Jim's Home Page

Maria dropped me back at the Greyhound station and I made the reverse trip to Sydney, arriving just in time to do some planned upgrades on the computer systems at work. Thanks for the great weekend, Maria. Do plan to come down to Sydney for the New Year!

We went and looked at Picnic Point, with it's fabulous views back over the plains between the Great Dividing Range and Brisbane. Awesome stuff. After dropping in to see Maria's mum, we went back home for a lazy day, catching up on the decade since we'd seen each other, and waiting for Cullum to get picked up so he could go camping.

Then Maria and I went out to a little Italian restaurant for dinner, getting home in time for the Manly game on TV. Talk about perfect timing...

I headed to the domestic airport, leaving far earlier than I had anticipated. I thought I'd ask the airline if they could get me on an earlier flight, not realizing that the ticket I had purchased was not transferrable. Even to an earlier flight. This seems strange to me, because I'm sure the airline would like to fly an earlier full plane, so they could potentially sell the freed up seats in the later flight to other people. However, what would I know?

On arrival at Brisbane airport, I found my way to where the Greyhound bus left from, and waited. I'd been trying to get a booking via phone with them ever since the plane landed, but all I could get was a ringing phone. Fortunately, when the bus turned up, the driver said we'd work out the fare when we got to the transit terminal in Brisbane. Which we did.

The bus was a little late leaving Brisbane as it had been held up coming in due to a three car pileup on the highway between Toowoomba and Brisbane. The driver informed us that both directions were backed up big time, so he took a detour to miss the worst of it, which gave me a great view of the countryside outside Brisbane.

Maria was texting me saying "Where are you?" just as the bus was arriving in Toowoomba. I eventually made it to her place, where a hug and a beer awaited.

Flying to Brisbane tomorrow, then busing it to Toowoomba to see a friend of mine that I haven't seen since I went to the States. Looking forward to this...

Richard Wright, keyboard player for Pink Floyd, died of cancer last night. Pink Floyd had and still has a major influence on my musical tastes. I saw them twice in Sydney when then were here to do the Delicate Sound of Thunder tour, and obviously when Nick, Richard, David, and Roger got back together for the Live8 gig.

Richard will be majorly missed. Hope you love that great gig in the sky, man.

We went to eat at the new Hugo's on Manly Wharf last night. The restaurant has only been open for a couple of weeks and this showed in the front of house staff's performance, which was really the only letdown for the night.

The food was excellent, and reasonally priced. I started with a beef carpaccio, which had me remembering a restaurant in San Francisco that used to do this really well. Hugo's version was a match for what I remembered. For the main, I had a prawn, tomato, and white wine spaghetti, which while really tasty, could have done with at least one more prawn.

The wine list provided ample choice, and was only moderately marked up.

Overall, a pretty enjoyable experience. Based on how full the place was, and how full I've seen it over the last couple of weeks, the owners have a success on their hands.