A perfect day..

By | | Australia, General Mumblings, Uncategorized
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So yesterday was a bit wet and miserable. The weather is a bit of a focus for us at the moment, as it is unbelievably cold at nights. My boss Rudy reckoned that this would be one of the coldest winters we had ever experienced… and coming from Scotland I had a good old laugh.

oh boy was he right.

The problem is that Australian houses are built to get rid of heat in the summer. They have white painted walls, tiled surfaces, overhanging roofs to shade the windows.. and not a stick of insulation.

Houses built in the last few years are starting to get (some) insulation – nobody has double glazing, as it’s only needed for sound proofing.. and folks get around it in the winter months by blasting on the gas fires, electric heaters and wood stoves.

I guess the whole idea of building a passive insulated house with decent thermal management to keep the heat in during winter and keep the cold air in during summer will start to kick in as fuel prices continue to rise.. but for this year, in our rented house…

brrr.

We have a couple of DeLonghi dragon electric heaters to keep the bedroom warm, but it’s like being back at our crappy flat in Motherwell. All of the folks we speak to have a little chortle, and say something along the lines of ‘wait till summer…’

That being said – today has been delicious. we nipped out to the local IGA (independent growers of australia – like Spar) to grab some bacon and rolls.. had a delicious breakfast sitting out on the deck… pottered around the house doing some weeding, put the pool cover back on (we had to leave it off for a couple of days, as the chlorine was a bit high), and settled down a lazy afternoon in the hot tub.

Nothing quite like a soak in the hot tub, couple of bottles of cider and just putting the world’s wrongs to right.. the suns just at that lovely ‘last light of the day’ stage just now – everything’s golden orange and yellow.. in fact, here’s a quick photo of the view from my desk – this is looking towards the edge of Joondalup.

So, settling down to read a book and generally chill before dinner. It’s days like this that just make you hapy to be alive šŸ™‚

Ding!

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>You have leveled up!

>Adding extra skill points to EVIL.

>EVIL is now at maximum level.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA
We have tenants.
That makes us landlords.
That makes us evil. More evil!
We have seen all those caricatures and therefore obviously have to live up to it.
Now I need a title higher up the chain than Queen of Evil.

Quick Update

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Well, I had an interview today for a business analyst role. I think they liked me, I was in for nearly two hours and got a guided tour. It comes down to the fact that I dont know the tools they use. It is pretty much what I have been doing for years – talk to users and figure out what they want and how to go about getting it for them. Its just the formal way of documenting it that I dont know.

It will be a few days before I hear anything. Once I know something, I will let you know šŸ™‚

One Month and a few days in ….

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We had a good weekend, the weather was fab and we used the hot tub a *lot*. Its too cold to use the pool believe it or not, the water just isnt warm enough, but we are coping with the hardship of just the hot tub.

We went to a local steak house for dinner last night (The Hogs Breath Cafe), great steak, huge portions, we will be going back there again šŸ™‚

So, onto todays agency meetings. I did well with agency number one. Then agency number two landed a pop quiz on me and I totally blanked everything I ever knew about programming and couldnt answer a single question. As I left there rather flustered, I got a call from agency number one with an interview for a business analyst role and a developer role with a company in West Perth. So, I am being interviewed by one company for two separate jobs on Wednesday :). Agency 3 was OK, but he wants to wait till I get a clearer picture from the other two agencies as to where my CV is.

Over all, a knackering day. Its been nearly two months since I was in anything other than jeans and trainers, so after today getting suited and booted, my legs and feet are killing me. Thank goodness for the spa!

Skippy!

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Couple of folks have asked about Kangaroos – and afterĀ  amonth or so in Australia, we had seen Kangaroos twice. Once on the way up to Lancelin…

And once in the IGA (that’s Independent Growers of Australia, the equivelant of Spar). That one didn’t look too clever either…

So,Ā I asked in the office, got some pointers to ‘Roo country (apparently, driving down any road at night is a surefire way to meet “one of those tough littleĀ bast**ds”, and by “meet” we mean “smack into with the car, spin off wildly and barely survive”)… and are proud to present – Kangaroos!

Yep, yer bona-fide in the wild Kangaroos – just like Deer, actually, and behave the same when startled etc.

One month in ….

By | | Australia
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Well, its a month to the day since we arrived in Perth, seems like longer!

I have got the finger out and started looking for a job for real.
I hate job hunting, I really do. Not a good thing for a contractor it has to be said given that in theory, I could have had to look for work every three months. Not that I ever did, what with being renewed over and over till they ran out of budget (I think that tells you a lot about contractors and their ability to find and then spend budget šŸ˜‰ ). But, still, I hateses it.

This time round though, with the fact that we are on the other side of the world, I figured a little bit of stability might not go amiss, so I am opting for the permie life for a while.

So, with Ian having been working for 3 weeks and everything that we ordered here being delivered, I couldnt use “I have to be here for the delivery man/pool guy/internet connection bloke” as an excuse any more. I spent a few days working on my CV, got Ian to go over it and then yesterday sent it to 3 agencies. Within 10 minutes I had the First Agent on the phone, my CV in for 6 jobs and a meeting with him for Monday. 5 minutes after that, the Second Guy called, and my CV was in for another job, and he had another two, but it turned out that the First Guy had already put me in for them, and I had a meeting with him on Monday. Another 5 minutes passed and Second Guy called back with another two. It took Third Guy till this afternoon to see my CV, and he has a place to put my CV into, and a meeting with him on Monday.

So …. to recap … thats my CV in for 10 jobs, and I am meeting 3 separate agencies on Monday.

I still hate job searching, but at least this time it looks like it will quick!

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.

Nothing for days, then three posts wrapped into one!

By | | Australia, Uncategorized
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Well, itā€™s been a few days since any blogging, you’d think we had given up, but no!

Itā€™s been a bloody busy few days, with no internet connection…. which has been hard, trust me!

We have finally moved into our own place and out of the rented accommodation. The “holiday” accommodation was fine, but we couldnā€™t settle at all knowing we were in someoneā€™s basement – one time the owner came down while I was on the loo! He knocked and everything, but still – it was his basement….

Now, we are in our own place (well, still rented, so we canā€™t knock holes in the walls even when Ianā€™s SDS drill arrives) and it has made all the difference. We have created a wee walk through for you, but we canā€™t actually post it yet – itā€™s another 2 weeks till we get real net access – we are working off my new ozzie mobile phone at the moment. Once we are up for real, we will show you the place from the front door all the way through šŸ™‚ We already have the movie, we just donā€™t have the bandwidth to upload it.

The last few days gave been hectic – Ian has been at work this week (since Tuesday, as Monday was a holiday ā€“ they donā€™t do the previous Monday that most of the UK does) ā€“ and we picked up this place on Thursday, so the past few days for me have been about running around getting stuff we need. Then Thursday Ian bunked off for an hour or so to sign off here ( with me not having a job yet, waster that I am, the car loan, my phone and the house are all in Ianā€™s name, w00t šŸ˜‰ ) Then it was all day Friday I was waiting on stuff being delivered ā€“ washing machine, fridge, giant mega bed, all important PCs from Scotland, temporary desks for the PCs and basic IKEA sofa and dining table.

With having none of our stuff yet ā€“ last time we checked it hadnā€™t actually left the UK, even though we were told it would be leaving shortly after us ā€“ we have set up camp in the computer room. Basically we are rattling round a HUGE empty house right now. Once our stuff arrives it will be very different, but for now, itā€™s settling in one room.

Today (Saturday) was a day of shopping ā€“ we were being very Fight Club (ā€œa house full of condiments and no foodā€) so we finally got a load of food, and then on to IKEA for the ā€œreasonably decent, but not as good as our own, solutions for modern livingā€ PC chairs and other stuff. If you didnā€™t realise that a 207CC has may areas that live within Time And Relative Dimensions In Space (thatā€™s a TARDIS for those that didnā€™t watch Dr Who as a kid (or maybe even now) ) I canā€™t believe how much we managed to fit in it …. We have also ordered our very own barbeque ā€“ 4 burner plus gas ring in black for our deck. It will arrive on Tuesday.

I did have a ā€œmomentā€ tonight though … I was having a great time, cooking for real for the first time in almost a month, with a glass of wine and I was very much enjoying it, when I thought, ā€œwe should have a house warmingā€ and then I cried a bit šŸ™ Its not the first ā€œmomentā€, but it wasnā€™t great ….

Gonna sign off this blog post with many congrats to Gerry and Steven on the new baby Finn!

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 šŸ™‚

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 aĀ  .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!!

While You Were Sleeping ….

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It was pishing down in Oz:

Yep – people 5 minutes down the coast from here had their roofs torn off due to the storms.

GVD! Storms!

Today was nice though – we walked along the riverside here at our apartment for ages which was gorgeous, then later on went up to Joondalup, parked outside our new place and walked to the station and back to see how far it is. I ended up seeing stars as I was knackered after walking for ages on two slices of toast and Vegemite (yeah, I have been having Vegemite for breakfast šŸ™‚ Totally ozzie šŸ™‚ )

Tonight we were rather bored – its sunday again – most things are closed – so we went out for a run in the uber car and ended up on Scarborough Beach (most things are named after the UK) watching the sun set into the Indian Ocean, which was amazing.

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?Ā  šŸ˜

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…” andĀ  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!

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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 Ā£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 šŸ˜€

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

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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 šŸ˜‰ ) 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? šŸ™‚ ). 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 Ā£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. šŸ™‚

Been a couple of days ….

By | | Australia, Uncategorized
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Been a couple of days since we updated anything….

My nephew has teeth! Go Adam. Well done wee man!

Elaine, I havent found me a job yet never mind you and BJ, that will take a few weeks I am afraid, we only just got here! Besides, I am sure mum & dad will be annoyed if we all ended up here – the reason for having 4 kids was to have them spread out over the world, not all in Oz.

Di, has Jennifer got any word on her visa?

And just so he doesnt feel left out, as I am sure he hasnt seen this at all yet – Rab, ya smelly bas!

We BBQed burgers today for lunch, and then again for dinner – because it looks like Perth closes down on a Sunday. There are some restaurants open, but very few – we fancied sushi, but there arent that many open, and none of the open ones have a conveyor belt. We wanted a sushi train!

Today we explored, we saw Freemantle, which was nice, Rockingham, which doesnt really Rock at all – its industrial city with BOC plants and so on. We also went into Kings Park in the centre of Perth which is beautiful! Then we went north to check out stuff near our new house in Joondalup, and went to the nearest beach:

This is litteraly 5 minutes by car from the door. It was amazingly fab, right onto the Indian Ocean. Huge breakers, sandy beach, people surfing, kayacking, and the best bit was that it wasnt too busy.

We still have a fair bit to get sorted, tomorrow they will check the finance for the car and let us know, the house is already sorted, we have applied for our Tax numbers, so we can both work OK. We need to arrange insurance and get a bed for arriving in the house.

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….

Got our house! And its a doozy!

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We had decided to get a furnished flat in the city centre and try out city living for a while till our stuff came.

Pah, that was sooooo two days ago.

Today we spotted an amazing house in Joondalup, about 25 minutes from the center and are going to be staying there from the 5th June (we will be kicked out of here on the 2nd, so either need to extend for a few days or find somewhere else). Its amazing!

Empty, but as it has FOUR bedrooms, we will be getting a new bed anyway, so when people visit we have a spare. We will get a nice patio set as well, letting us use it as a dining room table till our stuff arrives.

It doesnt *just* have a pool – it also has a hot tub!

Lookie :

Banks and stuff

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Yep, seem far better adjusted to the time zone now, got up with the alarm at 8, had a shower (realised that all I had got in the supermarket was shampoo – no soap or face wash!) and off into the central business district to the bank for our appointment for opening the accounts. We now have banking set up, and have applied for a credit card, to build up our credit history. We do indeed have *no* credit history here – which is good! But … means we cant get a car loan, so have to get an old one, still looking for that ford capri šŸ˜‰

So far we have seen The Fenian Pub, and coon brand cheese, there is also “The Coliseum” – the christian gym. I can only assume that they get people fit by putting them on a treadmill, and getting a lion to run behind them!

We have also seen drive through offsales. We had heard about them – and apparently they are also common in the US, but its such a weird concept!

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!!!