Victor & Claudia

I can’t help but notice how the media puts a spin on everything they report about the stockmarket and the financial crisis. I think it prolongs and increases negativity and anxiety amongst the general population which makes them panic and sell which makes the stocks plunge even further.

Also pretty amusing are the stockmarket crash images and facepalm brokers with looks of doom and gloom scattered throughout online news websites. Come on! Where do they get them from? There must be a library of random images they choose from and recycle every day. Stocks haven’t been this cheap for many years so it may be a good time to cash in on all these bargains, because if we learn from history these stocks are bound to go up over the next decade!

I just realised the other day when I uploaded my vid to youtube it did not work and thus displayed a dead link on my last post. This was because the submission was rejected because it was longer than 10 minutes! So I tried google video and submitted it and it worked fine, could be better quality tough. Well here it is…

Just before my last trip off Darwin, I managed to sneak a weeks leave to go on a holiday to Japan purely for snowsports. I’ve had heard of this place called Niseko from another guy working offshore who spent 3 months there last season saying the powder snow the region gets is incredibly dry and abundant. I had to go see it for myself and though it only snowed a little bit relative to how much had dumped a couple months before, it’s safe to say im hooked! I put together a few video clips together and will put up a few more clips once I get a hold on the helmet cam footage. To sum it up - nice food, softest snow, crashed a snowmobile and broke a involuntary jump fall distance… extreme indeed

I thought that while I had a few hours spare on this job (downtime due to equipment failure), a new look for the website was needed. It is quite the opposite to the old theme with regards to the colour theme, so for now the dark night time look will have to do. I replaced the banner picture which was a night photo of a city similar to that of Perth and added a new icon to the address bar (its a polar bear toy).

I also tested out a new gallery program called gallery2 and here is to test that the links work…

Finally got around to posting on the website, I’ve been pretty busy with other things since my last post. To sum things up I’ve been on so many flights I’ve lost count especially up and down from Geraldton in October / November, been to Tomasz’s bucks night which was awesome and which I only half remember - end of the night I found myself asleep at the table at Billy Lees (damn not again). To going up on another job which seemed more like an action movie like hijacking a rig (boarding it via rope ladder and attacked by a million flies). Been out of the market since November, so many missed opportunities since then, and spent lovely Christmas day on a 30 year old drilling rig.

On a lighter note I did managed to take a time out and witness Tomasz’s jail sentence/marriage and we even managed to bind him up in just married tape (he didn’t mind) him and Aimee make the best couple. I managed to out shop Claudia in Singapore first time in my life and come out on top with the biggest credit card debt out of the two of us (bring it on interest rates). I’ve learnt that day spas are dead cheap overseas and aren’t evil, only to men who choose a Thai massage and won’t back down when the going gets tough - my muscles were hurt not soothed, well the weak ones were.

Another exciting thing in amongst all the madness was that we got the keys to our Byford house. It’s still a little bit bare right now and again a driveway crossover has to go in, a pathway from the driveway to the door and a bit of green. It’s taking longer to paint since the sense of urgency has been lost… I’ve got six months to live in it though and the holidays, heat and work don’t make it any easier. So officially 22 months to build that house as opposed to 12 months for the other.

Important lessons learnt: make sure titles are out if you are moving in otherwise as an investment its free capital growth (well at that time its good, just made it on the final stages of the boom).