So another week has gone by and i've barely noticed it was there. It's a bit hard to believe that it has already been three weeks since we have been back from overseas.

As you can probably guess, i've had little to blog about lately. All that's recently happened is me getting Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. It's pretty much the standard C&C game with a different storyline. I have been, and still am, very critical of the fact that the C&C games have not changed much in over 10 years, specifically and especially gameplay-wise.

But as long as they still make the games with awesomely cool full-motion-video cutscenes and storyline, i think i'll be a sucker every time. This is even more so with Red Alert, as the storyline and custscenes are purposefully so ridiculously over-the-top and just awesomely bad, it makes it just plain awesome.

This game is just so perfectly targeted to the young adult male gaming demographic, and perfect case-in-point is inclusion of many of the main characters being young attractive female's wearing very revealing short-skirts (see The Girls of Red Alert 3).

I've already played through the Soviet campaign, and now i'm playing through the Allied one. I can't say i'm really interested in playing the game online though, but i never have been a fan of playing RTSs online.

It's been a pretty ordinary week overall. Returning to work has been, as expected, a bit of a let down after four and a bit weeks of holidays, but there wasn't any disasters in my week back so I guess it could have been worse.

There have been a few technological-related happenings around our place. Firstly, I picked up a new router. I've had good experiences with Netgears, so I decided to upgrade my existing one to the WNR3500. The upgrade was mainly to get one with Quality of Service so that the wife's VOIP calls aren't mixed up by me torrenting or gaming, and also to get a gigabit switch and a 802.11n wireless access point.

The other thing was the (not quite so) spectacular failure of the Mediagate that I got earlier in the year. I've been progressively more disatisfied with it as the year progressed, so this just rounds it off. I was hoping to get a refund on it so I could buy something else, but Umart's returns policy doesn't cater for that. Hopefully the repaired/replacement one will be better.

Moving on, after a disastrous last week or two for the Arsenal faithful, I bravely stayed up last night to watch the Arsenal vs. Manchester United match.

It turned out to a cracker of a match. Like the Spurs one a week and a half ago, it was great watching for the neutrals, and in the end not too bad for the Arsenal fans too. Arsenal ran out deserved 2-1 winners, although the last few minutes of the game had my heart going at a million miles an hour.

Great stuff, and it really made my weekend.

... and this time I think they got it right (see my blog entry about last time).

I remember four years ago seeing Obama making a speech after being elected to the Senate and thinking "that guy's a pretty good speaker", with the media saying to keep an eye out for him as a promising man with potential.

It's quite remarkable that only four years later the same man has been elected President, even discounting the other more obvious and well discussed attributes.

After 8 years of Bush it's so great to see and hear someone that has some charisma and is actually a half-decent speaker. It's amazing the sense of hope and enthusiasm one man can provide to a nation.

One thing's for certain: there's very, very little chance he'll be a worse president than the incumbent. That title will take some beating, and shame on America for electing such a douchebag not only once, but twice.

Here's hoping for a brighter future, not only for Americans but for the world in general.

We've pretty much taken it easy in the past week since we have gotten back from our European trip.

On Saturday night, although we were still a bit lethargic, we went back to Church for the first time. Afterwards we went out for some very ordinary Indian food, which was surprising because the restaurant we went to is usually renowned for its quality.

Sunday saw me play indoor. I don't know what I was thinking, but I managed to play two and a half games: as a fill-in for a half, then our actual full game which we lost despite having many chances, and then for another game as a fill-in with Wil.

Needless to say, my body did not appreciate it, and subsequently let me know as much for the next few days.

On Monday me and Des did what we've been wanting to do for a while: go back to uni and see how the place is. It's a very good time to do such a thing: this time of year the Jacarandas are blooming (as a result it is also exam time, so the campus isn't very busy too).

The main difference since i graduated is the relatively new Eleanor Schonell Bridge linking Dutton Park to the campus. This thing would have been fantastic for me while i was going to uni, it would have meant a much shorter drive to get to uni (but admittedly probably much more walking considering it is a bus/pedestrian bridge).

As a result of the bridge, it also meant a drastic change in the 'Jacaranda Row' area that I photographed four years ago. See the difference between the years below in the area behind the new bus stop.

Before (2004):


After (present):


This week we also did our biannual 'maxi-clean' of our place. It was tiring and aggravating, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

In the past few days i've also finished playing de Blob. I really enjoyed this game, it's tonnes of fun and i thoroughly enjoyed it throughout. I agree with a lot of reviewers statements that it is probably one of the best third-party games on the Wii. Highly recommended.

On Thursday morning I woke up early to watch the North-London derby match between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Although it was a fantastic game to watch for the neutrals (some saying up there with one of the best premier matches to watch), it sucked as an Arsenal supporter. Being 4-2 up with 5 minutes to go, they somehow leaked two goals to Spurs for the game to finish 4-4. I was cursing and swearing for nearly the whole day after waking up to that. Ah well, the scum (as they're known to Arsenal fans) are still bottom of the table, so it's not all bad.

The notion of returning to work the day after tomorrow is slightly depressing after having such a long and wonderful time off. I'm not sure if i've mentioned this before, but the last time I had a holiday longer than two weeks was the wedding and honeymoon, but I don't really count that as a proper holiday (with all the wedding stuff, moving out, learning to self-subsist, etc.), so the last real holiday I would have had would probably be the mid-year uni break of 2004 (I was working during and since the end of that year). Wow, when I think of it that way it makes it even more depressing...

One of the downsides of having a non-anonymous blog is that you can't blog a lot of stuff because of it, and going overseas for a few weeks is probably one of them.

As you can probably tell, we have just gotten back from spending the better part of the last three weeks in Europe. It was almost torture not being able to blog about planning the trip before-hand, but I did manage to write a few offline blogs while we were over there.

Just to quickly sum up the reasons for and the planning of the trip: there was a big family wedding in Cyprus that a lot of my family here were going over there to attend.

We had all planned to spend three weeks in Cyprus in addition to the wedding, and one of the first things that came to my mind was: "Darn it, i'm not going to be that close to London and not try to go and see an Arsenal match".

Because the Cyprus trip was planned in advance for the past 10 months or so, I was eagerly waiting the announcement of the Premier League fixture list for the current season to see if a game was on in London while we were in Europe, and then also waiting to see if i could get tickets.

Luck went my way for the first part: the fixture list was announced in July and an Arsenal home game was scheduled for the 18th of October; probably the most perfect date in the whole three weeks as the wedding was on the 12th.

However getting tickets to the game was always going to be a big challenge: not one Premier League game at the new Arsenal stadium has ever gone to a general sale, and the lowest level of membership has only 5000 of the 60,000 seats reserved for them. Not great odds.

However sometime during last year I stumbled upon the Arsenal Australia Supporters Club, which is the officially sanctioned supporters club in Australia. The football club in London allows members of overseas supporters clubs to apply for tickets to games in London, and providing that you get in early enough and it is not a massive game (e.g. Man Utd, Spurs, Chelsea etc), generally they will get you tickets considering how far you are travelling to watch the game.

It was tough waiting out the process, but I eventually found out in late August that I had successfully gotten tickets. A huge 'thank you' to Graham at Arsenal Australia for organising and getting us the tickets.

Other than London, because we were travelling outside of Cyprus we were sort of obliged to go and see a few of Des's relatives in Greece too, and we also thought it would be a good idea to catch the train from London to Paris and spend a day there.

It was slightly nerve-wracking planning the Paris journey: a few weeks after we booked the trip the big fire occurred in the Channel Tunnel, but luckily that was mostly sorted before we got there.

So what had started as a small blip to go and see Arsenal, eventually saw us planning a big European side-trip through Thessaloniki in Greece, then London and a day in Paris before flying back to Cyprus to return to Australia with the whole family.

So that was the plan. I took the EeePC with me and offline-blogged into OpenOffice documents whilst I was over there.

Below are a list of the entries I wrote over there which are now online on the blog. I've added photos to most of the entries, especially the side-trip ones.
- Euro Trip Day 1 and a half: Flights and first day in Cyprus
- Euro Trip Day 3: Satanic Clothing and Financial News from Home
- Euro Trip Day 5: Relatives and Monasteries
- Euro Trip Day 8: Today's the Big Day & Not the Time to be Travelling
- Euro Trip Day 12: McDonald's Missions & Side Trip Begins
- Euro Trip Day 14: Arriving into London & Arsenal! Arsenal!
- Euro Trip Day 17: London Tourist & Paris

We just got back from the trip on Friday. The trip back was exhausting for me and Des (we caught nine flights in 20 days as well as the train to and from Paris), but we are glad to be safely back home. It was an awesome experience, especially the Arsenal stuff; it really was a dream come true to be over there and experiencing it.

We're taking the next week off from work to recover and have a bit of time at home sorting stuff out before we return to work the week after.