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!

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!

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.

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!

Now I’ll just tell you a little about what I did when I returned to Sydney after my unlucky Canberra trip. Well, the fist days I just tried to recover as much as possible from my sickness. After that period I went in a got-to-spend-less-possible period (after discovering that I almost spend 2000$ in 1 month), so it was no more night clubbing or fast food places for me. My main focus was getting a job and earn some good money before moving on, well lets just say it as it is, I failed deeply. I made a lot of phone calls, stamped heaps of CV’s and spend much time going from door to door, but without luck. Then my friend that I meet on my first week in Sydney called me and we decided to have Christmas and NYE together in a little (but famous) surfer/backpacker town called Byron Bay. Then one week before I had to leave for Byron Bay I got a call from some work I had searched weeks before, they needed a hand to move stuff for their relocation business; so I applied for the job. The bad thing about the job was that there wasn’t work every day, so I only got to work one single day , that really sucked. Well, the thing that sucked most was that I only got to work for 4 hours, and that made me 80$, but then there was my suit that costed 30$ and after that I had to pay TAX too (of cause), so my cash-in-hand was only silly 43$ , anyway, better than nothing. Before I left Sydney I decided to buy a ticket to the cinema, what I didn’t knew was that it is the biggest IMAX cinema in the world (thought it was in America somewhere), anyway, I have to say that I was really a big experience for me. Actually when I booked the tickets I got to choose my seat, and I pointed to one of the seats in the middle, then the lady selling the ticket went, “well, that’s a bad place, because you wont be able to see the whole screen and your eyes will begin to hurt after some time”, so I got a seat in the final row right in the middle. I think that was the best seat you could get in the whole cinema, another great thing was that the final row was double raised compared to the other seats, so it was great; many times it felt just like being in the movie, because you couldn’t see the other people if you looked straight and also because you couldn’t really judge the distance to the screen; so if you happen to go to Sydney, be sure to visit the IMAX cinema! Oh right, didn’t even tell you the best part of it , I only payed 22$ to go to the cinema , so awesome . Anyway, enough cinema talk. Apart the cinema I really didn’t do much stuff while on my second stay in Sydney, in fact the only time I got to use my camera was at a donation raising event, where people of all ages could make different creative stuff, like painting, learn dance steps, ride a mono-wheel bike plus other stuff.

After my stay in Sydney it was time to head for Byron Bay, to celebrate christmas and NYE there with my friend; the only problem was that I didn’t find any cheap train tickets, because the train didn’t go though Byron Bay, so when you bought the ticket you also payed for a 1 hour bus ticket to Byron Bay ;(. But in the end I found the perfect solution, a ticket to Brisbane! Yep, even though Brisbane was 150km further from Sydney than Byron Bay the ticket was cheaper, so I just went all the way up to Brisbane to meet my friend, and then go down to Byron Bay with him, hehe, quirt cool huh?

Just a reminder, I didn’t write this message on the 24^th, I have modified the data on it in order to keep things organised and easy to follow here on my blog .

That was all for my Sydney stay, see you soon folks .

Hey there folks, now it has been 1 week since I arrived in Sydney. I’ll just tell you a little about what I have done these last days . Well I have already told you about what I did the first day, so now for the second one . Well, on my second day I woke up early (because I went early to bed ) and got lunch at the hostel. After that I went on a very long orientating walk around Sydney, and on my way I stopped at the Bank to open my account. Day 3 was the day where I got my Tax File Number (have to get it to not pay 49% in Tax xD), and I tried to get my new sim card working, but without luck :S. It was only on my sixth day that I got my sim card working (with another operator), and today it’s already giving me problems, so that sucks :S. All the days before I had been around the best areas in Sydney.

Like Manly Beach, where I saw the surfers catch the waves, and after that I went on a 11km long walk through some beautiful nature around the coastline (filled with strange animals xD). I also wanted to go to Bondi Beach one day, and when I was almost there I ended up catching the wrong bus (had the same number) and got off at the bus central when it stopped, and from there I walked home because I didn’t want to through away additional money. I have also been to museums, and I even made a bid on an Aboriginal beautiful photo hehehe .

I almost every night I have been going to the night clubs, it’s so cool, I have never been to nightclubs that big in my life. In the beginning I was “too casual” to enter the clubs, so I went home and got on the only pair of neat formal cloths I have taken with me, and now I call it “my clubbing cloth” . During all the time I have been trying to eat the cheapest possible; I’d say that I’m managing it pretty well . But unfortunately I use a lot of money in the club because my friends are always offering me drinks, and therefore I have to return the favor, and that can be pretty expensive. Last night my friend spend 130$ only on drinks, it’s so sick! I mean, 10$ for a f**king beer? That’s why I always buy a six pack in the store and drink half of it before I go to the club (the six pack is only 14$ compared to the 10$ for a single beer :S, so sick!). Ok, enough talk, I’ll be seeing you soon

 p.s. I’m going to Canberra on the 27^th and I’ll be staying there for 3 days. So I’ll make a report on my stay there once I return

p.p.s. You can see some of the pictures from my first week Down Under on my facebook channel: http://www.facebook.com/KTMax90#!/album.php?aid=97449&id=1391415839

See ya

G’day folks , after a long trip I finally arrived at Sydney. Well, the trip really wasn’t that annoying because Emirate’s airplane had a little display in the seat from which you could see films, see footage from outside the plane, play games, see TV or listen to the radio; so the journey really wasn’t that annoying . After a 5-6 hours trip the airplane made its stop at Dubai around morning (local time), and from there I had to wait 5 hours before boarding my final airplane to Sydney. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Dubai because I was in the TAX free zone and couldn’t exit it. Anyway from Dubai to Sydney was the long journey, but as I said before it really didn’t bother me thanks to the little computer in the seat. The food was nice too, and the service was great so I couldn’t ask for more.

I arrived at Sydney in the morning, and when we landed it was actually raining a little . After filling out some papers and declaring all the stuff in my backpack I finally got the permeation to officially enter Australia . When I booked my hostel I got a free pickup at the airport, so that was nice. After a 15minutes trip with a Moroccan driver I arrived at Jolly Swagman backpackers hostel. The hostel was quirt nice but I was really unlucky with the room (got the worst room and bed you can imagine); mine is facing a window that’s right over a ventilation for a kitchen, so it’s really smelly that room. Another thing is that my bed is the only one in the room that hasn’t got a power supply or a place to but my things, but enough of that silly room. Around midday I began to feel sleepy and I therefore decided to take a walk. The walk got pretty long and in the end I got lost. Anyway the sun was starting to break through the clouds and it enabled me to orientate myself (I found out where north was). After that I decided to head north to see the harbor, where I arrived around an hour later. Then I took a street though what I think is Sydney’s biggest park which exits right in front of the Opera House.

After spending some time at the Opera House I decided to get back to my hostel, but that was easier said than done, because I obviously didn’t know the way back. In the end (after 4 hours of walk around most of Sydney’s streets) I finally got back to my hostel, and after a slice of pizza at a local store I went right to bed (think it was around 6p.m. hehe).