That map of the world, with the countries you've visited marked in red, is sooo last year. This year, all the cool kids are doing this one:
So far: Sydney, Yokohama, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Hong Kong, KL and Singapore. So far...
Nothing is more frustrating, more infuriating, than a technical problem that you can't resolve, when it's 11 at night, you're still at work, and you know that if you don't get the problem fixed, the next morning is going to be an absolute sh*tstorm.
And gradually, the anticipation of a 'nightmare' scenario the next day increases and increases - what will my boss think? will the client be mad? am I at all competent? how can I not have fixed this already? why did we try and do this on a Monday night and not the weekend when we'd have more time?! - in direct proportion to the ability to think and concentrate on the problem at hand.
Urgh.
In the end, we decided there was nothing we could do. The problem would not be fixed that night, and we'd just have to come in the next day with fresh eyes and try and fix it then. The night's sleep was full of dread anticipation. The next morning was not as disastrous as expected, but defending your professional decisions to upset clients in the cold light of day with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight is never fun.
We went to Vi's birthday dinner at a Korean restaurant in Campsie last night.
Eva wrote a better write up, so I'll just link there. Happy birthday Vi!
Oasis - Roll With It
Regurgitator - ! (The Song Formerly Known As)
Mr Children - one two three
Weezer - Islands In The Sun
Frenzal Rhomb - You Are Not My Friend
Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
In the Canberra airport, there is absolutely nothing to do...
A few observations from my brief time here.
Canberra in the late winter is really pretty. A lot of bare trees, which means the light from the clear blue skies gets right down to the streets. The view is counter-balanced by the cold winds, but that's nice, too - nothing like a brisk wind to remind you that it's winter.
I didn't see any politicians, since Parliament wasn't in session. About the closest I came was spotting Peter Shergold, head of PM&C at King O'Malley's in Civic. Which I suspect is probably not at all interesting.
I caught the bus out to Manuka (which passes for a happening part of town) on Wednesday night, and had dinner at Verve. Good food, dodgy service. I had to wait a long time before actively trying to get the waitress' attention for:
Sometimes dining alone really sucks. The food was good, though.
A lot of cyclists rule the roads in Canberra. And not just the lycra-clad super athletes, either, but a lot of regular people on old crappy commuter bikes getting around, especially in Civic. The city is flat, which makes it easy to ride on, but the roads are wide and there's often bike lanes tacked on to the side. I wish Sydney could be more bike-friendly.
I also wish Canberra had a few more things to do at night, but then again I didn't really do all that much outside the central business district.
Staying in a hotel around the corner from the office where I'm conducting training this week has led to the development of a few bad habits this week.
The first one is coffee consumption. Where before I'd maybe have one each morning first thing after getting in to the office, I'm finding here that I get to the local cafe at around 8 each morning. This means that I have a good 45 minutes to sit and read the papers before I have to get to work.
45 minutes is actually a long time to have only one coffee.
The temptation to order another one is pretty strong.
So I'm up to two coffees a day (espressos, too!) straight away.
At lunch, it's even worse. There's not much to do in the middle of the day, so I end up heading back to the cafe again. That's the third coffee of the day.
At the training centre, there's a bowl of lollies provided for each student (and instructor) daily. A bowl full of redskins, minties and fantales. The urge to partake is strong.
Around about 4pm, when the caffeine and the sugar high start to wear off, I can actually feel a bit of a mood swing. Each day I swear that tomorrow will be different, it'll be peppermint tea instead of coffee, and water instead of lollies. Each day, I end up at the cafe at 8am.
Next week, when I go virtually cold turkey from the caffeine and the sugar, will be interesting...
If I was to highlight the one thing that I hate most of all about air travel, I'd have to say that it's the useless security theatre of taking the laptop out of the bag, running it through the security scanner, and then placing it back in the bag. My bag always seems to be jammed so full of stuff that it's a major effort just to get the laptop into the thing at home, let alone in the tiny awkward space, surrounded by strangers, afforded at the airport security scanner. Plus, I watch as the security guards push the laptop down the conveyer belt, bumping and jarring every inch of the way. That'll do wonders for the hard drive, thanks for that.
This morning's flight was pretty uneventful - a propeller-driven engine, rather than the usual 747, due to the smaller number of passengers. A smaller plane means that those clowns who bring on their suitcase and try fruitlessly to jam it into the overhead bins are sh*t out of luck. You know who you are.
I'm not quite sure which I prefer yet - flying interstate the night before a course or project starts, and missing out on being at home with the wife, or having to wake up at sparrowfart and get down to the airport in the dark, tired at waking up at 5am, despite the fact that you went to bed at 9 the night before and tossed and turned for 3 hours since you weren't tired.
At least being in a new city makes up for the slight inconvenience.
I'm off to Canberra next week to conduct a training course. After this week's draining, technical course, it will be nice to wind back a gear and instruct on the usage of a less technical tool.
And, parliament is in session. I'll have to see if I can get down and watch the politicians whose shenanigans we fund through our hard-earned money. Maybe I'll even get to heckle the Prime Rodent in person, rather than via the TV.
A ha! I knew it.
A discussion we were having with Kathleen's brother and his wife found Kathleen admitting that she was leaving the mirror wardrobe doors deliberately on my side of the room, rather than closing them.
"Yeah, it's bad feng shui to have mirrored doors on my side of the bed. So I just open them on Andrew's," she said.
"What?! You mean you're deliberately giving me bad luck?"
"Yeah, but you don't believe in that crap anyway, so it doesn't matter," she replied.
I've started the long and tedious process of converting my CD collection to MP3 so I can transfer it on to my iPod. In the process, I've started listening to some of the albums I own that I haven't listened to in years. Listening to all these fantastic songs reminds me why I bought the albums in the first place.
Unfortunately, since Kathleen and I have different tastes in music, I don't get a chance to play them loud out through the stereo.
The following have all been on high rotation over the past few days: Led Zeppelin's Presence and IV, Queen's Queen II, Metallica's Master Of Puppets and Black Sabbath's Paranoid.
Rock!
I finally got the bike out of the garage (gee, it would be a bit embarrassing to take it in for the 3 month service with the only ride I'd had being that from shop back to home, ne?) for a ride on Sunday.
I caught the train around to West Concord, which is the closest regular train stop to Olympic Park. From there, it's not even 100 metres to the eastern edge of the park.
I was amazed - Olympic Park is at least as big as Centennial Park, and incredibly busy, with families riding bikes, having picnics and just generally enjoying the fresh air. I'll have to get Kathleen out here for a ride - you can rent a bike for about $20 a half day, and the rides are easy and flat.
There're a couple of bike trails out there that are long, but easy rides. While Trev and I didn't set any speed records, it was just a casual ride, anyway.
And then we had a couple of beers at the Overflow (the rugby was playing out at the stadium) in the winter sunshine. Nice!
Since downloading it, I've become addicted to Google Earth. I've been busy finding some personal landmarks, particularly from our time in Japan.
I've been able to find our apartment in Kamoi, as well as the schools Kathleen and I were working at. Here are some of my favourites:
Here's hoping I don't have to fly in the next, oh say, 20 years or so. Looks like it's going to become even more of a complete PITA:
The battle against terrorism means travellers may face draconian measures and severe limits on what they can carry.
Experts say tough new restrictions placed on US flights and those out of London to combat new types of liquid explosives - including the ban on all but the most essential items of hand luggage - are likely to remain.
And eventually, passengers may even be forced to wear airline-issued tracksuits if detection technology cannot keep pace.
Temporary restrictions introduced on Thursday mean books, laptop computers, carry-on luggage and all liquids have been banned from flights leaving London's Heathrow airport.
And travellers flying to and from the US face an indefinite ban on all liquids in cabin baggage - including beverages, suntan lotion, creams, toothpaste and hair gels - as well as screening of all footwear.
Fun.
As security expert Bruce Schneier says:
It's easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it's shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we've wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we've wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets -- stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security -- and too many ways to kill people.
Security measures that require us to guess correctly don't work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It's not security, it's security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.
The goal of a terrorist is to cause terror. Last week's arrests demonstrate how real security doesn't focus on possible terrorist tactics, but on the terrorists themselves. It's a victory for intelligence and investigation, and a dramatic demonstration of how investments in these areas pay off.
And if you want to know what you can do to help? Don't be terrorized. They terrorize more of us if they kill some of us, but the dead are beside the point. If we give in to fear, the terrorists achieve their goal even if they were arrested. If we refuse to be terrorized, then they lose -- even if their attacks succeed.
Part of Kathleen's new job will involve a degree of car travel, as she heads off to the offices of some of the financial planners she works with.
She's a little hesitant when it comes to directions, however, and wasn't really confident when it came to reading the Sydways road atlas.
Enter Navman.
Now, when we were in Japan, it seemed that most cars (especially the big minivans that seemed to be the preferred family cars) had their own in-car navigation computer, which directed you where to go. This was really, really useful in Japan, a country whose methods of defining street and house addresses appears to have been born in the Circles of Hell. Akihabara, the Tokyo tech mecca, was full of shops catering to car navigation systems, just because people find it so hard to get around there.
In fact, it's so hard that often if you're going to someone's house, they'll meet you at the local train station, since the odds of actually being able to follow directions to a particular building are close to zero.
Anyway.
In Australia, it's not as bad as all that, but certainly in the bigger cities, where there are a lot more streets, and one-ways and no-right turns and whatever, the road atlas isn't always the easiest way to navigate.
So Kathleen started looking into in-car navigation systems. Before forking out $600-900 bucks, though, she borrowed Lu's Navman computer, and yesterday we took it for a spin.
We're now converts.
We mounted it on the windscreen, easily visible from the driver's seat, and keyed in an address in Epping. The device picked up our current location and direction, and even had audio:
Navman: In 100 metres, turn left. Turn left.
Us: Thanks, Navman! You got it!
Yes, we became so attached that we started speaking to it.
Navman: Turn right at Duntroon Avenue. Us (slightly concerned): Are you sure, Navman? Not sure you can actually turn right there.
It turns out you can't.
Apart from that one little hiccup, plus a few minor 'idiosyncracies' ("At the next roundabout, take the second exit." Kathleen: "What the hell? Why can't it just say, go straight ahead?!"), it was beautiful. It could tell (mostly) where you could and couldn't turn against the traffic and came up with an alternative route, it let you know when you had to move over to the right or left lane, and it was able to cope and pick up a new route if you decided to wilfully ignore it's helpful directions.
Unfortunately for Navman, however, there's a better alternative on the market: TomTom. Bigger screen, better options (avoid toll roads, take back streets, etc), plus a cooler name.
All jokes aside, it's incredible how much more relaxed you feel when you don't have to worry about looking things up in a road atlas, and having a navigator that knows exactly where you are, and how to get where you are going. I could easily believe that an in-car navigation system is one of those things that, once you buy one, you couldn't imagine ever living without it again.
We got back from our three day ski weekend late Monday night. We had a great time. Fell down a bit (a lot). Embarrassed ourselves with our unco-ness. Scared ourselves hurtling down icy slopes with little ability. Will write more when I can get out of holiday mode.
We filled in the census form online last night, even though we were over at Cousin Elaine's for most of the evening for dinner, and then stuck on an inconvenient trackwork bus home.
A lot of questions around work, which I guess provides a suggestion to what the government really thinks is important. Also interesting to note that neither financial services nor IT were deemed important enough to justify their own categories.
I struggled to think where we were five years ago, I reckon it was Melbourne based on the fact that I was living there during the whole September 11 thing.
When it came to the question on religion, I was tempted to put Pastafarian (putting in Jedi is soooo last season's census), and there was no specific box for "Atheist". Putting in "None" seemed like such a cop-out.
Perhaps in hindsight I should have ticked the one for "Humanist":Humanism is a broad category of active ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationalism. Humanism is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems, and is also incorporated into some religious schools of thought.
Humanism entails a commitment to the search for truth and morality through human means in support of human interests. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or divinely revealed texts. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature, suggesting that solutions to our social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.
Which is a pretty accurate summary of what I think and believe in. A more catchy summary might be a quote from Desmond Tutu:
"You need others. But you need others for everything, really. In our part of the world, we have something called ubuntu. Ubuntu. Ubuntu. Ubuntu. The essence of being human. We say a person is a person through other persons. I can't be human in isolation. I need you to be all you can be so that I can become me and all that I can be."
Note to self:
When taking the contact lenses out, try and remember which is the right one, and which is the left one and place in the appropriate side of the lens holder. This is especially important given that they are of different strength. Idiot.
Tomorrow morning is going to be fun. And blurry.
Why is it that contact lenses, when you drop them whilst putting them in or taking them out, seem to end in the most unlikely spots in the bathroom? Somehow higher than where you dropped them from, stuck to the mirror, behind the aerosols... contacts obviously do not obey the laws of physics.
andrewandkathleen was meant to be a place to chuck our photos and diaries of our time in Japan. Since then it's transformed into a way of letting our friends and family know what we've been up to!
We've been together since high school, married since 2005. We've travelled and lived in different cities and different countries and are now trying to work out whether we're settling down or having a rest!
