My New Job

I started a new job this week. Its pretty amazing to be here, and even more amazing the series of events that has led me here. First though, some history.

For the last six months or so dad and I have been trying to work out what the future of Country Contracting will be, its been pretty hard recently and both dad and I have been growing tired of the unnecessary difficulties that generally come with this industry. The answer presented itself a few months ago, Geneva started chasing dad for a job, they wanted him for a chaplaincy/christian living role which the school currently lacks. It was hard for me not knowing what was next, but it was too great an opportunity for dad not to take it.

Dad accepted the role, and was scheduled to start with two days per week from term 3 this year, which was in mid July. We still have a fair bit of work to wrap up with CCE so we can’t just pull the pin and walk away. I was to keep working 5 days a week where possible and keep things ticking over while dad was at Geneva, it was a difficult time, not knowing what was next or whether I would have a job come the end of the year.

In early July Grant, my brother in law, was invited to a business networking meeting where he met a local IT business guy who mentioned in conversation that they were looking at putting someone on soon and Grant said to him hey, I know a guy. Grant gave me his contact information and told me to give him a call, so I did. I was asked to go in and have a meeting with him about it. I dressed up in a suit and went in for the meeting. The business is Perth WA based, and had only recently opened the office in Devonport, the local guy had been working from home since moving here from Perth in 2014 and had picked up enough local clients to make it too much work for him and his home office. I told him straight up that my availability would only be Mon-Tues most weeks until such time as the family business work was finished. The interview went really well, but they wanted to run a job ad, which is fair enough. I submitted my resume once the job ad went live several weeks later and was asked to go in for an official interview on Monday 30th July. Late Wednesday night August 1st I received an email from the boss in WA offering me the job, I would start on a casual basis until the family business work is done at which time they will transition me to a full time role.

For a business to be willing to put me on, with no qualifications, on a part time basis while I finish up with CCE is almost unbelievable. I have absolutely no doubt that God has been at work during all of these events and I am truly grateful. I’ve landed a job that I have long thought I’d one take pursue, and its happened while I have no official qualifications. God is good.

The Block Sold!

Block is sold!

It finally happened, the block has officially sold. A few weeks back a guy from Kalgoolie contacted our real estate agent about the property, shortly there after he found my ad on Gumtree and contacted me directly. As luck would have it our RA contract was set to expire a week later, we agreed to settle privately.

Chris (our buyer), who currently lives in Kalgoolie, was keen to purchase the block sight unseen. After agreeing to a price, which, was lower than I would have liked, but given the lack of interest we couldn't afford not to accept, on top of that the timing of the sale was no accident. Chris is a bit of a legend, when he made the offer (145k), it being lower than my original minimum of 150k, I told him to give us some time to discuss it, even though I knew we had to accept, the following day I contacted him to agree to the sale price, he was wrapped, and said to me ‘first things first, do ya like bourbon?’.

Debbie Hutton handled all the legalities, she’s the same conveyancer who handled the hell that was our original purchase and sub-divison of the block. She’s really good, if you need a conveyancer give her a call.

Funny story, so the guy who bought the blocks name is Christopher Robin Kreely, apparently his parents really liked winnie the pooh…

Anyway about a month after the purchase went through he and his partner came down and we went out to the block to show them around, he brought a bottle of bourbon and his partner brought several bottle of champagne for the girls.

We spent a few hours showing them around, giving Chris all the information I could in regards to the block and its many quirks.

Chris was wrapped with it, its just what they were looking for.

I Bought an Android...

Yes you read that correctly.. Unfortunately.. Or not? 

As many of you would know I’m a big user of Apple products, iPhone, iPad, Macbooketc, I know the basics of Android but recently I started a small tec support business, in an effort to increase my skill-set I have purchased an Android flagship that I will be incorporating into my daily use to learn the in's and out’s of the Android OS. 

There were a couple of phones I was looking at to fill this role, but I settled on the Samsung Galaxy Note8, primarily because Samsung is the biggest seller of android phones, and also because the S Pen intrigues me. I briefly used a Note7 last year, I was considering buying one then, but we all know how that went. Lets hope there isn’t a repeat this year!

Tax Scam

I got a call the other day from an officer at the ATO's Legal Department, after identifying me through the usual means, he informed me that he had in front of him a legal affidavit that stated I have been accused of tax evasion and that I owe the ATO $4,000.

Up until this point everything was extremely legit, in fact its exactly how I would expect such a call to go down.

At this point I started inquiring about the debt and how it came about, most of my tax returns have been done by an accountant so I really wasn't sure how I could have been avoiding taxes. We argued over the figure for several minutes, I was not able to get any concrete information out of him, it was at this point I was starting to question the legitimacy of the call, but the final nail in the coffin was when he said 'you are required to pay the debt in full before the end of this phone call' I told him I cant do that, and he came back with, 'if you do not an officer from your local police department will be around within the hour to collect you and hold you for 72 hours until you can appear in court'.

I told him I look forward to it and hung up.

The legitimacy of the call was unreal, if I didn't know that the Tax Office sorts out such matters via letters I'd have probably fallen for it...

Australia Day 2017

What a day! 

I hadn't originally planned to do anything on Australia Day, I wasn't even sure I would get the day off. Which didn't really bother me. But I got the day off, and Ek & Grant invited us to join them and go for a drive and visit the Bridestowe Lavendar Farm. 

We visited a few places on the way home, we went via George Town for a look (I haven’t been there in years) we also stopped in at Moore’s Hill Vineyard, a small but fancy vineyard.

That was our last stop before heading home, all was chill and we were enjoying ourselves. It was late afternoon so we thought we'd call into woolies in Port Sorell and grab some stuff to cook tea at Ek & Grants, but all plans went flying out the window when we got close to home and saw the smoke rising from somewhere very close to Ek & Grants house (it was hard to tell from a distance, but it appeared to be very close to their house) and there were two helicopters circling above, suffice to say we cancelled all plans and rushed straight to their house, for obvious reasons. 

What we found was my block on fire, their house was fine and not in any danger, there were several fire trucks present, along with 2 police vehicles, and 2 fire fighting helicopters, it was pretty full on. 

The fire was started on the neighbours place, no one is quite sure what he was doing, but it ended in a bush fire that took off across his block and onto mine. Here are a few shots of what we saw arriving home.

It was pretty much under control by the time we got here, still, pretty crazy stuff! I didn't mind tho, everything that burnt was now something I didn't have to deal with! The heap on fire in the above photos was around 5 times that size prior to this incident. I wasn't sure how I was going to get rid of it, now I don't need to! 

I knew one of the volunteer fire fighters who was there and he yelled out across the paddock 'Oi Jase you should have had a digger here and we could have stacked it up and kept it going'. He was joking of course. I yelled back, 'Yea, I know where I can get one at mates rates'. Very shortly after that the firefighter in charge rushes over and says 'Do you have an excavator?'. One thing led to another and well...

I brought our 3 tonner around in a screaming hurry and we pulled the burning heap apart so they could make sure the fire was completely out. During this operation (which took a couple of hours) the lead firefighter came over and asked me to see to another fire around the corner, apparently it was a busy day for our fire service...

Apparently the second fire was lit to 'get rid of some bees'. The foam they use is interesting stuff too.

All in all a pretty crazy afternoon! We didn't finish up till 9pm, Grant came with me during all of this so we headed back to his place for a Whiskey.

The aftermath

A lot of this will be much easier for me to clean up now, but it could have been so much worse, especially if we had our house built.. 

Live Long and Prosper

Our 1st Wedding Anniversary

I cant believe its been a year already! So much has happened. I am so happy to be married to the most amazing wife, life has been so much better since we tied the knot and I cant wait to celebrate many many more anniversaries!

We decided we'd go away for the weekend to Richmond, where we got engaged!

We stayed at a place called Hatcher’s Manor, I've never stayed at such a place, it was quite cool.

Breakfast done right on Saturday morning at a cute little cafe in Richmond.

After breakfast we wandered around Richmond, we had a lunch booking at the French Bistro, we weren't really sure exactly what it was, but it looked fancy, its on a vineyard, and we assumed it'd be french food, Amy was very keen to check it out!

Wandering around Richmond we found the Richmond Chocolate Shop... going in was a bad idea..

Amongst many other things, they had the above, made in house, gelato selection, we got a 'decadent thickshake' which is a thickshake made using your choice of gelato, my first choice would have been musk (pink one bottom left) but unfortunately there wasn't enough left to make a shake, so we picked Nutella, and boy was it good! 

By now it was time to head off to our lunch booking, the Bistro was really fancy, with an amazing view out over the vineyard.

All of the menu items were, well lets just say I had no idea what anything was, one of them said 'burger' in their somewhere so I ordered that one, seriously thats how I picked, and this is what I got:

It had some ingredients in it that I would normally stick my nose up to (yes I know, I'm fussy), but this burger was delicious! Amy picked out some sort of French salad, she really enjoyed that too. 

Next stop, some shopping in Hobart! 

On our wedding day we never actually got to try a piece of our wedding cake, we grabbed a couple of pieces as we were leaving, but some clown decided to cover us in glitter.. And so we have had in our freezer the top tier of the cake, all that was left, we decided to wait until our anniversary to try it, so for dessert we tried it, and it was so good! 

On Sunday Amy wanted to go to the Royal Botanical Gardens, it was really nice and very pretty, we really enjoyed wandering around, I particularly like watching how excited Amy gets when we go to places like this.

After the gardens we headed home, via Richmond, we wanted another shake from the Chocolate Shop... Baileys... It was so good...

On the way into Richmond I spotted a Tesla Model S! I have finally seen one in the flesh and I want one even more now! 

They are actually alot bigger than I expected, its hard to believe that it can launch 0 - 100 in under 3 seconds.. 

The Fence

After deciding to get a puppy we both knew that the fence wouldn't be up to the task of keeping him in, see for yourself..

Its pretty run down, in fact the gate barely works, We never closed it until we got Bilbo.

We are also removing the gravel from the backyard and putting grass back down, and so while the old fence was down I wanted to back the truck in there and tip off a load of topsoil - save barrowing it all through the gate. I also brought our 3 tonner down to remove the old concrete plinth under the existing fence. It was pretty cool having an excavator in a unit block driveway.

On a side note, when the Foxtel tech installed the dish on the roof he left a full tube of silicon up there, I had been thinking at some stage I’ll get it down, this seemed like a good solution.

Unfortunately the Saturday we picked to put up the new fence turned out to be a scorcher, so it made the job twice as hard as it should have been, it also took considerably longer. 

Some progress shots.

The victory pose!

Before:

After:

Now to clean up that mess along the side of the house.. 

Its Time to Lose the Beer Belly...

Well, technically its not a beer belly, I don't drink beer - actually, I hate the stuff - but it looks like one. And its long past time I got rid of it. Not to mention my health and stamina are somewhat lacking atm...

Meet my chosen fitness machine:

Its a GT Verb Elite, as far as bikes go its only a cheapy (no, Kmart bikes don't count) but I like it, its a good solid frame, in a cool colour, and its really nice to ride!

I bought a mountain bike for two reasons, first dual suspension was a must, since I had back problems a few years back riding my old hardtail was torture. Second, I want to be able to take it bush, once I get my stamina back up a bit (atm 5km is hard work, embarrassing I know..) I plan to take it on some local bike tracks, I am told there are some good ones around!

This also counts as my Christmas present this year, so I won't be opening much on the day, but I'm cool with that.

We've Moved... Next Door

Yea its true, we have moved from Unit 2, to Unit 3, the existing tenant offered it to us before he told the real estate he was moving out, its a fair bit bigger, has a full kitchen, and also a garage for Sheldon, all for an extra $5/week, because he told us before the real estate we had time to find someone to take over Unit 2.

Castle's Been Cancelled!

I started watchingCastle at season 3, and have been following it for the last five years. Its a great show with a great cast. Its a bit of a shock that it is ending, season 8 has been very good! From what I can find online it looks like the last episode of season eight will be the finale, so tomorrows episode had better be good!! And it better end things nicely or I will be one unhappy fan...

Its Been a While...

A lot has happened since my last post, here is a quick update on a few things that have happened (its been very busy!) 

Christmas

A brief word on Christmas last year, in short, a lot of lasts involved, and by that I mean things happening for the last time, it was my last christmas as an unmarried man, the last christmas at home with mum and dad, and also the last christmas dinner at my grandparents current house, where it has been for as long as i have memories of christmas. It was a good day, and also a bit emotional, but I was very keen for the future. Nothing can get you more excited than being able to marry your best friend! 


Bucks Night

Grant was able to secure In the Zone for my Bucks night at a cost to everyone (except me) of about 1 game each, we spent something like 5 hours there... It was AWESOME! Thanks Grant, you pulled of a far better bucks night than I could have hoped for. Unfortunately Ben wasnt well and didnt make it.


Wedding

Anyone who has planned, or helped to plan a wedding will know that it takes a hell of a lot of effort and time, and Amy being at Uni and me full time working didn't make it any easier, however come January 10th 2016 everything came together in absolute perfection and went off like clockwork, literally nothing could have gone better. Amy and I couldn’t be happier, and we will thank God for that for the rest of our lives.

Isn’t she absolutely stunning?

Yes, I cried.

I would like to say a HUGE thank you to all those who helped us to pull it off, we couldn't have done it without you. 


Honeymoon

I wont say much about this other than it was absolutely amazing, and, that a cruise is the perfect honeymoon, everything, and I mean everything, is taken care off for you. The ship, the places we visited, the food, simply mind blowing. All of it. It was an amazing experience and a perfect honeymoon.

Our first look at the ship, Carnival Spirit

This was at the first stop, Mystery Island, absolutely stunning place, we couldn’t believe it! Turns out those tropical island photos in magazines aren’t photo-shopped! 

Leaving the ship was a process called Tendering, several of the lifeboats were used to ferry people to and from shore.

On the balcony of our cabin, on the starboard side towards the stern.

This shot was taken from the viewing deck directly on top of the bridge. Pretty cool.


Free TV

A little bit of a backstory before I talk about this one, Amy and her family, particularly her father and sister, are big followers of Survivor, they have watched it together since long before I came on the scene. Due to our limited funds we didn't have a TV and so I had just setup one of my computer monitors in the living room to watch episodes and movies on. Well, about a week before Survivor was scheduled to start we get a phone call from her dad informing us that as an early birthday present to Amy they would put $400 towards a TV for us. Wow. 
 
Obviously I wanted to put extra money in and get something nice, but we decided to be wise and find something for the $400, which we did, a 43" Full HD TV. Freebies are awesome :) Thanks Brett & Jenny!!


Smashed Apple Watch

Yea um.. whoops.. I’m glad I bought Apple Care+, a new one is on its way!


Dozer Engine

Dad and I have had a rush of work come in in the last 8 weeks, we have been absolutely flat out, with people chasing us to be there, which is great, a welcome change from the last couple of years! Last year we bought a dozer so we could take on these jobs, we had to do some work on it at home, but as it turns out, unfortunately we didn’t do enough, towards the end of the job we are currently on it suffered an engine failure, so we are now working flat out to try and get it going again (we are building a new engine for it) and to finish of the job we are on. 

The old girl is looking pretty sad at the moment. 

Anyway that’s it for now, over and out. 

FINALLY!

Most of you will know that myself and my brother in law, Grant, have been working to subdivide a block of land at Squeaking Point. The process has been less than friendly, the council worse than completely useless, and the cost, ridiculous! But I finally have some good news! On Friday 23rd October 2015 @ 12:01pm our titles were finally issued!

It has been a long hard and expensive road, but we are finally on the home stretch, as of the writing of this post we are just waiting for our bank manager to organize the refinance, at which time we will have separate mortgages, on separate lots, and each own our own piece of Planet Earth.

Unfortunately due to all the delays and extra cost I wont be able to build there for some time, Grant however has been gnawing away at the approvals and planning etc and is now ready to start, we are moving our 30 ton Excavator in this week to begin clearing!

Praise God!

In other house related news, today Myself and Amy have submitted an application to rent a unit in Port Sorell, God willing we will hear about that this week, and hopefully be successful!

I'm Engaged!

It would be an understatement to say that I am happy! It would be an understatement to say that I am excited, in fact 'over the moon' doesn’t even cover it!!

I proposed to my amazing, beautiful girlfriend on Tuesday, and as you might have guessed, SHE SAID YES!!!!!!!

I took her to Hobart for the day, I knew that Richmond was her favorite place in Tassie so I decided that’s where I would take her (it really is quite beautiful down there). But I coudn’t take her to Hobart without taking her shopping, so first off we went to the mall and spent some money, by the time we finished it was around lunch time so we headed out to Richmond for lunch at one of the bakeries there.

Early afternoon I had pre-organised a gourmet berry and ice cream picnic which we took down to the river front to enjoy, it was here that I proposed, and she made me the happiest and luckiest man alive!!