Wednesday, February 18, 2009

New Job?

Bugger this accounting for a joke, today i found the perfect job. Its seasonal and looks like sooooo much fun.

What is this great job? (I can hear you all asking)

Mini snow plough driving.

I get to drive a VERY manuvreable tractor around the side walks clearing all the snow and putting down salt and grit (small pebbles) for idiots who wear business shoes to work :D
Hmmmm food for thought

Monday, February 16, 2009

Professional Hockey

Well, last Friday night after work Michaela and I met up with a couple of South African auditors from Deloittes (they had been auditing my work and finished 3 days prior). We met up and made our way via metro to O2 Arena which has a metro 30 seconds walk from the front door which is awesome.

We were there to watch Slavia Praha vs Liberec White Lions which was a top of the ladder vs the 3rd bottom (apparently no one told Liberec they were meant to lose). We had some seats in right next to the Slavia fans and nestled in to watch the game. It was immediately obvious the difference between Michaela's brothers 2nd division team and these Extraliga teams. I guess thats the difference between semi and fully professional. Anyway the end result was 7:1 to Liberec which certainly was an upset. The cost for the Liberec team was heavy! 2 of their players were helped from the rink after both receiving a puck in the face at about 140km/h. It was atrocious, blood every where as these poor fellows face were nearly caved in by pucks. It provided a break in play as the cleaners had to come out and scrape all the blood off the ice with something that resembled a large chisel.
The play has stopped and 3 medical staff are attending to a players face

2 interesting parts of the evening was the small blimp was flying around inside the arena with advertising on its side (very American) and the supporters. The difference between Czech and Australian supporters is that Czech supporters actually support their teams without exception. This is very different to the fair weather supporters you see in Australian sport.

At the end of the game, after being THUMPED the Slavia players came and sat on the ice in front of the supporters while the supporters sang to them. I asked Michaela what they were saying, as I was expecting "You guys F***ING SUCK", but they were singing something along the lines of "we support you if you win or lose and we will be back here next week to watch you play again regardless of the result". Once they had finished the players tapped their sticks on the ice to thank the crowd for coming and left. It was very nice to hear this from supporters after growing up in Sydney were we would have sung "we support you when you win but you can bugger off if you lose"

It's a pity this doesn't happen in Australia :(

Friday, February 13, 2009

Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice.........

SHAME ON ME

Despite my previous post about the dangers of wearing business shoes in snow do you think i listened to my own advice?????

NO OF COURSE NOT

The other day we had blizzard conditions all day with dumping snow and STRONG winds. The snow and wind stopped at about 3pm and when i left for home all the snow had melted (the temp was about zero all day) and i forgot to change into my winter boots ................. IDIOT. The result was that there was more snow over night and I then had to walk to work in my work shoes, which i am now convinced are soled with TEFLON. Maybe i can get sponsored by Tefal and get a red spot put on the sole of my shoes, like the naked chef.



On the glass 1/2 full side I ONLY fell on my arse once, but on the glass 1/2 empty side it really hurt :D


Anyway i am not sure if saying continues with 'fool me thrice and I am a deadset TOOL'

Monday, February 9, 2009

I have an announcement to make!!!!!!!!


Yep, after nearly 2 months with nothing the sun it has finally reappeared and my skin started to bubble after so long with no contact
It is strange that I knew i'd be fine with cold temperatures but cold temperatures and no sun REALLY SUCKS.
The irony is that the moment the sun showed itself everyone at work shut the blinds because it was making it difficult to see the screen. Come on people WTF are you doing as I am sure it will be gone again by this time tomorrow :D


Responsible service of Alcohol in the Czech Republic??????

So the other day a mate of mine was heading home to Oz after 6-7 months here, he is the same bloke we spent NYE2009 with. As a fair well a few of us went to a place called 'The Pub' which has beer taps on every table and every person is allocated a number on the touch screen monitor. When you pour yourself a beer you simply hit your number then start pouring and it measures how many litres are poured. IT'S GREAT.


So where is the problem, I hear you all saying!!!


Well the problem is that not only do you get to compare how much each person on the table has drunk compared to each other, but there is a big screen that compares the beer consumed by your table against every other table in the place, and this screen then compares the tables throughout all the other locations in the Czech Republic against one another. The point is that eventually you find yourself in a position where your table of 5 mates has only had 50 beers compared to the leading table which has had 65 beers and therefore you all need to drink faster :D
I am very glad i got there late and had to leave early and therefore could only contribute 4 beers to the tally but the boys were certainly putting up a valiant effort.
As an aside, the beer taps have gas knobs that you can adjust depending how gasy you want your beer. So we had a table challenge where you had to get as much as beer as possible into the glass. As some of you may not know the beer glasses over here have a line that marks 500mls and this is about 1.5 inches from the top of the glass, the rest of the glass is filled with froth. I am pleased to annouce i WON and managed to get 650mls into my 1/2 litre glass.
Anyway this place certainly does not practise responsible service of alcohol like you find in Australia, BUT it sure is fun

Friday, February 6, 2009

The Dangers of Floorball

So in an effort to try and prevent a massive blowout on my guts due to a cold winter and Czech food I have been playing as much sport as possible. One of these sports is Floorbal which uses a ball similar to a practise golf ball but is similar to hockey in every other way.
Well last night i learnt that despite the ball only weighing 30 grams or so it still leaves marks. I was goaling tending, which really means i was taking a breather because there were no reserves, when i was struck in the neck from a vicious wrist shot from one of the guys. Saved the goal, well obviously since i am 3 inches wider then the goal in every direction :D, but i did receive 2 cuts on my neck where the ball hit me. (nothing too serious but the photo doesn't do it justice). At the time we were all laughing that it looked like I had just made love to a large woman and she had won :D
Despite this apparent violence it is still a thoroughly entertaining game.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Downhill skiing in Europe

Well I know its a little bit late but on News Year Day after spending the previous evening 'smashing the cans' with friends we headed up to the mountains that were only about 20 mins away from where we were staying.
We hired the essentials (boots and skis) and borrowed some other stuff from friends. This was Michaela and my first time skiing together so it was going to be interesting. We jammed our way into a gondola and headed up the mountain. We realised VERY VERY quickly that perhaps buying goggles would have been a good investment. I find there is nothing better then tearing down a hill at some break neck speed and then going directly under a snow gun (fake snow maker) with no goggles on, well i suppose it is appropriate considering my middle name is 'DANGER'.


Anyway we skied for the afternoon as everyone was a little hungover in the AM and had a great time although I was seriously surprised to see Michaela tear off down the hill in front of me. So much for her "I am 'ok' I guess". 'Ok' my arse, she was bloody good and bloody fast, where i am FAST but technically retarded which means on anything but perfectly groomed runs I look gangly, uncoordinated and out of control.
It was a very pleasant day but we had a weird incident in the bistro when we were getting some food. It appeared the bistro staff hadn't stopped drinking after new years and were all SMASHED. They were dropping uncooked chips onto the filthy floor then picking them up and putting them back into the deep fryer. Michaela said they were so drunk she couldn't understand them but i didn't pick up on that as it all sounded Greek to me :D


Anyway hopefully we can go again soon as we both had a lot of fun