Hey guys,

Jaz is very busy at work at the moment, whilst I am a man of leisure so I thought I might add a little update. I'm still on the hunt for a job which isn't going too well at this stage. I am working a few hours at a pub, much to Jaz's dislike. I work nights, she works days!! Anyway a fair bit has happened since our last blog. After our arrival back into London we spent about 10 days sleeping on peoples couches (mainly Benny and Emma's) before we found our own place in Shepherds Bush, which we needed for 2 weeks before we could move into our house with Benny, Emma and Smar. Shepherds Bush isn't the greatest area of London, I didn't mind it but Jaz wasn't keen at all-walking home in a dodgy area in the dark after work was not her ideal living arrangement. However it is home to the famous Shepherds Bush Walkabout, a big Australian themed pub, which I have visited a few times to watch the NRL finals. The girls don't love the place as its full of "Aussies on Tour" (drunken messes) which from our travels tend to be the yobbo Aussies with all the tattoos and the girls who drop the 'C' bomb in general conversation.

We are now living in our new house in Ravenscourt Park, next to Hammersmith which is to the west of the city. Emma, Benny and Smar did a great job choosing the house as we were still on our travels. It is an awesome house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and another toilet downstairs and it has been renovated. Jaz and I have the top floor which is the converted loft, very light and big but not many places for our clothes! We are sharing a very small bed so the quality of sleep isn't great - also having to listen to Jaz talk/cry//shout in her sleep and snore doesn't help! We keep everyone awake in the night too as we creep down the creaky staircase to the bathroom - which is at least once each!

As I said above Jaz is very busy at work at the moment. She is nannying for a family in Shepherds Bush and looking after 3 kids, Jessie 6, Toby 4 and little Theo 14 months. I have spent a bit of time with Theo and he is a mad little dude, when he isn't crying. I think Jaz is a bit stressed at the moment, trying to get their house clean and trying her best to get the kids to like her. She will be fine in a few weeks once they get to know her. Jaz and Emma (the nannies) have been meeting up for little play dates and lunches which has been great. At the moment Jaz is the bread winner in our relationship, earning a great deal more than I. I'm working at Connelly's Irish Pub in Chiswick, about a 15 minute walk from home for 6 pound an hour. It's a bit of a pay cut from what I'm used to at home but at least no one can sue me for pouring a s*** beer, which is good. I am currently sitting in a little café writing this whilst on the net trawling job websites. Not much luck though!!

I had a boy's trip last weekend to Munich for Oktoberfest with Liam Crimean and Jimmy O and also Brodie and a few of his mates. It was a very big three days and I was glad to be on the plane on the Monday night on the way back to London. Jimmy, Liam and I were the suckers who were camping at Thalkirchen, about 15 mins bus from the festival site. The whole weekend was pretty much raining and freaking cold. Brodie, who has done Oktoberfest before, and his mates got a hotel room in the city, which is definitely the way to go. The festival site is massive and house about 8 huge beer tents, from the different brewers. We sampled a few of the beers from the different tents, I thought the Sparten beer was the best. We found it to be tough to get inside the beer tents. They opened at 9 in the morning and closed at 10.30pm at night. Generally you had to line up for a while until enough people left, then they would let more in. We did however find that bribing the beer ladies with 20 Euro was a much better way to get in. They'd grab the cash then take us into a table where we would have to buy beers off her. You could only buy beers inside if you had a table and each lady had their own section. We would give the lady 10 Euro for a 1L stein of beer, we had a group of about 10, and she would come back with 10 1L steins in her hands. It was impressive to watch. Only the beer men and ladies could buy the beers, which cost them 8 Euro, so they would make 2 Euro profit from each beer. They worked for their money though. A lot of people were dressed in the Oktoberfest outfits, which cost about 200 Euro, and they looked pretty cool. I didn't want to part with 200, so I didn't get one.

Oktoberfest also had some of the best food as well. Bratwurst, Pork Knuckle, Sausages, full chickens etc. If you were vegetarian, Oktoberfest isn't the place to go. I sampled quite a bit of the food and loved it all. The festival site also houses some of the best rides I have ever seen. Some of them looked very scary. We tried a few of them but they were about 5-7 Euro a go so we weren't too keen to try too many more, plus I was scared s***less of some of them.

We also had a team called the Reverse Kangas play in the Oktoberfest Rugby 7's competition. Our jersey and shorts were the Girls Oktoberfest outfit, the Lederhosen, and were the best design by far.Unfortunately, a combination of injuries, torrential rain, 5 degree temperatures, but mostly hangovers, resulted in a few losses. Actually we were beaten quite convincingly in our matches and didn't make the finals, but it was a bit of fun. I haven't played rugby for about 4 years, but you wouldn't have known from the display I put on. I've still got it. The punters in the festival site loved our jerseys, with quite a few photos taken. Apparently this weekend is a re-union of the Reverse Kangas at the Shepherds Bush Walkabout in full Oktoberfest uniform. That will be interesting.

If I'm still in London next year I will be very keen to go back to Oktoberfest, however I will be staying at a hotel and will be drinking a lot more powerade during the day. It was great fun.

We haven't really got any trips planned in the immediate future, as waiting to see if I can get a job and what sort of holidays we will get over Xmas and New Year. I am pretty keen to get to Morocco, Egypt, Russia and Switzerland skiing, however Jaz is keener on a hot beach somewhere, lathered in tanning oil. There are some great beaches in Morocco and Egypt (plus good waves in Morocco) so we might look into those places first.

Now that we are settled in our house, sort of with jobs, we are starting to do a few "London" things. I have bought tickets to watch the Wallabies play the Poms at Twickenham in November with a few mates which will be awesome and planning on going to a few of the Fulham soccer games in the English Premier League. Fulham is about 10 mins away and the closest team, plus they have the Aussie goal keeper in the team. They are going alright this year, about 6th. Jaz and I went to the Lion King musical at West End on Sunday. It was alright, but I don't think musicals are my thing, Jaz loved it. A good thing about London is the quality of bands that come, which is more up my alley. I have a few planned in the coming months.

Anyway I'd better stop. The staff in the coffee shop are giving me dirty looks as I have been here for hours on their internet and only had a small coffee. We will keep the website updated with our travels and whatnot so stay tuned. CYA!!!