Cars, booze and money

Life in Melbourne plods on. Work is going really well, Sensis appears to be "on the up" at the moment, and lots of launch celebrations are planned (e.g. free beer). Yesterday was the first of these free drinks sessions, which went on for a long time, after which was my mates birthday in Saint Kilda. It all got blurry... blurry enough to prevent a 9:00 apperance at work today, it was more like 11:00am when I finally got in - whoops.

Most of my fun has been constrained to weekends though. Last weekend was a bank holiday and the Melbourne grand prix. I went down for the day of the race (which was a foregone conclusion in seconds) and had a good time - it was loud as hell and a nice day to sit outside, and we were surrounded by many exitable Columbians who went wild at every mention of Juan Pablo Montoya. I cheered on our boy Button, mainly as he was my sweepstake pick, but he only managed 6th.

Otherwise I've been catching lots of movies (go see the station agent if it's out near you) and a few nights of drinking and dancing, including one legendary night in "Tony Starr's kitten club", a trendy jazz club / restuarant hidden away in the alleys of central Melborne. This is one of Melbourne's signature themes - all the cool bars worth knowing are all hidden down side streets with little or no signage - although this has prompted the sale of a very useful pack of cards, detailing how to find these hidden gems.

Still waiting for my first pay cheque - it has to go through various layers of companies now that I am contracting, but hopefully a few dollers will drop into my account soon, as I have over 1,000UKP of debt on my credit card ! This has been partially accomplished by me signing up for some kite surfing lessons for next weekend - which accomplishes one of my new year's resolutions (try kite surfing) - which I am very excited about.