Aaron came to spend the last week or so of his 4-month trip around the world in sunny old Brisbane with me. We managed to get out and I can (finally) say I have been to Family in the valley now. Quite strangely Aaron & I appear to have misinterpreted the dress code (helpfully this was “dress to express”) and almost weren’t let in because we were too smart! Apparently jeans, trainers & t-shirt is what they wanted and a shirt with a collar was too much. Very odd….. Anyway, they still let us in! There’s lots of pics from Aaron’s time here over on the Australia Pics page.
Was really good to see him actually. He sounds like he’s had an awesome time doing his travelling. It also gave me the first feeling of homesickness I’ve had in the (almost) year that I have been here. We had such a laugh it made me realise how much I miss everybody from back home! I have also decided that although it is a long way off, I am planning on coming home over Christmas 2009 because I want to see everyone. So keep your diaries free – you can’t say I haven’t given enough warning!
As well as going out on the town, Ben & Tilly had us over for a BBQ (some of those pics are also in the album mentioned above. But I think the best part of his visit was when we went to the GameON exhibition on Brisbane’s southbank (see here for a panoramic pic!). It was basically a two-floor exhibition of computer gaming since 1960 to the present day and it was AWESOME. There were just hundreds of arcade machines, consoles, computers, etc with all the classic games over the years that were free to play on. We didn’t realise that cameras weren’t allowed so we managed to take quite a lot of photos which can be found here. Well worth a look and anyone who’s in Brisbane / going to be here before February should definitely give it a look 
Talking of computers…. I managed to catch my first ever virus the other day. I think it was this one from the BBC News website. It was a nasty little bugger to try and get rid of… took me a couple of days of working out what it was & how to get rid of it then fixing the mistakes i’d made along the way. I’m pretty sure I’m all good & safe now but it did lead to my world of warcraft account getting hacked and banned. Luckily I got everything back and I guess “all’s well that ends well” – but to any of you using Internet Explorer out there – UPDATE IT NOW!
Apart from that I’ve just been working hard. Looking forward to spending Christmas with Ben & Tilly. We just got back from doing the shopping for all our food and stuff. It should be very good! Also going out for a curry with most of the people from the lab on Tuesday night so that should be good. Will try & remember to take my camera with me.
That’s all really. I doubt I’ll remember to / have enough news to make another post before Christmas or New Year so MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR to anyone and everyone back home that I wont see!