Scattered Thoughts and Ramblings of a Madman

Untitled
the heart that sings its unheard song
whisperings to the souls in reach
the sands of trust trickle slowly
upturned before completion

lovers come calling
like the tears of a clown
with bittersweet memories
of the unforgotten past

winding pathways of endless tomorrows
crash and collide with todays revelations
as the highway of life stretches on
over countless horizons

sleepless dreams like stolen glances
shepherd thoughts to soaring spirals
another sign ahead is lit
obscured by turbulent uncertainties

taking comfort in uneasy solitude
the courage to be one throughout
the yearnings to be many
and the burnt black road continues.



Streams of Life
slipping through the streams of life
surviving though the pain and strife
choosing paths to lead the way
to change the dawn into the day

cluttered mnds with scattered thoughts
changing ships in shifting ports
weeding grass thoughout the maze
hiding from obscuring haze

lonely valleys surround the heights
the beauty's mixed with tragic sights
battles fought on friendly ground
endless silence in the sound

heartache filled with envied joys
subtle plots in overt ploys
dreams a' scattered on the land
ones own chances in ones hand

hopes in grasp we forge through life
through all the pain and strife
gleaning to the paths of right
heading up into the light


The Watcher
as the people are coming and going
i sit and watch without them knowing
i watch their moves, their style and grace
the varied look on every face
some are short and some are tall
some aren't worth the look at all
some are mean and some are nice
and they're the ones i look at twice
i see beauty etched in evey pore
which makes me watch them even more
and still i sit and watch you all
as you walk by and down the hall

Black Tuesday

Well.... after a full on week last week working 53 hours.. and the week before that working a 18 hour shift.... was feeling on top of the world, did a modeling shot for a mate of mine.. cant wait to see the pics (was a fetish gear shoot done in the freezing cold in the back streets of Alexandria Industrial Wasteland)

Started the day ok today... went to Brazilian Ju Jitsu at lunch.. hey even won a few bouts.. not bad for my 2nd proper lesson. (have been doing these "self defence classes which taught a bit of it, which got me interested in doing it properly)
had a meeting at 3pm... only to be told... im being made redundant. so now im unemployed. eeek! bad timing i guess. what really cheezed me off is that im 2 weeks away from 5 years service.. and they are only paying me 4 years in redundancy payout.. but i reckon i can fight that in court. is it worth it for 2 grand ?

if only i knew what i wanted to be when i grow up? Do i do I.T or do i do Travel Industry since my background is both. sigh. thinking of going on a holiday to Europe for a few weeks.. get the head together and decide what i want to do for work...esp since i wont be getting a holiday for 12 months in a new job. sigh.

anyway... heres a pic taken on sunday... before the bombshell.

Days of our lives

Well, the wolf has grown older. Celebrated the umteenth anniversary of my 21st.

almost managed to duck out of all references to my birthday.....NOT !
got woken at some ungodly hour by good old mum, determined to be the first person to call me. (she'd even woken up at 2.30am...the time of my birth.. weird huh)
then my nieces got into SMS mode... then Bob rang (blow me down with a feather)

thought i would at least have a quiet day at work... no.. got taken out to Yum Cha lunch, and ate like a pig. wondered why everyone was trying to talk me out of having mango pancakes... (of which i made sure i had anyway)

but i enever expected to be in the office and have the lights go out and people produce a cake with sparklers on it. (got all mooshy inside)

Dinner with my mum and by brother went reasonable well.. even if i get end up arguing with mum over who would pay for the dinner. was a bit pricey and didnt want her paying for it, to which she got upset. sigh.

got a little/lot tipsy... so tried my chef friend suggestion to have cheese before bed, and after i finished drinking.. aparently the cheeese breaks down the alcohol. well it kinda worked.. no hangover but still felt like my head was all fuzzy.

so thus i managed to survive another birthday.. relatively unscathed.

will it ever end?

well... stress levels at work have basically gone thru the roof! hence havent been writing for a bit.

so to relieve the stress and find a good life/work balance, ive decided... fuck it. im coming out from behind my shyness. (yes friends.. laugh all you want but believe it or not, i am actually quite shy)
been trying to balance the work hard with play hard. gone out a few times with me best mates Paul and Joseph. Saw Bob breifly last night. was a little strange to see him, but i know in the end things will work out for the best for both he and I. Aparently hes going well with his new boyfriend so it makes me happy that hes so happy... just a little weirded out to think of him loving someone else. oh well.

had a nice Valentines dinner cooked for me by a good friend Ian (who does a mean BBQ) oh and Ian, if you read this... you know you love me ! (lol) i think hes out on a date tonight.. so looking forward to catching up on the gossip.

god.. birthday looming.. eeek! have decided im way too old to be having birthdays anymore.. so im boycotting them in the hopes this will stop me getting older. Mind you the older i get the more fun i seem to be having so im not really all that worried about it. more fun to pretend i am.

got new nokia N70.. so having lots of fun with my new toy. because FINALLY they decide to give you a cable to attach to the pc ill be able to more readily take pics on the run and post them up here.

anyway.. must go.. things to do.. people to do.. places to be.

Ouch

Well, a good end to a crapulous day.

needless to say work is filled with endless bureaucratic red tape,

and weird directorships. but my 2nd class at my new martial art went well. kinda.

well, did heaps more wrestling around this time. got trown about a bit, but gae as good as i got. noticed the guy i was partnered with, who was at his first lession, was a little reckless during training. but i put it down to just being inexperienced. got to practice with some advanced guys too. heaps of fun, although the positions are a bit sus.

got winded twice, almost broke my wrist, sweated like a pig, copped an accidental backfist in the face, got dizzy and delerious by the end of it from all the throws and chokes. but hey, i got to learn mount position, and side mount, how to apply this neat choke from the mouht or rear position. learned a defence against the mount position, and even the defence against the defence of the mount position. so overall id say it was worth it. even if i did seem to somehow hurt my hand, but think its only an old martial arts injury so im not too concerned.

had great fun, managed to throw one of my team members, who whilst a girl, is bigger and heavier than i am. and managed to work it against her, so looking forward to practising it on maybe friends who are bigger.

wasnt as bad as i thought being in all those extremely compromising positions with some pretty buff looking boys.. after you get over the initial thrill of ooh err who wud have thought id be like this with a hot straight boy, you actually dont even think that way because youre so focussed on training. seriously.

felt i got a good workout. planned to do 10 mins on the rowing machine after as a warm down, but only lasted 7.5 mins and got bored. i was so tired and in need of a shower.. so gave up.. naughty me. but i reckon i did enough today. we did about 150 crunches/situp things which killed by the end of it but feeling the abs getting bigger already (i know, im a bastard) and 20 wheelbarrow pushups which were weird coz we also had to walk like a wheelbarrow between the sets.

a good night of torture and im ready to curl up and snuggle my pillow.

Flying High

well.. Travelling Dan is off at it again. Tonight, off to Brisbane for work. luckily only going for 2 days.... Brisbane is a bit too humid for my liking and usually you end up being drenched with sweat just from walking up the road.

my little team are going great, despite having so many database and environment issues... testing is a very slow process at the moment.
went to a conference on the weekend for work.. where my boss presented to the conference and theres a picture on the big sreen, of me... entitled Dan "Who's ya daddy" on it. after several years at flight centre, i think they finally found my nickname. gosh, you make one little comment in a meeting and BAM it sticks.

get back to sydney on thursday and thankfully its a public holiday so i can not have to rush from the airport to work again.

hope to have some pictures for the blog when i get back

emerged from the other side of the weekend

wow, what a weekend.

went out with a group of friends on friday night to a club that we hadnt been to before. had fun, danced the butt off!

got home at some ungodly hour sat morn.. got hardly any sleep before being picked up by Bob and driven down to Wollongong to go to another mates party down there.
got to sleep at some ungodly hour that morning too.... Sunday afternoon is a bit hazy.. but i know i went supermarket shopping.. spend $200, and nto really sure what i got, since there doesnt seem to be that much food in the house.. lol i think it was a lot of frozen meals and crap like that... and fruit juices (to detox the body after such a bad weekend)

lucky me found out that Telstra have broken something at the exchange and i have no land line for a couple of days until they can fix it. which of course means no broadband either.. so no internet.. doing this from work during a break.

sigh.. what did we do in the days before internet?

going to bobs tonight to do washing.. since my washing machine broke and just havent had time to get a repair man in.... as not home during the day lately.

my team at work still has no environment to test in (the technology dept up in Brisbane have really let us down) so i was a good boss and gave them the afternoon off.. better than playing hangman.

wow ! how cool was that !?!

after a gruelling day of training my team (and somehow ended up with the nick name of "big daddy" ) i fought my way thru the problems of my laptop crashing just prior to starting the training, and then not having a database for them to start work on.....

we managed to get them all down to the harbour, and take them for a well deserved Jet Boat ride. fantastic experience, and recommend it to anyone in sydney! ok, we got soaking wet, but every second was worth it.

on the adrenaline come down now.. but cant wait to give it another go sometime!

heres a pic of my team (this is the actual team, the other project members not included)
of course this pic was taken prior to the ride, so we are all nicely dry.

Stray wolf finds blog again

Ok, yes, I know... Its been a while. lets all get over the shock and back down toit.

loads has happened since I last wrote on this thing, and if I was to put it all in here, we would all be here for days. so lets do the abridged version.

have been working as test manager for one of the projects at my company. we are buying a suite of programs from a 3rd party supplier. anyway, had to go work in new zealand for 2 x 2 weeks, and work with the developers so I could understand what the programs do.

Made a good mate whilst I was in NZ (Hey There Newman) and totally battled the return on a kiwi accent.

got back to Australia the day prior to xmas. so missed out on all the pre-xmas merriment but sure made up for it on xmas day. tee hee

New years was fun.. ended up going to a dance party called Fantasy. whilst the party itself wasnt so full , i had a great time on the dance floor.

then when i get back to work, i was given a team of 7 to manage, and ive grown so proud of my babies as they have just finished training on the programs yesterday and handled it with ease.

Today they enter training with me, and im going to teach them all to be testers. eeek!

We have a surprise for them this afternoon, and im taking them all jetboating on sydney harbour as a graduation present.

anyway.. thats a brief catch up, and im promisig to keep writing more regurlarly as my mates overseas never seem to know what im doing (wonder why)

how slack am I ??

god, it has been ages since i wrote anything in here.. so heres a quick update on the life of the wolf.

The new job as UAt Test Manager, is provings to be an interesting one. ok, so its full of undefined stresses and lurking horrors that im only just barely aware of. but focussing on the priorities in frontof me and trying not to the the enormity of the project scare me too much.

got to go to Auckland for 2 days. but the 3 hour time difference nearly killed me. we arrived at 1am on day one... and had to be in the hotel lobby at 9am. (9am Auckland time is 6am Sydney time) in my sleepy haze i got confused and set my mobile phone alarm to the wake up time, forgetting my phone was on sydney time..... i woke up, 5 mins after i was supposed to be in the lobby. man, i dont think i have ever jumped up so quick.. nor made it across a room in one step. managed to get ready in 10 mins.. but was in a sleep induced haze for about an hour.

day 2 was only slightly better.... and we met at 8.30am... .after a rather boozy night touring the vodka hot spots of the city. anyone who knows me, will know im not a morning person.. so youc an imagine what it was like for me to be ready and packed, in the hotel lobby at 5.30am sydney time.

on the upside, i did get into the qantas first class lounge on the way home.... so that made up for it.

looks like work is thinking that i may need to move to Auckland for 2 weeks soon, to work with the 3rd party software supplier that i will be testing for. interesting!!! always wanted to work overseas.

currently in Brisbane, on a whirlwind visit, as we (my division at work) are headingup to Noosa this afternoon for a conference. hard like.. first class lounges and luxury resorts like the sheraton noosa. who would have thought flight centre would offer me this. must be true, that we open up the world for those who want to see. (man my FC microchip that they insert into you on induction is working overtime today.)

im sure i have more photos to add in the blog, but working on the laptop.. so no access..

stay tuned.