It may interest you to learn a little about our newest member of staff

Phoebe Louise Lee joins us effective from today the 28th of April at 04:51am, working in the Crying and Pooping Division, an area that has been severely understaffed of late in the organisation. Phoebe comes to us with ample qualifications, being 48 cm long and 3.06 kg.

Despite being completely incomprehensible at this point in time, Phoebe would like you to know that her hobbies include crying, sleeping, pooping and flailing about in a red-faced, jellyfishy sort of way.

The management are very pleased with the new signing, our Director of Manufacturing, Finance and Warfare is quoted as saying “Thank Christ that’s over. You’re not getting another one of those things out of me, I can tell you that. Where’s my happy gas tube. Did you take my happy gas tube?! Give me the happy gas tube!!!”

To help you identify Phoebe in the corridors, attached is an attractive mugshot. More examples of her impressive porfolio can be found at http://losfp.smugmug.com/gallery/4812902_kSoMw

Phoebe hopes you will pop by and say hi, and looks forward to meeting you all in the fullness of time.

cheers from Des, Janelle & Phoebe.

Yep that’s right, the Megaplex is holding a guessing competition…

Guess the sex of the baby, and the first initial (bonus marks for getting the actual name). No prizes, just bragging rights

The results have already pretty much been set in stone, so have a guess - results announced in late April!

Last night, we went to see The Idea of North at the Independent Theatre in North Sydney. Quite simply, if you haven’t seen them live, or even heard their stuff… do yourself a favour and check them out as soon as possible.

Quote - ‘Australian Jazz sensation James Morrison has said of the group, “The Idea of North is the best contemporary a cappella group in the country and is quickly becoming recognised as one of the top groups in this genre in the world.”’

That is pretty much spot on. 4 disgustingly talented singers, songwriters and arrangers, their repertoire covers genres as diverse as jazz, pop, gospel - and often includes refreshing takes on familiar tunes. I randomly read an article about them in smh.com.au one day while I was working in Brisbane, went out at lunchtime to buy a couple of their CDs… and loved them ever since.

Live, they are an absolute hoot - lively on-stage, pitch-perfect singing, and wicked senses of humour.

Again, do yourself a favour and check them out - http://www.idea.com.au - Their next gig is at The Basement in Circular Quay, on Thurs 8th Nov.

SYDNEY - The Stanbury Megaplex has announced that their live-in staff numbers will be rising in late April 2008.

After receiving early advice, the Megaplex management was able to report that they are expecting a rise in headcount of approximately 50%, or one. The principal manufacturer for the project is said to be relieved at the news that scope will be limited in that regard.

A spokesperson for the Megaplex is quoted as saying “yes, we are very excited. I’ve seen the scan, and it appears to be human, insofar as I am able to tell from those black and white fuzzy screens. The rather stern lady with the barcode reader at the ultrasound clinic didn’t seem to find it very funny when I asked if she wanted my flybuys card next. Say, these baby things are supposed to be able to mow the lawn and contribute around the house pretty much straight away right?”

The Megaplex hopes to deliver their little bundle of crying on-time and on-budget, on or around the 27th of April, 2008 (Industry figures have revealed that while it is just as likely as not to produce the deliverables on time, there is often scant hope of sticking to the budget).

If you happen to already know, now is the time to show your surprised face.

Sigh… Another weekend over. I’ve only been working at Infra for a week, but the old wage-slave routine has set in again. Ah well, better the devil you know eh?

This weekend, I managed to have a look at the pilot episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a TV show starting in January 2008. It’s based on the happenings in the Terminator movie series, and is set sometime after the events of Terminator 2. Apparently for all intents and purposes, Terminator 3 is assumed never to happen. Or I suppose more accurately, is assumed never to going to happen. Or possibly not going to happen, depending.

Looks like they’ve been given a pretty decent budget to play with, and most awesome of all, it also features Summer Glau from Firefly/Serenity - as The Good Terminator. Certainly easier on the eye than Big Arnie (though to be fair, he IS looking pretty good for a 95-year-old politician).

Time will tell (this is of course a clumsily introduced pun due to the fact that time travel plays a not insignificant part in the series) if it turns out to be any good, but the pilot is promising.

Lots of brain-grinding going on at the new job - it is always fun learning a new product, especially one that is probably twice as big as the one at my old job!!

Good to get back to work and relatively motivated at least!!

The best part is that since I’ve only moved about 250m away, I don’t have to get used to traveling to a different location or finding new food spots. Which also allows me to attend a traditional laksa lunch tomorrow to celebrate Ashley’s departure from HRX…. Hooray for laksa!

I’m trialling a couple of different ways of importing my blog into facebook.. so don’t worry if it appears to appear twice

Well, now that I think I’ve managed to import my blog into facebook, I might blog a bit more often, on the off-chance that it might be read a little more often….

I start a new job tomorrow, which is exciting. Pretty much constant work since 2001, which I’m rather satisfied with - those long months of unemployment after finishing my diploma were pretty lousy. I think I’ve rather gotten used to working, and at the very least, complaining about work keeps me pretty busy.

My last job taught me a lot about life, and here’s hoping the new opportunity does the same!!!

Another lovely transit day. Left Kamloops around 10am, with pretty much our only objective for the day being to get to Vancouver in one piece to catch our flight out of Canada.

Oh, and of course to stop in Chilliwack along the way.

Actually, apart from the name, it’s pretty well rather dull. We had lunch there, and that’s about it.

Got a little lost finding Vancouver International due to lack of clear bloody signage.. and ended up in North Vancouver, which is about 10km to the wrong side of Vancouver downtown. Slogged our way back through the traffic, but still made it with plenty of time to spare.

Jumped through all the usual hoops at the airport, and copped the 18 hours on a 767. On the upside I managed to read Hannibal Rising and the last Harry Potter book on the plance. Bafflingly anticlimactic and vaguely satisfying respectively.

We lost Thursday entirely, and landed at 7am on Friday. We’re back.

Hope the blog and photos were somewhat entertaining….

Nothing much to report. We drove the 430-ish km from Jasper to Kamloops, stopping only for lunch at a random Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere (I’ll always have a place at the DQ…).

Today was spent exploring the area around Jasper. First on the list was to visit yet more lakes! Surely we’ve had enough of lakes for the time being, no matter how pretty they are, you might ask? Well, it turns out I can handle pretty lakes for a while yet…. We had to stop by Lake Annette, in honour of one of our bestest buds who is named Annette (we also visited Annette Island when we stopped by Metlakatla in Alaska).

Passing by Lake Edith as we drove around Lake Annette, it was time to head on down the road to Maligne Lake, some 40-odd km away. Maligne Lake is the largest naturally forming lake in the Canadian rockies (Lake Minnewanka was artificially dammed). We went past Medicine Lake as we did so - that lake is occasionally drained naturally at certain parts of the year.. No problems today, it was full and blue.

We stopped at Maligne Canyon, which was brilliant. It was created by the Maligne river (which comes, eventually from Maligne Lake), and is 50m deep in some parts! It would be cool to go back in winter, because you can actually walk on the canyon floor, over the frozen river.

At Maligne Lake, we went on a boat tour out to Spirit Island and back, unfortunately the sun was in the wrong spot when we went, making it quite difficult to get good photos of that beautiful spot.

Heading back into town, we stopped in Jasper proper for a little while to kill some time by visiting the very small but also quite interesting wildlife museum, and to buy way too much chocolate.

We then headed up to Whistlers Mountain (so called because of the hoary marmots who live up there, who tend to whistle when alarmed) to go on the Jasper Tramway which brings you up about 1000m almost to the summit of Whistlers Mountain. We went probably a third of the way to the actual summit before the rain forced us to turn around - it was steep and slippery even in good conditions, and I didn’t fancy trying to get back down safely if it got even wetter.

Dinner at the restaurant before taking the tramway back down and driving back to our hotel. Tomorrow we officially start heading back to Vancouver to catch our flight home to Sydney!

Today’s photos here