like time – only more so …
Archive for July, 2009
Jobs for the boys …
Jul 31st
Well there you go. I got the job. I am now officially in the employ of Surf LifeSaving Australia who have decided that I’m the sort of geek they need helping out in their IT department. The money’s good, the location’s great and they have flexible working so I can work two days a week in Sydney and three down here in Barefoot Bay. Which is a bit of a result, isn’t it?
The office looks like this …
SLSA’s head office is located at the south end of Bondi Beach in Sydney, which is a pretty respectable spot I’m sure you’ll agree. I start work there next week.
How big is yours?
Jul 18th
I started collecting MP3s in about 1996 (I have a couple of datestamps from that year). Back then, with broadband a distant futuristic dream and 56K modems all the rage – ripping your own was pretty much your only option. I may have snagged the odd 5.6Mb single, waiting some 20 minutes for it to plop into my downloads directory, but that was about it. In about 1999 my main music drive suffered a fairly catastrophic crash and I lost 80% of my music, which by that stages was already fairly sizeable (I was DJing and had a lot of music). So yes, 1999 was a bit of a ‘year zero’ for the collection. I’ve been building it up again since then but I’m much more picky now and it’s only 112Gb at the moment.
I was looking at the status bar at the bottom of iTunes the other day and it said that my 15,925 songs would take 55.7 days to play. So I thought to myself, why not? I was sure there were songs languishing in my older directories that I’d forgotten about and so I started playing my collection from the beginning in album order sorted alphabetically. The experiment has been going on for a couple of months now (because I don’t, like, listen to MP3s 24-7) and I’ve just arrived at Buddha Bar 2, so it’ll probably be some time next year by the time I finish. And of course the collection’s growing all the time too.
The iPod phenomomen was, of course, the product that changed the MP3 scene forever. That product wrestled the MP3 from the hands of geeks like myself and handed it over to the greater public. I missed the first few generations of iPod (I had an iRiver which pre-dated the first generation iPod by about six months) but eventually got a second generation Nano which is still on active service in the car. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again though, if you’re at all fussy about the quality of sound output from an MP3 Player then the iPods are not for you. Listen to a Walkman or an iRiver and you’ll be amazed at the difference. I have a Sony NW-HD5 with a 20Gb drive in it that is still my prefered mobile MP3 player despite the fact that the SonicStage software you have to transfer music with is diabolically awful.
Incidentally – if you *do* own an MP3 player other than an iPod or you listen to your music on your mobile phone, then check out DoubleTwist. This incredibly cool software was created by DVDJon – the guy that cracked the DVD encoding and made DVD rips possible. It enables you to use your iTunes library, complete with all its playlists, with pretty much any other device. This is possible because DVDJon has cracked the iTunes encoding that Apple used. I dare say Apple aren’t too happy – but fuck ‘em. DoubleTwist also does encoding on the fly, so if you’ve ever wanted to put a movie on your mobile phone but had no idea how to go about it – all you have to do now is drag and drop the movie into your phone/MP3 player’s entry in DoubleTwist and it takes care of the rest. Oh and it’ll download YouTube videos for you too so you can put ‘em on your phone or MP3 Player.
Cool for Cats…
So yes, the missus has a new kitten. His name is Simon. He’s a big hit with the cat lovers in the house. His principle abilities appear to be, climbing bare human flesh like a squirrel up a tree (I still bear the scars), farting (which he does constantly and which absolutely reek), annoying the living shit out of the other cat (he jumps on him, bites his tail, twats him in the face) and sleeping. I’m still waiting for someone to explain the purpose of cats to me. Think I’d rather have herpes.
Anyway – last night we’re all in the kitchen – evening meal about to be prepared. And I hear the small cat’s miaow. I look around but he’s nowhere in sight. It sounds like he’s in the cupboard, but an inspection doesn’t turn anything up. I listen again. He’s really close. I look at the fridge. Hmmm. I open the door and there he is, in the milk tray in the door at the bottom. He jumps out and sprints downstairs to his basket to warm up – perhaps by farting. He must have got in when the missus was perusing the contents of the fridge trying to decide what to have a few minutes earlier.
That’s not actually my only animal in a fridge story. When we lived in Nailsworth we had a second fridge in the laundry room which was also where the cat slept. One day I went out to the fridge, opened the door, and was greeted by a small mouse, sitting on his haunches, eating a piece of pasta. The mouse looked at me. I looked at the mouse. Then he dropped the pasta and jumped off the shelf and clean over my head. Cue a mad chase around the living room with frying pans. I think the dog actually caught the mouse on that occasion, having double-teamed with the cat. Liz said, “See I told you cats were useful,” neatly forgetting the small fact that the mouse wouldn’t have been in the house in the first fucking place if he hadn’t brought it in to ‘play’ with. And as to how the mouse got in the fridge – we still have no idea – we can only assume it was left ajar at some point and the mouse sought refuge in there.
What is your greatest weakness?
So I’m off to town first thing Monday morning for my big job interview. Everyone’s holding their breath. Haven’t even told the parents about it. No idea how many others they’re interviewing or how soon I’ll know. Fingers crossed please, people.
Some aussie adverts ..
Jul 16th
Most aussie adverts are mind-bogglingly shite, but here’s a couple of good ones that slipped through the net.
VB have made some superb adverts. This one’s a cracker. Blokes punching above their weight … too funny.
Gis a job …
Jul 15th
Wonders will never cease – I have a job interview. Don’t want to go into the details in case I jinx it, but please cross your fingers at about 11:00am Sydney time this Monday. Will let you all know how it goes on Monday evening.
The Lurgy …
Yep – definitely *that* time of year, but with the added spice of a global influenze pandemic causing much pause for thought with every winter sneeze and sniffle you get. The sprog is currently suffering a bit – needless to say we’re monitoring his condition. His mum treated him to fish and chips, a DVD and a bar of Dairy Milk tonight, which all went down well.
Bidding …
The missus has rediscovered eBay. We decided to sell the sprog’s cabin bed and she placed it on eBay. Then she started thinking about what else she could sell and she’s been going through all hers and my clothes, deciding what we’ll either never wear again because we live in Oz now or because we’ll just never fit into it again. The pile of never fit into it is depressingly larger than the wrong climate pile. Currently 17 people ‘watching’ the cabin bed and she’s already off-loaded the mobile phone she bought in error earlier in the year.
Changing rooms …
Liz’s attention has already turned to the visit by her parents this Xmas. To this end there’s been some big changes to the rooms in the house, which lead to the sale of the cabin bed I mentioned just now. The idea is that the outlaws sleep in Jack’s room because it has air-conditioning and if the bride-of-satan is well rested she’s marginally less likely to spend her time sucking all joy and happiness from those she comes into contact with, like the Dementor she is. So we decided to flog Jack’s bed (pretty much everyone hated it anyway, so it’s no biggie, was an absolute fucker to get the sheets on ) and move the double bed out of the spare bedroom into there. So he’s got a double bed, which he’ll have to give up for six weeks over Xmas. The spare room has now been turned into a kids playroom, complete with sofa-bed for any guests that stay with us. The sun room’s also had a makeover and now feels more like something that belongs in a family house and not in a mental hospital.
In a sudden surge of action I also decided to give the lawns their mid-winter haircuts. The back garden was looking pretty bloody depressing, various humongous fucking branches down from the palm tree, dog shit every 2feet (quite literally) and grass and weed knee height. Rather than spend an hour happily picking up Kali’s Microsoft Minesweeper of turds, I just put the mower on the second lowest slot and vacuumed them all up. Apart from the ocassional whiff of Parfum De Shite, it’s an effective way of clearing a lawn of shit-loads of shit. Indeed Kali was so impressed that just as I finished she wandered gaily into the middle of the lawn and crimped a fresh one off. Lovely.
Kali enjoys eating cat shit. Now that we’ve got two cats there’s plenty of poo for her to trough on too. As soon as one of Liz’s little bundles of delight does a bum waggle in their kittie litter, Kali saunters over and gets stuck in. If the cats would only return the favour and trough on the dog’s shit, we’d be laughing. Instead I’m either going to have to continue doing the petrol powered turd vacuuming or invest in several hundred dung beetles.
Three years …
Jul 12th
Well here we are. Three years down the line and, as is traditional on this anniversary I like to reflect on our lives here in Australia since we emigrated from England. The first thing to say is that this past year has been the most difficult – financially, emotionally and physically – but most of all, financially.
Paying the bills
Workwise, my little PC repair business has faltered – it had a promising start, but work has dried up lately thanks in part to this global recession thingy. I hope to pump some new life into the business, but it was never going to make me a millionaire. So I’m also looking at the alternatives and at the moment I’m applying for fulltime work. This falls into two camps – jobs from my old life in the media industry (which if it happened would mean a commute to Sydney everyday) or local jobs where I can retrain as something else (including, I shit you not, a prison guard).
Liz’s business continues to go well, although we’ve had to find money to pay for the failures of an inept accountant and a large surprise tax bill – along with the daily difficulties she faces running business in two hemispheres. We are, at least, making ends meet – though we often have to perform various monetary miracles each month to get the mortgage payment in the account.
We were thrilled to find out that Kevin Rudd was going to stimulate us, and the $2000 cash handout we got from that meant the mortgage was paid for one month without too many dramas. The plummeting interest rates also helped us a great deal, dropping our mortgage payments by about $700 a month – though of course we’ll start hurting again when those interest rates inevitably climb skywards again. Hopefully by then I’ll have got meself a job.
Like most people we save cash where and when we can. We got rid of things like Austar and have started shopping for groceries more sensibly. We now do a large shop every two weeks in Aldi, rather than lots of small shops in the more expensive IGA (think, co-op non-Australians) in Broughton. We have had to put our plans for trips to the UK and America on hold and I’ve told the boat designers to use cheaper marble in the en-suite on the 50 footer.
The Sprog
Jack’s had quite a year of it at school too – lots of growing up has been going on. He’s a real brainbox and his mental capacity certainly outstrips his social skills – but he’s getting there. He had an outstanding school report this year and a gold stamp from the principal, which was great. He’s discovered that he hates teams sports, loves running and writing and using computers. So, ermmm, nothing like his dad then. He’s in a pretty shite class this year (they lumped all the ‘problem’ kids together) but we’re hoping he gets a better deal next year.
The Missus
She’s been slogging her guts out keeping a roof over our heads, while dealing with difficult clients on both sides of the planet (no, not you Jerry!). Oh and she’s got a second cat – a kitten called Simon who arrived on her birthday. Won’t say much more than that, because she reads the blog and I’ll get a cuff round the ear.
Rest and Relaxation
We still love living in our house in our small town, but you have to work hard not to take somewhere for granted. You get into your daily routine and before you know it, it’s three weeks since you walked on the beach. Why move to a coastal location if you’re not going to make the most of the coast? Makes no sense. I remember before we emigrated, reading all these posts from disgruntled British expats saying that the beach was boring and that after you’d been there for a few months you never bothered going. I thought it then and I think it now – move, then! It’s like people have this bizarre fantasy of what life’s going to be like here and unless there’s a palm-tree fringed beach involved, it’s not a goer. This despite the fact that most people, when it comes down to it, find the beach a bit of a bore. Ho hum.
So we make an effort to get out of the house. We walk the dog down by the river, we drive to Black Head and look out for whales and dolphins, we go to the headland in Gerroa, we walk on our own beach. It’s good for the soul, but we’re basically your average humans, prone to sitting on the sofa watching CSI Mentally Lie To Me Miami House.
So yes, what else? I’m currently fat. I was making good headway with a fitness regime last year, but in a kind of inverse new years resolution it all petered out after the new year. However I need to be in fairly good shape to patrol the beach here as a surf lifesaver and so I know that I’m going to have to hit the gym again any day now. Before I know it the surf lifesaving season will begin and I’ll have to do my proficiency and I sure as shit ain’t doing that when I’m puffed running for the bus. So yes – spin classes and laps in the pool await.
This year I made more gains in the surf lifesaving club, picking up my patrol captain, spinal, defib and IRB drivers awards. The IRB drivers was a big deal for me and I feel I’ve achieved something in getting it. It basically took me three years to get that award.
Oz in general
It’s all part of the wallpaper now really. Three years in, we know how everything works, what brands to buy in the supermarket, how to buy houses, car and pies, what day bin-day is on, why they all go to bed at 9:00pm, who Bert Newton is, how Centrelink works, why they drive in the middle of the road and what Lammingtons is.
We’ve made some good friends since we arrived here.You can’t expect these sorts of things to happen overnight and in our case they haven’t. We’ve made a few mistakes along the way, but that’s been half the fun to be honest.
The final thought
And that’s it really. Are our lives better here than they were in the UK? In some ways yes, in others no – where our lives are better, the reason isn’t due to any deficiency in the fabric of society in the UK, but in us. When you emigrate you have a chance to reinvent yourself. Nobody knows who you are and on the whole they couldn’t give two shits where you came from. So you have this chance to shed the baggage you build up living in one place, in one society at one time. Whether you do that is up to you – seems to me that many people just recreate their old lives here and then complain that nothing’s changed.