Today I was slightly geekier than normal. See, without (though I will) sounding needy + pathetic ‘n stuff.. it’s *very* nice when away from home to get mails / calls / notes on a message board… and best of all – postcards..

So thanks to all of you who have said hello from time to time. I promise to try and send at least one postcard over the next 6 months (yes, 6 months!) of travel..

Anyway – there’s this thing on blogger where you can leave comments (the little links at the bottom of each post). But either you have to be a member of blogger (pain) or you have to have the posts anonymous – and then you get spam..

Someone wrote a hack to allow posts without having to go through the blogger screen and that’s here. However, you get spam using it – so I added in a little password field – same as my message board – and made a little site so that if anyone wants to use my change they can. And that’s here at http://patricktesting123.blogspot.com.

Anyway, ‘nuf geekiness for one day.. but feel free to leave a comment.. and to all the silent watchers out there… you can post anonymously ;)

Still waiting on Lorcan to mail me his version of our trip around the S.Island.. in the meantime.. here’s a sneak preview of what Lorcan looked like on our trip around..

20 months since my job on a building site and 17 months after leaving (my stressful) job in the recruitment company and starting work in the contact centre – I’m unemployed again.

I can say, without any doubt, that it’s the best place I’ve worked. While I know I’ve had a huge amount of freedom, the people who work there are just the loveliest happiest friendliest most helpful people I have ever, or could ever, hope to work with. Visitors (and new starters) in our office simply don’t feel like it’s real – that somehow it’s all just a show.. but no…

I’m not sure why it is really.. perhaps its that there’s no sales etc, it’s civil service and relatively low stress – though it was mental this week.. I’m not sure why it’s such a happy place – but it is.

Sorry, I’m not articulating very well ce soir.

On a lighter note – this was in the daily e-mail today – which I thought was just classic

So yes, me be a bum again.. can’t wait to be in OZ and on the road now.. lots left to sort out before I leave, but it will get done I’m sure. I can’t thank my friends, and especially my boss Andrew (mad, but great) in the M.E.D enough for making my last year and a half an amazing one, I will miss them all a lot.

Well, it’s been, oh, I dunno, maybe a month or something since I last raved about how wonderful skype is. It really is you know!! hehe – my friend Barry just pointed me to jyve.com which is a plugin for skype – amongst other things it can be used to show whether a skype user is online..

So .. on the right hand side of the page you will see this: icon. If it’s green, it means I’m online on skype, red means offline. If you have skype installed on your PC you can click the icon – and my PC will ring (like a phone) and we can talk. It’s that simple. Free phone calls anywhere in the world. Magic.

Other than that.. frickin’ twisted my back or something (well, my back) at squash last night.. quite annoying as I’ve been beaten consistently by my mate Fraser in work – and I was *hoping* to snatch the last match before I left NZ.. looks unlikely now. Ahh well.

Yay, my camera turned up again.. quite the relief really.. really wasn’t looking forward to buying a new one. Ok, that’s a slight lie, I was looking forward to having a new digital, but not to paying for it. I think I would have gone for a PowerShot SD500. I’ve decided that I want a smaller camera that I can easily bring hiking etc. with me.. but I’ll wait until my one dies before buying a new one.

Anyway, here’s a pic of my cousin Hannah with James on her lap – and Aunt Mary with Bridgit (the 6 month old arrival).

Also headed out with my friend Sarah for a mountain bike ride. This is something I have to get into when I come back.. there’s a place called Bottle Lake. Named because there’s absolutely no lake anywhere near the place!. Well, actually, that’s not the real reason (funnily enough), but I’ve no idea why it’s called that… anyone know?

But anyway – mountain biking, lots of fun.. might well get my own bike when I come back.