Pete and I back at Urbnsurf once more, this time though I went to the new surf board shop, Surfboard Empire in Narrabeen and told them I want to 'smack the lip' 😄 They did an amazing job at getting me the right board!

Here's one of my attempts

Peter and I did the 'Intermediate' session today at Urbn Surf in Sydney, it was good fun, bigger than the progressive turns but less waves so not quite as good exercise.

You take your shoes off at the door, walk three steps into the hallway, and then — wham. You're doing an impression of a falling tree. The culprit? The very shoes you just removed.

The Weird Way Your Brain Tracks Your Body

Your brain maintains a constantly updated mental map of your own body — where your limbs are, what you're holding, even what you're wearing. This is called the body schema, and it's remarkably plastic. Studies have shown that people who use tools regularly start to incorporate those tools into their body schema, perceiving a long rake, for example, as a temporary extension of their arm.

Shoes are no different. You wear them for most of your waking hours. Over years of daily use, your brain quietly folds them into its model of "you." They become part of the picture.

So What Happens When You Take Them Off?

Here's where it gets interesting. When you remove your shoes and drop them on the floor, your brain's body schema doesn't necessarily update straight away. The prior — the standing prediction that shoes are on your feet — lingers.

This means when you walk toward that shoe on the floor, your visual system may not fully flag it as an obstacle. After all, your brain's best guess is that the shoe is attached to you. Why would you need to step over part of yourself?

I've called this the Worn-Shoe Assumption Bias, or WSAB. The idea is that the shoe's strong association with being worn reduces its perceptual salience as a hazard in the brief window after removal.

It's Not That You Weren't Looking

This is the part that's a bit counterintuitive. WSAB isn't really about distraction or not paying attention. You could be staring right at the shoe and still trip, because the issue isn't detection — it's classification. Your visual system sees the shoe. It just doesn't ring the obstacle alarm with the urgency it would for, say, a brick or a toy left on the floor.

The prediction error — the brain's signal that something doesn't match expectations — is dampened because the shoe matches a very familiar context: your own foot. It's only when your foot makes physical contact that the mismatch snaps into sharp focus. By then, you're already mid-stumble.

Learn more at the WSAB microsite.

Pete (fellow school Dad) and I have been going to Urbn Surf pretty much every week recently. Sharks biting people all the time is a good reason. We are currently 'stuck' doing the 11am and 1pm session which are smaller waves, I feel like we are ready for something bigger.

Really enjoying coming out to URBNSURF!

For Christmas 2025 we embarked on a huge trip from Sydney to Dubai, on to Finland, then on to Courchevel France, back to Dubai and then finally back to Sydney.

It was a huge trip and a lot of fun, first off was Dubai where we stayed at the Palm Royal. It's got one of the best breakfast bars on the planet and was very convenient for us to get to the waterpark next door. Dubai in winter was actually quite cold though so the water park was fun but not the boiling normal that we were used to! We also got to go to Carbone which had just opened. Amy had been to the one in NYC previously.

We then flew to Helsinki and then on to Rovaniemi which is of course the home of Santa. We got to meet Santa twice, we also got to do dog sled riding, snowmobiling, ice karting and more.

It was really good fun, we missed the northern lights by an hour though, our glass roof huts were perfect for it but we fell asleep at 19h00 and the lights apparently were on at 20h00 - although now we have reason to go back!

We had one day in Helsinki where we visited a market that was just down the road and stayed in a hotel which used to be the Finnish sniper headquarters!

This is where I started to get chills and annoying was a bit sick for the rest of the trip, eventually giving it to Evie, Oscar and eventually Amy! We pushed through though even though we probably had Flu or COVID!

We flew to Geneva in Switzerland and the got a 2 hour transfer to Courchevel, which is probably the most beautiful ski resort you can go to.

We stayed at Fouquet's Courchevel which was absolutely amazing. The euro is extremely expensive though I couldn't really get over it, Evie's spaghetti with cheese was $100AUD every night (and she ate two mouth fulls with her sickness). We had Christmas at the hotel and it was fantastic, the food was amazing (although very rich every day) and they had a man come and cut a silhouette of Oscar and Evie at Christmas dinner (which is actually on Christmas eve).

The snow was thin but the green runs were so wide an a lot of fun the days we got out there.

We then flow back to Dubai and stayed at Bab Al Shams our favourite desert hotel, however most of the family was sick by now so we really just recuperated there and then got on our flight back to Sydney!

This January we were all meant to go on a trip to Japan for another round of skiing in Niseko. Unfortunately Amy had a ham string injury so could not even come on the plane! So Oscar, Evie and myself went on a 10 day adventure to Japan.

Taking a 12 and 9 year old to Japan wasn't as hard as I was expecting to be honest. We had a good time in Tokyo visiting Akihabara. We managed to do six hours of walking around which was amazing. We managed to visit Ginza, some Casio shops and get Sim City 2000 on the SNES for $10.

We then went on a short flight to Niseko, where we met up with a lot of the other school parents (33 people in total). It was good fun for Oscar and Evie, I stayed on the green runs so that I could look after Amy after her surgery when we got back to Sydney!

Here's the video of the entire trip!

As an update from 2023, here's the end of 2025 sales for NSW Heritage car plates 3 and 4 digits. Shannons stopped doing it's auctions so the data is from Lawsons and Collecting Cars.

Sales suggest 2023 was the year to sell your NSW 3 or 4 digit heritage plate, that kind of aligns with post COVID 'Revenge Spending'.

4 digit NSW heritage plates appear to be on a downward trajectory, or at least a return to the pre-2022 average.

2025 saw the first $400,000+ 3 digit heritage plate sale '567' and '838' - NSW '100' was excluded from this as it went for $900,000+ which was bit of an anomaly.

I stopped tracking 5 digits sorry.

In April this year we went to the Four Seasons in Thailand which was really good fun because it was only just on "The White Lotus" TV show. It was a great trip the video tells the story of all of the fun we had!!

Whoops getting behind blog posts! I rebuilt my business from the ground up it took nine months but now have some spare time! Here's the video for our trip we did in July 2025 - this was a trip to Singapore then Malaysia then back to Singapore again. It was really good fun.

This week I went to URBNSURF with Marcus, Hugo and Tom which is a wave machine in Sydney. I did two 'Progressive Turns' sessions at 10am and 1pm - they last for 1 hour each and are really good fun! The takeoff is quite easy thanks to the blue and black markers in the picture and the concrete wall and bottom are not that intimidating unless you are doing the bigger wave sessions. The setup is really good there and they've got a really good AI based video recording system that captures all of your waves and also labels what you are doing on the wave. This video had "Barrel" as one of the AI tagged parts to it and I am accepting that if the AI thinks it was a barrel it must have been -

For sure will go back as some stage!

In January we did another trip to Japan for skiing. Oscar and Evie really enjoy skiing and a few of the school families go to Japan every year as it really has the best snow!

We also went to Hong Kong on this trip which was actually really good fun, visiting Disney Land and having some amazing food.

Here's the obligatory video of the trip!

Until next time!!

I didn't think I'd be going back to Japan so soon but I had a good reason to go. My nephew came with me for this trip it was short but very good fun. We walked about 105,000 steps in the 4 full days we were in Tokyo, about 70km of walking!

Was an excellent trip and back again in a few weeks for skiing!

13 years in the making! Our trip to Thailand pre-childen 2011. I remember it rained quite a bit and that we went to a lady boy show! Here's the video of the footage I made -

This school Holidays we went to Bali - we went previously in 2019 and decided to head back over as it's a really nice place to visit.

We stayed at Four Seasons in Jimbarin Bay and also Four Seasons in Ubud, both were amazing. The food at Jimbarin Bay was our favourite as there was so much choice for breakfast lunch and dinner. Ubud was in a little tropical valley it was incredibly beautiful.

Obligatory video of course.

A few weeks ago we took 2 days out of school to do a mid-week trip to Fiji with Chris, Marcy, Jackson, Max, Lorraine, Paul, Molly and us, as Chris and Marcy were over from USA for the first time in 11 or so years. We thought it would be nice to do the trip that we did 12 years ago to Fiji but this time with loads of children!

We stayed at Six Sense on Malolo Island. When we got there the weather was a bit overcast and no that warm. The swimming pool was quite cold as well. Miraculously the weather turned on for us for the rest of the trip, blue skies and warm days even though it was technically still winter.

We basically ticked every box we could whilst we were there. Fishing, spa, kayakings, boating, Fiji night, Fish night, Pizza night etc.. etc.. The service was some of the best we've had in Fiji.

It was an incredible trip and so good to see Marcy and Chris and family after such as long time.