Author Archives: Ian - 'Kei'

Back Online – so here’s a new video!

By | | Australia, General Mumblings
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Well, after a wait that seemed to be measured in weeks, we are in the new house, and have broadband! – we couldn’t really do a blog post for a while, as we were using Jen’s smartphone for web access. sloooooow!

Still, we are now hooked up, and the Hot tub is up and tested (and is as awesome as it sounds!), so here’s a new video:

In the meantime, I have started work so am keeping busy – I need to get a couple of pictures of our new office. I’m travelling into work on the transperth trains, which I am (rather oddly, I guess) actually enjoying. The trains are nice and modern, very regular and the ticketing is quite clever.

I have a ‘smartrider’ card – a little RFID tag which allows me to ‘tag’ on and off of the transport system. You put money on the card, then tag on and off, and it deducts the fare automatically. You get a 15% discount just for using the smartrider rather than buying a ticket, and you get a 25% discount if you link the card to your bank… so, I happily use the tranport system – buses, trains, ferries, and it just pops the fare off each time.

When it reaches a pre-set level, it invoices my bank account for another $50 or so (you set this amount through the website), and that’s that. You can log onto the website and see all of your journeys, and where your tag was used – rather slick.

Yeeee -haw!

By | | Australia, Interesting! (Well, for me)
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So, it’s an absolute scorcher today – for us at any rate. temperature is 26 degrees, not a cloud in the sky and a gentle wind from the ocean (whic is nice and cool – it’s gorgeous).

We decided to try something new today – it’s Foundation Day, a public holiday celebrating the founding of the state of Western Australia, so most places are closed – apart from the usual recreational type stuff: restaurants, bars and so on… so we headed over to The Lone Ranges in Belmont.

Yep, we joined a gun club 🙂

We took the training package, which included a lot of safety (I hadn’t really planned to look down the barrel or put my hand in front of a loaded gun, but there were a few bits that were not so obvious – like making sure your left hand thumb stays clear of the slide on a semi-auto pistol).

first up was the lightweight fun stuff – we each got 50 rounds on a combination of a .22 Smith and Weston revolver, and a  .22 Ruger semi-automatic. The revolver was fun, but the semi- oh man.

when that was done, we moved up the firepower range a bit (quite a bit), with a Glock 9mm Semi-automatic – wow. absolutely insane feeling – the recoil was incredible, the thump from the sound… I think we have found a new stress relief hobby!

Another one of those “what the f….” moments.

By | | Australia, General Mumblings, Interesting! (Well, for me)
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We had decided before we came out that we would do the whole aussie experience thing rather than just being the “whinging pom” types who stuck to ex-pats clubs and basically complained that everything wasn’t like “back home”.

We watched an AFL game yesterday. Aussie Rules Football, or just “footy” to the locals. The game can basically be summed up in a couple of small facts – there’s 18 players on each side, and full physical contact is allowed between the shoulder and the knee.

The entire game (quarters of 20 minutes each) looked uncannily like a pitch invasion. there seems to be too many people on the park, they wear slightly different variations on the strip, there are about 8 umpires, and large parts of the game are spent basically fighting.

It’s more ordered than it looks, naturally, with the key element of the play being “Marks” – basically catching the ball after it has been in the air for 15 metres, which entitles you to a free kick (ie, you can pause for a second and nobody is allowed to kick you in the chest, or bite your arm until you kick the ball again).

I might just get into this – it’s kinda like rugby, basketball and ultimate cage fighting rolled into one.

Not weird enough for you? how about this then… it’s late autumn here, and the trees are dying back – like this one:

That tree is perfectly healthy – rather than drop their leaves for the winter, Aussie trees keep their leaves, and drop their bark.

it’s the little things that remind you that you are NOT in Kansas any more!!

Day Ten and counting.

By | | Australia, General Mumblings, grrrr
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We drove up to a place called Lancelin yesterday – our first attempt to see a bit of rural Australia. huge roads – sections of it variously like driving through England, Eaglesham Moor and Spain.. but strangely fused together into one. We had to stop at the side of the road every now and then to grin like maniacs, and take pictures of the car:

One thing we have noticed pretty regularly since getting here – despite the aussie reputation for being laid back, they are even further down the old “Police state” path than the UK – everything is illegal… and has a sign telling you that it’s illegal. The road signs are insane – they have completely arbitrary signs for no right turn, no left turn, no u turn, no parking, no stopping, no looking, no smiling (okay, I made the last two up).

Seriously though, check this thing out:

Worlds Most Cryptic parking sign.

That means no parking to the left of the pole (outside of the bays). no parking to the right of the pole at all (even in the bays). On the left of the pole, in the bays, you can park for 2 Hours (that’s what we think 2P means – you also see 1/4P and so on), during these times. Outside of these times, you can park anywhere you want.. including to the left of the pole. *except* If you have a resident’s permit, when you can park to the left of the pole any time you like, for as long as you like. But not on the right of the pole… can you guess I got a ticket?  😐

In Lancelin, as well as the delightful signs on pretty much every lampost (and this is a town smaller than Plockton’s Pub Car Park) they also have a huge sign that says “no camping – campers will be prosecuted”. There is a sign at the entrance to the town saying “Local Police are targetting…” and  a set of hooks where the topic that most irritates the local plod can be hung up, so that you can consider yourself warned. Yesterday, they has mostly been irritated by Speeding it seems.

We stayed in Lancelin for just long enough to write in the sand:

the beach at Lancelin

We then decided that we had better scarper – in case smiling, laughing or standing on the sand turned out to carry a jail sentence!

Back to Perth, where the locals are thankfully not all cousins and the signs are slightly more welcoming (we think) and picked up some meat for the barbie – we are mostly eating BBQ at the moment, but this is less to do with becoming true aussies, and more to do with the flat not having an indoors cooker… we are so looking forward to moving into our house!

Posted another cool video too – the 207 doing it’s convertible roof thing:

Yeah, nice one T-mobile!

By | | Uncategorized
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just a quickie before we head off to the bank – we both have HTC smart phones, windows mobile things with touch screens, pop out keyboards etc. We got them from T-mobile branded as “Vario II” – they are also called “Tytn” or “hermes”, depending on who is selling them.

so, popped my new SIM into the phone, only to be faced with a Network Lock – unsurprisingly, t-mobile had locked the phones to them: not much use to me, as t-mobile don’t have an australian network (vodafone and three are the only guys from the UK out here).

quick call* to the UK later, and T-mobile want £20 and 28 days to send out the unlock code for the phone. each.

Thankfully, the magic internet comes to the rescue again – this guy has an unlocker that removes all of the network locks easily – for the princely sum of zero, taking about 8 minutes. I’ll probably chuck him a tenner donation…

I’m on three now – they seem to have good enough coverage, but I need to get the mobile internet working to see how it is.. especially as our computer kit has cleared customs, and should be delivered to the house next friday.

from here, it’s just get a phone, get broadband, set up the servers and then we should have proper email etc back.
I am, of course, trying to stop myself from jumping around the place with excitement (and not just because of who got booted on the apprentice last night!). We pick up the new car tomorrow 😀

A truly amazing night (not so good for the cows…)

By | | Food
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So, today was a pretty good day – the rain was gone, and it was brilliantly sunny – nice and warm, very bright and just exactly the sort of weather we are looking for. Everything got sorted with the car (we pick it up on Thursday), we ordered a new king size bed (which is fantastic – one of the latex cushioned/ memory foam jobs), and I got a new mobile (number to be sent out later – don’t really want to stick that on the ole t’interweb).

We decided that, what with it being a monday as well, that it was time to celebrate – and eat out! we have been the very models of restraint for the past few days, eating home cooking (most of which was cooked on the Barbie, naturally), but tonight we fancies something extra special.. so we drove down to fremantle (the locals call it “freo”) to a cracking place called Outback Jacks.

For starters, we opted to eat some of the local wildlife – crocodile (tasty, little bit like chicken 😉 ) and kangaroo (quite “beefy”, little bit like rabbit). This set us up nicely for the mains.

wow. they have steaks of all sorts and brilliant quality! You go up to the counter, which is just like the meat counter in the supermarket, with these huge succulent bits of raw meat sitting there – tell them what you want, they show you it, and you okay it.

Jen had a 400g Kobe steak (well, technically a Wagyu steak – you can’t properly call it kobe unless it’s been raised in the Kobe area), whilst I opted for the 500g “not so hungry” australian Angus (rare – is there any other way? 🙂 ). They arrived on huge platter plates with salad, chunky chips, caramelised onions and a pepper sauce for me (you don’t put a sauce on Wagyu steak).

so, there we were, grinning from ear to ear, eating some of the biggest, tastiest steaks either of us have ever seen, and Jen getting quite happily sloshed on the house white (I was driving, a mistake I won’t make next time!)

great food, great evening, and when the bill came, quite pleasant. came to $104 all in – about £50.

now, having rolled back to the car and driven back to the flat with the top button of my jeans undone, there’s little left to do but relax in front of the telly. a good day. 🙂

And after the house…

By | | Australia, Interesting! (Well, for me)
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comes the car. it’s a heck of a lot to get done in a small amount of time – we had a pretty tight schedule with 2 weeks to get the house, car, bank accounts etc all sorted out, and that schedule got even tighter when we threw caution to the wind and rented an unfurnished empty house rather than a pre-furnished one…

we now have a lot more stuff to buy/arrange before our own boatload of stuff arrives (and it hasn’t left yet – there’s another two weeks or so before it goes, unless someone else doing the central scotland -> perth route appears)

Still, the whole “abandon your plans when something shiny comes along” strategy worked okay for the house, so it’s probably not much of a surprise that we didn’t, after all, opt for an old banger to run around in.

no, siree…

we have bought a shiny new Peugeot 207 cc – the convertible one. It’s apparently a complete girls car, but I don’t care – I have been hankering for one of these since it came out.. except that Glasgow (let’s be honest here) doesn’t really have much in the way of convertible car weather, unless you are really determined.

so, that’s the house, the car.. now we just need mobiles, furniture, a bed, kitchen appliances, food….

ARGH! Weather!

By | | Australia, grrrr
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it had to happen, didn’t it? when we visited Jamaica, we had guys out on the beach performing dark voodoo magic and sacrificing chickens, convinced that the world was going to end… they had never seen such freakish weather in their lives…

now, the “Jenni and Ian effect” comes to Australia – yes, that’s right, we are single handedly responsible for the end of the great Aussie Drought!

Weather Image

Guess where we are!!!

Getting settled – with a trip to woolies :)

By | | Australia, General Mumblings
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Well, a walk past Woolworths, and a visit to Coles – the Aussie equivelant of Asda and Tesco.

We stocked up with some essentials, as well as a trip to Bunnings – the local B&Q. some hack job surgery later, and we have a couple of Aussie power leads for the laptop.

starting to find our way around and took some photos from our living room – here’s jen having breakfast:

Living Room

Those doors lead out to the patio, there’s then a nice park before the river. Given that the river probably contains crocodiles, sharks and jellyfish (for all we know), we are not going down there just yet… still, the patio has what looks like a good croc-proof steel fence:


Our patio..

Anyhoo, next we head off to Westpac to prove that we are who we say we are, and open our Aussie bank accounts (which we have to do before we can rent a place).

busy, busy!

and then we went to Perth :)

By | | Australia
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Well, after a five hour flight from Singapore we landed in Perth and picked up the hire car. Our apartment is pretty cool (and then my new boss swung by with some bread and milk etc).

It’s a little intimidating driving here – they have some nasty junction merges and for some reason Sat Nav that quite seriously sucks!

still, we are finding our way around, and starting the search for an apartment. It’s 8:20 and we are starting to get sleepy. not too bad though – we will probably be adjusted to the time zone by tomorrow. 🙂

Visit Singapore!

By | | Australia, Food
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oh yeah.

so, today could easily have turned into nothing more than an airport – hotel – airport stop off. we were tired from the long flight and unsure of what to do, where to go etc.

then we got to the hotel – it is incredible. we have a bunch of pictures that we’ll get online whenever our computers arrive in Perth, in the meantime, here’s the view from our hotel – we are actually on  the other side of the hotel (with a view that’s just as cool, but not the marina!)

view from our hotel

So, we went for a walk to explore central singapore, including a visit to the famous Raffles Hotel where we enjoyed a couple of singapore slings in the long bar. the sun was lovely and warm, and the temperature (about 28) was just delicious. if this is a hint of what Perth will be like, we are loving it!

back to the hotel to freshen up (did  i mention the two person walk in wet room style shower?)

cool wet room shower

After a nap to help knock the time zone into our head, we headed out onto the esplanade at night – walk along the banks of the marina, and got rick rolled. oh yes – the band playing at the waterfront auditorium were belting out a heartfelt version of “never gonna give you up”, which gradually turned into a Kylie medley.

took a couple of hours to soak up the nightlife, then stopped off at “yoshinoya” for some meso soup, spicy beef and teriyaki chicken – yum!

that’s us now back in the hotel and about to head to bed (it’s 10pm here, and we are up early for the bus to the airport). Perth tomorrow, and we get our first sight of our new home!

I would heartily advise visiting singapore. it’s a truly wonderful place, and well worth 12 hours on a plane.

Our house, empty!

By | | General Mumblings
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after many aborted attempts (grrrr – youtube!), I finally got the vid walk through of our house uploaded.

anyone who has ever been to the house will be downright shocked at how clean and tidy the place looks, minus it’s messiest contents (that would be us!).

for your enjoyment:

also a little bit of good news – we have a couple of viewers set up already for the house 🙂

Step One – London!

By | | Australia
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Well, after a teary farewell at Glasgow Airport (and some scrambled egg on toast!) we had a pretty pleasant flight down to heathrow.

we arrived on time, and settled into our executive room (oh yeah) at the Sheraton Heathrow. I’m now uploading some photos and the video of the empty house using the super fast internet connection.

now the biggest decision we face – do we enjoy the club lounge here at the hotel and just relax the day away, or do we scoot into London and do the tourist thing..

sounds tempting, but then so does the mini bar 😀

Unemployed again!! :D

By | | General Mumblings
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Well, that’s us now, officially, unemployed slackers again – we both finished this afternoon, and are now running about mad getting stuff ready for the off.

The house is packed on Monday/Tuesday, we should be decorating the finishing touches on Wednesday, letting agent is out on Thursday, Friday for “contingency”, then we fly out on Saturday. phew.

Nearly two years later, and right on schedule!

By | | General Mumblings
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We started KyCon ’08 back in 2006 (as evidenced by the dates on Jen’s posts). That’s when we started thinking about roaming the world.

Wintermute Consultancy had just went under, we had sorted out work, the house was safe again, and we decided that we had just had enough of being cold, wet and miserable… it was time to see the world.

Last year, part one of the plan came to fruition, and we visited the pyramids – one of the best experiences I have had so far, and one of “the big 50 things to do before you die”.

Now, here we are – ready to leave Scotland for Sunny Australia. The house is being packed up as we speak, and we fly to Perth in a little over two weeks.

It was my really sincere hope that ’08 would be the year we actually did it – I honestly didn’t think we would make it.