Pong

This is the ping pong table at work, where all the magic happens.


My coworker Yoram and I have gotten really good. We've pretty much outgrown the tight space, but we still have good matches almost daily.

Dexter's

This is our local chill-out bar, Dexter's. Out back:


Out front:

Tram

Morning tram self-portrait, thanks to a well-placed mirror!

Japanese

Dinner tonight at Yu'u with our friends Steve and Trisha.























Missing three other courses too, including their amazing sashimi. I am full to the GILLS.

This is the Thai food place where I get about half my lunches these days.





Good, cheap, fast, and always packed if you don't get there early enough.

Cafe

A little cafe in our neighborhood that went unnoticed down a side street for over a year until I stumbled across it yesterday.








We ate there this morning. Melbourne is full of hidden gems like this!

Possums

I was going to caption this picture with something about how possums are never really out in the light of day - it's just the idea of them that gets Laika excited:


But then two trees down we spotted a momma and her babies:

Austrian

Dinner at Mutti's Austrian just now. Me: goulash mit spatzle. Marjorie: pork belly.





Marjorie's comment: "It's a good thing Laika doesn't taste this good."

Bay view

The view out a different office window. In the background is the bay that we used to live four blocks from.






Weird -- the sky looks all blue for some reason!

Dreary

My street. We're sick of this weather! It's been a particularly grey spring.






I call the trees "broccoli trees" for obvious reasons.

Lunch

The daily post-lunch gaming session, with Guitar Hero and MAME box.




Featuring Tom, Simon, Dan, Owen, John, Mark P, and Sean.

Elvis

Saw Elvis Costello perform solo tonight. Great show. He had to work hard to win over a crowd of sober forty- and fifty-somethings and he succeeded.




This was the playbill out front:

Clifton Hill Station

Waiting for the train, Clifton Hill, like every morning...




It's ten minutes to the city if I catch the express; otherwise, fifteen. Then ten minutes of walking or tramming. Sometimes I think the ride isn't long enough!

Merri Creek Video

A bonus today: here's a quick video from our walk the other day.

Webmasters

The other night I met the guy who took over the Elvis Costello web page from me lo those many years ago.




John is a really nice guy, and it's nice to put a face on the name. We're going to see him again on Tuesday night for Elvis's second show in town.

Fairfield Boathouse

Took a walk down to the Fairfield Boathouse on the Yarra today.



They rent canoes and kayaks here, and it's a short paddle down to see the bats. We were actually looking out for the black cockatoos we'd seen a few times here but no sightings today.

Merri Creek

We miss the beach we had at our old place, but the new place has the river which is quite idyllic.



Lots of birds! I'm going to go do some volunteer work for the Friends of Merri Creek in a few weeks (pulling weeds most likely).

Office View

Trying something a little different. I've found an iPhone app that lets me blog from anywhere, and include pictures, so maybe I can breathe a little life back into the blog by making it more of a photo blog of our life down here.


As a start, here's the view out my office window, down William St in the heart of Melbourne. This is where I stand and look when my brain gets full.

A few months back I entered some of my family tree information, as tracked down by my Uncle Bill, into the website Geni. So just the other day I was contacted by someone who apparently has some Schnitzius blood in him, and we've been chatting a bit. He was able to supply me with a few details my uncle missed, including some whole matriarchal lines - one that takes me back as far as 1585 (my father's father's father's father's mother's mother's father's father's parents, Nicolas and Catherine Roemer, both born 1585 in Germany). He's pointed me at some other online resources that can be used to trace family trees, so I might have a go at trying to follow up my mother's line of Tomaszewicz's and Gasiors and such, especially considering we might do a trip to Poland before long. Here's a limit view of my tree - you'll have to sign up with their site to see more. Click on it and drag to scroll around, or use the slider to zoom in and out:

View more of Mark's tree |
Get your own family tree at Geni.com

New toy. My boss authorized us all to get new iPhones, so I ordered a new iPhone 3GS online before he changed his mind. I haven't always been the biggest lover of Apple products, but I have to admit this is a pretty sweet little device. I've been playing with it now for a week - I've had a few problems, but I know I'm going to end up using the shit out of this thing.

I "jailbroke" it straight away, which means I can install applications ("apps") other than the approved Apple ones. It's technically against the license agreement, but is pretty much decriminalized. My favorite apps are the ones that help me get around - the built-in Maps (very handy), another based on that that uses the built in GPS to show where I am, and Metlink and TramTracker for the local train and tram lines. Stanza is a pretty cool ebook reader (plenty of good public domain books out there now - I've started one by Dashiell Hammett). I FaceBook and Twitter on it, read news, check the weather, listen to music and podcasts (yay, NPR) and keep a lot of notes.

Already had a problem where none of my applications would open after I synced with iTunes, that kept me stymied for a couple of days, but I managed to fix that just now. All in all, it still seems like a device that was dropped here from ten years or so in the future.