Work, Running, and Lying

Here we go ladies and gents.  Pam is finally getting me to blog so im gonna tell you how everything has been going in Merrick's little world.  I am working all the time and things are finally starting to pick up with our clients here so that make me a happy little man.  My boss is this little Indian guy named Vijay Gupta.  I wish you all could see him, he is basically your typical broken english indian that loves Harry Potter.  We have been jogging a good bit lately getting ready for the 12K that my little angel mentioned previously.  I took her on a hour run the other day and on the completion on the jog i was completely cursed out, shes adorable.  Now on to my lying problem, i would like to hear your comments on why i lie... I was doing a sales call the other day and my customer asked how my girlfriend was doing getting settled here, so on and so forth.  I went on about a 10 minute tangent on how she gets up at 6 in the morning everyday and goes fishing by herself and how good she is at it, etc...the guy didnt even care, but for some reason i thought that he would be interested in hearing how good of a fisherwoman my girlfriend was.  I have no idea what i was thinking.  As soon as i left his office i just thought to myself,  how did all that shit come from my brain out of my mouth...Anyhow, whoever is reading this, love you guys, miss you guys.  Pam is making me cook dinner now so i have to get busy.  See ya later alligators

Gone Fishing

Merrick and I have been seeing a bunch of people fishing along the river lately.  So, we went to Kmart yesterday and got us some fishing rods and a little tackle box.  We figured it was simple. Get rods, get fish. Easy enough.

After about 3 hours of fishing, all we got were muddy shoes, mosquito bites, and an empty tackle box.  We had cut more fishing line than actually fished.  All we got from our first fishing experience were our new friends, ducks who were after our bread.

Merrick repairing my fishing line. 

While Merrick fixed the rods, I messed with the ducks.

We gave up fishing after they showed up.

First fishing trip...fail.

The positive part of our day was that we had found this guy named Robert who sells great seafood out of his trailer. He has been in business for 30 years! He had all kinds of people lined up!  He had some great specials and Merrick and I took advantage of his seafood. We got 2-kg of mussels, 1-kg of squid, and 1-kg of huge prawns!!

I've never cooked seafood before so I was nervous when Merrick said he wanted to do "Bonefish Mussels".  We love Bonefish mussels and their Bang Bang Shrimp! Here is my final product!

It actually turned out delicious! 

Enjoying the biggest mussel in the batch!

All gone!

My First Night Alone

Merrick is in sales and has to travel a good bit.  I was supposed to go with him to Sydney this weekend, but his company last minute decided to just do an over night trip. He left this afternoon and will be back late tomorrow night.  So, there was no point in me going if he was just going for a conference and that's it.

These are the beer of choice for tonight.

Right now, it's raining buckets outside and it's cold.  I had a plan to go on a run this afternoon and grab a drink down the street, but it's raining so bad I don't feel like it anymore. So, I'll just do it tomorrow if it doesn't rain.  Luckily,  I made Merrick stop by Liquor Land last night to get me a few beers and a bottle of Chardonnay. I am just going to cook me some dinner, watch a movie, and drink a a few by myself.

OH YEAH! I have a MagicJack (thanks dad!) so I can receive calls and call people with an United States phone number!! All for FREE! Merrick and I experimented with it the other day and talked with family.  Merrick and I got in the mood to do some prank calls too (can't tell you who we did it to because they are still on going). I then tried to prank call Erin because I know her number by heart and it didn't work out to well. Merrick is a lot better at it than me!  I'll call some people tonight! So, be prepared to talk! If you want here is our number: 1-954-353-6489

Cheers!

Mr. Johnnie Bats

Here is Mr. Johnnie Bats himself!

Merrick is currently involved in the Melville Fast Pitch Softball League.  Games are on Sundays and he seems to be really enjoying himself.  He actually shocked me this past Sunday.  He had some great hits and plays, hence the muddy uniform. His teammates are very supportive and really enjoy him as much as I do!  His teammates are all different races, ages, and sizes! Haha! There are some older Venezuelans, middle-aged Americans, and cuddly Australians.  Didn't see any girlfriends or wives at the game this past Sunday other than one little asian woman.  She didn't look really interested in talking to me so I snubbed her when we were talking to her boyfriend (a marine from Cali). I'll get some video of Merrick playing this Sunday and show you guys his skills!

Nice Little Surprise

We are in the middle of "winter" right now and instead of it being super cold and snowy it's been chilly with  intense monsoons! Merrick and I were trying to fit in our new running route in Kings Park yesterday and as soon as we got in the car it started pouring rain! After driving around for a little while this nice little surprise popped up!  I love seeing rainbows! 

House Pictures

We are renting from an older couple that is retired and traveling around the world.  The house is furnished a little old school, but the layout and size is incredible. The fact that we found a place that is fully furnished with EVERYTHING makes me happy.  We literally just have to bring our necessities and we are good to go!  Other places we looked at were super small, super expensive, and weren't fully equipped. We were going to go load up our place IKEA style and make it all different, but in the end its not worth it. More stuff to pack when we move. We are just going to collect cool things when we travel!

Here are the pictures!

This is the kitchen when you walk in the front door.

This is our living room. The windows along the wall overlook the city skyline.

This is the dining room.  Merrick and I have been using it as our desk.

This is the hallway to the bedrooms.

This is the extra bedroom. Whose going to be the first to sleep in it?!?!

This is my bathroom.

This is our room.  I want to make this a little more homey.

Our closet walking into Merrick bathroom.

The view as soon as you walk out on to the porch.

This is our porch (my favorite part of the house).

This is the back of the house.

Our First 12K!

Merrick and I have been running on a daily basis since I've gotten here to get use to a routine. After over a week we feel like we are expert runners now. So, we decided to sign up for a 12K. The run is called City to Surf.  This run is equivalent to Charleston, Cooper River Bridge Run. They are expecting about 30,000 people to attend the race.  We start downtown in the CBD (Central Business District) and end at the beach!

Here is a link to the running course and a picture of the race a couple of years ago. We are pretty excited about it!


Running Course

First Week Surprises

Merrick had some great things lined up for my first week here in Perth.  I got here last Monday and first thing that was on the agenda was unpacking and organizing our place to my liking.  I figured since he had to work I had the opportunity to rearrange things and make our house more homey.

Here is our favorite part, the view from our backyard:

Looking out to this everyday will never get old.  I will put pictures up of the house as soon as we get better weather.  We are in the middle of winter right now, so, we are getting a lot of rain and it's been really chilly. I hate taking pictures when its all dark and gloomy.

But here are some more pictures I took when the sun did come out.  When it is nice out Merrick and I eat on the porch.

If we aren't eating at home then we are out experimenting with the diverse cuisine they have here!  Our first night out we went to Korean BBQ.  If you've never experienced this, you need too!  You order raw meat and you cook it yourself on a grill in front of you!  They give you great condiments and little salads to accompany the meat and its so good!  

Here are some pictures taken from my ipod at Tong 86:

 They give you rice, green onion salad, kimchi, and egg smelt.

 This is Soju. It Korean rice wine with an alcohol proof of 70. We had 3 of these.

 Here we have brisket, ox tongue, and pork cheek meat.

 This is how you cook it.

 Happy and in love.

This is after the Soju and Sapporo's.

Here is my favorite part so far.  Merrick took me to go pet the Kangaroos and Koalas. We were a little hung over from our Korean BBQ night, but we were excited!  Merrick heard it was the place to go to experience Kangaroos and Koalas. Here are the pictures.

I'll stop blogging for now.  I am a little addicted. Thanks Erin!

34 Hours Later...

The flight was definitely not short.  My flight was from Greenville to Dallas, Dallas to Sydney, Sydney to Perth. The longest leg was about 16 hours. I had an isle seat the whole time and was lucky to have a girl next to me that was an american who had been living in Sydney for 3 years.  She gave me a lot of great advice and we actually had great conversation over endless bottles of wine.

Here are some pictures:

 My Mom, brothers, and niece sending me off at the airport.

Waiting on my flight to Sydney.

It was a great flight until...

I had to go through immigration to get my passport stamped (which is my favorite thing about traveling), collect my bags, then go through customs.

People are vicious when it comes to getting their bags and getting in line first.  I was by myself with a 40 pound carry on and two 50 pound bag duffles.  I had to get a cart and find my bags on the baggage claim that had over 2000 other bags!  After about 20 minutes of finding my bag and struggling I fall in line to go through customs.  I am zig zagging through the line, feeling rushed and then all of a sudden my bags fall on the ground.  I have an asian business man behind me and an indian man in front of me.  Guess who helps me? NEITHER! The asian business man straight up KICKS my bags to get out of his way and cuts in front of me!! I was shocked! The Indian man looks at me, giggles and walks on.  I had three Aussie boys come  to my rescue and call the guys buggas for not helping me!

I finally get through customs and they checked everything in my duffels! They inspected everything from my shoes to the pack of almonds I had. They were really nice about everything but asking all types of questions.  The guy who was checking my bag told me not to put "pacific islander" on my Australian documents. He said, "You aren't, you are "American"".  That's a first for me. From now on I have to put American not what I actually am.  Weird.

Finally, I get on the plane to Perth.  The flight was 5 hours long.  Everything was fine.  Had brekkie (what they call breakfast) with mimosas and watched Hall Pass.  We were fixing to land when a guy two rows up from me gets up and takes his backpack to the bathroom.  10 minutes later the seatbelt sign comes on and the guy is still not out of the bathroom.  The flight attendants are knocking on the door and then they check his seat and they find a liter of vodka almost gone.  They then think he is either passed out in the bathroom or puking.  The pilot had no choice but to stay in the air.  We were supposed to land at 1:02 and it was already 1:15. The guy finally comes out of the bathroom like nothing is wrong with one of those non-smoke cigarettes in his hand.  He basically got drunk on the morning flight and wanted to finish up the flight with a smoke. He was removed first off the flight and not sure what happened to him.

Phew, that was my flight.

As soon as the plane landed, I got off as soon as I could! I couldn't wait to see Merrick.  I had major butterflies in my stomach.  I felt like I was seeing him for the first time.  When I did finally see him, he had a huge smile on his face, flowers in one hand, and waving as hard as he could with the other. I felt like I was home!

This is what he had for me when we got home.

The Introduction

I'm not sure whether a blog and myself will be a good combination but we'll see how this goes!

First off, let me say how blessed I am for such great friends!  They gave me such a great send off the night before I left with dinner at The Lazy Goat and drinks afterwards at Hoops n Hops.  There was such a huge crowd of people who showed up and made me feel really special!  I know about 50% of them were there because it was something to do.  I'm not crazy! But I had a great time chit chatting and taking "brown shots"!

Here are some pictures from my last night in Greenville, South Carolina:

As for my last day in Greenville, it was tough.  I woke up early in the morning with my niece and we started packing and cleaning up.  I was fine till about 11 o'clock when I realized that I didn't have a full day and I only had a few hours to get in my goodbyes.

My friends came by, we talked, laughed, and ate Chick-fil-A. Kendall had a sampling of everything and I think Peter would have been proud!  It meant a lot to me that they were there to be with my before I left! I kicked them out around 2 o'clock to have myself a moment.  :)

I will miss my family and friends very much but it's not forever, just till next time!