The Chambers

Of course these thoughts are mine and not those of my employers…

Surely, in this day and age we can have electronic voting! Swipe our licences, passports or some sort of ID to then use a touchscreen system and lodge our votes…. We could then be seeing results come in through the day and by 630pm or so the result could be known. It would also cut down on the high number of informal votes. There were hundreds of thousands of informal votes were lodged and technology could be used to stop this. On the other hand, we only vote every three years or so and maybe the investment in technology, which is likely to be usurped quickly mean this is not a wise investment…. I’d think we could make the investment in a sensible way and someone should be looking at this.

Congrats to the 20 year old from Brisbane, Wyatt Roy, who looks to be off to Canberra to represent his electorate. This is a wonderful thing and great to see youth coming into our parliamentary system. To those saying he’s too young, too bad to you! He’s been elected by his electorate and he’s off to Canberra! Think about this. If we can send 20 year olds off to Afghanistan to fight, they can be part of our parliamentary system.

The big winners out of the election are the Greens and good for them! They ran a good campaign and gave the folks of Australia an option other than the Coalition & Labour. Great to see them in the lower house and capturing a big share of the vote.

Where does all this leave the NBN?! I want my fast broadband dang it!

I no longer believe in this two party preferred system and in particular it worries me that a party who gets the share of vote the Greens got and yet they still only have 1 seat in the lower house. Obviously, the Australian people feel uncomfortable in either the coalition or the Labour party being our government and it’s so close that neither of them will have a majority of any kind. I dont know the answer to this, but I don’t see the current system represents the desires of the Australian people.

I thought I heard last night that we’ve got our first indigenous member of the House of Representatives. Is that true? I would have thought surely there had been an indigenous person elected previously.

Great to see Steven Fielding gone. Tootle-loo! Shame Conroy made it through…. Shame.

The Labour party must be ruing the decision to dump Rudd. They should be anyway! Instead of blaming him for leaks and the result, how’s about acknowledging that the dumping of him is one reason for the result. Good to see KRudd get back in.

Hopefully, whatever the outcome, our politicians can put aside all the BS and sort out this mess soon and they can get on with running the country.

Sun going down on a beautiful Whitsundays day

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 25th June, 2009
Photo Location: Hamilton Island, Queensland

This photo was taken at qualia, on Hamilton Island.

I love this shot because it captures a wonderful moment and a beautiful scene. The gum, with the sun setting in the background, with the waters of the Whitsundays behind it and the plunge pool in the foreground.

And soon enough we’ll be back there

Royal Links Golf Club

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 1st January, 2010
Photo Location: 8th hole, Royal Links Golf Club, Las Vegas

This photo was taken on the par 3 8th hole at the Royal Links Golf Club.

This course is modeled on many famous holes from golf courses in the United Kingdom which have hosted the British Open. The course is pretty cool and I had a very good round to boot.

http://www.royallinksgolfclub.com for the courses official site. I did not get to use the services of the “Par Mates”, maybe next time.

In-room breakfast – what a view!

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 27th December 2009
Photo Location: Palazzo, Las Vegas

From our room in the Palazzo we could see out towards the Mountains in the distance and had a view of the Mirage, Treasure Island (including the Pirate ships in the front of the Treasure Island) and the Fashion Mall.

On the 27th we had in-room dining for breakfast and took in the view. A cracking big breakfast with a beautiful view of the Strip.

The Long Road

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 13th September 2009
Photo Location: Outback Northern Territory somewhere…

In September 2009 I went to Darwin & then toured out to Arnhem Land. This photo, with the road stretching off into the distance and seemingly never, never ending was taken somewhere on that tour…

California Pizza Kitchen

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 30th October 2007
Photo Location: Beverly Centre, Los Angeles, California

In 2007 we holidayed in the USA, staying in Los Angeles around Halloween.

This photo was taken at the California Pizza Kitchen, at the Beverly Centre. According to their site, the California Pizza Kitchen (http://www.cpk.com) serves “Authentic California-style cuisine at all CPK locations. Try our innovative pizzas, distinctive pastas, salads, soups, appetizers and desserts.” According to me, they serve good, inexpensive food.

I’m not sure what was happening in this photo, but it looks like Jackson was getting a smack, which he certainly would not have been.

on yer bike

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 21st January, 2010
Photo Location: Telluride, Colorado

This photo was taken on the last night of our stay in Telluride in 2009 / 2010. The snow had started dumping down during the night before and was heavy throughout the day, resulting in a couple of feet of snow falling over the 48 hour period.

These bikes were caught in the middle of the dumping, parked in a bike rack in the centre of the town of Telluride.

Too nice to eat!

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo Taken: 26th December 2009
Photo Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Funny photo. This was taken at one of my favourite restaurants, “The Cheesecake Factory” at the Forum Shops in Las Vegas. This restaurant has “good” food and “great” cheesecakes, like every restaurant in the US, the serve sizes are massive!

Kylie and Jackson are pictured with some type of chocolate cheesecake. Sadly, I must report that after having eaten their “entrees” (mains in ‘ztraylian”) the two of them were only able to eat but a few bites, after posing with silly looks and threatening to eat the whole piece.

IMGP4995

Originally uploaded by ckjchambers

Photo taken: 26th June, 2009
Photo location: Hamilton Island, Queensland, Australia

This photo was taken just outside the “Jurassic Park” like entry gates to qualia, on Hamilton Island.

I like this photo for a couple of reasons.

The photo was taken while Kylie and I were at qualia celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary. We had such a great time there and would love to get back there again one day. The resort is amazing and we felt spoilt to be able to stay there; the food is great, the accommodation superb and the service outstanding.

Hamilton Island was also a major part of my professional life during 2009. The “Best Job in the World” campaign was such an amazing experience and will always trigger a wonderful range of emotions.

http://www.qualia.com.au for more information on the qualia resort

Hooray, finally the big day was here… After ages counting down to it, there were no more sleeps! Jackson was very excited to have had Santa come visit & Kylie and I were excited that we were on holidays!

The plan for the day was to travel from Brisbane to Los Angeles (depart 12pm) and then have a short stop in Los Angeles before flying to Las Vegas. Once in Las Vegas we’d transfer to the hotel and kick off the holidays. I’m glad to report things went pretty much to plan…..

Best change of the day was the upgrade V Australia (web www.vaustralia.com twitter @vaustralia) gave us for the flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles. We were booked in Premium Economy, but to get upgraded to Business Class was aewsome. The seats lay all the way down to beds….. freaking awesome!

This is the view of the roof, when you’ve got the bed kicked right out and you’re stretched out… ah, nice! (Is that the Southern Cross?)

Our transfer through Los Angeles was fairly uneventful, the flight was delayed about an hour and we ended up sitting around in LAX for about 4 hours…. seriously, could they make that airport any more boring? People were pretty stressed about being at the airport, one lady who was in front of us was evidently going to miss her flight home on Christmas Day and was pretty upset. The whole check-in, then clear security thing in the states is pretty stressful, you have to unpack electronics from your carry-on, undress yourself (of belts, shoes, jackets, hats and anything else metallic), clear security and then grap all your crap on the secured side and get out of the way of everyone going through security as quickly as possible… Even with all the security you hear stories about Nigerians trying to blow up planes on the day you’re travelling… -> link to the story. The TSA do a great job, I’m sure but it’s still disconcerting to see those type of stories.

Probably the most interesting stat / piece of info about our stay in Los Angeles was that we had to line up for nearly as long to clear security as our flight was from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Seriously….. this photo doesnt do it justice, but the line up to clear security goes for a long way outside the terminal. This isnt the line to check in, this is the line AFTER checking in, to clear security…

So, we’re now in Las Vegas and we’re staying at the Palazzo (www.palazzolasvegas.com & @PALAZZOLASVEGAS. This is a very nice hotel, good choice – thanks tripadvisor! We stay here until the 30th of December and then switch over to the Signature MGM. We arrived at the hotel but our room wasnt quite ready when we arrived, but we were told we had a great room with a great view of the strip, up nice and high (41st floor) and was just what we’d requested. So, we said we’d wait and went for a bit of a walk and had lunch. Around 3pm we checked back at reception if our room was ready and we’d been swapped to a different room on a lower floor, but after some “discussion” we were moved up to a great room on the 31st floor… It’s great!

We didnt do too much after lunch and checking in….. unpacked and rested. Fell asleep pretty early, though I woke up after a couple of hours sleep thinking it was morning, so have uploaded some piccies and types up this quick update. It’s now approaching 1am on the 26th, so I am going back to bed now & that ends the 29 hour Christmas day, which included travelling nearly 12,000 kilometre’s, a lot of time spent in planes / airports and two christmas breakfasts & lunches….

This slideshow http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157622946959017/show/ has a few pics in it:

over n out…