I’ve struggled with this one today to be honest… I checked this morning on what today’s question/post was and have been thinking about it all day.  After chatting to my best mate Amelia, who lives down in Oxford, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have many habits that are weird and wonderful but none that I wished I didn’t have. The reason being because they make me the weird and wonderful person that I am!

Sure, some people would think the habits I have are kinda odd but I like that and who the heck want’s to be normal?  So for this post I’m gonna just say that I have no habits that I wish I didn’t have because they make me the person that I am… and if someone makes me wish I didn’t have them then they aren’t really someone I want in my life to be completely honest!

Bring on tomorrow’s question! x

Ok so this is gonna be a bit of a hard one to do because I HATE having my photo taken…. I hate it with such a passion that I don’t have any photos of me with my friends really. I have photos of my friends themselves but not of us together… I prefer to be behind the camera!

But… in order to fulfill this task today I’m gonna just put an old photo of me when I was like 10 yrs old with my ‘Wanaka Gang’ as I called them.  During almost every school holidays when I was at primary school we would drive down from Christchurch to a place called Wanaka which was further down the South Island of NZ.  I was born not far from there and we lived there til I was about 5 before moving up to Christchurch so it holds some special memories for me.

This photo is one of my absolute fav’s and for years I kept it in my wallet (hence the fold lines haha) because it always made me smile when I looked at it… something about the gumboots we’re wearing haha!

Clockwise from left it’s: Dave, my brother John, Me, my best friend at school Rachel and Emma – Dave & Emma are brother and sister and we pretty much grew up together

Well the meaning behind ‘The Daily Rossco’ is pretty simple… it’s inspired by ‘The Daily Planet’ newspaper from the Superman movies. I have no idea why to be honest but I think I might have been watching one of the movies when I was trying to come up with a name for this blog… maybe… my memory’s a bit fuzzy on the details (too many JD’s haha)

The Rossco bit is just a play on my last name of Ross… I think someone called me Rossco at some point and it just stuck and I thought it was cool!

Oh… and the quote under the name is from my all-time favourite comedian – Billy Connolly! I think he is the funniest man alive and fulfilled a dream of mine to see him live in London earlier this year!

In reality this blog should’ve been named “The Quarterly Rossco” as I haven’t ever kept up with the whole ‘Daily’ part… which my mate Daniel in NZ never fails to remind me… the cheeky shite!

Basically, I claimed this wee piece of cyberspace as my own to try and document my travels, after abandoning NZ, and my life experiences so that I could look back on it in years to come (when my memory has faded by either old age or more JD’s haha)

Hmmmmm does that suffice for answering Day #2′s question? I hope so x

Well this is as recent a pic that I could do… I just took it 5 mins ago haha!

Hmmmm not sure how interesting these 15 facts will be… I’d say they’ll be more of a random/insane/weird/numpty-type nature haha.

1. I love tomato sauce & put it on everything… even crackers.

2. I’m adopted. My birth parents put me up for adoption because they were really young… but then went on to get married and have two more kids so I have a biological brother and sister. I’ve met my birth mother, brother, sister and heaps of the extended family.

3. I always wake up 3 mins before my alarm goes off… even when I set it at different times.

4. I have a tattoo on my left foot – ‘Tosh-Serene-Bailey’ - for the 3 dogs I’ve grown up with because they have contributed to making me the person I am today.

5. I love watching tv sitcoms over and over again… F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Gilmore Girls, Everybody Loves Raymond etc – and I still laugh like it’s the first time I’m watching it.

6. I never leave the house without at least mascara on.

7. I’m addicted to Facebook and Twitter and love all my friends on there, even though I’ve never met most of them!

8. I collect pens.

9. I’m self-conscious in new situations and retreat into my shell until I feel comfortable (like a true Cancerian crab)

10. I love to drive and often just go for random drives to explore area’s I haven’t been to.

11. When I was a little I had blonde hair. It started going dark when I was about 4-5.

12. Both my little toes are really tiny and kinda curl under the next toe.

13. I regret that I didn’t pursue my dream of being a vet or zookeeper.

14. I have suffered from bouts of depression during my life & contemplated suicide.

15. Being the centre of attention makes me uncomfortable and I go bright red… every time.

Well there ya go! That was really hard to be honest haha. Until tomorrow… x

Twitter has been crazy with the hashtag #30daysofme and I saw that GlitterGirl had jumped on board and was doing it and figured if someone as awesome as her was doing it then I should too!!  It’s pretty self explanatory… for the next 30 days there will be one blog post every day… finally The Daily Rossco is living up to it’s name for the first time since it was created haha!

There are 30 topics that need to be covered – one every day.  These topics are:

Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
Day 02- The meaning behind your Blog name
Day 03- A picture of you and your friends
Day 04- A habit that you wish you didn’t have
Day 05- A picture of somewhere you’ve been to
Day 06- Favorite super hero and why
Day 07- A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
Day 08- Short term goals for this month and why
Day 09- Something you’re proud of in the past few days
Day 10- Songs you listen to when you are Happy, Sad, Bored, Hyped, Mad
Day 11- Another picture of you and your friends
Day 12- How you found out about Blogger and why you made one
Day 13- A letter to someone who has hurt you recently
Day 14- A picture of you and your family
Day 15- Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play
Day 16- Another picture of yourself
Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have
Day 19- Nicknames you have; why do you have them
Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future
Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy
Day 22- What makes you different from everyone else
Day 23- Something you crave for a lot
Day 24- A letter to your parents
Day 25- What I would find in your bag
Day 26- What you think about your friends
Day 27- Why are you doing this 30 day challenge
Day 28- A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?
Day 29- In this past month, what have you learned
Day 30- Your favorite song.

Right… so that’s the deal. Here goes nothing!

Wow what a weekend this has been! I was on the computer on Friday afternoon when I started seeing all these Twitter & Facebook posts from friends in my hometown of Christchurch saying something about an earthquake in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Thinking it must just be another little one I didn’t get too panicked… but I soon realised that it was actually a pretty big one – 7.4 on the Richter scale – so immediately I tried to ring my parents. No answer… eeeeek! More news reports & pictures started to filter through online & I was glued to the screen for the next couple of hours as first light was starting to break over there. People were out on the street taking photos & uploading them to Twitter & the news sites from home were picking them up to go with their published stories.

An amazingly horrible surreal feeling to be sitting on the other side of the world watching this unfold in my gorgeous hometown just literally minutes after it happened!
So I’m still frantically trying to ring & text my parents & brother to make sure they were ok. Mum and Dad have a pitched glass roof running above their bedroom so my mind was going to all kinds of crazy places. I eventually got a text from my brother to say he was ok but it was a scary time. As he wasn’t with Mum and Dad I still had no idea about them… But then an hour later I finally got a text back from my Mum to say they were ok – shaken but fine. I’ve never felt so relieved in my entire life! They had no power or water & ended up relying on me for the info on what had actually happened. They have self-contained flats under the house which are built right into the hill and pretty much like a bunker so they apparently had been down there since it happened.

In the next few hours I got to actually speak to them & they seemed in good spirits but were eager for any info I had. So that’s when I told them about the destruction in the central city with lots of historic buildings reduced to rubble, flooding in many places as water mains burst… and how the worst of society had come out to take advantage – looters.
A day later and I’m still struggling with how surreal it is to be so far away & going about my normal day when this chaos is going on back home. I even got teary last night looking at the photos of the destruction… it is only bricks & mortar but it’s home you know?

What has been totally amazing is the support from my Twitter & Facebook buddies who have expressed concern & offered cyber *hugs* which has really helped enormously… I love the Internet at times like this! Bonding with fellow Kiwis also over here & feeling lost at being so far away has helped too… hearing their stories & offering them support as I know what they’re going through.

Christchurch is going to take a long time to recover from this… especially as major aftershocks are still happening – over 35 so far – and another big quake is predicted apparently!

I was stoked to be able to have my birthday in Espana – espeically with having my NZ clan there as well! I realised that I’ve kind of started a trend with having birthday’s in different countries… 2008 was in NZ, 2009 was in the UK and this year in Spain.  Next year it’s the big 3 0 so I’m kinda toying with the idea of treating myself to a Mediterranean cruise to mark the occasion!  We’ll see what happens tho… a lot can happen in a year!

SO this birthday we went to La Cala for brunch at the beach and I indulged in an absolutely delicious strawberry tart! Birthday’s aren’t a day to watch your waistline (not that I did at all while we were away but still!) After scoffing that down we went for a walk along the beach taking the long way back to the car, then just had a lazy day each doing our own lazy stuff!

For dinner we went to a really nice restaurant in Cabopino called Alfreds.  Dad was in heaven as it was right on the marina so he went a’wandering while we waited for the drinks to arrive… he pretty much told Mum what he wanted and he was off haha. Dad loves his boats! Of course for me the occasion called for mojitos… I love my mojitos and I had a reeeeally good one at Alfreds.  The food was to die for and we all waddled outta there a couple hours later and of course Dad had to go look at the boats AGAIN… so we tagged along and I took some pics for him. We walked along the beach and heard the Spanish fans going nuts as Spain was obviously kicking someone’s ass in the World Cup haha.

For more Spain photos click >>> here.

Day #6 was the one I’d been looking forward to the most – driving down the coast to Gibraltar!  The main reason being that first you have need your passport as you are technically leaving Spain as Gibraltar is still owned by the UK… then you get to drive over the main airport runway to get into central Gibraltar!

After navigating the manic streets to find the parking building we found the town square and sat down to have some food – british food!  Money is a bit of a funny thing to deal with in Gibraltar as everything is priced in either Euros or Pounds… so you can choose to pay in either, but you have to watch the change you get because Gibraltar also has it’s own currency which you can’t use anywhere else! I got caught out by this and ended up with a bit of Gibraltan currency in change when I got back to UK but luckily enough it still works in parking meters so I’ve managed to use it up.  Very weird tho.

We had a walk through the town and marvelled at the cheap booze… John got me a bottle of Jack Daniels for my birthday and he got some vodka for his Mrs back in NZ – super cheap!

While walking we came across this van tour that takes you up The Rock of Gibraltar and shows you all the sights while giving you a commentary also – so we said hell yeah!!  You can get a cable car up the Rock but then it’s miles of walking from one side to the other and it was super dooper hot so this was a much better idea!

We stopped a couple of times on the tour to admire the views, go into the caves and also see the monkeys!  I had a close encounter with one of the monkeys… it jumped on top of my head! Luckily I had my hat on though!

After the tour we headed further along the main street to a pub to have some dinner and drinks, then meandered back to the car to head back to the apartment. Exhausting day but totally worth it!

For more Spain photos click >>> here.

Well this day was a rest day… apart from a trip to the market which is held twice a week and is pretty big! Mum wanted to get me a birthday present, as it was my birthday in a couple days, so I picked out a couple handbags (I’m such a bag-a-holic it’s insane!) The sun was particularly scorching that day so I was glad I had my cowboy hat on but still the open market got old really quickly as there was just too much to choose from and the heat made me a tad grumpy.  After everybody else had had enough we walked back to the shops and had some lunch and a drink at an Irish pub! It was the first time we’d ever been bothered by the beggars trying to sell their wares which got really annoying fast but interesting to see.

In the arvo John did another of his solo misions and headed down to the bars again… apparently there was a beach-side festival at Fuengirola up the coast, so he got the bus up there and we didn’t see him til the early hours haha.  I wasn’t up for it so just went to the golf club again but this time we took Dad along… Mum wasn’t so keen this time to have her drinks so as it was ’2 for 1′ I ended up having not only 1 & 1/2 of her drinks but both my own and one of my Aunties too! I was well tipsy by the time we left so was glad when we went to get fish and chips for tea

For more Spain photos click >>>here.

Day #4 of our Spanish adventure was my Dad’s 63rd birthday! Again we followed the lazy day + busy evening rule and had a chill-out day in the sun.  Dad funnily enough spent most of the middle of the day inside on the couch watching documentaries on telly! He doesn’t have SKY at home so having access to all these doco’s was the equivalent of a kid in a candy shop scenario for my Dad haha. He loves learning about how things are made, history etc etc so he spent most of his b’day drinking vodka, smoking cigars and alternating between doco’s inside and sunbathing on the deck!

While John and him were doing that Mum, Marcia and I went exploring down into the village to get some supplies… then Marcia took us up to the golf club on the way back and we somehow managed to get my Mum to not only drink some Spanish-heavy-measure vodka in the middle of the day (which is unheard of as she doesn’t drink!) but we actually got her tipsy! Such a laugh to deliver her back to Dad and tell him to have his way with her while he could haha.

Then in the early evening Mum, Dad, Marcia and I went to the lovely village of Mijas which is a proper Spanish village up in the mountains. John wasn’t interested so he just had some time on his own by the pool.  The view from up in the mountains was absolutely breathtaking and, even though I fell ass over kite while trying to take photos, it was fantastic!  We had a drink at this cafe that overlooked the entire coast and even got served by a proper Spanish waiter dude with such a gnarly moustache I just had to get a photo of Mum and Marcia with him!

Then I got a photo of Dad with a donkey as ever since he found out he was going to Spain he’s made these jokes about there being no cars and only donkeys haha.  So we wandered round Mijas for an hour or so and took in the views before having a couple drinks and watching the donkeys and horses being walked through the village to their stables.

For more Spain photos click >>> here.