My votes: Cat Empire, The - The Cat Empire Whitlams, The - Eternal Nightcap Living End, The - The Living End Temper Trap, The - Conditions Powderfinger - Vulture Street Living End, The - Modern Artillery Wolfmother - Wolfmother Eskimo Joe - A Song Is a City Gyroscope - Sound Shattering Sound Hilltop Hoods - The Calling Others: Gotye - Like Drawing Blood JET - Get Born Powderfinger - Odyssey Number Five Powderfinger - Dream Days at the Hotel Existence Pete Murray - Feeler Kisschasy - United Paper People Faker - Addicted Romantic Josh Pyke - Memories & Dust The Dissociatives - The Dissociatives John Butler Trio - Sunrise Over Sea The Grates - Gravity Won’t Get You High Gyroscope - Are You Involved?

After going on a 12 hour flight from Zurich to Hong Kong, a 5 hour layover and then another 9 hour flight to Brisbane… I was pretty buggered. As I couldn’t fly back to Rockhampton that afternoon I stayed the night with some of the Brisbane boys. Thanks to Anthony, Quentin, Jordan and Dom for letting me stay. Somehow I managed to stay awake until around 9.00 at night to try and get my body clock back in sync, at which point I basically passed out.

So the reason why I had so much trouble getting home was because of the floods. So here are some photos and links about it. This is why my flight was cancelled (it got higher than that): And NASA had some satellite images that show just how much water there was during and after: NASA source link here and here. With the airport underwater and the highway and railway closed to the south, it cut down my transport options, but it wasn’t completely isolated like the media said.

Well I figured that I should probably finish off the tale of my trip to Switzerland, for the sake of completeness, even though it is now ages ago and nobody will probably read this. New Years Eve was a great night, and we had an amazing Raclette dinner at the flat. After dinner we caught the train into Zürich to see the fireworks, but even before that there was some as the people in the flat next door were letting some small ones off.

Yesterday I went to Alpamare with some people staying at our flat for New Year (family of Nelly). It is basically like Wet-n-Wild except mostly indoor, which is good considering there was snow in the outdoor parts. The slides were incredible fun, I enjoyed it much more than Wet-n-Wild. One slide called the Thriller was completely pitch-black for the whole way which was kind of scary the first time as the turns and drops came out of nowhere.

The other day I tried to make a snowman but the snow was glorious powder and didn’t want to stick together. Today it was (according to the Internet) 1°C and the snow was starting to melt a little bit. Now that it was a bit melted I used the last chance I had before it melts away completely to attempt to make one before I go home. Making a snowman is HARD WORK.

Today I went to see the Abbey library of St. Gallen. You aren’t allowed to take photos so you will have to follow that link to see what it looks like, I didn’t take any of my own. The photo shown is essentially the whole library, it is tiny and is much smaller than it looks in the photo. Despite being much smaller than I was expecting, it looked incredible. They have different books open at any one time on the display tables depending on the theme, which was music this year.

Having looked at people’s votes coming in for the Hottest 100, it is really clear to me that I have been away a long time. While I know most of the bands, I have never heard of a lot of the songs people are voting for. Rachael has impressed me this year by voting and has picked some good songs that I had not heard of before. Before we started going out she didn’t even listen to triple J and now she is more up with the music then me.

Christmas in Switzerland did not feel like Christmas at all to me. That is not to say it wasn’t a great day - just that I didn’t do anything particularly Christmas-y. Or more specifically without having a meal with the rellies it doesn’t feel like a real Christmas. But I did have an interesting day. I went with Roderick to Mt. Rigi, near Luzern, to try Schlitteln (sledding) for the first time.

As it comes once again to Hottest 100 voting time, this year I think I am unqualified to vote. Having been overseas for 6 months, I have not been keeping up with the music released in Australia and popular post-June. On the other hand I am happy that the list this year will provide me with lots of new music to listen to. But before I start to look at what I am going to vote for, I wanted to look back on what I voted for in the past.