Groovy, Baby!

Today I was rescued from a terrifying earthquake by Superman. I also saved Gotham city, got locked in the evil Lord Farquaards torture chamber, high-fived with Tweetie bird, Batman and Shrek, watched a parade MC’d by Austin Powers and ate a dubious tuna salad that came in a ‘cob’ which is a bowl made of bread. Movie World! – a place where it's best to remember that, although it's tempting to go crazy buying fluffy toys, they do take up a lot of room in the suitcase!

In the spirit of ‘getting right into it’ we started with the 100kph ‘Superman Escape’, only later figuring out that this rollercoaster is the highest rated ride in the park. That is, it has the most potential to make you throw up and /or vow to never do that again. Check out the first turn.
Luckily I have a cast-iron stomach, but one of us, whom shall remain anonymous, actually lost her breakfast. Also luckily, that happened about 15 minutes after the ride was finished. The only ride that made me feel ‘green’ was the Batman Adventure, which puts you in a flight simulator, weaving through Gotham city chasing the joker and the evil Mr Freeze. It’s very realistic and fortunately we saved the day, blasted the evil Mr Freeze into the afterlife and then Batgirl safely crash-landed our craft and we stumbled out into the daylight feeling victorious and a little bit queasy. Also worth the outrageous entry fee is the Shrek 4-d experience. It’s a 3-d movie with added ‘seat effects’ like movement and strong puffs of air which are creatively directed to simulate, for example, spiders running around your ankles. Coool!

After the rollercoaster, my vision blurred for about 30 seconds and I was worried about what all those G’s (3 negative, 1 positive G) had done to my Lasik, or more specifically, my corneal flaps which I am endlessly paranoid about. After a few blinks and some drops it came right, but I was concerned enough to avoid the Batwing ride, which is a ‘Tower of Death’ type ride, straight up and straight down, 4 G’s. Later I remembered that NASA astronauts have the same type of Lasik that I had, so a theme park ride is surely ok, but I seem to recall something about taking it easy for three months at least. I’ll ask about that at the next check-up. I’m sure Dr Kent will give me that ‘I’m trying not to laugh’ look again when I ask him about such age inappropriate activities as riding the Lethal Weapon - upside down, 85kmh, 4G’s. I'm such a kid. I will post more Movie World pics tomorrow.

This is the middle of winter??!?

Three days ago, leaving the house involved twenty minutes of mental preparation, thirteen layers of protective clothing and a jug of hot water just in case my car had become an opaque-windowed igloo. A three hour plane flight later, I’m officially still in the same hemisphere and in the same season, but in Surfers Paradise it’s more a case of figuring out how many layers of clothing I can remove while holding on to a shred of decency. From what I’ve seen, the locals live in swimsuits or wetsuits and maintain a year-round tan and hard physique. I really should have bought some fake tan. I had no idea how hot it would be here at this time of year and the thought of exposing too much of my pale, winter self just doesn’t appeal. I might scare children. Actually I did already scare some 'children', when I got out of bed half naked and didn’t quite think about the fact that our bedroom French doors overlook the swimming pool. Of course, the pool would have to be full of teenage boys. I think I heard sounds of screaming, or it might have been ‘woo hooooo!’. It’s hard to be sure.

On the other side the apartment opens right onto the beach, which seems to maintain a constant population of surfer dudes. Today there were also two whales playing not far out from shore. I was relaxing in the sand but after the 10th passer-by asked me if I’d seen the whales, I got up and had a look. I think I saw a tail.

Getting some exercise is not a problem. All day we are low-intensity, long duration exercising, although I think I’m the only one that realises it. Everyone else just thinks we are shopping and sight-seeing. I’ve been bleating on about my eating over in the Fatloss laboratory for those of you that are interested what I eat. It’s going better than expected, although eating out twice a day is an interesting challenge. I’m aiming for healthy maintenance or a small amount of fatloss while I’m on holiday and to be relaxed and ready to get back to some fat-blasting the minute I land back in NZ.

The jetset

Woohoo, a holiday! I'm heading off to Surfers Paradise for a week and fly out at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning.... I mean really early, earlier than the regular stupid o'clock, which involves gettin gup at 5am. Tomorrow I'll have to be up at 3.30am. I'm hoping to just stay on auto-pilot, not really awake, until I get back into the airplane and go back to sleep, hopefully just snoozing right through the breakfast which usually resembles a ham and cheese bun, but is actually made of plastic.

I'll update as I can.