Monthly Archives: April 2008

John Chow & The Dot Com Lifestyle

Internet, Videos

I’ve been reading the blog of John Chow since the beginning. Over that time, John has written in depth about making money online and he has the proof; taking his blog from $350/month to over $31,000/month 15 months later.

While all of the information that John has presented has been amazing, especially watching him diversify his income stream and the different advertising/marketing gimmicks – he recently posted a video which I think sums up what it is all about, better than anything he has written since his blog started:

John says it isn’t about the money and I absolutely agree. If I manage to become a dot com mogal, it wouldn’t be about the money really – it would be about the lifestyle that it affords myself and my family.

I can think of nothing better than not having to worry about going to work, being able to take a holiday at my leisure and not at my employers, spending more time with my family/friends; our own home and the Ferrari in the garage would just be an added bonus.

Remembering 8 Seconds Of Titanic Proportion

Family, General, Sport

Remembering

April 25 is ANZAC Day in Australia and its a time to remember the Australian & New Zealand armed forces who fought to provide the citizens of our great counties the freedom we enjoy every day. Last week when Claire and I talked about it, we wanted to attend the dawn service at Currumbin but that didn’t pan out this year for health reasons. Even without our contribution to any of the dawn services, the Gold Coast saw record attendances right across the coast, which I personally think is excellent. Hopefully we can make it to next years dawn service at Currumbin.

8 Seconds

This weekend we ventured out to Somerset Dam, near Kilcoy for my oldest brothers’ 40th birthday bash. It was a great day and we were blessed by absolutely beautiful weather. Cameron & Phil brought their new jet ski’s with them which was a blast. The 8 seconds I’m referring to was what it felt like when I very very nearly got bucked off the back of the jet ski as it bit in hard during a fast, tight turn.

Titanic

Sunday afternoon I attended the Gold Coast Titans versus New Zealand Warrior’s NRL match at the new Skilled Stadium at Robina on the Gold Coast. I was accompanied by a couple of work colleagues, other halves & two consultants from Germany.

It was going to be a true test about the mixed reports regarding the accessibility of the stadium, as there are no facilities to park a car should you want to drive. Instead, you are encouraged to take advantage of the free public transport to and from the game.

Brendan, Lin & I left the Helensvale Train Station at about 1.30PM and were able to get a seat on no problem, arriving about 15 minutes later. It’s a short walk of about 10 minutes amongst other fans from the Robina Train Station to Skilled Stadium. Heading home took a little bit longer, as we had to wait in line for the next train but we would have only waited 10-15 minutes and we were sitting in an air conditioned train again. As far as I’m concerned, the public transport aspect of getting in and out of Skilled Stadium is fine – especially considering that if you have a game ticket you can ride for free!

More importantly though, the Titans got up over the Warriors 36-24; look out grand final – here we come!

Phantom Of The Opera

Life, Music

This evening I was fortunate enough to see the world acclaimed Phantom Of The Opera at the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane.

I say fortunate, as I some how managed to receive a ticket on the back of a birthday present for Claire from her parents this month. It was pretty awesome actually, as Lucy and Michael wanted to go and see it another time so there were four excellent seats beside one another. Claire and Lucy had seen Phantom Of The Opera three times prior, Michael had seen it once before recently, while this was my first experience.

I don’t know how to describe it accurately enough to do it justice, other than to say that the detail in the set was incredible, the costumes are great and Anthony Warlow has a truly magnificent voice. The female lead for Christine was played by Ana Marina, who I thought had an excellent voice. There is a schene toward the start of the first act, where The Phantom is yelling at Christine to sing for him; it gave me goose bumps!

The show is only on until the 27th April 2008 in Brisbane, so if you can still get tickets to it – I would highly recommend it.

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

Books

While at the Garden City Shopping Centre in Brisbane today, I ventured into a Borders book store and it was a treat.

The first thing that I noticed when I walked into the store was that it was big, much bigger than most of the other book stores I’ve been in. As it turns out, the further I walked into the store – the more of the store became visible and it was much larger than I had initially thought. Next up the store was very clean, wasn’t cramped within the isles and was well organised. Did I mention that they had a coffee shop inside the book store; I had to indulge.

After getting a large, double shot espresso I promptly found my way into the computer section. While it wasn’t the euphoric event that is the technical book store in the Brisbane CBD, there were a hell of a lot of technical books in the section and they were quality books – not the standard ‘learn x in y days’ crap that most book stores stock.

I felt I showed great restraint not to pick up at least one of the following for some light reading: