Stuck at Work....

It's 6pm, and I'm still sitting on my computer at work. My drive home isn't too far, but because of the Brisbane river I have to take a funny path to find a bridge and get to the south side where we live. You can imagine at rush hour all of the bridges in town become quite congested, and today the bridge I usually take is closed. My only other option is straight into the middle of downtown, but we all know that will be a bad idea at 5pm on a weekday.

So lucky you! I finally have no excuse but to blog it up until traffic clears. A lot has been happening in Oz (as usual), the weather has been fantastic and every one seems to be travelling (except me anyway).

Jensen and Jessica spent a couple of weeks with us, and hopefully they had as good of a time as we did. We got to do the tourist stuff again which is always fun, and they happened to be here at the right time of the year for Ekka. Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo was really good, and I even got to pet an Echidna in addition to a Kangaroo, a Koala and a Wombat on a leash. By the way, a Wombat on a leash competes for the cutest thing on the planet - all fat and pigeon toed.

Summer is off for Malaysia soon, meeting up with some friends who are spending time in Korea. I'm quite jealous of Dustin who will be heading to The Red Centre next week on a Contiki tour. The Red Centre refers to the arid desert lands in the middle of Australia, including Alice Springs, Ayers Rock (Uluru), and then heading up north to Darwin (where the movie Australia was filmed).

In other news, I've been keeping busy studying for a new certification, trying to get out riding on my dirtbike as often as possible, and working hard as ever. Some of you may remember a couple of years back when I passed my CCNA certification with Cisco, and it was probably the hardest test I've ever seen - in fact it took me two tries. That certification is about to lapse, so I deicded it was time to progress to the next certification, CCNP - Cisco Certified Network Professional. This one is guaranteed to be much harder than the last one, but instead of one exam I have to pass four individual exams. I'm giving myself two months per exam, and the expectation that it may take me two tries to pass each one. None the less, I am very confident I will pass all four, and we'll see if I have any motivation left over to go for another certification after that.

Well, I think I might be safe to battle traffic by now (I hope), so I will leave you with our latest photo galleries:

Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo
I know Jessica loved cuddling the Koala, I was extremely impressed by the "Free Flying Birds" show, and of course everyone loved the Red Pandas, the Koalas, the Kanagaroos and the Chinese tourists. (What?! Aren't they part of the attraction too?)

The Ekka!
Brisbane's version of the state fair, it originally was called the Exhibition and was geared towards buying, selling and showing livestock. Now it's just like the state fair back home, plus showbags.