Meat raffles

I haven't heard of these things before I arrived for this job. A word of explanation: bowls clubs are basically pubs, with a large flat garden out the front on which people can play lawn bowls if they really want to. (I did want to at one stage, but that's a different story.)

These bowls clubs sell raffle tickets. If you win, you get to choose a tray of meat.

I bought $5 worth of tickets, for the first time. This is what it yielded.
One of my other friends got another one. Not bad for a cheap feed.

Bodysurfing

Had a go at bodysurfing last Sunday.

It seems like this is an activity that involves being hit by a large volume of water every 15 seconds or so. The surf at Ballina is pretty good, even though one of the lads from Lennox tried to argue that it was nothing compared to there.

I almost caught about one wave, for about 2 seconds, but it was pretty fun being tossed around by the waves anyway. The only thing is when you're facing the shore after a swim and stand up for a rest, you sometimes don't see the next wave before it falls on top of you.

I think I breathed in more salt water than I swallowed. Cleared my sinuses up though. And tap nose isn't really that bad once you get used to it.

Goodbye, cruel internet

So it's the 14th of November today. This is the day on which I have to say goodbye to Telstra Prepaid's introductionary free Internet over mobile phone. The gimmick to get me hooked on GPRS internet has worked well.

However, it hasn't convinced me to pay Telstra lots of money, which was presumably Stage Two of Telstra's Grand Plan of Wayne domination. At the rate I was going I'd probably be paying Telstra about $100 for an hour of internet. (Yeah, I was downloading full sized webpages and what not.)

The cheapest bulk provider of GPRS that I've been able to identify is the special Vodafone data bundles, which cost about $50 a month for 300 MB downloads. Painful, but not as painful. My problem now is to find a Vodafone store that a) can sign me up for this service, b) is in or near Ballina, and c) opens on Saturday Arvo or sometime on Sunday.

The closest store is in Lismore, about a 45 minute drive away. My lack of car-edness means that this is somewhat difficult.

Therefore, I'll have to farewell the Internet for a couple of weeks. The only connection I'll get is the company one, during work hours, and probably only at lunchtime.

Shanks

Went to the Bellowing Bull on Monday, in a place near Lismore. (Northern NSW geography still baffles me.)

Their specialty is the Veal Shank. The shank is a large cut of leg bone, with a huge chunk of meat weighted heavily on one end. It's like a drumstick, except it's about half a meter long. When you pick one up, you get a strong urge to say in a loud voice "OG EAT MEAT". It's that kind of meal.

I wimped out. I had the rib fillet, which was great as well. I got some salad out of the serving plates, but there was an earwig in there, so I didn't finish it.

"Do you think Wayne's going to eat the shanks?"

"I think the shanks are going to eat Wayne."

Nicknames

I've been putting my hand up a bit at the local church. Or at least some people have been doing it for me.

A few weeks ago, I volunteered to do the electric keyboard for the evening service. Last week, one of the guys pushed me into doing the Bible reading for the service. Then I've been asked to operate the data projector a couple of times after that.

The guys at church have started calling me "super-sub", a la Cricket 2005/06, due to the way I keep getting substituted into the church roster with little notice. They also call me Deano, after some rugby league player who apparently is never in the starting lineup. New South Welshmen are weird.