Despite a rather large setback last weekend when I gorged myself on Cake, chips and beer I have managed to continue my weight loss.
As of today I've dropped another kilo and 2cm! I'm down to 86kg and 94cm, I can't even remeber the last time I had my weight down there. Other people are starting to notice now, which is cool. Makes it all worthwhile.
Happy Australia Day World!
Hope all you Aussies had a great day in the sun, and those of you in Sydney who went to the Big Day Out had a ball.
I celebrated here in the snow and cold by having a very frustrating afternoon at the offices of the BVG (the public transport company here in Berlin).
I use the trains here with a monthly ticket. Somehow I mixed up my tickets and took the wrong one out of wallet and left it at home. I'd been riding around for a week with the wrong ticket, got it checked twice on the bus when I got checked on the train and sure enough the guy spotted it was old. I of course was totally shocked and explained that I had my real ticket at home. But he must give me a ticket. However on the fine it says if you have a ticket you can go to their offices and they'll sort it out, but you have to pay 7 euros for being an idiot and leaving your ticket at home - fair cop!
Anyway, it wasn't so simple. Much more dramtic in fact. Basically I didn't understand what the guy at the ticket window wanted. I thought he said something he didn't so my explanation was making no sense to him. He gives up just as I realise what he wants, but he's already got someone who speaks a bit of English. This guys explains I must pay 40 euros and the fact that I have a months ticket means nothing. You can see where this is going, we are now having a slanging match in German where I'm saying that is unfair and he says he doesn't care just pay! I'm making up all sorts of stories now about just being here for 2 months and then he patronsises me by saying I should speak better German and if he was in Australia no one would speak German - which is true, and folks why is that true, because we English speakers have more economic power than anyone else!
So I storm out having achieved bugger all. Called Ela and got her to give it a try over the phone. She achieved exactly the same as me and copped a stream of abuse from the lady for her trouble also, I'm sure when you look up the word service in the dictionary here all it has is a question mark!
Now we'll give it to our lawyer and she can sort it out. We have lawyer insurance so it costs nothing for us to use a lawyer and if we lose we never have to pay, insurance covers it all. Now this part of Germany I love!!
So their was my day, not the greatest Australia Day I've ever had but eh, you can't win them all and I feel better having vented!
Peace out!
Had an absolute cracker for Ela’s birthday last weekend. It was her 30th and we celebrated in style. Originally we wanted to go to a bar that a friend of ours was DJing at but they wanted 400 euros to rope an area off for us, and we thought that was a bit over the top, so we took the plunge and had a party at home. Anyone who has lived in an apartment will understand what a risky business this is what with neighbours and space limitations.
Anyway we didn’t have to worry about anything, it was great. We had about 25 people including a few out of town celebrities (Ela’s bro and his girlfriend trekked 700km, while a few Hannoverites also made the journey, heads up to Nodeachen, he drove from Hannover in the early evening and returned in the wee hours of the morning, a round trip of about 600km!!)
Was a very eclectic mix of people, representing the various aspects of Ela’s life. Most of these people had never met each other before so it was a bit awkward at first but as to be expected after a few drinks they all loosened up and it was on. Hosting a party is always hard yakka as you try to talk to everyone and end up not really talking properly with anyone! In true German party tradition we played games, I was first up with Charades! At 12 then it was officially Ela’s birthday and everyone sang Happy Birthday and then I came in with the cake with 30 candles. After she cut the cake I had another tradition to perform, I had to pick her up in her chair and put her down 30 times. Don’t ask me I don’t understand either and no one really gave me an adequate explanation.
Then it was pressie time and wow did she do well, I can only dream about a) getting so many pressies and b) such top quality pressies! Mine was of course the last one to be opened and I did good son. I gave her an MP3 player which was pretty much what she wanted and it comes with all the bangs and whistles an MP3 can offer these days so I was fully in the good books, brownie points I’m sure to need at some point in the future!
The last people struggled out about 4 and we were am arsch (on arse) as they say here to mean totally bloody stuffed and maybe just a little bit drunk. My diet had suffered another major setback but fuck it, accorinding tomy poll fat blokes rule anyway!
Listening to: Still Megarock Radio
I got an email from Duncan the other day!! I was so excited, I think in 5 years of sending emails this is the first time he has ever replied, next thing I know I'll be getting emails from Sandy! It was George Bush with his metal horns that finally got him to write to me.
On ya Duncan, great to hear from you, wish I got an email more often, your good craic! Ela reckons your great too. (But then she only spent 20 minutes in a car with you...)
Listening to: Megarock Radio!!
Wow we have snow at last! It’s taken a bloody long time and I can’t really complain as I liked the warmth better, but damm the place looks so beautiful covered in 10cm of white powder snow! Arrived just in time for Ela’s birthday too. We started her birthday with sunny skies and finished it with it bucketing down on us in snow.
But you really notice the temperature difference, we’d been having average temps of about 8 degrees which is really quite dealable (yeah I can hear the aussies laughing from here!), but then today the top temperature was minus 4!! That’s middle of the day. On days like that the last thing you feel like doing is walking from the house to the station and on to work. You want a heater and you want it permantly exploding in your jacket!
I'm on a roll folks.
Lost another 2kg and 2cm!
Down to 87kg and 96cm!! Makes a grand total so far of 6 kg and 3cm!!
I'm a happy camper, I am starting to notice it in my clothes now, my pants hang off me!
Best thing is on the weekends my diet is going completely out the window but I'm not putting weight on!! The small moments of happyness.
Why is it that men are always wrong? Why even when she does something, I am wrong? We discussed this at a party last weekend, 3 Aussie boys with German/Polish girlfriends. We came to the agreement that Aussie boys never seem to admit that we are wrong. All 3 of us admitted rather sheepishly and under duress that we rarely admit we are wrong and that it is always her fault. Quite a turn around from our original question of them always being wrong.
Why are relationships so complex? Guess that's what keeps it interesting
January has really turned into party month. I’ve been on the piss every weekend and it aint about to let up.
As you know I was at Rollins last Friday and then on Saturday we hooked up with 2 other Aussie guys and their girlfriends. We all met through the internet, we had posted on various sites that we all were looking for people in the same situation, ie Aussie boy with German girlfriend in Berlin. The internet is such an awesome tool for trying to meet people. Sometimes it is really effective and other times I meet no one, my search for musically minded people is still continuing, but eh..never give up hope, there must be some other cool people out there.#
So anyway we went over to their place for a few drinks. I’m on the wine to try and reduce my Carb intake, thinking this will be an effective tool in reducing my drinking. How wrong I was. We brought along a bottle of white wine, I don’t really get into white, much more of a red man. Unfortunately the bottle turned out to be bloody delicious, so that disappeared rapidly, magically another one appears and it tastes good as well….diet plans are rapidly going out the window! Then the Corn chips arrive, it’s all over now..Carbs? What carbs????
After polishing off the wine it is now time to fulfil Ela’s wishes to go out and dance, it is her last week of being 29 and she needs to celebrate this, before she becomes in her eyes anyway..OLD! So we pile into the car and we are off to the other side of Berlin to visit the funniest club we know of. We call it the porno club because it looks like a set you would find in a porno movie. Large sunken dance floor surrounded by white leather couches and too much tacky fluro lighting. Tonight is Depeche Mode night so the girls are going off. We only got there at 2am so most of their really populare hits have already been played but there’s still a few beauties to be played that get me dancing.
However after about an hour the combination of wine and the smoke we had before we arrived are starting to take a toll on the boys. While the girls are dancing myself and Neville are slumped on the couch on what can only be described as “not a pretty sight”. The girls finally take pity on us about 3.30 and wake us up to go home. Life is rapidly restored to the system the moment you walk out into the blinding cold before the magic lure of Burger King and its bright lights lure us in for a magical late night meal. I have now broken every rule associated with my diet, but I’m happy and when I weighed myself on Monday it hadn’t had any major bad effects on my weight status.
A good night was had by all. The next day we met Neil and Donna for a wake up coffee and walk in the cold before settling in to Pizza and beer at a Rock Bar Ela had discovered the weel before. This delighted Neil and I endlessly, especially the Kiss pinball machine and Cinderella picture disc on the wall ensured we have found our new heaven.
Next weekend is Ela’s 30th birthday and we are having a party here. Should be a cracker, she’s more popular than I’ll ever be so the Duke/Paschke hotel has opened for business and the house will be packed. Looks like my diet is in for another battering.
Big Henry came to town on Friday night to do a spoken words show. I think I like his spoken words better than his musical shows.
Was as usual a complete laugh fest. For such an angry young man (though at 44 I'm pushing the young envelope a bit) he is very funny.
He performed at the Passions Church. This is a real live god on a sunday church, with real live god on a sunday uncomfortable wooden pews! But sitting on that was preferable to standing up for the 3 hours that he spoke.
I actually got lucky with a seat. I got lost on my way out there and only arrived right on start time, fortunately at the last minute some guy decided that standing was his preferred option and left his seat directly in front of me so I was in business, but I must say by the end of the show my ass was hurting man!
Anyway what does Henry talk about for 3 hours you ask? Well this is what he talked about:
I listed over 20 topics that he talked about, everything from George Bush and the war to Ramones Concerts and life in LA. The topic range was just huge. And at the end he came back and did and encore story which for Henry is unheard of - Rollins doesn't do encores. He even commented on it.
I highly recommend checking him out if you ever get the chance. You don't have to be into his music, you just must love a warped view of the world and a good laugh!
To view what I have written or posted in the past you must go into the archive section on the left side above the calender. My front page only holds a certain number of posts, but my old ones will live on for a while yet.
This morning the front pages of 2 of the 4 newspapers in Berlin are hilarious.
Yesterday a famous hairdresser here was murdered. (This is not funny) Basically this guy was a total socialite, always in the womens mags and on the entertainment TV shows. He was well known for having a this liitle dog that he took with him. The dogs name is Daisy. So it was a big shock when everyone found out that he had been murdered. It happened at home and no one knows who did it or why.
This brings us to today. I went to the bakery with Ela this morning and saw the newspaper headlines and just cracked up. Both are about the murder.
The first one said:
Only Daisy knows his murderer! (complete with picture of the dog)
The second one was:
Only Daisy saw the murder! (also with picture of the 2 of them together)
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph could learn alot about quality journalism from their counterparts here in Berlin.
Aaaah if only Daisy could talk......
Hey off to a flying start.
After 1 week I have lost 4kg and 1cm off my waist. I'm down to 89kg and 98cm around the waist!
At this rate I'll be a skinny dude in no time - Christian watch out!
This week marks the beginning of a lifestyle change for me. I have officially been self proclaimed a “fat bastard”. I’m not really happy about my shape and we recently saw a TV program about the Atkins Diet. For those of you who don’t know this is a slightly radical but popular diet which urges you to eat all the fatty food you want as long as you don’t eat food with carbohydrates. The concept being that fat digests slower than carbs, so if you have a lot of carbs that’s where your body gets energy from and then when it comes time to use the fats you don’t need energy so you get fat! Remove the carbs and your body must use the fat. Sounds simple enough. I hope it works.
I’ve never really had a proper diet before. I can’t eat bread, potato, rice or pasta or any milk products – but cheese is fine. This removes a lot of my favourite foods but I can eat all the meat I want – chicken, beef whatever. I also have to stop drinking coffee because when mixed with low carbs that can fuck your body up and booze is also a big NO NO. Now these 2 are going to be hell difficult to deal with. I’m used to 2-3 cups of coffee a day! But I’ve gone 3 days and no withdrawals so thats good. The beer thing I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
I’d like to lose about 10kgs, I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Wish me luck
Check out my poll! Please vote!!
We got good news from Simone and Sean 2 weeks ago. It looks like they will definitely be here to visit in July. They can only squeeze in 4 days, as they are in Europe for her sisters wedding, but I’m sure it will be 4 days we’ll remember for a long time.
Darren is also making noises about making it over in June, hopefully for one of the many festivals we have here over summer.
Christian and Rebecca – you know you want to! I guarantee a better time than the US
The other big thing we confirmed last week was a 2 week trip to Ghana in March. This will be my first trip to West Africa and Ela’s first trip to Africa. We are both really excited about it. It all came about when I realised I had to use up my frequent flyer points. Qantas are changing the rules and from May my points become pretty much worthless here in Europe. So I checked out my options and I could fly up to 10,000 miles return. This meant our options were India, Central America or West Africa.
We decided against India because 2 weeks is too short, Central America because I have no idea what is there and that left West Africa. We started reading and Ghana sounded awesome so bingo Ghana it was! It’s one of two English speaking countries in West Africa so language is no problem, it’s hell cheap, they have beautiful beaches, it’s 30 degrees all year round and everyone raves in the guidebooks about how friendly the people are.
So I will be returning to Africa. This is something that I feel I have to do this year. I have been here 3 years now and the urge to experience something totally different is back and pulling strongly at me. If 2 weeks is all I have then I must accept that, at least I’ll be in totally new surroundings again. I can’t wait.
Last week was a good week for our plans for 2005 with 2 sets of tickets being confirmed.
Firstly we got confirmation that we have 2 tickets for the soccer game at the Confederations Cup, Australia vs Germany. This should be a cracker! It’s in June and unfortunately Steven’s wedding is at the same time so Neil can’t come. It’ll just be Ela vs Paul – should be an interesting day. It’s in Frankfurt, they aren’t playing any games in Berlin so we’ll fly down in the afternoon, celebrate Australia’s mighty victory all night and then fly back the next morning – well that’s my dream at least!
Getting tickets proved quite tricky as all the German games only have tickets go on sale sporadically through FIFA’S website, so we just kept checking in every few days for about 2 months. Then one day I saw they were on sale and grabbed a couple. But even then it’s not confirmed, it’s almost like a small lottery, you must wait and then they allocate out tickets, but they took the money last week so that confirms everything.
I’ve never seen Australia play before and in such a big game it will be great, I just hope I’m not sitting between some rabid German fans or it could get really ugly, especially if we win, I’m not the quietest dude in the land – luckily I’ll have Ela there to moderate my behaviour.
Wow, what a week. A great time has been had with Steven and Neil this week. Fortunately my first week back at work was quite light as I would have struggled otherwise.
Picked up Steven on Tuesday and back to Neil’s to surprise him. Was great, he had no idea that Steven was coming, the look on his face was priceless. I think he was still shocked an hour later, he just keep looking at him like, Wow I can’t believe you’re here. Was fun to be a part of it. Steven had helped organise me surprise Neil on his Bucks Night in Sweden so was good to return the favour.
Had a few beers at Neil’s then on Tuesday night. Then on Wednesday they came out to visit our place for coffee and cake (The great German tradition) before we headed off for a bit of sightseeing. But first we had to make a stop to buy a second control for the Playstation, the boys were struggling with only one. It was Steven’s first time in Berlin and first time proper in Germany so he was taking it all in. It is funny to listen to me and Neil talk about Berlin, you can tell we have both been on the same tour as all the info we know is the same and it all comes from that tour, but we sound well impressive!
Then last night we hit the town. They had been invited to dinner by a girl that Donna works with so I met them after that. We hung around chatting for a bit until we ran out of beer and then it was time to move on. First stop the Kebab store opposite the house, basically it was the closest place that sold beer. Stayed there till the old guy got bored with us and said he wanted to go home and kicked us out. So it was Sayanora to Donna as us boys kicked on.
I’d had a bit of a look for clubs around where they were and found this Metal Club just down the road, so we headed off there and it really was true Metal! No radio friendly stuff here, just the sort of music that Sandy and Darren go crazy for. There was about 50 people there I guess and lotsa leather! We must have been close to the youngest people there, it really was a bit of a laugh.
Steven challenged Neil to go to the DJ and ask for some Motley Crue which of course he did! And the DJ basically laughed at him and told him to take a look around, if they played that there would be a riot – fair cop! Anyway after a while the dance floor became less populated so I had a go asking for some Sabbath or Ozzy, thinking maybe that will float – NO Dice! Finally about 5am Steven has a go, the DJ is finally developing some sympathy for our cause, we’ve had a bit of a dance to some stuff to try and prove our enthusiasm and eventually he comes good for us and plays some tunes we want, a bit of Cinderella, Marilyn Manson and after much pleading on our part Guns N Roses, even if it is only Don’t Cry, not our first choice, but better than nothing! With this we thanked him profusely and headed home. I promptly fell asleep on the train and fortunately woke up just as we arrived at my station (mind you I’m the second last stop so it aint so tragic if I miss it, but at 6.30am you can do without these hassles).
Feeling quite seedy today, but ready to get stuck in again. As I type this I guess Steven is on his way to the airport. Was great to see him again, it’s always good craic!
Till next time
Peace Out!
So here we are then – my first entry. I tried to do one yesterday but it all went a bit pear shaped and then I lost all my creative imagination so I gave up and waited for the juices to flow again and well…here I am.
What’s this all about then? I am going to try and maintain this site on a regular basis with all of the banal details of my life. Some of that will be interesting and some of it will make you wonder why you wasted your time reading this far. I hope more than just my friends will come and read this, or maybe I am deluding myself that anyone other than my friends would want to read about this.
Anyway.
I had my first day back at work today after the XMAS break, not a bad start back only one class today for 90 minutes – now that is living eh. Hard day back at the office. Definitely one of the benefits of working as an English teacher are the flexible working times, sure you work your ass off sometimes and have no life but others well, a 90 minute day, what can I say. And the company today are so disorganised I go there once a week and they never have anything organised, they didn’t know which room we were in, who was coming, classic! You waste the first 15 minutes just getting stuff organised.
I’m off to the airport tonight to pick up Steven, he is a mate of Neil’s and he is coming for a surprise visit, should be a cracker. Unfortunately he is arriving in the middle of the Spur v United game which I am not happy about at all…oh well.
Read a funny article today, talking about Argentinians in Berlin, asking why they were here, what they like and what they don’t like. They all raved on about what a multicultural place and how free and easy it is here and then for the bad things they all unanimously agreed the bad things are:
Soooo true, though Ela got a bit distressed when I told her. Germans are so sensitive about criticisms that are true. They think we are bagging them out, but we are just pointing out the differences, there is a difference.
That’s all for now. I’ll try and get a bit more philosophical next time. I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment and I’d like to share it with you.
Stay tuned, as Tommy Lee said, there is always more than one truth and this is MY TRUTH.
Peace
