About Me !!

Well, where do I start??? Well let's see. I was born in Melbourne, Australia way back on June 23, 1976. At 25, I am the oldest of 3. I have brother and a sister. I did all the usual stuff that parents make their kids do like going to elementary (or primary as us Aussies say) school. In 1988 I started Junior High, and it was about this time that a certain song called "I Want Your Love" exploded onto the charts in Australia. Transvision Vamp was the group, and boy was I in love. Music has always been a huge part of my life, and it was when I was in Junior high that my love for good music and some questionable music (but we wont go there) developed.

When I was a sophomore (10th grade) in 1991, two big things happened. First up on Monday September 23rd I went on a tour with my school of Central Australia. I honestly believe Australia has some of the best scenery in the world and would urge anyone who has never been to Australia to certainly think about heading down under for you next vacation. The second big event of that year occurred on September 21st. This was the night that I saw Transvision Vamp live in concert. I can go on and write pages of info about this show so I will save all that waffle for a review I will write later.

Moving on now, once I graduated from high school, I decided to skip going to university (or collage as the Americans say) in favor for going out and finding myself a job. My train of thought was back then was, like most kids I did not really enjoy school that much so why would I go and put myself through 4 years full time or 6-7 years of part time study for a career that may never happen. What I mean by that is that most people will end up changing their minds after only two semesters and end up either deferring there courses or just dropping them altogether. So as soon as I finished my final exam, I took a couple of days off and then started job hunting.

I was pretty lucky in that the first job I applied for I got. It started off as casual work only fifteen hours a week but I believe that if you apply yourself to what ever you do and you can be successful. so within two weeks I went full time work. The work I was doing by the way was a seafood restaurant. I learnt all the ropes from waitering, right through to doing the majority of food preparation through to cooking the food, one point I would like to make though is, just don't ask me why I chose a seafood place to work at as I cannot stand seafood. I enjoy a piece of Flake every now and then but other than that I don't really care for it. Flake by the way is really popular in Melbourne and Victoria. Flake for those who don't now is a really nice tasting white fish that is most commonly known throughout the rest of the world as Shark. Anyhow back to work after about 2 months there my employers decided to start training me for management duties and it was not to long before I became an assistant manager.

As the company began to expand and grow, my employers decided to take the franchise route with the store. The potential was there for other stores to do well and the second store was opened on Acland Street in St Kilda, Melbourne. St Kilda is like the San Francisco of Melbourne, very bohemian with almost every culture in the world there and it boast some of the best restaurants. It is a huge among the tourists and there is a great market there along the esplanade every Sunday. Once the shop was set up it did well over the first summer, by this time tow more stores had opened one down in the beach side suburb of Mornington and another way up to the North of Melbourne in Greensborough. Any by this time I had taken an interest in Training and Developing new and existing crew members and it was soon my job to take under my wing the 15-20 or so crew and management for the new stores and train them in all the aspects of the business. So all up I think I ended up training allot of people over the years. It was during this time I was transferred for a few weeks down to Mornington to work on helping the store get ready for it's grand opening. I eventually decided to work permanently at this store and ended staying for three years. I fell in love with the area.

Mornington is a beautiful seaside town which has a beautiful harbor and a large pier where you can go down at sunrise and get fresh fish straight of the boat, packed on ice. If you drive along the Esplanade - which is a road that runs along the cliffs and water's edge, you get some amazing 180 degree views of Port Philip Bay, you can see the ships coming in from the south of Port Philip Heads and you can see the mountain ranges on the other side and to north you can see the sky scrapers of the city of Melbourne. After the first year things started going bad for the company and although my store was a stand alone store that using the companies name the two other franchise store in St Kilda and Greensborough had to close. The original store that started it all was sold and allot of investors lost a lot quite a bit of cash. I decided from that moment never to go into business with anyone unless I fully 100% trust them and have known them for considerable amount of years. After working in Mornington for a little over three years (I worked at the Moonee Ponds store for three years as well) I decided enough was enough. The long hours and crappy pay for the hours I was working had pissed me off for the last time so I handed in my resignation in the end of February 2000 and on March 10 I was on a plane to California where my future awaited. Why the move to California? Lets just say that love does crazy things to people. Anyhow enough about my work as I am sure would all be bored reading about by now.

Musically I like a huge range of music. I like everything from Hard Rock, Metal, Dance, and Country music since I have been in the USA. I personally think Australia has the best pub bands around and on any night in any city around the country you can find an abundance of great musicians and bands playing in any of the great venues. I love a good laugh and love stand up comedy. I highly recommend Australian and fellow Melbournian Tracy Bartram, She is a stand up comic, morning radio host and does allot of great work for Charities. On the links page is a link to her great web site.

My favorite bands include Divinyls. I can't say enough about this great Australian Band Although I must admit I only really got into them once they hit the bigtime world wide with the hit I Touch Myself, although I can safely say that Divinyls have so many more great songs that stem from the bands early days when they played gigs in Sydney's seedy Kings Cross. Other bands/musicians I like are Joan Jett, Lifehouse, Blink 182, REM, Sheryl Crow, Matchbox Twenty, Santana and Alicia Keys - Anyone who saw her perfom at the MTV video awards would have been moved by her perfomance of her song Fallin' and it so rightfully deserved the standing ovation it recieved. I like the early 1990's Seattle grunge scene, Pearl Jams early hits were good (Even Flow, Not For You, Last Kiss) are all great songs. Nirvana were huge Smells Like Teen Spirit is just an anthem ( it deserves that title ) so is Heart Shaped Box. I thought In Utero was such a dark CD. You could almost feel Kurt's emotions as you read the lyrics and listened to the songs. I like some of Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Hole are good, Courtney Love is just crazy. I also like Hip Hop music too, Lil Kim, Da Brat, Miss "E” Elliot, check out her song one minute man, Ludicris, Outkast,112, Ice Cube. There are even some good trance songs out there. know you might all think I am crazy by admitting I like Country music but there are some really good country artists out there. Have a listen to Tim Mcgraw, my fave song of his is called Everywhere. Faith Hill is just gorgeous and can really belt out a tune, Tammy Cochran wrote a really nice song called Angels In Waiting about her two younger brothers who passed away of cerabal palsy when they were younger, very sad song that is capable of bringing a tear to your eye. My fave country artist at the moment is Lee Ann Womack she has a beautiful song called ‘I Hope You Dance' It is one song I would dedicate to Wendy after all the shit she has had thrown at her over the last 7-8 years.

Aside from music other things I like to are, spend time with friends and family. I miss my family back in Australia but they are only a phone call away when I want to talk to them. I grew up near the beach and love to swim in the ocean. I miss the beach as were I live in California the nearest beach is 2-3 hours away. I like animals and have 2 dogs. Love to renovate homes. I hope to take this up as a hobby soon. I have some great ideas for the interior of the house I live in at the moment but my partner is not to keen on the paint schemes I have planned. Landscape gardening. I am currently redesigning my back yard out for the inclusing of a BBQ pit looking out over the pool, as well as a mediterainian style garden. Motor Sports played a huge part of my life growing up. Drag Racing in particular. I dont mean these dimwits that race there cars against each other on the main street of town on a Friday night. Those morons give real Drag Racers a bad name. I love the excitement and thrill of watching two Top Fuel Drag Cars race from a standing start and cover the 1/4 mile in 4.5 seconds at speeds approaching 330mph. I now of some great links to some great drag racing sites so email me if you are interested. Thats all for now although I know what I am like and I am bound to add more as I remember.