Trivia

Marjorie came along to trivia last night, and despite our inability to name supermodels, we took first place!

Fundraiser

Me today at Another Bloody Fundraiser at The Fox, down the road:

Station

Southern Cross Station:


It went millions over budget and years behind schedule. And I think it's ugly. Actually I think that about most of the modern buildings in Melbourne, though I like a lot of the older architecture...

Contests

Some newspaper clippings from my programming contest days:











Good times.

Lavalamps

These are the lights we use at work that come on automatically to tell us that someone has "broken the build" (i.e. added defective software to the group repository):


All three on is not good, but it is the last day of a sprint when everyone's trying to get their changes added.

I used to think of lava lamps as relaxing, before I started here...

Brekkie

Breakfast of champions:


This is my breakfast, more days than not: grilled salami and cheese sandwich with two or three glasses of OJ. I suppose there are healthier ways to go, but at least I have the four food groups covered!

Cockatoo

A great sighting while out on walkies today:


It's a yellow-tailed black-cockatoo, a species we had only previously seen from a distance. There were five of them. Once again, the iPhone camera fails to capture the majesty of Australia's largest cockatoo/parrot.

Cicada

Spotted this discarded cicada husk on a broomstick in our backyard:


Just above was its gorgeous former occupant:


They call them "green grocers" here. His software never booted up, though, apparently: he was dead.

Survey

Today I joined the Friends of Merri Creek for a survey of birds along a short stretch of the creek near our house:


Here's what we saw:

Grocery

This is our little local grocery:


You can see two of the three aisles. Despite the small size they have a lot of interesting gourmet choices. I love having them just around the corner!

Notice the eggs there, unrefrigerated. That's standard practice in Australia. It took a while before we got comfortable with that.

Trivia

Trivia night at the Cornish Arms:


The host there is a former star on Australia's biggest ever soap, Neighbors.

Paddington

Strange sighting out the window while waiting to take off from Adelaide:


Yes, my phone should've been put away at that point...

Moonrise

Moonrise over the boats off Kingscote:

Beach

A secret beach on the north coast of KI, accessible only through a rock cave tunnel:


Though someone had clearly been here before:

Sea lion

This little guy wanted to join our tour group:


Marjorie got some great shots of him too.

Echidna!

That thar's an echidna!


He was being shy but poked his head out after we backed off. Cuteness overload!

Adelaide

Flight to Adelaide:


Adelaide airport:

Flagstaff

Waiting for the train to take me home...

Code

This is the sort of thing I look at on the screen all day:


And yes, it all makes sense to me :-)

Desk

My desk at work:


I've never been a clean-desk kind of guy, but I don't let it get too out of hand.

Pub

The truly local pub (The Royal Rose) that's just around the corner:


We don't go much, as the food isn't all that. They do have a microscopic bottle shop attached with a good selection though. They have trivia once a month that we've been trying to attend as well.

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:

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:

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.

Thai

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!

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.

Games at 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!

Walkies 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.

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.

River

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).

Window

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 heck 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.

When we became citizens here the very first form they made us fill out was a jury duty signup form. So, this week I got called. It was right up the street from my work, and I had often seen barristers in white wigs walking about, so I was pretty much just excited to get to go and see how things worked under the Australian system.

I was told that it involved a lot of waiting around, but it didn't for me. After an orientation talk and video for the 250 or so of us who were asked to come, they had a ballot for the first case, which I wasn't selected for, and then a second case that I was. They took about thirty of us into the courtroom, in order to choose twelve. Before we went in the tipstaff told us that the charges were "sexual in nature", and there was a chance to make a plea to be excluded if we didn't think we could handle it (several people went this route). In the courtroom they had another ballot to select the twelve, and so if we got picked we had to stand up and walk by the plaintiff (he was there the whole time) on the way to the jury box. He was allowed to exclude up to six people as they walked by, just based on their name, profession, or looks. Anyway, I got selected, and walked by him - kind of nerve wracking - and he didn't say anything.

So the twelve of us were sworn in, had some more orientation, and broke for lunch. After lunch we watched a videotaped deposition from the alleged victim, that took up the remainder of the afternoon. It was during this that I realized that all the shine had come off the experience, and I really didn't want to decided this man's fate. We only saw a tiny part of the evidence, but it seemed like there was a good chance that it would boil down to a he-said, she-said sort of situation.

This morning we all met again and were escorted to a different courtroom. While we congregated in the jury chambers, one of the jurors was called into the courtroom. The appointed start time came and went while we all wondered what was going on. When the juror returned we were told to leave all our materials there and come into the courtroom.

It turned out that our mysterious juror remembered a former coworker talking about the arrest of the plaintiff (or a case very similar), and that the coworker had called the guy a scumbag or something. He was duty-bound to report this, and though the prosecution wanted to proceed anyway, the defense felt this was sufficient grounds to ask for a new jury. And so we were all dismissed. The relief for everyone was palpable. I commented another juror that it felt like we got a pardon from the governor. I feel bad that another jury will still have to decide the case, but I'm mostly just glad to have escaped.

In the end I was glad to have the experience, and now I have a three-year exemption from having to serve again. And a check for $78 for my trouble.

We're back from our trip to South Africa. The term "best trip ever" has come up a few times - see our pictures. The trip I took there alone ten years ago was what I used to call my best trip ever, so clearly I think it's a pretty amazing place. This was Marjorie's first trip to the continent.

Cape Town: I'd been here before, so I got to show Marjorie around, at least to the extent I could remember. Still one of the most beautiful cities in the world. See the photos. Highlights were Table Mountain (though Marjorie was bummed that there weren't any hyraxes this time!), climbing Lion's Head, Camps Bay, Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, Cape of Good Hope, Boulders Beach, Rondevlei nature preserve...

Stellenbosch: We stayed in this wine region town for a few nights, which was nice. Highlight was petting the cheetah at Spier winery. I tried to recreate a great experience I had there at the De Akker pub ten years ago but of course you can never go back.

Kruger National Park: What an amazing place. We stayed two nights at the Pretoriuskop camp and two nights at Lower Sabi. In both camps we were in little huts without heat or toilets but we were fine. We did a lot of driving around on our own, but also did a morning safari, a night safari, and a walking(!) tour. We wrote down our sightings, and came up with 32 different mammal species (including most of the big ones), plus scores of birds and a few reptiles. I'll post our list in a separate blog.

The walking tour started a short ways from camp, so they drove us there, starting at 5:30 am, before the sunrise. They told us that this trip was about walking, so we wouldn't stop on the drive unless there was something really extraordinary. Almost immediately after we left camp we heard a big angry lion roar, just up the road! So we tore off, and came across some hyenas patrolling around. Apparently the kill was just behind the trees - we never saw it, despite the best efforts of our guide shining his "sport light" out into the darkness. It was really, really exciting - we hung out for ten or fifteen minutes to watch the action. Apparently hyenas can eventually outnumber lions and chase them off the kill, but our guide told us that if there's a big male lion there, the hyenas will hold back, which is what they did. Eventually a female lion also came out and chased them off. Our guide radioed to another tour group, who eventually showed as we were leaving.

As we drove on, the sun came up, and as we rounded a turn, there ahead of us were another three lions. We watched them for a bit, then rode off to get ahead of them in the direction they were traveling, down a different road, so we got to watch them pass again. Turns out these wasn't terribly far at all from where our walking safari was to start! So we were definitely looking over our shoulders much of the time. Our guides, Irving and Marrrrta, not surprisingly, toted guns, and we weren't allowed to talk while we walked. It was fascinating to watch how they tracked, using wind direction and bird calls. Our only encounter with a big animal was with a buffalo, which was still pretty intense - he spotted us and snorted, and we weren't sure if he was going to charge or not. Eventually he moved along.

Driving: I'm a lot more used to driving on the left side of the road than on my last visit, so driving was a breeze. In fact, we both think the driving is better there than here in Australia.

Safety: From past experience I knew not to stay in the city centers; beyond that, everything was fine and lovely, and we had no problems whatsoever.

Cost: It may cost a bit to get there, but you make up that cost a bit just because things are relatively cheap, thanks to the exchange rate. On our last night in Kruger, we had fancy drinks at the bar in our camp - you'd think with them having you as a captive, and being on safari, that they'd jack up the prices, but they were only around US$3/AU$4.

Wild animals: I had heard people say that it's different seeing these animals in the wild than in the zoo, but I was skeptical. But it really is, and I've come up with a list of reasons why:

Unpredictability - you never know what sort of animal is going to pop out of the trees or cross the road in front of you.

Danger - no moats or electric fences here. We followed the advice about keeping our windows closed.

Animal behavior - you see all sorts of different behaviors that don't happen in zoos, especially concerning the four F's (feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating :-).

Animal interactions - again, without fences separating them, you get all sorts of interactions you would otherwise never see.

Smell - nothing is sanitized, so there's a lot more poo. But it's an earthy smell. Also, the smell at the kill we came across was unforgettable, once the animals intestines are opened up. Marjorie described it as a mixture of "[poop] and fear" :-)

Soccer: South Africa is gearing up for the World Cup, of course, and had the Confederations Cup going on as a warm up while we were there. Lots of t-shirts and memorabilia on sale. I only watched the USA play Brazil on TV. But there's such a great spirit there that I think the World Cup will be fantastic.

Last night I dragged Marjorie out on a chilly June night (a work night, no less) to watch Australia play Japan in a World Cup (soccer) qualifying match. Both teams have already qualified, but I of course didn't know that's what the situation would be when I bought the tickets back in February or something.

The game was at the MCG, which is Australia's biggest stadium, and actually can hold more than 100,000 people(!). There were just under 70,000 there last night, which is just about the biggest event I've ever been to. After Japan scored in the first half, we were treated to a great comeback win as our superstar Tim Cahill scored two in the second half. Here's a video of the second goal from a fan's cell phone - we were in the level just above this.

My final exam in Graph Theory was this morning, in Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building. I showed up to find an absolute throng of people waiting to get in. It turns out that they do group exams here - there must've been a thousand students, each of us assigned a desk among the rows and rows spread across the gigantic floor. The ceiling, too, is pretty pretty impressive.

So how would you heat such a large space? The answer is, you can't. Is was cold enough to see your breath. I took the exam wearing a thermal shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, and a leather jacket. And leather gloves, that I put on occasionally to warm up. I had to get up to pee three times in three hours.

I may have aced the exam - eight questions, and I only had to tapdance around half of one of them. We'll see.

Tonight my work had a social function where we hired the special viewing room at a local theater and watched "Terminator Salvation". Marjorie came along. We came up with the proper summation of it on the way home: the main point of the movie was how it is our humanity that sets us apart from the machine - so why was it so lacking in humanity? This one could've been filmed by Skynet.

We went to a cool new pub on Friday called the Lambsgo Bar with our friends Viv and Maurice. When I first saw the name I didn't realize it was a play on words - but only if you have an Australian accent. "Lambs Go Baa", you see?

Reminds me of an incident at Marjorie's workplace that she told me about. The name "Nora Bone" came up in some context, and one of her coworkers started laughing. Marjorie asked, "What's so funny?" "Oh, Nora Bone. Like a dog." Marjorie: "Huh?" "You know, like a dog nors on a bone." Marjorie: "Oooh, you mean gnaws."