't look too wierd (currently it is a bit two tone, as in some places the sander brought out more of the original wood colour than others), in THEORY it should all even out as the oil returns the wood to the darker colour, but since it is me doing it, I am pretty confident that something will go horribly wrong.

Either way, short of hiring a professional to redo the whole thing, something neither of us really want to pay for when we won't get to reap the benefits, we are stuck with it as is. It will get a few more coats (carefully rubbed in of course, with any excess being wiped off) and then fingers crossed we will be back to square one!

Happy Easter!

Hi all (none),

I just wanted to pop in and wish everyone a happy easter, and hopefully one that has been less tedious and back-breaking than mine has been! Suzy and I (with some help from a few parental deputies) have been getting the place ready for our first open house which is set for the 29th of April. Basically it has involved shifting furniture down stairs and out of the attic and into local storage, packing boxes and re-arranging rooms... all because your average home-buyer is too freaking stupid to picture a place as livable if it is too "personalised" or cluttered.

We have chucked our massive and impractically large computer desk, and in the meantime bought a cheap $20 desk from Ikea which is a little more space-friendly. We swapped the spare double bed with a single from my parents, and now our study looks like a nice little bedroom. We also cleared out the bigger chest from the main bedroom, to give a bit more breathing room, and have cleared out the attic almost entirely, leaving just some full bookshelves and a little nook for watching DVDs etc. We had planned to put the computer up there too, but the little ikea desk works perfectly in the second bedroom so we left it there.

On the outside, we had a bit of a debacle. We got some more decking oil, and decided to renew the original coat we put on it when it was installed. We did one coat, which worked like a charm, and then put on a second. Unfortunately, the second coat was apparently a bit thick, as rather than soak into the wood properly, most of it decided to dry on top of the wood, and go all shiny/sticky and basically making the deck look like crap. We tried cleaning it off with detergent, terps and sugar soap but non of it worked. The only option left? Sand it back and re-oil the sodding thing!

I got some paper, and went down on my hands and knees sanding away... after about 5 planks (about 1/5th of the total) I had more than had enough, so I gave John a call and borrowed his belt sander. It was a bit late to fire it up tonight (technically we were OK, but felt guilty anyway) so tomorrow after work that deck is getting sanded but good!

Dental News-Flash! Presses may be stopped...

It turns out I ended up going with Plan B yesterday, and stayed up all freaking night because the pain and the sleep never managed to come to an agreement. The good news is, in the large time span where I had nothing to do but drink water and be miserable, I found time to finish off Baldurs Gate 2 at last, so finally my normal life may resume! (Although, the challenge of repeating the game with just a single character, rather than a six-man squad it was designed for is... intriguing, and I might have to give it a crack next time I have an RPG itch to scratch).

So, on tuesday morning, delirious from lack of sleep and gallons of water having been drunk I called work and took the day off sick to be at home with my pain. I did keep nodding off with a mouthfull of water throughout the night and during the day, and while I am happy to report that no drowning was involved, I did get it half right, and ended up drooling water all over myself pretty much non-stop.

I called the Dentist and found out that they never wrote down my original appointment (!!) but were able to fit me in at an earlier time anyway, so in the afternoon Suzy (who took the day off work to look after the decrepid, dribbling and delirious man of her dreams) drove me down to Broadway where the Dentist announced that it was high time for root canal #3.

In my defense, when I went for my original root canal (which started my long running dental saga, big enough to have spanned two blogs) the dentist was pretty iffy about two of my other teeth. However, monetary concerns prevaled, and as she conceeded that they weren't an immediate concern and might in fact never actually need treatment she agreed to simply give them a filling and see how they went. A few months ago one of them needed to be done, and now the other is going through the same process (what can I say, I rolled the dice and lost, it was worth a shot at least!). So while I have in fact had a string of dental emergencies spanning half a year now, I maintain that it has in fact just been one single emergency, I just put it to one side for a while...

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Teeth! Who needs 'em?

Well, it was back to work for me today, and I got the unquestionable pleasure of spending the day at my desk, dredging through emails from the past two weeks with some kind of extremely painful tooth (gum?) ache.

My gums have been a bit sore/tender for a few days, but I had assumed that with brushing, flossing and mouth wash they would be fine. So wrong! Today, they flared up something chronic, and now I can hardly think for the pain. Needless to say, painkillers do absolutely nothing to help.

The only way I have found to manage the pain is to drink water. I don't know why exactly, but having a mouthful of water is like some kind of miracle cure, which wears off extremely quickly and leaves me in agony again. So I have drunk like 10 litres of water today, and been to the bathroom a million times. And now it is one in the morning, and I can't sleep because of the pain (sleeping with a mouthful of water seems unlikely to work without a) drowning and b) drooling uncontrollably).

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon, the best they could do. My plan is to basically be so tired that I pass out despite the pain, since the other option is to be awake all night going to the toilet every few minutes.

God knows what is going on with my teeth. I have always tried to take care of them, but never really liked the idea of going to the dentist. So for 25 years or so I have absolutely zero trouble, then suddenly WHAM I am in and out of the dentists office almost non-stop. It is bizarre that all these unrelated dental issues are hitting me at once, but I suppose I shall have to just grit my teeth and think of England, so to speak.

Hong Kong windup, and only a week late!

I would love to say that I have had this crazy hectic week, and it has stopped me from posting until now, but it would be a shameless lie. I've had the week off work, and apart from the occasional odd job around the house (paint touchups, fixing the holes in the doors etc) I have spent most of my time playing Baldur's Gate 2, cause I'm just that cool!

So rather than saiting the curiosity of you, my non-existant readers, about the mysteries of the orient and the results of the Hong Kong Rugby 7s, i chose instead to play a computer game. So sue me!

Even now, I can't be bothered loading the pictures up, that is how committed I am feeling right now to my blogging experience!

So anyway, where did I leave off? Ah yes... Mark and I were still suffering under the questionable effects of the blah-tastic burgers and we were off to the Sevens! I worked it out, and I hadn't been there since 1992, so this was my first sevens in 14 years! It was even a new stadium, since '92 was the last time they used the old stadium, and moved into the current one (which still looks extremely nice 14 years later!)

The sevens is a three day event, with the 5 pools (of 4 teams each) battle it out to decide who goes into which division on the sunday. The divisions are the bowl (third), the plate (second) and the cup (first).

Apart from the new stadium, there is one other thing that was missing 14 years ago, and that was the South Stand. More than just a place to sit, it has clearly become an institution with the young and young at heart, and the place-de-jour for anyone who wishes to drink beer while watching rugby (the other stands were alcohol free zones). Naturally this means it gets packed out with all the drunken louts and lasses, but beyond that it has become a place for groups to get dressed up and party. We saw cheerleaders, wallace and gromit, x-men, beefeaters, uma thurmans from kill bill, to name but a few. It looked like a lot of fun, and something I definitely would have been a part of, if I still lived in HK and went with a group of friends.

In some ways, it made me feel a bit robbed as the sevens was always a social event, and even more so now than then, so it was sad to see hard evidence of something that I missed out on as a result of moving to australia.

The actual rugby was good too, I've always prefered sevens since the games are so fast! 7 minutes per half, and 10 per half for the big final. It is like mini-rugby... I want to pick it up and pat it, and give it a smacko for being so cute!

The games were a mixed bag, the main problem being that some teams were so far ahead of others, that more than half the games were totally one sided. It really wasn't until the quarter finals (the friday and saturday games were not knock-out) that it got interesting, as things even up a bit once they are split into the three divisions.

China beat Hong Kong for the Bowl, in what was an excellent game. It would have been cool to see Hong Kong win, but then... noone wants to piss off China :)

Wales beat Kenya for the Plate, but that was kind of a case of big fish in a small pond... wales really deserved to be in the Cup division, but thanks to a monster win (the highest in HK7s history) by scotland earlier in the comp, wales were just nudged out.

And in the Cup division, I had high hopes for Australia, but sadly they were thrashed by New Zealand in the Quarter Finals. Fiji and England both looked strong (between them having won the last 6 sevens, and Fiji in particular having won more times than anyone else) and indeed they met at the finals. It was an incredible game, with England pulling off a balsy win at the last second.

The instant the game was over, Mark and I had to run off to get to the airport so we didn't miss our flight. Nine glorious hours later, and it was 8am monday morning back at Sydney, and I hadn't had a wink of sleep! Good times :)

It was wonderful to go back to Hong Kong, and I hope I will be able to go again sometime in the next few years, and take Suzy to show her where I grew up. And who knows, maybe catch the sevens again!

Return of the Blah-Tastic Burger, and Other Amazing Tales

Ok, so I have been a bit slack since getting back to Sydney, but in my defense I'm a lazy lazy man... ok so that isn't a very good defense, but it will have to do!

First off, let me shed the mystery of the Blah-Tastic burger! I know you have all been on the edge of your non-existant seats, waiting for the tale of terror, trauma and tasty snacks.

On our second day in Hong Kong, Mark and I start to see adverts for a new McDonalds Burger with rice instead of bread, and chinese characters followed by "tastic". Mark and I were already in the habit of reading all chinese characters as "blah" so naturally it followed that the blah-tastic burger was born!

It wasn't until days later that my tiny brain finally fired into gear and put the following information together into a cohesive whole.

a) The Burger is made of rice instead of bread.
b) Fried Rice is "Chow Fan" in Cantonese.
c) It is therefore reasonable to assume that Rice = Fan.
d) So if you assume that the "blah" is in fact "fan", you have a clever dual language pun since it is "fan"-tastic, and also makes use of the cantonese for rice!



Never ones to shirk from a challenge, we decided that we must experiment with this amazing new burger-ized treat. We both went with the teryaki beef, since the chicken burger variety just didn't seem asian enough (and I didn't fancy the look of the sauce, which no doubt comes as a surprise to those who know me!).



The results? Surprisingly positive. Naturally the portion was deceptively small when compared to the adverts (no surprises there) but apart from that it was actually quite nice. The rice held together fairly well, and the beef was good. If they came to Australia, I would definitely recommend people try them for the novelty value.

So... I keep promising more than I am actually able to do in one night... more Amazing Tales tomorrow sometime!