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I’ve just come back from South Australia and my summer holidays are almost at an end. Thankfully that doesn’t have the same feeling of dread and regret that it did back when I was in school. In fact, I can’t wait to get away from work and back to Wollongong. That word back there is one of the main factors. Work.

There’s another reason that this summer holiday is different from all the others. Almost the entire time that I’ve been home, I’ve been working out on a ‘market garden’ farm. For the first month and a half, work was separated into three basic jobs: Pick onions, bag onions or cut garlic, and I’d do one of those from about 5:45AM until I finally crawled home sometime between 6 and 10 hours later. It wasn’t so bad, but I well and truly smelt like onions for days after I finished. Thankfully the onion thing is over for this year.

After that, I took 10 days off and went to Port Elliot, SA with my family. Port Elliot is a nice enough spot, a tiny little town on the southern coast of Australia, about 10km from Victor Harbor and an hour from Adelaide (SA capital). It has a nice little beach called Horseshoe Bay, but not being exposed to the open ocean, doesn’t have much in the way of waves. ‘Boomer’ beach just down the road delivers a little better, that’s all Port Elliot has to give, and when it rains, it doesn’t do that very well either. It was a nice break from work and home, but after a more than a week that tiny little house could get tense and maybe a little boring.

I got home last night and went straight back to work at 5:45 this morning, but this time I was onto picking and packing melons. Melons is much nicer, albeit heavier, job than onions and garlic, and most importantly comes with a much nicer melon-y scent.

While I was away, I managed to listen to basically every episode of the Rooster Teeth podcast, the Drunk Tank (I was a little behind on my podcast listening). Rooster Teeth are best known as the guys that made Red vs Blue, they’ve also got a great web-comic, some other fun videos (like the live action Rooster Teeth shorts) and a site dedicated to helping you get achievements and trophies on the Xbox 360 and PS3. The best way to describe the content of the drunk tank would have to be something along the lines of “A bunch of funny guys, talking about everything.” While they always talk a bit about games, throw in some stuff about movies, they talk about anything and everything and as long as you aren’t too sensitive about anything (or possibly “can be insensitive about everything”). I could go on and on about the drunk tank but the main reason I brought it up is the way it has found a way to make me enthusiastic about completely games again. I’ve always gone through a game and finished the story, generally on the hardest difficulty, but the achievements are generally something I won’t focus too hard on. The combination of the drunk tank, and the not-so-new feature on the Xbox that shows you how many of your games you have 100% completed has made me look back and start to see what I can do with those games that are close to the top.
I definitely can’t afford (financially) to try and get a high gamerscore at all, but for a little while at least, I’ll be working on completing a lot of the games I still own.

That lead on to me playing Geometry Wars 2 again. Geo Wars has got to be the most addictive game I’ve ever played…looking back, if I hadn’t played it for a couple of hours after work today, this would have been written long ago. Anyway, I’ve gone back to Geo Wars to get the last achievement I have left in it. Smile. This video shows what you have to do in it, and while they make it look fairly easy, it isn’t. I’ve spent a few hours just trying to get that, and got really close at one stage. Anyway, I’ve got a bit of a list to hit with that, might make it a separate post later.

Only another week of work to go before I start packing and preparing to go back to Wollongong for O-Week Leader training. Can’t wait to get back and welcome what is hopefully a cool bunch of newbies to Weerona and get back to civilisation and my friends. And the beach!