Welsh WASTAG

Work colleagues suprised me with variant of the stag night - the WASTAG. Women Accompanied STAG. They say a picture tells a thousand words so.....

......say no more.

The English

Listen to this guy carefully. These people once ruled an empire on which the sun never went down...

That's right, Liverpool is covered in statues of lambs with bananas coming out of their rear ends........The English.

Nature and Stuff

Meant to post this a while back. Not a whole lot to say here just thought I'd put up some pictures from a waterfall hike we took with some work friends. They forgot to mention it would be a five hour hike up a mountain. Anyway just some pictures of the countryside to show you what Wales looks like.

Laying low

Ok, again I've been slack in posting updates on what we're doing. Quick summary;

Went to see Underworld play at a festival called Escape in the Park. Have wanted to see Underworld for years. Leftfield are next on the list whilst here. Here's some film of Born Slippy (that Trainspotting track).








I also managed to win 10 pound at the festival by proving to some friends that I could convince one of the police to let me wear their funny hat. I was told that there was no way they would let me, they never do and get annoyed when you ask. So I immediately went and asked one and he basically told me where to go. I then noticed an older looking Policeman wearing a normal hat nearby and so I decided to approach him (I should add that I was in a pretty good state at this stage):


Me: Excuse me, I don't mean to bother you but why do you get to wear a normal hat when all the other guys have to wear those stupid looking ones?
Policeman: Because I'm the Inspector
Me: What does that mean?
Policeman: I'm in charge
Me: Really, does that mean you could make one of those other guys give me their silly hat so I can get a photo?
Policeman: Where are you from?
Me: Australia!
Policeman: What are you doing here?
Me: I heard Wales was a great place to visit (lying), so I'm visiting. So can you get me a hat?
Policeman: Yes, I guess if I wanted to (looking very amused at this stage)
Me: Can you?
Policeman: OK.
Me: Can you make that guy over there give me his (pointing to the officer who told me where to go)?




At this point he turns to one of his sidekicks, mumbles something to her and tells me to follow her. She is clearly not happy about this. So I follow her over to the officer who told me where to go.


Policewoman: "The inspector says you have to give this fool your hat and let him have his photo taken"
NowveryangrylookingrudePoliceman: "You're kidding"
Policewoman: "No, I'm serious"
Menowbeingacompletesmartarse: "Here, you just have to press this button on top of my camera..."

Madelene went back to Sweden a few weeks back as her registration to work STILL hasn't come through. She's getting wedding stuff organised and coming back to Cardiff with me after the wedding. Went to visit her last weekend and the trip included taking 36 hours to get from Cardiff airport to Gothenburg airport (usually a 3 hour trip), loosing a legal document I had to hand in at Gothenburg for us to be legally married in Amsterdam, almost getting detained by Dutch Customs agents for forcing may way back into a restricted customs area at Amsterdam airport looking for said document, making a KLM airlines representative cry whilst looking for said document, finding said document and being told never to come back to Amsterdam airport again by airport security. Wedding in 3 weeks, will be seeing a few of you soon.

Our Apartment

Just a quick video to show what our apartment in Cardiff Bay looks like.

All quiet on the Welsh front.

In response to Goldy’s question “Jonah, how is it in Whales?”...............pretty quiet actually. All has been quiet on the blog front as I really haven’t had much of interest to report and after my last entry was slammed by a certain Scottish blog critic I thought I’d keep quiet. There are no toilet stories here either Mal so you can stop reading now. We’ve moved out of the cupboard in Grungetown, the prostitutes that were working on our street weren’t the friendliest of neighbours. We’ve moved into a much bigger apartment in Cardiff Bay and they only way the neighbours bother us here is by setting off the fire alarm. The wedding is 9 weeks away so we’re just laying low and organising the apparently endless list of details that a wedding involves. In hindsight, organising to get married in Sweden whilst we live in Wales after just moving from Australia........real stupid. Have been heading out on the weekends to various pubs and clubs. There is no doubt that the Welsh make Australians look like lightweights in the drinking department. Remember what Jooce Nightclub used to look like at 5am......Cardiff looks like that by 6:30pm on a Friday. We headed out last Friday not realising that 60,000 Munster fans (Munster as in the Irish rugby club) were descending on Cardiff for the Heineken cup. We were in a packed pub chatting away to the supporters and all was going well.....until a Munster supporter told Madelene she looked like the kind of woman that enjoyed body contact. Then we had to go home. This is him, don't know how she resisted his Irish charm.

Birthday at Plas Llanmihangel

Madelene's birthday was on the 25th so I surprised her with a weekend at Plas Llanmihangel, an old Norman Knight's manor that was built in 1166. We struck it lucky and were the only people staying there for the weekend meaning that we pretty much had access to the huge place on our own. The manor sits about 30 minutes west of Cardiff outside of a market town called Cowbridge. The current owners bought it when it was derelict and it has taken them 21 years to restore. Ironically, now that they have restored it completely at their own expense the government has listed it as a heritage building and they now aren't allowed to touch any part of it without government approval. Gotta be happy with that.

We're still living in the cupboard in Cardiff but have found a number of bigger, better apartments to inspect this week so hopefully we'll be moving on up in a week or so. Unlike Melbourne there appears to be an oversupply of rental apartments and we've been told we can negotiate rent, lease length and bond quite easily. We also went out in Cardiff on the Friday night for the first time and discovered that it has an absolutely cranking night life. There were people everywhere dressed up as super heroes, pirates, cartoon characters and all sorts of things. When I asked someone if it was a special occasion they replied "Yeah......it's Friday". Awesome.