An 'A' for originality. Or maybe a 'B' as in 'Blaine'.

We're definitely not in Singapore anymore. In Federation Square, the busiest square in the heart of town, a band (the Regurgitators) have set up a bubble where they will live for three weeks, writing and recording an album.

On September 21, they will emerge and immediately play a concert of their new album, start to finish.

I don't know if they're any good or not. I haven't been by yet either, but I probably will go check it out this weekend.

An Australia moment. I'm helping to build a website at work. The computer keeps telling me it can't find one of the pages down a certain directly. I look, and the page is there. I stare at it in frustration for at least ten minutes before realizing -- nay, realising -- that the file is in a directory called "notrecognised", while in the configuration file I typed "notrecognized".

Language issues aside, work is going quite well. I start my new project next week.

WOO HOO! So I'm browsing Slashdot, and I notice that the new IOCCC winners have been announced. "Bummer," I think, because they always email the winners before announcing, and I hadn't heard anything. Then, I read the winners list, and lo and behold, there's my name. GEEK BLISS!

They make up the categories every year, but they often get re-used. My category, "Best Non-Use of Curses", is a new one -- in explanation, "curses" is a C package that lets you do animation. My program simulates character animation without it -- by generating a string which you then paste into the "vi" editor. The act of pasting is what actually starts the animation.

The source code won't be posted there until mid-October.

That Best of Show winner sounds pretty sick -- someone implemented a whole operating system (such as Windows) in 4096 bytes (about a page of code). Now that's some serious geeking.

Day four of my self-imposed five straight day stint of activity for Democrats Abroad. Today we went to the internet cafe where Ambassador Peterson is giving an on-line talk tomorrow and did a dry run.

Last night we had a meet-and-greet social at the Navy and Military Club downtown. I met a bunch of nice folks. At the end I was interviewed by a freelance journalist, which was interesting. I'm usually pretty tongue-tied when it comes to public speaking, but I think I did pretty good.

R-U-N-N-O-F-T. She's gone not even two days, and I miss her. How will I last 23? I'm so married.

Today was a day that was not beautiful, it was be-YOO-ti-ful. Sidewalk cafes were packed with folk enjoying the warmest day of spring thus far. I myself spent the day out-of-doors, working at a booth in the central business district doling out absentee ballot request forms to American citizens. (You can get yours on-line if you haven't already done so.) It was an interesting experience. I was even spat upon, but it was by a shabby British nutter with brown teeth who occasionally spat as he rambled on to me about the monarchy. Either in favor of it or against it, I'm not sure. But we got a good small handful of people signed up.

In the late afternoon I got a couple of new library books and had a pizza around the corner from the house we're about to move into. Quite good. Then I walked down to the beach and sat on a bench to read while the sun set over the bay. There were about a hundred seagulls in attendance, and two penguins.

Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.

The ocean here is so amazingly clear and clean. I went for a walk on the beach this afternoon and saw some new creatures. These guys were beached all over the sand at low tide. I didn't touch them even though they looked innocuous enough to me as this is Australia and you never know what might kill you. Turns out they may be bluebottles or Portuguese Man-of-wars if this image is an accurate depiction (other pictures of Man-of-wars I saw described them as looking rather different with much longer tentacles). In spite of the jellies, the beach is lovely. I also saw a small starfish.
I'm off to the States tomorrow to manage to shipment of our things in Atlanta to Melbourne. Have I mentioned how much I hate flying?It will be very nice to see my parents, the puppies, and friends though. Hopefully Mark won't be too lonely here.

I think I've given myself an ulcer from worrying about our move. There is so much to be done, and so many things are beyond my control. Today's freak out is over the things we mailed from Singapore seven weeks ago, which are still not here today. In that shipment are all my warm weather clothes that I need for my trip home on Friday. If they don't arrive tomorrow (and I'm beginning to wonder if they'll show up at all), I'll be wearing the same three outfits for three weeks. I could almost put up with that if I hadn't been wearing the same three winter outfits for the last month here. I'm really ready to have my stuff all in one place.
On the plus side, the house we found is lovely, and (fingers crossed) this will all be over and done with soon. By the end of November we should actually have something resembling a normal life. And when I get back from the States I've got a dog adoption to look forward to. Can't wait to bring "the dingo" home.

You betcha. Interesting concert experience tonight -- strangely, our first real concert since coming here. We went and saw Betchadupa at The Tote. This is the band fronted by Liam Finn, son of musical legend Niel Finn. We saw him playing backup guitar for his father about six years ago, when he was maybe 13. Now he's trying to make it on his own. From the sounds of things, he's inherited a lot of talent. Just about the tightest band I'd ever seen, and they use lots of interesting time signatures and such. Not as hook-laden as I had hoped though. I felt old, though; there were maybe two or three guys there that were older than me. Sigh.

Apropos of nothing. Back in 1982 I attend the Governor's School for Excellence, "a one-week summer program bringing together academically and artistically talented sophomores from Delaware high schools." I remember lots of things about that week, but one really odd memory came back to me the other day.

We did a "meet and greet" sort of exercise, where you had to write down something about yourself that you hadn't told anyone about yet. The list was compiled, and you had go around and figure out who everybody was, based on their personal factoid.

One guy wrote, I throw rocks at my cat while it's going to the bathroom.

You read that right. I don't find it memorable so much in the fact that somebody would do that (bad enough as it is), but that he would choose that tidbit about himself as the one he wanted to first reveal. I throw rocks at my cat while it's going to the bathroom.

When I found the guy who wrote it, he explained, "It's funny. The cat won't move, because he's going to the bathroom, and you can just sit there and throw rocks at it."

I wonder what happened to that guy.

He's probably a senator or something.

The house is a great find. I'm very relieved that Mark is as enthusiastic about it as I am, as I found it and pretty much committed us to it without his ever seeing it. It's a sweet little place in spite of the peach cabinets in the kitchen, and there are lots of really nice Victorian details throughout. Plus the real estate agent seems to think that a dog will be no problem.
I'm off to the States in a week to check the next tick off our to-do list.

Another check for the checklist over on the right. We've put down the deposit on a house we'll be renting in Albert Park. Nice little two bedroom place, hardwood floors, big kitchen. Location, location, location -- we have a nice little cafe that's spitting distance away, plus a pizzeria, video store, convenience store, etc. etc. About three blocks up the road is another nice row of stores and restaurants, and a library. Eight blocks from the beach too, and a half a block from the tram. Sweet!

So last night we attended a meeting of the Melbourne Chapter of Democrats Abroad. There was a banner turnout; where they would typically have five or so, about thirty showed up. Interestingly enough, I ended up sitting next to this guy. I didn't even know he was an ambassador until he got up to speak. I'll bet he's got some amazing stories (judging from some of the details in that article); I wish I had more time to speak with him.

Anyway, so we volunteered for some things. We also met a lot of great people, and had some great conversations; at our table, in addition to the ambassador and his wife, were an ornithologist, a student working on the neuropsysiology of cochlear implants, and the regional manager of a local conservation volunteer group.

While Mark is busy getting paid to program, I've been keeping myself busy trying to find us somewhere to live. This would be a much easier task with a car, but I'm doing okay on the trams. We've found a few places that are rather nice, including one in Albert Park that I would especially love to call home. Now we just need to convince the landlords of Melbourne that we're desirable, and that the dog we don't yet own is a good idea too.
One more check in Melbourne's favour: We found a good Mexican restaurant that understands that margaritas should be lime, not lemon, and also serves several varieties of good Mexican beers. It's called Bluecorn and it's in St. Kilda. The food is a very yummy Cal-Mex fushion, and, like apparently all restaurants here in Melbourne, they too are fond of the pumpkin.

First day. At some point today at my new job I looked around and thought, wow, I work with a bunch of Australians.

Actually, there's two irish women (both named Joan), a Sri Lankan, and a Chinese guy, who I'll be working closely with for three weeks. And he lived in Singapore for five years. The more things change, ...

It seems like it'll be a fun place to work. Everyone seems cool. I'm right in the middle of the CBD (Central Business District), twenty-two floors up, with views out in every direction, if I get up from my desk and walk a bit. I'm in a room with four other developers and testers. For three weeks I'll be helping develop a website, then moving onto another project that sounds really cool, involving Bluetooth and tablet computers.

The price of living abroad is to do without. Nowhere has everything.

Melbourne lacks orange juice. Sure, they sell an orange liquid in the supermarkets and convenience stores. It's even labelled "Orange Juice". But don't let that fool you.

I miss you, Harvey's Groves.

I leave it to Marjorie to tell you about the tomato soup.

(If we end up back in the US a few years down the line, watch for a similar post about vegemite or something.)

The weather with you. We rented a car again today to drive around and look at apartments. They do things kind of weird here -- there's a window, sometimes as small as twenty minutes, where you (and about a dozen other people, typically) can go view the apartment. We saw a few near misses, and one that we liked a lot. But our suspicion is that we will have trouble competing for a place against native Australians with lots of local landlord references.

Complicating our search was the worst weather that Melbourne has seen, apparently, in six years. Rainy, cold, and windy all day. This is not my beautiful August. Still, it's better than dodging hurricanes like my relatives just had to do in Florida. Luckily, everyone's safe.

Oh the joys of the international move! After the relief of Mark's employment, we realized we may soon be able to vacate the tiny studio apartment we live in, and may even manage to get out before one of us kills the other. But, our joy was short lived when we realized that, like everywhere, they want our references from past landlords. After what seemed like several hours of panicking and running around trying to remember if we have our last landlady's address and phone number we found them. But what will happen if they call? She's a really nice lady, and she liked us, but her English is not so good and chances are they don't speak Mandarin. Deep breath.
In other news, we now have our Victoria driver's licenses. And last time we drove from the right side it didn't feel quite as wrong.

Woop. Notice a new check mark on the To Do list over to the right?

Company 2 came through. The contract will be for a little over three months. Even better, they want me to start this coming Monday.

We celebrated for about a minute before thoughts of the remaining To Do list items started raining on our parade.

Still, good news!

Quite a weekend. As I said, we rented a car on Friday. On Saturday we got up (relatively) early and headed down to the Great Ocean Road. An amazing drive. Here are some pictures: Marjorie / me / Bells Beach (world famous surfing destination). The only real wildlife we saw was on these signs.

Today we drove up to Warrandyte State Park (more specifically, the Pound Bend Reserve) hoping to find some wildlife. This time we had better luck, as Marjorie spotted a koala before we had even parked the car. We ended up seeing six total -- all just lumps of fur up high up in the trees. Still, very neat. (The latest in a growing list of animals that we can snobbishly bypass the next time we're at the zoo: "Pish, seen it.") There were supposedly wombats and platypuses (platypi?) there as well, but none spotted.

On the way back we stopped by Yarra Bend Park for another gander at the flying foxes.

So now, to our future visitors, we can pretty much guarantee you sightings of 1) koalas, 2) flying foxes, 3) kookaburras, 4) brush-tail possums, and 5) penguins.

Well! First interview, with Company 2, seemed to go okay. There was a stretch in the middle where the tech guy hammered me a little on proper design methodologies, of which my experience has been a little skimpy in regards to. But overall it seemed to be nice and friendly and I hope it works out. I'll know more on Monday.

The second interview, though, with Company 1 was a little more... interesting... The company, he said, didn't have a contract right now for me to work on, but if I would be willing to work on some in-house stuff for a few months, without pay, then they could start me working right now. To my credit, I didn't go "Ha!". I just explained that I couldn't. They promised to contact me if they get the contract that I can work on. But obviously, I have to wonder about a place like that.

In other news -- our mailed stuff from Singapore started arriving. Seven boxes today. So, we decided to rent a car for a few days, just to save the pain of lugging stuff. Honest, there were no ulterior motives.