Thu, 29 Jun 2006
The Earth Simulator, just south of Yokohama in Japan, was the world's fastest supercomputer when we were living over there. I was lucky enough to be given a guided tour, without any sort of credentials or background check, just through an email.
I'll say that again:
I was shown around the facilities of the world's fastest and most powerful supercomputer for an hour, as a foreign resident, just by emailing and saying I was in the area and wouldn't mind seeing it. The organisation that manages it had no idea who I was, I had no credentials or authorisation or scientific background.
Great times.
Anyway, that was back in 2003. It's no longer the world's most powerful supercomputer.
Somehow, there's no bragging rights in saying that I've seen the 10th most powerful supercomputer in the world...
Tue, 27 Jun 2006
I have a particular character trait. Some (like Kathleen) would term this a really annoying habit, rather than a trait.
When I'm at a Japanese restaurant, and a Japanese person sits down close by, I cannot resist saying things in Japanese, just loud enough so that they might overhear.
"Honto ni? (Is that right)" I'll say in response to something Kathleen says.
"Nani daiyo! (Wow!)".
"Gum dai wok!" Oh, hang on, that's Cantonese.
I really should drop that habit.
Besides, my vocabulary isn't big enough to keep it going for longer than a couple of sentences anyway.
Mon, 26 Jun 2006
It was pouring when I left work this evening. It was still raining when I arrived back at Wollstonecraft station. To make things worse, I didn't have an umbrella, and so I had to run all the way home. I absolutely hate getting wet.
I've learnt the hard way that I'm really unfit.
And then, five minutes after I'd arrived home, trying to get dry and catch my breath again, the wife calls. She doesn't have an umbrella and wants me to come back down to the station and meet her, so she doesn't get wet like I did.
I didn't really want to come back out, and I guess my bad mood showed when I met her.
But.
She had some great news - she'd heard good things from a few people in the know on the job she'd interviewed for last week and it sounds like something might be coming through on that front.
And then, when we got home, there was a letter from Masumi, one of our friends from our time in Japan. She and her husband are expecting their first kid in January!
Two happy incidents, and suddenly the rain didn't seem so bad after all.
Sun, 25 Jun 2006
This afternoon, just to get out of the house, we caught the bus over to Mosman. Or, as Kathleen likes to call it, White City. The land where everyone is white, and no one is foreign.
As we were waiting at the bus stop in Crows Nest, I wasn't sure how many sections it was , or how much the fare was going to be.
"That's OK," said Kathleen, as the bus approached and pulled into the bus stop. "You can ask the driver. He looks friendly."
We hopped in board, just as the driver stuck out his hand and flipped his middle finger at the driver in the bus coming the other way.
Well.
I don't know about friendly, but he did know how much it was...
Steph's got a new toy: a brand-new, four burner BBQ. We went around on Saturday night for a mid-winter BBQ, to test it out. Kick the tyres, so to speak. Not bad at all!
After dinner, Eva brought out her toy - a mahjong table, complete with cup holders and ashtray built in (accessories du jour for the discerning Chinese mahjong player!). So we play a couple of rounds - where I quickly find how useful computer games can be as mahjong training simulations when I win the first two!
Then, Lu's mum calls her on her mobile. So Lu is talking to her in Chinese on the phone, while simultaneously trying to play mahjong.
And then. She says it.
"Mum, I can't talk to you right now, I've got to go. I'm playing mahjong."
A phrase that every Chinese person at the table had heard their parents utter at least once. And we all knew at once.
Lu has turned into her mum.
Sat, 24 Jun 2006
I got back Thursday night from a week working in Brisbane. The entire time was overcast and raining - I reckon the ads with blue skies and sunshine is just a myth to encourage people to holiday there.
I flew in on Sunday night. I much prefer that over getting up at 5.30am for a 6.30 or 7am flight up. Unfortunately, the city is dead on Sunday night at 8.30, and I really struggled to find somewhere good to eat - there's a distinct lack of cheap Japanese, Malaysian or Chinese restaurants compared to Sydney. Maybe I just didn't know the right areas.
I wanted to head down to Southbank, on the south side of the river from the CBD, but it was so wet and miserable on Tuesday, I gave it a miss.
On Wednesday night, I caught the 5.59 express train to the Gold Coast from Brisbane's Central station to catch up with an old friend from Japan, Tamra. Hadn't seen her since my wedding in January last year, and it was good to see her and hear what she's been up to since she moved to Queensland. The highlight of the trip, for sure.
Sat, 17 Jun 2006
At yum cha, earlier today...
(Note - those aren't Kathleen's glasses. So far as I know, she'd never have a pair like that)
The movie I saw in Malaysia that I liked so much, Perhaps Love had it's Austalian premiere last night as part of the Sydney Film Festival.
I was walking along Market St on Thursday morning, and passed the State Theatre, which was all lit up at 9.30 in the morning. I remembered the Festival was on, so I picked up a program. Flicking through it, I saw the page for the movie, in half-page size - one of the premier events! I rushed back to the box office and picked up two tickets there and then.
I took Kathleen to see it as a surprise - I didn't even tell her we were going to the film festival. However, she did managed to get out of me that we were going to see a movie. Luckily, I threw her off the scent by telling her we were going to see "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift" ("It's about Tokyo, and you know we love Japan!"). I don't she was convinced.
It was just as good as I remembered it. The whole movie-within-a-movie setup, the musical numbers... Kathleen was a little surprised though.
"That was pretty soppy," she said as we came out afterwards. "It was good, but not really like you to watch something like that by yourself in Malaysia."
Which is sort of true, but there's a massive revenge/betrayal as an underlying theme, which balanced it out.
Wed, 14 Jun 2006
I'm so glad I stayed up, especially when it was looking pretty dicey at 82 minutes, as it was looking increasingly likely that Australia would be lucky to get away with a draw!
And then, 3 goals in the space of 10 minutes, and we'd won! What a game!
Of course, the next day, came the obligatory attempts to turn the outcome political:
Australia's win against Japan in the World Cup shows the Aussie value of teamwork, federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese says.
...
"What it did if anything is show that the team didn't give up, that there was great teamwork there and that in the end that Aussie teamwork of working for each other and not pitting one against the other as John Howard's workplace relations and AWAs would do is essential," he said.
One thing that is really annoying about Australian politicians, and it's both Liberal and Labor that do it, is the belief that only Australians have these qualities, as if they uniquely define us, and other countries can't do teamwork.
Anyway, I suppose he didn't try and bring in that lame, strained mateship cliche.
Federal Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews has refused to urge bosses to show leniency towards bleary-eyed employees turning up late after the Socceroos' victory.
Asked if employees should be sacked for showing up to work late, Mr Andrews dodged the question and instead congratulated the team on winning its opening World Cup match over Japan overnight.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether or not Australians are mature enough to work out how much sleep they need and go to bed accordingly. We're a pathetic people sometimes.
Mon, 12 Jun 2006
I still can't believe Eva and Steph managed to get 26 people seated for dinner at their place on Sunday night. Granted, their lounge room is quite large, but still!
We had steam boat, which was perfect for a large gathering, since you just put a gas burner on each table, put a steam boat dish on top, provide raw ingredients, and let everybody cook their own meal. Easy. Luckily, people brought along a total of four gas burners (the little ones suitable for table-top cooking, not the 5kg gas cylinder-powered ones) so Eva didn't have to even worry about running power cords and extension cables everywhere. We had small stools, rather than large chairs. The night was cold, so most of the food could sit outside and be chilled naturally, rather than take up valuable room in the fridge. There was no way we could have put enough green vegetables for 26 people in the fridge anyway!
And believe it or not, we didn't finish all the food!
Considering all the stress Steph and Eva went through to put the occasion on, we had a great time and hopefully they felt the effort was worth it!
Sun, 11 Jun 2006
Went to a housewarming last night at Kathleen's work colleague Christina's place out in Ryde. It was cold and wet, but with roofing over the back verandah, as well as a gas outdoor heater, the weather didn't have much of an impact. The BBQ was good, too!
Sat, 10 Jun 2006
Hooray! The Hippies won the Amazing Race! The best bit was that the race went to Japan - and to all the places that we'd been to:
The world's busiest intersection at Shibuya, Lake Yamanaka, and the capsule hotels (which we never actually got around to staying in).
In a stroke of evil genius, the show decided to make the contestants drive everywhere there. Now, having been to the Shibuya, there is no way in the world I would even consider driving there. The narrow streets, the traffic, the lack of street signage... that was just pure evil. The contestants managed to get through it okay, which means they're probably better, or braver, drivers than me.
And the final leg was the most dramatic, with the fratboys choking when it came to remembering which countries they'd been to, and in which order, allowing the hippies to come from behind and win. Wow. Lucky we taped it, allowing us to maintain the drama by fast-forwarding all the ads.
Makes me want to go back to Japan again...
Fri, 09 Jun 2006
I was so engrossed in the newspaper this morning on the train that I missed getting off at Parramatta.
It wasn't until we'd reached Westmead, the next stop along, and the announcement that the next station would be Seven Hills and then on to Blacktown, that I realised. I managed to get off just as the doors were closing.
Luckily it didn't add too much to the total travel time.
Wed, 07 Jun 2006
The view from the 9th floor of the office building I'm working from in Parramatta was amazing today.
These large cumulonimbus clouds, hovering over the distant Sydney city skyline, with a golden base in the afternoon sun, and set against a violet and threatening afternoon sky.
Views like that are a warm welcome to the grey skies and rain of the past few days.
Sun, 04 Jun 2006
"Oh, great, you brought the bags," I said to Kathleen as we were heading out to do the shopping this morning.
"That's cause I didn't see you bringing them," she replied, half joking.
"That's cause you may have seen me with my arms full bringing out the garbage."
"Well, I cleaned up this morning. The house was a mess."
"Hey, you remember Friday night? How it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella, and I had to run home from the station in the pouring rain, and I'd just gotten inside and into dry clothes and you rang and asked me go back out in the rain to meet you at the station? And I got really wet again?"
Marriage is like one big, long game of one-upmanship, trying to get more brownie points than the other person.
Fri, 02 Jun 2006
The Chaser really should have ads for their TV show blaring out of ABC on the hour every hour. Otherwise, we always forget to watch on Friday night (9.45pm as a schedule slot isn't the most memorable, especially at the end of the week).
(Yes, it's raining outside, which is why we're in and I'm on the computer.)
