An Englishman Abroad

Strange Strangers on a Train

2007-12-15T21:10:00.000+11:00

"Excuse me, mate, do you know the speed of light?"

Not a question I'd exactly anticipated, but since I'd been listening in on their conversation (which had bounced backwards and forwards between English and German), I was somewhat prepared.

Two nerds, arguing over the speed of light, on a train. At one point, they'd involved several hapless Japanese tourists in their debate, and at another, they were pointing out to two girls that this wasn't the best way for them to pick people up on trains, and that they did do better chat-up lines. As they headed towards the door, they asked a few people, me being the last of them, if they knew which of them was closer.

Given options of 3*10^8 (or "dreimal zehn hoch acht" as he'd been stating his case) and 1.1*10^9, I helped Guy No. 1 to victory.

It was only after they got off the train that I realised they were both right - one's in m/s and the other's in km/hr.

Oops.

Toilet Humour

2007-12-11T22:15:00.000+11:00

I spent about an hour earlier typing something like 80% of a new post, my first for over four months. Was planning on finishing it off tomorrow. But here's a little aperitif before the main course gets published.

I was googling for some info on a national park I was hoping to visit in February. The best site for it came fifth on the list. On the way to that item, I had to go past this one.

I nearly did go past it without reading it. I'm very glad I didn't. Any of the following in isolation would have cracked me up :

The "suggest a toilet" link

"My toilet map"

The web address - it's a .gov.au site, i.e. run by the Federal government

The implication that, in light of the recent election, the content of the site is under review for potential political bias

Search for options, including toilet features

The National Continence Management Strategy

"Visit other sites about continence"

Find a toilet by latitude/longitude

Find a toilet by provider

"Some of the toilet counts do not add up. Why?" (in the FAQ)

"How can I use the Toilet Map with my Global Positioning System (GPS) device?" (also in the FAQ)

I need to go and wipe my eyes.

Coping

2007-07-31T20:36:00.000+10:00

I don't think I am. And it's starting to get a bit too much for me.

Job stress

I don't understand my role here. I'm generally given the impression that I'm doing really really well, and there are no problems, and everyone's really pleased with how I'm doing. I'm not, and they're wrong. I'm better-placed to judge than they are, and I don't seem to be able to convince anyone that there are whole swathes of my job that don't make sense to me.

There are large chunks of things that other people do that make no sense either. Mostly things I've now got to live with the legacy of, and in many cases justify on a monthly basis the results of. And I'm sick of it.

"Why is this doing this?" "Because the old system did." "OK, why did the old system do that?" "I don't know you'll have to ask {person who's now left." or "But A doesn't imply B." "It does the way we model things." "Well then the way 'we' model things is wrong, isn't it?!" It took me nearly a day in June to figure out why someone was worried about a pair of numbers in a spreadsheet not being the same as each other (subtle point of Australian regulation that I still don't "feel", it's just words). However, it only took 5 minutes to figure out why they would always and forever be different because neither of them was actually showing what they said they were. (And then another 3 attempts to explain this latter finding to the person who's noticed the former.)

That's not to mention the other swathes of the job that are pointless and unnecessary. Two weeks ago, I was asked to repeat the checks that we did last year on a certain rather monolithic and poorly-understood process. Some of the checks involved things like making sure that, because we were effectively re-doing some work we'd done earlier in the year only going about it in a different way, we ended up with the same answer at the end. "So why don't we just not do it again, and take the numbers we did the first time?" "Because that's how the process works." "Why don't we change it then?" "Too late now, we've already started."

Everything is planned using the reverse timetabling method. When's the due date? OK, then work backwards. If someone ends up being squashed flat by the volume of work needed, that's OK, we'll authorise weekend work (and this isn't always me - there's another person in the department whose only day off since the beginning of June has been the day she had jury duty).

Presentation comes higher up the priority list than accuracy, auditability or amount of work required. E.g., 9am e-mail yesterday. "Friday's meeting said we need to adjust this number by 5m. I've got to present results on the new basis at 11am, so I'd like this fed into the presentation. Don't care how you split it." The number needs splitting into at least 4 pieces, the final split wasn't ready till the end of today, and different splits can change the message given by the results radically. The impacts on the presentation of any given split can be done in your head, whereas actually putting the numbers into the required spreadsheets and getting all the results for the presentation to hang together takes about an hour and a half, and now we have a final split for this, there's another hour and a half's work waiting for someone tomorrow morning to put the real numbers in since, inevitably, the assumed split wasn't the final one.

So, perhaps, an alternative would be to leave the presentation as it is and say "These don't have the effects of the 5m in there, as we haven't finished doing the work to split it properly yet. If the split works like this, the results would be .., and if like this, ..." When I suggested this, the reply was something like "I could, but it's much tidier if the numbers in the presentation are right."

And justifying things with comments like "Ah, but you can't deny we're world-class leaders in spreadsheet complexity" is not demonstrating a helping, constructive or supportive management style.

Financial stress

Direct debits don't really exist here in Australia, at least not in any sort of coordinated "why on earth would you pay bills any other way?" sense that they do in England. This has led to me receiving "final reminder" notices on 3 different accounts so far (in case you're still reading and care at this point, gas, electricity and credit card). I am exactly the sort of person for which direct debits were designed.

Internet banking to the UK is infuriatingly intermittent. Nationwide works about 1 out of 3 days, HSBC's not much better, and I still can't get Tesco's (which is the account of last resort, although given some of the unbudgeted expenditure in the first few months I was here, and that HSBC Oz won't have a bar of transferring money to HSBC UK, it's now borderline first resort) to work, despite re-registering twice and also ringing them (20 minutes on hold at international rates...) They don't know why it doesn't work. So for now, I'm stuck with ringing them to transfer money around.

And then there's Pickfords. I'm not going to go there.

Non-financial stress

I received an "urgent notice" letter 2 weeks ago saying that my health insurance company hadn't received my application form, and that if I didn't send it back to them 4 days ago (given the length of time between the date on the letter and when I got round to opening it) my cover would be cancelled. What it didn't explain was how they'd been charging me premiums for the last 6 months, or how they'd sent me a membership certificate and a welcome letter in February with all my details on. I rang them to explain/complain, and they said they'd now cancelled it and that I'd receive notice of this in the post in the next few days, and I could reapply next month. So that's going to involve some more irate phone calls over the next few days.

My lower right wisdom tooth is hurting nearly enough to make me go to the dentist. In case it's not clear how that's a problem, I tend to put dentists only slightly lower on the "dislikes" list than tarantulas. I've also no idea how much it'll cost, or even how to do it - too many types of dentist here, and it's one of those things that the locals "just understand." I ask, and they end up talking about bulk-billing and Medicare.

Relieving stress (no, not like that, you filthy-minded people)

I don't really have anyone in work that I can let off steam about all this - half of them don't understand a word I say, and most of the other half don't understand what I mean. I can't use e-mail at all any more, and am apprehensive about using the phone, since it leads to too many misunderstandings - I have to see how someone reacts to what I'm saying so I can tell if they've misunderstood me, so virtually everything's face-to-face. There are a number of things that just don't translate - unfortunately, most of them seem to be things I want to say.

I've bent Colm's ear a fair amount with this, for which I'm very grateful, and without which I might have gone postal by now, but it involves some treading on eggshells given he works for a competitor now. Other than that, local pressure release valves are pretty thin on the ground. And talking to someone in the UK via e-mail, or even Skype, just doesn't work that well.

Black holes

So I guess where I would like to end this post is a general apology for being increasingly uncommunicative, rude, slippery, uncontactable and unfriendly over the last 9 months. I really wanted this move to have gone better than it has. An awful lot better than it has. And I think that's probably the most depressing thing about it.

Singular

2007-05-21T18:13:00.001+10:00

Hmmm. Taken me a while to write this one - with good reason!

I have returned from my trip to the "last great wilderness" - not my words, but a reasonably accurate description of the Kimberley in northern WA. Nobody seems to be quite sure whether there's one or many Kimberleys - I've been corrected 3 times when I've said one or the other. I'm sticking with the singular version from now on - sounds nicer.

The Kimberley is really just a very large, almost empty section of Australia. For most of the first 5 days, we were travelling along the Gibb River Road, which was built to enable easier transportation of cattle from the various cattle stations in that area of the country to Wyndham, the nearest convenient port. I dread to think how they must have done it before the road was built, as it's basically just a 600-mile-long dirt track. This was about as good as it got. All that way and we didn't actually even see the Gibb River!

First real stop on day 1 (barring toilet breaks like the one in Derby, where there was one toilet for 15 people - until another bus of 30-odd turned up, then the blokes realised there were lots and lots of trees...) was lunch by a large pool in a creek. The Gibb River Road ran over a bridge over this creek where it entered the pool. It was, for some reason, a condition of travel with Western Xposure, that we jump into every pool of water from any available high thing nearby - 15 feet or so, didn't look too bad from beneath, quite scary from above! Second stop for the day was Tunnel Creek, a 1km tunnel all the way through a limestone escarpment carved by a creek. Hence the name! This was interesting, but not quite as spectacular as I'd been expecting. It was the hideout for a local Aboriginal "Ned Kelly" figure about 100 years ago, and we went into the area of the cave where he'd lived - totally dry at the moment (it being the Dry - see later), but filled with some quality, and very sparkly, stalactites and stalagmites.

We spent most nights at reasonably well-defined campsites, and the first night was a short hop from Tunnel Creek at Windjana Gorge, where it was suggested that we don't go wandering, as we might encounter crocodiles. The gorge is an amazing place - like several of the spots we visited, I would like to have spent more time there. Then on to Bell Gorge (in what became something of a theme - I think, on the original plan, we'd have seen at least one gorge per day!) This is one of the most well-known gorges in the Kimberley, and it was quite busy (relatively) - there were 4 or 5 other people there when we turned up. More swimming and jumping ensued. Then quite a bit more driving, till we got to ...

Manning River and Gorge, which was a lovely place. It was full of woollybutts, a beautiful flowering gum tree whose name I am unable to type correctly at first attempt, and boabs or bottle trees, which look like someone's attached a pump to a normal tree and left it to inflate for an hour. I was head chef for our first barbie (my first time in charge at an Aussie barbie!), and this was the site of our introduction to the Clinker game.

This needs some digression. The only Aussies on the trip were a 50-something couple who'd not grown up past about 25 - they were great! About 20 years ago, when their children were very young, they invented the Clinker game. Clinkers are an Australian sweet, which don't have a UK equivalent sweet I can say they're like - it's got a centre like a Malteser, but somewhat harder, is shaped like a rugby ball, and is coated in chocolate. The key to the game is that the centre comes in one of three colours, pink, green or yellow. So everyone sits in a circle and is given a Clinker, and takes it in turn to guess the colour of the centre, before biting it in half and revealing the centre to the adjudicator. Those who succeed in "becoming the Clinker" and getting the colour right advance to the next round, which repeats until either a draw (everyone in a round gets their colour wrong ... or the bag of Clinkers runs out!) or an outright victory (only one person in a round gets theirs right). At this point, they are crowned the Undisputed Clinker Master. At least until the next game starts.

Greg and Sue swear they're going to patent this game at some point!

The third day was my favourite of the whole trip. Firstly, we walked down to the river itself at the bottom end of the campsite. And then swam across it, towing our valuables in the conveniently-provided polystyrene boxes! Then an hour or so's slog across rocky outcrops and sandy soil, surrounded by ghost gums, till we reached Manning Gorge and its wonderful waterfall and swimming pool. (And jump-off point...) I found its rainbow, although couldn't get the camera there as it would have drowned, and spent a bit of time chatting to someone from Queensland who'd got there on a motorbike trip with his 2 mates, a third of the way round a 10-week tour of the northern coast of Oz. After we headed off from here, we stopped for lunch by Galvan's Gorge, the best place of the trip - plenty of swimming, rope-swinging (with the obligatory big splash in the water at the end) and waterfall massages. Plus Steve, the insane guide, jumped off the top of the waterfall - a jump of about 15m.

Then several hours of driving, till we reached our camp in the middle of the bush - weren't sure we'd be getting back out of it after Steve drove down to it off the road on a 30-odd degree gravel slope. Here we had al fresco toilet facilities, damper (aka bush bread) cooked by the fair hand of Steve, and honey and soy beef stir fry, cooked by the fair hand of me (I ended up in charge of food quite a few times!) - this almost ended in disaster, as we found out just in time that Anna was allergic to nuts. 100 miles from anywhere is not where you want someone to go into anaphylactic shock. We were surrounded by dingoes that night too, and we could hear them howling through the night.

At this point, I should mention the American. Richard. He was very definitely an American. Complaining about everything (including, as far as I could work out, the fact that there weren't many facilities at the campsites we were staying at - we were in the bloody Outback, you fool!) His wife, Jenny, was Scottish, and, to quote Steve, "not the brightest cookie in the jar." She's one of those people that need to be told everything about everything on a trip (the morning she spent in the driver's cab with Steve nearly ended with him killing her until he asked Anne Marie to swap with her). They insisted on placing their tent as far away from everyone else's as they could, and that really set the tone for them for the whole trip. He started to get on my nerves when I overheard him talking about me to some of the other people that night when I wasn't supposed to be able to hear - nothing bad in itself, but that sort of thing annoys me (and brought back memories of PV=nRT in Venezuela...) So he was off my Christmas card list from then on - and much of the subsequent days he moved himself further and further off it!

And so to day 4, and El Questro station. This is a former cattle station that's turned itself into a bit of a Wild West dude ranch, and gets so many visitors that I had a bit of a Beach moment at the bar that evening and had to go off back to the forest where we were camped out. It has some amazing things to see though - Zebedee Springs (yes, they have both the Magic Roundabout and a sense of humour here!) which are rock pools fed by hot springs, far too many gorges to count (of which we visited Amalia and had it to ourselves for over an hour) and the slowest taps in the world - Steve asked me to go fill our 50 litre water barrel. It took 40 minutes. And cold ginger beer too! Plenty of wildlife around, and it was here that I saw my first kookaburra.

Day 5, and the end of the Gibb River Road, and back to tarmac. A brief detour to Wyndham (spelt correctly, unlike the Gibb River signmakers) and the Five Rivers Lookout (Durack, King, Ord, Pentecost and ... another one), and a snack stop at Doon Doon roadhouse where I had the bittersweet experience of eating a Mrs Mac's Chilli and Cheese pie in 38C temperatures, then a long drive down to the Bungle Bungles. The national park in which they live is reached via a 50km dirt road that was in a lot worse state than the Gibb River Road. We stopped to have lunch by one of the fords across the various creeks the track crosses. Rangers station about 3.30 (having left the tarmac at about 12, with an hour or so for lunch).

The Bungles were, unfortunately, a washout. In 16 years, Steve claims never to have seen rain in May at the Bungles (this part of the world has two seasons, the Wet from Nov to mid-Apr, and the Dry from mid-Apr to Oct). 2 hours or so after we arrived (fortunately after we'd pitched the tents and got the fire going) it began to rain a little. Then a bit more. Then more. Then it started pissing it down. Then a bit more. Then... well, you get the idea. Most of the tents were about an inch deep in rainwater inside the tents the following morning, as the rain covers had bowed under the pressure of the rain, touched the inner tent, and leaked through. As the creeks were now at risk of flash floods, and the dirt track was in a bit of a state, the park was closed to both entrants and departees - we were stuck in there. At one point, there was even talk that it could be 4 or 5 days before we'd be permitted to leave! Still, it wasn't a complete write-off as far as the holiday went. With the exception of the American, we actually saw it as a bit of a bonding experience. The first night, we told ghost stories and played Shithead (an apparently universal card game, which I have now played on 4 different continents) on the bus.

On day 6, during a relatively long rain break, we played cricket with one of the groups in the neighbouring camps, set up a tarpaulin big enough for us all to be miserable together under, and played "Strand the Ants" (where you put a small rock covered in ants into the centre of a puddle, and see whether any of them can swim). There was also Blindfold Karaoke (which wasn't fun), Charades (which was) and Celebrity Heads (I was Victoria Beckham - "Am I an entertainer?" "Well, you'd like to think you are." gave me the answer!) by the campfire.

Day 7 dawned, and we got the go-ahead to leave, in convoy with everyone else staying in the park. A somewhat tense 3 hours later, and Steve pulled onto the tarmac to a round of applause. From there, we intended to make a 250km slog all the way to our campsite at Kununurra. However, a happy circumstance arose. As we stopped for lunch at a service station, we noticed helicopter flights over the Bungles were being run from just down the road. Enquiries were made. Affirmatives were received. We were going to see the Bungles! (And from a helicopter, my first time in one.) A fairly amazing (and stifling too - we'd asked for the doors to be left off, for better photos and more "realistic" experience, but the pilot obviously thought I would be cold in my T-shirt and shorts (temperatures were a frigid 24C - it was nearly the middle of winter, after all), so he put the heaters on! I was sweating like anything when we got out!) 45 minutes later, we landed again, happy to have seen the Bungles in some way. The night at Kununurra was punctuated by our trip to their carnival, at which we saw quite a good local band, and Anne Marie was asked if she knew Lily, who was also from Ireland.

Day 8, and dawn was, happily, spent by the side of Lake Kununurra, one of several artificial lakes resulting from damming projects in the area. First to Mirima National Park, which is similar to, but on a much smaller scale than, the Bungle Bungles. Then to a rum distillery (or hoochery - officially, as the guy who owns the place has patented that as a name for his outfit) where I did have a shot, and also an extremely nice slice of chocolate rum cake. Thence to Lake Argyle, a much bigger artificial lake, which is used for ... well, not much really. It was intended partly as a hydro power station and partly for agriculture, but neither have really taken off, so it's just a lake that contains 17 times as much water as Sydney Harbour sat in the middle of nowhere. (They're actually considering building a pipeline from it to Perth to help shore up the city's almost non-existent reservoirs - Perth's only about 2000 miles away.) Many semi-tame birds around, including these two who sat still and posed for us for a while. The rest of the day involved a fairly long drive to our final campsite, punctuated only by our entry into the Northern Territory, the only mainland state I hadn't visited before.

For our final night, we had another barbie, and I was head chef again. Some friendly rivalry ensued in the subsequent clinker game, with Steve having to cheat to keep up with me. In the end, I was crowned Undisputed Clinker Master (the only one of the trip, no less), so I did a lap of victory. Around Steve.

Our last day was not terribly exciting - we were about 600km from Darwin, where we needed to end up at, so it was mostly driving. We did stop for lunch and a swim at Edith Falls which was quite a nice place, but unremarkable by comparison to some of the other places we'd been. It did have a little river-rapids section though, and a blowhole where Steve scared Greg quite a bit! Darwin itself seemed a reasonably nice little town, but it's a lot smaller than York and you can walk around it in about 20 minutes - filled with backpackers, for some reason. This, actually, was a good thing, as it meant Michael and I (who were flying out of Darwin that night) could have showers ... once I asked the Scouse lady serving behind the desk in my best Netherton accent if it would be OK for us to use their showers, even if we weren't staying there. After a "night out on the town" with everyone else to say goodbye, Michael and I headed off to the airport. Once there, I tried to smuggle a penknife through the airport security scanners. Unwittingly - I could have sworn I'd put it in my main bag! This being Australia, they were relaxed about it, and gave me it back and suggested I go and check it in (in my rucksack) as hold baggage.

And that's where the holiday really came to an end. A 2am flight that was delayed till 3am, arriving at 7am in Melbourne, and I was in work by 9.30! (In body, at least - I was decidedly not there mentally for most of the day!)

All in all, an excellent holiday, marred only by the weather in the Bungles, and by that bloody American.

Spoken Highlights

"Poor little fucker."
"This is Qantas flight QF429."
"I thought your fingernails looked spotless."
"Pink."
"The family that squats together stays together."
"Do you know Lily?"
"Thunderbirds do the Beegees."
"Night Fever, Night Feeeeeeveeeeer."
"Jen, can you hop out? The trailer door's opened up again."
"I think I was up to about 46 by the time you jumped!"
"Did you move my tent?"

Newsround

2007-04-28T10:57:00.000+10:00

This from my brother - this guy was not someone I ever liked at school.

This from the looney-tunes news archive.

We came joint 4th in the company quiz last night, out of 12 teams. One reason for our downfall : "A smack or smock is the collective noun for which group of water-dwelling animals?" Our answer - hippopotamus. Really.

Other questions, for which we were glad the team was half-local, included "Name 5 of the 7 golf courses in Melbourne that begin with the letter K?", "In the children's story The Magic Pudding, which two animals stole the pudding : possum and koala, koala and wombat or wombat and possum?" and "Who won 4 of the first 5 Iron Man championships, and for a bonus point, what type of vegetable did he farm?"

Seen on a T-shirt

2007-04-26T20:16:00.000+10:00

Haikus are easy,
but sometimes they don't make sense.
Refrigerator.

Laughter Tracks

2007-04-18T21:40:00.000+10:00

It's Melbourne's Comedy Festival this month, and I think this morning's tram driver was trying to drum up support for himself to be part of it. This came on the speaker as we were going past the hospital this morning :

"As you're exiting the tram, please watch out for all the crazy drivers who are in a mad rush to get to work. In the event that you fail to avoid a crazy driver, you may win a free stay at the lovely hotel you'll see to your left. Alternatively, you might win a trip to the coroner's office in a black zip-up bag."

Subtle difference #1749 - my local supermarket has 2 ways into the shopping area.

Two Englishmen Abroad

2007-04-09T17:38:00.000+10:00

Yes, it's true. I was joined for my weekend by another Englishman, who goes by the name of Psycho Hamster when he's not in real life.

We have had an absolutely excellent weekend. The weather's been perfect for all 4 days (including not a single cloud all day Saturday, and just one very small one that followed us for most of Sunday), and it's been in the late twenties the whole time. Great weather for walking in the windy Grampians. This is the autumn everyone's been promising me for months.

First and foremost, I should definitely give special mention to the car. I got a staff discount on the car rental, so went for a slightly higher-end car than I would normally have done, and we ended up with a Mitsubishi 380. Aka the sun mobile, the brightest car in the sky, or the monstrosity. It was a vivid metallic yellow. Not gold, yellow. We think one of the wild wallabies we saw was so confused at seeing the sun come round the corner towards it and brake sharply that it froze to stare.

That wasn't all, though. An insistent beeping was to be heard once we reached the freeway and I could put my foot down. I thought it was my phone saying no signal, but after turning that off, the beeping still occurred, and at somewhat irregular intervals. I finally noticed that it was a speed alarm, on the car! Going over 120 kmh (which has nothing to do with any Australian speed limits - they're all 110 or lower) set off the beeping, and a little indicator on the dashboard. An urgent flick through the manual, and we had that turned off. Back to breaking the law in relative silence.

But there was still more to come from the car. We'd been going about 2 hours, and I was starting to get a little tired, and we'd suggested swapping over shortly when there was a scenic route off through the hills. As if it had heard, the car told me to have a cup of coffee. Seriously. It had a warning alarm to stop you from driving for too long without a break. As I didn't really believe it, I took a photo :

We followed this up a bit later by inventing a tongue twister based on an Australian road sign - "Due to disdaining his doze, Dave the drowsy driver died a dreadful death." It's not very easy to say...

Friday and Saturday were spent walking in the Grampians. There are dozens of walks in the area, of varying degrees of difficulty and length, but a large number are closed at the moment because of recent bushfires. Still, all of the ones in the north of the park are open, so we visited Mackenzie Falls, Mount Stapylton, Silent Street and the Pinnacle. Good Friday came to a particularly good end with an accidental viewing of the Princess Bride and then to a Mexican restaurant in Horsham where they allowed me to pick the hotness of my chilli on a scale of 1 to 10. That was a good restaurant...

Saturday evening involved a spotlighting tour, not something I've ever done before. You go out into the bush with a torch and 10 of your closest (and hopefully quietest) friends, and hope desperately that you see some animal's eyes reflecting back at you out of the dark. It was, somewhat bemusingly, preceded by a Powerpoint presentation showing various animals and the sounds they make, in order to assist with our future recognition of said animals. However, it was not a good night - firstly, we discovered that Orion is called the Saucepan here. Secondly, our tally of animals spotted was :

1 ring-tailed possum

2 bats

5 golden orb spiders

1 wolf spider

I would have preferred to see none at all than the last one! Golden orb spiders are tiny. Wolf spiders are not.

Amazing view of the Milky Way on the way home, though.

Sunday started with us being undercharged for the hotel - $130 (about £55) for two nights. (This made it approximately 1/4 the price of Sunday's motel!) Then a good drive south to the coast via several one- and, in some cases, even no-horse towns. This is what driving in Australia is supposed to be like - perfectly straight roads that take you from where you are to where you want to go without anything else to worry about, like turning your wheel, or other cars.

We arrived at Warrnambool about lunchtime, stopped for a quick pizza, and then headed on to the road again. The rest of the afternoon, driving along the Great Ocean Road on what turned out to be the 75th anniversary of its opening, was a little strange. I've been there before, and 2 years ago, I would never have seriously expected that one day it'd be a 2 hour drive away, rather than a 24-hour flight. I also kept getting reminders of the previous trip, including seeing the same drivers of the bus company I went with 2 years ago, and accidentally eating tea in the same place I'd had lunch in last time. It was as good as I remember it, if an awful lot more busy in places (12 Apostles being a case in point). I'm going to put together a Flickr "Before and After" photo gallery, as the two days are quite a contrast in terms of sea and lighting conditions.

On the way back yesterday, we stopped at Kennet River, a place I'd seen koalas here in 2005. Sure enough, they were still here - 10 or 12 of them that we saw. Then to Erskine Falls ("best after rain" - they weren't wrong. Since it hasn't really rained here for about 3 months ... well, "Falls" was probably false advertising.) Aireys Inlet was a random stop, which became much more rewarding when we found out the lighthouse we'd decided to visit there was where they filmed Round the Twist. We also tried to go and see the surfing championships at Bells Beach, but as it was such a calm day, there was nothing happening.

And then back home, for about 5 pm, leaving Psycho Hamster to drive the monstrosity back to the airport and thence catch his plane home to Sydney.

The Art of Conversation Lives On

2007-03-28T22:36:00.000+10:00

Mark "Hello, Western Exposure, this is Mark speaking."
Chris "Hello, I'm calling about a booking I made at the weekend for one of your Broome-Darwin tours. I mistyped the e-mail address, so I'm ringing to find out what's going on with the booking."
Mark "Oh, hi, it's Chris isn't it? Yeah, I've booked that for you already."
Chris [surprised pause] "Yes, that's me. That's good news, but I haven't actually had an e-mail about it yet, though."
Mark "Oh, have you not? Hmmm. I thought I'd sent you one - I remember doing something with it on Sunday morning, but I had had a few beers the night before. Or maybe it was Monday. I'd had a few beers that night too."
Chris [suppressing giggles] "Oh, OK. I'll have another look for it.... No, I've had nothing."
Mark "Ah well, I remember sending the e-mail off to your wrong address, then opening the next one in our inbox and that was from you with the right address - you'd swapped a G for an E, hadn't you? Maybe I didn't send the second one - sorry about that."
Chris "You have a pretty good memory considering you'd had a few beers!"
Mark "Ah cheers mate. I also charged your credit card a bit early - we're only supposed to do that 4 weeks before. I probably shouldn't have done that."
Chris "Well, that's all right - it's only a week or so early."
Mark "The PC that stuff all lives on has been put to sleep for the night so I'll get on to sending you another e-mail out first thing tomorrow."
Chris "Excellent, thanks - hope tonight's beers are great for you."
Mark "Sure they will be, mate!"

That's not quite verbatim, but it isn't too far off! I put the phone down and collapsed in fits of laughter.

The aforementioned trip is this one, and I'm going in the middle of May, when I'm not likely to get myself either roasted alive or drowned in a flash flood. As far as I'm concerned, the two main highlights are visiting the Bungle Bungles, something I can remember wanting to do since Helen Daniels went there in Neighbours, and driving through a town called Humpty Doo. After this, I'll only have one state left that I haven't yet visited - Tasmania. That one I need to save for next summer, though, as it has a decidedly British climate for most of the rest of the year.

On a holiday theme with this post, Colm and I are going to do a bit of a grand tour of Victoria over the Easter weekend. We're off to the Grampians, to do plenty of walking and animal-spotting (although I've just discovered that due to bushfires in the area last year, many of the walks I'd most wanted to do are closed - can't go here or here (main photo) for example). Then we'll drive back to Melbourne along the coast, taking in the Great Ocean Road and a couple of state parks along the way. Likely exhausting (it'll be somewhere around 1000 km of driving) but fun!

If You Can't Beat 'Em

2007-03-19T19:11:00.000+11:00

Australian - English "Business Speak" Dictionary

(with Australian on the left)

"All over" (syn. "all across") (adj) = "Up to speed on"
"Catch up with" (v) = "Have a meeting with"
"Present" (v) = "Tell", "Say", "Discuss", "Communicate" (NB - "present" is frequently used as an intransitive verb ... e.g. "Richard's not here for next month's meeting, so I'll have to present instead.")
"would quite like" (v) = "must not fail to provide, upon pain of sacking" (NB - for added emphasis, "would really like" can be used)
"war story" (n) = "past example to illustrate discussion point"
"extrenuous" (adj) = "extraneous" (this might be just one particular person saying this one - it's starting to be on a par with "Where are the model points?" for me)
"objective criteria" (n) = "whoever shouts loudest / has most influence / asks most politely"
"solved problem" (n) = "problem which has been looked at in a cursory manner and a possible solution has been suggested, but which will take many months to actually implement and requires significant further work before a complete answer can be given" (Personal gripe here. A quote from Friday : "Chris has solved problem X." Chris's version : "Chris has identified a problem exists, and has been able to find one thing which explains around 25% of the error, but has many disagreeing sources of data to reconcile (5 - all different but purporting to be the same!) before he can progress any further towards deciding which one, if any, is actually right." Fine if this means I get credit for doing a fraction of the work needed, but there's an obvious catch to that if the problem occurs again.)

Some other things I've found odd or difficult to get to grips with.

It's dark when I get up in the morning now! (I know this happens in England too, but because of when I came here, and the fact I used to get up later in the UK, it's been about a year since it last happened to me.)

The heat. It's not nearly as bad as it was in Jan and Feb, but now it's more the way it builds throughout the day. Many times I've noticed that it's hotter when I'm leaving the office in the early evening than it was at lunchtime, and once or twice, it's been hotter still at sunset.

Personal space. Hadn't really noticed this one till the last few weeks, but Australians, while their "default" personal space is of a similar size to that in Britain, they're relatively uncaring if that does get invaded. Several times people have brushed against my hand in a way that would probably have led to a criminal investigation if I'd initiated it. One guy appeared not to even see me until he banged his head on my chin when the tram braked sharply. And tonight's jam-packed tram, where the driver had to ask some people to get off and take the next tram because he couldn't close the doors, was quite unbelievable.

Spiders. Saw my first significantly-sized one in the house on Saturday, and was surprisingly unmoved by it. Would have been a different story if it had been this one however! (Jumping?!)

And finally...I think I'm safe from being evicted if the landlord sells the house, as is his current intention. He showed some people round today (which gave me a good incentive to finally unpack everything and give the place a good tidy!) and gave me the impression there are several others on the way. According to my reading of the tenancy agreement and of the stuff I was given when I moved in, I don't think the agreement can be ended before its official end date unless I'm a bad tenant.

Post Script

2007-03-08T19:56:00.000+11:00

People in Australia say nice things about you when you've had a haircut. They don't point and say "Haircut! Haircut!" like they do in the UK.

They also do odd things like knock on your door on a Sunday morning, and ask if you'd like to sub-let your garage to a friend.

Long weekend again this weekend, only this time it's a freebie - Monday is a public holiday, Labour Day. (For some reason, despite the fact that Australians spell all the -out words correctly, you also see Labor as a valid spelling a lot - one of the two main political parties (currently in opposition) is the Labor Party, who have somehow lost their U.) Each of the states has one or more unique public holidays - this one is technically an Australia-wide one, but it's on different days in different states. Tassie and Victoria have it next week (although Tassie calls it, somewhat inaccurately, Eight Hours Day), Western Australia had it this week, Queensland and Northern Territory have it in May, and it's in October for the other three states, NSW, ACT and South Australia.

Educational!

Break of Day

2007-03-05T19:56:00.000+11:00

A brief celebratory post - I have just watched the final episode of the excellent, well-written and involving mini-series Day Break. This confirms one of the reasons I don't bother to have a TV - this, one of the few series I really enjoy watching, gets cancelled halfway through its run. Thank goodness they'd filmed the whole thing before it was canned, and for once an American media company thought it was a good idea to release a program on the Web.

Watch it as soon as you can.

A Load Off My Mind

2007-03-04T21:17:00.000+11:00

My first ever haircut abroad. As has now become usual over the last 4 months, it's the little differences that stand out.

I've only ever had my hair cut in four different places (no, not fringe, top, back and sides, the other kind of places) - a barber in Burscough, one in Ormskirk and two in York. Even when I was at Uni, I used to go back to the same place in Burscough to get it done - always easier when you don't have to describe what you want doing, and can just say "The usual, please."

Firstly, the barber (and, I assume, his wife, who was also cutting hair in the place) was foreign. And not just foreign like me, really foreign (I'd guess Polish or Czech from the language and how they looked). This reminded me vaguely of the first of the two places I went to in York, namely the Mediterranean Barber's on Goodramgate. Given this guy had a beard, I didn't expect to be offered a blowtorch-based shave like I was in York.

The conversation on sitting down in the chair began as normal. Didn't follow quite its usual path though :

"How do you want it?"
{describes desired haircut}
"You want it cut with scissors?"
{pause} "Yes please."

At this point, he pulled a few sheets off the toilet roll that was sat at the back of the chair, and wrapped them round my neck, then covered me with the usual tent-like thing to protect me from my own hair.

A significant plus point in his favour was that he didn't attempt to engage me in conversation. I'd prepared myself for the expected gregarious Aussie, with enough innocuous and inoffensive chatter to see me through 20 minutes or so of haircutting. Not needed for this dour Eastern European - he spoke only to clarify a few things in terms of how I wanted my hair doing.

Looking around, needing something to do with my eyes, I spotted the ultraviolet steriliser and the macassar hair oil. Yes, I had been transported back to the 1950s!

After I'd said I was happy with the cut, two odd things then ensued.

Firstly, he got a metal comb/brush contraption out and started to rub it quite hard through my hair while pointind a hairdryer at it. This was somewhat painful - he was pressing quite hard, and it was quite sharp - but I think it worked quite well. Very few bits of hair left over when I walked out - usually I'm still finding bits of hair around my clothes the following day.

The other piece of weirdness, something I still don't understand, was he put some powder onto a brush (shaped like a giant shaving brush attached to a milk bottle) and proceeded to rub it quite hard into the back and sides of my neck. Any ideas?

The prices were also somewhat 1950s - I think it's about 10 years since I paid that little for a haircut. $17! (That's less than £7.)

And last but not least - as a result of my haircut, temperatures have now fallen around Victoria to a pleasant (but not haircut-inducing) 22C. Autumn is nearly here.

The Red Rag

2007-02-27T20:09:00.000+11:00

An e-mail I received today :

Over the years, Allied Pickfords has built a reputation for quality by listening and responding to the needs and expectations of our customers. We understand that the days and weeks following an international move are busy for our customers as they settle into their new homes, but we ask that you take a few minutes out of your busy day to provide us with feedback following your move.

The drivers, packers, sales, and office staffs that planned, packed, transported, and delivered your move are proud of the work they do and are interested to hear your comments. We will pass on praise and investigate criticism in order to help us continue to make enhancements to the overall quality of our international moving services.

Thank you in advance for your comments and thanks again for using Allied Pickfords for your international move.

I might spread the reply to this one over a few days - don't want to have too much fun all at once.

Out and About

2007-02-25T22:24:00.000+11:00

400 kilometres I've driven today! I'm a little bit sleepy now. It's been a really good day, despite the usual few near-fiascos. Weather was perfect - very sunny, but with a strong cool wind, so it's only been early twenties all day, which is far better for being outdoors than the last few weekends. Of course, it does mean all the Aussies wear heavy coats, which is still quite funny to see (although I'm sure I look like someone from Newcastle out on the town to them!)

First fiasco was not getting to Hanging Rock yesterday (which, as I shall soon relate, actually turned into a separate fiasco of its own). The computer desk I bought in Ikea on Friday was just a little too big to fit into the car, no matter how many ways I tried to angle it. So I had to get it delivered. I wasn't too fussed about that, as I'd managed to get into the 8-12 time slot. At 2.20, they turned up unapologetically and dropped my stuff off. I could probably have gone out at that point, but I was feeling tired from having been woken up by the leafblowing man across the street at 7.45.

So, today began more successfully, and after a couple of wrong turns in Melbourne itself and parking up to look at the Melways, first real stop was Hanging Rock. This appears to be turning into a new Top Gun for me (was 2003 before I finally saw the film, despite having tried several times in the 15 or so intervening years since its release). I hope it's not going to be as much of a let-down as that was! Today was the day The Age, the Melbourne newspaper, had decided to hold its annual Picnic at Hanging Rock celebratory picnic, it being almost (but not quite!) the nearest Sunday to the date on which the schoolgirls purportedly disappeared. That meant about somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand other people converging on the same spot, and them charging $18 just to get in (normally $5) and the cafe was closed so I wouldn't even have been able to eat anything. Back to the car...

So then to the Organ Pipes National Park. An unfortunate position barely half a kilometre from the freeway, and less than a kilometre from a drag-racing track, means the park isn't quite the idyll of peace and tranquillity you get from the average UK national park, but it's still very pretty - kind of a dry-land Giant's Causeway, with the same underlying geological cause. Here's my take on the pipes themselves :

And finally, Portsea. Unfortunately, I didn't get to Point Nepean, overlooking the Rip, as it was closed by the time I arrived. However, there are two strongly contrasting beaches to enjoy - Back Beach and Bay Beach. The Bay Beach is utterly calm, barely a ripple, and the 100m jetty out into Port Phillip Bay allows you to see how clear the water is - you can see right to the bottom. Back Beach is a little different. Facing out onto Bass Strait, it's filled with powerful currents, big rollers and spray everywhere (mmmm, salty beard) - not a place to go swimming (and it was only a mile or so away that Harold Holt, whom I mentioned the other day, lost his life). Pretty exclusive place (as the Wikipedia shows, average house prices are around £400K, and it's the most affluent postcode in the whole country). There were 5 houses just along the main street with tennis courts in the gardens, and one house that's one of the most fascinating I've ever seen - it was laid out rising up a gently-sloping hill, and all glass, with a staircase running inside along the whole length of the house - being glass, you could see the whole staircase. Looked like a fairly novelly-designed house.

Aussieisms I've picked up today. Provincial doesn't have any negative connotations here - it's a commonly-used food adjective, and means something similar to the way we'd use "country," like "country vegetable soup". Then there's the marketing-spin-inspired sale justification "carbon-damaged" - i.e. fire damage. Also saw a sign warning me that tiredness can kill, so I should stop and have a 15-minute powernap.

So now I'm going to finish off my road trip by having 30 or so consecutive powernaps.

Bright Ideas

2007-02-22T22:09:00.000+11:00

The Blair UK government is well-known for its idiotic ideas. On-the-spot fines where you would be frogmarched to the nearest ATM. The A* grade in GCSEs. The Millennium Dome. Harriet Harman.

The Aussie government appears to be competing with them. From 2010, it will no longer be possible to buy the traditional incandescent light bulb. Only the fluorescent energy-saver bulbs will be on sale. This is expected to reduce the country's carbon emissions by, if I use the most optimistic estimate I could find, as much as 0.1%.

I'm somewhat torn over this one. While I do think we should be doing our best not to completely strip the planet of its resources before we've figured out where we can get refills, I would think that there are other things that could be encouraged to help with this. E.g. charging shops and offices high electricity rates after normal opening hours, so they're not encouraged to leave all their lights blazing because it might deter a burglar and it "doesn't cost much". The sooner economists come up with a sensible measure to replace GDP that factors in intangible costs the better.

(I also noticed this was in the news today, so it appears that they're also not averse to plagiarism.)

Plans for the long weekend - I'm using up one of my time-off-in-lieu days I got for working silly hours in January :

- Visit some gardening stores and buy a garden table and some local plants (local, hence drought-resistant ... I can only water my plants on Tuesday, Thursday and alternating Saturday nights, as I live in an even-numbered house. This is not a joke - see above re crazy Aussie ideas.)
- Visit furniture stores, to purchase a bed, a dining table and chairs and a sofa (which will largely complete my arrival, at least in a purely materialistic sense. Might think about getting a telly at some point in the future, but I'm really not missing having one)
- Visit Hanging Rock, something I failed to do a few weeks ago. (One of my colleagues told me a story which is probably only amusing if you've seen the film or are at least vaguely aware of the legend. She and some of her friends once went there dressed as Victorian schoolgirls, didn't realise the park closed at 5 so happily carried on walking, and the rangers found them after a major search 2 hours later. Well, I laughed!)
- Visit some other local tourist spot, which I haven't decided on yet. Might be The Rip - the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, on which Melbourne stands, one of the most dangerous stretches of coast in the country, and also where an Aussie prime minister named Harold vanished while swimming. (The disappearance of Harold Bishop was definitely a case of art imitating life, though, as the real Harold, Harold Holt, disappeared in 1967.)

My stuff did arrive on 7th Feb. Mostly, anyway. There were 3 mishaps. In increasing order of irritation - first, my stereo had been slightly dented on the top but remained perfectly functional, second, a corner about 2 inches long broke off my coffee table and third, they lost one of my packages altogether. Of the 24 packages they shipped, it was definitely the "best" one they could have lost - all it was was a sheet of plywood which formed the back of my flat-pack bookcase, and fortunately they sell wood over here, I've seen it advertised.

Stupid newspaper statistics misuse #1379845 - see the 22 Feb item here. Will people ever understand probability?

And to finish, a last memory of Venezuela - my tentmate Mark, a photographer and travel journalist by night (by day he works as tech support for a major insurance company), wrote this article on the trip. If you look carefully, you can see me swimming in one of the photos (if I'm honest, you really need to know that it's me there in the first place!) Note also the scary three-armed fruit-seller.

Four-figure Furniture

2007-02-06T22:14:00.000+11:00

I hired a car at the weekend, and spent a 4-figure sum on furniture, food and other large not-easy-to-carry items. I was supposed to go to Hanging Rock which is about 100k north of Melbourne, but I was quite glad I spent over an hour on Skype talking about pie-shaped vegetables on Sunday morning (see picture below) - it gave the weather time to ramp up from a pleasant mid-20s to its peak of 38. It'd have been early 40s up at Hanging Rock if I'd gone when I'd been planning to!

So, tomorrow marks a few milestones for me.

7th Feb 2005 was "the longest day ever" - 41 hours for me, as I flew over the Date Line on my way from Sydney to Calgary (via an unwelcoming LA Customs department)

7th Feb 2002 was my first ever "real" job interview (I ended up having a pretty non-event interview for originally getting into the actuarial profession as I was the only applicant for the job who had a degree, let alone a relevant one!)

7th Feb 1992 was the day my best friend's mother died of cancer (and on the same day, the mother of some other friends, twin brothers, also died of cancer).

7th Feb 2007 was the day on which the stuff I had shipped to Oz finally came back to stay with me, after a detour via Brisbane (where I've never been - I'm jealous!) and a stay in Customs of suspicious duration - having arrived in Brissie on 28th December, they were finally released less than 2 hours after I shouted at someone at Pickfords about it.

I really hope I'm not jumping the gun on that last one!

6th Feb 2007 is also a little milestone of its own - I've been here 3 months today. And what a quarter of a year it's been.

It's reasonably indicative of how the three weeks following my last post have panned out that my blog's URL has disappeared from my browser's history. Must write more often. 2007 has definitely not been an enjoyable year so far. The first 19 days of it were solid work, and no time to do or even think about much else. Then my first day off was supposed to be spent at the tennis, but instead it rained, rained and then rained some more - the one day in 3 months that it rains for more than 15 minutes during the daytime (not exaggerating here either!) and it's the day I least want it to rain.

The following two weeks have spent with me getting ever more stressed out over the way things are done here, and feeling less and less able to do anything about it as I don't know enough about the business to know if things are being done that way because they need to be or whether it's just because. And several people are quite inimical (and that's the right word) to changing what they do.

I do need some positives to balance that all out, as it would be unfair to say I've not enjoyed some things here. My department contains mostly fun people, and I can have amusing, if inoffensive, conversations with most of them. The learning has been enjoyable - I didn't feel like I'd been getting much development out of my role the last year in York, whereas I think the last 3 months have covered off my CPD requirements till 2013 or thereabouts (and the next 21 months will probably set me up there for life). On the food front, accessible sushi and juice bars make up for a world of hurt (especially guava juice). Living in a big city is good - there's a shop somewhere that sells anything (e.g. this one! Shame they couldn't find a shop selling a web designer though...) I've skipped winter. I've played tennis on a rooftop court. My sense of humour translates well. The bushfire smoke days were amazing.

On the whole, though, the negatives have outweighed the positives.

It feels very materialistic to say that I hope things will turn around a little when my gear arrives tomorrow. I shouldn't really feel different as a result of "just stuff."

Miss Understandings

2007-01-15T22:51:00.000+11:00

The last 2 weeks have been pretty awful. I'm vying with Iasonas for who can work more hours - I've worked at least 4 hours on every single day of 2007 so far. As usual, I'll get through things somehow, I'm just not sure exactly how, or what state my head will be in at that point. So apologies to several people I've been largely ignoring the last couple of weeks - Sunday is the day, I promise.

One thing which has helped is, after a rubbish 12-hour day at work, tracking this down - that certainly cheered me up this evening. As did her dress - I wasn't paying full visual attention to the TV when it was on, and I hadn't noticed the bottom third of it!

The other little grins that have got me through the last few days include :

Which kind of mustard? We've got Dijon or French.

What type of cheese? There's swiss, cheddar or tasty cheese.

Oh, is that what the meeeeeeeemo meant?

There's that annoying American counterintuitive phrase too, "I could care less," that I've started to notice quite a bit this week.

And finally, just over the road from work is one of the Australian Open practice grounds - haven't seen anyone I recognised yet. As it's mostly been populated by women, all either identikit Russians or identikit Chinese, I haven't much of a hope. We're also only about 200m from Lleyton Hewitt's house in Melbourne - no sleep lost over not seeing him around, though.

As I Mean To Go On?

2007-01-07T21:07:00.000+11:00

I hope not. I've been into the office every single day of 2007 so far.

Much as with last year, January's going to be a bit of a hideous month, although with the following three saving graces :

(a) we're due to finish a very big chunk of work on 19/01, rather than 27/01 like last year.
(b) I can have the Net scoreboard for the Australian Open on while I'm working this year.
(c) one of the lead accountants has tickets for the tennis on 20/01 (as do I!) so she's all for making sure we're finished on 19/01!

I reached my 2-month anniversary yesterday. In many ways, it's been quite a hard 2 months (not least understanding the jarringly different regulatory rules here in Oz), but I'm enjoying myself, even if not quite as much as I'd like to be.

A Young Rascal (10 letters)

2006-12-27T19:25:00.000+11:00

"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

2006-12-20T23:03:00.000+11:00

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

2006-12-16T22:01:00.000+11:00

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

2006-12-13T21:13:00.000+11:00

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

2006-12-09T14:41:00.000+11:00

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

2006-12-08T22:40:00.000+11:00

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

2006-12-03T18:26:00.000+11:00

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

2006-12-02T12:45:00.000+11:00

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.

With a Flake, Please

2006-11-29T20:15:00.000+11:00

The “and 99 pence” thing has always annoyed me, chiefly because it shows that the average person is an idiot, to be able to be taken in by such a simple ruse. Which is why I was quite pleased when I learnt that Australians, with their lowest denomination coin being a 5c piece, had essentially done away with all that - till receipts will often show a “rounding” adjustment to shift it to the nearest 5 cents.

Now, I can understand remnants of the 99c practice still hanging around, where you're not paying a fixed price but a rate, e.g. $7.99 per kilo of bananas (I wish – it's currently $12.49, and $7.99'd still be more expensive than the UK!) or 3.4c per minute for phone calls.

What annoys the hell out of me, even more so than the original 99c practice itself, is that there are still any number of individual items that are priced to end in 99c. I bought a phone on Sunday for $49.99. Plus a cent. Why? The 99c practice is disingenuous enough because it's playing on people's psychology and the way we write our numbers. This is going one further – it's giving an item a price which people cannot possibly pay! (Unless they buy 5 things all of which end in a 99. Imagine that as a special offer - "Buy any 5 items and save ... erm, well, 0c really, but if you bought them all separately you'd pay 5c more!")

The Huh? Moments

2006-11-28T21:03:00.000+11:00

This will be an irregularly and (hopefully!) infrequently added-to post, detailing my utter incomprehension when people have said things to me, or, to be entirely fair, the reverse. I may move this off into the sidebar at some point, if there are enough of them.

28/11/2006 - I order a sandwich : "Roast beef, mustard and onions please." "Do you want gravy as well?"

(same conversation) "Which bread would you like?" "What breads have you got?" {she points silently to several loaves on a table}

You Say Potato

2006-11-28T21:01:00.000+11:00

Go on, say it, out loud. Now say tomato. They don't rhyme, at least not in an English accent. They don't rhyme in Strine (Australian accent – to see where it comes from, imagine an Aussie saying “Australian” then speed it up and slur it a bit) either, which is lucky, or I'd end up giggling my way through cookery programs or supermarket food aisles.

However, in Strine, the word data is pronounced in the tomato style, i.e. it's "darter" rather than "dayter."

And can I keep a straight face when I hear it used in the office? (That's a rhetorical question – I'm hoping the answer's obvious.) I've resorted to coughing whenever I hear people say it. I've not had to use it myself yet – I don't think I'll be able to contain myself. (It's not even like it's a particularly rare word – I can easily envisage me needing to use it on an almost daily basis.)

Perhaps I could retain a little foreign colour in my accent, and pronounce it properly. No point going fully native – I'm only here for 2 years.

Snubbed or Why I Should Go to an Optician's

2006-11-27T22:50:00.000+11:00

I've had glasses since I was about 14, but I very rarely wear them. In fact, there are only 2 reasons I do have them – firstly, because I'm just below the legal level of eyesight for driving in the UK, and secondly ... well, actually, there isn't a secondly.

Or at least, there wasn't until I moved to Melbourne.

Melbourne has a rather excellent tram system. It's similar to the Tube in London, but there are many more lines (I count at least 40), it's quite a bit cheaper, and they run to a proper timetable, which means you can plan your stumbling out of bed in the morning to perfection.

What's not so great is when you're waiting for a specific tram. They don't stop at every stop – they only stop on request. If you're on the tram, that's fine – there's a button on the more modern ones, or a funny pull-cord thing on the old ones. Off the tram, and you need to make it obvious to the driver that you'd like to get on. That's also fine – step out of the shelter, or wave your hand, or pick up your bags and look intentful (which may be a word I've just invented – so sue me, I'm feeling inventful at the moment).

If you know it's your tram that's coming.

And that's where reason 2 comes in. I can't actually see the line number on the tram until it's too close for it to stop, so 2 sailed past me yesterday, and I'd have missed another one this lunchtime if it weren't for the pedestrian crossing 50m further down the road meaning I had time to run to the next stop up. As there are 6 different lines running through the stop outside work, this could start to become a problem.

I will probably soon be able to pick out the destinations more easily than the line numbers, but as I haven't got my head round all of those yet (some trams don't go all the way along the lines, so there are 2 different destinations that I've seen on the best homewards tram for me), I'm stuck for the time being with snubbing by the tram drivers.

The Slippery EelSlope

2006-11-27T22:49:00.000+11:00

My nearest takeaway is a Japanese.

And I thought living near the Jaipur Spice was temptation enough.

#1 of x

2006-11-25T20:19:00.000+11:00

19 days, it's taken me. And I jumped as much as usual.

I saw my first Australian spider today (first of this visit, anyway). It was not small (although I've seen ones of similar size in the UK). Unfortunately, I had to walk past it very close by in order to get to the gas meter, so I could get the serial number for it to be connected. Not fun. I was quite glad the serial number is only 6 characters long!

I was also the victim of bad timing today. I had the first call to my recently-acquired Aussie mobile while I was wrestling with an overly full sandwich. Sadly, my voicemail was set at the most hypersensitive setting (and try as I might, I can't change it), so it only rang twice and then switched off, by which time I'd managed to throw chicken and salad all over the table and drop teriyaki sauce all over my T-shirt. I'll just have to speak to them later instead!

I've bought my fridge, but it isn't in the flat yet. It will be delivered "some time in the next week" - I'm slowly learning that Australians have no concept of urgency, which in general is a state of mind I have a great deal of sympathy for, but not when I need a fridge! So I guess I'll be living on takeaways and non-refrigerated food till next week, then. That's not so easy here, not when days can get up to the mid-30s! There's quite a few snack bars and takeaways just round the corner which I will be frequenting. There are also a load of antique stores and wedding shops, for some reason - Armadale is the place to be if you want something old, new, borrowed or blue, with the emphasis on the old.

What Goes Up

2006-11-21T19:27:00.000+11:00

The past few months seem to have been typified by some sort of highly localised and time-bound karma. Every time something positive happens, something else negative balances it out within about ten minutes.

I get my new flat signed for, I find out I can't pay for it except by cash, drawn painfully out of a hole in the wall in 4 £400 blocks.

I get a mobile phone, but it takes 3 days and the same number of calls to Customer Service to get it up and running.

I finally get myself a bank account, but the lady serving me behind the counter is so brain-dead as to not realise that 2 is less than 6 so has to take me through the Australian-resident setting-up process about 90% of the way (15 minutes or so) before realising her mathematical error and having to restart with the recent arrivals process, which takes about 30 seconds.

Or take today's little seesaw - my furniture is all moved in this morning (I could count the 6am wake-up to get to my place for 7.30am delivery as a downside, but it's quite a minor one), but I have neglected to request a fridge. Furniture purchase #1 will therefore be a fridge, unsurprisingly!

On a vaguely related topic, I went to a quite interesting (stated non-ironically) presentation about auditing yesterday - the highlight was my department head (the aforementioned English guy) seeing the delivery of the drinks just before the start of the talk, and finishing his introduction off as "the first presentation I've ever been to where they needed ice, and the first where they've provided sunscreen." (Australia does actually have fridges, but it appears that the staff bar does not. It does however provide sunscreen in an attractive industrial-sized jar, presumably for those playing tennis on the rooftop.)

Further to the topic of refrigeration (which wasn't going to be my theme of the day, but these things happen) - the thermometer has hit a peak of 36C for the second day running (it's nearly 8pm and dark, and the one on the building over the road is still showing 32C). This is not good for recently-arrived British people, especially quite hairy ones. I was quite amused, however, to read the e-mail sent around the office this morning. I'll have to paraphrase, as I don't have it to hand, but the gist was "We asked our building owners to fix our air conditioning in July, when we wouldn't be needing it. They scheduled the work for yesterday and today. Murphy's Law dictates that we should therefore have 2 days with highs of 36C. If you would like to remove your ties, please feel free to do so. We've also provided you with free water in the fridges."

In what I assume is an entirely unrelated incident, marketing restructures being apparently just as frequent and drastic as in the UK, the sender of the above e-mail has already left the company on garden leave!

This Half

2006-11-20T22:46:00.000+11:00

Firstly, Snow Patrol are playing here in February, and I'm going to get a ticket (or perhaps several) to see them - anyone fancy joining me?!

Secondly, and more relevantly, I've had a really enjoyable evening at my department head's this evening.

Their flat is amazing. It has a huge balcony with olive (and other) trees on it, with a clear view over the city centre and out to the hills east of Melbourne, it's really bright (virtually the whole of the "wall" between the balcony and the living area is actually window), an enormous open-plan kitchen and an inbuilt fountain in the entrance hall! They're renting, but one of the other flats in the block is on the market for $3.5m (or about £1.5m).

(Aside - funny thing, which I've only just realised, but I haven't actually looked at the exchange rate once since I've been here. Odd. Kind of doesn't matter for me except as a rough guide anyway, since I'm being paid in dollars.)

While it is a really excellent flat, and in the most desirable (subtle note - desirable, not desired - it's what someone else thinks of it that matters, not you!) suburb in Melbourne, that does seem a bit toppy to me. Still, I wouldn't turn my nose up at living there.

They do have a slightly overzealous security system on the garage, though - Clare had to go and wake up the owner of one of the other flats to help open find out how to open the garage door!

Clare had put on "traditional" Aussie tucker - meatloaf and tomato ketchup dip! - having forgotten I'd been here before. This was unfortunate, as the much more healthy and desirable (by all of us) but less "authentic" second option was a prawn and avocado salad. Oh well, next time!

We had a very long chat about all sorts of things, watched several Peter Gabriel DVDs (not sure why, other than David wanted to) and then the first part of The Castle, recommended viewing for anyone who wants to understand the Australian psyche (and also for David, Clare and me who were pointing at the screen and saying "Look, there's Melbourne, we live near there").

I think the best thing about this evening is simply that I've been out - not surrounded by the same 4 soulless hotel walls. I think David was right, that it will be very different once I'm in "my own" place - I'd already planned to get myself a new printer, so I can very quickly have some decent photos up on the walls to personalise it, and I can unpack things properly rather than have everything sort of unpacked but also ready to pack back into the suitcases at a moment's notice.

A Part

2006-11-18T15:42:00.000+11:00

Rather fortunately, I still liked my new flat when I went to see it again! It's also quite a lot handier for work and the city than I thought - tram took less than 10 minutes from work to the flat, and a 2-minute walk and 10-minute train ride had me back in the city centre. Electricity isn't connected, though, so I can't move in just yet. I've used the address a few times already for various things (loyalty card at the big bookshop in town and for my new mobile phone).

On the topic of which - I've never owned a camera phone before, and I can now see the advantages of having one. I can see myself wandering round Melbourne spotting odd things I might want to take a photo of (the boards outside the nearby pub have had several choice phrases I could have shown a certain Welshman - "Avoid dehydration - drink beer!" and "Take time to savour your drink - the pub is not on fire.") So expect to see a few low-quality Flickr posts in the near future.

I've already started to meet a few expats. After being told off by the payroll department (for not having a working bank account yet!) I went to give them all the details I could, and found Jenny from Derby working there. She and her husband emigrated here (I need to get that phraseology right, as I'll likely be using it a lot - did they in fact immigrate here?) a couple of months ago and are really enjoying it, except for the lack of tea. So I've promised I'll pass them on a box once mine arrive on the ship! I also managed to get chatty with several people in the wider department when I accidentally found myself being the host of the Friday afternoon Finance quiz - it used to be held at my desk, so I had to take part in quite a central way.

Oh, and one final thing - any country where you can get takeaway sushi for lunch on every street corner is one where I'm happy to live.

Things are Moving

2006-11-16T21:00:00.000+11:00

Aussie bank account

New house keys

Customs authority form sent back to UK

Insurance proposal for shipping completed and sent back to UK

First non-organised lunch out with other people in the department

Invitation for a drink at my department head's place (he's also recently arrived from the UK, so we've got lots to compare notes about!)

I'm quite looking forward to going round to the new place on Saturday and starting to get together all the bits and pieces I'll need, then actually moving in properly next week. I've got a 41-item list put together for it already, and I'm sure it'll be a higher number by Saturday!

Turning on a Dime

2006-11-15T21:25:00.000+11:00

The new flat is signed for, all the utilities will be connected over the next couple of days, and furniture will be moved in on Tuesday. Why, then, is there still hassle about it? The relocation consultant, who for some reason I just can't speak to at all without one of us doing the telephone equivalent of a blank stare, wants to organise it all for me. I've done it already! If you wanted to do it, tell me before it's done! And stop rushing me to do it faster than I wanted to!

"But if you start the lease from tomorrow, you'll be paying but you won't be able to move in as you won't have any furniture." Yes, I know, but last week you were the one who said tomorrow might be leaving it a bit too long. Plus also, that's my problem, isn't it? I can go round on Saturday, have a proper look at what I will and won't need on a day 1 / week 1 / month 1 basis, write a list, and bring it all back ready for me to move in properly next week.

And who, outside of low-quality TV drama, finishes a phone call with "Be well, Chris"?

I'm having to rant at the internet because there isn't anyone else handy at the moment that I can do it at.

In that general area, I've at least had some sensible conversations with people around the office, and a free sushi/sandwich lunch with one of my team members (will be having similar meetings with the other two in the next week). I also out-one-linered the CFO, whom I'd just met. Snap character judgement said that'd go down well with him - fingers crossed!

Old Acquaintances

2006-11-12T20:46:00.000+11:00

Several things stick out in my memory of Melbourne and Australia from my trip last year.

First, Boost juice bars - I drank enough of these to get a 10% discount loyalty card, which, I discovered yesterday, still works. I went back to the same bar I got it at, for nostalgia's sake. Then I had another one later on yesterday, and another today!

Secondly, parks. I spent about half a day in the Botanical Gardens last year, and plenty more time in the other assorted parks around the city. I walked into town via the Botanical Gardens today - I am enjoying the summery weather as a contrast to my usual November!

Thirdly, walking, something I did an awful lot of last year. In keeping with that, I think I may have done 10 miles yesterday. Certainly my legs and feet were tired enough to have done so.

And on another topic, assuming I can cobble together a banker's draft at a distance of 12,000 miles from my bank (pound to a penny ... dollar to a cent HSBC doesn't inhabit the "global village"), I've got the flat in Armadale. I'll post pics once I've moved in and acquired some furniture.

On Flat-hunting

2006-11-09T20:39:00.000+11:00

The property rental market in Melbourne is decidedly a seller's one at the moment. To the extent that, of the 12 properties my relocation consultant had yesterday arranged to see today, 5 had gone by the time we set off this morning, and another one after we'd seen it during the day.

So of the 6 that we saw, there was a fair amount of variety. 2 very new flats, one with only one bedroom and the other really nice and very central but far too small. 4 flats in reasonably old buildings - these were all very good. As seems traditional with Australian housing, each of them was totally different from the others.

So I've put my name down for one in Armadale - fingers crossed (the back-up is one in South Yarra that I'd be just as happy with). It's slightly further away from the city centre than I'd originally planned, but it's 100 yards from a tram stop, 200 from a local train station and half a mile from a supermarket. Google Maps says it's 2.3 miles from work, so walkable at a push, but it'll probably be a tram. It's totally unfurnished, though, which is a small stumbling point - means I will need to rent some furniture and make use of one of the bits of my employment package I thought sounded a bit funny when offered it.

I really have to start getting my head round this metric system!

Journey and Destination

2006-11-08T08:02:00.000+11:00

£625 of excess baggage charges, two cut fingers, an aching back and several hasty repacks of my hand luggage later, I'm finally here!

There were a few tears as I left York. Firstly, walking round my flat for the last time, and secondly, American English came on the ipod just as I drove over the bridge on the ringroad and I saw the Minster for the last time. Driving tear-blinded isn't good. I kept seeing reminders of Oz on the way over - a car numberplate AU51 BEN, Jet's Are You Going To Be My Girl? playing in the services and Bachelor Girl being the last song to play as I arrived at my parents'.

The mad rules regarding single pieces of hand luggage on planes are still in force - no get-outs for laptops or anything else. So I had to quickly unpack and repack my backpack to fit everything in - fortunately I just managed to get the PC in there. Without blood all over it. It's a pretty heavy laptop too, unfortunately, hence the bad back.

Some rather blank looks from the check-in lady at Manchester - I think each of us was expecting the other to say something. "I'm emigrating, so I've got excess baggage." "You're allowed 20 kgs, and you've got 61." "Yes?" "That's 41 kg overweight." "Yes..." "You're going to have to pay excess baggage charges." "Yes!" I had to go through this again at Heathrow (to avoid paying £1700 of charges!) but with a slightly less dim attendant and with more knowledge of how my side of the conversation was supposed to work.

The 12hr leg from Heathrow was possibly the best flight I've ever had - I've been so knackered these last few weeks that I slept for 7 hours solid after they served the first meal. I then watched the first half of the World Trade Centre film (got a bit too disgusted to carry on at the point where Jesus made an appearance) and Lucky Number Slevin (good but not great).

Second leg from Singapore to Melbourne was less comfortable, but was only 7 hours, so was OKish. Stuck the Ipod on and read for most of it.

Then I was met at the airport by one of my new colleagues, Peter. Who has a beard. I point this out for my audience only - it's not the first thing I notice when I meet people. He drove me to my new flat, which is not really very central (about 3 miles out of the city centre) but is reasonably well located near St Kilda itself - appears I was pretty rubbish at estimating the distance when I was here last year! Unfortunately, Wagamama's, purveyors of the delicious ice cream, has closed.

Getting over the jetlag has not been a triumph this time. I fell asleep on Monday morning for 3 hours, then again a bit in the evening, and woke at 4am, unable to return to sleep. Tuesday was reasonably similar - slept pretty much straight through from 1pm till 6pm (despite really needing to go and get a mobile phone and a bank account) then from 11pm to 2.30am, and nothing thereafter. Still sleepy now, after a day at work!

The Price of Bananas

2006-11-08T07:59:00.000+11:00

While in Venezuela, Arlene and I (and others) had a passing conversation about the recent failure of the Aussie banana crop, and on how bananas were now quite expensive. I now realise she wasn't exaggerating. Bananas are $12 / kg in the local supermarket.

To put that into a slightly different context, I bought a bunch of 5, and it cost 80p per banana!

Time to find a different fruit to eat loads of...

A-Day

2006-11-04T12:24:00.000+11:00

It's arrived at last. I've been working towards this for over 4 months, never ever quite believing it was going to arrive. Now it has, it feels like nothing at all. It's just not there yet. 4ish tomorrow as I walk through the gate? I hope so.

I've not shaken so many people's hands before in one day since Faheem's wedding, and probably never hugged so many people ever. Even so, I missed quite a few, like Jenny, Nina, Colin, Stevie, Miriam, Pete C, Newberry and Buckle, and very nearly didn't see Stouty and Emma.

I was very not happy at several points in the day. First - "Oh, it's good to see you're finally implementing the clear-desk policy, Chris." Second was the meeting I was dragged into at 4.45 to explain why we were now 3 days late. That one I did manage to turn into a positive, as I was able to pull the rug from under everyone by saying everything looked OK to me now, and we were back on track. Yay me! (Was a very good ending to a very bad afternoon.)

People I'll probably see out in Oz :

Lint & Kathleen
Tom & Helen
Tsuki & Dom
Pete & Emma
Neil & Ali
Drew

Possibles :

Drew & Cat
Daryl
Jealy & Caroline
Gemma & Tom
Josephine & James
Rich & Liz

Bound to have missed plenty off here. I'll probably add to them over the next few months.

Memories of the York Era

2006-11-03T11:40:00.000+11:00

Note - these aren't all memories of York, they're memories of the period of my life when I lived there.

- Sports : gliding, gorge walking, tennis, squash and badminton, the 3 Peaks, my marathon, skiing trips * 3, rowing
- Events : PTHs, my "leaving party" on 30/12/04, Tsuki's 22nd in 3LM, Assizes of Ale, my 30th, Toto's chair, the Ujala self-immolation incident, qualifying, the LOTR day, the drunken conversations in Mazimaz and the 3LM, Henman at the assessment centre, the pack of cards trip
- People : too many to mention, and I'd only be told off if I left anyone out
- Things : the last Buffy, the last Friends, all of Babylon 5, Earnest, fuffee, projector TVs, GTA-SA, ginger beer, Boost juice
- Places : Venezuela, Minster Gardens, Precentor's Court, Trinity Lane, my flat, the OWS and the Swan, Rod Laver Arena, Al Fresco, Karachi, the Eden Project
- Random : the Snickleways walk, the Poppy Challenge, singing happy birthday to a random stranger on Tom's birthday in Ask, Mr Magoo's leaving party trip to Buzz, Mario Karts, the people with a potato, the "4 1-inch penises" night
- Downers : Bert's housewarming in Glasgow, year-end 05, Queen Anne's Road

67 Hours

2006-11-03T11:25:00.000+11:00

I still can't get my head round the fact that in that amount of time, I'll have moved to another country. I arrive in Melbourne 6.25am on Monday. I can't make it feel real at all. I'll probably have the same kind of moment on Saturday as I did last year when I step through the barrier at Manchester - definitely hoping I do, as that's still one of the most memorable moments of my life.

David's leaving speech was very good - much much better than Mon's! He's not a natural public speaker, but he did very well. There was a quiz on Australian English (I got 5 out of 6), and stories brought up included me hitting my head with my own ski, getting locked in the toilet in my final exam, self-immolation in the Ujala, the PV=nRT moment, and of course my detention at US Customs last year for having a beard, a tan, a Pakistani visa and a dirt-common name.

PTH XIII tonight - likely to be my last ever (since even if I do come back, I don't see the tradition carrying on for very much longer). Very fun, as ever. The theme being pubs of York, and us having chosen the Three Legged Mare, Tom and I were tied together by the legs 3-leggeding around town for much of the evening.

I was touched by the several goodbyes I've had this evening. Matt H, Cat, Mark L, Daryl, and amused by the one from two new graduates I've never spoken to before and probably never will again...

Not On Fire

2006-11-01T16:17:00.000+11:00

Things about me that disappoint others :

I don't get drunk often enough.

Because of that, I remember every single thing that other people do.

I cheat at CNPS. (Technically, the cheating aspect involves me living further out of town than Lint and having to walk in to work along one of the busiest rush-hour roads into York. Not strictly against the rules!)

I don't have enough character flaws to be a believable protagonist in a novel.

I didn't know Emma at the time of my 30th birthday, and hence didn't invite here to my party.

Things that people like about me :

I make fun of people in such a nice way that they don't mind.

I can laugh at anything - everything's funny.

I don't use an umbrella, so if it's raining, Tsuki can take comfort in the fact that I make her look dry.

For all of my negative points, there's a positive one that more than cancels it out. E.g. I hate garlic, but I counteract that problem by having a perpetual cold.

I received a going-away gift of a plastic bow tie sellotaped to my collar by Emma, who briefly fell asleep on my shoulder while attaching it to me. We also talked about whether I'm going to have to heckle at my own leaving speech in order to make it actually funny, whether Immacing of my beard and heavy drinking will be taking place on Friday (not if I have anything to say on the matter, they won't) and the continuation, but not conclusion, of a long-running talk with Helen about what I'm going to miss about the UK (sorry Helen, I'm not being obstructive, I genuinely can't tell at the moment - I won't know till I'm there and missing them!)

Cancelling broadband - far easier than I thought.
Cancelling a BT phone line - easy once they answered the phone, which took about 15 minutes.

I'm borderline finished with my to-do list, finally. I have a number of services left to cancel or switch into my tenants' names, like gas, electricity and council tax, I've got to pack all my clothes and everything else that I'm taking on the plane, and there are little bits and pieces of things around the flat I've got to finish off with, but there's nothing else I can do now. There are a few things on there that I haven't done in the end, like getting an Oz bank account set up and selling my car, but they were all non-vital things, so I've not done too badly.

Kind of glad I'm finished, because it means I can go out every night and not have to spend time in the quite depressingly vacant flat.

Quoth the RavenA Goodbye to York

2006-10-31T16:14:00.000+11:00

Many more last things have happened now.

Monday night quiz - we got 22m17 last night, with a record-equalling team of 12 people. We only got one question wrong in the second half, and that was only because Helen doesn't speak loudly enough. The quiz seemed particularly easy tonight - I'll miss Ian's eccentric question style. Particularly pleased with getting "Which country is the mass of a piece of sporting equipment?" The Bile Beans turned out to pay tribute to our glorious victory. And I won £6.05!

City walls - Sunday was a rather nice day, so I took the opportunity while my parents were out to go for a final walk round the walls. I've done this walk only once before, and it's excellent for seeing the whole of York. There were so many memories of the last 4 years - Toto's, Ujala, Terry's, Trinity Lane, 4 High Petergate, the Minster, the RI, the Wheel, NU... Walking into town beforehand was the same - Goodramgate seemed to have a lot of places that sparked off remembrances of things past. Mediterranean barbers, Fast Frame, the Lime House, the Thai place, Happy Valley, Little Italy, the other Italian place in the Tudor building, and of course the OWS.

Friends - goodbyes to Dave R and Jonny F.

My flat's quite depressing at the moment. It's almost empty, and surprisingly echoey. I'll be glad in many ways when this week is over.

Depending on the Strangeness of Strangers

2006-10-29T10:23:00.000+11:00

Today marks two significant anniversaries - 4 years to the day since I arrived in York, and my last Saturday night here. Fitting that it should end on such a high note in the Yorkshire Terrier, a scene of several stand-out memories for me, since the day I got back from Oz covered in snow, Lint eating a flower, pretending to buy champagne and then flouncing off, the first night of the new opening hours where we were having such a good conversation that none of us went downstairs to order drinks after 10.30, and the night a few weeks ago where Tom, Helen and I had our first 4 drinks rejected (Can I have a Terrier? No you can't. OK, can I have a Guzzler? No you can't. Right then - purple J20. Purple...is that the only colour you like?) then asked the same barmaid for advice on what was good - "There's this one, that's shit, and this one's shit too. That one's pretty nice, this one's average, and the other two are pretty shit. I'd have the third one if I were you."

The fun tonight started with an overheard conversation. Iasonas, Lint and I had been having a relatively low-key chat about all sorts of things (hotels vs sleeper trains, comparing ill girlfriends, how desperate the NUS are for members at the moment) when a heated debate ensued on the table behind us. "No, I think you'll find that at the end of Search for Spock, after Scotty says 'It should take 8 weeks, but I'll do it in 4' Kirk comes back with 'You've got 2.' I'm sure of it." Oh dear - Trekkies. I don't mind watching Star Trek, but I can't get excited enough about it to argue in a pub. This argument continued for several minutes, and expanded to include photon torpedoes, light sabres (different universe, I know) and graphical demonstrations of lowering shields, including banging on the table.

I really didn't notice much of this, beyond the "You've got 2" part - I was generally aware of a lot of raised voices behind me, but wasn't interested enough to listen in. When one went to the loo, Iasonas pointed out her "I Love Wookies" T-shirt, which I failed to see as well.

After another 10 or 15 minutes, they walked out, leaving only the 3 of us and another table of 3 who'd also been having a quiet conversation. About 10 seconds after they left, one of the guys at the other table said loudly "Fucking hell!" To which we all cracked up. We had a little bit of a chat about which was the worst part of the whole scenario, then as that petered out, went back to our respective chats.

And it could have ended there, were it not for the fact that now my people-watching senses were on alert. Sure enough, I was rewarded by "Mike, would you like to relieve me of my burdensome potato?" a sentence which will live in my memory for some considerable time. I've been described before as having a very free and extrovert laugh - my reaction would have made my normal laugh look shy and retiring and go and hide in the kitchen at a party. Fortunately, they also saw the funny side.

It turned out that Tim had been given a spud gun for his recent birthday, and so had brought it and a potato out with him. His potato had a large gouge in it - not a gash, not a crack, a gouge. He demonstrated the gun's use by shooting Mike repeatedly, who started to get a little annoyed, took the potato and forced it into Tim's half-full pint glass, splashing himself, Tim and the specials board in the process. "Now look what you've done Tim, I'm going to have to go to the loo and wash off."

What happened next makes me think that Tim and I would be dangerous together. At the exact same moment, both of us voiced the same thought - "Does Mike's coat have any pockets?" Tim scrabbled to get the now soggy potato out of his glass and into Mike's coat pocket. He then drank the rest of his pint, with a little help from his girlfriend Clare, who ended up eating a bit of potato. (This spawned a side-conversation about "A night out in a glass" - beer, baked potato and maybe a bit of cheese sprinkled on top. Other recipe suggestions included mashed potato and Carling.)

Mike returned from the loo, and he must have known Tim quite well, because the very first thing he did was look in his pocket. He was not happy. He shook the phone off and started wiping it on his shirt in one hand, still holding the potato in the other. "That's a brand new phone. It's not even mine, it's on a work contract. You're so out of order, I'm really annoyed now. You've got potato on my phone now."

"It's a pity Tim didn't get an orange for his birthday." I don't know where this came from, but I think it may be one of the funniest things I've ever said (not a patch on "I think you've got a problem there," which is still the only triple-bank punchline I've ever made, but definitely in the top ten). I think this took a second or two for everyone else to get it, then there were fits of laughter being had by all. Mike put the potato to his ear - "Hello, is that Orange customer service? Yes, I'd like to switch providers please." - a beautiful visual gag.

I'm not too sure how the rest of the conversation went. Certainly at one point, Mike decided that the only valid response to the potato incident was for him to steal Clare as compensation (Chip : "So Clare, how does being compared with a potato feel?"), we discovered that Tim's spud gun had a safety catch, and Clare revealed that Tim might be a closet Trekkie, because he knew all the answers to the Maize Maze this year!

I'm actually a little sad that I'll never see them again. To get a little philosophical, I don't see why there should be a limit on how long you know someone before you call them a friend - I would happily have invited them to my leaving party on Friday if I could have worked it into the conversation somehow. (Isn't that exactly what Annick did with me the day I qualified, after all?)

Reality and Realty Bite

2006-10-27T08:23:00.000+10:00

So much for the first sentence of my last post. Today's been horrible - I was in work at 8 trying to get in touch with Pickfords about my move (no luck till after 1!), I had no less than 3 email requests for stupid information, and I've still not managed to organise my leaving party. I really have to do that tomorrow if I want anyone to turn up!

I'm getting to the point now where I feel like I'm on my last reserves of energy, and I don't have much left. I really hope I make it through to next Saturday without snapping. Someone told me today he'd had a dream that I "went postal" at work, and started shouting at everyone for being idiots. I wasn't sure whether I should tell him that his dream probably had a 50/50 chance of coming true in the next few days.

Kathleen and Nadya, who are renting my flat as soon as I leave, came round tonight to go through all sorts of exciting admin like when the bins are collected, where the electricity meter is and how long the shower will run for before tripping the fuse. I think that one worried them the most - "12 minutes? That's not enough time to put on conditioner!" I did get to paraphrase Coupling in response - "It's never been a problem for me - I don't have showers for recreational purposes!"

Once Pickfords did get back to me after lunch, they said they offered me tomorrow as a date, which was what I was after. So I and my parents have spent much of the evening putting the finishing touches to the work of the last 2 months. Everything's in one of five categories now - "Staying In Flat", "Going Into Storage", "Shipping to Australia", "Going In Suitcase With Me on Plane" and "Other." "Other" includes sub-categories such as Throwing Away, Giving to Charity, Giving to Friends/Family, Getting Parents to Sell (this one contains my car!), Not Sure Yet and Other. The latter might appear somewhat superfluous, given I'm already in the top-level Other category, but I never like to close off my classification schemas - I might want to add something into a new cateogry later on!

Seeing everything set out like that has made me a little sad. All the walls are bare, there are blank spaces everywhere that should have things in them and some of the things I've packed I won't see again for several months (Shipping to Australia) or even years (Going into Storage). I've spent just over 3 years here, and I'll really miss it - York too.

It's also made the enormity of what I'm doing next weekend hit home.

Stress Relief

2006-10-25T07:51:00.000+10:00

Starting to feel quite relaxed about things, at least as much as I ever seem to nowadays. With the exception of work and a few things around renting my flat out, everything's either completed, can be managed fairly hands-off, or is not going to get done so I've given up worrying about it.

Work's going pretty badly though. It's clear to me now exactly why it was taking so much out of me at valuation time - I've been holding things together by sheer effort of will. As I've not been able to do that this time round (partly because of Australia, partly because I've had to spend a lot of time with my replacement and partly because of having left my head in the Gran Sabana for the first week back), everything seems to have fallen apart. I'm not the sort of person that can easily accept this as out of my control and, having only 7 days left in the office, would be unfixable even if I could spend 100% of my effort on it for the remaining time available to me. The same old conversations were had today with team member #2 - I can't see any more that I can do to solve this particular problem. I'm going to get a barrage of e-mails over the next few months, I just know.

I'm going to meet Richard, my new boss, tomorrow - finally! It's almost 4 months to the day that he rang me to offer me the job, and hiring someone when you've no idea what they look like still seems weird to me. (Likewise going to work somewhere in a foreign country where you've never met any of the staff, but I like adventure and surprises!) Concern over making a good first impression also seems somewhat misplaced.

My last badminton in York tonight - probably last anywhere for several months, as my racket will be on a boat heading Ozwards next Tuesday. It was, as predicted, nowhere near as good as last week, but still really enjoyable, and slightly sad to think I won't be going there again for a very long time. I've made several friends as a result of the "club" - Steve P, Matt H and Steve H are people I'd probably never have got to know if not for badminton.

Predator or Parasite

2006-10-24T16:45:00.000+10:00

Not a particularly pleasant post, this.

A quote from one of my favourite books - "Do you remember how to tell the difference between a predator and a parasite? Yes, whether you admire them or they disgust you." Definitely not a predator then.

I've had a bite on my toe which I first noticed a few days after coming back from Venezuela. Didn't really think anything of it, as at the time, I had somewhere upwards of 50 others all over my feet and lower legs, all of which were itchy. However, this one started to grow, and didn't go away. It had also started to bleed after being knocked by my shoe this week.

Then last night, a lump slightly smaller than a pea fell off when I took my sock off. That was fairly horrible. I've had something living in my toe for a month.

Apparently, in the Kukenan River there are some nasty little things called niguas. They're harmless, but very irritating. Carlucho had some "emergency surgery" at Angel Falls on a couple he'd picked up - I didn't pay much attention to that either, as I didn't appear to have any signs of them then! They bite on and lay eggs in the wound, the eggs hatch a few weeks later and the cycle continues.

I'll have to keep an eye on it in case there were any eggs left behind. I've smeared the area with tea tree oil and deet for now, and will have to get some other bits and pieces that will kill anything else like that off.

Who'd live in the tropics?!

Venezuela. Again!

2006-10-23T07:32:00.000+10:00

Brian, unofficial official videographer of the Venezuela trip, has created an excellent DVD of his video camera footage - some 2.5 hours of it, no less. The views of Angel Falls and Roraima work so much better than in a photograph - no idea why, but the photos just don't look like the real thing. He has some pretty inspired background music too - Travis's "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" on the top of Roraima made me laugh out loud! It brought back a few things I'd forgotten :

The hola birds
The children playing with the dog at Kawe
The downpour at Angel Falls
Bob Marley and the speed-demon 4WD driver
Several conversations I had with Chirag and Jai about Brian always videoing us!

However, the monkey spider footage is not a good thing to watch on an 8ft projector screen.

Moving Swiftly On

2006-10-22T22:26:00.000+10:00

I've got a visa! And flights! And 28 boxes worth of storage!

I think "it's always darkest before dawn" is the best way to describe the Both Ends Against the Middle post. I received an e-mail less than 6 hours later to tell me my visa had been granted - that's only 12 working days after the paperwork was started.

So I also got my flights booked on Friday, now I can be certain of a date. I will be leaving this sceptred (I've checked that's spelt right, but it looks very wrong) isle on Saturday 4th November, likely not to return for 2 years.

Various weights have been lifted. I need to be careful not to be too happy!

I successfully knocked a few more less important items off the to-do list today as well. Finally visited Clifford's Tower, after more than 4 years of living here (still haven't been to the Castle yet, but I've never really been bothered about that). I tried to get in free, but there's no discount for York residents as Lint found out (I couldn't find my card anyway), and I didn't think they'd take very kindly to me asking for a free entry on the basis my middle name is Clifford! It's a pretty good vantage point for the east side of town - you can see Terry's, Rowntree Wharf, the Minster, the Wheel and the Mecca Bingo down Fulford Road (but not Flic's flat, we thought).

I've also got rid of some millstone items that I didn't really want to either store or ship - filing cabinet and 5.1 system. They've gone to a good home with Tsuki and Dom - tried to get rid of my monitor too, but it wouldn't fit in their house! I kind of hijacked Lint's entire afternoon in the end - not only did I drag him to Clifford's Tower, he then came back to mine with Tsuki and Dom in order to get a lift back home, and ended up staying over an hour while we had a cup of tea and tried not to fall asleep.

Not too sure about what's going to happen with my car though. Due to my forgetfulness, I can't see it being MOTd before the end of the week, which gives me barely a week to complete the sale. Oh well, I knew something wasn't going to get done, and it looks like that's the big one.

Quartet

2006-10-22T22:20:00.000+10:00

The real goodbyes have started. I suspect I'm not going to see any of these 4 until I come back - if that even happens.

Jimbobjo - a peculiarly anticlimactic one. I would like to have spent a bit more time chatting with him properly, especially since the last month or so I haven't seen much of him (or indeed anyone), but I guess we've had our regular weekly conversations on the way home from the quiz.

Flic - went to her work leaving party on Thursday, but I was a complete wreck (hence "Both Ends Against the Middle," I think!) so I left without talking to her. Then went to hers last night for a friends party, which was very good. Lots and lots of cheese! I left just before 3 - the goodbyes took about 15 minutes. Thundercats, Go!

Goodlife - turned up to Flic's party. She would have been at mine the other week had I ended up having one! She also brought JB, who I've only met very briefly once - we had a pretty good laugh throughout the evening. No songs this time - she didn't have a guitar and a capella would have been wrong. As she's allergic to Australians (or something like that) I'm pretty sure I'm safe from a visit from her...

Diane - her 30th Birthday "Viking Raiding" Party, including "The Quiz of Diane" and a loose repeat of my own 30th at Meltons Too. This time I got the meal I wanted at roughly the same time as everyone else, walked round York wearing a plastic Viking helmet (it's left a bit of a mark on my forehead!) and had a really good time.

There was technically also Bert today, but I know for certain I'll be seeing him in May when he's over for Kim's wedding, so it wasn't quite as final as the others.

Both Ends Against The Middle

2006-10-19T08:08:00.000+10:00

Like the previous post, it's taken me quite a while to get round to writing this one too!

The Middle

Today I'm halfway between returning from Venezuela and leaving for Australia. Yes, that's right, I have a (semi-)definitive departure date! 4th November will be my last day in this green and pleasant land for at least 2 years, barring incidents and accidents. Of which more below.

Both Ends (see "Burning the Candle at")

I'm fairly sure that I'm not handling the stress of all of this very well. I've had atypical and pretty severe lapses of memory, including forgetting to MOT my car today, and telling everyone about the handover date I'd agreed for one of my team with their new manager, except for the staff member concerned! Something is going to snap at some point in the next 2 weeks, and I'm guessing one of four possibilities, which will remain secret.

The Other End

The "fin de siecle" feeling has really started to hit me in the last few days too. I often feel this when there's a precipitous and irreversible change in the offing, and I have the urge to try to remember everything with crystal clarity. It happened when leaving school and uni, moving out of my parents' house, buying my own home, and several other times.

There's Jimbobjo's last quiz on Monday, my penultimate badminton last night (and given the exceptional quality of the games we played, especially the 20-19 epic, next week can't help but be an anticlimactic finale), only one more Swan and 2 OWS quizzes to go to, Flic's last day tomorrow ... there are some people I'm sure I've seen or spoken to for the last time ever in the past few days.

Back to Reality

2006-10-14T07:33:00.000+10:00

It's taken me a while to get round to finally writing this post, for several reasons. Chief one, which is still a little upsetting, is that I've lost the first 2/3 of my holiday "diary," and while I can still remember vast swathes of the trip, I'm sure there are many of the little bits and pieces that make up the full story that I've forgotten, like...

Fruti Max, facts of the day, PV=nRT, "For twos, you use the bag," "Bumface," "Amanda, that's oarful," the monkey spider, Brian and the Day of the Three Spilt Drinks (also Brian and the day of camera footage...), the sunbow when we landed at Kamarata, "a woman comes in 3 times a week," the bus-surfing, Michelmas at Chichirivichi, bananas, ant armies, Chinotto at Paraitepui, Tek river waterfall jacuzzi, the Milky Way at Kawe, toilet buddies, "hold a firework in your right hand and count to 10," galletas, termite chilli sauce, fireflies, Salto El Sapo and "pondering life" afterwards, joy of movement on Roraima, partial eclipse, Myra's long-sleeved top, wrong turns (on the way up through the bog and on the way down through the steep forest near Paraitepui) the beautiful spider, snake in the cooler box, watermelons (for eating, for betting and for leaving sat on rocks for slowcoaches to enjoy), Carlucho the rain attractor, chinchoros, homemade limeade, menthol, waking up to the ISS, group dynamics, toilet terror, "when the fly comes down 6 inches...," Tarot Shithead, the flickering lights in the hotel on the first night - and the shower cubicle there too, pool at Banana Camps in Santa Elena, the DVT hour, thunderstorms at Angostura, lollies, swimming in Angel Falls, seeing Angel Falls from El Mirador for the first time and wanting to agree with Lee but not being able to speak, not washing for 6 days, remoteness, "How're you doing, brother?" on the way down Roraima, Simon & Garfunkel music quiz, Dust in the Wind - English and Portuguese - Piano Man, More Than Words and Mr Big, Ann Arbor coincidences, the Chinese girl's Mills & Boon folder of love for Jose Alexander, restaurant malfunction at El Tizon, solitary coffee at Kawe falls and at Angel Falls, hammocks for giants, crossing Rio Kukenan on the way back, El Anal cashew nuts, Toffee Goodness - something sticky and sweet, checking of passports on leaving the plain in CDG, insect attack, the 15 Minutes of Chocolate conversation, Aussie "mites", selling Amanda all my bolivars at airports...

And those are the ones I do remember!

Photos are here and here.

I don't think I've ever been on such a ... concentrated holiday. Even now, 2 weeks later, and I still haven't got my head back fully into the real world from it - of course, that could be in part because the real world isn't exactly somewhere I'm enjoying living right at the moment.

Spider in the Web

2006-09-15T08:48:00.000+10:00

I'm getting a little bit bothered about the potential for spiders on this Venezuela trip!

I'm OK with ones of up to about an inch across - those are my absolute limit, and while I can cope with having one of that size in the same room of me, I'll be keeping a very close eye on it, almost to the exclusion of looking anywhere else. Anything bigger than that, and I can't really even look at pictures of them - a friend I told about this said he'd scared himself stupid looking at a photo of a bird-eating spider, about a foot across.

I'm worried how I'll react if one drops on me in the jungle, or I wake up and one's on my bed, or my face...

No - I need to sleep this evening, so I'll have to stop this train of thought!

In my usual style, I have yet to do any packing whatsoever, despite leaving tomorrow lunchtime. I've also got several things to do in town tomorrow, including getting the haircut I didn't get last week, faxing the last bits of my visa application off and getting toothpaste, towel and other little things I've forgotten.

Oh, and the Oz bank account application too.

And my MFI furniture.

And...

Sadness, Part 1

2006-09-10T09:02:00.000+10:00

The first of my goodbyes has happened this weekend - to Neil, an ex-colleague of mine from Preston. I haven't seen him face-to-face for about 2 years (although we've spoken to each other by phone, e-mail and text pretty frequently). I've little doubt I'll see him again around this time next year - he was already planning a climbing trip to the Grampians in western Victoria before my Oz job was even advertised - but there's still that little twinge, as it now becomes impossible for either of us to just drop in on the other unexpectedly, or with little notice.

I'm expecting those twinges to become more painful with repetition.

On a happier note, Mazimaz was as good as ever yesterday evening, and I got my usual extra-hot soup without asking for it. And my little sidebar in researching exactly where in Victoria the Grampians were has given me some ideas for a long weekend break when I finally get out to Oz.Also had a pretty decent 3-hour tennis match with Neil, and I finally took a set off him!

C189Z7

2006-09-09T10:06:00.000+10:00

36 days and counting; at least, according to the current plan. Still can't actually book a flight or commit to much else until I've got my visa, the application for which is as progressed as I can make it, given I was too cold-ridden to get Tom's scanner into a working state last night. That's a job for tomorrow morning, after my desperately-needed haircut and visit to the milkshake shop to try something less bizarre than the chocolate and chilli one I had last Saturday.

Visited York Maize Maze tonight. Excellent fun - it was a haunted horror night, so we were wandering round largely in the dark (bright full moon notwithstanding), beset frequently by werewolves, witches, Freddy Krueger and several men dressed as Jason from Friday 13th films (or possibly Halloween - not a horror buff), complete with chainsaws! I really enjoyed it, although I think I probably would have liked it a little more had I been able to see properly - the viewing platforms were all closed, due to pointlessness, so we could never get a good sense of the size of the maze or where we were in it. Still, a good time was had by all.

In case you're wondering about the post title, one of the Maze challenges is to find and answer 6 questions around the maze, the answers from which form a code which opens a safe into which you can place a competition entry - the title is the code for this year's maze. I'm not spoiling anyone's fun though, as this year's maze closes on Sunday.

To-do list items knocked off today : 0

Getting to Know Me

2006-09-09T09:52:00.000+10:00

A bit of background for random surfers and people who don't know me.

At the moment, I live and work in York in the UK, but in July I was offered a 2-year secondment to my company's sister office in Melbourne in Australia, starting in October. While it's taken me about 2 months to get it started at all, I'd like to keep a record of everything (for certain values of "every," at least!) that happens over the next few years. My last blog lasted about 2 years before it fizzled out, let's see if I can manage that long with this one too.