One Day To Go.

Less than twenty four hours to go before I'm on the flight to Hong Kong now!

Had a long leaving lunch at work on Friday which went on for well over three hours down the pub, not that I'm complaining you realise.

Yesterday was very sad to have to say goodbye to some of my work friends. Still at least I'll be in contact with them for most of the week over email, if not over a regular web conference once a week for a progress report.

Had my last gym session at my local gym in Bristol today, still there are five gyms from the same company in Sydney so I'll only miss the regulars at my local gym and not the regular workouts there.

Also had my last hair cut with Mark my hair dresser. He appeared to be sadder than me to see me going away.


This is my S2000 which I cleaned (I can be obsessive with keeping things clean!) for the last time before packing it away. This is one of my toys which I'll really miss. Had a final thrash around Bristol this morning. Managed to get it sideways in some damp road which really put a big smile on my face as I caught the rear slipping out before it could spin around into the nearest hedge, which has almost happened to me when I had an MX-5 before this car.


Finally put all my plants in my house in one room and packed up most of my baggage.

Frankly I was amazed at how many plants I have. It was 14 plants around my house and putting them all in one room makes it look like a tropical hot house! The spiders are going to love this room when they get used to not having me around.

Final packing tomorrow morning and then off to the Airport via my sisters house.

Doubt I'll get many hours sleep tonight.

Looking forward to seeing my parents and the adventure that lies ahead but it will also be sad to leave England.

Leaving Party Time!

Had a really great time last week when some of my friends visited my house in Bristol for some final beers and great food.

Davey, Greg and Phil came down on Friday night, while Naheed, Penny, Steve, Jeff, Jason and Dom came down on Saturday.

Phil with lucky jumper as it was Friday 13th, it wasn't a pulling jumper though as he's already married and doesn't need one.

See my sofas at home really are big, even for tall people!









Our final Shadowrun card game before my trip, lots of tears over this one. Not because of it being the last game for a while, more because Jason won. Grr!






For some reason everyone's babies turned up at one point on Saturday. I'm sure that there were three babies, four mothers, three fathers and one bemused William Man in my house! Then there was the bottle feeding and nappy changing all over the place. All I can say is that I counted them in and also made sure that I counted them out.


This is Sarah with a baby that wasn't hers and I'm not sure whose it was, but it obviously isn't happy!









We went to my favourite Wagamamas on Sunday for lunch. You can see the queues of people outside when they realised I was going to be eating there.

Steve is obviously talking about the finer points of BBC TV broadcasting while Greg catches up on some much needed sleep after the weekend's activities.


Penny looking shocked as she discovers that Will's going to be away over the next year or so!









Jeff looking quite normal for him for Sunday lunch time. The chilli chicken ramen was obviously a little hot for him.









Thanks everyone for coming along to see me before my trip, it was a really good weekend.

The only minus point was the New England Patriots losing in the quarter finals. Grr!

One Week Before Leaving the UK for Hong Kong then Sydney.

With only one week to go it's quite exciting and also quite sad at the same time.

Went out to the cinema for the last time last night to see Match Point. Can't really recommend it as a must see film, even with Scarlett Johanssen in a wet T shirt!


Finally packed the shipping crate (read cardboard box) for stuff to be shipped out separately with my snowboard. While thinking things like, what would happen if this stuff fell out of the plane and be lost forever. Somehow I doubt I'll see my stuff appearing on the TV series Lost! Well I supose the only thing that I would really miss would be the snowboard boots and my inline skates. Everything else is easily replacable. We've been asked to evaluate the cost of the items for insurance in destination costs. God knows how much some of it would cost to replace in Sydney.