Jumpin June

June has just been flying by! And that is likely because I have been busy between work and extra-curriculars.  At the very end of May I went to the Sydney Ski & Snow Expo which was at the Sydney Convention Center in Darling Harbour.  It consisted of about 60 booths with people from around the world trying to get you to buy a 7-day ski package to their resort. There were a few familiar trail maps for Western US and Japan which got me all misty-eyed from good memories and times gone by. And a few places which I would love to make happen. Particularly, a ski resort in the Himalayas, but I have no idea how I will make that happen. What I am making happen is 1) a ski trip to Thredbo here in Australia and 2) a ski trip in July to New Zealand. The Australia trip will be with a few colleagues. The mountain is about a 5 hour drive and I'm not too sure about the relative quality, but it's been easily 16 months since I was last on snow, so I'm due. The New Zealand trip will be 5 days in Queenstown skiing in the surrounding mountains and potentially a day of heli-skiing. If that happens, there will be video posted here for your enjoyment. But those vacations are still far off (at least they feel like it!). 

In June I attended 4 films from the Sydney Film Festival.  I saw:

• Happy Happy - Hysterical, Sad, Awkward, Great.
• My America - Interesting outsider perspective of post 9/11 perception of America
• Top Floor Left Wing - Cute, but meh.
• Exporting Raymond - Hilarious! Phil Rosenthal, creator, writer, and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond goes off to Russia to help create a Russian version of the show.

I also went to a few fascinating talks at a conference for folks in the digital creative field. I Won't do a write up of the sessions, but the conference was a three part series including talks, music, and a light show, pictures of which are posted here and a video here.

In sadder news, I hurt my foot playing soccer about 3 weeks ago. I landed poorly on my heel and could barely walk for a week. Luckily I was wearing my ankle braces or I think my whole ankle would have snapped. Anyways, it's still a bit sore, but the swelling and lovely purple colour (I'll spare you the pictures) have gone away. So I'm still hobbling a bit to and fro and haven't been able to play soccer or climb in far to long, but hoping for enough of a recovery by next week to start doing...well...anything.

Hope all is well. Feel free to leave a comment or questions. In looking at the blog stats it seems like the only person reading is someone in Russia. спасибо!


(In looking up спасибо on Google translate, I discovered Google translate has Yiddish as a language. cool!)