Brewmart

Here is the place where I go to get all my homebrew stuff. Neil is the man in the know there and he always has a fresh beer on tap and a kind word of advice to the budding young homebrewer. Him and his sidekick Tatoo Ted are great craic. Its a novelty on a saturday morning to take a trip to the park, play with the dog, then on the way back pop in here for an hour, its like a social club, sample a few beers, chat to some of the locals and then buy some stuff to go home and make your own beer. Its great. One of the locals, Simon has his own site too which is a good discussion forum and a great place to ask questions of the guys that have been homebrewing for a few years.

Thank you Neil and Ted and Simon for all your help so far. 

Three Hundred Posts

Hi Guys. This blog has been going on since January and this is the 300th post I have put up. It has been great for me to keep a record of what I have been doing over here and I would like to thank everyone for reading this blog, it’s great to get feedback and comments.

I don’t like emailing everyone pictures of things as they happen over here as I am sure that it would get annoying and it would seem like I was glorifying the Ozzie lifestyle, but for those who are interested in what is going on over here and in my leisurely pursuits, then this is for you.

Enjoy

Finn's new friend

Here is Finn Morris with his new buddy, not sure of his name, but he looks a lot like a few people I know from Macroom.... 

Abalone Fishing #3

Here is Steve with a plate of freshly cought razorfish BBQ'd in garlic-butter. Delicious!!!! 

Abalone Fishing #2

Here we are on Steves boat sailing into the dawn (very poetic). There were 4 of us out for the day. Adam, me, Steve (Adams mate who is responsible for our introduction to homebrew keggery and also knows all the best spots for fishing around Perth) and his buddy Dean, a keen and experienced fisherman with many a scar and tale to tell (imagine a young, amateur Steve irwin)

Here is me with my first catch of the day, yeah yeah yeah I know, its small, but you should have seen the one that got away!!! We saw a few stingrays out there too, we stayed well away from them!

Here is Steves boat and all the gear (rods and stuff) ready to be hosed down after a long days fishing. We were out there for a few hours from 6am until lunchtime. We only were allowed 20 mins for the abalone (see post below) and then spent the rest of the time fishing with rods and the lads went diving for Razorfish again.

Here are some more of the fish we cought, Dean took all these to use as bait for when he is up north catching bigger fish. I had a funny chat with Dean on the boat, it was one of those "you had to be there" things, but ill do my best to describe it to you.
Dean was going forward to the bow of the boat to drop anchor and gashed his leg pretty badly on the window, we were sitting facing eachother on the boat and I commented "thats looks pretty nasty, but its a clean cut so will heal up pretty quick, but youll have a scar like this one", I pointed to a small scar on my right knee where I had dropped half of a broken place and the pointy end stuck into my leg. Thus began "Scarwars" and Dean went on in detail and much to the amusement of the other lads, to describe his chainsaw wound on his other leg, the time he was stabbed with a thrown scisors on his arm and many other impressive injuries. I didnt even go in to describing where I have a scar from a hot waterbottle on my leg, I should have opened with that one and saved the crockery wound till last really.

Abalone Fishing #1

Here is the first batch of photos from the abalone fishing session. It was a great day, we were up at 5am and on the water by about 630ish. There were quite a lot of boats out already by that time. As abalone are a protected species we needed special licences.

All the tools a dude needs for catching Abalone and a bag to put them in.

Here is Adam all tooled up at 6am, ready for some Abalone rustling. We were doing some other regular fishing too as we only had a 20min window for Abalone fishing, so Adam and I were tasked with going to the tackle shop and buying all the necessary hooks and bait. Hilarious names for stuff, murlies, bagglesnogs, 6.0 snarphooks, all manner of made up names. We just started making stuff up , I think we were delerious from the gig we did the night before which finished 5 hours previous! 

Where is St.Patrick when you need him.....

Walking the dog the other day and noticed this sign...... 

More Fishy Tales....

I am going diving for Abalone on sunday with Adam and his Steve Irwin-esque buddy (also called Steve). Abalone are a really rare and protected fish, the window for fishing is a few hours a day (from 5-7am i think) for 4 days of the year and you have to apply for a special licence and everything, but the best bit about it is that the minimum size for capture is exactly the same size as the bottom of a beer can so i guess we will be bringing a few of them! 

A hint for upcoming visitors....

Just a subtle reminder to all upcoming visitors to the land down under as to what is my favourite, not available in australia, packet of crisps....... 

Addition to the cinema

This arrived in the post yesterday. My sister Margaret has a friend of a friend who works in the mahon point cinema and they have loads of these things. Its going up on the wall tonight. 

No more pageturning

The future of sheet music is here. The electronic music stand allows paperless performances by either scanning your music or downloading it from an 85,000 score library. Flipping pages is easy with the foot pedal and the stand allows you to make notes via keyboard, stylus or touchscreen. Plus, the unit stores MP3s, setlists and fingering charts, while featuring small bonuses like pitch pipe, midi support and metronome. Imagine bringing your entire sheet music collection on a USB thumb drive, while the stand is simply provided by the gig. All it needs is a pint glass holder and its complete! 

The 'Inernental lysdexia day'

Well; it worked. The 5th of november will forever be known as 'Inernental lysdexia day' according to Fin, such was the state of us after the hour. Twas all well done, representitives from rathmines, kimmage, douglas, summerhill south, newcastle, texas, perth, finland and sweden were all in presence, celebrating the great day. After about an hour, Skype went a bit loopy and kicked us all off, but twas only minor hiccup, we all logged on again. All in all twas a magnificant event. We even got a mention on wikipedia. Anyhoo, I had better go to bed, i'm up for work in 5 hours. Taraa.

The 'F' Man

Back by poplar demand, another photo of Adams son, Finn. Here he is after a bath. 

Red Bull Air Race

Look at whats coming to Perth next weekend. The Red Bull Air Race. Right outside my window at work. They will be performing on the sunday the 19th but will be doing practice runs for the 2 days previous. I can pretty much guarantee that ALL work along the terrace will come to a standstill that friday.

The Kegerator: Part 2

Well, its pretty much done. All the piping and drilling is complete. We just have to clean and paint up the fridge and make it all look pretty, but other than that its working fantastically.

You can see the masking tape here covering some of the fittings in preparation for the spray-painting session (tune in next week to see the colour we selected...)

Here are the kegs. 19 litres each, about 66 pints in total (give or take a few) with the gas cannister mounted on a shelf above.

And here it is in all its glory at about 1am last night when it was all wired up and pressurised. Looking forward to a weekend of freshly poured pints!

Mongolian BBQ

Went to a Mongolian place the other night. Great craic. You load up your bowl with as much food as you can cram in to it, then hand it to one of these dudes and 5 mins later you have a meal. The BBQ they are using is representative of an ancient mongolian shield which the victorious warriors would cook what they just hunted. It is you who puts together the combination of meat, veg and sauces, its pretty much your own fault if it tastes dodgy. Practice makes perfect.

Wedding by the pool

Now this one sure beats a 2pm Honan gig. We did a wedding at this place last week, everyone stood around the pool as the ceremony proceeded, really cheesy stuff. Close on 28 degrees that day too, very tempting to ditch the violin and hop in the pool! 

Cork School Of Music

Construction is going well, all the structural work seems to be done, just rendering and internal finishings to do now. Still wondering if they will name the new bike shed after John Moore....
 

Where is middle C?

Here is another picture from the weekend. Its not the best quality (cameraphone) but you can make out this piano made of transparent perspex. It was locked when we were there so I am not sure what it sounds like, but I am pretty sure it was invented so that aging piano teachers have 1 less place to hide their mid-lesson booze.

Note: I refrained from using any Philip Glass jokes here..... 

TRANSFORMERS: More than meets the eye...

Usually I'm not a bench fan, but we had to get this one. Its for our gin & tonic veranda at the front of the house. A regular looking bench......

....but if you pull up the mid-section it transforms into table!