Andrew and Kathleen

I sent the following email to our friend Kim:

I've always said that Queenslanders are mad. The sun fries their brains, you see.

Excellent doco on a startup caught up in the hype of the US stock market pre-crash - and tracked from startup to burnout - last night. With the idea of being a middleman between government and citizens, the company grew from 8 to over 230 people in the course of 5 months, and it all ended in tears - with one of the co-founders being sacked by the other.

Quick Google search for the people involved turned up this and this - seems like the main characters were able to work together again after all.

Lisa and Nicole bought each other the same Robbie Williams DVD. Deliberately. Why?

"It's Christmas, and we had to get each other something."

Oh.

Christmas Day was bloody hot up here, mid-30s and a scorching sun overhead. We had a great day though, but it was a bit sad to spend the second Christmas in a row away from family in Hobart.

We went to (ready for this?) Kathleen's brother's girlfriend's sister's house. Returning home about 9pm, we could hear the doof-doof from across the road. The apartment downstairs had decided to have a techno party. Which is cool - we figured they'd turn it down around 11, like nice, considerate neighbours.

Nuh.

After two hours of the heavy bass (doof doof doof doof doof-doof) coming through the floor, I decided to have a word. Leaning over the balcony to the people below, I asked "Hey guys, it's a little late, would you mind turning the music down?" Yeah, yeah, no worries.

Twenty minutes later, someone decides they like the current song, so volume goes up again. Now, when you're lying on the floor, your head directly above the music source, and that music happens to be one of the most annoying genres known to man, you can understand what we're going through. So I get up and stagger outside again.

"Hey guys."

No answer. They can't hear me because of their friggin' music.

"Hey."

"OI!"

Some dopey chick looks up. "Can you turn the music down?! It's way too loud."

"Oh, yeah, sorry!"

They turn it down, but we can still feel the bassline coming through the floor, but it's late, and we're tired. Too tired to care.

DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF-DOOF! DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF-DOOF!

What the f***?! I look at the clock. It's 3am.

On the balcony, no matter how hard I yell, I can't get anyone's attention. So I go downstairs.

From the second floor, the music is so loud, they might as well have the stereo outside their door. It's that loud. God knows what their neighbours were thinking. As if all this wasn't aggravation enough, when I reach their front door, it has one of those stupid joke signs on it. This one reads:

I'm trying to understand your point of view, but I can't get my head up my arse.

I bash the door with the meat of my fist. It makes a delicious banging sound, loud enough to make me feel a little better. From within, the music goes down.

Again, I return to blessed sleep.

DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF-DOOF!

It's 4am. Now a broken man, I stagger downstairs once more. This time, I don't turn back after bashing on their front door. I continue knocking until someone opens the door.

"For f*ck's sake - it's 4.30 in the f*cking morning. Turn the f*cking music down!"

"Oh, but it's Christmas!" he cries with the air of someone constrained by the unreasonable requests of his neighbours.

"I don't give a f*ck! Just turn it down!"

"Oh don't be such a shumplegrump!" as he slams the door. The music goes down, and though I'm even madder by not getting the last word in, at least now I might be able to get some sleep.

You surely will not be surprised to read that at 6.20am, the techno again comes through our floor. By now I'm sick of dealing with their antics, and I call the cops. They go down and have a word.

For 160 blessed minutes, it's peaceful.

At 9am, in line with allowable noise rules, the music goes back on. When do these people sleep?!

The Fairfax journo Ross Gittins has written an interesting article about "deadweight" - the inefficiency of Christmas gift-giving.

Renault's new ads for it's ugly-arse car are set to Sir Mix-A-Lot's immortal song "Baby Got Back".

Sir Mix-A-Lot is still around, too.

Yesterday we arrived at our car to find a note on the windshield, informing us that since we have been using the visitors carspot for weeks on end, we might find it towed if we persist in parking there. We've used the spot since August, so it wasn't entirely unexpected - but parking on the street over summer is something we're keen to avoid.

There's a point in everyone's life when they stand there and think "I paid (insert your total cost of education here) to end up doing this crap?!"

I reached it today.

I'm doing photocopying. Photocopying is my current job. My job description (if I had one) would read something like "Insert document into paper tray, hit copy, and wait." I'm taking pride in making sure all the colour originals end up in colour, and the black and whites end up in black and white, that A3 and A4 can happily coexist, that all the pages I punch holes in line up and that it all looks fine and dandy. But at the end of the day, it's just photocopying. Sure, I could hype it up, and say "Well, I'm working for a company doing capital works in Sydney, building big infrastructure, and it's pretty interesting reading about all the engineering details and requirements, and it's a multi-million dollar project!" but at the end of the day, I'm just saving a secretary three odd-days worth of work.

And it would all be too depressing for words if it wasn't for the fact that in the two days I've been there, I've had interesting developments open up in the couple of doors I've been knocking on for the past few months.

Things are starting to look up - it's just a pity that everyone goes into Christmas mode between mid-December and the new year.

So tomorrow, I will photocopy with pride, knowing that there's something better on the horizon.

Last week's storms in Sydney were captured on film. Troy sent me this amazing picture.

Australia are 3 for 65 at the moment - India well in the hunt after a superb first innings.

Dickson and I were watching (well, ok, it was on in the background) the Cricket Show during the lunchbreak last week. Simon O'Donnell had a short interview with one of the selectors.

You can really tell how much of a reach it is for them to fill in time during the break, when Simon wrapped up with an enthusiastic "Well, thanks for that. That took up about 10 minutes. Great!"

Our closest train station is Central. 25% of all crime in Sydney's rail system occurs there. The other night, Kathleen caught the train home from a work function at about 11pm, and I met her at the station. The place is crawling with uniformed security guards, which is good to see. It's a vastly different state of affairs in Japan where the trains are full right up until the last train - and very little crime occurs.

The perception that the trains are riddled with crime doesn't help increase passenger numbers, though.

Lots of thunder so far today, and the rain hasn't let up. It's not heavy, but it'd be pretty miserable wandering around with just an umbrella. We were woken by the what seemed at 6am to be the loudest clap of thunder we'd ever heard in our lives.

Dickson's got a sleek Panasonic DVD/CD player which also plays MP3 CDs. It's pretty cool to be able to chuck one CD, which has about 5 or 6 albums on it, for 6 hours of non-stop music. Sometimes you don't want to have to turn on the computer just to play some tunes.

The old truism "It's not what you know, it's who you know" certainly got it's run yesterday. The previous week I'd made a search on some Sydney companies in a field I thought would be interesting, and followed up with a few cold calls.

The first place, the female development manager who answered the phone dropped a name that I'd heard quite a bit of in relation to my first project at my first job, and I mentioned it. She sounded surprised that I knew of the bloke way back when, and dropping his name again in the follow-up letter certainly didn't do any harm - I got a phone call Monday saying come in Tuesday for a chat.

First words out of the bloke's mouth: "So, where do I know you from?"

He called one of my references, too, on the spot, and it just so happened that the two worked together - small world - and got on well, which didn't hurt my chances either.

Follow-up interview with the tech guys next week, which should be interesting, at the very least.

If you're providing computer tech support for small businesses, and they call up with a problem, here's what you shouldn't do:

• Don't assume they know everything that you do about computers.
• Don't throw computer jargon at them and get angry when they don't understand your tech talk. How'd you like it if your customers started talking financial or marketing jargon at your ignorant arse?
• If you have a Christmas function that you're attending, don't assume that your customers won't need you when you're unavailable. Business doesn't wait around patiently twiddling it's thumbs while you're out getting pissed on a weekday afternoon. For goodness' sake, have someone cover for you.
• Don't assume you have these customers forever.

Kathleen had a wanker of a tech support guy yesterday.

We hope our wedding will not end like this one.

This time last year, on a freezing December morning in Japan, I opened the front door to witness the entire street covered in a blanket of snow. What a birthday present that was.

After Troy made the mistake of turning up his nose during an episode of Kylie Kwong where she cooks tripe, one of Kathleen's favourite yum cha dishes, and it turned out he'd never been to yum cha in the three years he's lived in Sydney, it was always on the cards we'd find ourselves at a Chinese restaurant on a Sunday afternoon.

The number of anglo faces you see at yum cha has definitely increased over the past few years - and no one stares at me anymore when I come in with Kathleen and her friends - but today at Chatswood, Troy and I were definitely in a minority. He polished off everything, even hoeing into chicken feet, which is something I've never had the courage to attempt!

It was also interesting hearing some of the stories from Eva and Martin, about organising yum cha for their non-Asian workmates.

"They order all this crap like sweet and sour pork, and roast duck!" said Eva, complaining about the unadventurous eating habits of anglos, who tend to stick to standard Chinese restaurant fare, rather than sampling some of the wild and crazy stuff.

Dickson and his girlfriend Lucy headed off for a weekend with their friends up the coast, but they left behind something to remind us of them.

An alarm clock that went off at 9am on Saturday morning. Thanks!

Komachi, a Japanese restaurant near the corner of Crown and Cleveland streets, has laid down a challenge to their customers. If you can finish off a bowl of their ramen - stock, noodles and all - they will give you $50. If you can't, the ramen sets you back $50. The bowl is twice the size of a regular bowl.

Calvin and Hobbes. Without a doubt. Ever wondered what happened to Bill Watterson, the cartoonist, when he abruptly stopped drawing his popular comic?

It's funny. Australia's business commentators regularly bemoan this country's increasing irrelevance in international trade, risking becoming a branch office, rather than a headquarters. You wouldn't know it from perusing the job ads.

There's an overabundance of world-class organisations, industry-leading firms, exciting/enthusiastic/dynamic businesses in Sydney.

Kathleen came home from work early yesterday with a migraine - the first she's ever had, believe it or not.

The night before, we'd started marinating some chicken, and I knew vaguely what she wanted to go into dinner - just a basic stirfry, right? So about 5 o'clock, I got started on chopping up some fruit and vegetables, with Kathleen asleep in the bedroom... or so I thought.

The door opens, and out staggers a feeling-much-better-Kathleen. Feeling so much better, that she decided to take over. "I'm on top of the cooking, you sit down and relax," I protested, to no avail.

The sound of the knife on the chopping board woke her up, and apparently the only thing she could think of was me stuffing up a meal she'd been eagerly looking forward to making for the previous two days! It's nice to know what people really think of your cooking.

She does make a great black bean vegetables, though!

Occasionally, the job search throws up some job ads that brighten your day. For all the wrong reasons.