Welcome to my world, sit back, relax and let me entertain you!

Such a great race, hands down! There was a consistent changing wind at Cockatoo Island in Sydney today, and it really played a big role in eliminating the riders that didn’t wanted to win hard enough great start. After there was only 6-7 very eager to win riders left and they really went for it! There were one big crash (didn’t know the person) at the final; a backflip went completely wrong and the rider crashed down from maximum height in a 180 degree angle, horrible! Dany Torres was very lucky because Nate Adams was out due to injury, if he was racing he had to place 4^th or less for Dany to win, and that would be nearly impossible I rekon; so good for Dany . So what Dany had to do was very clear, just win the first competition and he was assured the win! It wasn’t a hard race for Dany at all, the rider he was against did a very easy run being too afraid of the changing wind, but Dany didn’t go easy at all despite an almost certain win, he went for some dangerous moves and totally nailed it in front of the judges!

After that it was the semi-finals with Levi Sherwood vs. Mike Mason & Dany Torres vs. Josh Sheehan. Levi Sherwood won to Mike Mason, he was freaking superior; that kid really has some skills, unfortunately he has been out of almost every race this year due to injury; I’m looking forward to seeing him next year! After it was Dany Torres vs. Josh Sheehan, and a thing I really like about Dany is that despite being in a certain winning position he still puts on a perfect show for the audience; but today I saw a different Dany, on his run he took it very easy (even doing a dead sailor or two :S); so he has lost a little respect from me for that one. Josh on the other hand totally nailed it in front of the crowd, he even pulled off a double backflip Travis Pastrana style, f***ing insane!

After that was the final, Levi Sherwood against Josh Sheehan; or better, the Kiwi (New Zealander) against the Australian. Both did a great run, but Josh was just a notch better pulling off his double backflip once again and totally nailing it in front of his home crowd!

I would still say that Dany deserved to win the Red Bull X-Fighters 2011 (just as he did) due to his great dedication in his past races, good onya Dany Torres!

Such a great competition, I’m feeling really sorry right now for not being there :S!

Here you have the Red Bull X-Fighters 2011 final results:

1. Dany Torres 390
2. Nate Adams 370
3. Andrè Villa 270
4. Josh Sheehan 230
5. Blake Williams 215
6. Eigo Sato 190
7. Levi Sherwood 180
8. Robbie Maddison 160
9. Adam Jones 160
10. Maikel Melero 145

During the race I was drinking some cans of Red Bull, but half way in I decided to spice them up a little with some Jägermaister. Now I’ve put some music on the stereo and having a great after party, feeling a little tipsy with all that Jägermaister I’ve had hehe.

Well, that was all for now folks, see you next time & have a good one ;P

Finally the day that I’ve been waiting for so long has arrived; today it’s the Red Bull X-Fighters finals 2011! For the people that don’t know what Red Bull X-Fighters is I’ll give you some fast facts. Red Bull X-Fighters is a freestyle motocross (FMX) competition held among the world’s best freestyles! The fights are held in bullrings and other similar areas. The riders will be brining on their best (and most dangerous) tricks in front of the judges to score the most points. Red Bull X-Fighters is the most competitive motocross freestyle challenge in the world!

The Red Bull X-Fighters final 2011 will be held in Sydney this year (for the first time in history of men), and it’s going to be intense I’ll assure you that! When I got the news about the finals being held in Australia while I were down there I immediately began thinking on how awesome it could be to go. Some months after I started working at the piggery and I knew that it would be more difficult getting back to Sydney for the event. I really wanted to go even though it would cost me more than 350$ only to go there and get back, but my work leave and visa expiry prevented me to go there, so I’ll be watching it on the couch unfortunately .

It’s going to be a very close race for Nate Adams and Dany Torres, they are both likely to win the Red Bull X-Fighters championship!

Well, enough talk; let’s get to the important stuff! Underneath you have the link to see the whole thing LIVE! That saved you some time trying to Google it didn’t it?

 *Red Bull X-Fighters Live*
(Event Ended)

Let the best man win!

So here I am after a week working at Tong Park, I really have to get used to this, it’s so different from anything I’ve ever done, but more of that later, let’s begin from the start !

Well, I arrived at Dalby (which is situated around 250km from Brisbane) on a Monday evening. I got off the bus and waited at Hungry Jack’s as instructed; after about 30 minutes a car pulled up and I got to meet the woman that was going to “install” me in my new Dalby house. I was told that the farm was about 45km from Dalby, and that it was below zero in average many of the nights. Well, arriving at the house I got introduced to my new house-mates; 2 Burmese dudes and a Dutch guy.  The 2 Burmese guys didn’t talk much English at all so after some tries I started talking to the Dutch guy. He was a very “closed” person so I really had problems starting a conversation with him; I started asking questions but they were all meet with a “no-answer answer”; let me just give you some examples. Me: “So how is it working at Tong Park?” him: “Well, it’s a work…what is there to say (then all silence)”, me: “So for how many hours are we working?” him “It depends”, me: “What about the pay then, it’s 18.50$ per hour right?” him “It depends, some gets paid more”, me: “So do you get paid 18.50$ per hour or what?” him “yeah, something like that”, me: “So when do we get up in the morning?” him” Well, really depends if you are a morning person or not”, me “Well, how long a drive is it in the morning to the farm then?” him “I don’t really know”, me: “Well, approximately, you know, is it like a 2 minutes’ drive or rather like a 2 hour drive?” him: “Nah, it isn’t 2 hours”; and so on. I could see that the conversation wasn’t getting anywhere so I just went, “well, guess I’m better off just finding out by myself, isn’t that right?”, it was (obviously) meet with silence; so instead of talking I just went onto watching TV; Bear Grylls was on, and he was trying to get warm with some fire in a cave, and that really got me feeling that it was beginning to get cold. At around 9 o’clock it was starting to get very cold, and my house mates were starting to go to bed, so I thought I’d do the same. There was nothing on my bed (linen, pillow, and so on) so all I had my lightweight summer sleeping bag! Some hours after the light got turned off I still weren’t fallen asleep, it had got super-cold and I was totally rolled together, all shivering, trying to get warm, but my summer sleeping bag was definitely not gonna help me on that one! I think that I didn’t sleep more than one hour that whole night, it really was my coldest night ever in my entire life; you could see the condense when I was breathing, so I’m sure it was around zero degrees in the house!! I kept thinking about Bear Grylls tips on how to get warm and how a fire would do wonders in this situation, but then again, turning on a fire in the house would properly be a bad idea.

Well my Dutch roommate got up at around 4:30am, and I (of cause) was already awake so I just followed. After some breakfast we caught the bus out to the farm situated about 1km from a tiny village called Warra. After about 50 minutes we arrived at the farm, and we started going towards a smaller (on-farm) bus, then I was (finally) helped by the Dutch guy who told that I was due to wait at the main office instead of following the group, and so I did. The office wasn’t opened yet so I had to wait outside for about an hour, and it was still freezing (my body was still in dead cold after the long night). Well after the office folks arrived I got in and began signing papers, I think I must have put my signature around 50 different places, it was insane (had to sign that I understood every single rule separately); I’m pretty sure an hour or so passed by just doing that. I was put on the farm maintenance team, so most common duties would include moving stuff, building stuff and tearing stuff down.

Well after my introduction it was time to work, I was given a car that I had to connect to a trailer and then take it to another station. After finding the station I had to reverse the car with the trailer through a small gate, thing was I’d never before backed up a trailer in my life, and just to make it worse it was even my first time driving a car with the steering wheel in the right side. So as you can imagine I struggled a little getting that trailer through the stupid gate. It took me about 5 tries till I got it right, but I was still kind of satisfied about my effort being the first time doing it ever! After I had to manually load old pig feeding trays to the trailer and then finally drive them down to the scrapyard (also called China Town xD). That continued on for the whole day. When I got home I went straight to bed without having dinner, because that first day loading pig trays really tired me out, to not talk about that silly hour of sleep I had the night before. That night it wasn’t as cold as the first, so I managed to get more sleep compared to my first night, even though it was still super cold.

The following days were pretty much the same as my first day, well without the signature stuff though . I’ve been told that I have to begin working in one of the stables with the other maintenance guys (so far I’ve been working alone); kind of liked my little caring around job, it’s not that bad once you get used to it.  I hope my new building pig pens job will be quirt good as well when I start again on Monday; there is nothing else to do than to hope for the best!

Well that was all for now guys, I will post again in a month or so when I’m 100% into my new job (hopefully).

Until then take care folks!

Now I’ve finally got out of Sydney after a 3 month period, and I’m ready for my new adventure. I’ll try to only point out the most important stuff that happened to me in the last months so you don’t have to read for hours .

Well I started out at the hostel where I normally sleep during my stays in Sydney. Only one day after I arrived I got called up by a Dutch guy that I met down in Melbourne and he told me that he was coming up to Sydney in some hours and could see from my Facebook that I was there too; so we decided to meet up the same day. When we met up he told me about this hostel he was staying in that was cheaper than mine if I booked in for a week. After about 4 days I moved away from my hostel in the CBD and went in the hostel in Kings Cross that he told me about.

Apparently this hostel was owned by a Dutch guy who did a lot advertising back in the Nederlands, and because of that the hostel was filled up with only Dutch people (I think around 95% of all people in the hostel were Dutch). It was very hard to get a talk going because they were always sitting in groups just talking Dutch with their travel mates. Well after some weeks I made friends with an English guy (Jack) and a Dutch guy from Limburg (Ferd, a.k.a. Freddy); apparently the Dutch say that Limburg should belong to Belgium, so Freddy weren’t as Dutch as the rest in the hostel which for me was good. There weren’t free wi-fi in the hostel but about 200 meters from it they had a facility with internet that could be used by all the people that came down with a group called Wooduck (I think that all the Dutchies in the hostel were Wooduck members). Anyway there were so many people coming in the building everyday so they didn’t control who was member and who wasn’t, so I spent heaps of time in there trying to find work.

After some days I got offered work from this guy I asked in the hostel. The work was very simple, just setting up and putting down stands for various exhibitions around Sydney (me and my friends called it the monkey job xD). After some days even Jack and Freddy were working there, it was so neat to work among close friends of yours, made the whole work experience much more fun. There wasn’t work every day, so the days we had off we spend chilling in our room at day and going out at night (yep, we were in the same room). About a month and a half passed by like that and then I got asked by one of the persons in the reception if I wanted to become a night manager and get free accommodation in change. At that moment there weren’t that much work going on with the exhibition firm, so I agreed to it.

Being a night manager I had to be in the reception from 8PM to 11:30PM and take any bookings or check ins that might come. Meanwhile I also had to check that people weren’t getting too noisy in the hostel or were doing something they shouldn’t do. At about 10:30OPM I had to clean the kitchen and take out the trash, plus prepare for the free food for the day after. After closing down the reception and hostel I had to redirect the hostel telephone to my cell phone so people could call during the night for assistance. On some nights you didn’t get called up at all, but other times you could be unlucky and get something like 4 calls from different people that couldn’t remember the code to the outside hostel door, that really sucked especially if you had to work for the exhibition company the day after :S. Furthermore you had to open everything up before 7AM and after that your shift was over. I was working every second day (changing with another night manager) so sometimes when I had to work for the exhibition company me and the other night manager just swapped days. But after 2 weeks the other night manager decided to work at the exhibition company too, and it therefore got impossible to do both works properly, so I had to say no to the exhibition company every time I had an overlapping night manager shift.

A month passed by like that, and as you might imagine I didn’t have much free time on my hands that entire month, only working, eating and sleeping. During that same month some dramatic stuff happened! On the first week the guy that gave me the job had to quit because he had (without knowing it) had malaria for about a month. On the second week my friend Jack broke his wrist playing football and had to recover for a month before being able to do anything again. On the third week Freddy’s grandma died and he had to go back to the Netherlands for the funeral. On the fourth month with only me remaining I got quirt scared that something bad might happen to me but I was lucky, nothing happened, well, that’s not entirely true, I still quit my job in that same week. Thing was that I were promised work as a tree planter around 300km west from Sydney, but just as I was finding out on how to get there I got called up and told that they didn’t needed anyone anymore, so that really pissed me off as you can imagine.

On my second last week in Sydney there came some German girls in my room and being without work I went out a lot with them plus some other friends from the hostel, great fun, I already miss the great times. On one of the nights in the club I was talking to this group of people and one of the guys in that group had just returned from some farm work up in Queensland and he told me to try give them a call. The day after I gave them a call and fortunately they had a position available for me. So on my last week I was just getting sorted before my trip to the farm.

Now I’m here, just started working on the farm I really have to get used to it. I will post you in a week or so to let you know how it was. Guess that was all for now, all I can say is that I already miss the great nights out back in Sydney with my friends.

Well, that was all for now, talk soon!

It was great to see my Aussie friends once again, even though this time it was Keith’s turn to be the one down with influenza. Last time I was in Canberra I saw heaps of indoor activities due to the bad weather, so this time I got to see most of the outdoor stuff that I missed out on last time. On my first entire day in Canberra I saw the Botanical Gardens with Keith (so he could get some fresh air and get well again). I also went for a walk around the lake (well, between the two bridges that is), and I saw heaps of historical stuff on the walk. The day after I also saw the old parliament building, but as Keith says, I would have got more out of it if I were Australian.

I also saw Quest-a-con, which is a building housing all sorts of different of models that illustrate different stuff (LOL, I know that was a bad explanation). I’ll give you an example. In one place you could see how sound could move different stuff on different hertz. In another place they had gathered different eye illusions. In a third place they had facts and models showing different nature catastrophes (wow, I’ve said “different” insanely many times in a row now, gotta stop it :S). Well, I had a fun time in Quest-a-con, even though it’s mainly for a younger audience.

On Saturday night I got invited out by a Rugby dude that Pam & Keith knew. It was fun being out in Canberra, and it got me another perspective of the city, I really didn’t think Canberra had any good night life to it, but guess I was wrong there. The morning after my night out it was time for me to go home, but Keith asked me to stay some more days because he was behind schedule in his garden due to his influenza. So my 3 days in Canberra turned out to be almost week. One morning we went to this Italian car show that is held once a year in Canberra, it was great, heaps of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and old Alfas, just great.

Well, apart from the Italian car show we were working the rest of the time. We did a good job in the garden, and I really enjoyed my extra time in Canberra. Here is a picture of some Rosellas showering in Keith’s garden (they were there every day at lunch).

Well after my Canberra stay I went back to Sydney, and plans are to find some work and get some money before traveling again.

That was all for now folks, take care

Hi there, as you can see from the title this is post number hundred, and I feel a little like celebrating it hehe. So here you have a celebrating video, enjoy .

That was all folks, on to post number 101 xD

Edit: well of cause I got the music track on the video muted on YouTube

Hi folks, here’s a little post about what I did my last 3 days in Sydney. Well, the days after my Blue Mountains trip I was planning to go visit my Australian friends Pam & Keith in Canberra. Pam & Keith were leaving Australia for half a year and they really wanted to see me again because it wasn’t sure that I’d still be in Australia by the time they came back. After arranging a time and date for my Canberra visit I only had one entire day left in Sydney. My best friend’s birthday was coming up soon, so on my last day in Sydney my project was to buy him an Australian gift and mail it to him. On the day of departure I had to catch the bus at 1 p.m. so I got up early to have good time to pack my huge backpack. The same day an old war ship was going to be sunken to create an artificial reef not far north of Sydney, and I really wanted to see it. It was planned to be sunken around 9:30 I think, and fortunately I could see it all live on TV, so that was great. Unfortunately the whole ship sinking process was delayed due to a group of dolphins swimming in the “exclusion zone”. So after a long time (I think the clock was around 11:30) the ship was finally sunk. It was quirt cool to see, even though it went faster than I expected. I had a look at the clock and realised that time had flown by at high-speed while I was watching, and that it was best that I went for the bus pick-up spot right away. I left my hostel around 12, so I had an hour till my bus arrived at the bus stop. Having a little spare time I went to the post office with the gift to my friend. When I arrived at the post office there was a huge queue, but I decided that it could be done because I still had 50 minutes left and the bus stop was only around 800 meters away. After I had paid for sending the package I looked at my watch and realised that I only had 8 minutes till my bus left, so I ran for it to be on the sure side, but I was unlucky at every intersection and had to wait for green every time, it pissed me off big time. In the end I arrived at the bus stop at 1:01 p.m. with my heart rate sky high, and after being told that I was late and that they had been waiting for me I got on the bus; luckily.

That was basically it for my Sydney stay; as you have read not much went on during my Sydney visit, but I’m sure that during my 4 days I’ll have here in Canberra there will happen a lot . So stay tuned for my next adventure!

Until next time folks.

Today I’ll tell you about my Blue Mountains tour I was on yesterday . I started my day going to the pick-up spot early in the morning where I met my tour mates and driver. After some time waiting for the “late runners” we began our one day journey towards Blue Mountains. Our group was very mixed; there were some Chinese, French, German, American and Irish folks on the tour. After about an hour we arrived at Blue Mountains, and our first stop was in a little parking lot (inside the Blue Mountains park) were we had to spot some kangaroos. After some minutes without luck Jason, our bus driver, decided that we were unlucky and we went on to our next stop. We got out of the bus and headed for a lookout post few meters away from where we stopped. Just when I stepped out on the platform all the trees that were blocking the view before were all out of sight, and I assure you that the look was stunning .

After that we headed down a little path into the forest. We stopped almost every 3-4 minutes where Jason had something to explain about the area, and I got to say, he was really good at explaining every single thing in such detail and with such humour. At a point we arrived next to a tree and he started explaning. While he was talking I leaned against the tree but then Jason went “look out, there’s a funnel web in the tree” and I got to tell you, I’ve recon that I’ve never moved that fast away from something hehe. After that he began explaning about the funnel web and how dangerous it is. Well after the funnel web facts he showed us some natural colours from some rocks just next to the “funnel web tree”, neat stuff .

After about an hour (and heaps of photos) we arrived back at the parking lot where we had lunch. After our lunch we took to another place in the Blue Mountains where you can see the so called 3 Sisters (which is 3 rock formations close to each other). After lots of photos and a good long Aboriginal story about the 3 Sisters we continued down the mountain.

After around 1000 steps we were told to divide in 2 groups: the people that had enough stairs for the day and the people that wanted to further explore down the steps. I went on the further exploring team while Jason was following the other group back to the bus. It was great fun, we basically did what we wanted because nobody was around, so we climbed some rocks and trees around the giant park xD. After our walk we arrived at a “lift” that went all the way up to the top of the mountain where we had to get on the bus. The “lift” was a metal wagon driving on rails and pulled up the mountain with a wire. The seats in the wagon were tilted over 45 degrees and there was a metal “fence” for roof, so it was quirt a laugh getting in LOL. Jason had told that it was the steepest rail road in the world, so I expected the worst hehe. When it started it was very slow on the first 15 meters (where the rails were flexing to get the same angle as the mountain), and all the time I was like “fuck, it’s getting steeper and steeper, how much more can it go?” After reaching the same angle as the mountain the wagon violently increased speed and we were flying up the mountain, it was really f**king awesome, such a laugh. After 30 seconds we had reached the top and it was time to get in the bus and head back home after a long day out.

Blue Mountains really was a great/fun experience, I’m really looking forward to my next tour (wherever it may be)!

Well it was all for now folks, see you next time

Hey there guys, how is everything? I’ve just arrived in Sydney after a long time in Melbourne. I’m glad to be out of Melbourne and back in Sydney again, not that there’s something wrong with Melbourne but I really spend too much time there and it good to see something new again. Instead of making a video update I’ll stick with the “old school” plan text this time (really haven’t got time to make a video update at the moment, allready did a video update of my Melbourne update earlier today).

Well, as I told in my last update I took Greyhound (the bus) to Sydney; with a journey around 11 hours. I got on the bus at the train/bus station in Melbourne at 9:00 p.m. and from there it was a long night ride all the way to Canberra where we had to make a stopover because some of the passengers were getting off there and because we had to change driver. I was trying to sleep on my way to Canberra, but I only managed to get around 20 minutes of sleep in all, so that really sucked as you can imagine (I’m a really bad sleeper on any form of transportation). Well, after our stop in Canberra at around 4 a.m. the direction was Sydney. We went through a beautiful mountain area during our trip to Sydney, and it was awesome watching the early morning sun go up between the mountains. We arrived in Sydney at 8 p.m. and I only managed to get a total of 1 hour sleep during my journey, so I was really tired when I arrived, but I decided to stay awake all day today and just go earlier to bed.

Now I’m in my bed and I just booked the Blue Mountains Tour that I won in Melbourne for tomorrow. The weather is going to change to rain in 2 days, so I really want to do the trip now instead of having to wait for the rain to clear. I’m really looking forward for my tour, and I’m sure it will be awesome. Well I better get a decent amount of sleep so I can be fully charged for tomorrow, I’m sure there will be a lot of walking involved.

I’ll post how it was as soon I get the change after my trip. Talk soon!

Hey there folks, this is my last update from Melbourne. I have been in Melbourne for a total of 11 weeks, and I’m really glad to be back in Sydney again. This time I choosed to do a 3 week update instead of a 2 week update to sum up my last weeks in Melbourne and have less work to do. So as you can imagine I have a lot to tell. During these 3 weeks I have been to the Formula 1 race in Albert Park, I’ve been to Great Ocean Road, Phillip Island, Frankston, Eureka Skydeck, Australian animals plus more, so you can really look forward to some cool pictures, I assure you that one. Well without talking too much I’ll just let you see the videos .

That was all for now, next time I’ll update you on my short Sydney stay.

See ya.