Monday, January 29, 2007

We start this edition of Cairns Capers with a trip to Melbourne. I met up with my friends who I worked with in London, Lisa, Jon and Jon's wife Liri.

I arrived in Melbourne on the Thursday afternoon. With Jon at a wedding and Lisa at work I decided what a great opportunity to head to the Casino and try and win a $1,000,000 dollars at the Aussie Millions poker tournament. As you would expect if I'd won anything you probably would have heard from me by now. However it was a learning experience, albeit an expensive one.

However it wasn't all bad news. I did manage to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Here's me getting refused a photo opportunity with Mark Philippoussis and the chick who played the hot foreign exchange student in "American Pie". I'd put her real name here, but I don't know it and I'm sure you don't either. But I spoke to the "Poo"!!!

Another perk of losing wads of cash in a poker tournament is you get invited to the after party. So a week later I dragged poor Adam Thomas along to have a drink with all the dodgey old poker playing dudes. We had several free drinks but that wasn't enough to keep us there. Even the Rhonda Birchmore tribute band was surprisingly disappointing. For those of you outside Australia and never had the opportunity to see Rhonda Birchmore belt out a few tunes each week on our classic variety show "Hey Hey it's Saturday" you'll have to trust me that this is a very amusing reference.

On the first day of the Australian open Jon, Liri and I headed to the tennis. I think we all agreed it was a nice experience and well worth it. However if we went back I think we'd do things a bit differently. We made the mistake of entering the tennis courts and watching tennis. We saw Croatian Mario Ancic beat Go Soeda in three sets. But the real action was just outside where the Serbians beat the Croatians 3 knuckle dusters and a switchblade to none. However we did get to see the flares being lit as we entered the grounds which was perhaps the highlight of the day.

I'm now back in Cairns and I've been spending some more time with Nguyen. I've discovered a few things about Nguyen, her name is actually Nhu, she makes a great spring roll, and she's not likely to break up with her boyfriend any time soon. Since she's heading to Viet Nam on Friday, and her boyfriend will be joining her, I think it's probably best we go on a break for a while. But just so you know she's real, here's a picture of her.

Tomorrow my friend Andrew Middleweek will be arriving. He's here for a week and no doubt we'll be having some whacky and zany adventures, just like we did in New Zealand. It's the wet season here and thunderstorms are predicted every day. But I have a back up plan, it involves a case of beer, Smokey and the Bandit 1 & 2 and the words "smokey" and "bandit". I'll let you join the dots.

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