It’s now less than 2 weeks untill the football world cup starts in Germany. I’ve prepared by buying a digital set top box on eBay to be able to recieve digital tv as we have pretty bad reception on SBS (the channel that sends all the games live). I got it in the mail yesterday and it’s working quite well, the antenna in our apartment building is probably not adjusted for digital reception but I get four of the channels (ABC, SBS, 7, 9) perfectly, and the last one (channel 10) only cracks up a bit sometimes. On top of better reception we also get a couple of extra channels and live program information. I’ve set it up so we can still watch the old analog signals as well if we want so it’s all good.
Sweden starts it’s campaign against Trinidad & Tobago at 01.30 on Sunday morning 11 June, the next game is against Paraguay at 04.30 on Friday morning 16 June and the last group match against England is at 04.30 on Wednesday morning 21 June. As you can see there will be some late nights/early mornings for me to follow it live so I’ll have to see how I go, but I’ll do my best…

I’m back home after spending a week in Ballarat, about a 1.5-2h drive from Melbourne on my first job as a Lift Technichian. It’s been very interresting and there’s quite a few things to learn but it doesn’t seem too difficult so far. I’ve been pretty tired as we have been doing a few long shifts and its quite fysichal at times. I’m working with Anders, another Swedish guy and we are getting along well and it’s nice to speak a bit of Swedish. Anders live outside of Melbourne towards Ballarat so he’s gone home every night but I’ve stayed at “Mid-City Motel” which isn’t very exciting, but fairly central and close to a pub where I’ve been eating solid dinners. From next week the plan is to go there Monday morning, work long days Mon, Tue, Wed, we’ll both stay at the motel and then head home Thursday arvo (Australian short for afternoon) and have Friday off, so that sounds pretty good.

I’ve just installed a photo album and it seems to be working ok. It takes photos from my flickr album and posts them here on my page, have a look under “photos” on the left side menu. There’s some small design things that I want to fix but at least it’s working. I haven’t put a lot of photos up but I’ll try and get some up soon. enjoy

Update - I have fixed the design so now I just have to get cracking on uploading some photos…

Finally after a lot of turns I’ll start installing elvators next Monday. I got in touch with this company in August last year before I went back to Sweden, and have kept in touch ever since. It seemed like I would be able to get a job fairly quickly when I got back to Australia but due to different circumstances it has taken a bit longer. All the people I’ve met so far in the company have been really nice and if I like it and put in a bit of effort it should be possible to get to know a lot and get a pretty nice job in a while.

Also I’ve got VERY sore legs at the moment after doing my first training with “Elwood City Soccer Club” on Thursday night. The club is a bit bigger than Surf Coast Soccer Club that I played for in Torquay with 3 senior teams, and there was a fair bit of running going on but hopefully I’ll get in shape in a couple of weeks.

Just a quick note to say happy birthday both to Bec and my dad who happens to have the same birthday. Bec and I went out for dinner with a couple of our friends tonight which was really nice and I just spoke to my dad who is enjoying the lovely spring weather in Sweden at the moment with sun and 25′C so a big Happy Birthday to both of you, or as we say in Swedish “Grattis på födelsedagen”

We just got back from a very nice and relaxing weekend in Daylesford “The Spa Capital of Australia” and Hepburn Springs. We stayed in “Eastern View 1″ a cosy little cottage with a large spa that we turned into a bubble frenzy the first night. We got there on Friday and had a cosy night in, making pizza and enjoying the spa while the rain was poring down outside. On Saturday we had booked in for a spa and Massage treatment at Peppers springs retreat, we got the white robes and flippers and cruised into the spa area where we had about an hour, it contained two 37′C bubble pooles with mineral spring water and three different saunas so after our hour we where quite relaxed. We then got called in to our 45min relaxation massage witch also was really good (Bec fell asleep). After a few hours on the couch at home we returned for a luxuary 3 course dinner which contained high class service and GREAT food. Today we just had a big sleep-in before driving back to “The big smoke” (Melbourne) and back to normal life again.
Thanks to everyone who gave us this great gift as our engagement present!

It seems like my job, installing elevators are getting closer. On thursday I’m meeting up with Anders, another Swedish guy that works at the lift place, to follow him around for the day and learn basically what I’m going to do and hopefully I’ll start in a few weeks. Most likely I’ll be going to Ballarat for about 3 weeks for my first job and only come home on the weekends, but after that it seems like it’s mainly around the Melbourne area. I hope I like the job and that they’ll give me time of for the wedding (otherwise I’ll just have to find something else)