A Young Rascal (10 letters)

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Little shit."

Our family friends' neighbour Jo, demonstrating her skill with crosswords. She's a Kiwi. This concludes my explanation. (Except to say that I haven't yet got the real answer.)

We all finished work early on Thursday for another Christmas party (seems to be in keeping with Aussie style to have lots of parties) where we had to walk for 20 minutes in mid-30s heat, only to find that at the restaurant the aircon wasn't working! Not good. Peter and I had a pretty involved discussion about sunrises and sunsets that led me here via a roundabout route - I'd forgotten how

I managed to get all but one of my presents last Friday, but managed to swap that one with one my parents hadn't been able to get for someone else. Possibly my best ever for buying presents. Friday night was quite thundery, and, looking back, I think that might be the first time it's rained in more than just a shower in the 7 weeks since I got here. It was still raining when I went to bed, and, while it remained dry till I arrived in Sydney on Saturday afternoon, it started up heavily again on the drive down and didn't let up till Christmas Eve lunchtime.

I've then had a pretty relaxing 4 days in Kiama. A bit less hectic than my visit last year, despite the general Christmas rush. Christmas Day highlights included a barbecued turkey with homegrown roast potatoes (and non-barbecued shrimp), enjoying a warm, sunny but very windy 26C day (I was very glad to be away for Christmas - Melbourne reached just 14C, its coldest 25/12 ever, and some of the skiing resorts in Victoria had a white Christmas!), the most idiosyncratic playing of The Name Game I've ever been involved in (one name repeated 4 times, 4 others repeated at least once, and one of the names being a bottled beer rather than a person), and finding an adequate replacement for Fentiman's.

Other events included a walk over the cliffs on Boxing Day (photo below), an afternoon trip to Helen and Steve's to see their new pool, some of Christmas Eve afternoon spent fixing Steve and Jo's PC (10,000 miles from home and my reputation precedes me - first evening I was there Pauline started to ask me a question that I somehow knew was going to be PC-related!) without seeing any of their resident redbacks and generally enjoying being able to wear shorts the whole time.





In Sydney airport today, I decided that, just in case, I wouldn't repeat last year's mistake of taking a photo of the city centre from the airport. Yes, the risk of being stopped by US Customs on arrival at Tullamarine is probably a bit lower than at LAX, but once bitten, twice shy. I think the cabin crew may have been at an office party the previous night, as they were still in quite high spirits, including the announcers calling each other names during inflight announcements, one stewardess swearing at her lifejacket when the whistle got caught in her belt and the final "Thanks for flying with us etc." speech being rounded off with "Last one off's a rotten egg."

TODO : find a copy of "Your Grace Amazes Me" as sung at the Melbourne Christmas Carol Concert on Christmas Eve. That was a spine-tingling performance, but I can't find anywhere who it was who sang it.

On Top of Old Smokey

I played rooftop tennis this lunchtime. It was great fun. Pretty warm, but not scorching, and a pretty decent wind to make directing the ball fun (not to mention the odd sanded astroturf surface we were playing on that behaved like a clay court). It was all going swimmingly well till Jenny shanked a ball over the fence and down into the neighbouring park. We were 7 floors up. I hope it didn't hit anyone...

What wasn't so much fun was the smoke. I could smell it as I woke up this morning (and given the quality of my sense of smell, I'd hate to be someone who can actually use their nose) and the sun was a deep and cold red till about 10 am. Our office is about 3km south of the city centre, and we couldn't see it at all at lunchtime. Even over as short a distance as the height of the atrium within the office (7 storeys, perhaps 40m) you could see a faint haze hanging around the roof.

I'm starting to get a bit of a reputation at work. I keep finding other people's problems, and they're usually difficult ones (both to understand and to fix). I managed to find one on Monday that took 2 hours on Monday and 1.5 hours on Tuesday to sort out, and at one point on Monday involved everyone who was in the department at the time (6 of us) crowded round my PC with heads in hands.

I'm not sure that's quite what they hired me for!

Forty Days and Forty Nights

So, what's been good and bad about the last 960 hours?

The Good

Sushi.

Melbourne itself. I really like it.

The Queen Vic market.

The heat.

The free lunches (I'm on at least 6, possibly 7.)

My new house.

The Bad

My stuff going via Brisbane.

The heat.

Not being able to get anything back home sorted properly when you can't easily speak to people, and all you've got is a dodgy internet connection that you have to stand on the stairs with the laptop resting on the window ledge to get it to function.

Still not being able to get things sorted back home when you do have a working Net connection.

The silence.

The spreadsheets.

The flies and the spiders.

Last week's Christmas party (which deserved a post of its own, but I'll probably end up rolling it in with another one on misunderstandings in the near future).

That does make things sound a lot more negative than I really feel about them. Yes, it's not been fun on quite a few occasions, but I wasn't expecting plain sailing, and there've been lots of things that have gone more easily than I'd thought they would (e.g. place to live - I was expecting to be moving in about now, and instead my second month's rent was due today). I am looking forward to all the stress being over, or at least back to a normal background level, at some point though.

As a fitting conclusion, this is my 40th post.

Back In The World

13th is lucky for some. It shouldn't feel like this, but it is a bit like having had my arm sewn back on, or suddenly being able to hear again after being deaf for a while.

I've finally got a Net connection at home. Time to start catching up on oh so many many things now!

Doctor Dancer Cancer Feet

I had a few other titles for this post, including


Not Just Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Was It A "Special" Tram Or Something?

Some background to the day. Victoria is currently facing bushfires as bad as any in the last 30 years, and today's predicted to get to 37C in Melbourne (36C on the thermometer on one of the buildings I went past on the train about half an hour ago - I'm not designed for this kind of weather!), and possibly a few degrees hotter up north nearer the firefronts.

I woke up this morning and looked out of the curtains and thought it was foggy. Oh no. Smoke. You can actually smell the burning on the air, and I'm several hundred kilometres south of the main fire areas. The sun was hazed out till about 10 am, and was shining noticeably pinky-orange through the smoke, rather than the usual yellow.

After my fridge was delivered (at last!) I had to go into the city to pick up my suit for the Christmas ball this evening. (I've got a pretty good picture on my phone of the city centre covered in smoky haze - it was pretty eerie walking around town this morning.) And that's where the fun started. I've been chatting recently with one of my friends about how I've enjoyed the people-watching since I've been getting the trams to and from work. It appears the most ... interesting people save their tram tickets for the weekends...

Firstly, an old lady got on the tram just in front of me. She sat in the "reserved for disabled or elderly people" seat near the front, just next to another lady. I didn't really see either of them, but could overhear their conversation. It starts with the not-old lady.

NL : "Having a good day?"
OL : "Yes, but it's very hot."
NL : "I know. 37 it's supposed to get to."
OL : "And you can see the smoke in the sky."
NL : "Do you live round here?"
OL : "Yes, I do - for nearly 40 years."
NL : "Do you want the name of a good doctor?"
OL : "I already have one, thanks."
NL : "This one's really good though. Not a professional, but really good."
OL : "Oh, OK, thanks."
NL : " No problem. See you around."

...and she got off the tram. The abruptness of the departure made it sound like all she was doing was waiting until she'd "sold" this doctor's name to OL, and then her work there was done - off to find another victim!

So, with that distraction gone, I could turn my attention to another person - the hip-hopping semi-naked dancer man over the far side of the tram. He had one iPod earbud in and was bopping away like he was in a club and had had several too many Es - all the while sitting down! - and then he engaged someone sat near him in a very one-sided conversation. He sounded very very drunk (it was about 11.30am) to the extent that I couldn't understand most of what he was saying - the one clear bit was when he realised it was nearly his stop, leapt to his feet shouting "Driver, driver, let me off!," forgot to brace himself as the tram slowed down and hurtled to the front slamming into the wall behind the driver's seat. As we pulled away again, I could see him dancing his way across the street towards some poor unsuspecting pedestrians!

Then it was my turn to be accosted. "Don't mind me mate I'll try not to disturb you I'm going to the hospital I've got cancer you see all over you can tell just by looking at me can't you I've spent too long smoking and drinking and it's going to get me this time just look I'll take my cap off you can see the scars there can't you I don't think I'm going to last much longer..." (it appeared he said all this in one breath, hence the lack of punctuation!)

Wasn't really sure what to say. I was saved by someone else getting on and sitting down on the seat over the aisle - he moved on to her, "Merry Christmas love how's your day been mine's awful I'm on my way to the hospital I've got cancer you see and I think it's going to be my last visit..." She made the mistake of reacting - "Oh my father has cancer too. Do you know the way to Alexander Avenue?" Oops - this started another exhalation-slash-verbal-torrent where, as far as I could tell, the guy listed every tram line and every suburb in Melbourne as possible destinations for the next tram she should take. He then gave her his cap, and tried to offer her a T-shirt as well ("It's brand new you can tell look it's one from a school and it's got the graduation year on it look 2006 that's how you can tell it's brand new no-one's ever worn it and I'm never going to now...")

He got off at the next stop. Something I'd considered doing, but as it's the same stop as for work, I had some psychological misgivings about doing so!

The rest of the tram ride was pretty average - except for the unrelenting heat - until I got off at my stop in the city centre. "Ahhh, I've been dying to get here and off that bloody tram. My feet are burning up." {splashing sound} I turned around, to find a man sitting on the pavement taking his left shoe off (right one was already lying on the ground next to him) after which he proceeded to pour some of his bottled water over his left foot, clearly, by the puddle in which he was nearly sitting, something he'd already done with his other foot.

There are some odd people here.

In other news, I now own a pair of kangaroo-leather shoes, I was very pleased to learn that shoe sizes are one body measurement I don't have to carry round two versions of in my head (they use the UK size system here), and when buying the shoes, the salesman unexpectedly said "Oh bugger." Not that I mind, but I keep forgetting that swearing has a much lower impoliteness score over here!

A Shark's Tale

Phrases I hadn't expected to hear over lunch :

The scientists found that he wouldn't get bitten so often by sharks if he didn't wee every time he went swimming.

A washing machine in the kitchen?! How weird is that?

All this accountancy shit's easy by comparison - I look at my baby and I think "I made that. I'm brilliant!"

Chris is also a follower of the Dark Arts of the Actuary, just like Barnesy. Of course, Chris is only an acolyte by comparison.

I really like spiders.

I'm getting to be way ahead on the free lunch count - today's was my fourth in 21 working days (and included wallaby sirloin), and I have another next week!

In My Imagination

I don't think I've ever got such pleasure out of buying pegs, coat hangers or towels before, but such are the rules of my life recently. It was definitely good to finish the weekend's shopping list at 1.30 today, so I could pop off to Oskawhyte's for a much-needed and much-enjoyed lunch (and despite what the review says, it's not just ladies lunching there). I could have done without the high wind that didn't want me to be able to read my paper, though. I've spent much of the rest of the afternoon enjoying the hot sunshine out on my terrace.

It can't be December. It's just wrong.

No new "Huh?" moments for the last few days, but I have started to have accent issues. I keep having to remember to talk more slowly. There've been 2 occasions already where "No thanks" has turned into just "thanks" (no, I didn't want my coffee white, thank you), but I really don't get how "cats" and "cows" can be confused with each other!

Close Enough

I had to wait a day or so before making this post, firstly because I have negligible Net access outside work (I'm limited to piggybacking off the one unsecured and intermittent wireless access point I can find) and secondly because I wasn't sure whether I was amused, resigned, annoyed or despairing - who's doing what now? (Blinddrew, a challenge for you - which Simpsons episode is that a mangled misquote from?)

I have an arrival date for the stuff I'm having shipped over from the UK. It's due to arrive on 30/12/06 in Brisbane. Which is somewhere I don't live. And approximately 1000 miles (no, no, no, very naughty - 1600 km!) away from somewhere I do live.

They expect it will be another couple of weeks from then till when it arrives in Melbourne (assuming no further detours), but there are two caveats to that - it's entirely possible Pickfords are staffed by actuaries.

1. As my stuff is in a container with several other people's, under Customs laws, they can't remove it themselves, they have to wait till everyone else has collected their own gear.
2. There's a 2-week quarantine period from when the container arrives in Australia. Pickfords aren't yet sure whether Customs will want another one of these once it arrives in Melbourne.

So, in summary, I'm not expecting to see my stuff this side of the Aus Open finals. What's annoying, and the despairing bit too, about this is that I've told Pickfords 3 times already that they had Brisbane down incorrectly as the destination, and they've told me 3 times they've corrected their systems. They did not.

The amused and resigned bits are because it doesn't make all that much difference to me being without all my gear for three months rather than two. I'd already anticipated not seeing it this year, so it's just a small extra inconvenience on top of an already quite large one.

That aside, I think things are starting to go better for me. My phone will be fixed on Monday, and the Fat Free Fone company will be giving me a broadband account a day later. I'm out for meals 3 days next week with various different people from work (trying to broaden the social network), I'm off to purchase a wide range of solutions for modern living (film quote, anyone?) tomorrow, and I succeeded pretty well with a piece of work I was given as (I suspect) a bit of a test of how well I'd do with it.

All things considered, November wasn't such a bad month, but it isn't one I'd particularly want to go through again.