This week I made the decision that I really ought to be writing more often. If I did have any regular readers I’m sure I’ve lost you all now through my lack of regularity. 
The truth of the matter is I’ve been so busy over the last month or so that I haven’t had the time nor the inclination to write much unfortunately. There has been quite a few big changes in my life and I’ve undertaken activities that take up alot of my free time outside of work, and I’ve not at the break time at work to fill you in on what has been happening.
I’ve recently changed jobs. I now work in the city, but I have to get up very early in order to make the train (5:30am or so) but when I get home from work I’ve been actively trying to catch up with friends, building my MX5 (which with the significant help of others was completed in around two weeks), playing world of warcraft and trying to catch up on a million other things around my new house that are asking for my attention.
All in all I’m loving life and I’ve taken on a wide range of activities that is seeing me regularly busy. I’ve even started riding my mountain bike again so hopefully I’ll be getting fit again soon!
I’ve been unsuccessful in getting my VTR1000 repaired. The shop that has my motorbike has been extremely slow and after several months they still keep promising the repairs will be finished by ‘the end of the week’.
Owning a motorbike over these last 10 years has been my crutch of avoiding having to queue for public transport and paying for parking. It’s been a real shock to my system to have to add so much time to my travel times and to pay over $50 for two days parking at the cheapest rate in the CBD. At the moment I feel like I’m working to pay for my parking. Even the train ticket is double my weekly motorcycle fuel bill and I have to allow an extra hour for travel times.
I’m hoping that I’ll be getting back the motorcycle soon and I’ll be able to travel cheaply, efficiently and according to my own schedule again soon. Another avenue I am considering is riding my bicycle to work, but that will depend on the suitability of bicycle storage facilities at work as well as making the sacrifice of an hour per day each way for travelling. If my work hours directly matched the train timetable it would obviously be the easiest solution for getting to work, but unfortunately getting to work on the train means either arriving 40 minutes early or 5 minutes late every day.
From my new desk I have a view out over the city including the clock tower on the town hall. Every fifteen minutes the clock chimes and for some reason or the other it makes me smile.
This new workplace has a fairly fast buzz about it, and the workload seems to come in fairly thick and fast, but for the most part it’s a positive workplace and the people here make it a very enjoyable place to be despite the workload.
I hope to take some pictures of my MX5 soon and I’ll place the up here as I’ve had several requests. It’s not the prettiest example around but I’m very proud of what came together nonetheless.
Something I’ve noticed from my newest workplace is that every workplace were there is a significant number of people, you start to run into similar people in each workplace. I hope this isn’t offensive to anyone but in a way it almost seems like there is a workplace template where colleagues are stamped out of a workplace machine but due to the manufacturing process there are key differences from workplace to workplace but the individuals possibly came off the same production line. I can only guess why this effect doesn’t occur in smaller workplaces is because there isn’t a large enough sample size for similarities to be seen.
For some unknown reason, every time I work on my car or a computer recently I manage to give myself tiny cuts that are no deeper than a paper-cut but they bleed everywhere. Very unpleasant.
Speaking of cuts – on the weekend I started getting back into mountain biking again after at least 6 months of inactivity. After I got back from China I haven’t ridden enough to maintain my level of fitness and as result the ride was quite tiring for me. One one particular climb I was coming around a tight corner on wet clay, my legs were burning and I just didn’t think I’d have the energy to complete the climb, so I attempted to click my left foot out of my pedal. Unfortunately all I managed to do was throw myself off balance – I became stationary and fell sideways into the lantana that was growing thickly along the side of the path. I joked to the next rider that I was doing my part for the environment by beating down weeds using my body. I wasn’t significantly hurt but bruised my wrist slightly and gave myself tiny itchy scratches up my arms and legs. It’s not the first time I’ve fallen from my mountain bike due to my lack of co-ordination with clipless pedals and it probably won’t be the last.
I’m currently using Crank Bros Acid pedals and I find them much more comfortable to ride with than my previous Shimano pedals because they have much more float for my knees with the added benefit that they’re also much lighter.
Despite having an eeepc I’ve recently taken to carrying my much much larger Macbook Pro with me everywhere I go. It doesn’t really make alot of sense to carry the much larger laptop just to do some writing so I might wise up soon and start carrying the smaller cheaper one around with me to do my writings. It does seem a pity to have such a nice laptop and not take it everywhere with me though. I have to say this Apple laptop is possibly the nicest (not the most powerful) machine that I’ve ever been fortunate to use. I find the interface somehow relaxing and when I’m trying to be productive I find myself far less distracted than if I was using another operating system.
Obviously there is the Macbook Air which is also both small, portable and lightweight but unfortunately it’s not even remotely in my pricerange and I can’t justify buying any more computers. 
I’ll just have to find a way to take the MBP everywhere I go. With the excellent 6+ hour battery life it’s not hard to justify using the MBP as my daily laptop.
Something caught my eye on the way home tonight. A woman on the back of a very small motorcycle with exposed pale white, cellulite pitted legs that were considerably greater in size than my own chest (and that’s saying something). I would have thought that if I placed my own 110kg on a CBR250RR the suspension would be sorely pressed, I can only imagine with the two of them it must have been running along at the bottom of its travel! They seemed to be getting along ok in traffic and I think it’s great they were commuting on a motorbike.