Unlike the fleas, having worms is a good thing. In fact, it’s a great thing! Truth be told, I can’t think about worms without also thinking about Red Dwarf, when The Cat is trying to comfort Rimmer on the death of his father. “Sure, it’s bad news for him, but on the other hand – it’s party time for all the little worms!”.

*ahem*

Anyway – as previously mentioned, our anniversary gifts to each other this year was stuff for around the house, and to this effect, Kristy bought me a worm farm!

Wow, that’s a lot of little pets! I contemplated naming them all for the briefest of moments, however given how long it took for us to decide on “Oscar”, it’s probably for the best that they all just respond to “Little Wormy”.

And so, Little Wormy and his 999 best mates will from now on be helping us with composting. And helping us with composting will inevitably help us with our gardening. And helping us with gardening obviously leads into helping us growing food (mainly in the form of herbs); and that in turn leads to helping us with eating. And I like eating.

So far our Little Wormys seem to be enjoying their new home; now we just have to see if our garden will enjoy the benefits of their handywork!

This year, Kristy and I decided that since our anniversary (7 years!) is so close to both of our birthdays, we’d get each other a present for “around the house”. No, I don’t understand the logic there either, but I’m sure I was on to something when I came up with it.

So, come October 30th, and Kristy becomes the proud owner of a brand new toaster. Yes, I gave my wife a toaster for our anniversary. She loves bread! And, it’s not just any toaster, but a fancy pants, shiny silver one, which boasts such features as an “A Bit More” button (to add a bit more time to the toasting cycle), and “Lift ‘n’ Look” (to see how things are progressing without interrupting the toasting cycle). In fact, the “Lift ‘n’ Look” feature is so revolutionary that Breville listed it on the toaster’s Tech Specs page twice! Even Breville themselves stand behind this toaster so much that they included the word “hero” in the filename of the photo which I have shamelessly pilfered without permission for my own use here!

By now, it’s inevitable that you’re burning with desire to ask the obvious question: “How does this fancy pants new toaster perform?” Well, sadly, the answer is we still don’t know! See, I ordered it from Billy Guyatts, a self-claimed online electrical superstore. I wasn’t impressed with how long the toaster took to arrive; in fact, it was positively hopeless! Over a week! How much of this is the fault of Billy Guyatts versus Australia Post I don’t know, though I suspect that order status moving from “paid” to “dispatched” was somewhat short of instantaneous.

However, that’s not my main complaint; no, far from it. Unfortunately, someone in the Billy Guyatts warehouse was having a serious case of dyslexia when they were picking my order, because instead of sending us the BTA430, they sent us the lower model (and “A Bit More” button-free) BTA340! Yes, I appreciate that both models are made up from the same letters and numbers, but that does not mean they are the same toaster!

OK, so I’m human, and I can accept that people make mistakes, so I sent Billy Guyatts an enquiry asking how they were going to remedy the situation. Suffice to say, I was underwhelmed with their response:

Hi, we apologize, we will send you a post return label through email, you need to print this label off and stick it to the item.

Then take the item to your local post office. Once we receive the item back we will then send out the replacement.

My two main problems with this are:

1. The toaster that they mistakenly sent retails at around $30, which means they probably buy it for somewhere between $10 and $20. Postage is about $10.50 each way. Surely you’d write the toaster off and send out the correct product?
2. At the very least, I would have expected them to send out the correct toaster immediately, rather than waiting for me to return the incorrect one. Yes, I can see that that puts them “at risk” of me not returning the incorrect toaster – but see my previous point for my feelings on that particular matter.

I wrote them a reply to this effect, and thus far have not received another response. Neither have we received the correct toaster yet. We are underimpressed! And our bread is undercooked! Billy Guyatts, you’ve got some learning to do!

PS: Happy Anniversary, wife!

Today is our sixth wedding anniversary! I think we did pretty well to put up with each other for almost six years before we required the company of a baby to keep our lives interesting .

In eighteen years time, Oscar is going to look at this photo and say, “man, my parents were so cool, I just don’t know what happened to them!”. Either that or, “c’mon, I was going for the high five here, and you just left me hanging!”. Sorry Oscar.

Anyway, to celebrate our anniversary, we had breakfast at Brother Espresso with Jason and Susan. Luke, Sam and Cooper (owerns of the store) and Neal and Aimee (long time friend of Susan) also dropped in to say hello; Oscar, as usual, was the star of the show.

We’re also going out for dinner tonight at Embers at Milton, where we’ll hopefully be enjoying one of the best steaks of our lives! Kristy is especially looking forward to hers being cooked medium rare – a delicacy she had to forgo whilst pregnant. Now, if only we could have a bottle of red to go with it…. !

Happy anniversary baby.

More photos in the Anniversary Breakfast album on Picasaweb or Facebook.

We’ve had a very busy couple of days in Bangkok!

Kristy and I dedicated Monday to shopping! After a quick trip on the BTS, we arrived at one of Bangkok’s biggest shopping centres – MBK – which is basically 7 floors of markets. I have no idea how many actually stalls there are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it exceed 10,000. We managed to pick up some nice bargains, but our thirst wasn’t satisifed!

After a quick trip to the hotel to drop off our stuff (and grab some grub), we headed to Suan Lum Night Bazaar – another 3,700 markets. You name it, and they sell it! Bargaining at Suan Lum was much more effective, so we bought way more stuff than we had anticipated! The markets are set up around a central stadium type of thing, which serves as a giant food hall – it was like being at Octoberfest. They even had dancers and musicians to entertain the crowd!

Yesterday we decided to do something cultural, and planned a trip to the Grand Palace. Unfortunately a rain delay changed our plans slightly, so after lunch we headed to Wat Pho. A “Wat” is a buddhist compound (think temple), and Wat Pho is the oldest and largest in Bangkok. One of it’s features is “The Reclining Buddha” – a giant golden buddha monument. This thing is huge – 15m high and 46m long. If you melted that baby down you’d have enough gold to build a housing community.

Another feature of the Wat is the original Thai massage school. To get practice, the students offer massage at good rates – a 45 minute foot rub is about AUD$10 – so Kristy and I indulged. The massage caused Kristy to fall asleep, much to the amusement of her masseuse (and gerrod).

We finished the day with some more shopping at MBK. Last night we found the “mobile phone” section – about 6 or 7 rows of about 40 stalls, each selling mobile phones and accessories, and each crammed with people. I wanted to take a photo, but not only was my battery flat, but cameras are not permitted (enforced by MBK security).

Our adventure is coming to a close, but we’ve still got a couple more days to plan before we have to face reality again!

We’re starting to feel quite at home here on Koh Samui. But just when you think you’ve seen it all, this amazing country surprises you again.

For example, while walking down the beach at sunset, we noticed this pub with blaring music. All the customers were lying on the beach on triangular Thai cushions – how cruisy?!

Second surprising event: We went for a drink last night at the Happy Nights Bar (not as sleazy as it sounds) and while sipping our cocktails the waitress brought us… wait for it… a game of Connect Four! Sounds wierd, but it was soooo cool! Such a great way to kick back and relax. We both felt like we were about twelve years old again!

Finally, we trooped off to Armani Suits International to try on the Thai silk blouses they are custom making for me. Our new salesman friend Milan, invited us to have a drink with him. Since Gerrod has grown quite fond of the local Singha beer, we happily obliged.

While Gerrod was strumming away on Milan’s new acoustic guitar, Milan’s friend, a Nepalese trekking guide, hearing that we were from Australia, showed us his prowess on a digeridoo. The guy is good. Not only can he play like a pro, on a cardboard post-pak mind you, but he can do so while strumming a guitar.

You won’t find anecdotes like this in a Lonely Planet guide, but they’re memorable little pieces of our Thai adventure.

Kristy and I arrived at Tongsai Bay early yesterday morning, local time (Thailand is 3 hours behind Brisbane), both absolutely shattered from our travels. Though nothing was technically wrong with our flights, 12 hours of travelling with fairly limited sleep had taken it’s toll on us.

Tongsai Bay is absolutely breathtaking. Everywhere you turn is another photo waiting to be taken. Palm trees, 2 pools, a private beach, quaint villas, 3 restaurants, classy wooden architecture, and its very own Internet Café make this a real tropical paradise!

After an early lunch, we headed up for a 2 hour Thai massage, hopefully our first of many. The Thai massage technique has been described by some as “brutally enjoyable” – which is a pretty good description me thinks, as it hurts but feels good at the same time. We finished the day with our first sampling of the local cusine – a yellow curry, and penang king prawns. Both were rated 1 out of 3 on the chilli scale, and both nearly blew our heads off. The dishes were so hot that my ears started to clog up. Tonight we will go for the 0 out of 3 option!

Breakfast this morning was buffet style, but not like anywhere I had ever seen. Pretty much any breakfast food you could think of was available, along with cooks and counter staff to politely serve it. They even had a lady there making fresh fruit juice on demand!

Anyway, better sign off before Kristy finishes all the truffle cake! Unfortunately there is no USB connection available so I still can’t upload photos; hopefully I can from Central Samui.

Well boys and girls, it’s official. Kristy and I are now man and wife! I am writing this from Brisbane International airport, as we wait to board our flight to THAILAND! That’s right folks, the secret destination has been revealed. You saw it first on gerrod.com. Kristy was stoaked!

I would love to have put up a post about the wedding, with photos and all – but unfortunately time did not allow it. (Try loudah.com for those of you that just can’t wait). I promise to put one up when we return! But a big thank you to everyone who wished us well on our marriage – so far it’s off to a roaring start! (Note: for people who have digital photos for Jason, could you please contact him at luxurygoods@gmail.com to get his details).

Anyway, I’ll do my best to post from Thailand, but apparently internet access isn’t so flash over there. Also, for those of you that will be in Brisbane on the 21st of November, please keep 3pm – 6pm onwards free, for our going away party at The Normanby Hotel! Show a print-out of this page from gerrod.com for your special prize!

Hope to see you all soon!