Now that Fortzmeister's Online Resource has gone under (and the link has accordingly been removed) I feel it my duty to announce that the Ravens are the newly crowned champions of the Hawthorn Basketball Association 2005 C-Grade Winter Competition. After a hard-fought finals series the final was a bit of an anti-climax. The ravens cruised to a 15-point victory, including a few dunks by Moodie. Unfortunately I couldn't be there so I don't know too many more details, but by all accounts fun is currently being had by all at the Bhardwaj residence, where guests have been warned that if they break anything their kidneys will be sold to the Chinese to pay for the damage...

I finally own the high score at snake on my mobile phone (after years of it being dominated by Sam, Hana and I think at one stage Tommy). Today I racked up a respectable 1328. I put my newfound success squarely down to the bacon, sausage and egg torpedos from Benjy's which has helped me get the required practice while sitting on the bog at work.

Thanks Benjy...

Oh my God........

I've just realised that I missed the one year anniversary of the blog...

I would like to thank everyone who's read and contributed, not least of all Jesus, without whom I'm certain I would be a much happier person.

thats right

Have added links to Hana and Byron's online photo galleries, so here's everyone's chance to have a peek at what we get up to... Byron has a flash new camera phone so he's basically kept a photographic record of everything we've done for the last few months (obviously we're not involved in some of his adventures).

I know its been a while to get you access to happy snaps, but of course my photo galleries are far too high-brow for that sort of thing...

Last week I read the Beach (the book is much better than the film), and its made me really toey. I'm super keen to get back to travelling, although I kinda wish I was heading to a hidden tropical beach bordering a marijuana plantation... No idea why though.

Yesterday I got back my visa for Russia and I'm super pumped about that. After all the fucking around involved with that, its rewarding to have it all sorted now. To get my visa I had to arrange an invitation (usually the hotel your staying in will issue this, but wanting to leave my plans as flexible as possible, I haven't arranged accommodation). So I went to a dodgy online Russian company and paid them US$30 to invite me. So then sent my passport off the the embassy and the rest is history. Having just written this all out, it really doesn't sound like as much fucking around as it has seemed - you'll just have to trust me. So the plan is to fly into Helsinki a couple of days after Oktoberfest, train to St Petersburg, then Moscow (hopefully some places in between, but I don't know how restrictive the visa actually is - when you apply you have to list the towns you're going to visit, but I'm not sure if that's enforced), then Riga, Talinn (again, hopefully some places in between, but I know nothing about Latvia or Estonia so at this point I have no idea where I would go) then a ferry across the Baltic back to Helsinki.

We've also booked a long weekend in amsterdam with Byron and another few guys and then the last hurrah with the flat-mates will be a big trip to Oktoberfest. For anyone who hasn't read my comments in the last post, there's 10 days between being evicted and Oktoberfest so, as we haven't really seen any of England, we may rent a car for a week or go on a bus tour.

The novelty of my job has worn off, so I'm kinda living for weekends at the moment, but there's not long to wait for the travel to resume.