Marjorie's parents have been in the country for a week and a half now, and seem to be having quite a good time. They've already visited Sydney, Cairns, and Uluru. They've ridden camels, held koalas, and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. They've actually seen more of this country/continent than we have now. Her dad says there's a few months worth of things he'd like to see here. Tomorrow I'm taking off work and we're going to go explore some more around Melbourne.

Marjorie's parents are visiting. They came all the way from the other side of the world just to bring us a suitcase full of American groceries. Isn't that nice. Oh, they're going to see a thing or two while they're here as well. Today Marjorie took them around to see some wildlife, and scored on all fronts -- koalas, kookaburras, flying foxes, lorikeets, galahs, pied cormorants, and brush-tailed possums. Later in the week they're all heading up to the Great Barrier Reef together, leaving me all alone and OH MY GOD I'LL HAVE THE WHOLE HOUSE TO MYSELF FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND -- uh, I mean, I'll be lonely.

Three years, three continents, three cities, seven apartments. Yesterday was our third anniversary. We just did a quiet evening at home, but we splashed out a bit on a bottle of wine. Let's see, first anniversary is "paper", second is "cotton", and third is "cold germs", right?

Sickie. Only my second week of work, and I'm taking my first "sickie". Actually, that word has connotations of "faking it", but I really am sick. My first big, brash, Aussie cold, and I got some big, brash Aussie drugs to counter it with -- all cold medicines are over-the-counter here, but they have codeine in them.

Laika is the only dog I've ever known who doesn't bark at visitors. Workmen came to fix the kitchen ceiling, and she greeting them with a wagging tail. Our kitchen is filling with dust as I write this.

My soccer team now has a website where you can read game reports. I know you will all be checking regularly. I'm back on the thirds team for now. And apparently I was chosen as "B.O.G" for our last match, which I hope means "Best of Game".

After upgrading our workstation to Windows XP, I made the mistake of not turning on the firewall.

Stupid.

IE had started rerouting my default homepage to some search engine that encouraged me to look up information on Viagra. We started getting popup ads for anti-spyware programs (which is like a burglar breaking into your house and leaving pamphlets for home security systems). Ad-aware just found 117 infected files, and cleaned them up. Hopefully. There's a good chance it didn't find everything.

Things like this make me start to reconsider my opposition to capital punishment.

Tonight is our soccer team's big social event of the year, in honor of the FA cup. There's going to be something like 130 people there. It starts with a trivia competition at 7:30pm, but the game doesn't start until midnight, Melbourne time. Then I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow morning for, you guessed it, our soccer game. Sounds like poor planning but that's just how it worked out. I'll be rooting for Man U if Tim Howard is playing, or for them to lose big otherwise. This game is just a warmup for the big match next week anyway.

Tonight we rented I Heart Huckabees, an unlikely little movie that we enjoyed very much. Say what you will about Hollywood -- they still turn out a slew of daring, original titles each year that don't pander to the masses.

After Marjorie went to bed I heard a crash from over in the kitchen. It turns out a big chunk of the plaster roof, about a meter square, came crashing down on our kitchen counter. A nasty, dusty mess that took me a good hour to clean up. It got into the stove, toaster, and sink, so I hope our dinners aren't crunchier than usual this month.

Good news. I've been contracting for nine months with this company. They are choosy about whom they hire, it seems. But now they've asked me to join on, and we've agreed on a salary. Huzzah!

In no time at all, it seems, the sun started going down before we even get home from work. And the days are only getting shorter. We're on a comparable latitude with NYC, so I don't know why it seems so extreme, and so sudden.

It's roughest on the dog, who doesn't get the same sort of quality park frolic time she used to. Everyone here is in the same boat, and so the poo density in the park is increasing, as no one can find their little steaming piles of responsibility in the dark to pick them up. And thus nature provides itself fertilizer for the spring, and the cycle is complete.

As I alluded to, yesterday I played on the second "reserves" team, in addition to just the thirds team that I usually play on. I honestly can't figure out why, as there are much better players than I on the thirds, and that's not just false modesty. But I ended up playing pretty good, and had a really good time in the end. I like the bigger pressure. I got to watch the first team play afterwards, and hoo boy, I am most certainly not ready for that.

Before the game the seconds team coach collected my ID (they have stringent requirements here), and did a double take, saying "Hooray, I'm not the oldest guy here!". That gives me mixed feelings. I'll show these young hooligans a thing or two though.

Back on-line. Upgraded the home computer to Windows XP, upgraded the RAM, installed a wireless network card, and we're back.

Not a lot new here. Weather has been awesome. Spring seemed to give us a miss, and summer wasn't much to speak of, but autumn has been just one spectacular weekend after another. This is the first weekend that's it's been cold at all during the day. Looking forward to playing soccer in it tomorrow. Somehow I ended up agreeing to play two games tomorrow, which is going to hurt.

I should be hiring on permanently at work soon (finally). The project is approaching the critical end stage, and I only recently learned how huge in scope it really is. More details to come.

What a mess. So, after the misadventures with the first repair place, I took it to another. After a week, they called to say it was ready. Of course, it wasn't; it was having the exact same problem. So today was another week later, and this time they said it was the memory that was bad, intermittently. Okay, fine. The replaced the RAM, and I tried it out in the store; it booted, but kept getting some sort of page fault when it tried to shut down. But at least it was booting, so maybe they were on to something.

I have it home now, and it's connected to the internet, so I'm a tiny bit satisfied. Everything seems really sketchy, though; I think there are problems with the registry. So, I'm in the process of uninstalling everything. Now the wireless card has stopped working. Anyone know any good diagnostic software?

The return of boring soccer reports. Dull cheers and golf claps, everyone!

First game was today. Inauspicious, in that it was way the hell out in whatever the Australian equivalent of Podunk, Iowa, and I tried to go by public transport. Despite leaving more than two hours beforehand, I only just showed up as the game was about to start. And I scraped myself climbing over the chain link fence to get to the pitch.

Luckily I had the first half to compose myself on the bench, since you have to clear it with the referee that your a registered player. This is a MUCH stricter league than in Singapore. Everyone has these large printed ID cards with their pictures on them, and scan codes that the referee swipes with a bar code reader whenever you get a yellow or red card. Finally in the second half I got called to go on, and the ref took my number and made me tuck in my shirt. Then, just as I was about to run on, he said, "I can't let you on with that earring..."

I didn't play horribly, but I didn't play well. It seems like a good bunch of folks, and I think my skill level is about right. Good to be playing again.

Phoo. Our long silence has been brought on by a sick computer. It gave me the blue screen of death mid-email, and simply refused to boot afterwards.

I took it to one repair shop, who promised to get back to me in a couple of days. After harassing them a bit, finally, a week later, they called me and said that it was all fixed, that the problem was caused by dust.

So I went to pick it up, and luckily I tried booting it before leaving the store, because the exact same problem was occurring. Not only that, the plastic around the display had a nice new crack in it. Which they denied responsibility for.

I was not pleased.

Now, I don't want to mention any names, but it was Phil's Computers on Pelham St in Carlton.

Anyway, now the computer is in another shop, and we have brought out our backup computer, and have connected using dialup. Soon we'll get it hooked up to the network proper, but for now, some access is better than no access.

Our friend Ken from Singapore (he of the art and the zoo is in town for a visit. Yesterday we drove out to the Healesville sanctuary, which turned out to be more zoo than sanctuary. But it was quite cool. Every exhibit featured wildlife native to Australia, which was good because we got to see some local things we hadn't ever seen before, like Tasmanian devils and pygmy possums. The koalas and echidnas were active as well, which is unusual. The highlight (at least for Marjorie and me) was the lyrebird. We had seen one of these before in the wild but this time we got to hear him display for a prospective mate. Lyrebirds are the best mimics in the world, capable of imitating barking dogs, chain saws, camera shutter noises, etc., but this one seemed intent on just imitating local birds. Finally, after a few minutes, we were presented with an uncanny imitation of an ambulance siren, that even transitioned between the slow rising/falling note and the alternating high-low sounds just like the real thing. Very interesting.

I joined the fantasy football league at work. That's fantasy Australian rules football, actually. As I can't name a single player, it's going to be tough. So I picked every player in the league who's named "Mark". My team name is the All-Marks.

Woo hoo!

Find soccer team (Mark)


I think I finally found my team -- Middle Park -- and they play just up the road. There's actually three teams; firsts and seconds that compete hard, and a third that is more of a show-up-and-play social team like I had in Singapore. They train on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I practiced with them on Thursday, and boy is my [everything] tired. Not used to doing actual drills and such. We did running drills as well as pushups and situps. Afterwards everyone went to the pub, and I chatted with just about everyone. There's guys from all over -- England, Chile, Scotland, France. They used to have an American, who was really good apparently, so everyone is calling me the "replacement Yank".

Although they take the game seriously, it seems more of a social club. To wit: at the end of the night at the pub, they said to me, "You should keep coming out. Oh, and if you want to play some soccer too, that would be great!"

The company I'm working for just landed a choice new contract with Lonely Planet, to do some work on their website. I'm hoping I get a chance to work on it when my current project is done. How cool would that be?

Flotsam.

It's Labour Day weekend here. Just like Labor day in the states, it's a three-day weekend at the end of summer. By good fortune, the weather is supposed to be in the 30s (that's a good thing here). We're going to try to hit the beach.

In chess news, I've been playing a guy who's a bit better than me, but who I can beat on a good day. But today I played a guy who just wiped the table with me, two games. A good dose of humility. Part of the reason that chess is fascinating to me is because you can follow all the supposed rules of strategy, and see them work, but then good players are still able to drive in a wedge and crash over you like a wave (to mix a metaphor).

The last great physicist of glory days of the first half of the last century died this week. This was the guy who figured out how the sun shines. I always wanted to meet him.

The Station Agent is a great little movie.

New Aussie term: "to spit the dummy". A dummy is another word for a pacifier here. So, like a baby would spit out a pacifier when pitching a fit, spitting the dummy is having a tantrum. Also known as "cracking the shits" or "having a tantie".

Besides taking first place at bar trivia tonight, we also learned an interesting additional bit of trivia: apparently, Guy Pierce and Hugh Jackman live right on our street. From what we heard, Guy has grown his hair and beard long to avoid recognition, and Hugh is a regular at a neighborhood cafe.

Aussie term. "Grog" is somewhat archaic slang for beer. To take "a bog" is to defecate. Hence, a "grog bog" is the equivalent of the "beer shits". Thank you and good night.