This past weekend Elysia and I took a trip down to the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls, about 2 hours out of Toronto.

Just thought I’d share some of the photo’s with y’all here because there were some breathtaking sites to be seen!

The falls themselves were other worldly… 150 million liters of water flowing over them per MINUTE…

We also heard about a little kid who accidentally got washed over them AND LIVED!

There was also, of course, plenty of token tourist activity, the highlight of which for me was a FUDGE FACTORY with the most ridiculous sweets you can imagine (I’m a massive sugar fiend)

And on the last day, I even managed to find a place that offered something I’d been itching to do for quite a while… Indoor Skydiving!!

This is me FLYING in a wind tunnel…

Amazingly, we got done pretty much everything we’d wanted to do and still had time to hit the all important Hilton Casino!

Other interesting revelations from the trip included:

1. Niagara Honey Brown Beer is freaking AWESOME. I’m not a big beer drinker but I could drink that stuff all night.

2. Being a sugar fiend, the highly anticipated IHOP visit that I’d been looking forward to was a pretty serious let down. Only like 4 pancakes to choose from, none of which are even THAT fancy… why is it THE house of pancakes??

3. Since we’re on food… I tried for the first time these little tiny chunks of ice cream in a cup called Mini Melts which are also MEGA nice.

4. There are only so many “haunted houses” you can put on one single street.

5. American tourists are forever entertaining… and by entertaining I mean to laugh AT… not WITH

And more…

The whole Niagara region is fascinating for a bunch of reasons and I highly recommend if you’re ever in the area, you check it out!

Tuesday saw my highly contested return from New York City, NY.

After a whirlwind 5 days in the big apple neither Elysia or I wanted to leave… ever.

The city sung and danced for us through night and day, an atmosphere of high energy that never ends.

In our newly developed “professional tourist” style, we took in bits and pieces of nearly every part of the isle of Manhattan, from Harlem to Downtown, none of which were to disappoint.

Managing to cram Central Park, Times Square, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Washington Square, Rockefeller Center, The Met Museum, some cupcakes from the famous Magnolia Bakery, Groud Zero and the adjacent shopping complex Century 21 (thanks to Rachel Rofe!), to SoHo, Chinatown’s Canal St, East Village, Southstreet Seaport, a Broadway show, Wall Street, Battery Park, not to forget… some marketer meetups and other things that could be loosely classified as work… into 5 days was no easy task and required on one day we walk literally the breadth of the island from river to river West to East!

Really a memorable trip that should be on everyone’s “bucket list”.

So anyway, it’s back to hard work this week as there’s something BIG coming up… a new little something that’ll be the most serious launch I’ve ever done… that you’ll hear about in the coming week or so!

Until then.

So I realized today that I’ve been in 7 countries since the beginning of this year, WHILE running a business… somehow.

It was Monday morning and I was at the airport ready to come home from DC and Elysia gets this weird smirk on her face…

She asks me to check our tickets again, and upon doing so, I realize that we’re not going back to Montreal at all, but to… Cancun, Mexico!

It was supremely relaxing to get out of the cold and into the sun for 5 days.

We layed on the beach, rode Jetski’s through jungle mangroves, snorkelled, parasailed (which is #@$%ing scary btw!) and visited the eastern most tip of the country.

A few times through the trip we shook our heads thinking about how lucky we are to be living the “internet lifestyle”, and arrived back more passionate than ever about sharing this lifestyle with everyone else who desires it.

Here’s some photos:

So being in this part of the world, we couldn’t resist the urge to head off to another interesting location… and one that was a little warmer.

So we decided to spend a week in Italia…

Ancient ruins, dramatic sculptures, but no marketers… Here’s some snaps from the week:

The Colosseum…

Fontana Di Trevi…

Vatican City…

We even got as far south as the breathtaking Amalfi Coast and the famous town of Positano… (after a hire car and a trip through some italian city roads… NOT recommended!)

Positano…

An exciting adventure indeed.

Ok so enough of the adventures and back to work for a while.

Keep your eyes out for the coming posts so we can knuckle down and make some big things happen in 09!

So now that I’m back and blogging I thought I’d least do the courtesy of letting y’all know what I’d been doing instead of posting on my blog…

We thought on the way over to our new location, we may as well take the opportunity for a little holiday – it felt well over due after the stress of packing and organizing things for two months!

We visited some relatives in London and did all the tourist things while we were at it…

Like Buckingham Palace (not as cool as I thought…)

Piccadilly…

Leicester Square…

Hyde Park…

We even got out to the ever mysterious and icy cold Stonehenge!

Oh and I nearly forgot, we met up with these crazy dudea that some of you know…

That’s Matt Garret there on the left of Lazy Git Marketing and Blog Tactics fame, and his buddy Mike, another old hand and a wise marketer.

We drank the night away at a London pub while chatting all things marketing, SEO, blogging, and microwaves… (you’ll have to ask Mat about that ) I’ll be letting you know more about some of the things we talked about in the coming weeks.

All in all London was a blast – with the dreary weather and crowdedness I never thought I’d enjoy it but it turned out both those things were a farce. We had no rain the whole time and it wasn’t that crowded either.

Great way to start 09 – but only the beginning!

More adventures to come so stay tuned…

This one is for all the Malaysian marketers out there… And yes I happen to know that some of you will be reading this.

I’ll be traveling to your great country this month and we’re organizing a big marketers dinner to celebrate

Here are the details:

When: 30th May at 8:00pm

Where:

BORA ASMARA Restaurant
Lot 2933
Kg Sg Penchala
Kuala Lumpur

Who: There will be about 15 of us marketers attending some of whom even making the drive from Singapore for a great chance to relax with some like minded people and share some great ideas.

That’s about all – If you’re available just post here or email me

Really look forward to catching up with you all.

The last day of our trip I spent in a stopover in Taipei, Taiwan. An interesting experience indeed.

We hit up some street markets, saw the world’s tallest “building” (the definition being a structure that can exist if it’s FULL of people – or something like that, it was a weird definition) Taipei 101, and killed some time at the local chinese version of TGI Friday!

Here’s some pics from the day…

Taipei City…

My friend Josh with a massive burger at TGI Friday…

Taipei 101… 500 and something meters tall…

The view from the top…

Getting some love on the streets

Now it’s back to work and preparation for the launch of Firepow! There’ll be some good posts happening over the next couple of days so stay tuned to the blog!

 In stark contrast to the appeal of a panoramic mountain range scenery, was the blatantly materialistic allure of…

The world’s biggest shopping mall!

I’m a bit late posting these as it was actually about a week ago but I couldn’t resist showcasing the insanity of this place called West Edmonton Mall.

So imagine this…

A shopping center with…

It’s own indoor Ice Skating Rink…

It’s own water park…

It’s own indoor lake…

It’s own Theme Park, roller coasters and all…

It’s own Pirate Ship… that serves no real purpose other than to provide a closer view of the enormous lake…

2 of it’s own mini golf courses…

And the most fun we had that day…

An indoor shooting gallery!

That’s me kickin some alien butt – quite the experience indeed

And even this stuff isn’t all.

This place has two hotels (both of which we tried to stay at but were TOTALLY booked for a week past the date we called), a Segway track (you know those upright, scooter kinda things?) and of course a bunch of cinemas, gaming centres and the usual mall stuff.

We spent two days at the place after realizing there really wasn’t alot else to do in Alberta’s capital and I will in no way say a second of time was wasted

I actually only have another two days to go here now before heading home! I must say I’m excited to be getting back to see the lovely Elysia and going into hardcore preparation for the Firepow launch!

Until next time.

On Wednesday (I think – I totally lose track of time when travelling) we spent the morning in Banff, Alberta, after taking a good car trip out there from Kelowna the night before.

We rode the Banff Sky Gondola about 800 metres into the air to a peak about 3000 metres above sea level in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

First, being scared of heights, the Gondola trip was a feat in itself. I got some amazing snapshots going up of the village down in the valley plus the spectacular mountain ranges surrounding…

That’s the view up the mountain from the bottom of the Gondola… a looooong way.

This one is a view from about half way up, down into the valley… Those snowy lakes are beautiful (something I’d never seen before.

And into the mountains… Although this was just a preview of what was to come…

Then we hit the summit where there was a little lookout area with a nice walk around to an even higher summit.

Here the views were just breathtaking… Surely the most wonderous images my eyes have taken in over the course of my short life..

Shots like this…

This…

And this…

Don’t even begin to do justice to the glory of what was to be seen from this point.

It was almost hard to summon a word or a thought when you were up there, because you know there are really no words that are appropriate, no thoughts whose comparison would be meaningful, just nothing. And not a sound could be heard up there. We were lucky enough to have a day of completely cloudless sky, and not even a whisp of mountain air could be felt on the skin! The way the mountains, in all their grandeur, sit there in perfect silence, in perfect stillness, is something you have to ‘feel’ to believe. It truly was an experience of a lifetime.

I’ll be posting more photos tomorrow of our adventures of a different nature

I’ve just completed my first week in Canada, woooooo!

A friend and I spent two nights in Vancouver before coming to Kelowna and the snow mountain Big White (run by Aussies – HAHA!) Come to mention it, it seems like half of Canada is Australian, it’s weird!

We’ve been snowboarding for the last 6 days now and I am WRECKED… not to mention bumped and bruised (you’ll see what I mean)…

Here’s some pics from the trip so far:

View of the mountains from the Ski Village

Big White village – very cool!

Me takin a rest – Boarding is HARD work!

Beautiful setting.

View from the window of our hotel room – great to wake up to!

And finally…

The result of a head first face plant into the snow at full speed:

I’ll be posting more photos soon!

Gosh holidays are great