Gong Hei Fatt Choy

Happy Chinese New Year !! Gong Hei Fatt Choy - Wishing you a prosperous New Year.

This year is the year of the dog (more info here).

Travel Tips

Whilst waiting for my bagel to be toasted I catch a story on CNN about travel tips. They cover the usual stuff travel with your most valuable stuff in case your luggage is lost, carry your medication in your carry on just incase you need it and more common sense stuff. Then they come to #4 - don't let people know you're an American! I found this funny and true at the same time. Funny because in a land of patriotism and proudness for being an American this might come as a shock to some Americans. One of the ways they suggested to disguise yourself was to "lose the fanny bag" :) I mean once you call it a fanny bag (bum bag in more other places in the world) your a give away. On the truthful side I think Americans get shunned whilst overseas - mostly because of the minority of loud and obnoxious ones giving the rest a bad reputation. Ahh how good it is to be an Aussie.

Sports season

Sport season is definitely heating up in Chicago (quite the opposite of the weather). The football season is drawing to a close but that just means that Superbowl is nigh. My adopted home teams for basketball are coming along quite well with the Bulls (NBA) on a good run and Illini (NCAA) showing them how it's done (in college).

In a few weeks it's going to be the Winter Olympics in Torino. I actually work with a team out there and would kill for a business trip out there. Although you're going to have to be a rich European to be able to watch any of the events live. Third tier (ie. nosebleed) tkts for one day to the figure skating are going for a cool 300euro. That's just ridiculous.

NBC is the 'olympic' station so I'm going to be tuned to that for most of Feb. Unfortunately it's going to mean 99% of the events will be US orientated and to make things worse I'm going to have to put up with those American commentators.

Welcome 2006!

From a blogging perspective, '06 hasn't started well. 2006 is alread 23 days old and this is my first post for the year.

As per my previous post, I spent Christmas & NYE in Adelaide. T'was fantastic to be back in the land downunder. The best thing was probably catching up with my friends - many of whom I've known for a long long time :). Perhaps the activity that I did most often was eat. Everything was so fresh and tasty in Australia - lamb...ahhh...coorong beef...mmm...lobster...yumm..yes it was eat fest back in Adl.

Unfortunately on 5 Jan I had to depart Adelaide, but the fun & eat fest didn't stop there. It was off to KL for Lilian & Andy's wedding. Kev played host to SY & myself for another year and this time we were joined by another friend - Grantley. Pics from our M'sian trip can be found here.

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