Archive for the 'misc' Category

Aug 26 2007

Queensland Roar Draw – But A Win for Football

Published by Rob Taylor under misc

I am back in the UK for a few weeks from Wednesday / Thursday depending which part of the world you are in, so this weekend has been spent catching up with people and sorting the diary. Last night I ‘caught up’ with the Queensland Roar who were taking on Adelaide Utd, a fixture I have seen before but with two new look teams it was a much better game.

Still Roar have the knack of creating but not finishing, and their ‘marquee’ signing of Craig Moore ended in misery after he was sent off. Whoops!

Moore Gets Sent Off
Pic: Nathan Richter
Danny Tiatto has signed for Roar and had a great game, along with classic players such as Reinaldo and Marchino! What was great was Micheal Zullo, a local 19yo, making his debut. He does seem a good player if not a little lightweight, and could not help Roar get ahead, rather settling for a hard fought entertaining 2-2 draw.
Watching football down under is a completely different experiance than in the UK, the facilities in the Suncorp Stadium are superior to ‘top’ stadiums such as Old Trafford with excellent food and drink (wine, sir?), proper seats without smacking your knees (talking about you White Hart Lane!) , barcoded tickets to zap for entry, two huge video screens, masses of space etc rather than the pokey rat burger ‘no you cannot take that £8 official red devils budwieser watered down beer out into the stadium‘ quality rip off experiance of the Premiership. Sorry, forgot about the rebranding there, the Premier League!
The supporters are very different in viewpoint, whereas often the UK fans are quite knowledgable and are there for the game, over here many are out for the evening entertainment and treat it as such. A crowd of 17,800 turned up and while there is a couple of areas of ‘hardcore support’ the rest is quite quiet and observational, very much like the prawn sandwich brigade in the UK.
Saying that, if you delve deeper into the post-match bar you can meet some interesting characters. Once you get past them calling Derby ‘Deeerbie’ and other such Queenslander gems they are quite knowledgable. My co-brewer Nick is a Bolton fan, another bloke was a West Ham supporter (whos dad was from around Bala!) and another actually had a fantasy football team going! All quite refreshing and good fun.
So ignoring the air fare, $21 (£8.60!) to go and see a decent game of football compared to £17 to see league two dross or £33 to sit in comparable seats in Mold Trafford… I know what I would choose! Roar have all the chokeability of Wrexham in fluro orange rather than dragon red, yet without the cold trudge home as this is Brisvegas where the sun always shines, even at night :)
I will be back over in October , until then I will have to put up with paper banknotes and ‘heat waves’ of 26C!

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Aug 17 2007

Exchange Rates

Published by Rob Taylor under misc

Due to the recent sub prime crisis in America the worldwide backlash has started. This is good news for me being a Brit down under.

Auzzy Dollar v GBP

After being hammered on the exchange rate recently (£1 = $2.32ish) it is now back up to the respectable £1=$2.5 as of the tail end of last year :)

Saying that, I met a bloke in Sydney the other week who was telling me when he first moved out here it was closer to £1 = $3.5! Wow.
On the flip side I do a fair bit of work online, so a weak USD$ does mean that earnings drop from one particular source, thus why it is always good to be deeply embedded in a market with a decent currency ie. the good old British Pound!

The worrying thing is how the world markets have reacted to what is in effect quite a small part of the whole problem, with the real fun starting later this year and into 2008. It is worth a read of this article which gives a great insight into the credit issues and housing bubble across the pond. Fun times ahead!

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Aug 16 2007

Glorious Brisbane

Published by Rob Taylor under misc

I have one of these Sony Vaio TX1HP laptops, it is a dinky little thing with 11.1″ screen however over the last few months the battery has been dying and the power cable needs a wiggle before it works. Finally I have decided to take it to a service center and have it fixed up so it will be usable back on my 5 week trip to Europe so currently it is sitting here on my desk copying about 40gig of data across to this PC.
In more interesting news if you drive about thirty minutes out of Brisbane you end up on a road that resembles a rainforest track from a video game! At the end of the delightful drive was views across the Wivenhoe Dam from Mount Glorious which is aptly named!

Queensland View 1
Samford Valley View.

QLD 2
Wivenhoe Dam in the distance , taken from rainforest .

All in all a nice trip, and crazy to think of the differing climate and lifestyles around this area!

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Jul 20 2007

NOB No.1 – The Review

Published by Rob Taylor under misc

nob-number-one.jpg
Yes we are this sad.
This was our first brew based on a Munich Lager craft beer(!) kit (I will dig out the full recipe). The NOB No.1 kicked off on June 24th, was fermented for a week and then bottled, so it has been bottle conditioning for three weeks.

The beer itself is a deep amber with light carbonation and a decent white head, it has a quite powerful aroma of bread, yeast and hops.

NOB is certainly refreshing and not lacking in body and has a decent whack of good beery taste with some hoppy bitterness toward the finish. It stands up as a fuller hoppy beer which when the flavours settle down in a couple of months ought to be a decent first brew. As the original idea of hops in beer was to help preserve it, I would be keen to try one of these in a year or twos time and see what the taste is.

We didnt measure the gravity so cannot say exactly what the abv is, however going on rough association I would guess its a 4.5-5%’er with ease.

Nick has suggested a more science based approach (him being a uber sciencist type) based on drinking 5 bottles of a set ABV beer and then the next night drinking 5 bottles of NOB and comparing inebriatedness and then doing something involving rulers and graphs. Probably propelling pencils as well.

nob-new-brews.jpg
On the left is the yet unnamed winter ale, and the right our mexican cerveza.
Rather than faff about further we kicked off the above two brews last weekend. Yes you saw correctly, we have found another fermenter!  In the first one is a winter ale based around nut brown ale, a boiled whack of caramalt, fuggles and goldings hops and some Nick n Rob magic. The second is the corona style clone (lager kit, saaz hops and some carapils malt) , the aim being to brew a lighter lager in the mexican style, this is a dry (or should that be wet?) run to get the base right so in the future we can add some citrus flavours.
Considering it is ‘winter’ here in Brisvegas and it still only gets as low as 18-20C in the day the winter ale might require the air con on full blast. Potentially there are a few people from the UK heading over for New Years so it could be converted to a Xmas Ale, but then it is mid summer so 35C and up. Hmm.

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