A Pinch and a Punch

...for the 1st of the month.

Ah yes, April Fool's day no less.

But this is no April Fool's joke, no...this is the first opportunity I have had to sit down and follow-up on the last rhetoric post.

I arrived in Melbourne on the 1st of March, one month ago - after finally managing to sell just about everything I owned (the exceptions being my mountain bike and my computers), and leaving my home for the last seven years in an embarrassing state for the land-lords to deal with (not to mention lumbering them with my very missed pet dog Akira).

Since then I have managed to land the dream job (SEO Analyst - a job I applied for before I left even though I didn't get accepted till after I was already here), and tomorrow I pick up the keys to the dream apartment (photos and more to come I can assure)!

I knew around November last year that I was doing the right thing when I started thinking about moving to Melbourne. It just felt right. After only a short visit in 2004, I fell in love with the place. Since being here I am absolutely blown away by the beauty and diversity of Melbourne and Victoria - a large statement given the renowned beauty that New Zealand and Taupo are known for.

40 minutes in just about any direction can take you from high-rise city, to lush green woods, to rolling farmlands, to beaches to snowy mountains (in the winter). The juxtapositions between old and new, quiet and rowdy, country and city are very in-your-face and marvelous to behold.

The sad point to note is that there have been very few opportunities (so far) to take any quality photos, or those opportunities that have arisen have yielded less than great quality. The current two to two-and-a-half hour (!) transit each way to and from work hasn't aided that, so hopefully with my new pad located in the CBD I should get a lot more time to explore and take some shots.

City life certainly has been a nice wake-up for someone who has been pretty much a country hermit for the last dozen years. I hope that this new leash of life will give the same to this website!

Finally, if you're in Melbourne and wanna meet and hangout over a latte or VB, then drop me a note!