Nine Inch Nails

Wow it's been ages and ages since I wrote. I think it's because I was always wanting to tell everyone about my hols, telling people about work isn't as exciting. So the obvious solution is MORE HOLIDAYS. I am thinking after France and learning how to ski I am all excited about that so I think I'll take a couple of weeks off in the winter and go to Kiwi-land to do some skiing.

Tonight is exciting, I am going to see Nine Inch Nails. They are going to rock. I love 'em. I saw (I see-ed 'em Auntie Yonie) them once before, years ago, at the Big Day Out so I've been hanging out to see them again. And I also got tickets to go see The Butterfly Effect in July which will be fantastic too! I saw them in Perth a few years back and they're great too.

Ohh, guess what I did. I got myself a place to live. That's exciting. A little hovel of a unit in Kooyong. It's a good area, I met my first neighbour who told me I could come over if I need sugar or salt or anything, so that's good, nice neighbours. It's not too bad a place, it will be better when I get some furniture and housey stuff like cups and bowls. Everything is coming over from Perth - hopefully soon. At the moment all I have is a bed, a sandwich maker and little tea set from turkey! Poor Tan has come all the way from Perth and has to stay with me and has gone into shock because I don't have a kettle or some coffee!! Ah, screw 'er, she'll live ;)

i'm a doodle

i forgot to tell you about what i did on my way to footy training last week. it was funny, i am a doodle head.

i got off the tram and so did Michelle, this other girl who plays. As we were walking past Burnley Campus I said 'oh, someone told me it's a short cut, we can just cut through the campus and come out the other side where the oval is.' so michelle was like 'ok'.

god damn longest short cut EVER! we walked through the campus and came out the other side in this big paddock with greenhouses and little gardens everywhere and 8ft high fences! we walked to the end where we could see the training oval on the other side of the road, but the gate was locked. so we walked back up the way we had came in, but that gate was locked too!! someone had locked us in!! and by this stage it was dark so where wandering around in the dark going 'shit we've been locked in!'

so i said 'let's jump the fence', but michelle wasn't too keen on that idea, but seeming we were locked in we didn't have much choice. so i climbed up and over, then michelle climbed up and started having difficulties with the over bit. and me being the nice, helpful person I am was nearly wetting myself laughing while she was stuck on the top of the fence and cars are going past and other people are turning up to training thinking 'what the fuck are they doing climbing the fence?' she finally got over and it was all a good laugh, but i am not listening to other peoples 'short cuts' again!!!!

lovin' melbourne

Hey gang,

How goes it? I hope everyone had a good easter and got lots of chocies from the easter bunny. I went home for easter and took my brother and sister to the pub where they had a band in the back of a truck in the carpark. I got them pretty drunk which was funny. I got me pretty drunk too and I thought I was funny. But that's nothing new.

I am getting myself settled in melb now. I have started my new job which is great. Everyone there is really nice and I have been 'doing lunch' with a friends who also work around the city.

I've also started playing gaelic footy again. It's hard work though; the hard work being getting out to the games as they are on sunday mornings and in the arse end of nowhere. Last week we got flogged by the team on the bottom of the ladder and I copped an elbow in the face which gave me a black eye, but it's good fun all the same.

The only thing I need now is to work on the 'place to live' thing. I am still staying at my auntie's, she's on holidays (Africa and Barcelona, i am very jealous despite the fact I just finished 4 months of holidays), but i should find something soon. Some crappy little place close to the city so i don't have to comute too far.

But Melbourne is such a cool city. And it's comedy festival time at the moment. Last week we went and saw Wil Anderson, fuck he's funny. I also want to go see a couple other comedy dudes and I have tickets to see Nine Inch Nails in May which I am excited about.

Anyway, that's me for now. Keep in touch people!!

Work Work Work

Once again I have been slack on the blogging, but I haven't been up to alot. Catching up with everyone, looking for work & spending way too much time in dirty ole geebong.

The work thing has happened pretty quickly. A couple of weeks ago I thought I should start looking because I'm not sure how long it will take to find work. So I had a bit of a look on seek and started sending applications and I was only half way through when I started getting calls from recruitment dudes and later that week I had a couple of interviews and the next week I got offered a couple of jobs and so I start on Monday. So it's all happened pretty damn quick. I'm excited though, I think the company I'm going to work with will be good if the interviews are anything to go by.

So I will be starting gaelic footy this week which will be good. A bit of exercise wouldn't go astray.

Ah crap, nothing of interest to write so will get back to you later.

There's no place like home

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I last blogged so I think I'll just give you a quick run-through of what I got up to in Africa. It was awesome, by the end I was very sad because most of the group were going on to Capetown while I was going home. I was like 'I wanna go to cape town too!'. But as Blue told me on the last day of the tour, after Andrew's parting words to me were 'Kelly, I'm sorry we never got to have sex', 'Kelly you can't always get what you want.' So I headed back to Melbourne.

But fuck that was a mission and a half. I got delayed in Nairobi over 5 hours and then over 2 hours in Dubai and if you included stopovers it ended up taking me almost 3 days to get home! But I am now back in Melbourne catching up with everyone and starting to apply for a few jobs. So it's been good. Melbourne really is a beautiful city and I think I'm gonna like living here. (Until winter - then it may be a different story)

But back to Africa. The tour was great. The group were all pretty good people. Lots of aussies, kiwi's, irish and english. We went white-water rafting which was awesome and to the serengeti national park and ngorongoro crater. It was so cool, we saw lions and elephants rooting - well not lions rooting elephants, the lion was rooting another lion and the elephant was trying to root every other elephant it could get too. but that was pretty funny. and in the bush camps we seemed to get a different animal in the camps each time.

first it was a fat old pumba roaming around like he owned the place. then the next camp had baboons who came up and stole our carrots. with their beady ugly little eyes, i'm pretty sure they are all evil. and then one night i woke up and there was something grazing right by our tent. i was so sure it was an elephant and all excited i snuck out to have a look. but he heard me and shit himself, and i shit myself and all i could see was this massive shadow jump and nearly land on one of the tents and i was like 'oh crap he's gonna trample someones tent' so i quickly hid back in my tent and woke sara up to tell her there was a crazy elephant right outside the tent. it turns out it was a water buffalo, but still those things are bloody huge and i wouldn't be happy if one landed on my tent.

we did other good stuff like the elephant orphanage where we got to see baby elephants and the giraffe sanctuary and the trekking with the mountain gorilla was fantastic. oh and the diving in zanzibar and the seafood markets in stone town and the meat on a stick was pretty damn good as well.

anyway, writers cramp is setting in. keep in touch kids and for those of you around melbourne i'm sure we'll catch up soon and i'll get to tell you all my holiday stories.

hippos sweat blood and look manky

hey guys,

i made it to the tour after a 2 1/2 hour taxi ride and US$130. but it has been all good since then. we've been to rwanda where we trekked to see the mountain gorillas which was awesome. they are so bloody huge! there was this massive sliver-back in our group and when get got up you were ready to bolt! they were so cute, especially the young ones playing and wrestling.

in rwanda we also went to an orphanage and played with the kids there. they were such cute kids. all orphans due to HIV which is pretty sad. at first it was a bit strange, all the kids came up and were introducing themselves and hugging us. and we all know i'm not exactly the hugging type so that was a bit odd. then they sang us a song, but they all looked bored silly. so then our tour guide said we should sing a song. so we sang hokey pokey and then got them to join in. the kiwis taught them to do the haka which they loved and we taught them to thumb wrestle which they loved. so we all ended up having a good fun time.

crap, i was gonna write more about it, but am running out of internet time, so will do it later.

anyway, am having an awesome time and rwanda and uganda are real nice countries. next we are going to Ginja where we get to go white water rafting and quad biking which should be good fun.

catch yas

last days in london

Guess what? Just realised I forgot to tell you all about my last couple of days in London. It was pretty good really, despite the disappointment of not getting to see the northern lights.

Nga (friend I used to work with in Perth) and her brother were in London for the week, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with them and getting to do some of the touristy stuff that I didn't get around to while in London. That included the Tower of London and Tate Modern. Tate Modern was cool, they had this big slide installation. Fuck knows how they can call it art, but the big twirly slide going from the 5th floor to the 1st was good fun. And there were slides going from each of the floors to the first floor, so we tested out each of them.

We also went to the theatre - twice. We went and saw 'We will rock you', which was awesome. I love queen. And the people in it were great, they had the most fantastic voices and the chick was really funny. The whole story was good too and at the end they came out and sung 'bohemian raphsody'. crap i can't spell. 3 months with no working and all drinking and I've gone dum. i mean dumb.

The next night we went and saw 'Wicked' which is the story of how the Wicked Witch of the West came to be. The first half was a bit average. After seeing we will rock you the night before maybe we were expecting a bit much. But the story at the start was a bit 'teen high-school drama' where there is the girl who becomes the bad witch and the girl who becomes the good witch and they hate each other and then they become friends. But then along comes the hot boy and they both want him and they hate each other again. But the second half picked up, you find out how the tin man becomes the tin man and how the scarecrow becomes the scarecrow and it all ties in with the movie pretty well. And the hot guy in it, I think he was called ferrero rocher or something was actually the dude who is from 'coyote ugly' and 'bootmen', so a bit perve-worthy. Pity we were up the back and my noculars weren't that good.

I also had a couple of big nights catching up with people before I left too, which was good. One night I went out with Nga and Peter, my housemate Natalie showed up for a while and Ashleigh and Jasmine who I met in France skiing. I remember drinking shots of vodka with sherbet and telling the guy next door in Nga hotel, sure we'll be quiet. The next day I think I was still drunk as me and Ashleigh went wandering through Hyde park in search of food and ended up at some dodgy cafe in king's cross. That night was my last night in London, so those from the night before all piked and didn't make it out, and a few others piked due to dodgy tubes, but Natalie and Farrah came out and Cliona and her boy tim and Chris from work showed up and later cathy showed up for a bit. So I managed to get myself home at a decent hour, telling Cliona, ring me when you get up to make sure that I don't miss my flight again! which she did, good girl. But i was already up and at 'em. Unknowingly heading to the airport only to be fucked over. But i've told you all about that already. I've been emailing lastminute, but as expected they are all 'it's not our fault' fuckers.

i am strong

yes, i made it. right to the top, to the summit of mt kilimanjaro. it was hard work, but my guide kept telling me 'kelly, you are strong' and i was like 'i am, i am strong'. but i have to say, we were also pretty lucky, we had perfect weather. on the night we went to the summit, we set out at midnight and the sky was clear and there was no wind at all. and i got to the summit just as the sun was rising, it was awesome. i was so screwed though. i have never been so exhausted. and it was not all fun and games going up the mountain either, my torch went flat so i was walking in the dark and then i started getting altitude sickness. i had a massive headache and i threw up 4 times. but i was kinda thinking, 'headache, throwing up, i get worse hang overs than this!' actually it brought back memories of when i used to go visit lisa in ballarat and i'd wake up hung over as hell and lisa would say, 'c'mon kelly, let's go. it's only a 3k round trip!' which in lisa terms is at least 3k each way. so thanks stilly, you put me in good practise for climbing the mountain.

small tip for you all. if you're ever hiking and it's sunny and you're wearing shorts, remember to sunscreen the backs of your legs. otherwise 3 words for you 'WORLD OF PAIN'. my god, you don't realise how much you like bending over until it hurts to do it. and try using the dirty old squat toilets when the backs of your legs look like their pretty much cooked.

but all in all, the whole hike was good. i was actually in a group by myself, so was hiking alone with my guide Rashid. but i stayed with the same people in the huts at night. 2 dutch chicks and a canadian guy who were all pretty fun. i learnt some new card games, so i'll have to show them to you when i get home.

my guide was really good. he had just finished a safari guide course so was telling me lots of stuff about all the african animals and the plants on the mountain and all that jazz. he also tried teaching me some basic swahili, but i kept forgetting. the one thing i remember is 'pole-pole' (pronounced pol-lay pol-lay) which means slowly-slowly. He kept telling me on the first couple of days, 'pole-pole kelly, you need to go slow for the altitude changes'. but i naturally march around like i'm on a mission, so that was probably the hardest thing for me to do the first couple of days. on the hike to the summit though it wasn't so hard to go pole-pole. we were going so slow it was like; take a step, count to three, take another step. And i was so tired that i thought my feet wouldn't move anymore, so i started imagining that there were pieces of string tied from rashids shoes to my shoes so that whenever he took a step my feet had to go. that way it felt like he was pulling my along and i wasn't so tired.

oh man, but the way back down was good. it took 7 hours to climb up, but only 2 to go down. on the way up all the slope was frozen, but on the way down it was all thick loose rock and soil and when you step on it, you slid down. so i noticed rashid was just sliding with it, kinda like he was skiing. so i thought i'll have a go at that. it was so fun and easy that despite my tiredness i was like 'rashid, let's race'. so we raced down the mountain until i almost came a cropper and thought maybe it would be best to walk for a bit.

anyway, that was my adventures at mt kili. now i am back in nairobi where i am going to hang out my the pool in my hotel until thursday when i can catch up with my safari. they left without me damn it. because of the fuckup with my flights and all i was a day late and now it's going to be two more days before the truck is in a spot where i can find it easy. but that's ok, hopefully all will be sorted.

fuck you lastminute.com

hey guys, gals and misfits,

as it turns out, i shouldn't have made that joke about missing my flight again. i arrived nice and early to fly to nairobi only to discover i'd been fucked over by the people as lastminute.com. i had requested 2 months earlier that they change my paper ticket to and e-ticket as i was not going to have anywhere for them to send a ticket. they said, yeah it's all sorted for you. i get to the airport, there's no e-ticket. i ring last minute, who were so totally unhelpful. i cracked the shits and went and talked to the emirates help desk who said they couldn't do anything because it was last minutes problem. it turns out last minute had sent out my tickets to my old address and let some random person sign for and take my tickets. however, this random was good enough to get in contact with last minute and tell them about it and they made a note of it with my details and then forgot to let me know about it. so then there was nothing they could do and it cost me over 1000 pounds to new tickets. not happy.

anyway, i still got to nairobi, but arrived a day late. so now i have done the kili trek, but have missed the start of the safari and will not be able to catch up with them for 3 more days. what a fucking shambles!

but the kili trek was great. i am so tired now. i got back a couple of hours ago. crap, am running out of internet time. will tell you all about it later.

off to safari-land

Tomorrow!! Already, off to Africa for safari and to climb mt kili and see mountain gorillas. Yay. 5 weeks and I will be back home. That's if I don't sleep in and miss my flight again! I can't believe my big long holidays are already nearly over. It's terrible. But that's ok, I'll just have to start planning my next trip. I've got some big plans for this year and it does involve a fair amount of holidaying.

So I fly out to Nairobi tomorrow and then spend a week trying to climb up a fucking big hill know as Mt Kilimanjaro. I really hope I make it as I am so ultra unfit at the moment. The lovely Rikki-Lee had a crack at it last month and went up to 5000 metres, so hopefully I'll get that far so she can't lay too much shit on me.

Then a 4 week safari that ends in Zanzibar so I will get to do some diving which will be great. I can't wait to see the mountain gorillas, it's going to be so cool. And hippos, and rhinos, and elephants. Ohh, better recharge my camera batteries before I forget.

Catch ya all later.

now for the answers.

hey everyone,

i'm pleased to report that there has been a lot of feedback and people playing the sex or torture game. although i must say that a lot of you seem to have sex on the brain, dirty kids. anyway here are the answers.

Q1. When I saw this I was like 'ha ha it looks like mum!', but Cliona also suggested an uncanny resemblence to Dargan one of the girls I play footy with.

Q2. This was in the sex museum, the big dildo's hanging off it everywhere were probably a bit of a give away with this one.

Q3. This is a chastity belt and it was actually found in BOTH museums. It was said that it was a self-inflicted torture women suffered rather than being raped when out on the road.

Q4. This was in the torture museum. It was used to screw your head until your skull cracked.

Q5. This was in the sex museum. It is an anti-masturbation device, so in all fairness it probably should be in the torture museum.

Q6. This was in the torture museum. It was basically used to hold people so you could do nasty shit to them.

game time kids

hey people,

i've finally got some time (some dumb arse slept in and missed their flight to iceland) and a decent computer (yay Natalie and Farrah for letting kelly doss) so now i can get some photos up.

remember i mentioned the game i wanted to play, sex versus torture. the rules are, i put up some pictures and you guess whether they came from the sex museum or the torture museum and what the hell you think it is. you can add your answers as a comment and i'll let you guys know later where they come from.

Q1. This is a fridge magnet of a prosti in amsterdam. who do we think this looks like?



















Q2. Sex or torture?














Q3. Sex or torture?















Q4. Sex or torture?















Q5. Sex or torture?
















Q6. Sex or torture?

Kelly can ski now ... kinda, sorta, when she hasn't been drinking too much

Happy New Year Everyone

I hope everyone had a good new years and got up to a bit of mischief. I rang in the new years in vars which is in the french alps. There was a dj playing outside and we were dancing in the snow and drinking red wine from a coconut called milky joe. -- its ok, its not supposed to make sense. there was also the crappest fireworks display i've ever seen. (some of you family members may remember one night when uncle paul let go a couple of fireworks and one fell over and headed straight for the hayshed - it was about that impressive.)

Vars was great fun, we skied in the day and partied all night. The whole hostel was up till all hours every night. At 4pm new years morning I having drinks in some random room and wearing a santa suite thinking, oh crap Ive got a ski lesson in the morning! So I powered on and did get up and go to my lesson. I was pretty happy with my skiing efforts over the week. Admittedly I was in the group for the unco-ordinated (and was the worst in the group! - Ashleigh, you weren't far behind me though!!), but by the end of the week we were up at the top of the mountain and I could successfully get down the slopes without falling flat on my arse!

Skiing is so much fun. I am definately going to have to try it out a bit more when I get back to Melb. You Vicko's we're gonna have to do a ski trip this year.

Anyway, despite the average start to the tour where the 18 hour bus trip turned into a 24 hour bus trip and we missed out on our first lesson, the whole trip was grand. I really wish I had another week. Although I don't know whether my crappy dodgy knee would have handled it - but then it can't even handle a big night out at temple walkie, so we're not going to be too concerned about it.

There were a few different people on the tour. I mainly hung out with a group of girls and guys who had an odd habit of naming fruit and then later cannibalising it. There was the scot/aussie boys from room 206 who would have parties in their room every night and thought that taking a toboggan down the stair case at 5am would be a great idea. funny stuff.

The guys in my room were good value too. Fuck I have not laughed so much in a long time. From having one suffering alcohol-induced tb and wanting to sleep in the hall because he insisted he wasnt in our room, to a visitor in superhero fancy dress insisting he'd left his undies in our room, a guy who if asked to describe himself in one word would use 'wow' and me amusing myself greatly by abusing the dirty saffa's (some jokes just don't ever get old do they?).

Oh yeah, Kent, I met a guy who went to school with you. Small world hey? His name was Adam someone, can't remember at the moment.

Anyway, it was a big trip back as well. So I am pretty much screwed from lack of sleep and the drinking and all the skiing (gee, i was in a world of pain after the first day - although i was surprised when my legs weren't sore, but my arms and boob muscles were killing me), but will get to have a good nights rest at Natalie and Farrah's before heading to Iceland in the morning.

Can't wait, I want to see Aurora Borealis, but I better not fly through it or the Langoliers will get me. For those who don't know, Langoliers are big black flying heads with sharp snappy teeth that eat up everything when you go into the past by flying through the Aurora Borealis. It was in a movie so it must be true.

So keep in touch kids and let me know how your new years went.