As my dog sprints across the lawn, I like to slap his butt so that he ends up drifting.

What I thought was an innocent Facebook status update turned out to be a great source of amusement for my friends as the conversation inevitably degenerated into one direction. Since y’all had such a great time yukking it up, here are more iffy things that I do with Snoop.

• I greet him with a hug and a big whiff of his neck and face.
• I let him lick me on my hands and my face.
• He likes to sit outside the shower stall as I shower.
• He’s seen me naked.
• Sometimes when it’s cold, he likes to bury his face into my crotch.
• Sometimes when it’s hot and I’m sleeping on the floor, he sleeps next to me.
• I clean up dry debris from his eyes and his mouth.
• I feed him treats with my spoon and fork.
• When I bathe him, I wash everywhere including his penis and his anus.
• And lastly, because of his history with a tumour that forced his right foreleg to be amputated, I now touch him all over periodically to feel for lumps. This involves, yes, me touching his genital area.

So there, go crazy.

You let me got close,
Too close,
But you weren’t really there,
You never were.
I saw what I wanted to see,
But I want to wake up now,
This dream is getting old,
And I’d rather you were real.

V Iced Coffee with Guarana. Yes ladies and gentleman, this is an actual thing. Some food scientists must have been sitting around wondering what else can they do with energy drinks. They’ve added vitamins to it, they’ve taken the sugar out of it, they’ve made it taste fruitier, and they’ve doubled it in size and even shrunk it into little energy shots.

So they must have thought, what about THE original energy drink that more people on the planet consume than anything else, coffee? Brilliant! Why didn’t we think of this sooner? Let’s add guarana to it! Woohoo! \0/

Yeah it’s a pretty obvious idea but is it also indicative that they’ve run out of ideas? Never mind. Their ads suckered me into trying one anyway. So I went and bought a bottle from the supermarket to try. It cost $3.80 which is about the same as a can of Mother but a bit more than plain iced coffee. It has the same amount of caffeine as a can of Mother (~130mg), which is twice that of a regular 250mL can of Redbull. It doesn’t have taurine in it like Mother, but it does have guarana in it, about as much as a 250mL can of V.

Flavour wise, I’m pleased that it still taste like regular iced coffee. There’s no weird aftertaste. So the effects? On plenty of caffeine alone, I’d be quite jittery and although I get things done quicker, I tend to get distracted easily too. I am better with energy drinks in that I can concentrate better – could be the taurine and/or guarana, or it could be my imagination. So adding guarana to iced coffee has the same effect on me as a normal energy drink – I am wide awake and restless but I’m able to focus. The buzz kicked in after the first few sips and gradually subsided over the course of 2 hours. But I’m still wide awake now. And it’s been almost 9 hours. Hahah!

V has tried a coffee flavour before with their Black V. That one took a little getting used to but after a while, it tasted like a strong but waterry black coffee. And I give them credit for coming up with something new this time too.

Verdict? If you like iced coffee and you want an extra kick, try this drink out. But if you don’t feel like paying so much for flavoured milk or if you are lactose intolerant, then stick with the usual fizzy stuff. The end result is the same. Minus the added calcium and milky goodness.

I had an awesome night out with my Melbourne colleagues tonight. We had good Thai good and a good amount of alcohol (that $35 bottle of Wolf Blass Gold Label 2005 Shiraz was the bomb!), and great conversation. I’m glad that I have a bunch of work mates that can talk to each other about more than just work stuff. As my manager said during the dinner, we really do have a bunch of great people in the team right now. All of us just click and get along with each other so well.

Coming back to an empty hotel room though does dampen the mood slightly. The Internet, my laptop and my music enliven things a little. It makes me wonder how did people do this back in the day before Internet – there’s only so much expensive in-house porn that one can watch on the hotel TV. I know, ‘cos I’ve tried. Ah Japan, good times. Hahah!

So yeah … I get reminded that I’m not home as soon as I leave the company of my colleagues. I miss the noises that I took for granted at home. I miss the smell of my mother’s cooking as soon as I step into the house. I miss Snoop running to greet me at the door.

All of which pose a quandary. The working environment in Perth is more mundane and lifeless because I don’t interact with my colleagues face to face and I don’t hear their idle chit-chat and laughter in the office. But family and friends in Perth is a stronger pulling force and so it is that I miss working in Melbourne when I’m in Perth and I miss my life when I’m working in Melbourne.

Still, I’m glad that I get to come here to Melbourne on these occassions. And although I’m missing out on The Stanton Warriors in Perth tonight, having a great night out with my colleagues ain’t too bad of an exchange.

And yup, I do dance with myself when I’m bored and alone.

Saturday night, Metro City. After a fun night out with Gary, Simon, Sylvia, Evelyn and Wei Yi, we were tired but elated and were heading home in Gary’s car. At about 5:30am, whilst taking the girls home we got pulled over for random breath testing on Kwinana Freeway (they closed it down to one lane – ONE LANE on a 3-lane freeway!) – something that you may have read about.

‘We will catch you,’ police warn drink-drivers – The West Australian.

Gary blew just on the limit (0.05% blood-alcohol) and had to go wait inside the booze bus for about 20 minutes before getting re-tested. Meanwhile, the rest of us had a tense wait at a carpark nearby. Half an hour later, Gary’s blood-alcohol level came down which meant he was free to go though the cops advised him to wait another half an hour before driving again. Big phew all around!

Gary and I were both talking about how it could have ended very differently, and probably very badly.

For example, if …

• the girls didn’t get chatted up by some guys as we were leaving the club,
• we didn’t have to walk to Simon’s car to get Evelyn’s keys,
• Evelyn didn’t subsequently forget to get them anyway, hahaha …
• we then didn’t have to drive to Simon’s house in the opposite direction to get the keys,
• the girls didn’t get hungry and wanted some McDonald’s,
• some of the city streets weren’t closed off and thus causing us to drive one big circle to get there…

All those little delays meant that Gary’s body had more time to process the alcohol. If we didn’t have to drop the girls, him and I would have just driven home straight from the club and oh boy … that would have been bad.

And also, all the delays meant that we got a little more time to spend with the girls even though at the end, it was mostly silent because they had fallen asleep whilst waiting around. Hahah. But hey, a moment of silence is better than no moment at all right?

Yeah, I got thinking about “Sliding Doors“.

mooncross @ flickr

Shoot for the stars but prepare to land,
To land very hard even.
Aim high but prepare to live amongst mortals,
The pedestrian and the average.
You can’t always have what you seek,
But you will be happy anyway,
It’s all up to you.

Sony News @ Ultra Miami 2010 from Ultra Music Festival on Vimeo.

So I’ve been thinking of doing Ibiza for a long time but the strong AUD-USD exchange rate makes attending a festival in the USA a viable alternative. That festival is the Ultra Music Festival that’s held every year during March in Miami. Here’s some preliminary calculations with ballpark figures in AUD.

Airfare from Perth to Miami = $2500 (source: airfaresflights.com.au)
Accommodation at Hilton Miami (500m to the venue) = $150 per night x 5 nights (twin room shared) = $750 (source: miamibeach411.com)
3-day ticket to the event = $180 (holy fuck, cheap when compared to Aussie festivals!)
Spending money = $120 per day x 5 days = $600

All up, that should be about $4030 – rounding that up to $4500 just to be conservative. For a holiday that involves me seeing the USA for the first time, my love of all things dance music, all by the beach no less (sorta), I think it’d be a great experience.

The headliners for 2011 includes Tiesto, deadmau5, The Chemical Brothers, Carl Cox and David Guetta. It’s too late for the 2011 festival now but 2012 maybe? Now to convince me some friends to go with.

(ultramusicfestival @ flickr)