Five minutes away by bike is the Fairfield boathouse. So today I rode up and rented a kayak. Though the Yarra River there is wide and calm and unchallenging, the experience was really quite excellent, and much different than walking or riding alongside the river. Serene, scenic, and lots of wildlife. Towards the end I rounded a bend and came across the flying fox bat colony, which I didn't realize was so close. As I watched I noticed that many of the bats were carrying their babies on their chest - must be breeding season! Here's a bad shot of me in action by the bats. (Hey, cell phone photos are grainy enough even when you're not worried about dropping the phone in the water.) I'll definitely be going back.

This time of year I miss eggnog lattes from Stateside Starbucks (I know sounds gross, but try one, they're yummy!). We have Starbucks here, but they don't have eggnog lattes (I never generally go to Starbucks here because coffee in Melbourne is the bomb, and Starbucks is blah). Australia doesn't mass produce eggnog (and really, do you want to drink eggnog when it's hot?). I also miss the holiday lights extravaganza that occurs in every neighbourhood in the States. People don't generally decorate the outside of their homes for the holidays here. It's summer, so lights wouldn't show up as much anyway, but I miss them nonetheless.
Australia's great, don't get me wrong. But between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I always get a little homesick for the the States.

Our cable TV has been shut off due to a comedy of errors, so we're without it for the weekend. We've become a two-laptop family anyway, so that's how we're spending our Friday night -- next to each other on the couch, with our faces lit by an eery glow. Sad, I know. We just finished some pretty awesome take away Indian food from a new restaurant in our neighborhood, which is more than a welcome addition.

Today was kind of stressful at work -- I've been working on a major code revision for a few weeks and I finally sprung it on everyone late yesterday. It basically breaks everything for everyone and makes them have to rewrite large chunks of their code. It's for the best in the end and actually seems to be really well received, so far. The drama will continue next week.

Before then, on Sunday, is our office Christmas party. Luckily it's about a ten minute bike ride away, at the Studley Park Boathouse. Nice place.

We miss Thanksgiving back in States; it's always been my favorite holiday. Even at this distance it's a good occasion to sit back and take stock of your life. And by any standard, things are pretty great right now.

Two new Aussie-isms:

Good value - the literal meaning is accurate, but it's used frequently here to apply to people, not sarcastically, but kind of ironically; e.g. "He's good value."

Sook - a person who becomes overly sensitive or whiney when ill.

Deliberately, I've tried to keep politics off this blog. Can I let out a small woohoo though?

From the perspective of an expat and a traveler, too often I am asked, how did the US ever elect this Bush character? And I never know what to tell them, because I never got it either. The difference I've felt already since Obama surged ahead is palpable. There is a new respectability for the US in Australia and, from everything I can discern, the world. It's not an illusion, because I've surrounded myself with like-thinking people or anything; look at any opinion poll from outside the US.

I can only hope this is the end of Atwatery politics. It was a joy to see it fail, this time. Was it because of the internet? I think so, maybe. It was a joy to see it fail, and a shame to see McCain to give into those influences. In the end, if his concession speech was any indicator, he was a better man than many of his supporters.

It's not hard to predict what happens next. Obama will glide into office with a huge wave of optimism. After a few months it will be tempered by reality as he begins to take on the difficult problems he's up against. He will make some mistakes, and galvanize the right, who will find plenty of reasons to villify him. And then, the character issue comes in. We'll see what happens then, but I'm hopeful.

If you're worried, he's not going to steal your money and give it to the poor -- that was a lie told and repeated in an effort to win an election. The truth is, though, that the US has joined the rest of the Western world, by electing a man who is, by all accounts, a reasonable, intelligent consensus builder. And for tonight, it feels mighty good.

We did indeed go check out guerrilla gardening today. Here's some pics:

Guerilla gardening

And an article.

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of gardening!

I've recently become a fan of guerrilla gardening, after discovering its existence by stumbling across some broad beans planted on a tiny spot of green in the midst of an otherwise totally paved area. There are apparently several more examples in the local area and we are going to scout them out tonight. There just seems to be everything good about this, and nothing bad. And it's so lovely to come across it in the middle of the city.

I've noticed recently that my happiness seems to be mainly tied to my circumstances improving, as opposed to a comfortable steadiness. I know that's not really sustainable in the long run, and will probably have to figure out how to just be happy being at some point.

But it does explain my recent happiness. And my lifestyle improvements are mostly due to technology:

I've been bringing home my wireless laptop from work, and it's letting us surf the net from anywhere in the house. Marjorie's getting one of her own for her birthday, too.

We bought some speakers for the laptop, and are streaming internet radio through it, mainly from last.fm and Yahoo Launchcast. This is great for Champagne Sunday.

I finally got BitTorrents going, which means I've been able to download and burn tons of old music and TV shows. Everyone at work downloads and trades TV shows, but I don't know how much my taste overlaps -- my first grab was all all four seasons of Home Movies.

Facebook is putting me in touch with more and more old friends.

Skype is old news, but it's still great to be able to talk to people overseas.

There's rumors at work that we'll all be getting iPhones for Christmas!

We finally found some decent (albeit expensive) Thai food in town, a really nice place in a dire neighborhood a few train stops up from us. We had dinner there last night with our friends Viv and Maurice. Interestingly, we found out that he was bit by a snake two weeks back, while weed-whacking his lawn. It seems that his thick socks prevented a deep penetration, and so he was not given antivenin (which often causes more problems than the original snakebite), although he had to tolerate several days worth of intense pain. He never saw the snake, but figures it was probably a tiger snake like we saw the other weekend. Laika will not be getting a lot of off-leash time this summer!

While the occasionally error creeps in here, I think my brain came out wired in such a way that spelling, grammar, and punctuation come pretty naturally to me. Don't know if it's genetic or learned, but I don't consider this as having anything in particular to do with intelligence. Still, I have my peeves, because often it's just that people were never taught the rules.

Commas -- there are lots of situations where they're used, but my peeve is when people to use commas to separate two clauses (consisting of a subject and a verb). For example, "Don't separate clauses with a comma, it's not good practice." If you were to replace the comma with a period, you'd have two perfectly good sentences; therefore, the comma is the wrong choice. Use a semicolon or a dash instead. I fixed about a dozen of these in a document today.

It's versus its. I'll give you a rule, so that you'll never get it wrong again. I've used this since childhood. Picture the apostrophe in "it's" as the dot on a letter "i". This makes "it's" into "itis", or "it is". Now ask, does the sentence still make sense? If it does, leave the apostrophe. If it doesn't, get rid of it. Now, don't let me catch you doing it again.

Atlanta and Singapore, as airline hubs, were among the two greatest places to live in the world if you're into travel. I don't think we appreciated them while we were living there - because Melbourne, for all its charms, is not. Trips back to the United States, Europe, or South America, will cost you over $2000 at a minimum, and probably more like $2500. The only real options for under $1000 are within Australia or New Zealand, or maybe some of the Pacific islands. Which are nice enough, but we've been craving some strange.

Qantas has had a monopoly down here, which means they've had no real incentive to lower their fares. That has been changing of late though. Now we have JetStar, Virgin Blue, and Tiger as cut-rate carriers, who are starting to make things more interesting. Still, good deals to cool international destinations just are not found that often.

So when Marjorie found a deal for return trip tickets for $750 (Australian), well, we just had to jump on them. And so we say, hello Tokyo! In February.

We've been there before, but love it, and have really only scratched the surface. We're determined to get out of the city, too, to either Kyoto (cultural center of Japan) or to Nagano (skiing and snow monkeys).

In our recent trip up to northern Queensland, we liked having a specific quest that, by design I guess, was relatively trivial (to see the riflebird dance). This time, I think the quest will be to try "real" wasabi. Supposedly, the wasabi you get in Japanese restaurants is horshradish, mustard, and food coloring; the "real" wasabi does not ship well, and is only served locally.

Picnicked yesterday down where the Yarra River and Merri Creek meet. Here's some pictures:

2008-10-11 Picnic

It was fine and lovely until a woman nearby started freaking out -- I looked over and her two little bite-sized pomeranians were chasing a large black snake off of a rock (probably a tiger snake). There are a number of signs up warning about the snakes; now we know to take them seriously!

Some pictures and video of our wildlife safari can be found here.

The two videos of the Victoria's Riflebird were shot by holding our digital camera up to a pair of binoculars and the guide's tripoded telephoto lens, respectively. I thought I invented that trick but our guide told me that other people did it too. Though, another woman on the tour with us was left wondering why she spent so much on a telephoto lens for her camera!

Home safe now...

Score! Last night we stayed in a cabin near Lake Eacham. The man there gave us a tip on where to spot platypuses (platypi?) in nearby Yungaburra. So we hopped in the car and hightailed it down there, as light was running out. Sure enough, right where he directed us -- well, I don't know who was more startled, the platypus or us. Marjorie even got pictures and a video, which I will post soon.

Our quest on this trip was to spot a Victoria's Riflebird, doing its mating dance. (What can I say, we like the birds.) We did spot one on our birdwatching tour, but no dance. We tried again this morning, and managed to spot another in the carpark of Lake Barrine, but again no dance. This was a better viewing, though, and we got some more footage of him as well.

We're at an internet cafe in Cairns now, killing time until our flight home...

Two amazing days so far up here in northern Queensland.

Sunday we took a birdwatching tour and ended up seeing 76 different species of birds! Probably more, actually, but we didn't count the common ones that we have down in Melbourne. We also spent a fair bit of time trying to track down a Victoria'a Riflebird, which, if you're ever seen David Attenborough's "Life of Birds" "Trials of Life", you know has the craziest dance in the animal kingdom. We did manage to spot one, but didn't catch the dance.

Today we took a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef. A beautiful day, weather-wise, and more than a few interesting sightings. I remain kind of bummed, though, because by now I've had to have been snorkeling at least 100 times, and still have yet to see a shark. I think I exude some sort of natural repellent.

Tomorrow: well, life is pretty good if all you have planned for the day is "massage". They'll have to be careful, though, since we both got a fair sunburn...

Yesterday was Marjorie's birthday, which we spent pretty much in transit up here to Port Douglas on the northeast coast of Australia. Portents were bad when:

We found out the day before that our dog sitter we had arranged months in advance through Top Dog had no idea we were coming, and we had to find someone else

We received an email from Virgin Blue the day before asking us to confirm our flight to a different city, at a different time

Mark went to get money from the ATM, and ended up leaving the money in the machine and just taking his card. D'oh! Still trying to work out whether the money got sucked back in or I made someone's night.
But we're here now, and it's lovely. We were awoken this morning by huge flocks of (some sort of) parrots flying over our bungalow. We ended up taking a stroll down the street at 6 am a scoring about five new species, including a satin bowerbird (we think (update: this one was actually a black butcherbird)). Tomorrow we're doing a major bird tour, then snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef later in the week.

My job continues to rock. The word now is that we'll all be getting iPhones come December, thanks to a pot of unspent "morale money". (Though iPhones, an Apple product, are a curious choice considering we're working for Microsoft now.)

I've told you all what the job is about -- our product basically lets companies put search engines their own site and control all the associated advertising, instead of giving a major cut to big third-party sites (read: Google).

But here's an analogy that might give you a picture of what my job is like, day-to-day. Imagine a bunch of engineers designing a new engine. In their office they have a working copy of last year's engine. Various groups are responsible for redesigning various parts of the new and improved engine -- some guys work on the fuel line, some on the electrical system, and one guy is fixing the carburetor that never worked right in the previous model. The groups toil away at their desks, and when one team has an improvement they want to try out, they snap the old part off the working copy and replace it with the new one. Every time this is done, the engine is started automatically. If it fails to start, or runs poorly, everyone knows, because they're all working off the same engine (well, their own copy of it). Sometimes, more than one team will make a change to the same part of the engine, and you have to work out whose change will go in the final product.

That's pretty much how modern software development goes. Instead of the engine, it's just a huge piece of software, and the snapping on of new changes and retrieval of changes from other people all happens at the click of a few buttons on our desk computers. The process has been refined over the years, and there's a whole lot more to it, but that's the gist of how it goes at nearly every company these days. The days of a single hacker working away in his garage are all but gone.

It's a stimulating environment, especially working with people smarter than you. (That was a hard admission to make for me, that some people at this job are smarter than me. It's certainly not the first time I've worked with people smarter than me, but I was always able to come up with some rationalization that I kept to myself as to how I was really the smartest, even when deep down I probably knew it wasn't so. The ego is a funny thing.)

Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day in the CBD trying to round up Americans to register to vote. Mostly slow going, as there weren't any major festivals or anything in town, but it was still fun, and I had a lot of interesting conversations with people. While chatting with one guy, I was thinking, man you look familiar. Then I placed him -- it was Chas Licciardello from The Chaser's War On Everything, which is an Australian show, but clips of it are often spread around the internet. (This was their most famous stunt. Chas was actually the one who played Osama.)

The day ended on a sour note, however, as someone swiped my hoodie off of the steps at Flinder's Street Station.

Speedy internet at last!

Unbelievably, the saga of getting internet installed goes on still. Last Tuesday I went home to meet the technician that was to install it. At some point in the afternoon, he called me to say he was waiting outside, and that he had knocked but no one answered. So I went out front to look, but there was no one there. Turns out he had been sent to our street address, but in a different suburb.

Several angry emails and phone calls were made, and now I have a customer service manager and a technician whose job it is to get me sorted. That was a week ago. Now I’m rescheduled for next Monday, but there’s other problems; our phone lines aren’t getting the dial tone they should, so they’re going to have to come out and fix that too. We are going nuts. It’s surprising how dependent we are on the internet these days, not just for necessities like paying bills but even just for peace of mind. The source of the problems, seemingly, is Australia’s telecom monopoly, Telstra. See, this is why I’m a fervent free market capitalist but an equally fervent anti-monopolist. If they had any competition, they would be ridden out of the country on a rail by this point. And I would be leading the charge.

Speaking of monopolies, last Friday was our first meeting at the main Microsoft office in Melbourne since we got acquired. It seems to be full of salesmen: no techies to be found (though apparently there are some there). The meeting was largely managespeak with a lot of acronyms that none of us understood.

There are two phrases I just learned relating to Microsoft. “Drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid” is the term for, basically, getting into business with Microsoft (i.e. making the decision to have your product work with their operation system/business plan, agreeing to their standards, etc.). And “eating your own dogfood” is what Microsoft employees (including us, now) must do – this means that we are forced to use their newest, as-yet-unreleased software months (and sometimes years) before it is released to the public. So, where you may be using Internet Explorer 7, I’ll be using IE 8, with whatever kinks and bugs that haven’t been worked out yet. That is, when I’m not developing on my Linux box <grin>.

The owl is apparently a regular visitor in our backyard – we’ve seen him four times now. I’ll have to figure out some way to get a picture of him – so far we’ve only seen him in silhouette.