So you probably have read the play by play before and are thinking, what else could I leave out? Well I left a little bit out, so here are a few other observations made on the trip along with a few other things that I need to mention again.

• Queensland roads are freakin’ weird and I’d never want to drive on them again. How the hell can you have a two-lane motorway from Brisbane to the Gold Coast? That’s crazy man, and as we experienced on Saturday morning, one small accident or breakdown slows everything down massively. Add in all the crazy merges on hills and/or bends plus the lack of indicators when turning and I know that I love driving in Melbourne, even if everyone on the road is rude as hell.
• Speaking of roads, make those toll booths fully electronic now. The free for all that results when everyone pays and leaves the eight lane toll booth into one huge lane then attempts to merge into the right is just straight nutty.
• Clubs don’t seem to exist on the Gold Coast as much as they do in Melbourne, at least as far as I could tell from the street press and walking around on Friday. DJ’s were spinning tracks in bars where people were more focused on getting down another XXXX then dancing to the tunes. I tried finding some live music to go to as well - nothing.
• Valentinos in Broadbeach has the best Italian food on the Gold Coast, despite the seventies style presentation where Gordon Ramsay would have a heart attack (parsley around the plate, fresh cracked pepper at your table etc).
• I’d laugh if Jupiters eventually added some real NL Hold’Em but I can’t see that happening since they are owned by TABCorp. Then again, Star City has started adding tournaments recently so maybe one day in the future it will happen? Perhaps when they stop dealing out of blackjack shoe’s.
• Saw two funny things when coming home on Friday. First was a bunch of kids running from a single cop near a car park in Surfers, who knows what was going on there? Second was a Japanese woman in a rental car trying to do U-Turn which became a seven point turn, before almost running over two people crossing the street. She was trying to enter a petrol station but this couple were crossing. Once they got to half way or so (and it would of been barely half way), she turned onto the wrong side of the road almost hitting them before turning into the petrol station.
• Runaway Bay seems to be fully of gated communities and people renting apartments who shouldn’t be.
• I rubbed my eyes to make sure I saw what I saw - petrol below $1.00/litre. Also, what’s the deal with only having a petrol station on one side of the road near the airport!? You’d think they’d have one on the opposite side for those returning cars, nope. Seems even odder given the amount of land on that side too.
• Rude staff at theme parks - something I don’t get. Surely the theme parks would have their pick of the best employees given how many people are on the coast, let alone those folks who really want to work at the parks. So surely in the interview process they’d work out which people have no customer service skills what-so-ever!? Now I’ve worked in customer service in the past and I’ve had a few crabby days, but the people manning Superman on Sunday were straight up robots, and there were a few more like them around Movie World (none of these people seemed to be at Sea World for some reason). With that said, there were some really great staff like Michael who I mentioned earlier. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I doubt it somehow. Then again there was that staff member with the odd British accent..
• Hot Tomato - I coiuldn’t work out what the fuss is all about. The imaging screams Nova (smart alec style with the no more then two ad) but then the music is hot adult-contempory (a better Mix FM clone?). I prefered Nova 106.9 (which should be called Nova 107 imo), not as many dance tracks as Nova 100.
• Sea World - you are allowed to have costume characters out and about occasionally. I saw only one - one of the Buttercup Girls on Thursday, have a few more scattered around.
• Movie World - Knock down some of those fake building and install a bunch of adult flat rides. So much wasted space at that park and a few more basic rides would really add a kick to the park.

I think that will do it. Trip is over and I’m back at work, planning my next crazy one I guess. Til then, night.

So I was preparing to write up this entry on my favourite ten movies of the year when I realised - I haven’t really watched much released this year. Don’t get me wrong, there was a whole heap of stuff that was released this year that I had plans of seeing, but I only ended up watching maybe ten of them. I didn’t see any of the top grossing films in 2006 (which shows you my taste in film, hah!). So by default - my top three movies of 2006 in no particular order.

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