This will be my last post for a little while, as Nat and I fly out to London on Monday to begin our two year UK work/play adventure.

Wish me luck!

Back in June, I did a radio interview with 3AW. During the interview I mentioned that one of my goals (#18) was to meet Sir Richard Branson.

Shortly after the interview, a caller rang in and said that they might be able to help put me in touch with him. They had the details of his personal assistant.

I spoke with the caller (Bronwyn) and took the details she had. Until a week ago, I had done nothing with them.

Last week I thought it might be time to try the email address that Bronwyn gave me. So I sent an email, hoping that maybe I would get a response. Personal assistants tend to be the gatekeepers, so if I could get through this one, I might have a chance.

I eagerly checked my email inbox the next morning, and to my shock, there were two emails.

One from the person that I emailed, saying that she was not the personal assistant but would pass my email on.

And one from his actual personal assistant. Saying she loved Project 183 and had passed on my email to Sir Richard.

Cool I thought. But I still didn’t want to get my hopes up.

The next morning I eagerly checked my inbox, and to my shock and excitement, was an email from Sir Richard Branson!

Here is what it said:

Dear Heath,

Flattered you should want to meet me. Happy to get together the next
time that I’m in Australia. We’ll send your note to Danielle Keighery,
who will fix it up. Likely to be in December when I come to launch our
Pacific routes. Great idea!

All the best,
Richard

Can you believe it?! I now have a direct line with Sir Richard Branson (and his actual email address!).

Given I am moving to the UK next month, the meeting in Australia would not work, but we have spoken again since this email, and will be meeting in the UK in September.

Until I actually shake his hand (and maybe get a picture of him with a Project 183 magnet) I won’t get too over-excited, but just for him to write an email to little-old me is pretty damn awesome I reckon.

After a mountain of paperwork and a month-long wait, I have finally had my UK Working Visa application approved.

London, here I come! Two weeks to go until take-off.

Nat and I are a few months into preparations for what will be the biggest goal achieved on the list so far; we are moving overseas to work and live! Goal 84 is to live overseas for six months, but we are planning to stay at least a couple of years.

Where you ask? London.

When? Our one-way tickets are booked for August 25.

Why? Because we can. We were there last July, and had such a great time that we have wanted to go back ever since. So we are.

Just waiting now on the Visas to be approved, and then it will be London, here we come!

I’ve even found a short course in Flash website development in London that I will be booking into upon arrival, which will help to achieve goal 183. Here is the link to the course, for anyone interested.

As you probably now know, yesterday I took a longer than usual train trip.

And thankfully, I managed to complete my trip on time, as scheduled, completing the journey at Belgrave at 10.50 last night.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in comments (even the negative ones, they are kind of funny to read; and sadly true at times). I will make sure I respond to everyone over the next few days.

But right now, I need to catch up on some sleep. I have had eight hours sleep since Monday morning.

… and decided to pay my site a visit.

Thanks very much for coming. I would offer you tea and scones, but given you are at a website, rather than my house, it makes my offer rather difficult to fulfill.

But feel free to look around, inspect the goals, and leave some comments along the way.

The MX article covers my attempt tomorrow (Tuesday June 17) to be the first person to travel through the ENTIRE Melbourne train network in one day. If I do, it will also knock goal 141 off my list. Here is a photo of the article; I will attach a read-able version later.

Connex and Telstra have decided to tie themselves in with the silliness of this goal as well, which adds a little more pressure to the occasion.

Connex have written and sent out a press release to all the media outlets, and it sounds like I may be doing some radio interviews during the day, which is very exciting. Stay tuned to Channel 7 news tomorrow as well!

Telstra are providing me with 3G phones and a laptop, and they are building a blog on their website to track my progress during the day. I will be updating the blog during my trip (I do have 18.3 hours to kill!) with video updates and posts, and people can leave messages and comments that I can respond to.

The progress website, when live, is NowWeAreTalking.com.au/blogs/project-183

As discussed in a previous post, I am going to be attempting to achieve goal 141 next Tuesday. The goal is to travel on the entire Melbourne train network in one day.

Here is my schedule for the day for anyone strange enough to want to join me.

I am preparing at the moment for a new goal, and you can get involved.

On Tuesday June 17 I will hopefully be completing goal 141, which is to travel on the entire Melbourne train network in one day.

I have managed to secure some newspaper coverage for this goal (the MX newspaper, which is handed out free to hundreds of thousands of people every afternoon in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane). This will be the first time Project 183 is getting mainstream publicity, so I am very excited.

The goal starts at about 4.30am on the morning of the 17th, and will last until I finish shortly before 2am the next morning. If you are interested in accompanying me on any part of the trip, let me know. The complete schedule for the trip will be put up shortly.

This is the story of the shot of tequila I had last Thursday night which ended up costing me $430.

It all started at a Christmas party I went to on the Thursday night. I wasn’t planning on drinking much, so I drove there. I had a couple of beers early, but had had nothing for a few hours, so would have been perfectly fine to drive home.

I was feeling good with myself for not getting tempted by all the free alcohol. But then I went and messed it all up by having one shot of tequila. Not even sure why I did it, given tequila is absolutely awful. But anyway, I did it, it was done, so I decided that I would leave my car there, catch a cab home, and pick up the car in the morning.

I then proceeded to have a couple more drinks, then jumped in a cab and went home.

The next morning started off badly. Here’s what happened:

1. I woke up with a cramp in my leg.

2. There was nothing in the house for breakfast.

3. The first two trains were cancelled, meaning that I had to wait half an hour for a train, which was inevitably crammed with three trains worth of people.

4. The breakfast burger I bought at Flinders Street station was the worst burger ever (it was full of pickle mustard, which wasn’t mentioned in the burger’s description on the menu board. Pickle mustard is not great at the best of times, let alone at 8am).

5. The tram took forever to arrive, and when it did it had a dodgy door that could open but not close. The driver had to get out of the driving compartment and manually close the door at every stop, which doubled the time of the journey.

6. There was a ticket inspector on the tram, and I had a band-aid on my thumb which made getting my ticket out of my wallet near impossible. After about a minute of me struggling, he was just about ready to give me a fine for not having a ticket.

After such a bad start to the morning, I was thinking that things could not get much worse. It had taken 90 minutes to get from my house back to where my car was (a trip that should have taking 45 minutes at most).

But then things got a whole lot worse.

My car was not where I left it. In fact it was nowhere to be seen.

Then it hit me - I had parked in a clearway zone, and the car had been towed away.

A delayed train and rotten burger paled into insignificance compared to the realisation that my car had been towed.

I found the phone number of the towing company on the pole with the clearway sign on it, a sign that now seemed to be laughing at my stupidity. The towing company gave me the address (after abusing the local council for publishing their number instead of the council’s number - as if I was the council), and I jumped in a cab, on my way to retrieve my car.

A tow would cost about $100 I thought. I was wrong.

The tow itself was a whopping $275. Talk about highway robbery.

Speaking of robbery, the towing company was located in a dodgy alley in Collingwood, that made me think of the company as one that stole cars and then made the owners pay a ‘ransom’ to get their cars back.

As I was handed my receipt for the $275 tow, the towing man said that they left the parking fine on the windshield. This hit me like a left hook as I am falling to the ground as the result of a right one. I totally forgot that there would be a fine as well, for parking in the clearway. The fine was $110, as you can see below.

I got my car, drove it away, and eventually got to work three hours after I had left home that morning. It proved to be one of the most frustrating mornings of my life.

The tequila shot I had was the difference between me driving home that night, and not driving home that night. By not driving home, it cost me the following:

Cab ride on Thursday night $25.50

Train/tram ticket $2.70

Breakfast burger $3.95

Tow $275

Cab to towing company $17.80

Parking fine $110

TOTAL $434.95

If I was thinking in a Mastercard frame of mind, I would also include:

Story that is ideal for introducing the fact that I am about to start goal 4 on my list - Priceless

Yes, this long-winded story did have a relevant point, besides the moral of not having shots of tequila. It serves as a great way to introduce that on January 2, 2008, I begin goal 4, which is to abstain from all forms of alcohol for 100 consecutive days - a goal I now wish I had started a couple of weeks ago!

The goal is complete if I can last until April 11. In the process, I hope to learn that alcohol is not required in order to have a fun time.

And if last Friday is anything to go by, I might save myself a few thousand dollars at the same time!

I am not a regular attender of gigs, or concerts, or anything live that isn’t sport.

It’s something I wish I did more, but for some reason I just don’t.

So goal 78 is to see 10 live performances. This covers anything live that isn’t sport, so this could be band gigs, theatre productions or even Carols by Candlelight!

Hopefully this will get me into the habit of going to at least one live show a month.

Here’s the progress so far.

1. The Phantom of the Opera (seen at the Princess Theatre)
This was one of the best things I have ever seen. The singing was amazing, the set design even better and I would recommend it to anyone. And no, most of the singing wasn’t opera!
2. Spamalot (seen at Her Majesty’s theatre)
Classic must-see for any Monty Python fan. Should-see for everyone else. Very good.

3. The 39 Steps (seen at the Playhouse at the Arts Centre)
A murder mystery comedy based loosely on the work of Alfred Hitchcock. 4 actors played the roles of 130 different characters remarkably well. Laugh out loud funny.

4.

5.

6.

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8.

9.

10.