We are back from our trip to Japan, which I would describe as "fabulous". A recap:

Arrival: Our flight on JetStar was largely uneventful. We would recommend the $30 upgrade for meals and entertainment; they bring you a portable device that plays movies, TV shows, and music, which makes the time fly by. After landing, we took the shuttle to our hotel, which is more expensive, but much easier. Got to our hotel late in the evening, and crashed.

Day one: Marjorie decided that our Japan trip would start with a jog, so she woke my lazy self and made me go out with her in the near-freezing rain. My hairy, exposed legs cause some schoolgirls to point and laugh, covering their mouths. We grab an easy breakfast at Starbucks (sad, I know) and head out to the district known for sumo wrestling. When we arrive, it is snowing, which is very pretty, but also fairly miserable, as it is a wet snow. The plan was something of a bust as it is the off season for sumo wrestling, but there are some nice temples. We head back to Shibuya for lunch and shopping, and have lunch at a place where everything was fried. Tooled around, and almost had dinner at a beer hall that had safe, boring Western choices, but decide to bail and so, remembering that our best food experiences on previous trips were always the result of bravery, we charge into a back-street yakitori restaurant with nary an English word out front. It is predictably awesome.

Day two: We board the Shinkansen for Kyoto. This is our first time seeing any part of Japan other than Tokyo. It was amazingly smooth and fast. Unfortunately it was too hazy to see Mount Fuji, but we did see other big things, as well as some of the countryside. Kyoto is not as big as Tokyo, but is still pretty big in its own right. It is somewhat more laid back, lacking skyscrapers and high fashion, and has many more shrines, temples, and castles, and people walking around in traditional dress. With only a partial day to work with, we decided to just do some more shopping. We did wander out to the Gion district, famous for geishas. Dinner was at Don Guri, where the table was a heated grill, and everything was delicious. We didn't realize it at the time, but Don Guri is a chain restaurant.

Day three: We buy bus/subway passes and head out to Ryōan-ji, a temple famous for their rock garden. It was underwhelming to our Western eyes, and we do not pause to contemplate it. We lunch at a small restaurant where we sit at very low tables. A man at a nearby table is amused by my struggles to fit my legs underneath - I am just not built to sit cross-legged. But he assures me, in excellent English, that "it is a problem for us as well". This was in the Arashiyama district, which we proceeded to explore. We climb the hill at Iwatayama and take lots of pictures of the macaques, and of the view out over Kyoto. Back at our hotel we meet up with our friends Corrinne and Matt who are also visiting (they're the ones who tipped us off to the great airfare). We consider trying a Chanko restaurant - serving traditional sumo wrestler food - but decide instead to try a steamboat-style restaurant down an interesting alley near Gion. This was the only place where we were not made to feel particularly welcome, but the food was decent (despite our waiter's advice that we must dip our food into raw egg). Drinks afterward at a much friendlier bar, where the waiter brought us homemade chocolates to try.

Day four: We visit Nijo castle, and take a tour run by a young girl who didn't speak the best English and provided not much insight, but it was fun to hear her try. This is the castle that is surrounded by hardwood walkways that were deliberately designed to squeak, to prevent attacks by ninjas! Afterward we bused out to the lovely Kinkaku-ji. For dinner we went out near Gion again to find a place recommended in Lonely Planet for their gyoza, which are delicious. We topped it off with a trip to a British-style pub, recommended by our concierge when we asked for a place to have edamame. I also order some buffalo wings, just because they don't have them in Australia!

Day five: We take the train down to the ancient city of Nara. It is snowing again by the time we arrive. Tame deer - formerly considered sacred - wander through the town, looking for food handouts from tourists. They have also learned to bow their heads when asking for food! While Marjorie is fumbling with her camera, one tried to eat the map out of my back pocket. Later we buy some deer biscuits from a vendor, at which point the mostly docile deer become a bloodthirsty mob. The main temple at Nara, Tōdai-ji, is stunning; the best we have seen so far. After a pizza lunch, the snow has turned to a miserable rain, and so we head back to Kyoto. We dine again at Don Guri.

Day six: Shopped a bit more in Kyoto then took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. This time we stay in the Shinjuku area, and our room has an awesome view of lots of neon signs, huge government buildings, and a busy crosswalk. We dine at another awesome yakatori place, and then come back to the room and just sit on the bed and look out the window like it's a TV for about an hour.

Day seven: Only a few hours to kill before we head for the airport, so we go raid another department store basement food court, which we have learned are AMAZING on the trip. So much interesting and delicious food, and always beautifully arranged. On our trip out to the airport we get on the express train by mistake and end up having to pay an additional $32, but we get to the airport in plenty of time, and have a largely uneventful flight home.

All in all, an amazing trip, and our love for Japan only increased. It's fascinating to see a country that has modernized without Westernizing. The Japanese want everything to be beautiful and perfect, especially in how they dress and prepare food, and are almost always friendly and polite. We failed to have a bad meal the whole trip.

Despite finding a great deal on the flight there, the exchange rate was, shall we say, not favorable. For all the shopping we did, we didn't buy much, just because of the prices. At one point I bought a black-and-tan to drink, and paid something like $18 for it. We never dropped $100 per person on a meal, but came awfully close a couple of times.

Lastly: I was both a little scared and a little excited about the prospect of being in an earthquake while we were there, but none was forthcoming. However, the very night we got home, we rented Lost In Translation (what else) from the video store, and were halfway through it when our house started rumbling. We ran outside, and I half expected to see smoke from a nearby explosion or something, but it turns out it was an earthquake - my first!

Everyone here knows somebody who knows somebody who was affected by the brush fires. Horror stories abound. One guy I worked with at my last job spent the day with his parents trying to save their house - but couldn't; it was burnt to the ground (and he was lucky not to get killed). Even worse, a guy I work with now sent out this: A friend of ours lost her two daughters – 20 & 23 – they were running in to what they thought has a “safe-house” - it blew up as they ran in. Their mother (our friend) was right behind them as she saw it happen. I can't even get my head around that.

That was all on the day from hell (last Saturday). The fires are still going, but fortunately the wind has died somewhat. I could see the smoke on the horizon on my way home today. I think they're getting on top of it, but we have friends that live near the area where it seems to be encroaching on; we're hoping for the best.

The newspapers were calling it our "worst day in history". Highs in the 40's (Celsius) and strong winds made it feel like a convection oven outside. A firefighter's nightmare, of course; the skies were pinkish gray from the fires. We had a massage scheduled for today which Marjorie almost wanted to cancel, as our little backyard digital thermometer put the temperature at 109.8. But we went anyway, taking a nice air-conditioned cab, the massages were good. Afterwards we went into a grocery store, and when we came out, the cool change that Melbourne is famous for had come. When we got home the temperature was only 82.7. Our thermometer recorded the daily high temperature, though: 110.5.

In keeping with my usual paranoia about assorted criminals figuring out that I'm away by reading my blog, I've waited until now to post about my recent trip(s). Foiled you again, bad guys!

Last week I went to Hobart for the Linux conference, which is kind of funny considering that I'm now working for Microsoft. But it was interesting and at least somewhat useful. In the conference program they had a list of participants, and I noticed the name Linus Torvalds among them. He's basically the inventor of this Linux operating system that many people believe can kill Windows, although he's largely relinquished control. I didn't think he would actually show, but during the Q&A after one session by a guy from Google (talking about svn), the speaker handed the microphone over to a guy sitting off to the sides -- and I didn't realize until I was told afterwards that it was Linus. They held a banquet dinner the first night I was there, which finished with an auction to benefit an association fighting Tasmanian devil facial cancer. I left before the end, but one of the things offered up was that Linus would shave another Linux bigwig if the bid got over a certain amount, and it did. Nutty!

Immediately after I got back Marjorie and I headed out to meet some friends camping, pretty much right here. The campsite for some reason is the center for cockatoo activity, with scores of them gadding about during all daylight hours, and they are LOUD. But it was really good fun. Marjorie and I rented a surfboard and I gave her (or tried to give her) her first surfing lesson. After pushing her into too big of a wave, she did a face plant into the sand, and announced she was done. But instead she came back out ten minutes later, sans encumbering wetsuit, and gave it another go, managing to catch a few more reasonably sized waves and making it to her knees at least.

On the way back we took a detour to the Otway Fly tree canopy walk, which was pretty impressive, I thought. Good to be home now though.

Christmas roundup. Had a typical low-key Christmas. On Christmas eve, the tradition in my family is to gorge yourself on pierogies at my grandmother's house. Couldn't make it back home this year, so we stuffed ourselves instead at Borscht, Vodka, and Tears, ordering three mains worth of pierogies for the two of us (and I could've eaten another).

Christmas, we just exchanged presents and did the turkey dinner thing.

Boxing Day, we skyped our families, which was really great, and didn't do a whole lot else.

Saturday, biked down to Johnson Street to exchange a present. In the evening we went and saw Slumdog Millionaire, which is highly recommended. Not exactly an advertisement for visiting India though.

Today, we went canoeing down on the Yarra, and are just hanging out again, back yard, perfect weather, rosé, internet music. Salut!

I promise that this blog won't become a repository for funny animal videos, but this one had Marjorie and I in tears. We have these birds locally in the wild - we saw some just last night. The interesting thing is, this video has been the subject of scientific study - before, it was thought that only humans had a sense of rhythm.

At work we now have Guitar Hero World Tour, which adds drums and singing to the previous dueling guitar simulation. It's just about the funnest thing ever. At times it's hard to keep going because my cow orkers and I are laughing so hard. Hugely recommended if you're still looking for an Xmas gift, and it hasn't sold out in your area...

Last night, though, was a night for the real thing. I was a fan of the rock band Jet before we ever thought of moving to Melbourne, but they've only played a few festivals since we've been here, and I was despairing that I'd never see them in any kind of intimate setting, as they're now pretty huge. But I was browsing around on Facebook the other day and came across a link that said, "Are you Jet fan in Melbourne? Click here!" Behind the link was an invitation to a private show. Score! They have a new album out and wanted to debut their new songs to a crowd of true fans. I hadn't been to the venue before, but it turns out there were only around 250 people there. They gave us all posters, and had us fill out cards with our addresses so they could mail us their new CD when it's finished. Very cool!

Here's a clip I shot with my cell phone camera. Sorry about the sound quality - trust me, they sounded a lot better live!

Update: Here's an article about the show from the local paper.

You've been waiting in dread, I know, for Mark's musical year in review. But people, it's just like pulling off a band aid; read quickly and it'll be done before you know.

Personally, it was actually a great year for me, musically. Not because I discovered so many new bands, or so many of my current favorite bands put out killer albums. Rather, the internet has brought me a whole host of ways to discover new music, and to play music I already own. It has really made a qualitative difference in my music enjoyment, and promises to get even better. The internet innovations that have transformed my music listening experience, in no particular order:

• last.fm - their streaming radio in particular. Love the ability to create a radio station based on a particular artist.



• Songbird music player - a great player for all the music on your hard disk, plus links to hundreds of internet radio stations. Includes band information and ratings, and with option add-ons, will show song lyrics, similar artist recommendations, and will even tell you when your favorite bands are coming to town in concert.



• Playlist - a great site for queuing up a list of almost any song and streaming it back instantly. We amazed some house guests by being able to play a song by any artist they could name within seconds.



• uTorrent - a program for downloading BitTorrents, which I've been a little behind the curve on, but finally got into this recently. Great way to download almost any CD, and TV shows as well (haven't had the patience to attempt a movie). Combined with a CD/DVD burner, and it's a piece of cake to inflict share your music with friends, which we've done a lot of this year.



• StreamZap PC Remote - actually, this just arrived from ThinkGeek, and I haven't hooked it up yet. But I'm looking forward to it enhancing our champagne Sundays in conjunction with all the aforementioned technologies.

And now, onto the music itself. Nothing really jumped out as a top album this year, but I came across a lot that I've enjoyed, including:

• Fleet Foxes - A great soundtrack for driving through desolate Queensland woodlands.


• Cibelle - The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves - modern Brazilian for getting your chill on


• Elbow - The Seldom-Seen Kid - dark and beautiful


• Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Primary Colours - local garage band does good


• Vampire Weekend - good fun


• M. Ward - Post-War - lovely stuff

I have new albums by Paul Weller, Lucinda Williams, Beck, and Weezer that I haven't really digested yet as well.

Concerts this year include:

• Paul Weller - brilliant


• Billy Bragg - good


• From The Jam - great fun


• Polyphonic Spree - good


• Rufus Wainwright - really good


• Jet - actually, this is next week; I scored tickets to see them in a private show, which I'm very excited about.

We have tickets to see Lucinda Williams as well, but that's not until April! So it'll have to go on next year's list.

On a final note: despite all the new sources of music, the album I listened to probably more than any other this year is "Dry" by PJ Harvey, which dates back sixteen years...

Five minutes away by bike is the Fairfield boathouse. So today I rode up and rented a kayak. Though the Yarra River there is wide and calm and unchallenging, the experience was really quite excellent, and much different than walking or riding alongside the river. Serene, scenic, and lots of wildlife. Towards the end I rounded a bend and came across the flying fox bat colony, which I didn't realize was so close. As I watched I noticed that many of the bats were carrying their babies on their chest - must be breeding season! Here's a bad shot of me in action by the bats. (Hey, cell phone photos are grainy enough even when you're not worried about dropping the phone in the water.) I'll definitely be going back.

Our cable TV has been shut off due to a comedy of errors, so we're without it for the weekend. We've become a two-laptop family anyway, so that's how we're spending our Friday night -- next to each other on the couch, with our faces lit by an eery glow. Sad, I know. We just finished some pretty awesome take away Indian food from a new restaurant in our neighborhood, which is more than a welcome addition.

Today was kind of stressful at work -- I've been working on a major code revision for a few weeks and I finally sprung it on everyone late yesterday. It basically breaks everything for everyone and makes them have to rewrite large chunks of their code. It's for the best in the end and actually seems to be really well received, so far. The drama will continue next week.

Before then, on Sunday, is our office Christmas party. Luckily it's about a ten minute bike ride away, at the Studley Park Boathouse. Nice place.

We miss Thanksgiving back in States; it's always been my favorite holiday. Even at this distance it's a good occasion to sit back and take stock of your life. And by any standard, things are pretty great right now.

I've gone on before about how much America needs instant runoff elections. Here in Australia, where they have it, voting is more like choosing from a restaurant menu, instead of like an in-flight menu where you get the choice of chicken or fish (or something slightly different as David Sedaris awesomely points out).

We'll have a new item on the menu next go-round: the Australian Sex Party. Though lacking in specifics, I actually agree with their policies, at least the ones that they've decided on so far.

Two new Aussie-isms:

Good value - the literal meaning is accurate, but it's used frequently here to apply to people, not sarcastically, but kind of ironically; e.g. "He's good value."

Sook - a person who becomes overly sensitive or whiney when ill.

Deliberately, I've tried to keep politics off this blog. Can I let out a small woohoo though?

From the perspective of an expat and a traveler, too often I am asked, how did the US ever elect this Bush character? And I never know what to tell them, because I never got it either. The difference I've felt already since Obama surged ahead is palpable. There is a new respectability for the US in Australia and, from everything I can discern, the world. It's not an illusion, because I've surrounded myself with like-thinking people or anything; look at any opinion poll from outside the US.

I can only hope this is the end of Atwatery politics. It was a joy to see it fail, this time. Was it because of the internet? I think so, maybe. It was a joy to see it fail, and a shame to see McCain to give into those influences. In the end, if his concession speech was any indicator, he was a better man than many of his supporters.

It's not hard to predict what happens next. Obama will glide into office with a huge wave of optimism. After a few months it will be tempered by reality as he begins to take on the difficult problems he's up against. He will make some mistakes, and galvanize the right, who will find plenty of reasons to villify him. And then, the character issue comes in. We'll see what happens then, but I'm hopeful.

If you're worried, he's not going to steal your money and give it to the poor -- that was a lie told and repeated in an effort to win an election. The truth is, though, that the US has joined the rest of the Western world, by electing a man who is, by all accounts, a reasonable, intelligent consensus builder. And for tonight, it feels mighty good.

There's a trend going on here known as guerrilla gardening, where people plant vegetable gardens in public parkland and green spaces, usually illegally. Marjorie had a tip on where to find some so today on walkies I took some pictures:

Guerilla gardening

This rocks. Here's an article about the trend in Melbourne.

I've noticed recently that my happiness seems to be mainly tied to my circumstances improving, as opposed to a comfortable steadiness. I know that's not really sustainable in the long run, and will probably have to figure out how to just be happy being at some point.

But it does explain my recent happiness. And my lifestyle improvements are mostly due to technology:

I've been bringing home my wireless laptop from work, and it's letting us surf the net from anywhere in the house. Marjorie's getting one of her own for her birthday, too.

We bought some speakers for the laptop, and are streaming internet radio through it, mainly from last.fm and Yahoo Launchcast. This is great for Champagne Sunday.

I finally got BitTorrents going, which means I've been able to download and burn tons of old music and TV shows. Everyone at work downloads and trades TV shows, but I don't know how much my taste overlaps -- my first grab was all all four seasons of Home Movies.

Facebook is putting me in touch with more and more old friends.

Skype is old news, but it's still great to be able to talk to people overseas.

There's rumors at work that we'll all be getting iPhones for Christmas!

We finally found some decent (albeit expensive) Thai food in town, a really nice place in a dire neighborhood a few train stops up from us. We had dinner there last night with our friends Viv and Maurice. Interestingly, we found out that he was bit by a snake two weeks back, while weed-whacking his lawn. It seems that his thick socks prevented a deep penetration, and so he was not given antivenin (which often causes more problems than the original snakebite), although he had to tolerate several days worth of intense pain. He never saw the snake, but figures it was probably a tiger snake like we saw the other weekend. Laika will not be getting a lot of off-leash time this summer!

While the occasional error creeps in here, I think my brain came out wired in such a way that spelling, grammar, and punctuation come pretty naturally to me. Don't know if it's genetic or learned, but I don't consider this as having anything in particular to do with intelligence. Still, I have my peeves, because often it's just that people were never taught the rules.

Commas -- there are lots of situations where they're used, but my peeve is when people to use commas to separate two clauses (consisting of a subject and a verb). For example, "Don't separate clauses with a comma, it's not good practice." If you were to replace the comma with a period, you'd have two perfectly good sentences; therefore, the comma is the wrong choice. Use a semicolon or a dash instead. I fixed about a dozen of these in a document today.

It's versus its. I'll give you a rule, so that you'll never get it wrong again. I've used this since childhood. Picture the apostrophe in "it's" as the dot on a letter "i". This makes "it's" into "itis", or "it is". Now ask, does the sentence still make sense? If it does, leave the apostrophe. If it doesn't, get rid of it. Now, don't let me catch you doing it again.

Atlanta and Singapore, as airline hubs, were among the two greatest places to live in the world if you're into travel. I don't think we appreciated them while we were living there - because Melbourne, for all its charms, is not. Trips back to the United States, Europe, or South America, will cost you over $2000 at a minimum, and probably more like $2500. The only real options for under $1000 are within Australia or New Zealand, or maybe some of the Pacific islands. Which are nice enough, but we've been craving some strange.

Qantas has had a monopoly down here, which means they've had no real incentive to lower their fares. That has been changing of late though. Now we have JetStar, Virgin Blue, and Tiger as cut-rate carriers, who are starting to make things more interesting. Still, good deals to cool international destinations just are not found that often.

So when Marjorie found a deal for return trip tickets for $750 (Australian), well, we just had to jump on them. And so we say, hello Tokyo! In February.

We've been there before, but love it, and have really only scratched the surface. We're determined to get out of the city, too, to either Kyoto (cultural center of Japan) or to Nagano (skiing and snow monkeys).

In our recent trip up to northern Queensland, we liked having a specific quest that, by design I guess, was relatively trivial (to see the riflebird dance). This time, I think the quest will be to try "real" wasabi. Supposedly, the wasabi you get in Japanese restaurants is horshradish, mustard, and food coloring; the "real" wasabi does not ship well, and is only served locally.

Picnicked yesterday down where the Yarra River and Merri Creek meet. Here's some pictures:

2008-10-11 Picnic

It was fine and lovely until a woman nearby started freaking out -- I looked over and her two little bite-sized pomeranians were chasing a large black snake off of a rock (probably a tiger snake). There are a number of signs up warning about the snakes; now we know to take them seriously!

Some pictures and video of our wildlife safari can be found here.

The two videos of the Victoria's Riflebird were shot by holding our digital camera up to a pair of binoculars and the guide's tripoded telephoto lens, respectively. I thought I invented that trick but our guide told me that other people did it too. Though, another woman on the tour with us was left wondering why she spent so much on a telephoto lens for her camera!

Home safe now...

Score! Last night we stayed in a cabin near Lake Eacham. The man there gave us a tip on where to spot platypuses (platypi?) in nearby Yungaburra. So we hopped in the car and hightailed it down there, as light was running out. Sure enough, right where he directed us -- well, I don't know who was more startled, the platypus or us. Marjorie even got pictures and a video, which I will post soon.

Our quest on this trip was to spot a Victoria's Riflebird, doing its mating dance. (What can I say, we like the birds.) We did spot one on our birdwatching tour, but no dance. We tried again this morning, and managed to spot another in the carpark of Lake Barrine, but again no dance. This was a better viewing, though, and we got some more footage of him as well.

We're at an internet cafe in Cairns now, killing time until our flight home...

Two amazing days so far up here in northern Queensland.

Sunday we took a birdwatching tour and ended up seeing 76 different species of birds! Probably more, actually, but we didn't count the common ones that we have down in Melbourne. We also spent a fair bit of time trying to track down a Victoria'a Riflebird, which, if you're ever seen David Attenborough's "Life of Birds" "Trials of Life", you know has the craziest dance in the animal kingdom. We did manage to spot one, but didn't catch the dance.

Today we took a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef. A beautiful day, weather-wise, and more than a few interesting sightings. I remain kind of bummed, though, because by now I've had to have been snorkeling at least 100 times, and still have yet to see a shark. I think I exude some sort of natural repellent.

Tomorrow: well, life is pretty good if all you have planned for the day is "massage". They'll have to be careful, though, since we both got a fair sunburn...

Yesterday was Marjorie's birthday, which we spent pretty much in transit up here to Port Douglas on the northeast coast of Australia. Portents were bad when:

We found out the day before that our dog sitter we had arranged months in advance through Top Dog had no idea we were coming, and we had to find someone else

We received an email from Virgin Blue the day before asking us to confirm our flight to a different city, at a different time

Mark went to get money from the ATM, and ended up leaving the money in the machine and just taking his card. D'oh! Still trying to work out whether the money got sucked back in or I made someone's night.
But we're here now, and it's lovely. We were awoken this morning by huge flocks of (some sort of) parrots flying over our bungalow. We ended up taking a stroll down the street at 6 am a scoring about five new species, including a satin bowerbird (we think). Tomorrow we're doing a major bird tour, then snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef later in the week.

My job continues to rock. The word now is that we'll all be getting iPhones come December, thanks to a pot of unspent "morale money". (Though iPhones, an Apple product, are a curious choice considering we're working for Microsoft now.)

I've told you all what the job is about -- our product basically lets companies put search engines their own site and control all the associated advertising, instead of giving a major cut to big third-party sites (read: Google).

But here's an analogy that might give you a picture of what my job is like, day-to-day. Imagine a bunch of engineers designing a new engine. In their office they have a working copy of last year's engine. Various groups are responsible for redesigning various parts of the new and improved engine -- some guys work on the fuel line, some on the electrical system, and one guy is fixing the carburetor that never worked right in the previous model. The groups toil away at their desks, and when one team has an improvement they want to try out, they snap the old part off the working copy and replace it with the new one. Every time this is done, the engine is started automatically. If it fails to start, or runs poorly, everyone knows, because they're all working off the same engine (well, their own copy of it). Sometimes, more than one team will make a change to the same part of the engine, and you have to work out whose change will go in the final product.

That's pretty much how modern software development goes. Instead of the engine, it's just a huge piece of software, and the snapping on of new changes and retrieval of changes from other people all happens at the click of a few buttons on our desk computers. The process has been refined over the years, and there's a whole lot more to it, but that's the gist of how it goes at nearly every company these days. The days of a single hacker working away in his garage are all but gone.

It's a stimulating environment, especially working with people smarter than you. (That was a hard admission to make for me, that some people at this job are smarter than me. It's certainly not the first time I've worked with people smarter than me, but I was always able to come up with some rationalization that I kept to myself as to how I was really the smartest, even when deep down I probably knew it wasn't so. The ego is a funny thing.)

Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day in the CBD trying to round up Americans to register to vote. Mostly slow going, as there weren't any major festivals or anything in town, but it was still fun, and I had a lot of interesting conversations with people. While chatting with one guy, I was thinking, man you look familiar. Then I placed him -- it was Chas Licciardello from The Chaser's War On Everything, which is an Australian show, but clips of it are often spread around the internet. (This was their most famous stunt. Chas was actually the one who played Osama.)

The day ended on a sour note, however, as someone swiped my hoodie off of the steps at Flinder's Street Station.

Speedy internet at last!

Unbelievably, the saga of getting internet installed goes on still. Last Tuesday I went home to meet the technician that was to install it. At some point in the afternoon, he called me to say he was waiting outside, and that he had knocked but no one answered. So I went out front to look, but there was no one there. Turns out he had been sent to our street address, but in a different suburb.

Several angry emails and phone calls were made, and now I have a customer service manager and a technician whose job it is to get me sorted. That was a week ago. Now I’m rescheduled for next Monday, but there’s other problems; our phone lines aren’t getting the dial tone they should, so they’re going to have to come out and fix that too. We are going nuts. It’s surprising how dependent we are on the internet these days, not just for necessities like paying bills but even just for peace of mind. The source of the problems, seemingly, is Australia’s telecom monopoly, Telstra. See, this is why I’m a fervent free market capitalist but an equally fervent anti-monopolist. If they had any competition, they would be ridden out of the country on a rail by this point. And I would be leading the charge.

Speaking of monopolies, last Friday was our first meeting at the main Microsoft office in Melbourne since we got acquired. It seems to be full of salesmen: no techies to be found (though apparently there are some there). The meeting was largely managespeak with a lot of acronyms that none of us understood.

There are two phrases I just learned relating to Microsoft. “Drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid” is the term for, basically, getting into business with Microsoft (i.e. making the decision to have your product work with their operation system/business plan, agreeing to their standards, etc.). And “eating your own dogfood” is what Microsoft employees (including us, now) must do – this means that we are forced to use their newest, as-yet-unreleased software months (and sometimes years) before it is released to the public. So, where you may be using Internet Explorer 7, I’ll be using IE 8, with whatever kinks and bugs that haven’t been worked out yet. That is, when I’m not developing on my Linux box <grin>.

The owl is apparently a regular visitor in our backyard – we’ve seen him four times now. I’ll have to figure out some way to get a picture of him – so far we’ve only seen him in silhouette.

STILL no internet. They're coming Tuesday -- sometime between noon and 5 -- to wire it up, then promise to actually turn it on "a few days" after that.

The wait has been ridiculous, and I have formally complained to them. They've offered me two free weeks in compensation, which I am pondering, but there's not much appeal in that since work will be paying for it anyway. I just want it ON already.

(Posting from an internet cafe in nearby Northcote, that serves beer and Indian food as well. Pretty cool.)

There's another team in my soccer league who can best be described as a consummate disgrace. We're their chief rivals for winning the league. Every game against them seems to evolve the same way -- we come out playing hard against them, and they wail every time they're touched. Then one of their guys will fall during a fair challenge, which the ref doesn't call, and so they come to the conclusion (very vocally) that the ref has it in for them. After that, they feel they're entitled to play as dirty as possible, fouling us viciously, taking dives, calling everyone names, gloating at mistakes our players make, and of course, whining whining whining from their bench as well as their field players. One of their guys even spat on me earlier in the year.

Well, we played them for the last time a month or so ago, and it ran true to course. It was made worse by the fact that the referee didn't show up and our coach had to do the reffing. We were winning 1-0 at halftime, which was to them of course the fault of our coach the ref, but we just got sick of it after a point, and let the game slip away from us, and lost 2-1. They were of course in heaven. As I walked by their dressing room, one of their guys yelled, "You all have no integrity!" It may have been the ultimate pot-kettle-black moment ever. (Did I mention that their game the previous week got called because of a fight?)

I came away from the game with a sprained ankle (though I was the victim of a few cheap fouls, this was just the result of twisting it at some point). So I didn't play again until this past Sunday, which was the last game of the season. It was against a completely different team, and we needed to win in order to win the league. The funny thing was that, before the game, their coach talked to ours and expressed his wish that we would win the league because they all hate that other team too, and joked about throwing the game. They didn't, of course, but we beat them anyway, 3-0, and so won the league. Sweet.

One beautiful thing is that the website that shows the results has been incomplete most of the year and has been showing them as winning. Well, it's been fixed now. (See "VETERANS" at the bottom.)

We were talking before the game that if they're still in the league next year, we might just refuse to play them. And if other teams follow suit, all the better. It's just not worth the injury risk for a bunch of old farts like us. Plus the fact that they're intolerable to play against whether you beat them or not.

Still no internet at home, which is becoming maddening. We're settling in, though, and figuring out the neighborhood and how to get around. We're fairly sure that the dog likes it better here; we like it lots too, but there are things about the old neighborhood that we miss.

Last week we saw Paul Weller in concert. He was brilliant as usual, and his backing band just tears it up. This is the third continent I've seen him on, but was Marjorie's first time.

I'm still loving my job. We have a ping pong table now, and I've quickly established my place as the office's penultimate player (behind the guy who used to be ranked number 16 in Israel -- though I beat him the other day when he didn't have his special paddle). I'm getting better at Guitar Hero as well. Sometimes I do actual work too.

Sorry for the lack of updates but we've just moved house and they've said it'll be ten to twenty business days (!) to hook up our internet. So I'm composing this at home and will post it at work.

We're mostly on top of the move, but it seems like we moved into an unfinished house, what with all the workers we've had through. We've had two new garage doors put in, had blinds put in, had cable TV installed, had a locksmith through to fix the doors, had handymen fix various things... We still have a fence in the backyard to be replaced.

The new house is very nice, especially in terms of warmth. The old house had high ceilings, hardwood floors, and poor wiring that only allowed two little space heaters to be on at once. The new house -- lower ceilings, carpets, and proper wiring. And a good powerful faux-fireplace heater in the living room. Ahhhh... The dog seems to love it too, and seems to be frolicking a good bit more.

Once the weather starts to warm, we are really going to start enjoying the backyard. We even have the garage (which is attached to the backyard) set up with our dining room table and chairs. It's also great to have the storage space. Yet another advantage of not having a car.

We miss the old place, but it's good to be in a different neighborhood, that has a very different feel. Even the wildlife is different -- at dusk the other day an owl landed in a tree in the backyard. How cool is that?

The house we've been renting for four years sold at auction today. Unbelievable -- it went for $1.11 million (Australian -- that's still over a million US). I had no idea we were living in a million dollar house. It doesn't seem like a million dollar house.

But we like it, and we're sad to be moving. We're partway through the move; we moved lots of the more portable bits today, but tomorrow we're renting a moving truck and hitting it hard. Then on Monday the removalists are coming to do the really heavy bits.

In other news, we had a visit today from our friend who was on the Qantas flight that recently had the mid-flight incident where a big hole got blown out of the side of the plane. I don't want to post too many details about someone else's traumatic experience on a public forum, but we're glad she's okay.

Australian commercials get away with things they never would in the States, chapter 2134:

Domino's Pizza has a new mascot on their commercials, named Manny Toppings, who flies around via an umbrella a la Mary Poppins. His catchphrase: "It's super-cali-friggin-awesome!"

You like me, you really like me! For my birthday yesterday, I got birthday wishes in the following forms:

Six Facebook wall postings

Two Facebook messages

One Friendster message

Three instant messages

Four emails

A bunch of messages on a discussion group

Two cards that arrived by this interesting service that delivers hard copies right to your door -- "mail", I think it's called

Thanks everybody! It was a nice day. As it was a Wednesday, we only went out to dinner to celebrate. And this weekend will be all about moving. I'll be sending out our new address shortly...

We've got a new place. No more busy weekends searching; now it'll be just busy weekends moving and settling in for a while. We're north of town, away from the beach, in Clifton Hill. Nice place with really nice backyard (essential for champagne Sundays) but a rather quieter neighborhood. Still, we have a cafe, a pub, a fish-and-chippery, and a milk bar. There's actually a bunch more stuff that's a little further away. It'll be a much shorter commute for Marjorie (who deserves one) and still not bad for me; just a half hour by train.

They're actually selling our house. We have two "forthcoming auction" signs out front, and we'll be having to let people come into our house on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday for the next four weeks. We let the agents in our house last week, we thought just for an inspection, but today we found they have our house up on their website, complete with pictures they took with all of our furniture prominently featured:

Hocking Stuart

I don't know how they do it -- fisheye lenses or something -- but they sure can make a place look big. My favorite features are the wireless modem you can see in the living room, the luggage on top of the cabinets in the kitchen, and the dog toy in the back yard.

Ten years ago today Marjorie and I had our first date[*]. Marjorie wore a dress with cherries on it and her Birkenstocks. I wore a black and white checked shirt. We went to Doc Chey's, shared a bottle of wine, and bonded over Elliott Smith and Elvis Costello. It was all over from there (which she apparently knew straight away; it took longer for me to realize :-). Happy anniversary, baby!

[*] Okay, we did have a date a few years before that, but the timing wasn't right...

It's all over. Some guys at the office bought Guitar Hero for the lunch room. What a brilliant game. Thursday was someone's last day, but instead of going out to the pub as planned, we just brought in some beers and played it until late. It was the most fun I've had in a long while.

Back to house hunting...

They're kicking us out. Well, actually, they're just raising our rent to the point where we really can't afford to stay any longer. It was just a matter of time, really; we've been here almost four years now at the same rent, and it's a seller's market right now.

Today we hired a car and went by no less than nine different places today (there was a tenth too that we couldn't find). Exhausting. And none were up to snuff. Even if we find a place we like there's no guarantee we'll get it -- there's always a crowd at these viewings, and having to admit we have a dog is a liability. It's a grueling process.

We're looking north of the city, so Marjorie has an easier commute. There's some nice neighborhoods but nothing (I think) as nice as where we're at now. Still, a change of scene might be nice. But we may end up staying in this area if nothing pans out up north.

It was a lot easier four years ago when Marjorie wasn't working. We know we'll have to kiss a lot of frogs in the process but it can be pretty grating.

Not the most exciting post; I think I must just be burned out...

The good things about my new job:

• It's nothing but programming. No proposal writing, requirements gathering, design sessions, customer support, etc. like my last job; just the pure unadulterated fun stuff that I like.


• My time sheet takes about thirty seconds to complete, instead of the fifteen minutes of my last job.


• Magazines on the lunchroom table include Scientific American, my favorite magazine, which was a good omen on my first day.


• My boss is wickedly smart. Maybe even the smartest guy I've ever met, and I've met a lot of smart people. But he's also really cool and down-to-earth. It seems like he could do the job of any of the twenty or so people under him, but he doesn't micromanage.


• There's a MAME arcade emulator machine in the lunchroom (built by same boss). There's also an XBox.


• I have my pick of hardware, software, and books, plus a hefty yearly training budget.

The bad:

• Eight hour days instead of the Australian standard of seven and a half. I typically worked that much anyway so it's no big deal.


• It's all guys, save the receptionist.


• Pernicious Microsoft influence, now that we've officially been acquired. So far it's been no big deal. We have, though, been "discouraged" from working on open source projects.


• More pressure. I've already had a few work dreams.

Just got back from a lovely weekend away at a cottage (which was dog-friendly) in the nearby spa resort town of Daylesford. We did a whole lot of nothing for the long weekend, which was nice. The dog enjoyed herself too, but I still hate it that there's no way to explain to her what's going on -- she never knows if we're staying someplace forever or just for a visit.

On the way back we took a stroll around Hanging Rock, but failed to mysteriously disappear.

Interesting disclaimer on TV prior to a program we watched -- it was something like this:

SBS advises Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders that the following program contains voices and depictions of dead people.

Local celebrity spotting, in McNugget form:

Grabriella Cilmi, who recently knocked Madonna off the top of the British charts, is from Melbourne. I tracked down her song, Sweet About Me, which I expected to be pure bubblegum, but it's actually not bad -- kind of Amy Winehouse-y.

Sally Seltmann, who co-wrote Feist's international hit 1234 is also from here.

Nicolas Cage is apparently looking for a house in our neighborhood. This is probably in some way responsible for our recent rent increase. Maybe we can hang out. Though I imagine he'll be palling around with Hugh Jackman and Guy Pierce instead.

I was just watching a bit of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" episode about Singapore, and it got me thinking back. I surfed around a bit and came across this clip of a very typical Singaporean sitcom called "Under One Roof". All Singaporean sitcoms, I think, are about overbearing mothers.

I often go on here about the great things about Australia. One of the down sides, though, is the cost of things. A perfect example:

Item	US price	Australia price
Wii	US$250	US$379
Wii Fit	US$90	US$137

I want this, but the Australian price is a lot harder to justify. Electronics in general cost too much, as do clothes and housewares.

When we first got Laika she pulled on the leash too much, so we got her a halti. She hates it.

A few years later she started getting into kerfuffles with other dogs (particularly schnauzers) so we got her a muzzle. She hates it.

Now, after a leg surgery, we had to get her one of those lampshade collars o' humiliation. She hates it. Look how defeated she looks.

Fortunately for her she only had to wear it for one day, as we can now keep a watch on her, since we are both suddenly home sick with some bizarro virus. We both felt clammy and belchy at work on Monday, and now the symptoms seem to be a wildly fluctuating body temperature, belchiness, a complete indifference to food, and a general cold and clammy feeling. Marjorie chundered a few times last night while I got woken up by acid reflux at 3:30am. Always good to have to call in sick on your third week on the job. The dog at least appreciates having us around.

How to speak Australian. What would be your guess as to what these Australianisms mean?

A newspaper headline from a while back: "CATS FACE BLOW".

The government's new "Dob In A Hoon" campaign.

In bed with the devil? Naaaah... After one week on the job I no longer work for "FAST Search & Transfer" -- now we are officially "FAST, a Microsoft Subsidiary". There was a meeting today about how this will all affect us; the bottom line is "not much" (for now at least). We'll see. The group I'm working with seems strong and smart and sensible, so I'm confident that things will work out, one way or another.

Next month we have the official welcome bash. All the Australian branches are coming to Melbourne for it, and I've heard the word "degustation" mentioned. Lead us not into...

The dog is broken again. She started developing cysts around the sutures from her last surgery, so today she got the plate in her leg taken out. I came home to her whimpering and shivering a little, but she's just disoriented; she's fine when one of us is touching her. She's sleeping in front of the heater now. I have a big, complex emotion about all this that doesn't lend itself well to syntax.

Wildlife sightings while visiting the USA:

6 or 7 manatees: Cocoa Beach

3 bottlenose dolphins: Cocoa Beach

1 bald eagle (dead, roadkill): Cape Canaveral

Various hawks and cardinals: Arkansas

At least 15 different species of bird at our friends Dick and Carol's home feeder, including at least 4 new species for us: pine siskin, yellow-rumped warbler, Carolina wren, yellow-bellied woodpecker (says Carol, though I think this was actually a flicker): Georgia

Wild turkey: Berkeley

The parrots of Telegraph Hill: San Fran

3 or 4 of the lesser-known (Anna's?) hummingbirds of Telegraph Hill: San Fran

50 or so harbor seals: San Fran

1 acorn woodpecker, stuffing his tree like this: Palo Alto

I'm missing some sightings, I think...

I survived my first week at my new job for FAST Search. A lot of "drinking from the fire hose" so far as the system is pretty sizable and just about everything is new to me (including the operating system -- Linux/Ubuntu/Gnome). I've been advised that there's lots of hardcore algorithmic stuff deep in the guts of the system that needs work -- sweet.

All the people seem really cool -- serious geeks but no social misfits. There's a MAME box in the lunch room. They have a system of lava lamps that are lit whenever various software builds are broken.

Sadly it's a bit of a sausage party -- all white males between the ages of 25 and, um, my age. The one woman in the whole office (of twenty or so people) is (to complete the stereotype) an administrative assistant. By an odd coincidence, the guy who's been helping me a lot this week happens to play on my soccer team (I didn't know he worked there until after I accepted the offer). Should be good fun.

Some pics from our recent trip back to the USA. We had a super, super time, practically every day of the trip. More details to come.

My last day at my current job (yesterday) happened to correspond with their quarterly event. So I spent my last afternoon climbing rocks, which was a lot of fun. At drinks afterwards I burned the heck out of myself on an hors d'oeuvre and so get to start my new job on Monday with a scab across my lower lip.

Greets from the USA where we're just about to wrap up a lovely visit with Mark's side of the family. All the kidren are playful and rambunctious and growing up too fast. With twelve people staying at my parents' house it was like My Big Fat Greek Family. We saw manatees and dolphins in the canal that runs behind their back yard. I took some photos and movies which I will post later.

Our big joke this trip is to say "Oh yeah" whenever we see something that we used to see all the time but had completely forgotten about. Sales tax -- "Oh yeah". Texas Pete's Hot Sauce -- "Oh yeah". Towel dispensers where you have to pull the lever down a foot to dispense three inches of paper towel -- "Oh yeah". Supercuts, Panera Bread Company, Lance crackers -- "Oh yeah".

The US seems stranger to me in general than on previous return visits. The things that strike me the most strange are pennies (Why? Get rid of them already) and toilets (they give you a veritable lake to pee into in the US; seems like a waste).

Note to me Atlanta mates -- will be going Atlanta next -- spending a few days with Marjorie's parents before heading into town. Will be in touch soon!

More commercial goodness. A commercial down here refers to Easter eggs as "tarted-up chicken butt-nuts". I love Australia...

Great fun last night as I went and saw From The Jam, which is basically two former members of The Jam, one of my favorite bands, who broke up after I got into them in, um, 1984. The played all their old songs, but with a replacement front man. Kind of strange, really, considering that most of the songs were written by the missing guy. But if it was an odd situation for the band, it didn't show.

It seemed everyone there, like me, knew all the words to every song. It was a dream set list, where they played all my favorite of their hits, plus all my favorite of their non-hits, it seemed. From memory:

In The City

The Modern World

All Mod Cons

News Of The World

To Be Someone

David Watts

In The Crowd

It's Too Bad

'A' Bomb In Wardour Street

Down In A Tube Station At Midnight

So Sad About Us

Thick As Thieves

Private Hell

Little Boy Soldiers

Smithers-Jones

Eton Rifles

Strange Town

Pretty Green

Start!

Ghosts

The Gift

Thick As Thieves

Town Called Malice

When You're Young

Going Underground

After the show on the tram I chatted with a guy who flew up from Tasmania for the show, leaving his wife and two kids behind. It did seem that there were a lot of people like me who were there by themselves, just because they had to. Come on, this is as close to The Jam as you'll ever see. (Well, I said that about the Pixies too.) But I still have a happy buzz from the show the next day just writing about it.

Oh yeah, I have a new job too.

Seeing as my feet are size 12, I think I'll avoid visiting Canada for a while.

Posted without comment. We just saw this commercial on TV down here.

Your literary quote of the day:

There was something distinctly intimidating about her stare. It seemed to come from a one-woman mob, separated only by time and chance from her knitting bag and a splendid view of the guillotine. -- JD Salinger, "Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters"

Somehow I never noticed this book on our shelves before. So I'm reading it on the tram now, and it's brilliant.

My new crusade: ALL words in book, movie, or song title should be capitalized. Leaving small words like "the" and "and" uncapitalized only leads to confusion. Why not just capitalize them all?

Yesterday we met up with my internet-cum-real-life friend who was in town visiting with his sister. This is the third continent we've met on (previously we've met up in Atlanta and London). Had a great time showing them the city and our neighborhood. He works for Apple, so I got my first look at an iPhone and was wowed. To my surprise, given all the hype and my previous distaste for most things Mac-ish. That is one sexy gadget. Want.

Arthur Dent never could quite get the hang of Thursdays.

For me, the problem is Sunday nights. Back in Atlanta, it used to be "wing night", where I'd go out with a group of friends, usually to Taco Mac, and basically just try to extend the weekend for another night.

I have no big friend group here, and no proper spicy wing to speak of. But I'm left with the stubborn refusal to go to sleep on Sunday nights. Last night was typical. I started drifting off to sleep on the couch shortly after Marjorie went to bed, around 10:00pm. But instead I woke myself up on purpose, and stayed awake watching a soccer game I didn't care about, until after 1:30.

It starts the week off all wrong for me; I yawn through my Mondays, and have to play catch-up the rest of week on sleep. But what really bugs me is that I can't fully articulate my reasons for doing it. Yes, it has something to do with holding on to my free time, to not being a slave to work, to the feeling that days are slipping away. But it feels like there's something missing in that explanation, something not in my front-brain, and and not really in my control.

I got a new phone last weekend, and gave Marjorie the old one. The old one was a Motorola C261, which is a good phone, and has a camera, but unfortunately has no way to download the photos you take -- you can only send them to someone else. So today I've been sending all the photos I took with the old phone to my new one so I can download them. The quality of them isn't great, but what do you expect from a phone camera?

Remember my soccer injury from the middle of last year? Here's a shot I took of my face immediately afterwards.

And here's a photo of a standoff that took place on a walk around Albert Park Lake. I really don't know who would win this. Swans is mean.

A mix tape for Grandmom? Marjorie and I have been trying to put together a mix CD for my grandmother. She doesn't have a CD player, I don't think, but we can at least play it when we're all visiting at my parents house next month. It's been an interesting cross-generational experience, downloading these old songs -- as you might expect, a lot of the stuff I remember her liking, we've been finding, well, grating. It's not a product of the times, I don't think -- I've been listening to a fair bit of early jazz lately (Louie Armstrong, Benny Goodman), but I'm trying more to remember what SHE has always liked, growing up second-generation Polish in southern New Jersey.

The three names I can recall are Bobby Vinton, John Denver, and Lawrence Welk. It's hard to imagine finding any of these names on a mix tape I'd make for any of my friends. Vinton at least does some polkas, but his love songs are pure schmaltz. Denver is not offensive at least, while Welk is pure elevator music to my ears.

I also remember distinctly a few 78s that us kids always played at my Grandmom's house -- possibly they were two sides of the same 78? The songs were "The House of Bamboo" by Andy Williams (which actually swings) and "See You Later, Alligator" by Bill Haley and the Comets. I don't know though, these might have been my mother's. We were actually able to find both of these.

I'll have to see if we can track down some stuff from the Mummers Parades as well!

It seems that my late entry into the Metamorphosis Valentine's Day Limerick Contest came away with the coveted Best limerick making fun of the limerick contest award. Props also to lisad (who has been known to occasionally comment here) for taking the slightly less prestigious third prize.

I just got back from the beach, and boy are my arms tired. For the first time since 1994(?), I went surfing. It was good fun. I hired one of those long floaty longboards, and was happy to stand up at least. It was hard not to continually remember that the place that we went, Ocean Grove, is not terribly far from some Great White feeding grounds. The big clumps of kelp in the water were occasionally disconcerting.

The weekend in review, once again:

Thursday: Billy Bragg in concert at the Prince of Wales. Some left midway through due to excessive preaching and politicking, but c'mon, it's Billy Bragg; what did they expect? It was still lots of fun and I'm amazed that one man can entertain a room full of people for two hours with only guitar and his ideas. Closed with a rousing rendition of "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward".

Friday: Moonlight Cinema showing of the Sean Penn movie, "Into The Wild". Giant fruit bats squawking off to our left for much of the time kind of added to the wildness. Movie was good but flawed.

Saturday: Rufus Wainwright at Hamer Hall. Our third time seeing him, and vastly different each time. This time it was with a full band and costume changes (white body suit with sequins, lederhosen, a white bathrobe, and, um, full Judy Garland regalia. I was repeatedly struck by how his shy and stumbling between-song patter contrasted with his confident musicianship and dynamic performance. He's a fantastic entertainer.

Australia Day weekend highlights:

• Took dog to Red Bluff, just to have a look around.


• Hit USA Foods for some salad dressing, key lime juice, and a Dr. Pepper.


• Used the key lime juice to make Australia's best margaritas.


• Took the dog to walk along the Yarra, around the Abbotsford Convent, which included a pass by the Collingswood Children's Farm. Laika was very interested in the sheep, cows, and goats, but didn't freak out, which was a good sign for the sheep herding clinic we want to take her to.


• Ice skating at Waterfront City.


• Ethiopian food at African Town.


• Chicken wings on the barbie.


• Bought a bag of lentils from an ethnic food store. Marjorie warned me they would expand when I cooked them but I didn't believe her. Ended up with three big tupperware containers of them, and tossing out a fourth. I'm not going vegan or anything, I'm just looking for excuses to eat more hot sauce.

Sick of it. I've been ill for eight days -- just a chest cold -- but I haven't improved at all. It's not getting worse, but it's not getting any better. The drugs don't work. At all. I have cold meds from the US that all do nothing, and I went to the doctor yesterday, who prescribed me antibiotics but so far they're doing nothing either. (Come to think of it, I've had these kinds of colds before, and I can't remember antibiotics ever doing anything for them.) I tried going into work back on Tuesday, but only lasted about an hour. So I've had a big long extension to my holiday, but it's all been sitting on the couch, watching movies, and I'm over it!

In case you missed it, Australia elected a new prime minister a few weeks back.

The election was, to us new citizens, fascinating. Australia uses instant runoff voting, which essentially means that we had to rank all the candidates from one to sixty-eight. Each candidate was listed in a column under their party's name, and there are lots and lots of parties, so it was a very long sheet. They have some interesting parties, too:

Senator On-line

Shooters Party

Citizens Electoral Council

One Nation

The Fishing Party

Conservatives for Climate and Environment

There were so many we had to take a cheat sheet in. But I think it's a great system; if your first choice doesn't get a majority of the votes, your vote goes to your second, then your third, etc., so that it's actually possible to vote for alternate parties without "throwing away" your vote. The whole world needs to adopt this.

The other great thing about the election was that it was announced, and then held just a month and a half later. America is killing itself with its year-long (plus) multi-billion dollar debacle that leaves the candidates all covered with mud and everyone feeling acrimonious.

Another quiet Christmas but it was nice. The day consisted of opening presents, champers, snacks, and a nap.

We also caught part of the Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie Holiday Inn. A happy little holiday romp, until -- Bing comes out in blackface. He starts singing a song about Abraham Lincoln. Cut to the band, all in blackface. Cut to large black maid singing, "When black folks lived in slavery/Who was it set the darkie free? Abrahaaaaam..." Enter the female lead, dressed as a pickaninny. Cut to Marjorie and Mark, sitting out the couch with our mouths agape. How the times have changed. They apparently edit this part out when they show this movie in the States. They sell golliwogs in a shop up the street here, so I'm not surprised we see it unedited.

The Summer of Mark. By a bit of bad luck I'm going to have two weeks off over the holidays.

I say "bad luck" because I wanted to work so as not to go into the negative on vacation days when we go back to the States in a few months. But there's just no work in my office to justify it.

Marjorie has to work, though. So I've been coming up with a plan for how to spend my time. The plan includes:

Bringing my techie website back on line

Updating my CV

Finishing up some personal programming projects

Tracking down some books for a certain relative

Sorting out our various frequent flier miles

Starting some kind of exercise program

Keep studying my Spanish

There's a distinct danger, though, that it might end up like:

Sleeping until noon, then surfing the internet all day in my underwear

Stumbling towards Christmas we are. Marjorie's parents just left, after a big long crazy visit involving planes, trains, more trains, helicopters, more helicopters, and automobiles. The only excursion I took with them for was the Puffing Billy one, which was a disappointment for all of us Americans who are used to at least some animatronics with their tourist traps. Anyway, my father-in-law Rob spent lots of time writing up a great account of their adventures, and hopefully I can convince him to start a blog instead of emailing it around.

Christmas, though, will be a quiet one again for us this year, but that's okay. We do sometimes pine for the good proper cold-weather, never-ending consumerist nightmare that is Christmas in America but I think in the end it's just the family part that we miss.

What a long strange trip it's been. Right this moment marks almost exactly five years since we got on the plane and left the States behind. At the time we had no idea whether we would be gone for six months, or forever. The plan was originally for five years, I think, but now we've reached that and still only have tentative plans to move back to the States in a year or two. Or sooner, or later. To some as yet unidentified city. Or to Europe. Who knows.

It's funny how fast the romantic notions of living overseas got replaced by the day-to-day reality. But it's still not an experience I would have traded for the world.

Hooray for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. Shared it with the in-laws this year, which means nicer company but fewer leftovers. That's okay, they're heading off tomorrow on their big Australian adventure before the turkey carcass got picked fully clean...

By my mother-in-law's request, here's the story of my trip to South Africa from 2001(?). You can read this same text, but with pictures, on the Virtual Tourist website.


My decision to go to South Africa came about while sitting in an East Atlanta restaurant, The Heaping Bowl and Brew. This restaurant features a giant map across one wall; we were seated directly under Africa. Gazing at the map, I thought about what an interesting place South Africa always seemed to me; I remembered wondering about it at a young age, looking through my parents’ atlas. Not only was it on the other side of the world, it was the southernmost place in Africa, and entirely contained two other whole countries (Lesotho and Swaziland). Then, through the 1980’s, I would hear about it on the news all the time, in reports about the breakup of apartheid. When I did some research and discovered how scenic and beautiful it was as well, my mind was made up.

When Americans think of Africa, they tend to think of safaris and big game. And while South Africa has several safari parks, to be honest, this sort of thing didn’t really interest me too much. I have seen enough elephants and tigers in zoos. I know it’s another thing altogether to witness them in the wild, but I’ll save that for a trip to the Serengeti someday.

The fact that English is widely spoken there made my decision to go by myself much easier; I didn’t want to be all alone in a place where I couldn’t communicate well. And thanks to a friend’s recommendation of a travel web site, I was able to find a (relatively) cheap ticket down there.

My trip down involved a layover in London, which I could extend as long as I liked. Since I had never been there, I decided to spend a couple of days. I latched onto the city quite well; I could easily see moving there someday. Did a lot of shopping, sightseeing, and pub hopping.

My South Africa trip was everything I was hoping it would be and more. I can highly recommend it as a travel destination; while it may cost a bit to get there, I estimate I saved $100 per day over what I would have spent for similar experiences in Europe, thanks to the strong dollar. In the future, I’m going to remember to factor in the day-to-day costs when considering a place that may be expensive to fly to.

Coming home, I resolved to make a trip by myself somewhere every year (next year I’m thinking Greenland by way of Iceland). Travel, it’s said, doesn’t cure wanderlust; it only makes it worse. I have it in a bad way now.

I love going places where every tree, every plant, every car, rock, bird, or insect is just a little bit different than you’re used to. I love hearing young kids speak another language, and stupidly thinking for a moment, “Wow, that kid’s a genius; I could only speak English at that age!” I love spending the Monopoly money that foreign currency seems to be. I love seeing people work a mundane job in a distant part of the world and wondering what their everyday life must be like. I love telling people about where I’m from, and seeing how it differs from their perceptions. I love finding out how my perceptions about a place were wrong. I love visiting a famous place, and having your mind go “I’m here! I’m really here!” And I love having a real memory to associate with a place, when you hear about it later in conversation or in the news.

As it turns out, I recently had an opportunity to experience this last thing in a particularly poignant way. Last week, a terrorist bomb exploded in a pizzeria that was practically adjacent to the Bay Hotel I had stayed at in Camps Bay. I don’t let these sorts of things bother me, though; the odds are much, much greater that you’ll die in a car crash on the way to the airport than as a victim of a terrorist incident. Not that it ever hurts to be aware of your surroundings and keep your wits about you.

Lastly, I have to mention this. I had long heard that toilets that flush counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere actually flush clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the centrifugal force of the Earth spinning. Then I heard that this was a bunch of malarkey. So I had resolved to test this out while I was visiting. Unfortunately, I got so wrapped up in things, that during the nine days I was there, I never once remembered to check. So it will have to remain a mystery.

Arrival

I managed to sleep most of the way from London to Cape Town, passing over the equator for my first time some time in the middle of the night. I awoke as we were about to land, dipping out of the clouds to a magnificent view of the jagged coastline.

One of the delights of travel for me is the delicious nervousness of arrival in a new culture. Customs seemed a blur for me in my excited state.

The thing I was most nervous about for this trip was the driving. Public transit isn't very much of an option in South Africa; any guidebook you read will tell you to rent a car. What’s scary is that they drive on the other side of the road there, and all the cars have a stick shift that you must operate with your left hand.

After practicing in the parking lot for ten minutes or so I felt I was ready to hit the road. It didn't really seem all that hard. I drilled it into my brain that I must just continually keep to the left. And after a nervous encounter with a traffic circle in my first few minutes on the road, things went just fine. Only once during my whole trip there did I find myself going the wrong way, and that was in a relatively tame parking lot situation. My biggest problem was that I kept getting into the passenger side of my rental car. The standard procedure was to sit down, momentarily wonder what happened to the steering wheel, realize what an idiot I am, and then sheepishly pretend I was just getting into the passenger side to retrieve some small article or other. I must've done this a dozen times.

The only really peculiar driving habit there I noticed was that you are expected to pull over onto the shoulder to let faster cars pass you. Everywhere the roads had wide, clean berms for just this purpose.

Parking in Cape Town was something I wished the guidebooks had warned me about. The way it works is this. Every block has a single meter box for all its parking spots. However, you don't put money into it yourself; you give your money to one of the seedy looking characters that hangs out there and helps you park. He will put money in the meter box for you, but only if the parking ticketers come around. If not, he pockets the money. It seems like a racket, but it's really not a bad system. You pay as much as you would normally, and sometimes you can park in a spot for a lot longer than you're really allowed to.

Of course, I knew none of this pulling into Cape Town on my first day. I gave the guy not nearly enough money and got some dirty looks. Fortunately the hotel owner explained the drill to me and I went out and moved my car. (My male ego requires that I mention that I'm a good parallel parker even on the opposite side of the street.)

I can't really recommend staying in town, especially if you're planning to go out or return at night. There were some very nervous moments walking down the street; the guys hanging out on most street corners would not leave you alone. Everywhere else I stayed seemed much safer.

First Day

I was worried that, because I was visiting during their rainy season, I would not get a clear day to visit South Africa's main tourist destination, Table Mountain, but the first day I awoke to bright, clear skies (as I did nearly every day, as it turned out). Table Mountain is the rocky plateau that looms over Cape Town like a wave about to break. The way to the top is by an astounding cable car ride. Atop there are pleasant walking trails, magnificent views, and interesting wildlife.

Also on top there is a small business set up to allow adventure seekers to "abseil" (rappel) down the mountain. They claimed to be the highest public abseil operation in the world. I scoffed internally at the idea at first, but then I got to thinking. I was here for the adventure. Could I convince myself to go? I sat a while and thought about it. Well, I probably didn't have enough money on me to do it. I went and checked, and it only cost about $30; I did have enough on me, and probably would never find a cheaper place to do it. But, they didn't seem to have a photographic operation set up. Why do it if I couldn't even prove that I did it to the folks back home? No problem, the man assured me. We can take a picture with your camera and give it back to you when you walk back up. I went and thought some more. Finally I went back and asked the guy, "Um, are these shoes okay for this?"

"Yes, they're perfectly fine."

"Rats. That was my last excuse."

I think I was pretty green as he was explaining the procedure to me; he had to repeat some questions to me. I willed myself over the edge and began working my way down. I soon realized I was in danger of hyperventilating so I had to really concentrate on breathing steadily. I worked my way down about a hundred feet or so, then abruptly ran out of wall. The remaining 200+ feet were a straight drop, as the wall bends in from there on down. The instructor had warned me about this, I think, but it didn't really register at the time. I sat there a minute or two just trying to will myself to continue down without anything for my feet to push against. Finally I began inching down. The part that makes it even more fun is that you aren't allowed to grab hold of the rope above you with your free hand, as it gets too hot. About halfway down, I swung around to where I could see my tiny shadow against the massive cliff face. I considered the fact that I was half a world a way from anyone whose name I even knew, dangling like a fool off a massive chunk of rock. That was the most alone I'd ever felt or probably ever will. But it was an amazing experience.

Wine Country

After Cape Town I headed inland toward the wine country town of Stellenbosch. As this is also a university town, I figured it would also be a good place to try to meet up with some locals out at the bars at night.

I did an excellent wine tasting at a local winery and enjoyed the surrounding scenery, venturing into the charming nearby town of Franschoek. That night I tried out a few local bars, and finally found myself in a cozy little wood-framed tavern known as Der Acker, a hangout for the post-college crowd. I struck up a conversation with a regular, who introduced me to the bartenders, who introduced me to more people... Soon I found myself sitting in a booth with ten people, chatting about next to everything. They taught me my only phrase of Afrikaans that I picked up (and I’m going to mangle the spelling of it here): “Kann ech anochre bier krey asseblief” (“Can I have another beer please?”). One of my new friends kept trying to lubricate the conversation with rounds of shots of grapefruit schnapps. As the night wore on everyone was rolling their eyes as new rounds appeared, but as I was warned, this was a heavy drinking town in a heavy drinking country, and no one refused their shot. I'm pretty sure I had a really good time.

Cape Agulhas

My next destination was the southernmost point of Africa, Cape Agulhas (not the Cape of Good Hope as is often claimed). I had been advised by one of my new Stellenbosch mates to drive along the coast for the magnificent view, and I wasn't disappointed. What they didn't warn me is that this route would, as I got close to the cape, take me over thirty or so miles of dirt road. It was relatively smooth dirt; still, I began to worry what would happen if my car broke down there. This was as far removed from the civilization I'm used to as I came on my trip. Birdwatching camps, native schoolchildren, and farms fringed my route.

I picked up the pavement again close to the cape. It was pretty much deserted when I arrived. I had to wait a while to have someone take my picture among the surf-pounded rocks. Cape Agulhas is really just a geographical curiosity, but as good a destination as any when the whole country is foreign and strange and beautiful.

I stayed the next night in a town up the coast, Hermanus, which is a tourist draw in that whales came up to within scores of feet from the water's rocky edge to spawn. Thanks to the strong dollar, my room that night which looked directly down into the bay cost only about $40. No whales, unfortunately; it was only the very beginning of whale season.

Boulders Beach

The next day I headed back towards the Cape of Good Hope. Along the way I stopped at Boulders Beach to see the jackasses. Jackass penguins, that is; that's what they're really called. They are (I think) year round visitors on this beach. The brush that rises above the beach is lousy with penguin nests and baby penguins. It's all fenced in, so even the babies had only the sluggish half-wariness that comes with having no real predators to worry about.

Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope itself is better described with pictures than words.

Final Days

My last few days I decided to splurge, and stay in a five-star hotel; the Bay Hotel in Camps Bay. This decision was made easier by the fact that, with the exchange rates at the time, it was only $82 a night.

I made some other forays into the nightlife, checking out such clubs as the nearby La Med. Home for the beautiful white people who dance badly -- it was like the opening credits to Friends. Much better was the Observatory district, a narrow little street near Cape Town's university. Friendly little bars line the streets. At one of these I had a long, friendly conversation about racism with a "colored" woman.

In South Africa, everyone was considered either "white", "black", or "colored" under apartheid; the latter category is a catch-all that includes mulattos, Indians, Arabs, and even, I believe, Chinese. These distinctions no longer hold the force of law, but they are still in effect on a much subtler level. South Africa now has the most liberal constitution in the world, guaranteeing equal rights regardless of race, gender, nationality, age, economic status or sexual orientation, and though everyone is supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law now, in practice there is still a wide gulf between the "haves" and the "have nots". Most of the u unpleasant jobs are still staffed by blacks or colored people. Nowhere was this de facto separation more apparent than a scene I came across while driving out of Cape Town one day; twenty or so white golfers were lined up at a driving range, while a black man with a helmet as his only real protection retrieved the golf balls into a bucket out on the range.

Anyway, the woman I chatted with, I was surprised to learn, had grown up in an integrated school. Because of the sensational nature of the news reports I had heard throughout the 80's, I had assumed that every school down there was segregated by race but this was not the case. She had encountered some incidents of racism during her life, but all in all her experience didn't seem all that much different than someone living in the United States.

My flight back involved nine hours back to London, a three-hour layover (during which I had to make my way from Gatwick airport to Heathrow airport), and another nine hours back to Atlanta. It wasn’t at all as bad as it sounds, thanks to the portable TV sets that everyone gets onboard British Airways international flights. They are a godsend for making a trip fly by like nothing.

What's been going on:

Instead of going to the races this year, we just went up to the Transport Bar and watched the people come and go. Some were even undead.

Saw Crowded House last week; very good. The show ended with a touching tribute to their former drummer who killed himself here in Melbourne a year or two back. No, Jim, I didn't throw a paper airplane.

Am playing soccer in the corporate games again this year, but am having trouble finding a pair of soccer boots that fit me. I swear, sometimes the businesses in this country make it hard for you to give them your money.

We are culture whores. This weekend we hit the Hispanic festival (which had some really good food) on Saturday and the Polish festival (which had some really long lines for some decent food) today. We passed on the Turkish festival. Multiculturalism is the bomb!

Marjorie's parents are in the country and on their way here. They'll be heading off to even more places we've never been, and we'll be trying not to resent them for it. :-)

While we like all of our nieces' and nephews' names, sometimes you still hear of some people who name their children in ways that make you think, "What were they thinking?" (Frank Zappa and Gwyneth Paltrow spring to mind.)

Anyway, so as not to deny you all the pleasure of laughing at the names we would give the children that we're never going to have, here they are:

Girls:

Imogene Frances

Esme Matilda

Boys:

Hamish

Noah

We're still working on the middle names for the boys. The last names are all fluid too. It's all moot anyway, but I thought you might have a laugh.

I was admonished on Friday in front of my office: "Don't kill anyone today!" The hippies were again protesting BHP Billiton, who share our building with us, over uranium mining or something. I was going to counter with, "I work for Deloitte, moron!" but I decided I kind of like being thought the bad guy, and I don't honestly know if they have legitimate reason to protest or not.

I've hired a costume for our work Halloween party this Friday -- I'm going as the Grim Reaper. I better not put it on before I get to work, though -- they might think I'm a protester.

Dog update. She's recovering. Still limping a bit, but she's gotten used to the new routine, which involves no off-leash time. She's back to making danger-runs past the vacuum cleaner every time we turn it on. Our dog's a freak.

She also still doesn't like it when we dance in her presence. Other dogs mind their own business.

Wednesday was National Ride To Work Day, and as our workplace coordinator, I kind of had to do it. The weather was perfect -- sunny and cool. The cool thing about it was discovering that it's actually quicker than taking the tram. In fact, Marjorie left the house ten minutes before I did, but then when I got into the city, who should get off the tram right in front of me but her. And that's with me briefly stopping by the courtesy breakfast, too. I'm going to try to start riding in once a week, I think.