I love my iPhone. I love my macbook. I love my (brand spanking new) 24 inch iMac. And I love my shuffle. As you can tell I’m a bit of a mac geek. But in all seriousness I do love my iPhone, it has everything you need – phone, internet, email, facebook, twitter, calendar, photos, music, videos and lots more. And it’s great when your with your mates trying to figure out who that tv star is… You know, that guy… He was in that show back in the days when Felicity and Jack and Jill was on… He had a little sister and his parents were divorced… You know the guy.

Okay starting to lose the plot.

As much as I love my iphone, it’s seriously starting to give me the s%#ts! The first time it stopped working I took it to the “Genius” at the apple store Genius Bar – I’m not just calling him a genius because he fixed my iphone, that’s his actual job title. It was pretty cool at the apple store, the Genius said if he couldn’t fix it he’d give me a brand new one – right there and then. He even had the box ready to hand over. But he did fixed it so I just kept my 2-week old iphone.

For the past couple of days it keeps saying “No service”. It did it for a few hours the other night while I was waiting for someone to call, I was at a friends place and I know her place has perfectly fine reception. Unbeknown to me no one could call because I had “No service”. My phone was just sitting on the couch all night without reception, then hours later it decided to work. Now it’s fair enough when you’re go through a tunnel or you’re in the elevator, but we were on the top floor of a 3-story apartment. Very annoying.

As much as I’d like to, I don’t think I can blame apple or vodafone for this problem. A few days prior I was playing around with the setting on my phone and accidentally switched the carrier from “vodafone” to “automatic” – big mistake! I think what I did was tell the phone to look for any available network and connect to that instead of only looking for vodafone. There were a few times I looked at my phone and it said Telstra. Eek.

Looks like I have a date with my iphone manual tonight. Otherwise hopefully a “restore to factory settings” will fix it.

I love it when parcels and packages get delivered to the office. Mostly because I like to play with the bubble wrap, but also because sometimes you never quite know what’s in the box. Most of the time it’s just stationary or books or other boring stuff, but there are days like today when it’s something much more exciting.

Today I got a brand new 24-inch apple iMac for my desk at the office and it’s huge. I was previously working on a 20-inch iMac and while 4 inches doesn’t sound like a huge difference – it is. It’s going to take a bit of getting use to. Though it’s only 4 inches bigger than my old iMac you really do feel the difference in your eyes and your posture – even after 1 day. I had to make my seat higher so my eye level matched the screen and I had to push it way back because the brightness was starting to make me
dizzy.

All in all, I’m one happy camper. I can’t wait to play around with the new toy tomorrow, not only is it a bigger screen but its got double the ram and a newer, more advanced graphics card. Looks like I’ll be doing a lot more editing on this new baby – which, I think, is why I got the new iMac and my boss got my hand-me-down 20-inch iMac. Well I’m not complaining.

Last night crab was on the menu. We had 3 fresh blue swimmer crabs between the 3 of us so it was a crab each. The funny thing was none of us actually knew how to cook it, or clean it for that matter. So after a quick read on google, some scrubbing and 10 minutes of steaming we were on our way to filling our bellies with fresh crab meat. It didn’t go down too well with me but the girls gobbled it up, leaving an impressive pile of broken shell pieces on their plates (and evidence of flying shell in their hair. hehe).

After a mountain of crab with mash, meatballs and risotto on the side (yes those were our side dishes, not main) you’d think we were done eating. Nope. We whipped up a batch of delicious choc-chip cookies thanks to Bill. And a pizza.

As you can tell we love eating.

Good coffee is hard to find. I didn’t always have this problem so I’m not sure if it’s because my standards have raised and I’ve become a coffee snob, or if people are just getting crap at making coffee. I think it might be a bit of both.

I use to buy coffee from the cafe next door and for ages I thought their coffee was pretty okay. But recently a new cafe, The Peppermill Cafe, opened where they serve Campos coffee – and wow what a difference it makes to your life when you have good coffee. Since then, I haven’t looked back. And it’s hard you know, I have to walk past the cafe next door holding a cup of (awesome) Campos coffee – I feel like I’m cheating on them. A couple of times I’ve actually had to sneak around by doing a big loop around the block just so they won’t see me. Sad I know, but it’s all for the love of good coffee.

I emphasise “good” because Campos coffee is just so good. Not So Good like Delta So-Goodrem soy milk – yuk! But seriously good. Apparently the first Campos coffee place in Newtown is so popular that during the morning coffee peak hour rush you could expect to wait about 30 minutes for your coffee, now that’s dedication. Luckily for me I only have to wait 5 minutes.

Yesterday was my mates graduation (Congrats g!) so naturally we were at the pub celebrating. (Note to self: drinking on a Monday night isn’t as easy as it use to be – you’re getting old!). My mate actually has to graduate again in a few years, because she now has to do post-grad, so last night was just the practice round.

One of the things I love about Sydney is that there are heaps of funky pubs and bars scattered across town. Last night we were at one of my favourite pubs, The Clare. The Clare is great for a lot of things, firstly the beer is cheap. We’re talking $10 jugs of Coopers – AWESOME. And because its so cheap its extremely dangerous, especially on a Monday night followed by an early start on Tuesday morning. The next great thing about The Clare is the decor. It’s all from the 70’s, I’m not just talking 70’s themed, but seriously from the 70’s. You’d look at the swivel chairs or fabric lamps or long leather lounges and think “I’m pretty sure mum’s got a lamp like that in the garage”. Most of the walls are plastered with old festival or gig posters. So as you’re sitting on a lounge from the 70’s in this dimly lit pub sipping (or skulling) your beer, you can reminisce about the good times you had at GV ‘08 or at that Ben Harper concert (before he turned rocky).

Now I can’t finish this post without mentioning one of the greatest things about The Clare – the outdoor area. It’s not your typical timber clad beer garden with over-sized umbrellas and pots and a water feature, it’s simply an alleyway out the back. No joke! When your out the back sitting on a beer keg looking at the crocodile graffiti on the wall you kinda forget where you are (especially after a few drinks). Sometimes it just feels like you’re in a mates backyard because everyone knows your name…

Oh, and there’s old-school pac-man and space invaders – need I say more. The Clare is awesome – true story.

My mates recently moved to a tiny studio apartment that’s just minutes away from Annandale Hotel and the life-saving 24 hr Stanmore Maccas (If you live in Sydney’s Western suburbs you know how awesome that Maccas is after a big night out).We went over last night for their house warming and met the cutest little guinea pig named appropriately – Guinea. Guinea was the hot topic of the night, where most of our evening’s conversation was based on the little fellow, not the new place. I guess it was more of a “Meet Guinea” night than a house warming, whatever you call it, it was a great night.

Guinea is quite fascinating. Not only is he small, fluffy and likes to hide, he makes these little “squeaking” noises – like those “squeaking” soft toys you give dogs and babies. We occasionally tried to squeeze him to see if he was a squeaky toy.

Whilst at my friends place we started to was the version of Wolverine that was leaked on to the internet. It was really funny actually because some scenes hadn’t been digitally retouched so you could see the harness and strings attached to the actors as the fly like mutants. Other scenes didn’t have the correct filters or special effects applied which was pretty neat because you got to see things like the aircraft in its raw modelling state. About 30 minutes into the movie we all decided to bail, most of us were pretty tired. And watching Wolverine like that was kind of wrecking it. Though I think it would be neat to watch this version after watching it properly in full wide-screen screen surround sound awesomeness at the cinemas.