Hoke’s Ramblings

I am no longer Mr Hockaday. I am now Mr and Mrs Hockaday. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s starting to sink in.

Since I’m lying in bed on a Sunday morning eating freshly baked muffins and enjoying a fabulous cup of coffee brought to me by my darling wife, it seems an excellent time to talk about the joys of marriage. How long the muffins and coffee will last, however, only time will tell.

This past Sunday, Lina and I were married in a lovely garden wedding ceremony, where just about everything went as planned, and the things that didn’t, well, what does it matter anyway? It was just the way we wanted it, and the reception went off fairly smoothly too, thanks to my Best Man/Wedding Singer/M.C. Justin. Thanks for making our stresses yours for the day!

And after a wonderful day, we had a wonderful week at sea on the Rhapsody, cruising up to Bazaruto. It was a perfect honeymoon, because it packed into one week all the permutations of better/worse, sickenss/health and richer/poorer…

We each had our days of sea-sickness (I’ve realised being of naval blood does not exempt you from this - all hail the Sturgeron!), where we had to look after each other, and then after getting pretty lucky on the roulette tables, Lina squandered my winnings at Blackjack, so the whole wedding vows got wrapped up into a five day cruise.

Besides the nasty gurgly feeling in my tummy on Tuesday, it was a really awesome trip. The on-board entertainment was superb, and the weather at Bazaruto couldn’t have been better (my dad only told me when we got back that the trip there last month suffered a hurricane!!)

Thanks to my dad’s professional acquaintance with the captain, we scored our choice of wine at dinner on the house, together with champagne and a fruit basket in our cabin. Then on Friday morning my dad worked an extra shift to bring home the Rhapsody, where we got front-row seats on the bridge. Our thanks to my (our) dad and Captain Siviero for a wonderful trip!

Some wedding pics here and some honeymoon pics can be viewed here. I didn’t upload every single sunrise/sunset shot though.

Okay, so I get an email over the weekend from my good mate Peter in Taiwan saying there’s not enough on my blog about what’s actually going on with me.

That’s mostly because my life is mundane and boring, but also because I’m a really lazy blogger. This weekend however, was anything but mundane and boring.

Seeing as I was to be married in less than 8 days, the lads decided to ‘treat’ me to a guys day/night out. This involved dragging me to a paintball range, throwing me into a bright yellow jumpsuit and having me run up and down the range unarmed, with open season declared on the human banana.

It’s quite remarkable how when the target is unarmed and highly visible how everyone armed with a projectile launcher with questionable accuracy siddenly becomes an instant marksman. For every ‘pffft’ I hear from the 8 guns on the range, I felt a blinding pain in my ribs, neck, back, front and other places until I got back to beginning and hit the deck.

Okay, there was more to it than that. They also sent me into the range with some ammo this time, and had a round robin two-at-a-time tag-team continually assault me until I basically couldn’t stand any longer. I did at one stage get both enemies at once though, which made me think I was invincible, but the next two promptly vinced me good and proper.

After an afternoon of physical pain and suffering I was taken pub-crawling for the psychological pain and suffering. I was given a white tee-shirt to wear, with a list of tasks written on it that I had to perform before the end of the evening. These were mostly questionable at best, but that’s all I have to say about that.

But besides all this, I know I still want to marry Lina, which I suppose is the whole point of the exercise anyway, so I guess I passed with flying colours

We won’t talk about Sunday morning, because I didn’t witness much of it, but in the afternoon I did witness the most amazing game of cricket ever played. If I could only go back in time and place all my lifesavings on SA beating Australia after they posted 430-odd I’d be a very, very rich man.

Straight after our stunning 1-wicket/1-ball victory a bunch of us hopped in the car to go and see some guy named Bryan Adams sing at the Dome. While I’m no huge fan, I suspected it would be a good show, and I was not disappointed. The guy sprays a lot, has turn-ups in his jeans, yet he still somehow manages to ooze coolness from every pore.

I guess after a crazy weekend like this, I can only follow it with another crazy weekend doing something like getting married, so what the heck - 6 days to go!!

Hmm, seems I was a bit hasty in updating my blog software, as there's a bug with the comments.

Until further notice, y'all will have to keep your flaming and ranting to yourselves.

- Management

[EDIT] Bizarreness - It works if you add in a smiley, so think happy thoughts, everyone!

[EDIT2] No it doesn't. My first comment was a freak fluke

[EDIT3] Everything should be working again. And now you can use emoticons!! Yay!!!

Ok, since other people (people 1 and people 2) have already posted such rave reviews, I'm just going to mention a ghastly thing that may or may not have been so ghastly for other people.

Casting Pete Postlethwaite as the Keeper. I mean, come on. It's like when Dame Judi Dench played opposite Diesel in that Riddick flick.