Yay breakfast.

For lunch we went over to The Celtic Club, which appeared more like a members club or British legion than a bar but anyway they did good burgers.

The afternoon was dedicated to the MTUB (Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade) meet-up in honour of STA Travel and Earn Your Stripes. We all met up at Softbelly (as mentioned here) and it was a great chance to share a few beers with some great locals.

After which we went for Chinese, got fed a lot of VERY strange stuff I had little idea about. I think there were prawn dumplings (where the dumpling had the texture of skin) along with custard puddings (as a starter). Some of it was brilliant, some less so.

A slight change to normal morning today, work then breakfast before a bit more work. Then went to meet Martin for lunch, we went down to the Mitre Tavern. As described its popular, took a good half hour to get a seat. However once we did, got the food ordered and it literally raced me, I hadn’t got back to the table before the food had arrived.

I had dinner, 4 chips…

Oh, and for those worried, no I didn’t die in the earthquake (being called an earthtremor here), did I even know it happened? No! Not like the UK one last year.

Similar start, breakfast then work…

In the evening I decided that Watchmen at the Melbourne Imax was a good idea, and I was right. It was a great idea! Shame there is no Imax experience footage for the film but the awesome screen made it worth it. I wont start posting spoilers for those that haven’t seen it don’t worry.

No dinner again… getting even weirder!

Good to see I am already falling behind in terms of write-up days. Day 1 I am counting as Wednesday, Tuesday was still travelling…

So what did I do? Got up as ever a good start, got breakfast at the hotel, not brilliant but adequate. Couple hours work, and then went to check out the Malls on Bourke Street before meeting Caroline at a funky little coffee bar called Pellegrini’s. Not at all strange, until she mentioned that the head of the Melbourne Mafia hangs around there all the time. I watched my back to say the least.

We wondered down to Softbelly, which you will be hearing more about on Saturday, popped in for a quick beer. Random chat with Lloyd who runs the place, just happens to have spent many years in the UK, Millwall fan!

Back to hotel and a bit more work before sleeping. No dinner, weird for me.

They have some kick arse shop names here… This ones for Jeffo and Burs.

How incredibly exciting… here’s a picture of my boarding passes. Premium for first half, economy for second half. A big difference!

Some ranting I did whilst flying, I decided not to edit it up and make it make sense, but instead, leave it as written as a mind dump. So read on if you are that bored…

Yesterday I arrived in Australia, after leaving the UK the day before yesterday. What did it take to get here?

[5 minutes] Oxford Bus – From end of my road, to Oxford City Center
[90 minutes] The Airline Bus – From Oxford Bus Station, to Heathrow T5
[10 minutes] 482 Bus – From Heathrow T5, to Heathrow T4
[690 minutes] Qantas Aeroplane Flight QF030 – From London, to Hong Kong
[510 minutes] Qantas Aeroplane Flight QF030 – From Hong Kong, to Melbourne
[30 minutes] City Taxi – From Melbourne Airport, to Hotel

1335 minutes, not bad! That works out at 22 ¼ hours. Not taking into account all the waiting around time, there was plenty of that too…

So yes I’m off to Australia tomorrow… this is what I’m taking:

Carry on bag

Checked bag

The “most unfortunate names”, that’s how the BBC describe them, their top three are Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still.

My personal favourite is probably Terry Bull… good stuff.

Read more about it.

And thanks to Ethanwinner.com for the piccie above.