You may have noticed no posts for a while – unfortunately this month has been a little barren of completed goals.

So I thought I’d write a post about the weird keywords some people have typed into a search engine to end up at this site.

Here’s my top 5 favourites so far:

“Clearway car parking penalty best reasons”

“Indian restaurant tutorial videos”

“How to beat the hammer brothers on nintendo”

“Mega bloks aquarium”

“Weird looking landmarks”

I guess when you write about such a variety of topics and areas of interest, you are bound to get a wide variety of visitors.

No complaints here! Thanks to everyone who has visited so far, however you managed to stumble upon my humble e-abode.

Month completed: January 2008

Here it is – my big Lego achievement. In fact, it is my big Megabloks achievement, but that’s much of a muchness, because Megabloks is just like Lego, but looks more realistic and less like a bunch of blocks put together. It is the Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow’s ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise*.

Nat gave it to me for Christmas, and I couldn’t wait to get started. Unfortunately it took only a few hours to complete and wasn’t too difficult, but what it has done (besides looking awesome) is that it has given me the appetite for more Lego and Megabloks projects.

The only problem I have is trying to find room in a one-bedroom apartment to put all of my future masterpieces!

* The painting behind the ship is one of the beach that I did a while ago. Works in well with the pirate theme I reckon (I am such a geek!).

Month completed: January 2008

On the same day as I completed goal 12 (visit the Melbourne Aquarium) Nat and I decided to knock this goal off my list as well.

And I am glad we did. The view from the Tower to all angles of Melbourne was tremendous, and we could see out as far as Mount Dandenong in the east.

For those not in the know, Melbourne’s Eureka Tower is the world’s tallest residential building, and the 88th floor (known as Skydeck 88) is the highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere. Pretty impressive, and thus visiting it was on my list.

One of the unique features of the Eureka Tower is The Edge, a glass cube which projects 3 metres out of the building, 300 metres above the ground. Once you are out of the building, the walls, roof and floor of the cube go from white to transparent. It was weird looking down, and seeing nothing but the ground 300 metres away. Not exactly scary, but definitely worth doing if you are up in the Skydeck anyway.

I was most impressed with the 30 viewfinders scattered around the Skydeck. Going to many tall buildings in Europe, none was ever able to deliver a clever, simple way to point out landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, for example, was particularly void of any tool). Skydeck has.

There are a number of vertical poles with metal cylinders at the top acting like telescopes, but without any magnifying lens. They simply direct your vision to exactly where they want you looking, which is at a particular landmark. The landmark you are looking at is written on the pole, and LED displays on the floor next to the pole give a little detail about the landmark. Very simple, yet very effective (you can see a couple of examples in the photo below).

And given the Eureka Tower will become one of Melbourne’s key tourist attractions (if it hasn’t become such already), here is me with the typical Japanese photo salute. If you can work out how Nat is in the picture as well, take a bow.

Month completed: January 2008

Since opening a few years ago, I have always wanted to go to the Melbourne Aquarium, but never got there.

For Christmas, my brother gave me and Nat a gift voucher to go, so yesterday we went.

The aquarium was good – there were plenty of displays and heaps of information, and I would definitely recommend a visit if you have a day spare (I would also recommend booking ahead if you want to do the glass bottom boat tour – we didn’t, and it was all booked out when we tried to book in on the day).

If you want to see a really great aquarium though, visit the Aquarium of Western Australia, next time you are in Perth. The WA aquarium has a better underwater tank, bigger sharks and turtles (the turtles are my favourite), and a seal display, and is overall just a better aquarium.

But that takes nothing away from our Aquarium. One recommendation – don’t go during the school holidays, or you will be spending half your time dodging a thousand-strong army of prams and ankle-biters.*

Here’s me sticking my head out of a bubble in one of the tanks.

* We would have missed overhearing a funny line if we didn’t go during school holidays though.

A mum and her son were looking at a lobster in a tank. The mum said ‘yum’. The son said ‘why do you keep saying ‘yum’ all the time?’. She didn’t reply. I was quite amused.