The Qantas first class lounge in Sydney Airport's International terminal.

Last week I was in Sydney for most of the week for meetings and a few hours at CeBIT. Having everything I needed to do done, by about lunch time Friday, and not flying home until Sunday night – I had a little bit of time at my disposal.

I decided to fly down to Canberra and see some friends and catch up with the team at AusssieHQ, then fly back to Sydney on Saturday.

When I told a friend (Shaun) of this, he asked me if I wanted to go with him on a “Lounge Crawl” [ my description of it ] on the Saturday.

Here is basically what went down;

Saturday

Sunset @ Melbourne Qantas Business Class Lounge

Breakfast at Qantas Business class lounge, Canberra.
Fly Canberra to Sydney
Transfer from T3 (domestic) to T1 (international) at Sydney.
Lunch at the Qantas First Class Lounge, Sydney
Fly an international route from Sydney to Melbourne
Transfer back to Melbourne Domestic
Have Dinner at the Melbourne Business class lounge
Fly back to Sydney that night

Sunday

Head back to Sydney and have afternoon tea / champagne in the business Class lounge,
Fly back to Brisbane
Connect to the Hervey Bay flight

Sunday Session @ The Qantas Business Class Lounge, Sydney before flying home

The highlight of this was of course lunch at the Sydney, Qantas First Class lounge. Having never (and not any time soon) travelled internationally in F (First) class, or be a platinum frequent flyer, this was my first time to the F lounge. I was lucky enough to have a QFF Platinum card holder with me, so this is how I gained access

Lunch was great –  the wine selection alone justified the trip, let alone the 3 course lunch ( and sides ) that followed. I had pork belly as an entrée, then nice steak with brown butter, fries and greens, followed by something that was called a pavlova, but oh my this was superior to a pavlova! I cannot find what it was called, or a photo of it anywhere, but I will try my hardest to track it down.  After a great meal, some very nice champagne, we went over to the reclining chairs, and watched half a dozen A380′s and 747′s all departing (mostly for the states) which was very relaxing and I enjoyed it a lot.

Many thanks to Shaun for letting me tag along, and experience the F-lounge, which was totally incredible.

At the end of last year, Coast Restaurant was opened in Hervey Bay. I hadn’t been there until early this year, but had heard many great things about it prior to dining there from range of people. I’ve now been there four or five times for dinner, and have been impressed every time. Great food, great wine and just as important, great service.

This week Coast did something which I think is a first for Hervey Bay, and that was a 5 course degustation dinner, and even better, prepared by e’cco bistro’s Philip Johnson.

It was a great night – lots of wine, great lineup of food to try and a great atmosphere – let’s hope events like this continue!

While both systems have API’s I knew it would be possible – but simply have the time to try put an API Connector together- and to make it work nicely.

Earlier in the year I started looking again, as I really need to move my hosting management softer to WHMCS for greater management / organisation of my hosting portfolio.

I was introduced to OneSaas – who are an Australian IT company – who are building connectors for many of the popular cloud based applications – and keeping contacts and invoices synced.

Read more about Syncing WHMCS and Saasu here – I worked with the guys at OneSaas as they developed this plugin for a reasonable fee (considering the time this will save) – and have now released this as a module in BETA for other WHMCS users to enjoy.

At the office, we have a pretty awesome coffee machine, but stocking it with good beans or ground beans is hard, I have ordered from Merlo in Brisbane a couple of times, which is pretty awesome, but not as good as having it at a Merlo cafe in the city.

I recently found Dispatch…. What is it?

We want to help you drink good coffee, not just at café, but also at home. The stuff you’ll find in the shops is stale and boring, the range is limited, and you have to go out of your way to get it.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get good, fresh and interesting coffee sent to your door?

Mall coffee sucks: mailed coffee rocks.

We’ve partnered with the good folk at Canberra’s Lonsdale Street Roasters to send you monthly packages of coffee goodness – something new and interesting each time.

Today we received our first bag, which is a Brazilian Blue Coffee – and man was it fantastic! It was fresh (I worried about this) and ground to perfection!

We are all looking forward to sampling some more awesome coffee in the coming months.