CFA Urban Senior Championships 2011 - Bendigo: 11-13 Mar

This year as usual, I worked at the Firefighter's Urban Senior Championships over the Labour Day long weekend. But luckily this year my manager relieved me from Sunday evening and so I didn't have to work the full weekend.

I got Darling to come along because I wasn't comfortable driving the 2 hours plus alone since my colleagues had already gone up earlier or were going up later the next day. He didn't have to pay for accommodation as we were all getting our own private rooms regardless. And thanks to weichao and daisy again for the last minute notification to take care of Jasper.

I didn't take much photos this time as compared to the last couple of years. Every year is pretty much the same anyway, only in different places and the set up of the display stands are slightly different.

The Online Services & CFA Connect display stand where I was based at.	This year they had more display stands like the Radio Allocation & Accessibility stands.
Great student volunteers who came along to help clean up and pick up rubbish.	The teacher of the students group who volunteered to come clean up & recycle.

Here are some of the sports called the Coupling and Ladder Eights and Section Hose, Hydrant and Pumper.Congratulations to the Maryvale fire brigade for winning the 2011 State Urban Championships.

I think the highlights for us staff working that weekend was certainly the dinner and viewing of the Torchlight Ceremony at the Shamrock Hotel on Saturday night.

30 odd CFA people at the 2 course dinner that night. We took up most of the balcony area.	The view of the the famous and beautiful Bendigo Town Hall and clock at night.
Entrance to the Shamrock hotel upper levels of the restaurant and hotel.	We stopped by Beechworth Bakery on the way back as a colleage wanted to buy stuff.

This year for the first time of the Torchlight Procession, they had these really old and vintage firefighting vehicles heading the procession at the start. It was really a good experience for darling. He was commenting on all the competitors, how they weren't marching properly, their shirt weren't tuck in etc. It was real funny!

We also met a new colleague of mine called Catherine who had just started work at Community Safety dept. She was just lovely and chatty, a nice person to hang out with. We drove back Sunday arvo around 4pm and boy did we finally sleep well again that night.

CFA Urban Seniors Championship 2010 - Mildura: 5-8 March

The CFA had their "Firefighter's Olympics" AKA the CFA Championships in Mildura this year. And as part of the Online Services team, I'm always sent to be there to mend the Online Services booth in the Corporate Tents area. Our booth is there to promote the CFA member's website and the new forums and new sections and also to activate and assist members with their accounts.

Accomodation and meals were of course all provided as it was considered a working trip. We stayed at the Grand Hotel just next to Mildura Brewery. I'd say it was more fun than work and also a chance to visit a new place! Here are pics from over the 4 days.
Day 1: We arrived a day before the championships started and had time to wonder around. Dropped by the Ice-Creamary which of course sold ice-creams, finger food and sausages as well to grab lunch.
Day 1: Lucky to have been able to meet Tanya, one of my colleagues and tagged along with her dad and another colleague, the health and well-being officer and his wife to take a cruise down the murray river. Lovely breeze and relaxing trip.
Day 1: Crusie down murray river - pictures of other house boats all owned by people and some you can even rent them for the day or for a few nights! They are fully furnished.
Day 1: This is called the lock chamber. Because of the raised water levels on the other side, we had to enter this chamber and after it closes its doors, the chamber fills up with water to match the level on the other side before we continue on our journey.
The place which I slept in for the 3 nights. Wished I had brought tubby along haha.. Ample space to fit him as there was a double and single bed.
Day 2: Officially the first day of the championships and the first day we started "work". This is the Online Services and Public Affairs booth.
Day 2: Giving a member some assistance after activating his account. He was more interested in posing for a photo. lol.
Day 2: Inside the Online Services booth where one of our colleagues was so excited to spot Minister for Emergency Services, Bob Cameron standing nearby and so quickly shuffled us to take a photo with him.
One of the events of the championships: hose cart reeling and then fixing the pipes / couplings to the water pipe and the first to spray the target in the fastest time wins.
Every year, they will have the torchlight procession where firefighters march in the streets holding torchlights and their marching is also marked and counted towards their brigade scores.

Day 2 night: Just chilling with colleagues at the Mildura Brewery Bar. With Heather and Andria.
Sacred Heart Parish in Mildura. No matter where I am, and as long as it's a weekend, I have to find a church and go attend mass. :D
Day 3: Another hose and coupling event. This time they have to pull the hoses from the truck, fix them to the water pipes and activate them from the fire truck and which team has the fastest time in assembling all that and spraying the target wins.
Here you go, the target that they spray on. I got water on me a few times cause I was standing too near.. LOL..
And finally after a 3-day "olympics marathon" the brigade who won the most points out of all the events and won was Dandenong Brigade. This is their trophy presentation.

After a tiring but fun 4 days, we caught a (propeller plane yet again!) back to melbourne where I took the next day off just to sleep in and rest! :P Man I love my job sometimes esp. when it involves going away from the usual office mundane-ness!

Bit and pieces of the remaining whole of April...

Haven't been updating again this month, oh well, I guess it sorta gets to this when the time passes so fast and there's holidays and stuff and there was nothing really super exciting to rant about. In short, I bought myself the new Nintendo DSi. It was actually a trade-in of my old chipped pink Nintendo DS Lite. A pretty good deal actually, I only had to pay extra $150 more to get it and it came with a free 2GB SD Card. And of course for the moment the new gadget doesn't support the R4 Revolution, so it's back to buying games legitimately. :p

Especially love the new Photo-taking feature, you can distort faces, put new frames, draw graffitti on your photos and much more! It's much like what the neo print machines can do, except you can take as many photos as you want here and its free! :D Of course don't expect too much about the photo quality. I also like the idea of downloading games to play from the DSi store, they are not too costly at all

Then we went bowling with Daniel and Serene on Easter Sunday. CFA was given free passes to play 2 games on either of the weekends. And we opted for Sunday so that serene was off and can come with us too.

Daniel and Serene - Mr. and Miss Singapore. Heeheehee... :p

Bro, the poser during his move...

Tubby and moi...

Then just a couple of weeks ago, we also went to the Sandown Toy Collectors Fair. Boy people quere queueing up like way early in the morning lah! We were late but we cut queue seeing Stuart and his wife and kids. :p

Lining up to buy tickets and be the first to check out the goodies!

A snapshot of how one part of the interior looked like. They had stores outside too.

The boys digging for goodies and seeing what they can find for a good price. Man they have good bargaining skills!

Group shot of part of the ozformers melbourne group!

Well and the rest of the time is being busy with Tennis and going to the gym. The BRTA District comps on Saturdays have also started. Oh and we also watched Xmen Origins: Woverine. Boy is Taylor Kistch (Gambit) super hot lar! Anyway am super-duper looking forward to this weekend because we are going to watch Cirque Du Soleil - Dralion this Saturday!!! Will update with photos another time! Oh oh oh and Len and Joewiz are coming to Melbourne for a visit and we're all going to Gold Coast together! Oh man! May is such an exciting month! :D

2009 CFA Urban Championships in Warrnambool

Boy am I still exhausted from the trip! It was a 4 hour plus drive each way and I had to drive on the way back as Katie - my colleague had to drive a Nissan Petrol small fire jeep (or I don't know what you call it) back. Anyway if you don't understand what the title says, basically it's known as the Fireman's Olympics. So all the sports events include something to do with firefighting. I was there for 4 days and 3 nights as we had to set up a booth to promote our website services to the volunteer firefighters. Anyway I'll let the photos do most of the talking:

I stayed in Lady Bay Apartment, it was just next to the beach. My colleague got the hotel room instead and had a nice high level view of the lake. I had a ground floor apartment but I wasn't complaining since I had a kitchen, large living room and even laundry facilities where I can do my washing everyday. The swimming pool was just a few metres walk (and I managed a quick dip on the 3rd day!) and the food we had every night was just "too extravagantly much"! :p Behind me is Breakwater pier (the small line of brown u can see) built in the 1890s.

Didn't have time for much sight-seeing as it was mostly a working trip, so I took photos whenever I can. Top left is Lake Petrobe which I could see from my colleague's room. Then there's Flagstaff Hill, which was built like a historical village where one can walk through and find out about the town's history and the Visitor Information centre was also there. The flags were outside the Warrnambool city centre where the art gallery was. And bottom right: Snaps of St. Joseph's catholic church. My colleague was nice enough to give me an hour off to go for Sunday mass.

A Corporate tent was pitched at the side of the oval football field and inside were all the different booths like Merchandize, Junior Volunteers Sign Up, Online Services (us) etc... It was freezing cold in the mornings and usually cloudy. But luckily the sun would come out later in the afternoon. Meet Captain Koala, the funny looking figure in the yellow suit, next to the kiddie fire truck. He's the CFA Mascot for kid's events. Bottom left is a pic of me and my colleagues Katie (left) and Dawn (centre). Katie works with me while Dawn works in the Community Safety dept.

Like most sports events, there's some sort of official opening and at the championships, it was a marching of all the firefighters in their corporate attire. Premier John Brumby was the special guest for the occasion and a 1 minute silence was observed for the victims of the recent bushfire that happened. Check out the new fire truck on the top, it's huge! It took some effort to be able to climb up. There were a few different types of fire trucks displayed behind our tent and Katie took me around to explore them.

The sports events include hose connecting, running up the ladder, fire truck hose connecting and hose connecting with the traditional wheel or something (I don't know what you call it!) But in earlier days, hoses were coiled on those wheels instead of in the fire truck. Then on Saturday night, there was also the Torchlight event where all the firefighters parade in the town centre of Warrnambool carrying kerosene torches as they march through. The whole town of 2000 people gathered to watch.

Apart from work, I also had a bit of "play" and getting a bit pissed on one night. Like all company events like these where you go away, there's always a bit of flirting where everyone did with everyone! But that's a different story for a different day. :p Tata for now... And don't let your mind wonder too much as nothing major happened!

Full album on Facebook which you can see by clicking here.