A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

A goodbye for now.

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 12:54:00 +0000

It has been so long since I wrote anything here and the excuses are running low these days... Being brutally honest, the good feeling of sharing my vibe with anybody willing to read the ramblings of this wacky guy are lost and I got no idea where to find it.

Last year was a very difficult year, like no other... Around these days last year my grandma health was getting worst per minute until the unavoidable happened and she passed on... A little bit further along my mom had breast cancer and just before the end of the year, my dad was gone. The emotional blow, plus all the shit going on in Venezuela made it pretty hard on me.

Not everything was negative, I got a new nephew that I got to carry while I was visiting my family and saying goodbye to my dad's ashes... got to enjoy my brother and sister; and gave lots of kisses to my mom. Bought a house... Became an Australian citizen.

Anyhow... thank you if you read some of my words... I ran out of words and there isn't much that I really want to continue sharing for the time being.

Venezuelan people need your help!

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 00:30:00 +0000

At this moment, the little nation in which I was born is in desperate need for help. Its ruler (as I can’t call that a government) has decided its needs are more important than its people and has selected a few above the rule of law.

Venezuela is bleeding to death and the international community does nothing about it.

Basic human rights are violated every day, people can’t find anything to eat and the government is (on an attempt to remain in power) cutting liberties, and charging favours with nations around it. It has become a totalitarian dictatorship.

What is exactly going on in Venezuela?

The short version of the events is: A protest against food shortage, insecurity and extremely bad administration of the current government has escalated into civil disobedience and huge conflicts between the Venezuelan government and its own people as the government has decided to silence at any cost anybody who chooses to criticise the government. At the moment the Venezuelan government has murdered 21 people, 33 people has reported torture and close to 261 has been wounded. These numbers are going up everyday.

These are images the government doesn't want to go public.
Weaponless students fighting the national police armed with water cannons, pepper spray, teargas, guns and rifles.
Image via Frank Gomez

A more detailed version of the events is:

After Chavez's death in November 2011 (formally announced in March), the government had to invoke new national elections which were conducted in April 2013. The result was an extremely narrow margine in favour to the second in command, Nicolas Maduro. These elections were obscured as the government actively avoided any international verification of the results or any statistical analysis, introducing a reasonable doubt onto who was actually the real winner. At this point most people wanted a change already as Chavez's policies had driven the economical prosperity away as well as it introduced an enormous amount of corruption at every single level of society, being corruption of the justice, the one granting freedom to those thugs, murderers and sociopaths supporting the government. Insecurity became the most pressing issue for anyone living in Venezuela.

In January this year (2014) a Miss Venezuela went back to visit her family after a long time of living overseas, and while she was visiting the country she was robbed and killed by several gunshots on a freeway between two cities of Venezuela. This event exploited rage into every single student and member of the society, forcing themselves onto the streets requesting from Maduro a radical change in which the rule of law needed to be preserved or a change in the government itself as it had been proving itself inefficient.

The death of this beauty queen forced many to recognise
the difficult situation lived in the country.

Maduro labeled this movement a conspiracy against him and a cue to take the government out and responded to these claims with brutal force (deploying the army, the national guard, the police and the government armed factions called ‘collectivos’, a different label for the government guerrillas) killing students in the process and issuing order for detention and later on incarceration of the opposition political leader Leopoldo Lopez, while restricting internet access and creating media blackout to prevent anybody from knowing about their actions.

Leopoldo Lopez being taken by the national police as he requests freedom for the nation
armed with white flowers in one hand and the national flag in the other.

All these efforts to repress the people had the complete opposite effect. Raged on, people (fearless of any consequence) went in the streets to fight back the now full on totalitarian ruler, who has decided to release these armed guerrillas (in addition to the national police and groups of the army lead by Cuban soldiers) in the streets to kill, rape or kidnap anybody marching against the government.

Students fighting back while the government shuts the protests down.
Image via Frank Gomez

All of this is happening while the world is watching Ukraine and international observers have had their hands dirty with Venezuelan money. Countries such as United States, Canada and Panama have condemned all actions taken against the Venezuelan people and several parliaments and senates of Latin America have raised issues against their own governments to get some action going to protect the Venezuelan people.

Why should I care?

You see, the world is quite little and there is this fabulous theory called “the butterfly effect”. Any action you do as little as it may be, will create a chain of events to produce something completely unexpected on the other end.

If you are not Venezuelan there are plenty of reasons why you must care. The Venezuelan ruler is driving the entire country to bankruptcy and every single industry in the nation is failing massively.

Venezuela is the first oil reserve in the world, it is one of the richest countries with the highest index of poverty and inflation. Every single barrel of oil Venezuela doesn’t produce increases the cost of living in regions such as: North America, Australia and Europe. These are as you very well know some of the biggest economies in the world. Every single day Venezuela continues in mayhem it affects you by increasing your cost of living.

So, what can YOU do?

Spread the word, the more people participate the more pressure we can generate. Venezuelan’s are using the #SOSVenezuela or #PrayForVenezuela twitter hash tags to request for help, but the government is little by little closing all the channels in which any voice may get out to tell the truth about what is going on.

Isaac Asimov once said: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"

Contact your local media and demand from them coverage of what is going on in Venezuela. The more voices the least our governments can ignore the situation and proper international observers (as well as media coverage) will expose the dictator and introduce pressure for a change that will not involve violence in my home town.

Spreading the word is quite easy, tweet, post on facebook or just talk to your friends.

Contact your political representative, raise your concern about this issue with them. There are many governments in Latin America being complicit about the current situation as they are receiving huge amount of money to maintain their silence. Your representatives aren’t under the same interest, they will create some force in the government to recognise the difficult situation that my home town is living.

Finally, brothers and sisters of Ukraine. Even though my home town is submerge deep in the oppression and tyranny of a totalitarian government we are glad your struggle is getting somewhere. Let’s fight for a free world.

We are united in our fight for freedom and respect of human rights.

Some of the voices joined our pledge:

Apparantly Maduro is not familiar with the phrase "Human Rights"! Facism is alive and thriving in Venezuela and... http://t.co/flSihs3h4T
— Madonna (@Madonna) February 20, 2014

Please #PrayForVenezuela and please #PrayForUkraine... RT
— demetria lovato (@ddlovato) February 19, 2014

#Venezuela #PowerToThePeople ('cause the people want #peace)
— Eliza Dushku (@elizadushku) February 20, 2014

Ok. Now to put down iphone aka #Kiev #Venezuela tracking device & pick up "How I Met Your Dad" pilot script to read. #spinoff #channelchange
— Eliza Dushku (@elizadushku) February 20, 2014

Praying for the innocent people in #Ukraine and #Venezuela .. If you haven't read up on what's going on around the world you should
— Deena Nicole Cortese (@DeenaNicoleMTV) February 20, 2014

Protests in #Venezuela - © Chappatte in The International New York Times pic.twitter.com/Fhi3OiaP1s
— Chappatte Cartoons (@globecartoon) March 11, 2014

New post is coming...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 22:26:00 +0000

I know... I haven't publish anything for quite a while now... But I will be breaking my silence soon.

Venezuela, my heart is with you through this hard time.

Living with a flatmate...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 08:34:00 +0000

This post is one of those that I have written and rewritten so many times… I have been upset and bashing the crap out of the keyboard… or calmed, reading everything I have written before and turn it down a notch. In any case, this is my attempt of explaining my experience with a flatmate.

There is always a topic to talk about the life in Australia, especially when it is related to how to save a few extra bucks per week in one of the most expensive cities on planet earth. Let’s take any of the Australian cities (like Sydney for instance) where you could be paying close to $2400 per month on a flat with just two rooms, one bathroom, kitchen and something you could call a living room, and you will find no reason (apart from being paranoid or a freak) of why not to share your place with someone else?

Having a flatmate is very convenient for many people as you could share rent payments, some services and hopefully good company for a while... but it could become into a nightmare quite easily... So I have decided to write down this post to understand a little bit the situation I lived for a while and what I needed to take into consideration at the moment of considerate sharing my place with somebody else.

Sadly I couldn't find this guide in time...

Have you lived with a flatmate before?

The very short answer is: no and this probably has a huge impact on my experience. My life in Uni was quite "comfortable" giving that I was living with my parents for a big chunk of it... but when situation required a little space from my parents I used to spend my nights at Uni on the couch of the computer lab or in the department that I used to work for.

Eventually, when I decided to start living with somebody I was in a relationship which it doesn't quite match the description of 'having a flatmate' (although sometimes relationship deteriorate into just having a flatmate and not a couple... but I am not going to go deeper into that subject).

How was my appreciation of "sharing my place with somebody"? What did it mean to me?

I always thought that: "If I am going to be sharing my place with a someone, it has to be my friend!" hence the relationship with that someone was supposed to be easy going, having conversations during those shared moments together but everyone having their own separate life.

On the other hand, having a stranger as flatmate seemed to be appealing as well, as someone new meant getting to know new people, different social circles and possibly different appreciation of life as a whole.

Either way, with friends or strangers I was hoping to share my place to get a little bit of financial aid and moral support on those times of terrible uncertainty I was living day by day.

Why did I decided to share my place?

Two reasons comes to my head:

For starters I was going through the separation that was kicking me pretty hard, deep in depression I needed some company to help me out to go through the days without thinking too much.
And I needed a little bit of help recovering my finances while paying a yearlong contract that I had signed just two weeks before the separation. I was in a pickle but I didn't want to change to much my environment while I was adjusting to my new life.

So... how was my experience?

Well... it was a mixture of not too bad with terrible and awful product of different lifestyles and issues addressed in a poor manner. I thought that offering a hand to a friend was going to be a good idea, offering my home as residency for both while she figured out what she wanted to do with her life, thought it was the safest decision as I was not going to be in the unit everyday and I was hoping she was going to be on her feet quick enough… I thought it was going to be an ‘I scratch your back and you scratch mine’ sort of thing.

The first couple of days were marvelous, talking heaps and catching up during all that time we didn't talk, to which I started wondering "Why did we grow apart?" but surely within that time differences started to show: I became more skeptic and atheist while she became a bit more... ‘extremist’ towards religion and human differences, commenting frequently how she believed 'white people' are superior to any other 'race' and how she was 'pure blooded' being graced by God's will.

People... look around, the world has become a complete mixture of cultures, ethnicities and preferences.
Accepted it or become a hermit!

Within three weeks my good friend became just the person I was sharing my unit but I still had the intention of get along with it, not getting on her way and ignoring her nasty eventual comment on "Why I haven't found a job?" followed closely with "… this country is shit, this air is shit... this <fill the blank space> is shit".

On her mind (based on my interpretation of our conversations), she envisioned a world where Australia as looking desperately for any people with some talent throwing money at anybody knocking the door three times, while being face with reality that in Australia anybody has to work pretty hard to earn their money, to pay their rent and make a living just like any other place. That turned her into an extremely bitter person difficult to be around with.

As time went by the situation turned from bitter awkward into critical when she decided to have one of those inspiring ‘white power’ moments, offending me in the process (I really don’t know if she understood the ‘you should better stop your comments right now if you don’t want to sleep on the streets’ as a ‘I am deeply offended by your comment, you dick!’)... People, if nobody ask for your advice or opinion, stay quiet… bite your tongue or go out with someone that actually shares your point of view.

Certainly I did not get to this point (thankfully!) but notes like this were comment in my place.

But I was too polite (or stupid) to ask her to leave, although I was short tempered, giving her quick comments to every "I am too clever for you" sort of comments. It took close to four months for her to understand I was not comfortable with her around and she was starting to feel lonely as she didn't want to socialize with people I tried to introduce to her before the incident.

Eventually with a job offer, she decided to move alone to her own unit and I decided not to share my unit with anybody else as my experience wasn’t precisely a ball in the park.

Did I considerate to look for another flatmate?

Not really, my experience was a little bit of a downer (as I have my own manners that are difficult to tolerate as well) and I thought I was going to be moving by myself once the contract was going to be over… I closed any possibility to have a nice person around as I was not in a position to be understanding or open to other’s idiosyncrasies.

What things do I think went wrong?

Many things, I was not sharp enough to draw the limit from the start, there was not enough tolerance and the way of living was too different to cope with the other.

Things you need to have in mind at the moment of finding a flatmate.

I am (for a long shot) not the best adviser on this subject as I shared my place only once and the result was terrible... but, based on my experience:

All parts involved need to understand that privacy is going to be an issue.
Respect has to be a key element in this type of relationship. If you have your space and don't want somebody else trespassing it, then draw the line to define your preferences with the rest of the members.
Some common ground needs to be established. What expenses are you going to be paying and what's fair for all.
Be open about others ideas. If you don't share the same ideals or believes you don't have to insult others because of it.

Surviving Migraines

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 09:37:00 +0000

I know I haven’t been posting as I used to do before… and this post is not a vague excuse to attempt to restart my blogging habits.

You might be asking yourself, how are migraines related to migrating to Australia?

The answer is quite simple, I suffer migraines and this is my experience of the medical treatment even since I got to Australia and my current status.

One of the migraine monsters in my head - by Migraine Chick

A little bit of context is needed, right? In case you don’t want to read it (as it might be longer than expected) jump further down to where it says “shall we move onto the actual post?” where I am relating the one thing it has stopped (or at least have under control) my migraine attacks.

Well… wanted or not here it goes.

I am a migraine victim, have been ever since I turned 7 years and I can still remember that first one like it happened yesterday.

I was sitting in the living room couch watching T.V (we used to have dinner at 6p.m) while waiting for dinner when out of nowhere bright orbs appeared in front of me. Scared of it (as I thought I was going crazy) went running to mom to tell her what was going on but her reply at the moment was that I had enough T.V, giving the sign to stay close to her in the kitchen as she was going to finish up cooking to serve dinner.

My dad was not around; he was either at a party or travelling and my sister was with the door shut closed in her bedroom listing to music; music that I could hear from the kitchen getting mixed with the noise of the frying pan scratching the surface of the cook, and the small radio my mom had hidden under the table with that little bit of static it never went away, and the T.V still making those extremely loud noises (unintelligible from where I was). Every single sound was getting increasingly loud and I was getting increasingly annoyed by every single one of them.

A spoon slipped from my mom’s hand, hitting the ground… to me it was like millions of spoons emanating a hideous high frequency getting to my nerves… the BOM BOM noise coming from my sis bedroom was too much to bare! Stood up, went to her bedroom and hit the door as hard as I could, open it wide. A very stupid move as the noise of the wood vibrating against the frame amplified my bad mood. Told her to turn off the damned noise! That it was too loud! Obviously she was upset and slammed the door in my face right away yelling ‘GET OUT OF MY ROOM!’

At this point I was very cranky, more than I usually was, walked to the kitchen to tell on Vanessa’s behaviour but when I looked up to see my mom’s face the light was too bloody bright and my head was starting to hurt badly. Asked her why did she changed the light bulbs, these ones were too bright and my head was starting to hurt! (rational thought of a kid: "lights seems brighter.. mom changed bulbs.. obviously!")

My mom looked at me with a puzzled face and told me “Here! Give it a try on this and tell me if you think I need a bit more salt…” Took the spoon with a little bit of stew, the vapour with the aroma got to my face and my stomach went mental! The nausea stroke hard, making me chunder right away causing panic on my mom.

“Are you alright? Did you hit your head? What do you feel?”

I told her that my head was hurting because of Vanessa’s loud music, her spoon hitting the floor, the radio static, the T.V, the bright light and the awful smell of the food (worst thing to say to my mom - the cook).

She understood right away what was going on, went around the kitchen turning off everything and closing the doors. Took a piece of cloth and placed it on my ears while asking “Is that better?” I nodded but my head was painfully heavy now.

She took a bag, filled it up with cold water and placed it on my neck asking again “how does that feels?” It was better; I could feel my cold blood going up my neck, into my skull alleviating the sharp pain on the side of my head. Went to my sister’s room, ordering her to turn off the music as I was having a headache, proceeding then to escort me to her bedroom tell me to wait there for an hour.

Laying on her bed I could feel knives scratching the surface of my skull… trying to get out unsuccessfully… I could tell time was going by as I was listening clinks at the dining table and my mom popping every now and then into her room with a glass of cold water for me to drink it. Eventually the clinking stopped my sister said her good nights going to bed and my mom coming in with another glass of water and a couple of aspirins.

“Take these, you will feel better in no time!” whilst taking a sit close to me, caressing my hair… I told her to stop as I could hear my hair making strange noises against my skull… I think I even told her not to touch me at all as every interaction was painful. She stood up, took the bag with now warm water going to the kitchen to fetch more cold water, placing the now cold bad back on my neck telling to try to sleep as it was late. Turned to take a look of the time and it was two in the morning… I could feel as the pain was coming stronger and the cold sensation of my blood getting into my head had stopped.

I stood up heading to the fridge and took a jar of cold water pouring it on my head. The water was exceptionally cold but I could feel again the easing sensation. Took a bunch of ice cubes, put it on a towel and walked back into the room. Told my mom that I was going to use it as a pillow (having my neck placed straight on the ice cubes) and stood there for a couple of minutes until my body decided to let go and feel asleep.

Woke up again with the pulsating sharp pain, soaked wet with my mom on my side, turned around to look at the time and it was 5 in the morning. My mom woke up as well as asked me “how do you feel champ?” to what I replied “Mom? Am I dying? Why isn’t the pain going away?”... I was not trying to be dramatic with that statement I was feeling my head about to explode, my eyes pushing outwards and an intense pain going through every centimetre of my body; I had broken bones before that an this was way more intense than anything else I had suffer up to that day.

She stood up, dressed me up and took me to E.R. One hour later I was completely sedated going back home to sleep for the next 10 hours.

Ever since then the “crisis” (migraine attack phase) because worst and for longer periods of times getting to the critical point of 9 months straight with the same migraine, forgetting what it was "not to have" migraines. At that moment doctors had me reduce my diet to just few things (rice and boiled chicken with no salt... that is grey rubber chicken... YUM!), getting my blood stable and start all over again to continue with tests. At school my classmates got used to call me “migraine boy” (like the MTV character) whenever I was moody as they knew what was going on; finding a new drug that worked for the next two to three months to then started research for the next one. I spent so much time at the doctor that I got increasingly skeptic any new drug was going to work for a longer period of time and decided to just “survive “ the migraine episodes as I was not going to put my entire life on hold because of it. Eventually a doctor found a good combination of drugs (a mixture of fluoxetine a brain oxygenation drugs and rizatriptan) that worked for two years in a row and gave me enough drugs to continue while I got everything back on track in Australia.

What happened to the migraine once I got to Australia?

Shortly after my arrival I decided to pay a visit to the local drug store with my prescription (written on English) just to find out the prescription had to be written by an Australian doctor… Thinking it wasn’t going to be too much hassle to go to the doctor and get a new recipe I waited until my medication ran out and had to get a new batch… But for some strange reason my migraines disappeared for almost one year… Don’t know what was it: change of environment? Was it the fresher air? Or was it the decrease of stress in comparison to America?

Eventually (motivated for a pretty strong flu) went to the GP with the assumption he/she was going to take my previous recipe and generate a new one but his response was “until you don’t have a migraine episode we are not going to do anything… For all I know your migraines might be gone! If you get an episode give it a try to the any headache drug and see how it goes”

Inevitably the day came; I was at the office when everything started happening quite fast. First the light orbs, then the noise and the light. I was going through my things trying to find the Tylenol and Ibuprofen as fast as I could but it was useless… It took about 15 minutes that I could recognise as the prodromal and the aura phase (early stages of migraine) before the attack phase started doing its own thing. My mates at work saw me and told me to go home as soon as I could but again… it was useless, the bloody migraine lasted four entire days.

Went to the GP on the second day to ask for the fluoxetine and the rizatriptan prescription, getting as response an extensive inquiry of why I wanted to do with those drugs. The doctor was refusing to provide me with the prescription even though I told him to contact my previous doctor in Venezuela to get his diagnosis providing me with quotes of “I find extremely suspicious you got here with this ‘alleged’ bad migraine attack… You could be addicted to these drugs, using the excuse of migraine to request for your doze. Let’s do a ‘clean up’ phase to verify if you really have migraine to then continue with whatever drugs you used to have. But I am going to tell you… fluoxetine is not for migraines and is highly addictive!”

Finding a good doctor is hard and bad doctors are not easy to spot as this fellow.

He sent me home with a panadol box (the weakest thing you could probably imagine) that did nothing that entire day; feeling pretty bad decided to go to a different GP and explain everything yet again while the migraine was happening (that was on day three). Taking a deep look on myself and asking me when was the last time I used those drugs, the doctor decided to give me codeine the stop the migraine entirely, leaving me to rest with a different drug and comeback to me with a fresh mind without the attack episode full on.

It took a while (almost four months) until the doctor allowed me to go back to rizatriptan giving me a prescription indicating how to dispense the drug to me with limitations (as the rizatriptan may cause renal impairment) working for a while… but then, with my marriage failing, depression striking hard and stress migraines came back with or without the rizatriptan; my life was utterly miserable as the migraine was affecting everything I did. I had to move on and continue searching for alternatives.

Every now and then headaches went away, enough time to allow me to ride my bicycle and exercise, losing weight as I was moving into a healthier diet based entirely on eating the way it should be (heavy breakfast, medium lunch, and light dinner without anything that might be metabolized as sugar).

Even still migraine continued to strike every time it could.

Note: my experience with healthcare in Australia has been a mixture of good and bad experiences. Dealing with migraines has been a nightmare as most GPs will discard your symptoms and assume you want to take drugs just for the hell of it. It may well be a problem with the migraine itself as anybody who suffered a strong headache says “I suffer migraines” without any medical report actually assessing the condition, or maybe there is a hidden problem to which I am completely unaware and Australians try to get any kind of renal impairment drugs just to get more kick out of a beer; honestly I doubt the last one. I am going to continue telling my experiences with medicare later on as I have to comment on my knees surgery.

But that is enough boring history about my migraines… Shall we move onto the actual post?

The real reason why I have got to this post is to comment on a new treatment I am following and it has proven (at least on myself) extremely promising. More or less seven (7) months ago I started taking magnesium as daily supplement and most of my nasty episodes (attacks) have stopped or became completely manageable.

Shortly after my knee surgery a friend (later on my girl) went home to take care of me as I was unable to walk freely when see commented out about an article (and book) she happened to stumble upon saying how effective the magnesium was against migraines and some muscular related diseases. I was quite skeptic about this efficiency as I had multivitamins for long periods of time and couldn’t find anything satisfactory about it (related to migraines)… so another daily supplement wasn’t going to be helping me to deal with my migraines… or so I thought.

Went online to read about this miracle cure she was speaking of, finding dozens of articles about people being treated with one high doze per day to remove magnesium deficiencies have found as a lucky side effect an effective migraine prevention tool… I was still skeptic as I couldn’t find any medical paper indicating such discoveries but in a state where I agreed to read a book about it and eventually was informed enough to give it a try (which I am going to describe below) and after one month my frequent migraine went away. Up to this day there have been just three episodes of migraine and all of them have been under control in matters of hours.

Now, I have to add a disclaimer: I read lots of articles and two books about magnesium and migraines (one other book after I started treating myself) and I must say it is not a magical solution for everybody although it might help making you feel better overall. Nevertheless the magnesium is an important component of our body; you have nothing to lose by giving it a try.

What do I do? Where to start?

First thing… check with your doctor in case you have some condition that prevents you from having magnesium. Then find the right type of magnesium for you and you have to be patience, migraines will not go away after two days (although it will go pretty fast).

There are several things you need to know about magnesium before use it as treatment… that is the main reason of why you need to find the right one for you.

The magnesium has laxative effects if your body doesn’t process it so you better do the trial when you know you will have a bathroom at your disposal. Because of this same reason you don’t start with a full on full doze.

Lots of food contains magnesium... but is hard to absorb by the body.
You might need to use supplements.

Another thing I found out reading papers and books: magnesium and calcium does not mix because of a very weird thing our body does… This is important to know as the magnesium will be more effective when your digestive system doesn’t have calcium (that includes dairy products, calcium tablets and multivitamins… especially multivitamins!!).

What type of magnesium is right for me?

Magnesium as such is a mineral… pretty tough for our digestive system (in fact, most of the times it goes in and out of your body without being absorbed) and because of that is mixed with different types of transporting substances to may have different behaviours on each of us.

Look up online the differences between each of the magnesium listed below, but have in mind that pretty cheap magnesium powder or pill are usually made with cheap poor transports that doesn’t really work.

Magnesium Orotate (Excellent source of magnesium)
Magnesium Amino Acid Chelate (Pretty good as well)
Magnesium Citrate (Low in magnesium but is absorbed almost entirely)
Magnesium Chloride (good)
Magnesium Lactate (Is moderately good, but you have to avoid it if you have kidney problems)
Magnesium Glycinate, Malate, Taurate (this is the only source of magnesium that can be mixed with calcium)
Magnesium Sulfate (this is one of those that are pretty cheap)
Magnesium Carbonate (The CHEAPEST you can get… pretty bad as supplement… excellent as a laxative)
Magnesium Oxide (this is also known as magnesia, it can prevent reflux and be used as a laxative… but isn’t great as a supplement)

Here you can find a bit more description of the types of magnesium or here.

Which one was right for me?

I don’t know if the brand is important… but the one I am using at the moment has a mixture of Magnesium orotate and amino acid chelate as the main components followed by Chloride and Taurate and small quantities of magnesium oxide. It cost close to 60 bucks per 300 grams every three to four months (about 3 grams a day).

Ok, I bought it… now what?

The recommendation is to start with small quantities. If the container says “take 2 grams twice a day” you will take 1 gram just once… checking your tolerance for a week or two after which you may want to increase slightly the amount to continue checking the tolerance, eventually you will hit the limit indicated by the container. Avoid calcium two hours before or one hour after having the magnesium, that is avoid dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt or any good source of calcium).

Any mineral or vitamin is best absorbed during the morning, given the magnesium is hard enough to get in your system, try having it early in the morning with fruits and plenty of water. Avoid multivitamins as well as all of those have calcium in it.

How do I know if I am doing it correctly?

If you are having it in the morning (as I am doing it) having at least two glasses of water (one glass of just water and another glass with the magnesium in it) you will notice it in your pee colour as it will be pale in colour (or almost transparent)... assuming you pee many times a day.

If you pee is bright yellow it means the mineral was flushed away from your body as it was blocking some other process and needed to be removed from the system. That was one of the first things I learnt about multivitamins… all of them suck as you bought something to have an expensive wee.

If after a while (three weeks) you don’t notice any significant reduction of your migraines intensity or frequency then the magnesium might not be helping.

Final words of this post

I must say, I was quite skeptical the magnesium was going to free me of migraines… and even though I had three other migraines on the last seven months I am quite happy I gave it a try and that it works.

Finding the right one can be unpleasant (one of the blends I tried made me very gassy and another one had a terrible taste) nevertheless it was better than having migraines every week for three or four days.

I had to adjust my diet to fit the magnesium in a spot where I was not going to be having any dairy products (such as cheese or milk) for a period of time of three hours but is not impossible (and definitely not a sacrifice).

If you suffer of migraines I will recommend you to give it a try as well.

Cheers

Lessons to be learned from the Venezuelan situation

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 07:24:00 +0000

Many people of first world nations think about the third world as a series of slums/poorly coordinated nations directed by a bunch of dictators; the stereotypical representation of a banana republic... and I know, I know... generalisations are usually wrong but the idea with this post is to share my point of view of those lessons rich/developed nations should always take into consideration about small societies from the third world.

I have come a long way from Venezuela to be here but every time I try to compare the States, Australia and Venezuela I notice clear differences between its societies... as well as the dangers hidden in the state of the well being.

Trying to explain these points of similarities and hidden dangers I am going to use three short phrases to state the obvious (yet so many times forgotten in the past).

Nothing lasts forever - Anonymous
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity - Albert Einstein
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people - Martin Luther King Jr.

Three great phrases everybody has to remember every time they look up onto the depth of the sky, breathing fresh air (well... as fresh as you could get) enjoying every single bit instant of freedom.

Why? You may ask...

Well... let me take you through a small tale, introducing as I go along each of these phrases... How about if I tell you:

Once upon a time there was a young boy, sitting in front of a cliff facing the ocean, thinking to himself “How marvellous earth is... creating something as beautiful as this scenery where the waves crushes against the walls of the cliff, bursting with foam and sounds and colours! Marvellous indeed because I could take a seat every day and enjoy such a wonderful permanent painting in motion as it is!”

Eventually the young boy grew up, he became a man with a family to maintain; moved to a bigger brighter place to be happy and work until one day... when he was old and grey decided to come back to his favourite place to contemplate this painting once more... but this time he couldn’t find the cliff in front of the ocean; instead a beautiful beach laid in front of his eyes and he couldn’t believe it.

“Where did the small mountain go? Am I at the right place?” – He could definitely tell he was where the mountain used to be as it was located in front of his town; the very same between the valleys and neither the valleys nor the town had moved. At that moment he understood the waves were not just making sounds on each coming hitting the wall; it was eroding the rock little by little; imperceptibly until it disappeared completely into the white foam of the sea.

Don't fool yourself taking things for granted

Hence, “Nothing lasts forever” or as any old Venezuelan granny would say “nobody will suffer a sickness for hundred years... neither the sickness will be that strong nor the victim will endure it that long” but you could apply the same logic and reverse the direction, instead of something bad like a disease it could be: “well being won’t last forever”

If you are an optimist this shocks you (although you might think is obvious at this point), like a cold bucket of water thrown at you while sleeping forcing you to wake up.

But why does it apply to me (that I live in the States, Canada, UK, Australia or whatever)?

Because of a bitch called entropy.

A bloody attribute of our universe that states everything has certain level of chaos that can’t be taken away, only displaced to a different system in order to create a temporary state of order.

This is the chaos star (designed by Snoopydoo) the perfect symbol of chaos.
The symbol represents forces pushing outwards of a circle (not on this drawing) breaking the balance of things.

It means that if your country wants to be rich with well coordinated society and high standards of living it has to take all the unwanted things and dump it somewhere, as well as take the wealth out of somewhere else (lands, producers, markets... the money has to come from somewhere, right?).

(Sigh...) I wish that picture would be just that simple but no!... entropy tells you as well if you want to preserve that ordered state, you will need to constantly use energy to push that chaos away from your ordered system.

The Yin/Yang symbol represents the balance...
but in order to maintain it both parts needs to swim around each other.
(Drawn by Chinese Ranger)

Well... first world nations achieved (via hard work, war, battles and education) an ordered system where each citizen contributes to maintain the order by being polite with their neighbours, participating into political, economical, social and scientific aspects of it all; while those of the third world are struggling to gain that fine balance needed to succeed as a rich and developed nation. Look at it as every citizen is an agent of order or chaos, if you do your part the order is maintained but if you don’t, little by little, just like the waves crushing against the walls of that cliff, the energy used to maintain the system ceases to circulate, the system starts its slow degrade to its natural state of chaos, collapsing eventually the system.

But if people know this, they surely will keep doing their good work, right?

Prosperity makes people go blind... blinded by the illusion of well-being maintained over several generations until... one generation that doesn’t really remember the what or why of several rules and dropping it as “everything works as it should so why bother?”

There is when I remember the second phrase by Albert Einstein - two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.

Speechless...
Albert, you said it perfectly after you realised how humans used your discovery of the formula of energy to build bombs.

And true it is! Humans are a silly stupid race; instead of studying "why the weather is more extreme each year?" or "how can we all live better?" we sit down to discuss who is right and how's wrong? Is it really getting hotter or colder? What’s the secret agenda behind everything everybody does?

Instead of helping each other (as collaboration has been proved to be more effective than individual work) we sit down with pointing fingers, blaming whoever committed a mistake.

Instead of forcing ourselves into consider the implications of our acts we prefer to ignore certain situations and relay in others to solve any problem; to which my mind praises the third and last phrase of this post, wrote by Mr Martin Luther King Jr. - the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

And what of this ramble is related to Venezuela and how can we all learn about it?

Venezuela is a nation of wealth and natural beauty to such extent that it holds one third of world oil reserve with massive amounts of minerals (iron, copper, gold, titanium, etc) yet most people tend to forget their duties and responsibilities (such as voting in national elections or actively pursuing the truth), hoping for a messiahs of some kind to come down from heaven to take them to paradise without any kind of effort or sacrifice.
Venezuela is a country so dependent of its wealth that has forgotten it won't last forever and it has decided (actively) any kind of investment on any other source of income such as its people.
It has become a nation where its politics seek a way to secure power and become richer and faster without thinking of future generations, feeding chaos into the destruction cycle of those systems created by previous delegations of countrymen.

Is difficult not to establish a comparison between the Venezuela I knew and the nowadays Australia (the so called Land of Plenty), when walking down the streets I overheard somebody criticising the government followed by a "but you know what? I don't care... we will be fine." or when you turn on the TV and listen to people trying to 'protect' as much as they can the carbon industry of Australia because their retirement depends on it instead of proposing new ways to generate wealth or develop this nation... I know, I know... is not as bad as the rampant corruption, street gangs, daily violence and number of death Venezuela suffers at this moment... but my parents didn't think the current situation of the country that was known as "the Switzerland of America".

Here comes the ultimate lesson to learn: all it takes is you to do nothing to contribute on the destruction of order. Do you take your part as an agent of chaos? Or do you try to maintain the order by teaching morale, ethics and the importance of good education to future generations?

Still think the voice of just one person doesn't make a difference? Take a look to the following video...

This man opposed the mark of tanks with just groceries on his hands.

This man stood in front of tanks regardless to everybody else's comment, hiding from the scary barrel of the tower of the tank.

This man became history because his will dictated his actions.

We might need to do less if we all chip in...

Think about it.

Cheerios!

The new sparkle of life…

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 01:19:00 +0000

Just minutes ago, my family has grown a tad more with my newest nephew’s birth: Leonardo David. I still don’t have any photos and I couldn’t be there for obvious reasons but I sent from here all the love I can for the newest member of my family :)

My family picks names because of different reasons, is a tradition… our names are meant to represent our personality, charisma and illusions for the future ahead.

In this case, Leonardo (strong as the lion) David (beloved) will be a strong of character person who will be loving and beloved by his peers.

Now... this blog post is for him, hopefully you will read it when you are old enough to understand this words.

I would love to introduce you people you share name with, and hopefully will inspire you in life to be the greatest on whatever you want to be.

Meet Leonardo Da Vinci:

Probably the guy that has the most influence on your mother (besides your father)...
Leonardo Da Vinci

We don’t expect you to be the next Leonardo Da Vinci, although I am sure your genius, creativity and intelligence will be a fantastic addition to the world.

Leonardo dared to go beyond anybody of his time,
to dream incredible machines,
to create mind blowing contraptions that changed the world forever
and keep changing in it inspiring thousands.

Meet Leonardo Fibonacci:

Take him as mentor, challenge the world with your curiosity!

I don’t know if you are going to be good with numbers as Leonardo Fibonacci (although it runs in our veins the thirst of science and the curiosity) but certainly the way you will see the world will be amazing and we will love you whatever you decide your path is going to be.

Fibonacci looked more than plain beauty on things...
He saw how things grow and replicate themselves..
He thought in a way to explain the beauty of the world using mathematics because
he dreamed to challenge his imagination

Finally be noble, strong and courageous as King David:

Highly probable to be a misdirection from the actual image of David...
But angels will come down to watch over you.

But I know you will be strong enough to fight your demons and vanquish the giants lying on your path, just like King David.

I also know you are extremely loved and this will continue for as long as we have blood running though our veins, air filling up our lungs and strength to protect you with our heart.

Welcome to this blue marvel, orbiting around the star we call sun on this vast
and amazing universe.

Welcome to this wonderful planet my dear nephew, it has some bumps and is not on its prime because we have been sloppy and careless... but certainly is beautiful and full of joy; my arms aren’t long enough to hug you from where I am but my love will definitely reach the deepest regions of the cosmos to bring you all the very best.

Trilogy Time

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Have you ever felt identified with a book, TV series or movie?

In my case I have felt identified lately with How I Met Your Mother because I found myself going through certain aspects of my life and can’t help to notice similarities between my Ted’s emotional state and mine own.

Ted is the kind of guy who is always trying to find the bright and romantic side of the story, filling with hope every corner of his mind with his dream girl yet reality hit him straight on his face every now and then to remind him how life really works and to stand up and keep looking forward, remembering the details of his life to later on tell the story to his kids.

In a way, I am Ted; loving the story telling and trying to compose it in such detail a matter that the audience enjoys it as if they are watching my life on their minds.

Although I don't plan to tell my kids the story of
everything girl in my life...

That doesn’t explain the title of this post, does it?

Trilogy Time is How I Met Your Mother’s 20th episode of the season 7 where Marshall, Ted and Barney agreed to watch Star Wars trilogy every three years just to imagine at the end of it how their lives will be different in three years time. As for me there is no trilogy to watch on my comfortable couch but it is a time to remember the sacrifices I have done over the time to achieve part of my dreams.

If you don't watch Star Wars at least every three years... the dark side wins!

Three years ago I was for the very first time taking my first breath in Australia, waiting for friends to pick us up (Kathy and I) at the airport to then enjoy the rest of the day waiting for the night to arrive and finally, give some space where to rest our exhausted/jet lagged bodies.

Three years ago I took a seat in the balcony looking west as nightfall came upon us gazing at the starry sky, trying to understand this familiar yet different celestial vault; searching for the location of Orion’s belt, Southern Cross, Arcturus, Vega and then Spica (my favourite stars).

Three years ago I couldn’t imagine the types of changes I was going to go through neither the challenges I was going to be facing. My dreams were different to those I have now and definitely there have been changes I couldn’t foresee...

But... three years ago Australia gave me a marvellous sunset and an amazing night sky to allow me to energise for a new tomorrow and a new start.

That is, one thousand and ninety six days since I arrived to this fantastic place and I don’t regret any of it.

Three years full of stress, sadness, happiness... but nevertheless...
Three years of pure awesomeness.

So... What is 2015 going to look like?

Short answer, I don’t know... but whatever it is... is going to be amazing!

Keep posted cuz more is coming ;)

Friendships: those new and those old...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 04:27:00 +0000

These last three years in Australia have been amazing on different areas and well... different on certain other aspects.

Australia gave me personal satisfaction towards my work as I am working with a group of smart and capable people motivating me to deliver my best most of times; even though my personal life has taken a severe change and the company culture has been changing towards a more corporate/ less creative environment.

Another thing I noticed (and I couldn’t appreciate it when I was in Venezuela) was how close some of my friends really are to me... and when I talk about friends I am referring to the real friends, those that remembers the best of you out of the hard/awful times.

Finally it brought me internal peace from those last seven years in Venezuela (and a few more in here) of charged tribulation, tension and uncertainty of the direction of the country, my relationship and work.

Internal peace brings clarity of judgement, allowing me to see things clearly looking back in time so I can reconsider past behaviour and how I reacted to some of it. It enabled me to self discovery to find spots of improvement instead of plain self critic.

Up to this point, I want to expose something very personal I have found of myself over the last couple of weeks. I am not the kind of people trying to be friend of everybody as most of times I felt I couldn’t communicate with others effectively, wondering constantly if people understood what I was trying to say; making me a very stubborn and insecure person trying to cope with the rest of society just to blend in (regardless to the reasons of why this insecurities took place in my head and my heart). So... for me it was extremely difficult to recognise love or concern others felt for me.

The relationship friends develop over time are not subject of discussion between the members of the friendship; they just know you could count on them for anything in times of need and the friendship is never put under the microscope to find the little cracks, to later on exploit it to tear it down... If they do, they are not your friends.

So based on that definition I got to admit... I was a pretty lousy ‘friend’ as I was constantly evaluation people around me in terms of how much damage they could do to me (psychologically) if I let them get in my ‘comfort zone’... but eventually you meet people that really likes you and wants you to see it even though you might try to push them away as you feel vulnerable as you start caring for them. To me, these special people were four friends I meet over several years that I meet in primary school or university.

To all four of them I tried to convince to come Down Under with me. To all four I invested a considerable amount of time to explain to them the benefits of moving here as I was trying to decide the path I wanted to follow and how I wanted this people to be part of my life. Sadly I couldn’t convince them all; one of them lives in Denmark and the other still lives in Venezuela but struggles to take the decision as she is pretty close to her family.

But two of them decided to take the leap and join me in this marvellous adventure. At least I wasn’t going to be moving for long by myself with any extended family.

They are not as close as I would love to...
Hello finger... give me a big hug!

But I knew I couldn’t move to Australia without more contacts or support from other people and what’s better than finding a common goal to relate to others?

That’s how ‘The Aussie Neighbor’ and this blog were created, or at least the reasoning behind the impulse of sharing ideas over the Internet with strangers/anonymous/mates/friends; I wanted to meet new people with goals in common to myself (at least common enough to envision a life in the Land of Oz) and feel connected to something a bit bigger than my lonely journey.

That is how I met my new family and friends... that is how I got to open up to others without judging them in terms of how much I was going to suffer in case of misunderstanding (because I do care about people around me and their interactions).

These people were an essential part of me when I need them the most. They decided to support me even though I was shutting down; grieving my problems while failing to comprehend how it all went down that path... and it was when I understood the phrase:

“Remember that the darkest hour of all is the hour before dawn”

Despair and fear blocks your sight but even though everything looks grim, your friends will help you out to stand on your own two feet while dawn starts to show its true colours.

To all of them: the new and the old ones thank you!

I am truly and deeply grateful of having such great people around me.

The beginning of brand new dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 13:12:00 +0000

Warning! I might be using profanities a tad. You have been warned.

This post was going to be a series of post (seven posts to be precise) where I was going to be describing a number of different events happening in my life on these last four/five-ish months.

But after careful and detailed reading I noticed I was providing a story telling that I could be selling later on to CBS for a series of the episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

For those of you who don’t know anything about the TV series I have the following phrase:

Samuel L Jackson tone of voice: You piece of shit, what the fuck do you motherfucking think you doin? Get the fuck out of here and watch how I bang many bitches ‘til I got stuck with your mom! Then get you sorry ass here motherfucka!

Get the fuck out of here!

Without Samuel’s tone of voice: “Please, watch the How I Met Your Mother then come back”.

In any case, I don’t have more than eight (or more) years to tell you about how I met Kathy before things went to hell and we decided to split up... so she is not your mother... and is not auntie Robin...

Spoiler alerts! Oops... too late!

I know! I know... By now your eyes are going back to the same paragraph above to detect the joke or the misspelled word that changes the interpretation of the content...

No... I am not joking...

Stop going back to the same paragraph, damn it! Is not going to magically change to say “Foool you!” Notice how the title of the blog, the author and everything else changed!

It is true, Kathy and I have decided to hit separated roads and keep moving forward just not together.

How did this happen?

Shit happens.

Is only takes a moment to understand when things aren’t going as you expected and another to open up your mouth and say the words.

But before those two moments there a huge number of difficulties, troubles, and fights nobody has to know! Still all these factors contributed to get to the point where you don’t love as you used to and there is no turn back.

In our case, we grew apart, love stopped flowing and there was nothing else keeping us together.

What does it mean?

It means that eventually I am going to explain how to get a divorce in Australia.

It means that I have some good advices (even though I have shared tons of my wisdom related to this topic) and observations that could apply to anyone; not just those planning to move to Australia.

But my dreams are mostly unchanged.

I will still have a beautiful family that I am going to make extremely happy one day, providing plenty of love and I will still live down under, where the women glow and the men chunder! Just that those dreams aren’t with Kathy anymore.

Why am I telling part of my story?

When you move to a new environment there is always the risk things don’t go the way you planned. But more importantly, many people think they are on this on their own... And that is not true at all.

I was lucky I got enough support (because of my depression and my separation) to get things going to feel better, calmer and hopeful about the future. Otherwise I would have got stuck for quite a while without being able to understand in totality next couple of steps to get on top of this situation.

I overheard at some point the number of divorces from families coming from overseas is close to 50% after many years.

The reason?

Yourself and your partner will have each other to deal with situations, problems and find comfort in general... but after a while those little things you used to find annoying about your partner start being more notorious, irritating and possibly unbearable.

Now... can you imagine if you already had issues with your partner and decide to jump the pond? There will be only two different outputs; you will get closer or not, hence 50%.

So... if you are going through a similar situation and need to talk about it, I am here to try to help you out as somebody helped me. My comments are moderated at the moment so if you want to publish your comment and not make it public just let me know and I will keep it to myself, leave your email to reply to you though.

Words of advice

I have said before, if you have problems with your family: be aware you could be stepping into the final stage of the decline of your marriage (it doesn’t matter if you are newlywed). Moving to a different country, different culture often implies more stress that has to be dealt somehow; otherwise you will be extremely unhappy.

In my case, I applied pressure on Kathy to commit to this decision (move to Australia) which thankfully none of us regret it. I was decided from the start to migrate with or without her... and eventually she excluded herself from this recipe. I will continue my process by myself and she will continue by her own means. The moral is: are you ready to take this kind of decision knowing the risk?

Finally (but not least), I don’t regret my time with Kathy (even though I have to recognise at the end I was extremely miserable) as she provided me the support I needed to fight for the future I always wanted but didn’t know if I was strong enough to achieve it.

Also I have got a clear panorama of the things I want to get in life. I want a beautiful girl that sees me for what I am, likes it and is willing to share herself, her love and her thoughts with me as willing to grow with me in every possible way, provide me feedback to be better for her, for me, for our family. I want her to show me what's the real thing of being utterly in love. I want to make this girl as happy as I can, to love her to the fullest.

My singing is terrible... but I will tune this song everyday just for her.

So... ladies... that means I am open for business and the higher bidder will take it all and all I’ve got to offer. I am not going to make a ‘As Seen On TV’ sort of joke as that stuff tends to break after a little while and I am built to endure whatever you want ;)

Cheers and until the next post.

Over and OUT!

Getting out of depression

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 05:18:00 +0000

The following post reflects one reason of why I haven’t been around as frequent as I would like to or why I haven’t been publishing more photos for a while...

This last year has been very difficult for me (emotionally speaking) causing me distress, sadness and frustration; leading me to a profound state of depression and low self-value. The cause of it I will have to keep it to myself for a bit longer as there are topics of it that I still need to work out, digest and process.

Now, I know is difficult to detect the subtle yet visible trail of my depression over the last year because I tend to use to great extent satire and sarcasm as part of a defensive mechanism to guard me from a painful reality... but at the end you got to understand where you are standing, facing the truth that you have been unable to solve situations the way you want it to be solved and accept that you need of someone else to get you out of it.

Up to just seven to ten weeks ago I couldn’t recognise that I was deep in depression that was affecting my life and that I needed desperately to do something about it, starting a recovering process to a more stable version of myself.

Is hard to get out of a dark place with your eyes are closed.
Image by Brandon Rechten

It wasn’t until I went to Canberra to visit a childhood friend of mine that I was pointed out of this issue; it took to him no time to understand something was off with me, asking a series of subtle questions about my mood, behaviour, eating and resting patterns. Puzzled about the causality of my depression (as I am strong/stable personality) he tried to point me out my problem without a direct confrontation as he thought I was unable to handle it at the moment, keeping frequently in touch the next two weeks, worried I might try something stupid.

But after a short period of time something happened, leaving me totally exposed to this situation to which he called me once more to tell me to get professional help. I couldn’t discard his pleads as he was utterly concerned about my well-being and I was starting to realise he might have been right on calling me almost every day; I had touched rock bottom.

Next thing to do was to indicate the situation at the office (to my boss) trying to appeal to his understanding as I was struggling to get things going on a positive note. He told me to talk to him in person, try to deal the situation without me being uncomfortable and provide a series of advises that I was meant to follow. I don’t think that I have acknowledged to him that I am really grateful for understanding my position and give me those comments.

There were more people critical for my recovery; one of them was my good friend and co-worker that I share desk with and a Venezuelan friend that lived though a similar situation that I was living (apart from the depression). The two of them took a big chunk of their time to be there and listen out everything that I needed to say, just like a security valve I was letting everything out, venting my problems, getting feedback about it and trying to be objective about what things I needed to take control of and what things to let go.

The next following weeks were of intense work on me, stabilising my emotions and getting into rhythm; talking my issues out with friends and therapists, understanding the origin of it all, getting priorities in which I am number one and letting things go.

It may be painful at first... but letting things go is the best approach you could assume on destructive situations.

In any case, I am a lot better now, capable of writing this post to check against myself (and my future self) to keep in line and remind me that I need to flush stress and sadness on time before everything goes dark.

I wanted to share my story as well... to expose what I think it was useful to me and to be able to connect to some others in the same situation.

There are early symptoms which you will be able to detect if you or someone you know is suffering from depression.

Is not just being sad all the time, is an entire attitude towards your day to day that changes gradually dragging you down bits and pieces until you hit the critical zone. Depression appears because of multiple causes but one common cause is the inability to resolve a situation that causes frustration, anger or sadness for a long period of time.

In any case, you might be suffering of depression if:

If you think there is no much point of getting out of bed or performing daily activities.
If you struggle to focus on activities and you are easily diverted for topics of conversation.
If your daily diet is invariant most of days, you probably don’t care and you have stopped eating properly (over or under eating).
If you have lack of decision taking and leave everyone else to take decisions for you to prevent conflicts, or because you are unable to made your mind toward one option or the other.
If you can’t find anything gratifying or positive about your day or the activities you have performed during the day, every single day.

Does many of these items apply to someone you know? In that case get help and talk to someone about your problems. Try to vent out the steam, get out and walk, exercise, spend time with friends.

Do you still have a hard time to get on the right foot? Then try to following:

List good things of your day: creating a daily list enumerating those things you liked about your day gives you perspective and motivation to go on. For yourself to write it with at least certain amount of items; it could contain from ‘I liked my cereal this morning... marshmallows are the best’ to ‘I have manage to deal with X situation at work, getting my boss to like the outcome at the end of the day’, from ‘the night tonight has lots of stars’ to ‘I have run 2 extra kilometres this morning’. Force yourself to positive and each day you will find a new reason to keep it up.

Get distracted: if the problem follows you anywhere you go, then try to distract yourself by meeting new people, going to galleries, museums, beaches, parks or movies... Chill out! There will be a good portion of it where your brain isn’t trying to psychoanalyse your situation, giving you a second breath of air to continue moving forward.

Stay clean: Alcohol and/or drugs aren’t good advisors and are not a good source of distraction (as you will find out sooner or later that you are losing more than what you get out of it).

Recognise the support from friends and family: is easy to fell into the trap ‘I am the one with the problem, I will work it out’ but in reality there are people willing to take a seat an listen to the things you got to say without judging; they might give you some critics but embrace it and improve out of it as they meant to help you get through the situation. Close friends will not overlook details and they won’t give a critic that you won’t be able to handle.

Be honest with yourself: ask if you are happy with the situation, if you are willing to change anything to feel better with yourself and recognise you have a problem that needs to be solved. Being in a dark place is not easy and bad ideas will pop out of the wilderness of the dark regions.

Get resolution to your issues: facing your problems will be the hardest and the last thing you will do to fully recover. You will need closure of that feeling, be ready to accept any outcome and then face the problem.

Force yourself to do things: have you ever seen ‘Yes man!’? No? Watch it! Is not a great movie but the idea is fantastic. Apply it to your life; every piece of the puzzle will start to fall into its right place.

Cheers and till next time.

Changes ahead

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:06:00 +0000

As you might notice by now… I have not being really active on my blog these last several weeks (more than a Month now) and I would like to let you know that there are a bunch of changes I need to announce… but not at the moment.

Sometimes we don't have a way to indicate changes like this sign...

I have been working on a bunch of posts; most of it is personal stuff and some other is unfinished material that I need to publish really soon.

I am not closing or ignoring my blog (as some people have indicated to me), I am just unable to publish as many things as I have written.

I am sorry and I will be publishing something really soon.

Thanks for reading.

Comments demography

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 13 May 2012 10:31:00 +0000

I have always found fascinating the freedom assumed by people when commenting on blogs, because few words could reveal big aspects of their personality. Even more interesting you is start finding common characteristics on each of the comments, creating a demographic group or categorisation of the commenters...

WARNING: if you are susceptible and might suspect that I am going to be indiscreet, please... stop reading now and assume this post never existed.

For instance, there is the buddy type of comment as the following:

"Duuuuuuuuude! [Small opinion about the current topic is inserted in here]. [Best wishes or small observation trying to be polite goes here] [Optionally their nickname]"

Here is the dude... No idea what am I talking about? Get some pop culture first and then come back.

This kind of comments usually comes from friends.

Note: ‘Dude’ could be replaced by an ‘hey’, ‘Hi’, ‘Mate’, ‘congrats’, ‘I am sorry that’, ‘I think that’ or ‘HAHAHAHA’ (depending on a painful experience shared on the blog), and it is totally optional.

You could also find the "I have never read your blog, but I want to ask something and don’t want my intervention to sound as a desperate way to get the info without reading heaps of your rambling" comment type as the following:

"Hello [blog author name here]! I have been reading your blog for a long time (undefined period of time is a must) but I have never written anything! Congratulations on [anything relevant on the current post]... I would like to get in contact with you and my email is [blah-blah-blah@blah.com]. Cheers!"

Some are straight on their interests by changing the last paragraph by "I have a question related to [topic of inquiry], could you send me the answer to my email?"

Note: they always... ALWAYS, will include their email account; that way they express their lack of interest on the blog; thus redirecting the conversation as further away as possible from it.

My blood heats up every time I found one of this in my blog... I mean seriously, if you don’t take the effort to read my posts, what makes you think that I want to waste more time writing something exclusively for you?

But then I come to my senses and end up writing a re-redirect comment with the link to the related blog post. I have met good people like this as well.

Another type of people is the fans (I was going to call them groupies, but to this day no one has offered me sex, so... no groupies for me) with comments as:

"Love your work... superb." Or

"Can’t wait to read your next post." Or

"Inspirational, live changing blog post about... polystyrene cups!" Or

"OMG! I never thought you could complete X, Y and Z so soon!... OMG! I will never change my underwear again... E.V.E.R A.G.A.I.N..."

And sometimes fan comments turns hilarious (and creepy) when they try to keep it cool:

“WOW, this post is F.A.N.T.A.S.T.I.C! That is fantastic!

... I mean... Great work!

I will be waiting your next post... Or not... whatever... is not like I am waiting for you to write anything...

Please write your next post soon...

... Please...

(...I love you...)”

Then you have trolls with their lack of taste type of comments as:

“Oh... you got to see the full moon? You are not as moron as I thought...”

Or “Oh... you got the Canon 60D? That piece of rubbish is not as good as I thought... Is too difficult and that is why I love my iPhone... and Instagram.”

Or “so you think getting job offers in a country where no one knows you is achieving a personal goal? How nice...”

To all of you... I don't really care about your comments and will be deleted.

Finally, spammers presented in many flavours... these are the one I hate the most and I can’t wait two minutes to report and delete it.

You could find the hide hideous link inside comment type: "Interesting blog, I have found it very useful in australian-visa-link,-click-here-and-you-die.com" (is there any reason why 95% of this comments comes from India?)

You could find the hide sexual content in comment type: "Australia is a beautiful place with lots of sexy gals, had to use massive-boner-pills.com to keep up with ultra-slutty-girl-with-big-tits-and-infected-vagina.com!" (Again, is there any reason why 80% of this comments comes from the US?)

And you could find the subtle sex ads: "VIAGRA VIAGRA!!! BOOBS, TITS, BIG COCK, VIAGRA at clandestine-and-probably-illegal-viagra-provider.com" (50% of this comes from china and 30% of it from the US).

So... what type of commenter are you?

Sad thing about my blogging habits

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:17:00 +0000

One of my biggest issues writing any post is me. I’ve written already close to sixteen posts about different topics and can’t get my head around it to make it interesting or just to get the courage to publish it.

But I have to ask myself: why? Is it because is open for critic? Or is it because I am sharing with the rest of the world the way I think and possibly sharing too much of my dark passenger.

Erm... not this kind of dark passenger...
(image property of wordans)

Well... the blog is a dairy to me where translate and order my thoughts into words, trying to make sense of lessons, interactions and appreciation of my environment and life. But it shouldn’t be this difficult, right?

I’ve recorded how much time it takes me to write down a post, getting a totally shocking time (average) of three to four days...

And you may ask ‘Three to Four days??? Why? I know you have typos, reaction issues and some of your jokes are... incredibly stupid.’

The first pass my draft is nothing more than a couple of lines describing general ideas of what I want to create as an end result; must of times this process is a bunch of questions I ask myself of what I have learned or what I would like to read later on (I read my blog a lot). This takes me no more than 20 minutes.

Some drafts start like this...
(Thank you John of Austin for this image)

The second pass is a refinement of the draft, trying to expand the ideas, including parts of my silly humour and some other anecdote left behind as couldn’t fit it anywhere originally. It usually takes me two to three hours and at the end of it I don’t want to keep writing anything about the blog.

A third pass or second refinement is trying to read it with my own voice, feeling the vibrations of my throat and exercising the facial muscles. This serves me with a dual functionality: spotting sections where the reading process does not flow (shuffling paragraphs or ideas) and excluding trivial or redundant details with little or none value for the post. Depending on my mood, this process could take from two hours to an entire day.

A fourth and final pass is my creative/destructive phase, consisting on a read of the content to Kathy, modifying the post (yet again) on the fly as I read it to her or rewriting entire sections as I notice certain ideas could be exposed in a different way (sometimes pulling new ideas into its own separate post). In the end I ask her if it reads ok, repeating the pass as necessary until I get it right and dropping the entire post altogether. Is at this point where Kathy points out the rough edges of my tongue, lowering the level of acidity to my statements from car battery acid to lemon or orange juice sort of thing (one of the reasons of my moderation while writing).

But, this process is not consistent; writing down a draft for two or three posts at once, to then come back to it a week later and type down an entire post: reading, expanding, researching and linking details, to then publish it just few days later, leaving those drafts as incomplete thoughts.

So I ask... is there a better way to create content and publish it? Does anyone have a better approach for me to try? because it seems to me it takes me ages to compose and get things published...

The Miracle of the Easter Egg

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:09:00 +0000

Let’s face it, is pretty rare to find someone whom does not know anything about Easter and its general meaning. Although I have always found interesting how different countries or cultures celebrate it.

For instance, in Venezuela the tradition dictates you should get communion with god, realise the value of the sacrifice of his son (Jesus) and the realisation of his divinity after his resurrection, although everybody tends to go to the beach, drink and party like there is no tomorrow and get wasted… Basically the religious context is set aside but the last day (resurrection day) where people march to the nearest church to spend that day in communion.

Easter looks like this in Venezuela

In Australia (probably in every Saxon descendent culture) is a bit more disconnected from the church and a closer to a festivity for kids and teach them about what’s the meaning for these days; rebirth.

Years ago I thought about the bunnies and the eggs...
And it was a bizarre image to picture a bunny laying eggs coming out of its little furry bum.

In case you did not know the history behind Easter eggs or baby chicks I will tell it to you, they are symbol of rebirth and renewal; which for most parts of the world, matches the season (spring) and everything else grows around you. This concept might not apply environmentally (because we are in fall) even though the spirit keeps the same, finding enormous queues to buy chocolate eggs, bunnies or bilbies.

Oh yes, the chocolate Easter bilby.
Not extremely popular in Australia but you could find it as part of the Aussie tradition.

And… how do I know of such long queues?

Well, the explanation is… Kathy (my missus) wanted a new phone to replace her old (and extremely slow at the moment) Nokia E71, which was a bit more than troublesome taking is two good minutes to open up an SMS and a lot more to start up the email application. The frigging phone was starting to show its two years of intense usage by crashing every few hours but the envisioned replacement provided enough hope for Kathy to hold on and keep using it until the service contract was due.

NOTE

The explanation might sound totally absurd but it will make sense at the end, hang with me for the next forty three paragraphs. I swear, there is no alcohol in my body (at least not at the moment) and I am not deranged, although most of times I make no sense.

Two months ago, Kathy pointed me out the date of termination to get her new phone (an iPhone) and she started to count down the days to be able to go to the store, picking one of those beautifully designed devices and begin a world in which calls were not dropped because of phone crashes (although I am not sure the antenna gate is totally fixed) and application can be purchased and installed without having a software engineering degree. But I took over those expectations and shattered like a delicate crystal glass being smashed against the ground by telling her

‘Hon, I don’t think you should get the iPhone at the moment… You know the super capitalist company called Apple will release a brand new version of it on the next couple of week (6 to 9 weeks) and we should probably wait to get it later on… A brand new or another cheaper, what do you think?’

At this moment you probably think I am the sickest man alive and I am doing this just to make her suffer… but you are wrong! MUHUHAHAHAHaaaa….

(the evil laugh doesn’t help on my point)… Anyhow, I had the plan of buying the phone, but how to present it so it was a nice surprise? Some of the following ideas came to my mind:

Scenario 1 – The Restaurant Mystery

We could arrange dinner at a nice restaurant (we have been trying to reserve a nice decent restaurant for the last two months) to then wait for her escape to the bathroom (every woman does this) and at that moment place the phone in a noticeable area… but where to place it? On the plate? What about if we already started to eat could I place it in front of her place? What about if she never when to the bathroom? This plan was flawed from the very beginning plus the surprise level wasn’t going to be high.

Scenario 2 – The Glorious Delivery

I could try to arrange the delivery of some flowers to her office and get the phone included with the flowers. Sounds perfect, but… Then she had to walk three blocks to home with everything on and the one thing I will never do to Kathy is to put her under that situation. I know women love intense and big displays of affection, but I have seen lots getting pissed off because of that giant 25 kilos teddy bear her partner sent to cheer her up followed up by ‘you should have come early enough to pick me up …’ (as in you pick the gigantic shit you sent me) ‘… to then have a romantic dinner’. Soooo nope; another plan goes to the rubbish bin.

Scenario 3 – Easter is coming, right?

Here is where everything makes sense. At the beginning of this week, I decided to share some of my ideas with one of my friends and went though many different scenarios. Some evil and some… totally evil! But at the end the ideas diverted to buying a box of chocolate that looked uninterested to give it to her and let her find the phone inside. The only problem with this was the level of difficulty; had to be aware of details such as the wrapping and presentation (trying not to be suspicious) but overall it was a simple plan.

That night I went to bed, trying to formulate the perfect plan to delivery multiple surprises and then I thought… What about a chocolate egg with an awesome surprise inside? If I could pulled that up it would be legend.

On the next day the opportunity arrived, Kathy told me she was going to a chat (or presentation) of one re-noun belly dancer from Cairo, checking with me if we had anything scheduled, to which I respond nothing special other than ‘Ok’ while in my head I was fast forwarding every step I needed to complete…

I had to buy the phone, the egg, set up everything on her phone (mail, calendar, contacts, favourite applications and music) to then find a way to cut the egg open, place the phone inside, shut it as it was never open and give it to her avoiding suspicion…. Everything had to fall in place on the next 20 hours if I wanted to succeed on it.

Setting things into motion.

Early on the given day and after calling Apple to check stocks and be certain I could go there to pick up the specified flavour of the phone, went to Chatswood Chase and then to Big W to find the biggest chocolate egg I could fit the phone in; got two of those (intelligence purposes to be explained later). On my way back to the office got a micro sim just to receive calls and set up the phone with it so Kathy don’t lose her line while I was preparing the surprise and more importantly to allow me to ring it while in the egg. Back to the office, charge the phone and installed all her favourite apps and once I was home loading her music and final touches.

Ingredients of the surprise

Now all I needed to do was, cut open the egg, put the box and phone inside, seal the phone and put it back in the box... Easy right?

To cut open the egg I used sharp and flat cutting knifes, preheated with hot water, allowing me to melt the chocolate without too much mess; it was a good idea to pop the egg in the freezer every now and then to maintain its shape.

Getting the egg ready to be cut open while the phone charges a tad more.

Egg ready

Phone ready

Sealing everything up!

Once I had two shells, I could fill up the egg with notes and the phone in the box, and proceed to close it. Taking one of the shells and place on a hot surface to then carefully place it in position and back to the freezer; is not supposed to seal it perfectly because you will need to fill up the gaps with melted chocolate then wrap it with the same foil paper.

It took a bit of work and patience. But once I was done it looked like new.

In case I had any accident and the first egg got destroyed in the process I would have used the second trying to save as much as possible from the first one. But given everything ran smoothly I was ready to give her the present and now all I needed to do was to wait for her to crack the egg open.

Now... Which one has the prize?

She got back home around 11pm and I told her I got those two eggs to celebrate Easter, Aussie style. Also specified to her some of the eggs contained toys for kids (sort of like kinder surprise) just in case she started wondering the weight of the egg, which she pointed out as soon as she had it on her hands.

What kind of cheap plastic toy could weigh this much? Is so nice you got me this gigantic egg! Thank you honey!

I had to hold it a bit more, trying to resist the impulse to tell her to open it once and for all, she pulls the wrapping foil and cracked the egg just enough to notice a bunch of pink notes inside saying 'surprise!'

Took out my mobile and rang her four times to which she replied 'what kind of toy rings like a phone? How did you get all these notes inside the egg?' Dug a bit more and there it was a box wrapped with pink paper, ringing again and vibrating. With a confused face took the paper off the way and stood quiet staring at the white box with the apple logo on one side and the picture of the iphone on top.

Must be honest, at this point I was on edge because she did not said anything for 3 or 4 seconds... but then turned around and said 'Oh my god! Oh my god! How did you do this?'

She kept asking me for two days how I did it.

Is not necessary to describe her reaction, she really loved it :) and so, the miracle of the Easter egg was born. I must admit, I am not the kind of guy that is planning for weeks a surprise, in fact I am pretty simple on that aspect but it felt so damn good... (she kept playing with the phone for three hours until at two AM when I was pretty cranky and told her to play with it in the morning).

Well fellows, I have shared one of my Easter stories. If you have one post a comment :)

Cheers.

Playing Melbourne

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 08:13:00 +0000

Ever since I came to Australia I always wondered what's the look of Melbourne, its spirit and how would you feel living in there

And you probably wonder,

Why?
Didn't you decided Sydney from the start?
Are you planning to move to Melbourne?

The why is:

Melbourne is an interesting city of Australia (the second biggest) and curiously enough it was our first option when we first take the decision to come down under.

The Sydney decision:
Moving to Melbourne was a short lived dream because after a little research and a bit more of crunching numbers (and understanding the meaning of it) we realised Sydney was better option; it provided more jobs with equal to almost less competition, which meant quicker insertion into the work force and more metropolitan (closer to our taste) lifestyle.

Am I planning to move there?
Nope, I think it was a bit of curiosity but that alone wasn't the driving force for our trip, the real reason why we went there was to celebrate the engagement of two dear friends (it was their Aussie wedding sort of thing... difficult to explain without writing another post... and is sort of private) which allowed us to go there for two days and enjoy the city.

NOTE:

Please be aware, it was a weekend getaway (forced to three days thanks to bloody jetstar) which could be a complete overlook of the entire Melbourne experience. By the way, jetstar is a piece of shit; never fly with them (promotional spot was promoted by Rod’s Rage... and Colgate!).

First impressions of Melbourne

Its architecture is extremely interesting; evolving gradually replacing spaces of the old city without removing its architectural heritage as Perth has done during the last twenty something years... But if you know nothing about architecture or don't care about it, you probably will notice that is definitely cleaner than Sydney.

In my case I noticed both at the same time, causing me instant wonder and surprise.

Would you like to take a look at some of my photos of Melbourne?
Click on the slideshow and it will take you to my flickr photo sets.

Is very easy to find yourself walking on the streets, looking at a Victorian building from 1890’s near by a brand new art-deco or post-modern house with solar panels on its roof and a vintage shop at the entrance; so well done that it refreshes the old Victorian building without breaking its style neither tendency; it just plays beautifully.

Worthy to include: their general dress code.
Melbourne dress style is very European with a hint of hipster; that is, elegant yet including young elements into the mix which makes you think they are outgrown children with a keen sense of fashion (don’t hate me for saying the truth). Obviously not everybody uses the same style but you can get the general idea with the following image.

Also worth to note on ‘first impressions’ is (with the exception of Mel CBD) the city is two stories high in every direction our eyes look upon, having as consequence zero to none point of reference while you are walking around. This is not entirely a bad thing as Melbourne adapted its flatness to its advantage building up the tram as main transportation system.

A tram gives you the possibility to move around the city easily without losing contact with the surface or the city, resulting in a more appealing, interactive and enjoyable ride towards your destination, although I found myself quite often thinking ‘every tram should be a bit bigger, I feel cramped’. If getting into the tram is not your thing and you are more sport oriented, the city is super adapted for bicycle riders and it has lots of dedicated roads for all of them.

And riding the tram, bicycle or walking around get me into another point of interest, shops and restaurants. Melbourne seems to be designed as a big shopping area with plenty of restaurants established in every corner with music (lived or recorded) to engage your senses with its aroma, texture, taste and sounds. Certainly you could find something to captivate your curiosity to drive you to one of those establishments, spending most of your time in there. In my case I was captivated initially by Flinders street and its multiple parisienne alike galleries with numerous restaurants and beautiful smells (someone told me they are called Flinders’ Hallways, no idea if that is correct) especially after starving for three hours while we were leaving our bags to then go back to Flinders Street to get something to eat.

Finally (and this is what stood up all the time) was the lack of mimes running on the streets entertaining everybody.

At this stage you probably think... WTF is he talking about? (Yes, what the FAQ...)

Everybody (from Melbourne) has told me so many times that the best way to describe Melbourne was with the word... ‘Cultural’

But what does it mean?

I am going to cite a dictionary definition of culture: ‘The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.’

Cultural as in there is lots of history in there just like Greece or Italy? Nope...

Cultural as in you will be able to find people walking down the street dressed and dancing with their own very cultural background? Again, no.

Well... Melbourne does have lots of sculptures every now and then and it does have a huge number of graffiti’s in every single wall of alleys, semi old houses, etc, etc. And the concentration of museums, theatres and public spaces where to demonstrate a play seems to be greater than Sydney... But does it qualify as cultural? I don’t know... I have seen some pretty cool art on the street of Brisbane and tons of public sculptures, drawings or paintings on the far away Perth. (Oh yeah, forgot to mention I went to Brisbane a couple of months ago...)

My expectations were set by Melburnians as if I was going to be received by cirque du soleil acrobats jumping out of hot air balloons, guided by the magical old man with a set of rolling dices in his hands telling me where to go, while legions of mimes walked down the street entertaining everybody.

Our experience was not like this, but it was pretty good.
(In case you are wondering... we could not see anyone running around with a hospital rope...)
Do you want to play Melbourne?

So, cultural is a word that will apply for every other city in the world as every city in the world as well, as it has the capability to ‘manifest human intellectual achievements’.

Certainly is a refined city, with refined taste for food as well for some fashion (I am not thrilled about the hipster thingo) and undoubtedly exposition to great architectural tendencies. Melbourne is the New York’s fifth avenue of Australia; I would dare to say (just the fifth avenue).

How about that for a first impression! Uh?

Was there anything I didn’t like?

Three things came to my head straight away.

First, the beaches; I am terribly sorry for you Melburnians... but St Kilda is anything but dreamy and any comparison to Bondi beach (which is not nearly one of the best in Sydney) will be more than unfair to Bondi’s crystalline water, soft sands and outstanding panoramic of its surroundings, and apparently surfing beaches are too far away for the discussion of this post.

Second and this one could be highly related to a very bad coincidence... but in two days I saw no less than seven drugs consumers, sharing or consuming drugs on the street; leading me to think one of two things: Melbourne has big drug traffic or Melburnians are not discrete at all! For instance, on two and half years in Sydney I have seen two drugs users, definitely not cool.

Third and last thing I did not like, the Yarra River and I think is heavy attributed to my mental image of what a river should look like. Its water is anything but clear; in fact it has a brown turbulent muddy colour giving you the impression of being dirty all day long. At the end of the day, my dislike is more related to its appearance more than anything; can’t complain about bad smell (because I couldn’t get any odour) but there was no connection what so ever to the river.

How do I compare Sydney to Melbourne?

There is no comparison what so ever. Both cities are so bloody different to try to establish a comparison.

Australian cities are so different between each other, so diverse and (at the same time) so into their own fashion and lifestyle that any comparison between each other will be unfair and disproportionate to both.

Melbourne offers an interesting mixture of fashion, gastronomy and architecture compensating a lot its uninteresting beaches, few slopes (or very poor elevation, I should just say lack of panoramic views) or extremely bad weather.

Unfair comments between Sydney and/or Melbourne

I have heard comments from different sources about what to expect from Melburnians or Sydneysiders and I can tell you... there are some nasties in the bag. I will try to show two of them and my counter argument.

Comment #1

"People from Melbourne is friendlier and less interested on how much money or what type of stuff you have. Sydneysiders are d-bags on this aspect" - Shared by some fellow Melburnians.

Dear people from Melbourne, what type of people have you met in Sydney?

Sydneysiders are not classist or segregationist as far as I can tell. On my two and something years of life down under I have bumped with pretty cool people with little pretensions or preconceptions at the time of socialising with somebody. In fact, our conversations will focus on many things but money, class or social level you're in; they try to avoid it as much as possible!

Now, I know I can't speak in absolutes and it is possible that I have been blessed to be in a circle without awful social activities such as discriminating people because of their monetary/financial status or type of education, but as far as I have seen, that behaviour does not apply here.

Comment #2

"Melburnians are ice cold with everybody other than themselves... a bit boring but definitely cold people... like Europeans." - Shared by a fellow Sydneysider

I have to say, on those two days of my visit to Melbourne and the day at the airport, everyone was kind and curious of our origins; sharing a laugh while we were browsing or walking around.

Those are comments that I have to add to the 'list of things to never apy attention to', I really don't know why people express things like those.

In conclusion

If you are taking into consideration living in Melbourne I think is a pretty good choice. Even though there are things that I don’t like, it offers really nice options when it comes to food (the city is packed with restaurants), nice transport system (trams and trains) and liveable standards.

Living with issues...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:40:00 +0000

Everybody has an issue they must live with.

Some people have strabismus...

Some people have one leg...

Almost anybody have at least one condition they have to learn to live with...

What’s mine?

I... I have... sorry to all of you... is difficult to admit it... But I am going to share my terrible problem with all of you. If you suffer hypoglycaemia, bladder control or aspersers’ syndrome, hold on tight to your seat...

I have...

two last names!

Reaction of a chipmunk moments after my last name was revealed.

Hispanic cultures use multiple last names as ‘the last name’ to indicate their origins and pay respects to both father and mother. A better explanation (if you are interested on reading it) is here. In Latin-America is extremely common to meet someone with two last names and in very rare cases they even use more family names (grandparents or grand grandparents). Someone even wrote an article about it.

Now, why am I writing about my last names?

Because I would like to recognise the person who had that marvellous idea, he or she should be taken to a podium in front of the thousands of Hispanic descendents living on English, German, French speaking countries... and stone him/her to death!

Who in their right mind thought about prolonging your name until it doesn’t fit on one piece of paper?

To me it wasn’t such a big deal until I came to Australia (in the States is not a big deal because of the increasing number of Hispanic descendents blending in the American culture, and still they struggle with it at first) and it was totally manageable with almost no consequence until today...

Today I was ready to take the knowledge driving test to eventually be able to drive free in Australia... and have proper identification other than my passport, when I get to the RTA (transport and marine services) and an officer calls me by number to inquiry ‘what can I do for you?’

After telling him I had a booking for the knowledge driving test and handover my documents and other papers the guy tells me:

‘Well... everything seems perfect. So you are Rod FatherLastname MotherLastname? Good...

Do you have your passport? Good!

Silly me... asking for everything when I have it all in my hands.

Let me check... let me check... uh! This is interesting.

Why is your last name in here (pointing to the gas bill) with a hyphen in the middle?’

To what I reply kindly ‘the guy at the gas company got confused with the last name and thought the system could find it easier to understand if he used a hyphen to connect both last names.’

He looked at me and said: ‘I am very sorry... but that hyphen changes everything! I could take your last name and consider you are stealing the identity of someone else! ...’ (Yeah right, someone on their right mind will steal a last name with 30-ish characters in it) ‘... So I will need a different document as proof of your address. I am afraid you will have to come back some other day...’

Secretly, they all went to the same school, then college.
Super trained on the deadly skills of the bureaucracy!

I stood there... silent for 25 seconds... to what I replied ‘Are you serious???????? One hyphen changes everything???????? Every other document matches everything, every single letter of my name and one hyphen in a piece of paper will force me to come back later to take the test?’

To what he replies ‘do you have any bank statement on you at this moment?’

‘Uhms... I don’t know, let me materialise my Tardis to then go to level five where the archive is to get you the frigging bank statement!’.... Is what I thought... But my real answer was ‘I have the electricity bill right here (I think)... but it has written my name as Roderiko and if you complained about a hyphen I don’t want to imagine about Roderiko.’

He turned around and handed me over a piece of paper while telling me ‘that is your new appointment, come back on Thursday with a document or reference properly spelled. I am very sorry, but the last name on your gas bill is totally different to the one on your passport.... Bye.’

Seriously, I cannot understand how someone can be so square.

Dear boys and girls... Madame et Monsieur... if you are an unfortunate soul with multiple last names thinking to move to an English speaking country, please take some of my advices:

First, check every identity documents to validate the full name appears identical in all of them. If your name is Mary Jane Watson Smith where your last name would be ‘Watson Smith’, check all your documents appears as Watson Smith instead of Watson S. or Watson-Smith.

Second, at the time you are getting new services, take the time to spell everything until they actually get it right.

Third, do not follow recommendations of ‘is going to be easier for the system and/or consultants to understand your last name’. That is utterly false, they still get it wrong and now you will have a document you won’t be able to use as proof of address (or anything else).

Fourth, if you can and you are willing to, sacrifice part of your last name and change it to their standard version. In my case I have been thinking about it for a while now; today just gave me another reason to do it.

‘Until next time’ says Rod With-A-Last-Name-Very-Long-And-Troublesome

Commuting

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:33:00 +0000

Australia is a huge country with long distances; those are the main two things you will listen when you are offshore, but you never grasp the meaning until you have to walk, ride or drive.

As many of you might know by now, Kathy and I love to take walks for hours (main reason of our latest tradition, the seven bridges walk), but for everyday commuting is a bit troublesome to walk 20K, under this hot sun or the little-yet-effusive rain of Sydney.

To travel to and from work you will need to relay on buses, trains, cars or any other type of transport you might think of.

Sadly (and this one is a very hard critic to my follow country men and women) Venezuelans have the wrong appreciation of need; that is ‘you need a car for everything!’ or the very well known ‘Is impossible to live in this city without a car!’ (Wrote down two pages of complains justifying myself, realised later on is not worth it).

Before anyone jump with their fire-on torches in hand witch hunting, I would like to expose my ideas so you could later on tell me yours.

First of all, a car is not a necessity (unless you have offspring); the car as it stands is a commodity. Is a pricy sweetener of your everyday commute and as such you should be able to move around without you needing it.

Sydney's trains map

Second, Sydney’s transport system is pretty good (in comparison to many others such as the NY Subway and NY buses, Spain train system and the list goes on and on. Although is not cheap and occasionally stops for 20 to 40 minutes is a system that I have been using for at least 29 months and I find it fast and reliable.

And Third, even though Sydney does not have an awesome bicycle system as Melbourne or Brisbane is a kind of city where you could easy start riding to and from work.

And, why am I writing all this?

I got a bicycle! WEEEEEEH

Bought it just before Boxing Day and it took 10 days to be assembled and delivered to me.

Here is the picture of my beauty.
At the moment I call it Azzurra,
but the handle bar has drops of blood product of my fall.

So now I am going to start training to get to the office (at least 3 days a week), getting more active and blood flowing, maximising my creativity and hopefully my productivity.

At the moment I have done my first try to get to the office from home and totally failed it. After a long uphill ride, my legs started failing, I was panting and lose control of my bicycle; resulting in a less than spectacular collision of my body against the hard concrete (with the later on disapproval look of car drivers passing by).

Next couple of weeks will be intense training (trying to build up resistance and muscle strength) to then perform my second attempt to become one of those guys riding like the wind. Let’s see how it goes.

Cheers and till next time,

Talk to me about the Hallaca

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:55:00 +0000

Before explaining everything about it, and how to make it (for those interested on try it) I will warn you that I will be using lots of terms and ingredients many has not heard before, as many of these ingredients are widely used on Latin-American cuisine and nowhere else. Every ‘weird’ ingredient will have a reference to Wikipedia; in case I miss some of them, please leave a comment and I will edit the post.

If you search online for Hallaca you will probably find 100 different recipes,
but all of them will look fairly similar.

The Hallaca (if you are trying to imagine the sound it will be like ‘ah jacka’... although it seems that I pronounce it as ‘A jackass’... yes, I know you are giggling) is a traditional Christmas dish of the Venezuelan cuisine. There are different variations such as the ‘Pastel en hoja or Pie in Leaves’ of Dominican Republic, the ‘Pastelle’ of Trinidad and Tobago and the ‘Tamal’ of Peru and Colombia; all of them with similar taste but the Venezuelan is one of those with more refined flavours... And I am not saying this just because I am Venezuelan, just in case.

Its flavour (for those you who have not been fortunate enough to try it) is a mixture between polenta with beef stew with a hint of paprika, the sourness of olives, the saltiness of capers and sweetness of raisins; anyone who had it will have a hard time trying to describe its flavour. (Could you describe the blue colour to a blind guy?)

The Hallaca has a very interesting appearance as is stew filling bright yellow dough protected by layers of plantain leaves, and its intense fragrance combined with the smoked Plantain leaves will definitely overtake any other sense in your house.

A bit of history...

Its origins date to mid 1500s when Venezuela was a dependency of Spain and the big families had a huge number of slaves (Africans or Indigenous people) which were forced to eat the leftovers of their masters and given that Christmas is a very important holiday for Spaniards the leftovers were exceptionally good with plenty of pork, beef and chicken to be used by the slaves to cook their own dishes.

To most of the slaves a common meal was the cornmeal dough (a paste made out of corn and water) as it contains lots of nutrients and provides a considerable amount of energy; and as you probably guessed by now, they decided to mix with the leftovers to make some special Christmas dish served on Plantain leaves (the plantain and banana trees are extremely common in Venezuela).

Not many have tried the plantain.
When cooked is sweet and extremely tasty (good source of proteins too).

Apparently, several Indigenous tribes used the plantain and banana leaves as a natural way to preserve food by wrapping the food with it and then boil it; and as you might guessed as well, using this technique the slaves were sure its precious Christmas meals could last a very long time (taking advantage to the maximum the leftovers for later on).

Because the Hallaca takes a lot of effort (and numerous hours of work), it was served to friends and families only and with the release of the slaves, the Hallaca made it into the palate of wealthy families (as a way to say thanks to them) which then became a tradition, then a custom in the country.

Leaving history aside

Next I will try to explain the full process (the recipe is for 50ish portions, you could try to scale it down, but there is no warranty it will have the same outcome), as I have to do it from scratch because Australians don’t sell very easy some of these ingredients (such as the smoked Plantain leaves). The process is divided in stages: Ingredients, smoking leaves, making the consommé, making the stew, making the dough, putting it all together and cooking it (again).

If you want to try this recipe and you have not done it before; please, read it entirely before start, it has a lot of effort and is hard but is worth it.

Harina P.A.N, primary component of the Hallaca.
Image from Adriana Lopez Blog

Ingredients:

3.5 Kg of Plantain or Banana leaves, plantain recommended as it is a bigger surface than the banana, but is not mandatory as the flavour remains unchanged.
2 Kg of Cornmeal (there is a product called ‘Harina PAN’ which is the best for this).
1 Kg of beef mince (preferable a grounded clean of fat cut).
1 Kg of beef for stew (is the one cut in squares, it has to be clean of fat; has to be chopped in squares no bigger than 1cm each).
1 Kg of pork leg meat (chopped in squares about 1cm long).
½ Kg of pork leg mince.
1 ½ Kg of Hen (you could change it for chicken).
500 grams of bacon (separate it in 400 grams and 100 grams as you will use it for different things, chop the 100 grams).
6 big onions finely chopped (I have no idea how much grams that will be).
3 big onions cut in rings.
200 grams of capers (try it before use it as it might be extremely salty, in that case put it on a strainer and wash it with 2 litres of water that should take the excess of salt).
3 green capsicums (finely chopped).
2 red capsicums (cut in strips).
1 bunch of leek (chopped).
1 bunch of chives (chopped).
2 cloves of garlic.
1 bunch of parsley.
1 bunch of coriander.
500 grams of tomato (chopped in squares).
150 grams of butter.
900 grams of filled green olives (or deseeded olives).
350 grams of pickled vegetables or giardiniera. Blend it with half cup of water (without the vinegar or the salty water).
2 litres of cooking oil (I use canola, but you could use any type of oil with mild flavour) plus ¼ cup of oil.
500 grams of raisins.
1 ½ cup of red wine.
2 table spoons of chicken stook powder.
2 table spoons of mustard sauce.
5 table spoons of steak sauce.
4 table spoons of tomato paste.
1 table spoon of sweet chilli (if you could find something called Aji Dulce will be better).
Bay leaves (you will need around 30 to 40 leaves).
Salt.
Pepper.
And finally the difficult ingredient: Annatto (15 table spoons). If you don’t find it, change it for saffron imitation plus paprika powder. Saffron imitation has less kick than real saffron, but is cheaper and gives you good colouring. It has to be the bright orange.
Optionally: 100 grams of chopped almonds.

Smoking leaves

The plantain and banana leaves are made predominantly of hard and coarse fibre with a strong and unpleasant flavour when is raw. In order to allow it to be malleable and remove some of the taste it has to be cooked by smoke or expose it directly to fire for short periods of time.

To cook the leaf you will need a barbie (BBQ) on mid to low fire with its grill, pre-warmed evenly.

Take each leaf and place it directly on the grill, notice how the colour of its fibres changes from bright green (or light green depending on which side is up) to a darker and intense olive colour. The Leaf should NEVER change to brown or black (it means you burned it). Make sure the entire leaf is cooked and the colour is consistent and even.

Notice her hand is moving against the fibre and
it should be following along the fibre.

Do not tear apart the leaf because you will need a big enough patch where to place everything later on and bigger patches will be easier to handle than small ones.

Repeat the process for each leaf.

Tip: While cooking the leaf, try to have a humid cloth at hand. The barbie will be hot and the leaf will release a bit of oil (will be hot as well), if you want (and you know you are not going to burn it) use the cloth to handle the leaf as you cook it.

Wash each leaf with soapy water once you have finish smoking it and dry it with a cloth. Be careful with the leaf, it will tore easily. Easy trick to clean it, wipe on the same direction of the fibres.

Making the consommé

Consommé is a very simple soup (my mom would have hit me in the head as I said that). To make it take a pot with 4 and half litres of water and leave it on fire until it boils. Once is boiling take chopped (into pieces) chicken and put it in the water with two table spoons of chicken stock powder (if you want to be a bit more fancy, you could make your own chicken stock), a pinch or two of salt. Let it cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until the chicken is white-ish inside yet soft to the touch.

Once the chicken is fully cooked, take it out of the consommé and shred its meat in long strips. Add to the hot consommé the coriander leaves (you don’t need to chop it). After some good 10 minutes the consommé will be ready to use, just filter it with a strainer to have a clear golden liquid (get at least 8 to 9 cups of consommé).

It might look like this. If you are hungry you could have a cup in the meanwhile.

Tip: If you leave the chicken in the consommé after is done, it will overcook (turning it into chicken flavoured rubber). As soon as the consommé is finished and the chicken is cooked take it out and leave it in a plate.

Making the stew

The stew is the tasty bit of the Hallaca (like the filling of the meat pie, a good meat pie has a great stew, take your time and you will be rewarded). The stew should never be stirred by more than one person and should be the same person at all times; this is a rule and do not ask why?!

In a big enough stew pot (you will be mixing up almost everything here, try to get the side right) you will pour ¼ cup of cooking oil and set the fire to low; slowly melt the butter in the pot.

Once the butter is almost entirely melted, add the chopped onions and garlic. Stir gently until the onions releases its juice.

Then add the chopped green capsicum, leek and chives. Keep stirring for another 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, the capsicum should be almost cooked. At this time you will be adding 100 grams of bacon, let it cook for a little bit to then add pork mince. Stir for 5 minutes, include the chopped pork and let it cook with the lid on for another two minutes.

Add the beef (chopped and mince) and the parsley (about a cup of chopped parsley), giving it a good stir for two minutes to mix it up. Add 2 cups of consommé, 1 cup of water, the mustard and steak sauce and the tomato paste. Put the lid on and let it cook for 30 minutes on mid fire, periodically checking and stirring to prevent the stew to burn.

Referential image of the stew,
if you follow my recipe the end result will be more colourful and less chunky..
Image taken from http://blog.lolalobato.com

Then the stew should start releasing all those beautiful smells, when you remove the lid you should get a not very strong bouquet of the beefy stew. Time to add the capers, 300 grams of olives (sliced in rings), bay leaves, wine and the paste of giardiniera (pickled vegetables). Again, stir it to mix in everything, put the lid on and let it cook for 10 minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes; stir a bit more (if you decided to add almonds, this is the right moment to add it). At this point you probably have a beefy stew which you could start adjusting the salt and pepper to then let it reduce at low fire. DO NOT PUT BACK THE SPOON IF IT TOUCHED YOUR MOUTH (again, you will have to believe me on this unless you want a very long explanation), the best way to try the stew will be to pour half spoon into a plate, let it cool and then try it. At this point the stew should be 30 to 45 minutes away to be ready. If you have plenty of liquids after that time, you could extract some of it using a clean cup (do not throw away this liquid as you are going to use it later on).

Tip: remember to stir every now and then to prevent burning the stew.

Making the dough

I am tired already and I am just typing the recipe...

As you might have guessed, while the stew is finishing up its cooking process, you could start preparing the dough!

But I will have to write a detour for some of you...

If you have annatto, you will have to heat up the amount of oil is described below, then to that hot oil you will add the annatto (7 or 8 table spoons for each litre).

If you don’t have annatto, don’t heat up the oil; just use it as is because later on we will add the paprika and saffron.

End of detour.

Pour 5 to 6 cups of consommé, two cups of oil, one cup of water and some of that delicious liquid you extracted from the stew (just liquid, if it has chucks remove the chucks before pouring the liquid) into a bowl.

With your hands, mix up all the liquids and start gradually adding the cornmeal; you must keep it consistent all the time, if you find lumps stop adding the cornmeal and massage the mixture to regain control of the homogenous mass (BUHUHAHAHAHA! you are creating Frankenstein monster!). The mixture must feel sticky without watery bits. If you feel is getting dry add more consommé (or water) and more oil (for each consommé cup you should add ¾ of a cup of oil). Add liquid as you need to, keeping the ratio water/oil, do not add the entire cup straight away since you will have to get to the right balance between sticky soft mass and dense paste (you don’t want to eat play dough).

Keep adding the cornmeal until you have added the two kilos (remember to keep adding liquids as you go). At the end add one table spoon of sugar (sweet and salty flavours always play nicely).

Tip: My mom used to use the right balance was ‘if you take a ball of it in your hand, turn it to face the dough. The ball should not leave your hands yet it has to be a little bit soft.’

Back on a detour.

If you added the annatto to the oil, at this moment your dough should be bright yellow. Don’t do anything else until the next step.

If you don’t have annatto, at this moment your dough should be light cream or whitish (although if you used the yellow cornmeal you might get a different yellow tone); so we are going to add two tea spoons of saffron (imitation, do not use the real saffron as you will expend a lot of money!) and 2 spoons of paprika powder and mix it up a bit more. The dough should be bright yellow now.

End of second detour.

Finally, we have to rectify the salt. Because we have a lot of dough we will have to start adding a full table spoon (of salt, obviously) to the mixture. Once is incorporated into the dough give it a taste, you should get a grainy texture of corn-something-like-chicken-and-another-weird-flavour-product-of-the-awesome-liquid-you-added kind of taste. If is a bit pleasant and you like the flavour then you are spot on. If not adjust a bit more the salt until you get it.

Tip: always start with little salt while you are adjusting. It will be extremely difficult to remove the salt once you have added it. If you like, try some of the dough before adding any salt; the dough will need some salt anyway because the cornmeal masks some of its flavour.

Putting it all together.

The moment to combine the dough, the stew and the plantain leaves has come.

Take one plantain leaf and spray a bit of oil on its centre (prevents the dough to stick to the leaf).

Make a ball of dough (about 8 centimetres in diameter) and place it in the middle.

With a chopping table wrapped in plastic cling, flatten the ball with the table until you get a pancake like shape. It must be close to three millimetres thin; thinner than that and it will be very difficult to get out of the leaves, thicker than that and you will be having a fat Hallaca with the filling on one side. The ball should be by now a 22 to 25 centimetres yellow dish on a plantain leaf.

Place one to one and half table spoon portions of stew in the middle of the pancake. Be aware you must try to leave as many beef stock (or the beefy liquid) out of the Hallaca as possible.

Decorate the stew in the middle with one onion ring, one or two olives, one red capsicum strip, 5 to 6 raisins, a bit of the chopped bacon and one chicken strip.

I am not going to be a critic of the image...
but just take it as reference to put together all the components.
Image taken from http://chubeza.com

Now one tough part, wrapping it.

I am not going to write the full explanation of this process because it will be extremely difficult to explain without a visual representation, here is a video someone prepared earlier.

I do not use that technique because is a terrible waste of leaves and if you have cooked the plantain leaves as I told you before when you start folding the leave it won’t crack.

As you fold the Hallaca be aware of the fibre, fold it following the same lines made by the veins on the leaf. Then gently compact the content by pressing your hands on each side towards the middle and finish up ‘the present’. You will need some cord to tie it down so the next stage goes perfect.

Cooking it again.

You are now close to taste it!

Take a batch of hallacas (depends on the size of your steam cooker); lay down certain number of hallacas in your cooker and let it cook for 40 to 45 minutes, this will seal the dough and preserve everything in it.

Once done, let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting it open as the cooked dough is fragile after those 45 minutes. Don’t worry; it will get tougher after an hour or two.

The hallaca will not expire as fast as other type of meals because of its multiple layers of plantain leaves and the dense dough. But you will have to store it in the fridge if you want to eat it in the next couple of weeks or in the freezer if you are planning a longer term for its consumption.

Serving it is easy if you are careful; once the hallaca is hot, cut the cords and unfold the plantain leaves. Then eat the dough with its filling (do not eat the leaves).

If the hallaca is cold (most likely to be after refrigeration) heat it up using steam for 5 to 10 minutes or sprinkle some water on it and nuke it (whack it in the microwave for 2 minutes) then serve.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Hope you like my mom’s recipe, enjoy it!

Cheers.

Clarification

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:03:00 +0000

This is a public announcement.

I will include this toon at the top of any post that might lead to incontinence.

Good Lads and Ladies, please... chill out!

There is nothing to be afraid.

I know the latest news has been confusing and rumours spread fast, out of control.

But I assure you everything is and will be OK.

There is no reason for mass evacuation (or the other type of evacuation, nobody wants a shitty situation) and the police is having a hard time trying to control the chaos.

Riots in London when the blog post was published

Please, do not compare with September 11; do not call homeland and security, eventually the crisis will be over! (Now my blog is probably being tracked by 6 agents just because I said that).

So I am going to say it again without prelude (in case you freaked out before getting to the end of the previous post)

I AM NOT CLOSING MY BLOG

I was rambling about why people decides to shut it down because one of my mates (frank) decided to close his and made me reflexive, pondering about the reasons and motives.

I know my posts aren’t short and most of the time confuse people with bladder control problems... but read to the end before cursing my mom.

Yes, my head is twisted and I need a translator for human.
But I meant good

By the way, to the anonymous (who sent me an email this morning signing as Anonymous but his email address has his last and first name... yeah, clever!) my mom said 'Thanks!', and she is fine. You probably won’t understand the sarcasm, but it doesn’t matter... you probably won’t read this either and jumped of the balcony screaming ‘this is the end of the world!!!!!!!!!’

I repeat,

I AM NOT CLOSING MY BLOG

Cheers.

Yet another blog has died

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:30:00 +0000

In the next few words (or paragraphs) I will try to explain in my point of view why some blogs die and why you should not be upset about it. I understand the feeling and that is why I am writing down some of my digested thoughts.

Ever since I started reading blogs (mostly from people whom I have not met until later) I wondered what kind of motives they would have to write it down and then publish it?

Why these people share their thoughts in such a personal way in an open media such as the Internet?

That is the question.
Image taken from creativeeducation.co.uk

When I started Uni (at the end of the 90s) I was the kind of guy who was totally comfortable being anonymous; my facebook was closed to everyone except those very few close friends (although facebook as much much later) as well as my IM or any other type of contact. In other words, I was the most asocial person you could probably meet. But that never stopped me of being curious, frequently checking the Internet for interesting and appealing stuff with my rampant 128kbps modem (translation for the new generation that was the fastest broadband you could get at that moment, at least in Venezuela).

One of the first blog I started reading frequently (by adding it to my bookmarks) was in 2003 and those posts were written from Florida, by a photographer on his mid fifties who decided it was about time to retire and take lovely pictures of kids buying ice cream, eating lollies or running around in playgrounds, which at the time was a big deal with lots of paedophiles on the loose and people complaining about strangers taking pictures on public places. I guess he was trying to protest or argue with control freaks, more than fighting with angry and concern parents...

He used to post every Friday or Saturday about his life and how society had changed on the last 30 years in Florida, but after a while the blog posts stopped; very few people were following him (or understood the concept of virtually follow someone) and 16 months later, his blog was shut down by his son with a final and explanatory paragraph indicating a fatal blow to his father’s heart; it was just out of the blue. Not long after, the blog was deleted from wordpress and with it, the incredible tales of his author. The content of the blog and the blog itself died with his author.

Image taken from andrewcaldwell.org

At that time I was reading more and more blogs, each of them with different topics; from silly poetry to music, videogames and software development.

There was one in particular I remember the most; it was themed on cakes and desserts, called Caroline’s Cakes blog... but in reality the blog talked about anything but cakes and it was a way to vent different situations in her life (business decisions, life, friends, etc), and the reason of why I remember this blog in particular was because I always felt ashamed of reading it in public with its bright pink and yellow pastel colours and corky midi music in the background, which by the way made its way to the internal speakers of the computer, at loud in the laboratory; it happened once and I said it was one of those frigging pop-ups and I was trying to kill it... yet no one believed me.

But somehow I felt connected to her; connected as if I was her close friend like if I knew her, her thoughts, her way of writing and her silly jokes.

That is one of the many reasons why I felt offended when she decided it was about time to move onto different things, closing down her site and erasing her blog without warning, excuse or the expected ‘that is all folks’ sort of thing; she just closed her blog. To me it was a ‘facebook un-friend’ sort of deal, where someone just decides to take you out of their lives. But who the bloody hell was I? She knew nothing about me! Not even a single peep; never left her a comment or let her know I was reading her gobbledygook. There was no reason for me to be upset, and yet I felt she killed it.

Why would she dare to share feelings and mood to total strangers?

How did she realise that is better to keep her life to herself after almost two years of constant bickering

When did that happen?

And why did she remain silent when she had followers and cyber friends?

There was a missing piece in my puzzle, why would someone take the effort of opening their world, putting it into words and writing it down then close that chapter in their life and pretend it never happened?

Radicalised on not spending more time reading someone else useless mumbling I decided to stick to just tech blogs. It was the safest approach as very few IT people, writing down code and ‘best practices’ decides to shutdown their blog to do more entertaining things.

Let’s face it, we communicate better with a keyword than with our mouth.

But my radical solution started to fall apart as I took the decision of leave Venezuela behind to move somewhere else, making our mind to choose our destination and familiarise with the culture of our soon-to-be home; reason enough to invoke the-daemons-who-find-it-all and browsed for hours any related story about Australia, filling up my head with more stuff than I could possibly remember, keeping me busy and distracted from many problems and situations of Venezuela.

It was amazing how much people have had shared when it comes to migrating to Australia. Is at that moment when you realise it does not matter the differences of culture as long as you find something in common to start a conversation, which later on leads you to friendship.

Sadly enough, very few of all those blogs were active; in fact, half the blogs were already dead! And the cause of death seemed to be Australia (arriving to it or settling in it), causing the flow on entries to dwindle for several months until total stop or the expected ‘we are going to close/end/finish blogging, it was a lovely experience but... [insert-excuse-here]’ blog post.

Could not understand why it happens. I could not possibly understand it because I was not living in Australia and the blog was an escape pod from the atrocious reality of Venezuela.

But you know, eventually I got my visa, moved here and started my life all over again and after a year of adaptation I begun to understand the motives behind the desertion of those moving to Australia.

It was like meeting with an old acquaintance whom you have not seen for a very long time: Greetings, profuse conversation about family, parents, exes (strangely enough someone will ask you about that someone who everyone knows but him/her should not be named), business or bad decisions in life and that is. End of the conversation, both parties look awkwardly to the sides and cheers goodbye.

You just ran out of conversation topics.

Of course, you could mention any funny anecdote of sometime ago but you don’t want to delay the inevitable... So you stay quiet, tapping your glass to make the other one a bit more uncomfortable to then say ‘hey, there is Mary! Has been so long since we talked! Let me check her out!’ Ending the conversation without the nasty and impolite ‘I think we don’t have anything else to talk about... off you go!’

Yes, we know... Mary was part of the plan all along. She was your escape pod from that dangerous situation of uncomfortable silence. You told her to stay there and call you out or wave hello in case you started looking to your right and left. Or even better, you just had enough beer and have to go to the loo.

Finally I was getting it, why blogs were dying! I was not because the authors decided to regain privacy of their lives... It was because they got to the point where they would have to share the private details of their mind and lives, the little details they were hiding all the time and all of the sudden, without any new source of events will be forced to share their precious intimate moments!

So the best tactic to apply is run for Mary or escape to the loo, killing the already dying blog.

To those who gets angry at the authors (like I did) whom leave their blogs in a painful state of abandonment, this post is for you. Learn to forgive and move on.

To those who decided to abandon their blogs. Respect your readers and send them one final post. Dolphins would say ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ although the mundane crowd won’t understand it. Eventually it will be appreciated.

As you might notice by now... my blog is not dying given the amount of gibberish I just wrote.

If makes sense, good onya!

If it doesn't, eventually you will get there.

Until the next time.

Experiences with the Internet.

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:05:00 +0000

As some of you might know by now, I have decided to switch to a different ISP motivated to find better speeds, awesome browsing experience and compelling customer experience...

Cultural parenthesis on;

Do you know what ISP is? I am going to stop here to explain what ISP stands for (just to be on the same context).

ISP stands for Internet Service Provider... Or at least that is the definition I am going to be using on this post; actually is going to be the only definition I am going to be using on this blog as I could check with urban dictionary...

Some other usages of the abbreviation are ‘international shit provider’, ‘inscribed signed photographer’ or ‘I suck penises’ as I could find on urban dictionary.

Cultural parenthesis off;

But before getting into deeper waters, why did I want to switch to a different company?

My initial contract (the very first service I acquire in Australia, after my mobile of course) was my Internet service; a must-have-service to track and hunt down the desired and needed job to bring food to my table, and I set it up with Optus.

Why Optus?

When you arrive to the country there aren't any references on quality of services, how they treat their customer or how great their networks are... In fact, you got to be glad to get some response from some of these companies because they will ask for those marvellous 100 points to open up a contract.

Now, 100 points are kind of easy to get: You need a credit or debit card (it will be 96 points out of 100... demonstrate you can pay).

See? he showed those 100 points and got his contract in no time.

Identity document showing your pretty face and names (if you have an Aussie driver’s license you are done... but remember you gotta pay... In my case was my passport... so another point to the bag).

At least one bill with your current address. Electricity and gas could be among your first set of bills, was not my case; I was more interested on getting Internet than electricity. Now I wonder from where would I get power for the modem?

Finally but not least, your lease agreement; they need to know you are connecting services to a valid address where you have access to. Obviously!

I know... I know... 100 points does not explain why Optus, but I have to build up the expectation, isn’t? Plus, it is related.

Initially I was going to sign contract with iinet; someone told me about their great service and excellent rates, but after a call in which they asked me if I had an active phone line to do the installation and enough money to pay for installation, activation, connection, fornication, insemination and gestation of whatever they wanted to charge me for I decided to look a different horizon. I must be honest here, I was trying to get any service for very few money, and the fact they were asking for a$350 dollars just on equipment was a big deal in my budgeted and super planned future.

Someone else recommended TPG as ‘They are cheap but not great’. What I heard was ‘they are cheap and awesome-because-they-will-fit-on-your-tight-budget-and-they-are-utterly-awesome!’ so decided to give them a call.

The initial conversation was a bit confusing, partially my fault because I did not say ‘I would like to set up an account with you’ but said instead ‘I don’t have Internet and I would like to...’ to which the representative asked me if I had username... username of what???

Took me 12 minutes to fall into the realisation, the guy thought I had connectivity problems instead of trying to set up a new account. This was the very first lesson when dealing with sales representatives: ‘be direct and concise’; had to hang up and call again because the guy stood blocked when I told him I did not have an account with TPG.

Now... I want to explain why it took me 12 minutes... I am not an indigenous bloke extracted from the middle of the tropical rain forest with no social skills... I think... The representative did not ask if I had an existing contract (to which the answer would have been 'no'), did not ask me about any pre-existing connection in my unit and finally (an probably more important) the building manager told me 'some services will be pre-connected for you and all you need to do is to call and set up your name to start the proper billing'... I thought the Internet was one of those services.

Second attempt was better in comparison, this time I got to the right representative to which the guy asked me if I had land line (home phone) for my naked broadband. I don’t know many things about networks but to me ‘naked broadband’ meant I don’t needed a land line to get Internet connectivity, so as you might guessed by now, the conversation went very wrong as the guy kept saying I needed a phone line to hook up the modem to it and I kept refusing opening any contract to get a phone I was not going to use at all.

No caption needed

After a third call and my negative to open a Telstra contract for whatever months, I decided to talk to someone else.

Later on that day, walking on the mall I was engaged by one of the Optus sales person, inquiring about my inexistent connection, imaginary broadband speed and low desire of opening a contract with Telstra (as it was shown to me to be the very devil in Australia). The guy asked me if I had the papers with me, which I did, and pulled the contract; checking with me with possible installation dates. I was marvelled, it was so easy that I was almost in love. The guy told me I need a phone line, but they were going to provide it for me and there were no huge costs upfront, everything was going to be paid with the monthly fees and I had not to worry, just enjoy the ride.

Needless to say I signed up a contract for 24 months without reading in details the contract; just skimmed the doc trying to find the words ‘your soul is ours’, ‘you are automatically an organ donor and we are going to get it out soon enough’ or ‘Buglabu’ (you will probably won’t understand this last one... is an internal joke and I won’t write it down here... just you know is pretty bad... very very bad). Everything was set with Optus, in 7 working days I was going to have Internet connection at home, and in reality it took just 6 days to finally have everything connected and fully functional. It was a 20 GB data transfer with unlimited calls within Australia (that I used to the maximum until I start working, later on the phone was as decorative as a picture frame), it was good but you got to be careful not to exceed the data allowance; otherwise I was going to be paying 2 extra dollars per MB in exceed... Now that I think about it, the contract did specified the buglabu section!

But... If everything was pink love story... what happened? Why did you decide to move away from Optus?

They sell you the kind of relationship exhibited on the graphic below.

Without reading too much, flying elephants?
Hot air balloons?
Racing flags and rockets?
Holy sheets, is so pretty and unreal!
Totally rock!

As any relationship, you got through different stages:

The everything-is-perfect stage: there are no flaws, you like and love absolutely everything from it. They could be getting you impaled but you love it.

The is-all-good stage: you are digging the service or the relationship; is not entirely perfect but there are a couple of things that would be great if improved.

The meh stage: you don't really care as long as it works. This stage is also known as 'the cheap-prostitute-from-the-bar-after-you-came-back-from-three-years-of-solitude stage'

The there-is-something-better stage: unsatisfied complaints and poor performance has dug a hole in your mojo; you could choose to complain with what you got or start moving to a different provider.

The I-am-sick-of-this-friggin-shit stage: you know it is hell. If you open up your mouth to express yourself is going to be shut quickly by two tons of manure freshly produced. Most users never get to this stage because it requires constant abuse and very poor ethics from your provider.

With Optus I moved to the second stage within two months with very few details every now and then but inconsistent Internet speed, staying on stage two for almost 14 months. I was pretty happy with them (even though the $99 plan really costs $102 because they will charge you printing your bills or administrative fees – that is 3 extra dollars a month). Needless to say, I became a compulsive reviewer of my Internet consumption, knowing what to download and when to download it just to be within the plan avoiding costly mistakes.

One day close to the year and half of signing contract with them, a mate tells me he is on the same plan with Optus (freshly captured by their offer) to which I noticed we have the exact same plan with a tiny difference, his broadband had bigger cap than mine expanded to a 120 GB broadband allowance.

I thought to myself that I would be great if I could get that ‘upgrade’ in my plan, eliminating my concerns of exceeding my data quota.

Calling Optus was very challenging... they changed their data centre to a voice recognition system in which you had to say the motives of your call to later on be redirected to a proper representative. My faith with the company was going downhill but my determination of getting a more appealing deal was stronger than their complex and confusing system... It took me at least 6 minutes to talk to a real human (with strong Indian accent) but I was finally exposing my interest of upgrading my plan, charge-free on exchange of renewing the plan for another 24 months.

I must confess... to the guy, my proposal must had been confusing and difficult to understand, he asked me several times if I was going to cancel my current plan to move to another company or if I wanted to pay more money to be upgraded on the data allowance. The conversation continued for another 25 minutes to end in my realisation of not a chance in my wildest dreams. Apparently Optus needed to cancel my current plan to open up a new one, but since my plan was still 6 month to be over I had to put on the table money for early termination fees plus the money I was supposed to pay Optus for the next 6 months... that was a grand total of 700 dollars to be upgraded to a plan with them... Seriously... What the funk?

And I finally understood the presence of the elephant...
But wait... is a flying elephant!
So the shit comes with lots of momentum and speed (accelerating constantly thanks to gravity)
and you will never see it coming.

That day I thought I did not want to spend any more time and money with Optus... If they were willing to treat me as rubbish, I was going to move my money to a different company.

Checking again on the Internet, noticed TPG and iinet had pretty good plans. Decided to call TPG first (given some refreshed recommendations at the time) to check rates and plans, but after 5 minutes I was complete convinced with their service (the representative even explained to me what to say to Optus to cancel my current contract waving any residual fee).

So... new love story begins?

Erm... no. The conversation with the first representative was awesome, their guy explained to me they were a bit collapsed with the demand, but he was going to book a day to my convenience to perform the installation of the new service and enjoy wonderland. But the technician never called or arrived to my place on that day. Calling tech support I received the news their guy called me to the wrong number and because of that they were going to charge me more for whatever reason... the conversation went for another 20 minutes, with me raging full of anger super volcano style and ask them what’s missing in my connection, when was I going to be connected again to the cyber world?

I had to call private technicians and understand technical issues related to the line and details that I really don’t want to get into my head!

Hulk does not like private technicians
Hulk Smash!
Hulk does not pay!

Story short, it took 3 weeks after the period they claimed everything is going to be operational and some serious blows to my wallet to get my Internet connection working... at last!

At least I got some money refunded after complaining a lot.

What do I think about TPG?

Some of their technical support is good and some others are a total mess.

It was hell to get everything working and I recognise is partially because of their lack of commitment or extreme bureaucracy between contractors, providers and Telstra; I was requested multiple times to contact different specialist with zero or close to zero promise of any resolution for my problems. Guys... come on... I am paying to get the service working, I don't want to know what a MDF is or who's part of the cable isn't working, just get it working!

After everything was connected there have been no flaws or downsides. I am still waiting for the first issue to pop but only time will tell. Until then I will keep posting my funny incidents and stuff worth sharing.

Later!

Let’s talk about prices

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 03:47:00 +0000

It is known by a fact Australia is a freaking expensive place to live in; it does not matter how you search online or who you consult with, almost any Aussie city will be in that list. Even worst, almost all the time Sydney and Melbourne will be in the top ten.

And why do I think Australia is so freaking expensive?

Because I suffer it on my bone and flesh every single day, every single time I am paying rent and every single time I go to the mall to acquire any good I notice the huge price difference in comparison to the same products in the US or Asia.

Being honest, I don’t have a clue of why Australia is so overpriced; maybe lots of taxes, import duties and what else only god knows but you could find lots of goods with huge overprice margins regardless to the country of origin of the product.

To those who does not know what a PS3 Controller is...

For instance (and I don’t have intentions to sound trivial with the item I am going to post in here) you could buy a PlayStation 3 Controller Dual Shock 3 SIXAXIS on any retail store for A$90... If you find a very cheap place where to buy it from.

OR you could go online to ebay if you want and buy it for A$30 plus postage, or you could even go to Amazon and buy it online with a bundle (most of the time bundles are not available in Australia) and get it for A$40 including postage with a brand new game (depends on offer and season).

Maybe the PS3 controller is a bad example because you could argue there are websites selling those controllers directly from China with a retail price of $30 flat; and there is the light possibility of someone telling to compare a wide range of items, because one item is surely not enough…

Let’s take a shiny new 3D LED TV (I am going top of the line here just to show the difference in prices).

The Sony Bravia 60” Full HD 3D LED LCD Smart TV (I don’t like Sony as my display, but I went to the JB HIFI website looking for any brand).

See the tackle coming at you... you will definitely will feel it with the price!

On JB HIFI it cost A$3496 (you could ask for a deal, actually I went there and asked for one and they gave me the ubber awesome discount of A$500)

On Amazon (US)*(1) it will cost US$1258 (at the time I am writing this post), including shipping, exchange rates and taxes it will be A$1800.

*(1) Could not find it on Amazon.co.uk for the comparison… But it will probably be cheaper as well.

Difference in prices: A$1.200!

If there are differences on these prices, go to JB HIFI and Amazon websites, note down the prices and compare.

Now I could argue this price stuff and blame entirely on extreme taxes (yes, bonji jumping extreme) or very bad policies applied to certain products.

Let’s study then a scenario that to me is totally absurd; I present thee Holden Cruze (I was about to select the Commodore... more about that later).

Holden/Chevrolet Cruze

Why the Holden Cruze?

Holden brand is Chevrolet on the states (and several other countries as well) and the Cruze has the exact same name everywhere, so I thought it could be easy to related between different models. And there is another reason to select the Cruze; turns out is a fine Australian made car (at least those sold in the US are)... So, if the theory is right, the Cruze should be cheaper down under than anywhere else, right?

WRONG!

The Holden Cruze CD (the cheapest you could get) costs in Australia A$21.990 (without changing anything to it); that is US$21.700 with the current exchange rate of US$0.98 per each A$ (if I had posted this before the US price goes up for few hundred).

Its description is:

Model: Series 2 Cruze CD
Engine: 1.8 Petrol (gasoline) engine with manual transmission, 6 (gears/speeds).
Colour: Heron White (not that makes a difference, double checked).
Trim (Seats and Interior): Jet black cloth.

The Chevrolet Cruze LS (again cheapest that matches previous description) costs in the US$17.275.

Aussie price for the Aussie built car is 126% the US price.

That is ‘BUGGER!’ in Aussie slang or ‘what the funk?!’ in American.

So... how come Aussie will pay more for the same car? Is it that shipping stuff to the US is so cheaper than shipping within the same territory?

I can't understand it at all...

What could I find while doing my research?

Australia will get higher prices on 80% of the items; you name it! If you are whiling to spend some of your time searching online, try to establish similar products from different places and you will notice the great difference between prices.

Whose fault is it?

There are three different groups to blame on any society (Australian or not).

The Merchants, manufacturers and retailers; huge companies will always try to get more profit without taking into consideration markets or societies. I call this group ‘the bitches’ or industry prostitutes because they will charge you as hard as you want their services.
The Government or the market regulator; this group are the pimps, they use their prostitutes to get money out of the public on many different levels.

For instance, you pay levies or taxes on those goods you are trying to purchase (just like the prostitutes charge you for their protection paying it to their pimp) and on top of that you also have to pay taxes deductible from your income.
The customer or client; this is the worst of all (to my point of view) because it won’t matter how much people would like to sell themselves for money or how hard the pimp will hit others to get his money, the customer is the one supporting the entire system. Without someone looking to get an easy ‘date’ there are no prostitutes, without prostitutes there will be no pimps.

What do I want to say with this?

Well my dear Aussies, you need to hunt a good bargain and to know when to say no to a huge overprice, no matter how madly/desperately you want it just say no and keep looking for a better bargain.

Think ahead, plan your investment. That means, if you buy something regardless its cost try to get the best value out of it.

What do you think? Am I wrong with my perception?

Another year is gone... Two years Down Under

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 05:10:00 +0000

Yup, Kathy and I have officially turned two years down under and what’s the best way to remember those two years than checking the balance.

Sadly, this post is being written as the migraine strikes back, so please forgive me if is total nonsense.

This story has two sides, one happy and one sad. Let’s start with the sad one (that why you won’t end depressed at the end of the post... maybe a little in the middle).

Three days ago (on September 7th) I was having a lovely moment with my missus, watching a movie when I received a call.

This was the movie we were watching on that day...
Confessions of a shopaholic – if you are a guy and your girl brings this movie to your place... Run! Run away from her, leave her behind and never look backJust RUN!
Save yourself while you can, it was too late for me!
I think my testicles shrank twice while watching it

At first it was confusing and could not understand what the person in the other side of the line was saying to the phone because there was too much interference, but I decided to give it a try and replied:

‘Alo? Hello? Anybody there?’

At that precise moment, the sounds coming from the other side resembled someone crying and mumbling something...

‘Today... is two years... have been two years since you are gone. I miss you so much!’

My chest felt instantly heavy, it was difficult to talk, to breathe and I had to stand up and stepped out to the balcony replying:

‘Hi Mom! I was not expecting your call! How are you?’

The conversation went on for another ten minutes, with my mom crying more and more, my dad trying to make her smile (unsuccessfully) and I... I was trying to maintain my calm.

Must admit, it has been one of the most sad, complicated and depressing conversation I have ever had with my mom, but I fully understand that for her is not easy. But for me it was extremely difficult to respond to some of her questions, such as:

“How do you feel? Are you happy?”

Are you happy????? What am I supposed to say here? I know there is no right answer to this... maybe a

‘No mom, I am being miserable in here. I am being treated like shit, less than rubbish and because of my masochist tendencies I am going to stay for as long as possible?’

Obviously that is not the case, telling her that I feel utterly happy and comfortable was not very well received; triggering a new river of tears, with eventual phrases saying ‘I know you are very happy... it was your choice of leaving us, pursuing your adventure of trying to be happy... is just that I miss you so much!’

Up to this point you might be wondering... but why isn’t your mom taking the first plane to Oz?

Economical issues will be my first answer and probably lack of interest to take a plane for more than 20 hours.

To my mom, anything that is not America or Europe is far far away.

Why am I not taking a plane to go and visit her?

Yet again, economical issues will be the first answer. Flying to Venezuela is very expensive from this part of the world, but sadly enough is not the main component of the full answer; Venezuela has become very hostile place to anyone, categorised at the moment as one of the most dangerous country in America and the world. You don't believe it? Google it and you will find in no time posts and articles pointing it out.

But... Why am I telling these stories and thoughts?

Being far away from my family has been hard. There have been times when I would like to be with them, share some of the same experiences, enjoy my nephews and nieces, play with my brothers or just take a seat and chill out, hear them talk about baseball, or what was the last big move with the national soccer team, or my sis laughing of my stupid jokes or sarcastic comments about different situations.

I miss those tasty treats my mom used to cook for me, even though she was going to tell me later on I am eating too much and that is why I am too fat! Or going bald or whatever.

I miss them, all of them very much and the feeling is neither getting worst nor decreasing as the time goes by. This is part of the decision I choose when starting somewhere else.

Now... the happy and more appealing side of the post!

There is always a bright side.

The 9th was our second anniversary since our arrival to Australia! Heey!

On these two years we have been able to:

Start different projects and studies. Kathy has been back to her belly dancing, and I have been reading different types of articles and magazines, most of them related to photography and how to improve the image composition and general appearance.
Buy the camera we always wanted (and now we are fighting to get a chance to use it... and highly probable we will have to buy another one). I was not going to include material things into the list, but the camera (for me) isn’t part of those material things. The camera give us the opportunity to show to our families and friends how we perceive and appreciate Australia (and our lives).
Establish our home. With all the crap need it for it.
Make friends, very dear friends.

Say whaat? Two years?

These two years have been great yet a bit melancholic... or should it be melancholically great? In general the balance is still pretty good! We are deeply, truly and madly in love of our new home.

I am unimaginable grateful to this country for giving me the opportunity of being part of it and I will try to do my best to be a great investment for its future.

Thanks to our friends (in and out of work) for being great with us, to make the effort of understand, comprehend and share our journey.

Till next post.

Oh my dear muses...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 01:36:00 +0000

I think I have lost my muse for the last couple of days. There are so many things I would like to share but at the same time I don’t know how to write it or how to remove the depressing tone from my words.

Dear Calypso, bring your tunes and give me inspiration
Image from evike

I have tried to evoke Clio, Erato or Calypso to take my hands and use them to put down into words my mood and make me feel better... but nothing. So I had to force myself to express what’s on my head, draining some stress and getting calmed.

So, my dear blog, you might ask me, why am I so depressed? Why the blue mood dragging me into the limbo?

So many things, for starters as days goes by the situation in Venezuela is getting worse and being honest, I can’t see the tipping point where people will say “I can’t stand it anymore, this has to change”. My family (as certainly any others in Venezuela) is having serious economical issues thanks to the wrong policies and schemes the government has taken for the last 12 years, plus the water supply, electrical power, roads and health systems has become a mere joke... a bad and tasteless joke which keeps me worried.

On the other hand I am not getting many distractions at work; I do not like the code or the design I am producing, but I have to concentrate to deliver stuff and to be easy going, but my head and my heart are telling me to do something different, to act, to change the situation... but how?

Probably I am just in my blue era, just like Van Gogh, with the big difference that I am not a genius, neither a great artist, nor an alcoholic, nor Dutch... definitely not going to cut my ear and not going to kill myself... and this blue phase eventually will go.

Van Gogh - Almond Tree

So... What to do? What to do?

In the meanwhile I keep taking pictures (which aren’t good either), studying new technologies (well... not really studying... more reading than anything else...), browsing for hours the Internet trying to find good deals and trying not to forget to watch the stars at the end of the days.

Van Gogh - Starry night

Do I have any news for you?

Well... I got officially older on July and so did my mom (kind of sad to sing the happy birthday on the phone because the freaking Venezuelan’s Internet is shit and I could not video call my mom)... I finished one book I have been reading for at least 6 months now... On September 9th it will be two years since I arrived to Australia.

Broken communications... that's our experience with Venezuelans failing systems.
Image from corbisimages.com

And I have rewritten four times three posts of which I have published none... and I still don’t like‘em.

Anyway, I am going to go back to editing those posts.

Hope to get it ready anytime soon.