Imogen is here!

It finally happened over the weekend - Georgie gave birth (I believe it was around 9.53am Sat morning) to a beautiful baby girl. We were lucky enough to go and visit them at the hospital on sunday.


How many regulators can you fit into a hospital room?


Happy parents

trip down south

I was lucky enough to get to go down to melbourne for IBM's summer camp. It turned out to be quite a large event, with around 700 people attending from Aus/NZ IBM. The bonus was that the Australian Open was going to be the following week, so Lisa, my parents, Donna and Jeremy also came down on the sunday to watch the tennis.

It was a great 10 days down in Melbourne, getting to catch up with Lev/Della, and meeting their new baby boy Jett. Also got to see a 2.5 yr old Kai, although not sure if he fully recognised us from when we last met (which was March last year).

Some other people we hadn't seen in some time was Pete, who was our old flat mate from London. Was great catching up with him, and he was an awesome host, driving us around and showing us some of the sights of Melbourne. Sat night, we headed out to dinner with Sarah and Alistair - hadn't seen Sarah in several years, so was great to catch up with them as well; they took us to an awesome thai bar/restaurant cnr of Collins & Swanston. Food was awesome, and they had a massive beer menu - a big plus in my books.

The culinary delights didn't end there though - Lisa booked my family into Movida; a Spanish tapas restaurant off Flinders St. Food there was awesome - in particular, the rabbit meat balls.

And as a final surprise, Donna had tried to book us into 15 (Jamie Olivers restaurant) back in Oct last year, but they were fully booked 6 months in advance. We get a call on monday morning heading to the tennis - they were on the waiting list, and the waiting was over. They had a table for 6 available for monday night. It was a tasting menu; we had A1 seats (see photo below), and the food was off a very high standard. Although doing the food/price value test, I would say it would be average, as the tasting menu was $90. But as Jeremy pointed out, the money does go to a good cause.

Anyway, to the photos -

At Lev/Della's place in Carlton - the new Jett (with Kai's hat)

Della & Kai out at lunch on Bridge Rd, Melbourne

Getting ready for our culinary experience with 15

not sure if this is readable, but the menu from 15

Poppy and the Wolverines

So with scottie and chico back in the country, we headed off to the opera bar for a few drinks. And then... well... we went to another venue in the city for a bit of fun.. check out the photos -

Night out in Sydney

Where are we for the past 12 months

I've just uploaded 13 photos onto picasa web. Click the below link to check them all out:

where are We?

Arrrrrgh Xmas 2006

So the 16th Dec was the designated day for the Arrrrrrgh annual christmas dinner. This time, we decided to go for a lunch rather than dinner - location was the Belgium Beer Cafe in the rocks.

We had a big turnout this year, with (i think) the number hitting 27 attendees. Drinking started shortly after 1pm. A late decision during the week was to take part in the kris kringle - $10 limit, and some rules to do with poaching, which would make the whole affair a bit a more interesting.

Again, a great day had - And it got better after leaving the belgium beer cafe - we headed to Glenmore rooftop pub in the Rocks... and once we were feeling like eating again, it was off to Sea-Bay - for those who have not been to Sea-Bay, it is an experience.

I've been told that you can't go in there and spend more than $20/person. Its just not possible. We ordered a LOT of dishes, there was food left on the table, and we only managed to rack up $16/person (thats about 6 pounds for our UK readers out there!).

Although the night could have gone on from there (from the original 27 there was about 12 that made it to dinner at sea-bay), we decided on going our separate ways and head home - probably a good decision given the amount of drinking that had occured during the day.Anyway, time for a few photos...

Joe "the Butcher" with his sample of beers (and sausages)

Joe was the lucky recipient of the 'pirate' kris-kringle present

The Arrrrrrgh boys on the glenmore rooftop

With Matt's current beard, the resemblence with Adam Savage (Mythbusters) is uncanny

You should see the other guy

(note: ok so it really isn't that bad. It was really from an elbow to the eye during basketball. Still, I've been playing the bad boy card for the last couple of days)

Regulator Xmas 2006

well - a late change in date meant that there was little preparation for this years annual regulator Clifton Gardens Xmas party. It was a big weekend on the regulators social calendar - ziggy and jodie had their house cooling down party on friday night; Damian & Bonnie invited us all around to visit their awesome place under Mooney Mooney bridge up the coast sat night; and of course, the annual xmas party on Sunday.

So what happened then -

• the weather forecast for the weekend wasn't looking so sweet, and it rained most of saturday; it cleared up sunday, but was still quite overcsat and windy
• Lisa and Graham got rammed up the ass on the F3 heading up to Collins' place. Basically, cars in front of them braked - they braked. The car behind them unfortunately did not brake as quickly. We now know that our Magna has an ass of steel as the car behind was quite totalled on its front, with the Magna just having a few scratches
• Bonnie & Damian introduced us all to Taboo - did the whole girls vs boys, and of course the boys won convincingly (by 1 point anyway)
• Sunday's events were moved to Georgie's parents place - gave us a good plan B as we did not know what the weather would do, and it was good to be back in familar terrority again
• Kris Kringle, with its alternate 'present opening strategy' went off smoothly in the end - however, before that, there had been many numerous/wasted discussions about how it should all work

So yeah, it was a pretty fun weekend - Dan took some photos, which are below....

Lisa showing her stuff on the pool table

Collins telling it like it is

Santa & Jon

Big Poppa Arrives