Super Bowl Monday! Monday morning here, and I'm home watching the Super Bowl. Eagles looking a little tentative so far but are starting to settle in. The dog is trying to relax next to me, but keeps jumping up when I shout out the TV. The game started later than I thought, so I'm probably going to have to miss the second half, as I'm expected in at work at lunchtime.

Metamorphosis' Valentine's Day limerick contest is back. The subjects this year are medical pioneers, microscopic animals, and skin conditions. We'll be back to defend our crown.

I placed a bet on the Super Bowl today, legally, at Crown Casino. (The guy at the counter tried to wind me up a little, saying "Eagles? You mean the West Coast Eagles?")

Rumor has it that Paul McCartney, who's doing the halftime show, is an Eagles fan.

Another Aussie-ism is to use "crap" as an adjective, instead of "crappy". Like, "It was a crap movie." If something is really bad, it was "the crappest".

Yesterday's weather was the crappest. It rained all day to start with, then in the evening the wind whipped up as well. And kept it up all night. Supposedly it was the heaviest rainfall in Melbourne since they started recording it in 1856. Wow. To top it off, the huge ferry that leaves for Tasmania from just up the road from us was forced to turn back in 20m seas, which is more than 60 feet! Bleah.

We were woken up at about 5am by the sounds of drips; our bedroom roof was leaking in a couple of places. It also leaked into our kitchen and bathroom. The wind was still blowing something fierce. But, less than an hour later, it all stopped, and there were blue skies.

Everyone took their dogs to the dog park today, since no one could yesterday. There were twelve trees down. I think we were actually pretty lucky all in all. Mad weather here.

Bike. Last weekend I bought a used mountain bike. There are some spots of rust but it rides good and I like it a lot. Marjorie already has a bike, so this will definitely extend our range, having previously being limited to walking and our single tram line. Not always, of course, but most of the time I'm glad I don't have a car. I think bike's are one of the greatest inventions ever. The fact that they've had the same basic design for a century says a lot.

Bikes I have owned in the past (that I can remember), and their eventual fate:

Age 5: Orange tricycle.

Age 6?: The bicycle I learned on. I seem to remember it was red and very stripped down.

Age 14: Red, white and blue bike with banana seat. This was a cool one.

Age 16: Ten-speed.

Age 18: Ten-speed. My college bike. Left it locked up over winter break and it was gone when I came back.

Ages 18-33: Nothing!

Age 33: Mountain bike. Great bike. Left it locked up at Music Midtown in Atlanta; came out and it was gone.

Age 37: Green crappy Carrefour (i.e. K-mart) special, in Singapore. Stolen from train station bike rack. And they say there's no crime in Singapore!

Age 38: see above.

Joy. We are freshly back from the Polyphonic Spree show, and boy are our spirits uplifted. It was like being at a religious revival. There were twenty-three in the band, by our best count, but it was hard to tell because they were constantly going nuts. Everyone dresses in choir robes. The eight-person choir spent half the time dancing like a cymbal crashing. Besides drums, bass, and guitar, and choir, they featured a harpist, trumpets, flutes, and a French horn. Great songs too. The audience ate it up; they turned on the audience lights at one point and I could see everyone was grinning ear to ear. Some people were going into paroxysms, like they'd just been healed. Hard to describe, but totally joyful and original.

Yesterday was Australia Day. We celebrated by going to the beach, having a barbecue, and by going to see Closer, featuring equal parts Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen. It was engaging enough, but didn't see a lot of point to it. Nor did I particularly care for any of the characters, which isn't usually a problem for me, except that I get the feeling that I was supposed to. Clive Owen was his usual excellent, though, and I'm glad to see he got an Oscar nod for it.

I'm reading my blogs nowadays through an aggregator, which I highly recommend. I also use it to watch for updates to a lot of my other favorite sites, like Snopes and the NY Times Science section.

While we were gone today Laika got into a box and chewed up my drinking bird. Besides the "yikes" of her chewing on glass and doubtless tasting the red mystery liquid contained therein, it's kind of a bummer -- it was a gift from a friend. He got it for me after a discussion we had one day where we both found out, to our mutual amusement, that we each independently had a "random object" that we kept ready to mention whenever someone asked us to name a random object. Mine was a drinking bird; his was a doorknob.

Now that I think about it, we never found the drinking bird's head. Double yikes.

Aw yeah. The teams I root for never seem to make it to the final game, at least not since I was a kid. Today my Eagles made it. Woop! I had to get up at 7 to watch it, and I could only watch the first half before having to go to work. For the Super Bowl, you can bet I'll be staying home to watch the whole thing.

Who needs a phone? If you have a microphone on your computer, download Skype and give me a call -- my contact name is "angusmcpresley" (don't ask). I'm trying to hook up with parents this way, but they're asleep most of the time I'm on-line.

I realize this is like posting my phone number on the web, but if I start getting crank calls, I'll just change my handle. That's the other advantage of this over phones. Ma Bell is a punk ass bitch.

While I'm elated that the Cassini/Huygens mission went largely as planned, apparently there was a glitch that went almost entirely unreported. A software bug caused the loss of nearly half of the 700 images that were hoped for.

See, that's why I'll never work on a project like this, despite being an enthusiast. I just can't imagine what it would feel like to be the one responsible for introducing a bug that dashes the hopes of your colleagues and costs millions of dollars, while instantly flushing at least a decade of your life down the toilet.

What will make a good weekend for me?

The probe lands successfully on Titan.

The Eagles beat the Vikings.

I get the shelves hung.

A bad weekend, obviously, will be the opposite of all those.

I really don't like the new "typing pool" work setup. Very distracting. I feel like the guy in Memento, where every thirty seconds I forget what I was working on. I need to find an mp3 of white noise and some headphones.

We are in the process of trying to score some Rufus Wainwright tickets. We listened to his "Poses" album over dinner, and both just marvelled at it for the umpteenth time. So, as is our frequent wont, we started coming up with another music list over dinner. This list was, Albums That We Consider To Be "Old Friends", Mutually:

Rufus Wainwright, "Poses"

REM, "Reckoning"

Squeeze, "Frank"

Radiohead, "The Bends"

Jellyfish, "Spilt Milk"

Elliott Smith, "Either/Or"

Neil Finn, "Try Whistling This"

Soul Coughing, "Irresistible Bliss"

Soul Coughing, "Ruby Vroom"

The Kinks, "Village Green Preservation Society"

Hoodoo Gurus, "Mars Needs Guitars"

Elvis Costello, "Imperial Bedroom"

Sam Phillips, "Martinis and Bikinis"

Billy Bragg, "Talking To The Tax Man About Poetry"

Jiminy! Members of the Australian Cricket team are going to be in my building tomorrow doing a tsunami benefit.

Cricket (the sport) is ubiquitous here. I'm starting to appreciate it, a bit, though I still have no real connection to it, and I still don't fully understand it. Like most Americans, I'm learning it in how it relates to baseball. Though the spirit of the game is quite different, the comparison helps one learn the rules. Take baseball, but:

Give the pitcher a running start. No umpires to call balls and strikes; rather, if the ball hits the sticks, yer out. Get rid of first and third base. No foul balls either; everything is in play. Instead of trading sides every innings, have everyone bat. Then it's the other team's turn. Make a home run six points, and hitting it to the fence is four.

Actually, the main way I'm learning it is through playing the game that everyone in our office has been playing: StickCricket. My highest slog score thus far is 218 for 4.

An interesting read. The Edge magazine asked a bunch of really smart people, "What do you believe is true even though you can't prove it?". Their responses are quite interesting.

Today was the first day in Australia that we both went to our respective jobs, leaving the dog alone. She was pretty good, but she did get into the recyclables -- she dragged a six pack box and two empty Corona bottles to her dog bed. We're starting to take photos of the artwork she creates each day she's left alone; we'll post them en masse at some point.

Marjorie's at her new job, which I'll let her tell you about. Me, I'm in the new office building, which is a big, sterile Gattaca-like monstrosity. It does have a great choice of restaurants though (a giant food court, and Chinatown and the Greek area right up the street). Our office space is, unfortunately, a newsroom type of office; I can peek over my monitor and spot just about all fifty or so people in the company. Fifteen floors up, but the view is mostly just the ugly tops of other lower buildings.

Marjorie starts her new job tomorrow. I don't go back to work until Wednesday. Actually, most of my company doesn't go back until the 10th. We're starting in a brand new office building, that's right on the tram line that starts right by our house. Nice.

It'll be hard to get back on sleep schedule; I've been staying up until 3 or 4 a.m. these days. My interest in chess has had a resurgence; I've been up late playing people from all over the world on Yahoo games. I'm only a mediocre player, but the game still fascinates me. (Particularly the games of Bobby Fischer. Too bad he's completely lost the plot; it kills me that he and Kasparov are both still alive, and will never play each other.)

Ouch. When Marjorie was back in the states, she got me some Dave's Insanity salsa and sauce. It's, like, really hot and stuff. I can only do about a spoonful of the salsa at one sitting. It hurts, but I get a strange sort of happy buzz from it -- probably endorphins or something. Heat aside, too, i'ts actually tastier than anything you can buy here.

Took a nice trip today down the Mornington Peninsula, all the way to Sorrento and Portsea, and even beyond to the national park on Point Nepean. We went to the beach as well, and I went skimboarding for the first time in, oh, ten years or so. I can still jump on the thing but I seem to have forgotten what to do when I get the waves. Still, I managed to show up some ten year old kids.

Though there were signs for kangaroos and echidnas, the only real wildlife we saw were some Australasian Gannets, which are common there, but still a new sighting and pretty cool.

A neat catch on TV tonight; we caught the film adaptation of King Rat. I read the book, and never even realized they made a movie out of it, way back in 1965. And they did a really good job with it, too. It's set in Singapore (in a Japanese prisoner of war camp), though it obviously wasn't filmed in Singapore (there were mountains in the background).

We're planning a getaway for later in the week. We'll probably just rent a car and take a trip down the Mornington Peninsula towards the ocean. Today was actually cold here, but it's supposed to warm up.

I've got a lot of problems with you people. The internet is abuzz with talk of Festivus, a holiday that derives from an episode of Seinfeld. People are throwing Festivus parties, sending Festivus cards, etc.

Which is all well and good. But if you ask me, if there's one holiday tradition that should be reborn, it's Saturnalia.

Memories. Check out the top 100 toys of the 70s or thereabouts. I (or a friend maybe) had 97, 95, 93, 90, 86, 83, 81, 79, 74, 71, 70, 69, 68, 64, 62, 61, 58, 57, 56, 54, 48, 47, 46, 44, 41, 38, 36, 35, 28, 23, 19, 10, 8, 7, and, uh, 1, I guess.

46 (Ricochet Racers) was my favorite, and I had totally forgotten about it for the last thirty years.

The year in music. Another year without me devouring any albums in particular. The problem this time wasn't the location (Singapore was a musical wasteland) but rather the lack of a car. I just don't listen to music that much without one. I could take a CD player on the tram but I find it cumbersome to carry them around. And MP3 players are still too labour intensive to load up. Around the house I never sit idle long enough to concentrate on the music. There's nothing like a car CD player for music enjoyment.

I did hear some good albums this year from Tom Waits, Jet, the Shins, Ron Sexsmith, Franz Ferdinand, the Finn Brothers, PJ Harvey, Modest Mouse, Sam Phillips, and Keane. But I haven't really fully digested any of them.

I do have an opinion on the Song of the Year -- Jet's "Look What You've Done". It's like a lost Beatles track. I just learned it on guitar today and it has sweet little chord structure to boot. Marjorie likes it too, but we're both of the opinion that the song needs just one more idea in it for it to have become a true classic. Jet is a young band though, and definitely going places. They hail from right here in Melbourne, so I'm looking forward to catching these guys live.

One more thing I'm excited about -- My Eagles are 13 and 1! Too bad their star receiver is injured and probably out for the season. Typical.

Five things I'm excited about:

1. We have tickets to see The Polyphonic Spree at the Forum and the Shins at the Corner Hotel.

2. We found the necessary centerpiece for my traditional Christmas eve dinner -- pierogies. It won't be the same without my grandmother cooking them, though. We also have a turkey for Christmas.

3. On Christmas Eve the Cassini probe we sent to Saturn will start the process of dropping a probe onto Saturn's moon Titan. This may be the last, best chance to see anything like this in my lifetime.

4. Books, books, books. I had forgotten how many I had. I'm trying to simultaneously re-read Catch-22, Beatlesongs, and The Winter Of Our Discontent.

5. Some time off. Since the office is moving, tomorrow is the last day I can work until at least the 4th of January. Which kind of sucks while I'm contracting, but it is still time off.

Ten dog behaviours of Laika, the dog:

1. Playing with her new squeaky toy. The first toy we ever got her that hasn't been killed within a day. We're guessing it's because it squeaks when she bites too hard. She's taken to whimpering while she plays with it, which we can't figure out.

2. Sleeping with four legs in the air.

3. Sneaking off to sleep on the guest bed.

4. Running her face through high weeds.

5. Sitting down when another dog tries to sniff her butt.

6. Hiding from the vacuum cleaner. Every dog does this, but we're happy to know she's normal.

7. Yelping at puppies, especially when two are fighting each other. It gets her really excited but she doesn't know how to express it.

8. Chewing on sticks. If she finds a piece that's three or four inches long, she will eat it.

9. Trying to get you to play tug-of-war with the leash if she's not ready to leave the park yet.

10. Jumping up and down whenever Marjorie or I head for the front door, if she hasn't been to the park in the last two hours. I think she thinks that we don't ever take her unless she shows enough enthusiasm.

Corporate shill. A new list of products I endorse:

Braun electric razors. I used the same one for over a decade back in the States. I had to give it up to come overseas, and used some other brand in Singapore. Now I have me a brand new Braun and will never use anything else.

Jock's Ice Cream (83 Victoria Ave, Albert Park). The ice-cream place around the corner from us. It's really, really good, and dangerous to have so close. For something different, try the coconut-lime.

Redken Rough Paste. Yeah, it's hair product. But it works so much better than any spray, mousse, gel, or wax I've tried. Redken Rough Paste. Ask for it by name.

The Eclipse IDE. No IDE has been able to tempt me to stop using just an editor to develop, until now. I've been using this to develop Java at my new job, and I won't go back. It even makes CVS workable.

Team America: World Police. Parker and Stone's message is starting to get a little tiresome, but this is still a damn funny movie. "America, fuck yeah! Back again to save the motherfuckin' day!"

New Aussieisms that I've noticed:

"How did you pull up?" Basically, "How did you feel afterwards/the next morning?" Used when inquiring about the after-effects of a night of drinking or strenuous activity. Quite common.

"How good is that?" "Isn't that great?" Quite common as well.

"You should call in." "You should come by." Actually, this may be more Irish than Aussie.

"Chockas" Chock-full of things, people, or events. As in, "We tried to get lunch at the restaurant on the corner but the place was totally chockas." I had never noticed before, but this is rather common as well.

I've started to blog several times in the past week, then for some reason couldn't get into it. So now I'm just going to force it out, to clear out my blotter, so to speak. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Stuff! Our things have arrived. Wheee!!!!

We've been living basically out of a suitcase for two years while all our worldly possessions have sat collecting dust in storage for the last two years. Hence, unpacking is a trip down memory lane, and our house is instantly more homey.

I'm currently most excited about: THE COUCH, my books, kitchenwares, Marjorie's guitar, my leather jacket, other clothes, and the extra bed. Christmas has come early.

Spree. Purchases made this past Friday/Saturday/Sunday:

Computer desk

Six kitchen chairs

Buffet cabinet

Vacuum cleaner

Tall bathroom cabinet

Saw

Two screwdrivers

Shoe rack

Microwave

Light bulbs

Brita filter

Barbecue

Can of spray paint

Several bunches of coat hangers

Two basil plants

Shelves

Subaru Forester (okay, we only rented that)

Bottle of Cointreau

Bottle of Cuervo

One genius, two genius. Marjorie and I had a dinner table discussion the other day about musical genius in regards to bands. More specifically, which bands are based around one genius, and which have more than one? I guess what we were really talking about was songwriting genius more than the ability to play an instrument. We broke things up into categories, and had a lively little discussion. However, the opinions expressed here are mine, not hers. Solo artists can obviously only be single geniuses, and are not listed here.

Two geniuses. The rare confluence of talent that happens only once or twice in a lifetime. Only two bands here:

The Beatles

The Clash

Two near geniuses that add up to more than one genius. Sometimes people can only achieve their best through working with others. This is not to damn these people with faint praise; genius is not a word to be thrown around lightly, and these each add up to more than one.

The Rolling Stones

REM

The Smiths

U2 (actually, a sum total of more than two, I suppose)

One genius, one wannabe genius. Often times a genius will inspire another in the band to better things than they would otherwise achieve, but at the end of the day, there is only one:

The Pixies

Crowded House

XTC

One genius.

Nirvana

The Who (lots of instrumental genius here though)

The White Stripes

Radiohead

Weezer

Many others

Your mileage may, of course, vary. Afterward we had a ton of fun taking turns playing DJ while goofing around with the dog.

My three favorite job titles here in Australia:

"Spruiker" -- a salesperson who addresses passing members of the public from the door of a store, bar, or other establishment.

"Stevedore" -- One who is employed in the loading or unloading of ships.

"Removalist" -- Our office is moving to a new location, and the people that are going to clear out our office have this title. That'd be a cool job title to have.

Spring is gone. Literally. I found out today that Australians mark summer as starting the first of December, basing it not on astronomy, but on the months. Strange to me, but when I explained to my cow orkers that summer starts on the 21st for us, their response was "What? Why?".

So now it is officially no longer spring here. On cue, it rained for most of the day.

Spring has sprung, it seems. About time, too, as it's three weeks until summer. With the heat has come the mosquitos (aka mozzies, which seem to love me as much as North American and Asian mosquitoes) and flies. But the weather is still very nice, and there are lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants.

On Saturday we went to a housewarming party/barbecue for one of my cow orkers, on the rooftop deck of her new townhouse. It was beautiful and clear and the full moon made an appearance late. Fun bunch of folks I work with.

Sunday we saw Garden State, which was first-rate.

Tomorrow night, PJ Harvey.

Elvis Costello is playing up the road right now, and somehow, I'm not there. It wasn't in the cards this time.

Tomorrow, though, we're off to see the Finn brothers. Front row!

This Thursday, we're invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some Americans we met. I'm excited. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, or at least my favorite meal.

Then, next week, we have good seats again for PJ Harvey. There are advantages to living in a country that doesn't have the internet saturation of the USA -- you can score good concert tickets if you're among the savvy.

Comparing countries. I made a couple of graphs, just out of curiousity, with a little help from NCES's Create A Graph.

First, here's a comparison of Australia, the USA, and China, in terms of area. Pretty close, yes?

Now, see the graph comparing their population.

The point? I have none. I just think it's interesting.

Book roundup. Recent reads:

Call Of The Wild/White Fang (Jack London). I've read a lot of London, but somehow, never these books. Now that I have a dog I figured it was about time. Good stuff. London knows his dogs.

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I'm reading this for historical reasons. Recently I came across a couple of separate references to this novel which refer to it as a cultural phenomenon of its time. Pretty much the whole world, it seems, was reading it when it came out, serialized in a magazine. So I thought I would too.

Singularity Sky (Charles Stross). Science fiction candy. The guy obviously reads Slashdot. Some seriously crazy technical references, not dumbed down. Still, his short stories are better.

Titan (Stephen Baxter). Timely reading. Written in 1997, the story begins with the Cassini/Huygens probe -- which lands a month and a half from now -- finding evidence of life on Saturn's moon Titan.

Odd goings-on at the local Borders. Browsing in the bookstore this evening, I came across a ball-point pen that someone had left on a shelf -- not a skinny, cheap one, but a big fat nice one. I picked it up, and hit the button to push out the tip -- and promptly got shocked. What the...?

Why? What purpose could it serve? My immediate (and far too overdramatic) thought was that it some sort of spy pen, like the briefcase that shoots poison gas at you if you open it wrong. Then I thought, maybe it's a self-defense device, like pepper spray.

Of course, like the dumber maze rat, I had to get shocked a second time before I learned.

An internet search cleared up the mystery; it's just a novelty.

I just hope I wasn't being filmed.

Resuming my job as a cultural ambassador, today I tried a famous Australian "delicacy". Composed of yeast and sea salt, vegemite is typically spread on toast at brekkie. The cafe at work has little packaged individual servings of it (surprisingly to me, made by Kraft). Taking the advice of the Aussies I work with, I spread a very thin amount on my English Muffin. It has the appearance and consistency of gunky axle grease.

Americans notoriously react negatively to it. I thought I might be different; yeast and salt don't sound like a bad combination to me.

I have to say though. Ick.

The other night I proofread fifteen OCR'ed pages of an old book about the influence of ancient Greece on modern times. Why? For Project Gutenberg, a project (started well before the internet) to make publicly available books of interest that are in the public domain. Most of the books had copyrights that expired, or were old enough that they were never copyrighted. Check out some of the amazing books that are available for you to browse or download.

Music. I think I've mentioned here a few times my plan to have a home music server where I would just start downloading everything, without even considering the quality. There'd be a lot I would never listen to -- but, so? Memory is relatively cheap; I think the tendency to be discriminating is merely a holdover from a time where a large number of albums would require lots of money and space.

Well, here's a story about a guy who's trying to do it. His goals are, at least on the surface, more noble; he claims to be an archivist. Interesting, though.

It's funny, 'cuz it's true. Today's Overboard. 2.4 seconds is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but this morning Laika wolfed her bowl of food in under 30 seconds.

The comics I keep thinking about in relation to her, though, are a series of classic Far Sides. It's obvious that Gary Larson knows his dogs:

1. The one with the two dogs watching their food being prepared, with big smiles. The one dog says to the other, "Oh boy, it's dog food again!"

2. The one where the dog is picking up another dog for a date, and he says to her, "You look lovely tonight, Alice -- and whatever you rolled in sure does stink."

3. The one where the dog is riding in the car, and you can see that outside a nuclear bomb has gone off, and people are running around screaming in terror. The dog, though, is looking at another dog, who's just sitting there on the sidewalk. The caption reads, "Suddenly, Sparky saw something that interested her."

It's Friday evening here, and pretty nice out. We're sitting out in the backyard now because it's supposed to be rainy and cold again this weekend. Phoo. We just cooked up an awesome Mexican meal of soft tacos and beans, with Coronas on the side. Marjorie is reading over my shoulder and the dog is sitting next to me chewing noisily on a piece of bone.

Our stuff is supposed to arrive in port on the 17th, and then spend God knows how long in quarantine. But soon. We simply CANNOT WAIT.

We did get a box of groceries that Marjorie mailed from the states. Customs confiscated some of the stuff, like the black bean mix (because, apparently, it had chicken in it) and a Sante Fe rice mix, presumably because of the corn. They are seriously uptight about agricultural imports here.

The IOCCC winners have been posted; mine is under "schnitzi". Ah, the sweet buzz of fame. Actually, I haven't even shown it to anyone at work.

No chance to see the aurora last night. Actually, the sky was clear and blue in the morning when I woke up, so I missed my chance, I think.

It struck me earlier today how much the "Woy-yoy-yo"s in Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" sound like the theme song to The Banana Splits. Coincidence? Conspiracy?

There's a chance that I'll be able to see something tonight that's on my Life List of Things To See. Heavy sunspot activity means that the aurora australis (a.k.a. the southern lights) should be visible from here tonight. If the weather cooperates, which it isn't. Bummer.

Mall rats. Today we took a train a good ways out of town just to go to a mall. Marjorie convinced me by showing me on their website that they had a Wendy's, my favorite fast food. It turned out to be really quite a huge mall, and we had big stupid grins on our faces as we arrived, which we attribute to our being American. There's something fundamental in the American psyche that requires an occasional mall visit, and it's been years for me.

It turns out that the Wendy's was an ice cream store. Phooey. The excitement of being in a mall wore off rather quickly, in fact.

In the Borders there, though, I finally found a copy of the November issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal in which I am mentioned on page 16 for the IOCCC thing. Aw yeah.

Cup day. Today is an officially sanctioned holiday here in Melbourne -- Melbourne Cup Day. Perhaps the only holiday anywhere that's based around a sporting event? Lots of big hats on the tram. I went in to work thinking there'd at least be some skeleton crew there, but there was nobody. So I left. Time to go play!

Two things I haven't seen in years, that I just saw:

A rainbow, on our way home from the dog park. Then, half an hour later --

Hail.

Move your bloomin' arse! For once, the weather was crappy leading up to the weekend, then turned beautiful: not the other way around. We just went city exploring, like we hadn't done in a long while. Me in shorts.

Late in the afternoon, we headed back to a bar just across from Flinders Street station, which is in the very heart of town, to watch people come back from the races. It's great stuff, and we can't wait to do it up ourselves next year when we have more disposable income. It's rather like Ascot opening day in My Fair Lady, except that everyone is like Eliza instead of the snobby rich people. Ladies in fancy dress and big hats with feathers; men in suits or tuxes; everyone drinking a lot. Monday (and maybe Tuesday, I haven't quite figured it out) is a work holiday here in Melbourne, just for the Melbourne Cup, which all the other races have been leading up to. Of course, being paid hourly, there's no real motivation for me to take a holiday.

Marjorie had an interview the other day that sounds like it went really well. We'll keep our fingers crossed. That'll be a good one to check off the list.

Happy birthday, Mom!

The dog continues to provide comic relief. Now she's taken to attacking her tail. Not chasing it, but actually catching it.

I'm fascinated by the race of hobbit people that have been unearthed. I'm sure the scientists are cringing about them being called "hobbits" everywhere. The significance of this find can't be overstated. I mean, the reason you've heard about neanderthals is because they used to be considered our nearest neighbor in the evolutionary tree. Now we have a new closest relative. Wild stuff.

Marjorie had an interview the other day that sounds like it went really well. We'll keep our fingers crossed. That'll be a good one to check off the list.

Happy birthday, Mom!

The dog continues to provide comic relief. Now she's taken to attacking her tail. Not chasing it, but actually catching it.

I'm fascinated by the race of hobbit people that have been unearthed. I'm sure the scientists are cringing about them being called "hobbits" everywhere. The significance of this find can't be overstated. I mean, the reason you've heard about neanderthals is because they used to be considered our nearest neighbor in the evolutionary tree. Now we have a new closest relative. Wild stuff.

Everyone seems to know a list of celebrities that they share a birthday with. More interesting to me is the list of people who were born the same year as me. I came across just a list. A few of the notables:

Troy Aikman - Rick Astley - Stephen Baldwin - Halle Berry - Edie Brickell - Jeff Buckley - Cindy Crawford - John Daly - Stefan Edberg - Jon Favreau - Ben Folds - Samantha Fox - C. Thomas Howell - Janet Jackson - Paula Jones - Sinead O'Connor - Luke Perry - Andy Richter - Chris Robinson - David Schwimmer - Matthew Sweet - Mike Tyson.

What a graduating class that would be.

When I was a kid I remember occasional visits to relatives where, after dinner, I would be made to sit at the dinner table while the adults talked, when what I really, really wanted to do was to go play. How could these adults want to just sit here and talk? There's all these great toys, right over there!

That, I think, is what the life of a dog is like. In my efforts to empathise with the new dog, that's the example that keeps coming back into my head. There is nothing she wants more than to be out on walkies. Her tail starts wagging every time one of us walks in the direction of the front door.

But, too often, she's stuck at the dinner table while the grownups talk. She's definitely settling in, and has already learned to manipulate us with sad looks, especially when she thinks she's about to be left alone. She's also testing her limits a bit at the dog park and the beach, not coming when she's called. She's a very silly girl, though, and is continually providing us comic relief.

Look Ma, no cord! With the help of a downloaded patch, our wireless internet connection now works, and I'm blogging from bed. Sweet!

We tried a new Mexican restaurant tonight, Los Amates in Fitzroy. It was just okay. We think the problem may be getting the necessary ingredients imported into a country with very tight agricultural import restrictions. Poblano peppers are just nowhere to be had on this continent.

Atlanta, 1996. The Olympics are in town. At a neighborhood restaurant I end up dining at the next table over from Pierre Salinger. This is a year before his ignominious exit from ABC news.

Wow, those are some eyebrows.

I mention it only because now it seems he has died.

I love articles like this: Endangered species: US programmers. To quote in part:

Since the dotcom bust in 2000-2001, nearly a quarter of California technology workers have taken nontech jobs, according to a study of 1 million workers released last week by Sphere Institute, a San Francisco Bay Area public policy group. The jobs they took often paid less.

What they don't realize is that the quarter of the programmers they said were forced to take other jobs were the quarter who didn't belong there in the first place. The business was overrun by people from other fields who had no business or aptitude for the subject, but just wanted their piece of the pie in the dotcom boom. At my old job we rejected hundreds if not thousands of applicants.

Anyway, I really do love articles like that, because they tend to discourage other career opportunists. And as for offshoring, I know a lot of companies that have tried it once, but not many that have tried it twice.

My job here seems to be going exceedingly well, all in all. It's a good bunch of people, and they seem to be really happy with the work I'm doing. I've gotten my groove back, and have also discovered the key to happiness at work, for me: stop screwing around on the net. I've had jobs in the past with free reign to surf at will, and it's a dangerous lure. Without it I'm considerably more productive, and more content as a result.

This new work philosophy comes at a price, though; in idle moments where formerly I would wander out on the web, I now take to biting my nails. It got bad for a while, but I'm stepping up the battle -- I mark up my hangnails with a ballpoint pen so I don't bite them, and have even taken to covering them with band-aids.

I love articles like this: Endangered species: US programmers. To quote in part:

Since the dotcom bust in 2000-2001, nearly a quarter of California technology workers have taken nontech jobs, according to a study of 1 million workers released last week by Sphere Institute, a San Francisco Bay Area public policy group. The jobs they took often paid less.

What they don't realize is that the quarter of the programmers they said were forced to take other jobs were the quarter who didn't belong there in the first place. The business was overrun by people from other fields who had no business or aptitude for the subject, but just wanted their piece of the pie in the dotcom boom. At my old job we rejected hundreds if not thousands of applicants.

Anyway, I really do love articles like that, because they tend to discourage other career opportunists. And as for offshoring, I know a lot of companies that have tried it once, but not many that have tried it twice.

My job here seems to be going exceedingly well, all in all. It's a good bunch of people, and they seem to be really happy with the work I'm doing. I've gotten my groove back, and have also discovered the key to happiness at work, for me: stop screwing around on the net. I've had jobs in the past with free reign to surf at will, and it's a dangerous lure. Without it I'm considerably more productive, and more content as a result.

This new work philosophy comes at a price, though; in idle moments where formerly I would wander out on the web, I now take to biting my nails. It got bad for a while, but I'm stepping up the battle -- I mark up my hangnails with a ballpoint pen so I don't bite them, and have even taken to covering them with band-aids.

Speed. Hoorah! Just got our DSL connection going. The hardware was delivered this morning, and Marjorie got it set up all by herself (almost). Speed is good. We also got the wireless modem, but are just wired in at the moment. Will try to get the wireless working tomorrow, which will be nice.

Yesterday at the dog park Laika noticed for the first time a metal statue of a dog that sits off to one side. It was hilarious -- she started by barking at it, then circling around it growling with her teeth bared and hackles raised. She was totally freaked out by it.

We're getting to know everyone who goes to the dog park regularly. The people we talk to, but no one knows each other's names, just the names of everyone else's dogs. Funny how that works.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." (Groucho Marx)

Laika had her first trip into the Albert Park Library today. Yes, into. I tied her up outside -- her first time being left like this -- and went in to get something to read. I was well inside when she broke her leash and came bounding into the library after me. Apparently she has some abandonment issues.

She's a funny girl. She keeps grabbing the side of her bed and dragging it and flipping it over, or sometimes just holding it, or thrashing it around.

All in all, though, not many behavior issues. She nips at you if she's excited by play, and pulls a little on the leash, but for a pound dog, if those are the only problems, that's pretty good. Even those problems should be fixed with the help of obedience class in a few weeks.

Meet Laika, our new canine. She's a little unsure about her new home, but she seems very sweet and playful. And a wee bit gassy.

TV. We have satellite here now. We're not disappointed; many of our favorite shows are in heavy rotation. At any given time, the Simpsons, Frazier, or Seinfeld are on. Marjorie gets a lot of her shows which I don't like; I get a lot of the sports and such that she doesn't (NFL football, English Premier League soccer, etc.).

There's only one Australian show we've latched onto -- Kath and Kim. We actually discovered it while in Singapore though.

Weeknights at 11:30 we get The Naked News, in which women newscasters read the news while they take off their clothes. Full frontal. The news seems to be two weeks old, at least, but no one seems to be complaining. It's actually the least sexy thing you could imagine. Especially when they cover US election news.

For the second time in a month, I am wigging from an intense episode of Six Feet Under. It was the one where David helps the guy who runs out of gas. I had bad dreams about it all last night, and couldn't get it out of my head all day. Is this the best show on TV? Definitely the best acted.

Our new dog--

...is still out there somewhere. We visited the no-kill pound and the RSPCA today, but came home dogless. In a big city like this you'd think there'd be hundreds of dogs available, but there were maybe 20 combined at both places, and none of them were our dog. One at the first place almost was -- a very sweet black lab that was a little gimpy in his hind legs, they think from being crated too long as a puppy. We left to think about it, and later they called us and told us that they decided our living situation wasn't right for the dog, so there you go. We were kind of glad that they resolved it for us.

Vernacular. I've started incorporating some local phrases in my daily speech patterns. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unconciously. A brief rundown of the more common ones:

"No worries." (Translation: "No problem" or "That's okay" or "You're welcome") Probably the most commonly used Aussie phrase. I've fully assimilated this now, and use it without thinking.

"How are you going?" (Translation: "How are you doing?" or "How is it going?") I say this now pretty commonly too. (Marjorie wondered aloud the other day why the remaining permutation, "How is it doing?" is never used anywhere. Maybe we can start a trend.)

"G'day." (Translation: "Hello") Relatively common. I've never been able to say this.

"Ta." (Translation: "Thank you") I've tried this a few times, but it always feels like I'm saying goodbye, as I think it means in England. It feels almost dismissive to say, especially when you're trying to thank somebody.

"Nice" (Translation: "Good") This still seems odd to me; I'm used to "nice" meaning "friendly". It's odd to be asked if the lunch you had was "nice". To pronounce it in true Kath-and-Kim Aussie style, say "noice".

"Haitch" (Translation: "Aitch", i.e. the letter H) I was advised that this is "low" Australian, but I have yet to encounter an Australian who DOESN'T say it this way.

"Mate" (Translation: "Friend") Marjorie doesn't like this one. I do, but I can't seem to describe my friends as my "mates". It sounds too British to me.

"Good on ya." (Translation: "Well done") I think I've used this a few times.

"Crook" (Translation: "Sick", as in "Mary is crook and will not be in today.") A more obscure one, that I've never used.

One other note about the cold house --

When Marjorie was gone, I found the perfect antidote to sitting around a old, cold, drafty, half-empty house, feeling a little bit lonely: Tom Waits. Specifically, "Alice". The last five songs had me just staring at a wall; I haven't been captivated like that in a while.

Internet at last. Dialup, at least. We got our phone line connected, at last.

The house is still quite lacking in soft edges. Hardwood and tile floors, wooden chairs, and still only an air mattress (we're still waiting for our bed to be delivered). It had never before occurred to me that cushions are a modern necessity.

Last night we escaped up to the bar at the Albert Park to play trivia. Marjorie nailed a bonus question before the whole rest of the bar (Announcer: "Who am I? I was born in 1967 in Smyrna, Georgia..." Marjorie: "Oy! Julia Roberts." The prize: three CDs of DJ mixes of songs by artists we've never heard of.) We did only average overall, but I met a couple of guys who play soccer in the area. The season doesn't start until March, but they might be doing a pick-up game or two soon.

There will be some new softness in the house very soon -- on Saturday we're getting a dog. Marjorie wanted to get this one until she realized that it's in a totally different area of the country. I have no doubt, though, that we'll walk out of the dog adoption place with the dog with the biggest ears.

Where we've been. No internet access at home means no regular updates. We'll have it hooked up soon, though, I hope.

We're just trying to set up house at the moment. It'll be another two months before our stuff arrives from the states, but in the meanwhile, we have to make the place more livable. It's a great house in a great neighborhood.

Job is going exceedingly well. I've managed to solve some problems that had been plaguing them for weeks, and it looks like there's every chance I'll be hired on at the end of it. We're building an application that ambulance drivers ("ambos", in the local parlance) will run on their tablet computers to enter all the information about the vital signs, treatments, and procedures followed for each case.

I had a good Friday night happy hour last week with about thirty people from work, and chatted with just about everybody. Good buncha folk.

Today the AFL (footy) Grand Final is going on, which is the equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday back home. Strange, but they only had about an hour of pre-game shows. Still, it is quite obvious a HUGE deal here. The town was overrun with people from Adelaide and Brisbane, all wearing their colors. I suppose we should have watched, just as part of our cultural indoctrination.

Spent last night in the new place. It was BITTER COLD.

Of course, it was (I think) the coldest night of the year. I couldn't get the main heater to work, so I only had a small little space heater. And I'm sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. I woke up at about 2:30am, just from the cold. I draped my blankets over the heater, so it was blowing directly underneath, and after five minutes, the heater STOPPED. Panic. Luckily, it came back on after five minutes. But I was still cold. I thrashed around and cocooned myself for a bit, then began to realize that whatever part of me was against the bed was what was getting cold. So if I was lying on my left hip, my left hip would get cold. Strange. I finally figured it out, that, being on (hardwood) floor, my left hip was basically three inches from the bitter-cold crawlspace. I made an effort to spread out my weight, and everything was okay. I need to lay down a layer of insulation or something though.

Today I bought a fridge and a washing machine, all by myself. I'm a big boy!

Frances. The family is okay, apparently, but no word yet on how the houses in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral fared.

Was glad to see that they have Six Feet Under here on regular TV. Totally unedited, too. I am still wigging from last night's episode.

The bulk of our packages mailed from Singapore have arrive, after nine weeks. They promised five to seven, but we're more relieved than angry. Still three more on the way. There are now twenty-seven boxes in this little studio rathole apartment I'm staying in until the end of the week. Then I get to move them all myself. What fun.

A different world.

In the US, there are commercials imploring adolescents who've turned 18 that they are now adults, and they have a civic duty, required by law, and it is to sign up for the draft.

In Australia, there are commercials imploring adolescents who've turned 18 that they are now adults, and they have a civic duty, required by law, and it is to sign up to vote.

Yikes! Hurricane Frances is bearing down on my family. It looks like it going to hit land right between where my brother's family lives and my parents and grandmother lives. Then it moves on towards my sister's family and my aunt and uncle on the west coast. My parents are in the process of evacuating. They're veteran hurricane dodgers, but there are others in Florida who aren't so smart. This thing is going to be nasty.

An 'A' for originality. Or maybe a 'B' as in 'Blaine'.

We're definitely not in Singapore anymore. In Federation Square, the busiest square in the heart of town, a band (the Regurgitators) have set up a bubble where they will live for three weeks, writing and recording an album.

On September 21, they will emerge and immediately play a concert of their new album, start to finish.

I don't know if they're any good or not. I haven't been by yet either, but I probably will go check it out this weekend.

An Australia moment. I'm helping to build a website at work. The computer keeps telling me it can't find one of the pages down a certain directly. I look, and the page is there. I stare at it in frustration for at least ten minutes before realizing -- nay, realising -- that the file is in a directory called "notrecognised", while in the configuration file I typed "notrecognized".

Language issues aside, work is going quite well. I start my new project next week.

WOO HOO! So I'm browsing Slashdot, and I notice that the new IOCCC winners have been announced. "Bummer," I think, because they always email the winners before announcing, and I hadn't heard anything. Then, I read the winners list, and lo and behold, there's my name. GEEK BLISS! That's win number six for me, but it still feels pretty good.

They make up the categories every year, but they often get re-used. My category, "Best Non-Use of Curses", is a new one -- in explanation, "curses" is a C package that lets you do animation. My program simulates character animation without it -- by generating a string which you then paste into the "vi" editor. The act of pasting is what actually starts the animation.

The source code won't be posted there until mid-October.

That Best of Show winner sounds pretty sick -- someone implemented a whole operating system (such as Windows) in 4096 bytes (about a page of code). Now that's some serious geeking.

R-U-N-N-O-F-T. She's gone not even two days, and I miss her. How will I last 23? I'm so married.

Today was a day that was not beautiful, it was be-YOO-ti-ful. Sidewalk cafes were packed with folk enjoying the warmest day of spring thus far. I myself spent the day out-of-doors, working at a booth in the central business district doling out absentee ballot request forms to US citizens. (You can get yours on-line if you haven't already done so.) It was an interesting experience. I was even spat upon, but it was by a shabby British nutter with brown teeth who occasionally spat as he rambled on to me about the monarchy. Either in favor of it or against it, I'm not sure. But we got a good small handful of people signed up.

In the late afternoon I got a couple of new library books and had a pizza around the corner from the house we're about to move into. Quite good. Then I walked down to the beach and sat on a bench to read while the sun set over the bay. There were about a hundred seagulls in attendance, and two penguins.

Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.

You betcha. Interesting concert experience tonight -- strangely, our first real concert since coming here. We went and saw Betchadupa at The Tote. This is the band fronted by Liam Finn, son of musical legend Niel Finn. We saw him playing backup guitar for his father about six years ago, when he was maybe 13. Now he's trying to make it on his own. From the sounds of things, he's inherited a lot of talent. Just about the tightest band I'd ever seen, and they use lots of interesting time signatures and such. Not as hook-laden as I had hoped though. But they could fill out a bill with Sloan and Superdrag nicely. I felt old, though; there were maybe two or three guys there that were older than me. Sigh.

Apropos of nothing. Back in 1982 I attend the Governor's School for Excellence, "a one-week summer program bringing together academically and artistically talented sophomores from Delaware high schools." I remember lots of things about that week, but one really odd memory came back to me the other day.

We did a "meet and greet" sort of exercise, where you had to write down something about yourself that you hadn't told anyone about yet. The list was compiled, and you had go around and figure out who everybody was, based on their personal factoid.

One guy wrote, I throw rocks at my cat while it's going to the bathroom.

You read that right. I don't find it memorable so much in the fact that somebody would do that (bad enough as it is), but that he would choose that tidbit about himself as the one he wanted to first reveal. I throw rocks at my cat while it's going to the bathroom.

When I found the guy who wrote it, he explained, "It's funny. The cat won't move, because he's going to the bathroom, and you can just sit there and throw rocks at it."

I wonder what happened to that guy.

He's probably a senator or something.

Another check for the checklist over on the right. We've put down the deposit on a house we'll be renting in Albert Park. Nice little two bedroom place, hardwood floors, big kitchen. Location, location, location -- we have a nice little cafe that's spitting distance away, plus a pizzeria, video store, convenience store, etc. etc. About three blocks up the road is another nice row of stores and restaurants, and a library. Eight blocks from the beach too, and a half a block from the tram. Sweet!

First day. At some point today at my new job I looked around and thought, wow, I work with a bunch of Australians.

Actually, there's two irish women (both named Joan), a Sri Lankan, and a Chinese guy, who I'll be working closely with for three weeks. And he lived in Singapore for five years. The more things change, ...

It seems like it'll be a fun place to work. Everyone seems cool. I'm right in the middle of the CBD (Central Business District), twenty-two floors up, with views out in every direction, if I get up from my desk and walk a bit. I'm in a room with four other developers and testers. For three weeks I'll be helping develop a website, then moving onto another project that sounds really cool, involving Bluetooth and tablet computers.

The weather with you. We rented a car again today to drive around and look at apartments. They do things kind of weird here -- there's a window, sometimes as small as twenty minutes, where you (and about a dozen other people, typically) can go view the apartment. We saw a few near misses, and one that we liked a lot. But our suspicion is that we will have trouble competing for a place against native Australians with lots of local landlord references.

Complicating our search was the worst weather that Melbourne has seen, apparently, in six years. Rainy, cold, and windy all day. This is not my beautiful August. Still, it's better than dodging hurricanes like my relatives just had to do in Florida. Luckily, everyone's safe.

Woop. Notice a new check mark on the To Do list over to the right?

Company 2 came through. The contract will be for a little over three months. Even better, they want me to start this coming Monday.

We celebrated for about a minute before thoughts of the remaining To Do list items started peeing in our Cheerios.

Still, the plan is a step closer to fruition.

Quite a weekend. As I said, we rented a car on Friday. On Saturday we got up (relatively) early and headed down to the Great Ocean Road. An amazing drive. Here are some pictures: Marjorie / me / Bells Beach (world famous surfing destination). The only real wildlife we saw was on these signs.

Today we drove up to Warrandyte State Park (more specifically, the Pound Bend Reserve) hoping to find some wildlife. This time we had better luck, as Marjorie spotted a koala before we had even parked the car. We ended up seeing six total -- all just lumps of fur up high up in the trees. Still, very neat. (The latest in a growing list of animals that we can snobbishly bypass the next time we're at the zoo: "Pish, seen it.") There were supposedly wombats and platypuses (platypi?) there as well, but none spotted.

On the way back we stopped by Yarra Bend Park for another gander at the flying foxes.

So now, to our future visitors, we can pretty much guarantee you sightings of 1) koalas, 2) flying foxes, 3) kookaburras, 4) brush-tail possums, and 5) penguins.

Well! First interview, with Company 2, seemed to go okay. There was a stretch in the middle where the tech guy hammered me a little on proper design methodologies, of which my experience has been a little skimpy in regards to. But overall it seemed to be nice and friendly and I hope it works out. I'll know more on Monday.

The second interview, though, with Company 1 was a little more... interesting... The company, he said, didn't have a contract right now for me to work on, but if I would be willing to work on some in-house stuff for a few months, without pay, then they could start me working right now. To my credit, I didn't go "Ha!". I just explained that I couldn't. They promised to contact me if they get the contract that I can work on. But obviously, I have to wonder about a place like that.

In other news -- our mailed stuff from Singapore started arriving. Seven boxes today. So, we decided to rent a car for a few days, just to save the pain of lugging stuff. Honest, there were no ulterior motives.

Tonight we went back to the park to take possum pictures. Here's the only one that turned out.

In other news: now it looks like there's two companies that are interested in me. This is certainly good news on some level, but it's only added to the stress. The reason:

Company 1 will want me to start straight away. I didn't ask for as much from them, so my salary will probably be lower. But they have some good perks like bonuses based on my professional development (which they'll pay for).

Company 2, I won't start until 10 September, but the work looks like it will be cooler. And it's only a three-month contract, with the chance of staying on afterwards if they like me. I'm convinced I can turn it into a full-time job, but can we last another month without income?

Neither job is confirmed yet. Tomorrow I go in for a followup interview with Company 2 in the morning. In the afternoon, I meet with Company 1 and I think they'll make an offer.

This is good news, I guess, but that doesn't mean I'll sleep well tonight.

Brighter days. Job search prospects are improving. I had a good interview the other day, and a different interview tomorrow that sounds promising.

As a diarist, and because I like to look back on things that make me feel smart, the techie question I nailed in the interview last week was:

If I define a Java class with an "equals()" method, what other method should I define?

For yesterday's interview, I nailed these:

What is a Java VM?

What is inheritance?

What is data hiding?

What is polymorphism?

What are some issues involved with multi-threading?

"I bought myself a liarbird..." As planned, we took the train out to the Blue Dandenong hills today with a mind to go hiking.

It was about an hour ride out to the Belgrave station in the hills. Portents were good as we saw a number of species directly from the train station -- three galahs (which are known for riding on children's merry-go-rounds and sliding down slides), a few cockatoos, and, sitting right on a station lamp post, a kookaburra.

After a thigh-burning tramp up a hill on surface roads, we met up with the trail (Avard Track?) and hiked in. The forest itself was quite stunning; lush ferns down low and eucalypts towering very high. They are rather like thinner sequoias.

First spotted were a dozen more kookaburras. As we got deeper in, we were passed over by a flock of at least a hundred squawking cockatoos. Then, there were scores of crimson rosellas, like we first spotted one of yesterday.

We hiked up and down a bit, and finally met up with a trail closed to bikes because it was a "Sensitive Lyerbird Habitat". We had seen lyerbirds on Life Of Birds -- they are quite amazing. They are probably the best mimics in the bird kingdom; as part of their mating display, they have been known to imitate chain saws, car alarms, dogs, and camera shutters. It would be bird geek heaven to spot one, so we charged in.

We didn't have high hopes, but after a half kilometer or so, we started to hear strange, loud calls from the low brush. We wandered carefully off the trail but the noise moved away. So we moved on, and minute later Marjorie stopped and said, "There's one!" And it was. He crossed the path right in front of us, then disappeared into the ferns as Marjorie gave chase. Very cool!

"Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed; they don't mean quite so much." But still, we went today out to Maranoa Gardens. Definitely worthwhile on the birdwatching front; we saw two new species -- the Crimson rosella and the Eastern Spinebill. We also saw two cuckoos fighting so intensely that they fell to the ground in a tangled mess from twenty meters up.

Tomorrow we're going to head out to the Dandenongs for more of the same. Parks and gardens and mountains, oh my! That's the way to explore your new home when you're on a budget.

Interview number two was today. It was good and bad. I punted on a few questions, but nailed some others, including one that they said that no interviewee ever gets. I'll find out next week, but my inclination is that I didn't get it. We'll see. I have other nibbles I'm pursuing. Deep breaths. Must'nt panic.

The local pub. Last night we played trivia at the pub across the street from our new abode. We thought we were doing well but we ended up in last place. Phooey. It was a close game though.

I learned an interesting thing about the pub after the game while chatting with some locals. Earlier this year, a sports legend was killed by a bouncer there. Yikes. There's still a lot of controversy raging about the incident, and the proper response to it.

Fish. After lunch today we visited the Melbourne Aquarium. It was really quite well done, with just about all my favorite sea creatures featured.

Afterwards we took a walk through the casino. We played a $1 slot, and immediately lost our money. A lady came up and offered us a free casino money card worth with a free $5 credit on it. We declined. We're just not gamblers at heart, I guess.

Tooting own horn. I seem to be getting a lot more action on the job front. The turnabout seemed to come after I was informed by one recruiter that while the American way is to limit your resume/CV to one or two pages, the way to get a job here is to expound. So now I'm sending out a four and a half pager that details everything. Fifteen seconds after I was off the phone with one recruiter this morning, another called. It's a little early to start predicting rampant success, though.

I have to relearn how to spell my name out loud again. I had gotten used to saying "zed" instead of "zee" in Singapore, but now I've discovered that "aitch" is actually pronounced "haitch" in Australia.

We had an epic first night of bar trivia the other night. Not because we did so well (we did all right until falling apart at the end) but because we met a bunch of people afterwards. There was another team there (two people from Scotland and one Brit/Australian) that we hooked up with after the game and ended up closing the place down. Towards the end we joined up with another guy and girl who were flight attendants for Emirates Airlines on a layover (they were Brits living in Dubai). We ended up partying with them at another bar (Frostbite?) up the street until 3 a.m.

A new location, a new look and feel for the blog. Let me know what you think.

Things that I forgot about cold weather:

The feeling of a cold toilet seat.

How hard it is to get out of bed in the morning.

How good it feels to take a long inhale of cold morning air through your nostrils.

The feeling of standing in the shower with warm water flowing on your back, while the rest of your body is shivering.

How good I look in winter clothes.

Birthday.  My birthday was Friday -- the big three-eight, which means I can no longer claim "middle thirties" -- I'm now solidly in my "late thirties".
 
Marjorie got me some CDs to start with -- the new PJ Harvey, and two by Australian bands: Hunters and Collectors, and Something For Kate.  Then it was on to the St. Kilda Baths for some west and welaxation.  First a soak in a salt water bath, in front of a big window looking out over the white-capped bay, with seagulls flying by.  Then a much-needed massage.
 
Afterwards we had an awesome lunch at the Sheherezade Cafe -- I had goulash with potato balls, rice, carrots, spinach, and cole slaw.  Best I've had since Europe.  Then we scored scored some chocolate eclairs and other yummies from a nearby bakery, and some bagels from Glick's.  Home for a nap, then a quiet evening at home watching Donnie Brasco.
 
Saturday was part two.  I wanted to see a footy (Australian Rules Football) game, so we went off to the Telstra Dome to see the St. Kilda Saints wallop the Richmond Tigers.  It was quite a spectacle.  I used to think the game was pretty much just anarchy, but as I start to understand the game more, I'm beginning to appreciate it, even if some of the rules are still a mystery.  There's some serious athleticism involved.  The fan base was amazing -- the two teams are just based in suburbs (or urbs, I guess) of Melbourne, but there were 40-50,000 people there, evenly divided.  (It was as if Virginia Highlands was playing Buckhead back in Atlanta.)  Everyone, even the old ladies, were into it, yelling, waving banners, wearing team scarves, etc.  Other interesting things:

There were machines where you could place bets on the game beforehand.  Actually, you could bet on anything, or play the pokies (poker machines).

 We got food beforehand in the restaurant there, and it was served on real plates with real silverware.  And it was reasonably priced.

 You could also bring your own food, or hot drinks in Thermoses.
What a crazy idea!  Don't gouge your fans -- let them come to the games at a reasonable price.  No wonder they draw crowds.

Still in limbo. Job search continues. Some leads, but I think there is a lot of competition right now.

Last night we rented a movie but we couldn't get the VCR in our short-term apartment to work. Maybe it's just because we're used to western VCRs. Do you have to plug in the tapes upside down or something?

I'm still having to use internet cafes. I bought a wireless card so I can access the internet from the various hotspots around here but I'm having trouble finding the right pre-paid cards to buy to use.

We're going to play trivia tonight, which should be fun.

Spend spend spend, spend, spend, spend. Being Americans at heart, and with a free license to start accumulating goods, we've been dropping scads of jing-wah since arriving. Marjorie's up in Target right now, while I'm next door in a Japanese-style internet cafe. We found a extended stay apartment off Toorak St. which we're moving into on Monday. My interview on Friday went -- okay, I guess. They'll call me back for a technical interview and a test later on, if all went well, which it may or may not have. I have other leads to follow up on, and now that I have a local phone, I think I'll get more action.

Yesterday we took the train down to Williamstown ("Willie") which was a nice, quiet suburb, on the water. Spotted several new birds, including the superb fairy wren, which is what they prefer to be called, as I understand it.

A quick list of some little differences about this place:

The first floor is the ground floor, and the second floor is the first floor. I keep getting into elevators and hitting "1" by mistake.

"Entrees" in a restaurant are actually what they call appetizers.

A big sign in the park reads "Dogs allowed off leash". That's really amazing to me. Not that they allow dogs off the leash, but that the big sign tells you so. Advertising a freedom, not a restriction.

Similarly, you're allowed to eat and drink on the trams. It's kind of courageous, I think, to allow these simple freedoms that may cost a little as far as maintainance and clean-up but have a positive effect on the quality of life.

We've arrived. A fairly hectic day, but in only a few hours we got me a suit, a shirt, socks, haircut, and a cell phone. Had the best damn burger ever for dinner.

It's cold! Why did Melbournians schedule winter in the middle of their summer?

Such sweet sorrow. Everything is packed, thrown away, given away, or mailed. We just had the final inspection of apartment and got the full deposit back (yay!). At the airport now, waiting for our flight out. Hooray for free internet. I'm feeling an odd combination of melancholy and excitement.

Bye, Singapore, it's been interesting and fun.

Another list of the top 100 wonders of the modern world. I've only seen 11 from this list. Only three from the top 50. Life is short.

While Nirvana is usually my music of choice when cleaning house, a day of cleaning AND packing required something a little different. I credit Marjorie for cuing up the right thing. For future reference, The Modern Lovers is the proper choice for such an occasion.

The great Singapore black-out. Last night, right in the middle of Six Feet Under, the power goes out. This is a first during our time here. The blackout seemed to stretch a long way -- I climbed to the top of our building, and there were lights in the distance, but mostly dark for several miles in every direction. For 45 minutes or so, we got to experience what it was like here before electricity. Damn hot. How did people sleep?

Tonight was my last soccer game. They let me play striker for the last twenty minutes, which was fun. I had no goals, but got an assist after committing a flagrant foul that was not called. Afterwards, beers at Turf City. Then goodbyes, which I've really come to hate.

I'll find a team in Melbourne, but will it be as fun? Doubtful.

Turns out the Chinese opera we heard the other night from our window might have had another interesting twist to it. On opening nights, apparently, Chinese opera troupes play their first performance to an empty theater. It's for the ghosts, you see. We couldn't tell if there was a crowd there or not but this might have been what was going on.

My coworkers Hong I and Meng Wah told me this today during lunch, which was interesting in itself. We went to a dim sum restaurant on the seventh floor of a public housing project. It was rather like a banquet hall. But the food was really tasty. We had three kinds of dumplings, pork ribs with yams, glutinous rice, porridge, spongy meat-filled rolls, tea, and chestnut(?) cakes for dessert.

Got another ping on the job front today. A recruiter called me from Australia about a CV I posted on a job site. He asked me if I had any experience with HAV. Sorry, I said, as I had never even heard of it. Later he mentioned it again, and I asked (so I could look it up later), "Are you saying H-A-V or H-A-B?"

"No," he said. "E-J-B. Echo, Juliet, Bravo".

I thought language issues weren't going to be a problem. But "E-J-B" in an Australian accent sounds an awful lot like "H-A-V" to my ears.

Violent streak? Me? Frustrating game today. The team we played against had a player who was the biggest cheater I had ever seen. You breathe on him, and he falls down and cries out like he's in agony. The problem was, the ref fell for it almost every time.

I was covering him. I'm usually a pacifist, but I can't stand that sort of crap. So I tried to rile him up by calling him every name in the book whenever he was near me. At one point he ran through my space, so a grabbed his shirt, and of course he fell down and cried for the ref. The ref missed this one, so I said, "Awww, what's the matter? You fall down there?" It was all I could do not to at least step on him. He was just ignoring my taunts, so I figure, as long as he's falling anyway, and the ref's letting it happen, I might as well get my licks in. He was subbed out before I could do much. But he came back later, and then worst thing happened, which was that he scored the go-ahead goal. While I was covering someone else, but still.

Even now, the big dumb jock in me wishes I had left him with some scars. Sports are primal sometimes.

Anyway, the coach announced that this would be my last Sunday game (though there's a Wednesday night one that I'm still playing) and everyone applauded me. At least I hope they were applauding me, and not the fact that I'm leaving. It was nice.