Sean O'Brien, Pro Windsurfer – seanobrien.com.au™

Just got back from another amazing trip to Singapore! The first time I was there to catch up with some buddies of mine but this time I was there to catch up with some buddies of mine AND compete at the 2012 Asian Windsurfing Championships. Singapore is just such an amazing city it’s a bit hard to describe; so I thought I’d make an attempt with the above photos. A bit less craziness this trip as I was competing each day and running lot’s of training clinics and coaching sessions for the local sailors and up and coming kids but we still did manage to make it to every nightspot imaginable, and some! Enjoy the pics. All by except the ones from Howie!

So I hadn’t seen my bestie Timmy in about 3 years so figured it was time to swing down to Singapore to catch up with him and also another good mate of ours who’s just got hitched and on his way back to Australia. I haven’t been to Singapore proper (apart from Changi airport 15 times a year) in about 8 years and A LOT has changed in that time! Here’s a quick chronolog of our weekend madness in Singapore – the happiest Asian city on Earth!

Sentosa Tourist Park (can’t believe this guy ruined my shot!) – check out the 45m high stone MERLION statue in the background.

Collecting horrible Chinese masks in China Town.

Checking out the foyer in the $8 billion Marina Bay Sands Hotel/Casino (that place is awesome!).

View from Level 27 where our friends were staying in this amazing MBS hotel!

The Art/Science Museum at the front of the MBS where we went to see the Salvador Dali exhibition.

Caribbean Club apartments where we went to one of the wildest BBQ’s full of English twats and all-sorts on Saturday night before hitting the town.

The amazing INFINITY POOL on the roof level of the MBS which also doubles as a nightclub in the evenings called Ku De Ta (was $50 just to get in though – sheesh!)

Inside the MBS shopping centre there were small canals and fountains that you could take gondola boat rides in! WTF?!

Avalon Club. A 17,000sq foot ‘crystal inspired’ glass nightclub floating on the water in Marina Bay right in front of the Casino. One of the best nightclubs I’ve seen on the planet … simply amazing. Hello, another $40 to get in though and $20 drinks. Meh!

Hit the clubs with a few friends!

The city skyline viewed from the balcony at Avalon Club.

On Sunday we rocked the Tamjong Beach Club (they call it model beach apparently) for some sun soaked beers and sand. Great atmosphere.

Up the top of the MBS at Ku De Ta rocking the VIP section things get a bit wild. Our first adventures with the big man’s new fiance – think she took it all in stride!

About to check out the Louis Vuitton store which is another floating glass temple on the water in front of the MBS. There is actually a tunnel that goes between the LV store inside the MBS to this concept store where you walk under the water… Saw the most awesome pair of hightop sneakers there but they were $1,980.

On my last night before hitting the airport me & Timmy head to LITTLE INDIA and find the magic Ghandi restaurant where you are served endless rice/vege/meat curry assortments dumped on a massive banana leaf on your table and just eat with your hands. They refill the water glass pretty quick cause this stuff is SPICY!

Managed to actually make my plane this time and get back to Europe (and the cold). Singapore…WHAT A PLACE. Go visit! Do it!

So after skipping the European Championships in Latvia due to an injury, I decided I needed some time out from windsurfing and some kind of European roadtrip. My good mate Andy was floating around Europe so I jetted him over to Italy and we thought we would take a tour through the East with a few days in one of my favourite European cities; Prague, Česká Republika. I actually rocked this city one before with some girls I know from NZ many years ago and after this visit, I think I remember why I really liked this place so much the time before; and once again.

Our timeline involved catching up with a friend in town and smashing the Playboy Party at one pretty slick club called Mazanej Králíček before visiting the rest of the Prague nightlife (which is, granted, pretty fine) and hitting up most of the places downtown. Somehow managed to drag ourselves out of the hotel each morning to do the usual tourist traps like Prague Castle, Astronomical Clock and of course the statues on Charles Bridge. They love a good statue in Praha; yeap! The weather was INSANELY hot by European standards (which I actually like) but isn’t so conducive to wandering the streets all day and alas, my big Canon 7D camera has been stolen so I didn’t really capture as much footage of this beautiful city as I would have liked. So I guess that means I will need to go back sometime………

Also in a completely UNRELATED story had someone throw in the word ‘Defenestration’ in to a conversation about breaking up with their girlfriend over the weekend and when I looked up that word, turns out they love a good defenestration in Prague (which is what that first picture is all about). If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you need to Google that sh**, yo!

Just after the PWA Slalom World Cup event in Ulsan, Korea, myself and Kurosh Kiani took a little trip down to Okpo Island, which is just outside Busan, in the south of South Korea. Okpo is home to one of the biggest shipyards on planet earth, owned by Samsung (yeah, you know them, the electronics brand, yo!) and a cousin of mine happens to be working down there overseeing the build and fitout of some of the world’s biggest Drillships.

Don’t know what a Drillship is?? Understandable. It’s basically what would happen if the Titanic, a Space Shuttle, Terminator and the Mining Industry had a baby together that looked like a ship. We got the full tour of one of the new ships being commissioned and it is one of the most impressive and complex pieces of engineering design I have ever seen. Drillships are designed to head out in to the far reaches of the ocean then can drill +3km deep in to the ocean seabed; mostly being used for exploration of new gas and oil wells and scientific drilling. These beasts don’t use anchors, they position themselves to exact GPS coordinators by maintaining engine thrust from 6 different thrustors to stay in position whilst the drilling takes place; all with a floating drill pivot that allows the ship to tilt over massive waves in the ocean without actually moving the drill pieces in the ocean – which would surely break if not! If that doesn’t seem complicated enough; at the same time this is going on, there is mud being sucked up out of the drill which is then compacted and treated on-board in massive tanks and turbines before being hardened and pumped back down to the bottom of the ocean.

The drills are controlled by just 4 guys sitting in a pressurised cabin on the top of the ship. Each driver sits in a space-chair complete with all sorts of joysticks and custom-keyboards and flatscreen monitors to show all the information that the drill’s sensors spit out – as well as cameras on every angle to make sure everything is running smoothly. The drivers don’t really need to leave the control room; even in a hurricane.

Samsung is one of the biggest shipyards on the planet employing over 30,000 people every day with its own hotels, sports centres, running tracks, gyms, shops and basically its own economy to keep the workers happy and on the site 24 hrs a day to keep busting out these massive ships.

Was definitely a side trip from windsurfing I will remember for a long time. Including climbing the ladders to the top of the drill mount which are around 30 storeys high climbing up a sketchy metal ladder! Thanks to Tim and the guys at National Oilwell Varco for lending us the overalls and allowing us to check out the site.

Looking for some places to do some slalom training before the PWA Pro Tour event in South Korea next month, I discovered my good Dutch buddy Markus Bouman’s family has a house in Dahab, Egypt. 12 hours drive from Italy later I was sitting with Markus in Warsaw airport with 400kg of windsurfing gear and ready to go stalking camels.

We got super lucky with this trip, as the wind was perfect nearly every day of our 2-week stay. The house is away from the tourist areas where the surf-clubs and hotels are located, in the Bedouin town of Assalah, so we really got an opportunity to explore this amazing culture, away from the cliche tourist perception of Dahab. We rented a very old-school and falling-apart jeep, and despite the fact we spent more time learning how to Macguiver broken engine parts back together, we got amazing opportunities to drive north through the desert and windsurf in places no tourists have likely windsurfed; our own private reefs with only desert Bedouins for miles and miles. Mix in some snorkelling, camel rides, parties with the plethora of English tourists who frequent this town and plenty of late night Vodka escapades with our Polish friends and this was a perfect way to spend two weeks. Stay tuned shortly for the windsurfing pics and some movies that we shot during our stay…

On the last Friday of the Las Vegas Trip the Vegas boys and I decided to hit the Wet Republic pool party at the MGM Grand. For those that have never heard of Wet, it’s a dedicated day club housed in and around 3 large pools in a venue inside the MGM grounds. It’s home to some of the craziest pool parties, world renowned DJ’s and if you check out their website, you’ll see the list of international moviestars and sporting celebrities who host their birthday’s there is simply incredible. We managed to score one of the VIP Cabana’s with some of our hookups and ended up having one of the best day’s out ever. All my good friends, all the sun, all the lounges, all the girls. Yeap. Will need to come back at some point with wind turbines and host a freestyle content there.

About one year ago, a really good friend of mine from school announced he was marrying his sweetheart. In an incredible act of genius, he announced that in 1 year from that day, he’d take his best mates to Las Vegas for one kick-ass bachelor party. Insert 14 of my best and oldest friends, 15 hour plane rides from various parts of the world, 14 Hugo Boss suits; and this is what happened when that day finally arrived!

New York, New York casinos. One of the biggest and right next door to MGM Grand where we stayed.

Our mate getting married on the left; the reason we all went to LV.

Firing an M249 S.A.W. at a firing range in old town. Apparently civilians can buy these guns!

Nick and me being awesome everywhere we went.

A genuine Buick RoadMaster Estate Wagon. With wood coloured wallpaper so thick you can smell the vanish.

Americans really know how to do sneakers.

The mega fountain outside the Bellagio Casino. Right next door to the Cosmopolitan casino (my personal favourite).

The Las Vegas Wranglers. We watched them claim victory at the Fiesta Rancho stadium. Ice-hockey is such a cool sport.

We also caught the NAMAUU vs BARRAGAN fight at the Rio the next night.

Wild times everywhere we went.

With 14 of us, limos were a necessity and used frequently.

Lazing by the pool after breakfast was always worth it.

So after only 5 days in Las Vegas I’m fairly sure we ticked off everything to do there, in and out of the casinos. We managed to see ice-hockey, boxing, Cirque de Soleil, David Copperfield’s show, the awesome ‘Bodies’ exhibit at the Luxor Museum as well as drive downtown to see the 900m rooftop tv-screen at Freemont Street, visiting the Gun Store to fire obscenely big machine guns and also hit the greatest clubs on the planet such as Wet Republic at MGM, Marquee @ Cosmopolitan and even managed a few of us to get in the semi-finals of the Blackjack competition at the upstairs Playboy Club. I think Las Vegas might just be my favourite place ever….

More photos on Facebook if we are friends right here.

We’re currently out on Tenerife, Canary Islands at the moment with the Point-7 Pro Team getting some training in and shooting some videos. For the past 5 days there has been ZERO wind so a few of the boys thought we’d go and check out the nightlife in Las Americas, the bigger town on the opposite side of the island to where we’re staying. I don’t think I saw one Spanish person all night; plenty of clubs, tons of people out, but all just English tourists here on cheap holidays and most of them were in fancy dress. Say hello to Big Bird, some NFL giants and a lot of guys dressed in Morph suits. WTF.

My final week at home in Brisbane for the summer I decided to head to a massive Rock/Metal music festival in Australia called Soundwave. Headlining were bands like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Primus, Slash, 30 Seconds to Mars, Queens of the Stone Age, Rob Zombie and about 1 billion others. It was a stonking 37 degrees all day with no shade anywhere and thousands of Brisbane’s metal fraternity arriving in their tattoos, piercings, rebellion and Jack Daniels to see what the day had to offer. My highlight was the deathpit for Slayer.

A good friend of mine Josh, had a bash on Friday night for his birthday. The venue was a cool bar in Brisbane called Jade Buddha; right in front of the river overlooking the city. We came, we rocked the place, we left. Here’s the only 5 photos that didn’t turn out blurry.