The last couple of weeks has been pretty hectic. Three weeks ago we actually planned to go to Fiji. But since I got in on a free Silverlight Designer Developer hands on course called AiR (artists in residence) we skipped Fiji.

The last couple of weeks has been pretty hectic. Three weeks ago we actually planned to go to Fiji. But since I got in on a free Silverlight Designer Developer hands on course called AiR (artists in residence) we skipped Fiji. So I spent the week at the Microsoft office doing Silverlight stuff with my team mate Kamil from MyCareer together with 6 other developer/designer pairs from different companies. Jordan Knight from Readyfi did an excellent job on the hands on labs the first couple of days. The last 2.5 days were spent developing a working product using the stuff we had learned. Each pair came up with complete different ideas, and most of the ideas ended up being pretty good.
 
If you want to see more of each idea, visit http://soulsolutions.com.au/Blog/tabid/73/EntryId/537/Artists-in-Residence-Melbourne.aspx website where Bronwen wrote a thorough blog post with lots of photos.
 
During that week Jonas had spent some time researching and booking another trip. Since this was our last chance to travel in Australia. We ended up with a travel plan looking like this; Byron Bay sat-wed, Sydney wed-fri, Canberra fri-mon. The Canberra trip was planned a while ago with Gianni, but Byron and Sydney we kinda did on the fly. So Saturday morning we hopped on the plane to Byron Bay and by 13:30 we were in the waters around Julian Rocks diving. None of us had heard that Byron Bay had such good diving, and we ended up doing six dives all together with Sundive. Sundive was pretty much right outside our hostel door, and the guys and girls working there were just awesome. They showed us all the cool stuff around Julian Rocks, even though we would have been as happy just watching all the wobbygong sharks that was all over the place. We got to see lots of new stuff, and our guide on most of the dives told us lots of interesting stuff about the life around Julian rocks. We got up pretty early every morning an did our dives and was usually done before 13:00 o'clock, so we had lots of time to do other stuff. We rented a surfboard and some wet suits, and hung around on the beautiful Bayron Bay beach, which by the way makes a very funny noise when you walk in the sand. We went for a walk up to the light house and got a good view.
 
On Wednesday we went to Sydney, and stayed for two days at Adam Cogan's place. We finally got to see Sydney opera house and the harbor bridge. The weather was not too good so we didn't do too much those two days. We had dinner with Michael Kordhai and his family on Thursday. All the girls (both Michaels and Adams) are just gorgeous.
 
Friday we flew down to Canberra to meet up with Gianni. His brother lives in Canberra with his family. We visited most of what was to see in Canberra indoors, because the weather was not great. Questacon, The war museum, the mint (the place where they make coins), the embassy tour and the bell tower by the lake. We had a great time, and I even got to go for a ride in Gianni's brothers Mercedes, which is a 170s 1953 model. Such a beautiful car.
 
Monday morning we headed down to Melbourne. It was a good ride with lots of good Australian nature, although there was a lot of roadwork going on.

The last two days was spent with friends and to pack the bags once again. Back in Norway we spent a couple of days in Oslo. We had a big dinner with almost all of our closest friends from the Trondheim gang. It was great to see everybody again. I flew up to Alta the 21st to spend Christmas with my family. Jonas family is celebrating Christmas in Oslo with her sister.

Byron Bay:
 

Sydney:
 

Canberra: