A venezuelan couple living their Australian dreams

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 on 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.

My photostream...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 12:05:00 +0000

If you are a computer affectionate (A.K.A geek, nerd or computerholic) or love photography, taking pictures of very attractive-artistic-astonishing rubbish, probably you have bumped into the inevitable I-am-running out-of-disk-space problem... or the very well known my-mom-does-not-know-how-to-check-my-facebook-photos-and-it-will-be-better-if-I-just-send-the-link-on-an-email.

In those case you need an image storage service to upload some of your pictures to share it with your mates and maybe (it depends on how attached to your photos you are) store it on these services and have it available anywhere at all times.

There are tons and tons of those services, for instance:

Google has Picasa Web which connects to Picasa (on desktop computers or Picasa plug-in for IPhoto on Macs), I use this service to host the images used on my blogs, why? Is so easy to click on blogger, upload my images drag it where I want it to be and that’s it. There is another reason; if you just want to store a bulk of images Picasa will be a cheap option for small storage. Right now Picasa Web allows you to upload up to 1GB (Giga byte or 1000 Mega bytes) for free; $5 per year if you want to upgrade to 20GB and if you need more space than add 5 bucks for every 20GB you want to expand... Obviously, when you need lots of space, for instance 1TB (= 1000GB) you will be paying $256 per year.

Microsoft has Live Photos (I don't know if it was re-branded to skydrive, but it exists for two years now...) which works great with Live Photo Gallery and you get awesomely 25GB of storage for free... But I have not used it... ever... so I can’t give you a nice comment related to it with the exception of the great free space.

And Flickr (I don’t plan to post in there the entire list of services available) is a very nice photo sharing site where you could easily upload your images, include comments and post them online. The one thing that made me use Flickr to post my photography experience is the nice experience of beautiful user interface (do you imagine gorgeous photos in an awful web page layout?). The second reason related to my selection is based on scalability; when I get to the point where maintaining the pictures in my computer is not possible and the amount of pictures I can upload surpass the monthly allowance imposed by Flickr, then they will charge me $25 per year for unlimited storage... Right now my data storage is pretty low and I don’t think that any time soon I am going to exceed 300MB per month, but something more important is that Flickr has a better photography-related community in comparison to Picasa’s.

So I present thee (drums please)... my photostream!

I am still uploading images now and then; currently (at the time that I am writing this post) my most active stream is related to Vivid Sydney 2011, but fell free to take a look of my inspirational moments. Comments, observations and constructive critics are highly appreciated.

Long live the Queen

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:41:00 +0000

If you are looking for this Queen... you won't find it inhere!

For those of you who does not live or have knowledge of the Queen’s birthday, every second of June the members of the Commonwealth celebrate the birthday of the Monarch.

But what does it means and why am I writing a post about it?

The meaning

It means that the current Queen, Elizabeth II will be celebrating another year of experience in the crown.

And here... The monarch of the Commonwealth... Elizabeth II

Why is celebrated in June? Isn't the real date on April 21?

Apparently this holiday was first established in 1788 (in Australia), honouring King George III (Monarch at the time) who’s birthday was the 4th of June 1738, but every other king or queen born after those dates was celebrated on their own birthday...

So... Who decided to celebrate anything in June? King George V in 1936 decided to celebrate any Queen or King Birthday on June and later on the Commonwealth fixed the date to the second Monday of June.

... Not that interesting really... I was expecting a drunken aunty dancing around naked in the Buckingham palace to which consequence and in an attempt to distract public attention decided to celebrate the queen birthday that day... Anyway... now you know we are not that crazy =P on celebrating Queen’s birthday on her non-real-birth-day.

Why am I writing about this?

Because is long weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!

The queen’s birthday is a public holiday in Australia (with the exception of the people of Perth, that decided to celebrate it on the first Monday of October... why? No idea!) in which friends take advantage of the long weekend to visit between each other, or many just crack a beer between mates. In any case is a wonderful opportunity to rest and enjoy the cold but lovely weather.

In Sydney you will enjoy some fireworks at Darling Harbour, the end of Vivid Sydney (which reminds me, I have to share with you the pictures that I have been taking from this event), The Darling Harbour Jazz and Blues festival, different events in North Sydney and so on.

So, if you are in Australia, enjoy this awesome and well deserved long weekend.

Edited: added the reason of why is celebrated in June instead of April, thanks xerxesb for your observation.

Vivid Sydney 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:15:00 +0000

Well… I am still getting ready to publish the bazillion pictures I took last Saturday on this fantastic show called Vivid Sydney.

Vivid is a very quiet yet colourful and marvellous that it represents the great (and simple) things you could create with a bunch of lasers, lights and an outstanding building.

This post is the first part of ‘Vivid Sydney’ post series and the next one will contain no less than 30 full colour pictures capture by me :) (My camera actually).

Here you will find a time laps of the show, enjoy it

Falling low...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Fri, 27 May 2011 11:31:00 +0000

Yes... I have falling very low... and I had to make a post of it...

I am still struggling how to put this into words... especially when I have said before that I would hate myself if I ever opened... I found hard and strong, like a knight would fight a dragon, trying to slay it just to proof his bravery, chivalry and honour... but at the end the fool dies saving a friend, a hot chick or just something as stupid as treasures...

Something that life has taught me is that when you have a problem... you got to share it with a friend because it will give you the first step in a very long recovery; that first step is called recognition of your problem.

There is no good way to say it... so here I go...

I... I have opened a twitter account...

Yes... I can't believe it either...
Can't say that I was forced, neither I did it by mistake... I was totally aware and in control of my faculties.
Image from brutalion

Yes, I did...

so sorry fellas... Now I will be able to share my silly and stupid thoughts in twitter as well instead of having it contained and concentrated on this blog.

The little blue bird who tweets...
Image from alpercakici

So if you want to follow me (yeah right) you could do it @rodrigoelp; I will try to do my best to not let you down and share good stuff.

Cheers and till next time.

Things I liked about Perth

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 22 May 2011 06:54:00 +0000

I have to finish Perth’s post series and I wanted to end in a very positive note, those things I liked the most about it. In a way, I need this positive note right now because of different factors:

Firstly, the hideous migraine has been visiting me more frequent in the past few weeks and is highly probable that I am not handling it right.
Secondly, sometimes I feel I am not at my best at work... I really would like to give more of me but I have been bumping against walls and I haven’t been clever enough to early detect it and change accordingly.
And thirdly, I just need to get a couple of things out of head to make room for new ones.

In response to those points I have decided to take a sit (while I eat a meat pie) and start taking a look to 23 gig of pictures recently taken, stored in my hard drive and share with you a couple more of our Perth adventure.

As you may have already read in previous posts (such as 'hop hop hop and off to Perth we go', 'how did we get to Perth', 'Perth first impressions' and 'Comparison Sydney/Perth'), Kathy and I went to Perth to spend some time with close friends and the result was outstanding; our friends were delighted taking us out every single day (to all of them I am truly grateful) trying to sell us the best of their city and nearby areas; we were delighted as well with their attentions, treatment and love.

Even though I have written a comparison between Sydney and Perth, impressions and a very descriptive report of how Virgin Blue ~~raped our wallets~~ took us to there, I felt obliged to add those things I liked the most from Perth, and here there are:

Bell tower

Also known as the home of the Swan Bells(1) is a gorgeous crystal and copper building between the Perth’s CBD and the swan river; it was built to host 18 bells provided by city of London and the British and Australian mining company in commemoration of Australia bicentenary.

Colours and shapes... that incredibly attractive, isn't?

I don’t know if I am in love of the wave-alike shape, or its similitude with the Opera House, but truly is a magnificent building that everyone has to visit once in Perth.

I love that shape, it was extremely well played and beautifully finished.

We got there elevenish with the purpose of walking around the city, have some meal and keep our tour, Kathy took advantage of our good friend to take as many pictures as possible (and took my camera and started taking pictures of whatever; it really did not matter what it was, she was taking a picture of it. Meanwhile I stood there watching it, impressed with the shape and how crystal-like fragile seems to be as seen from the outside with its huge amounts of glass and its two shells on each side. It kind of reminds you a big, big clamp with a piece of glass on its middle and I was totally intrigued about the internal structure and the sound that could produce. So we walked in all the way to the highest level we could get... and at that precise moment, a bunch of blokes and two ladies started pulling the cords through series of pulley, generating leverage on the mechanism that finally rotated the bells, striking its clapper against the walls of the metal cup, making a very loud ‘CLANK!!!!’ followed by other different clanks and bangs which variates on intensity; pushing the entire structure to its maximum, vibrating its pillars inducing you into the feeling of being in a boat with small shakes every now and then. At first I could not understand how the entire building was moving just by the fact of someone playing the bells... till I actually got the look of the 2 metres high bells and weight up to 1480 Kilos.

From level 5 of the bell tower the view is outstanding

I know there are plenty of stuff in Perth, and some of those could be even more important than the Bell Tower, but for me this building casted a magic spell on me and now is one of my favourite modern buildings in the entire world (right behind the Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Chrysler Building in New York City).

The Swan River

Water has been always a topic of fascination among the human kind and I am not the exception to the rule.

Our first encounter with it was while our welcome committee was picking us from the airport and driving us to Maccas (McDonalds, btw) while our friend Victor told us ‘Now that you are looking at the swan river you must feel great, don’t you? Is here where is celebrated the biggest event of Australia... Perth Skyworks...’ to what I remember and made the immediate analogy of the grateful and independent republic of Zulia (one state in Venezuela where anyone and everyone believes they are not Venezuelans, they are citizens of Zulia which has been giving the royal honour to Venezuela to be part of it). Anyway, I took a look to the brownish waters, the shores and the view around it. It wasn’t something extraordinary and I must say I could not understand why lots of people were so excited about the river... I mean, the water wasn’t crystal clear as the Parramata River (in some areas I must remark), beside the bell tower, the blue house (to which I still don’t know its name) and the CBD’s view from the south shore I could not find any extraordinary thing about it...

One of the multiple points were you could stop and enjoy the view.
Is not precisely in the swan river shore.

Our second encounter was the next day, Victor took us around to show us the beaches and nice spots to take pictures, and it was in one of those incursions that I saw a couple of old folks in their boat placidly driving it in the calmed waters. Maybe it was a matter of scale or maybe it was the moment, but I felt like part of it, so nice and relaxing... and I started wondering... is this the feeling some of the pertains have talked about?

Third encounter, fourth day of our holidays, driving to the Swan Bells and then to the blue house (that I am going to show the picture in a bit) to take pictures and I realised the entire city is surround it by the river, like a huge serpent around a leaf... a big leaf obviously. So pretty much anything you want to do in the water will be probably on the river.

A black and white image of the Swan river and Perth CBD
I know... it looks extremely small...
Click on it to see a bigger version of it.

Fourth encounter, our last day there, we were coming back home from an amazing meal in ‘Eat Greek’, an all-you-can-eat restaurant where our friends took us to give us the farewell and enjoy with us the last night. Driving us back home we notice bunch of cars parked on the kerb (as well as a police patrol) staring at the water. We wondered what could be that impressive when it happened, dolphins jumping out and in, teasing between each other and teasing people to throw them things and then keep playing between them and with the occasional new visitor. It was an incredible and magical experience which I did not capture in photos (I am very sorry).

The blue house on the river, known as Crawley edge boatshed

You start understanding that is not just a river... is pretty much the entire view of Perth. It gives them life, it gives them joy... the Swan River makes Perth what it is, a nice and peaceful place full of gorgeous sceneries, outgoing people and relax above all.

Sculptures around the city

In different occasions I wondered about events in Perth based on the number of pictures I have seen with mates and sculptures. And I always asked myself... why is everyone taking a picture of this bronze bloke?

And yes... we also took our picture of the bronze bloke...
Otherwise people could had told us 'but you did not have the picture with that man!!'

Well, as we discovered later one, Perth is filled with sculptures anywhere becoming almost a challenge to keep looking around to find more of those, but for some odd reason, people visiting Perth only have eyes to take picture to this funny looking fellow.

A 'pee-pee' man - Sculpture by the sea - Cottesloe

Our first day we went to the beach when an interesting sculpture got my attention which made me start to play with my camera and the object, trying to get interesting images, capturing the texture, the colours and the shape... But more interesting was that I was totally pleased to find new shapes and objects every now and then.

Even in the fish market you will find it.

Now, that last comment could suggest to some of my readers that Sydney lacks of sculptures or interesting stuff to see around, but I think the key difference in here is that fact that Perth is pretty much flat and trying to find sculptures is kind of easy; all you need to do is walk and look around, while Sydney gives you a more challenging situation because with its big buildings, streets and people rushing to their lives without taking a minute to look around, the Sydneysider has grown unaware of these little details, and most of the times they don’t even know where to find it.

Dragonfly - Cottesloe, part of the sculptures by the sea

Walking men - Sculpture by the sea - Cottesloe

Walking around the fish market we found a sculpture with interesting textures
and beautiful mosaics

So what’s the difference?

I was walking to friends that took the time to appreciate the city, which is a fantastic way to spend some of your time; it gives you the opportunity to share knowledge, ideas and creativity.

So Rod... is there anything else you liked about Perth?

Short answer, yes, there are plenty of stuff to remark... But if I highlight lots and lots of stuff, I will be totally unfair to another set of items present in Perth... I could spend a long time talking about beaches, parks, scenery, etc, etc but the main idea of this post was to highlight those things that I would recommend from Perth to anyone to enjoy on their trip plan.

I think this post completes Perth post series. I hoped you enjoyed these words and I will back in now time to take more precious moments with our friends.

Cheerios.

(1) Ring my bells website suck big time on Google Chrome (I haven't tried in Firefox). Use Safari or Internet Explorer if you plan to check it out.

Meet the Kookaburra

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 08 May 2011 04:57:00 +0000

As described in Wikipedia, the Kookaburras are large to very large birds native to Australia and New Guinea, carnivore by nature, easily spotted in a wide variety of environments from humid forest to arid savannas, but also spotted in suburban and residential areas near running water where food can be searched for easily, including on its menu lizards, snakes, bugs and meat... like raw meat, sausages, fillets or steaks in an unsupervised BBQ or visitor’s plate!

IS SO FLUFFY!!!!!
Image from wikipedia

What I find more interesting about this bird is that it looks like a stuffed toy bird, with all its feathers puff up gives it the appearance of being super fluffy white, blown and blue fairy floss in the shape of a bird with a big waffle cone as beak (I was not starving at the time that I wrote the last paragraph!).

Laughing Kookaburra.
Very common in Sydney

Its name derives from the word guuguubarra, which is (kind of) the sound these little fellows do to call each other, producing a distinctive yet hysterical sound very close to the human laugh. Curious enough, their laugh is known worldwide, used on infinite number of attractions and jungle themed entertainments around the world such as wildlife parks, or the more characteristic monkeys laugh in Disney’s park attractions.

And why do I want to share this knowledge with you?

In case you think this is related to the blue bottle incident...

No... I was not stung by any poisonous Kookaburra while a mysterious man came out from the bush with an unknown yet catchy nursery rhyme about Kookaburras flying in blue skies... But I feel compelled to tell my experiences with these birds.

Experience #1 – First encounter.

I was newly arrived to Australia and I was walking with Kathy around the area (looking around... trying to find furniture to use in our empty apartment to be perfectly honest...) and we started hearing that laugh at which we quickly turn around to face the source of it, just to find a white and brown bird, looking back at us and no one else. At first I thought I might be a bit crazy... then I turned to face Kathy asking her if she heard it too and she replies says ‘Does Australia have monkeys anywhere?’

The Kookaburra, watching at us and nothing more.
The image is from Ian

I was trying to find a recollection of an article of book... but nothing; I could not remember any Australian monkey famous for its mockery of bystanders.

Two more steps and we heard it again, facing back as fast as possible just to see the same puffy bird, sitting placidly on its branch. I remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” where a raven gave visits to a man, just to remind him his beloved late Lenore...

“Once upon midday dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint a curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly walking, suddenly there came a laughing,

As of someone gently giggling, giggling at my bad joke,

‘Tis some visitor’ I muttered, ‘giggling at my bad joke

Only this and nothing more’ ”

Turned once more to face Kathy and tell her that I did not know the source of the laugh, but whatever it was, wasn’t moneys and then for third time we got the ‘GUU GUU UHA BA AAH AAH AAH!’ and to my surprise there was the bird, shaking with an harmonic yet spastic movement to which each ‘AAH!’ corresponded perfectly.

Full of excitement and curiosity; we rushed back home to try to find this odd bird whose singing was exactly like if it was laughing and googled ‘laughing bird Australia’ and there it was... first link ‘laughing Kookaburra’

I must say, it looked so puffy and huggable (just like a stuffed toy bird) that I skipped the carnivore part of the text (do not remember reading it) and ever since then I wanted one in my balcony, laughing to me, making happy each morning, day or night an hysterical opportunity to feel joyful.

Experience #2 – The Taronga Zoo

There had been few days since the arrival of some dear friends, when we decided to go and get to know the famous Taronga Zoo... and getting the very emblematic (yet mandatory) picture with a roo. In fact my mom told me several times, ‘without a picture with a kangaroo, you have no proof what so ever that you are in Australia!!!’ and so... that day of March we took the train to Circular Quay, walked to the wharf with the huge ‘Taronga Zoo’ sign and got the annual membership.

Why? (or why not to get a simple ticket? you may ask)

Well... lots of people told us ‘is a huge park and you will have to walk a lot!’ it was noon-ish already and the annual membership costed as much as two tickets for an adult. I thought ‘what the hell, I know that I am going to come more than once...’ (I did, later on... don’t take my decision back).

Once in the zoo, we went straight away to take pictures of koalas and kangaroos (Erm, I must clarify this, Taronga does not have kangaroos... in reality they show Wallabies, but it fits the purpose) and in our way to see the birds show Kathy and I stood petrified trying to find the precise location of the laugh origin. It was going to be the very first time to watch it up close and there it was, a big bird (30 or 35 cm head to tail bird) puffed as always, looking down at us, trying to invite us to give it some food.

I think someone from the zoo saw me and came by fast enough to cough while pointing to the sign ‘feeding the animals is forbidden at all times – fines applies’ to which I reacted instinctively to protect my wallet and told to Kathy to keep walking... Kathy just looked at me with her usual ‘I told you not to...’

'What does it say?'
'Dunno... don't worry,
humans seems to not understand it either'

Yeah... I know... shame on me.

Experience #3 – The BBQ

We had less than a week of having bought the BBQ and have it assembled when Kathy told me ‘I am hungry... could you cook some sausages in there?’ Pointing to the BBQ with the look “I don’t want anything from the kitchen to get dirt”

I stood up, grabbed the tomato and basil sausages just like she said, warmed up the BBQ and put the protective cover of oil just like one of my mates at work told me, to then leave (unattended for five minutes) those sausages and keep playing God of War while Kathy was folding shirts in our room.

I started smelling the delicious aroma coming from cooking process when I heard the flapping of something close to the BBQ, just to turn around enough and see a Kookaburra standing in front of the BBQ and I thought... ‘Ouh! How lovely looks the... WHAT THE FLUNK IS IT DOING?????????’ whiles the bird jumped inside the BBQ, taking one sausage with its beak and flying away very very fast.

yes mister... you will eventually pay me that sausage!

I stood there... totally speechless... Wordless to say, Kathy told me not to leave the sausages unattended. She did not foretell any theft bird stealing our lunch, but she was trying to avoid getting charcoal as meal.

As I walked to the table, I tried to think into very different explanations to ‘why are we one sausage short?’ to which in my imagination I was about to tell her ‘I just dropped the sausage to the floor and throw it to the bin’ or ‘I was hungry and got one ahead’ or ‘I think the pack had one less than usual’. Then she asked and all I came up was with ‘damn Kookaburra! Too long to explain, I will get one slice of bread and a sausage, you will get your sausages... don’t worry’

She looked puzzled... but at least I got one less ‘I told you so’ (and less sausage as well...)

Experience #4 – the one in Macquarie University.

I have been always marvelled of how careless to human presence some animals in Australia are, is like they know people mean no harm to them and as long as you don’t try anything weird, they won’t try to go away, which is the total opposite to animals (desirable animals) in Caracas; if you were walking, pigeons will fly away; if you stop abruptly, it will fly away. If you are talking to someone, it will fly away... if you are quiet... it will fly away... Does not matter what you do, it will fly away as soon as you are on its field of view.

Anyway, some birds in the Macquarie University campus aren’t the exception. Some time ago I was going back to the office and I see this lovely and puffy Kookaburra standing in a handrail and I thought of pulling out my cell and capture the moment... but as soon as my hand got to my pocket the bird looked afraid so I stopped in an attempt to not scares it. Apparently the Kookaburra was curious about me either and started walking towards me, while still in the handrail getting puffier and puffier and then stood there, in front of me at a distance where I could grab it easily if I wanted. So I start moving my finger towards its head to try to touch it when I heard ‘If you really love your finger, put it away, mate!’ as the student went passing me by, acting as if he wanted to bite his finger... then I looked back at the Kookaburra just to realise that it was opening its beak as I was rising my hand.

Looks small... but its beak is very intimidating...

Thanks to my affection to my extremities... I decided to keep walking to the office and leave the sociopath Kookaburra behind.

Experience #5 – the one in the park.

Yesterday (Saturday 7th of May) a couple of friends, Kathy and I went to Lane Cove National Park with the intention of getting some good food, talk and enjoy one of the multiple national parks that this wonderful city have. Our friends picked us up at 12 PM with pretty much everything except the wood for cooking, which we bought 5 minutes later from the petrol station and off to our picnic.

First thing was start the fire, to which I began my explanation of how to set the wood in a squared shape with a bit of oil in the middle (or combustive material) trying to get the centre as hot as possible to get the wood burning...

Most of the times I remember when one of my older brothers was explaining to me the same technique and telling me how the kerosene gave a nasty taste to the meat, while I was emptying a jar of kerosene on top of the charcoal to then throw a match on lighting up... it was like slow motion movies... my brother watched the match descending into the grill while screaming ‘what are you doi...’

[CHAKAWOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!]

This is a video of what happened when the match hit the grill.

He just stayed there, quiet, staring at the grill burning from the ground up... literally from the actual grill till the floor... with the subsequent phrase ‘I should have known you planned something like this... that’s it, I am not going to teach you anymore...’

Gladly for me, I was the one among my brothers that really loved cooking BBQs and eventually (taking far away from me anything combustible with the exception of a paper napkin soaked in oil) he did teach me how to light it up without getting the entire forest burned.

Back to the story; we got the wood ignited and cooking sausages, meat and some sweet corn while I was looking at the nearby trees while trying to refine my hearing, just in case some Kookaburra was close by, waiting to drive in our picnic and steal some food... but then between the chatting and eating I saw a Magpie getting ready to jump to my friend’s wife plate. I took one small piece of meat (I was not going to eat it anyway) and throw it away... My mate tells me ‘you should not throw them stuff... they are not going to jump in our plates to get anything...’

But as I was explaining to him one encounter I got with a magpie at Guzman & Gomez, where the bird tried to peak my burrito but I was a bit faster, moving my hand enough to cover it and continued saying ‘plus we should be wary of any Kookaburra around here... they tend to steal food from people and.... hey!! Look a Kookaburra!!’

But my warning was too late; the Kookaburra was already stealing the biggest part of my mate’s wife steak and flying back to its branch... to which I completed ‘as I was saying... the Kookaburra steals food to people just like us... chatting about Kookaburras stealing food...’

I realised at the moment I was the mysterious man with the not very well done rhyme of Kookaburras eating behaviours.

So in conclusion... be wary of clear skies because a Kookaburra might steal your bite!

Cheerios

Comparison Sydney / Perth

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 01:48:00 +0000

And I have come to the topic I have been asked ever since we came back...

How can I compare Sydney to Perth?

Simple, I can’t...

Both cities are very different; in their lifestyles, flavours, weather, people and entertainment. On each city you will find opportunities, issues, pros and cons, but the key factor is what kind of person are you?

My mental image of Perth before going there...
Everything was built... no one was there.

Talking to some people in Sydney, we got the odd idea that ‘Perth was a mixture of city, isolated ghost town and Dubai... very small, undeveloped, with lots of money, nothing to do there... really...’ But we found something totally different; it was a nice place where anyone who wants to reside there will enjoy lots of different activities to those who likes Sydney (like me).

Perth is a young city, on its way to become something really great, while Sydney is a city with a bit of history, it has grown already and right now is trying to find its right spot into a bigger world.

So... asking a comparison between Sydney and Perth is like establishing a comparison between young wines (verdelho) versus one that has already matured (Cabernet-Merlot)... Different flavours, different palates, different tastes... just different.

How is the cost of living of Perth in relation to Sydney?

Food, services, petrol... is about the same with the exception of the property market; which is the big, big difference.

Our friends (almost all of them) have bought their homes in the first year (max two) which is a very nice record in deed. Sydney in average will be 50% or 60% more expensive than Perth (or any other city in Australia) which is a huge disadvantage to my favourite place... Sydney.

Was thinking to publish a different image...
But I bet some of my pals will feel id with this one =P

But if you compare the renting market, is again, about the same in term of price. The difference will be the size of it. Sydney will give you units for about 300, 350, 400 or more per week... And Perth will do the same but for houses...

Which city offers me more entertainment options?

Again, is not a matter of comparing both cities and specify which one will offer you more attractions and options. What is really important is to describe which city might be more related to your personality.

Sydney and Perth are cities in which you will be able to express yourself in outdoor activities... You will be able to walk or run to the closest park, enjoy the scenery and take a bit of sun and off to your next activity. The difference will be found in the number and frequency that each city prepares those events.

Sydney's food festival

Sydney is well known worldwide by their food and cultural events, but Perth also has great events and plenty of activities to do. Plus I got to tell you, it feels extraordinary to walk on the streets at 10PM and find yourself watching the stars in a quiet night.

So what I have been blabbing was, Sydney will give more events prepared by the city or the government while Perth will give you the opportunity to make your own arrangements to go and have fun in the wild, near small town or city.

Some of the sculptures at the sea
I had a great fun taking this picture.

Something I did notice... and it might be totally related to the fact that we were escorted all the time by our friends; Sydney gives you gastronomically more options than Perth and I think is also related to how busy the life on each place is, Sydney being more complex and busy and Perth being more relaxed and family oriented.

Transport system and commuting times.

Most Aussie cities have a series of developed transport system in which you might be able to go from (almost) any suburb to the city or another suburb. The transport system will include trains, buses, ferries, light trains and trams with their different fare system, different rules and different schedules... but at the same time coordinated for the common good.

Sydney's lightrail

Sydney’s system is based mainly in the train, with some areas highly related to bus or ferry or both at the same time. And some minor routes that are covered by light train or monorail (but these last two are more ornamental than functional).

Perth’s system is based mainly in bus lines, covering the entire city and a bunch of train lines going from the north to the south and some lines covering the west coast (currently in development... so is highly possible that upcoming years will bring more similarities between Sydney and Perth).

So... where is the difference?

Sydney’s system is having delays (every now and then); it could be related to lack of maintenance, abuse of their boundaries or lack of commitment of their staff. Anyhow, Sydney’s system needs to improve a little bit, but is still comparable against any first world transport system.

Sydney's double deck trains.

Perth’s system is struggling as well... but against the city. The city is growing too fast and too frequent for its commuters, so is highly possible that your bus gets 5 minutes delayed because it got stuck in the middle of the city while some trucks moved blocks or concrete from one place to the other, or multiple lanes were closed because of the nearby construction, or the actual road is being expanded.

TransPerth.

The basic difference is, Perth system is still growing, is a bit young and you will totally need a car to do basic stuff such as going to the market, movies or something like that. While Sydney is a bit more developed even though delays might strike in your schedule (nothing in comparison to delays in Caracas or New York... although I must be honest, I haven’t been in New York for ages... their subway could have improve tons ever since I was there).

Issues and problems on each city.

Each city has their issues and problems, and each city must find a way to solve it for its resident’s sake (even though most politicians don’t give a sheet... mistyped on purpose) and here I am going to try to show some which I don’t like (and I could notice).

I know that I could sit for days writing long descriptive specifications of the multiples issues Sydney and Perth have... And being totally honest with you, I did... in a second though (and reading again my post) I decided to remove it to avoid touchy topics. Instead I am going to give you a small list of things I think each city could improve a bit.

Sydney’s list.

The buses need to meet regular schedules.
I have found myself several times waiting for a bus that never comes... More common though is the one that does appear... 20 minutes later.
People’s attitude towards bus drivers, or as the matter of fact, people’s attitude towards someone else that gives you a service... I know my building manager hates some of my neighbours because they treat him as their slave.
People’s tidiness.
I don’t know what happen to people in Sydney... and believe me, is something you would not notice at first. But I have seen people throwing rubbish on the streets rather than hold it for two metres and dispose it appropriately.
Respect to pedestrians traffic lights.
I have seen lots of people crossing right at the middle of the street or when they shouldn’t do it. Apparently no one cares and it got to the point that I started doing it; Now (and thanks to my wife’s stare of death) I am on my way to remove this nasty behaviour in my day to day basis.

Perth’s list.

I will have very few items to post in here... you know, there are very few things you could catch in a week with lots of people being constantly taking care of you.

Transport coverage.
I know Perth is growing and there are things missing... But at times I felt the only way to travel from one point to the other in Perth was by car... and being honest, I am not a huge fan of cars, in fact, I think a big chunk of our society depends insanely in cars to the point that some people have it as a need more than a commodity. Sydney might suffer issues on its coverage, but Perth low density yet wide residential areas to cover will be a huge challenge to solve leading to bigger traffic issues than any other city in Australia. Hopefully I will be wrong.
Little control over some sectors of society.
Is highly probable this issue is bigger than just in Perth, but I did notice people take precautions when they are walking towards refugees or aborigines because they might act unexpectedly to your presence or even your behaviour. I have no idea if these sectors of society are as worrisome in Sydney as in Perth but a common comment in Perth is that residents feel these sectors are above the law.

Common list.

I have come to the simplistic approach to say... In Australia, to get to know a bit more than the city’s basics, you need a car. In Perth is closer to a must than a need.
Teenagers respect to others.
Again, I have come to the simplistic approach to say... teenagers are not people... they are a proto-human being with a total lack of respect... I wish I could pack them all, and send them to Caracas, Venezuela so they gain a bit of appreciation to this country.

Uhms... Given that a second thought... I shouldn’t send more socially unfit members to Venezuela... The country has enough and I really would like someday to look back and feel proud of the country I have come from.
Could I send them in a ship titled ‘Titanic II’?

How awesome is this????

Let them feel the kings/queens of the world while the ship sinks to the bottom of the ocean. BUHUHAHAHA
People’s respect to others.
Especially in the train. Some people really struggle with the phrase ‘where your rights ends, mine rights starts’ and I have seen lots of people eating really disgusting things on the train without respect to others noses... And lots of people put their nasty shoes on the seat...
I mean, what’s wrong with you people?

But anyway, if you have anything else to add to these points, please point them in the comment section below and we could expand it later on.

Cheerios!

Perth, first impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:08:00 +0000

You are probably wondering by now ‘where are the freaking pictures Rod promised?’ and here there are... not... all.

I can tell you, there are many things that you will notice of Perth straight away:

FIRST

In Perth EVERYTHING is brand new.

There are new buildings, streets, suburbs, houses and parks. Pretty much everything is new just like if the city was built in the last 10 years. I have to be honest with you, most of the pictures I have seen from Perth they show a very nice, clean and new city... and that’s all true. Everywhere I watched there was a new building about to be completed, a house being painted or a road being expanded or improved. The city contains a bit of history, but it has been overtaken by huge business buildings, parks or new constructions; in a way is sad because the city could expose some of its history but instead they decided to obliterate anything kind of old to replace it immediately with something fashion and new.

Perth Skyline

When you drive through a suburb, you find yourself immerse in a well planed suburb, with new houses (or 15 years old tops), plenty of parks (this point I am going to expand it later on), public transport in some areas and small malls nearby... This covers your day to day needs.

SECOND

There are lots of parks everywhere.

At first I didn’t want to admit it... I have seen lots of parks anywhere in Sydney, but the size of them and how close they are between each other is something totally different in Perth.

They have built parks in almost every block which gives you the crazy impression that Perth wasn’t built on top of a dessert; although that impression is quickly gone when you start driving between suburbs and take a look or two of the sand dunes with small bushes everywhere.

Children walking around

These parks are great to take lunch, exercise yourself, rest, enjoy the city, etc. And thanks to that the people in Perth has come to a permanent state of relaxation. In my personal opinion, that’s the main reason why so many people told us ‘Perth is a family place!’

Those little rascals
I remember when playing or running around a tree was pretty fun...

It is filled up with green open areas with plenty of sun light (almost 12 hours) a day in summer time; the chances to take out your kids, play and do free stuff are extraordinary; super attractive for parents trying to get their kids burning 100% of their energies, riding bicycle, skating, taking lunch or just running around in one of the thousands gardens and open spaces.

THIRD

Everyone is in total relaxation.

Perthians in general are very, very relaxed. Don’t mind about difficult choices and try to keep it simple.

If you want to go and have a great meal, just drive 10K and get your lunch from your favourite place. You don’t want to eat it right there? Drive couple kilometres more and have your meal at the riverside of the Swan... watch the dolphins jumping out of the water while you are at it and then drive back to work.

The old folks full of stress having a meal in front of the ocean.
I would like to be as stressed as them!

Of course, you won’t do that every day, but every now and then will be an incredible experience.

FOURTH

It has great beaches.

When I stood for the very first time in front of an Aussie beach my thoughts were ‘I can’t believe Venezuelans brag about beautiful beaches... Australian ones are outstanding!’ well... Perth isn't the exception to that comment (if you don't have recollection of my comment related to Sydney's beaches, read here there are more, just follow the beach tag).

One panoramic view of city beach

I am not going to say Perthian beaches are better than those you could find in Sydney, but something I am certain is that Perthian beaches are great. Their soft sands, wide shores and crystalline waters were some of the many things I remember from that experience.

Walking in the dock

I know that I could make the comparison and determine one and for all which beaches I liked the most... but in reality I can’t; both types are great, fun and enjoyable.

FIFTH

The city landscape is pretty flat.

That means, very low population density, giving you the notion (the right one) that the city doesn’t have any building (or skyscraper) till you get to the CBD. Where almost all of them are concentrated in 4 by 12 blocks (joking) and the rest are one to two storey buildings such as: warehouses, houses, town houses, etc.

Another panoramic (click on any picture to get a bigger version)
Something I don't quite like about publishing the picture is
after resizing it looks a bit blurry,
but I have too, otherwise I will be publishing 80 meg pictures in jpeg =S

In a way is nice to drive in a very low populated area, but the city right now is starting to suffer some diseases such as traffic and long commuting time. A common tale in the area is how people commute 30 minutes every day from and to work, because of the long distances, highly related to a growing population in a low density area. That means, if you want to get around, you probably need a car.

But don’t get me wrong... Let buildings means wider, greener areas where you get the chance to breathe pure air; a luxury these days in any modern city of the world.

SIXTH

Perth has lots of expensive houses, known as McMansions.

Is unbelievable the number of mansions you can find in Perth.

Actually, it contains some of the more expensive properties in the whole Australia. This does not imply the land is expensive, is just that the owners had so much money; they could not find anything else useful to do with their money other than investing it in their homes; adding pretty much everything they wanted.

I could not find a single picture of any McMansion that I have taken.
Instead I present to you a photo of some great churros.

You will be able to find residential areas filled up with these types of constructions with houses just getting bigger and bigger... some with two tennis courts in the front yard, separated by fountains with cupids spitting water (other just pissing the water), bushes or just a swimming pool. At that moment you start wondering, when the money is really too much? But at the same time I wonder, if I had that kind of money, what will I do with it?

By the way, the term McMansion is a pejorative term used by some Aussies to id this kind of houses. Don’t use it to describe your mate’s place... Not that I can tell...

SEVENTH

Common folk houses in Perth are AWESOME.

And you probably wonder: WTF is a common house?

Well... for me a common house is the type of properties most of the folks can afford to get. Housing in Perth is accessible in comparison to the price of any property in Sydney... Which means, lots of our friends had done the arrangements to buy their own places, and most of them would be places were any Latin American would dream to have (I am talking to those whom are not stealing money, doing odd businesses or do not own their own companies).

Houses in Mandurah. 'Close' to Perth.
Beautiful view, isn't?

Just to give you some maths:

A house with 450 square metres of construction: three bedrooms, two and half bathrooms, two parking spots, entertainment area, home theatre, living room, kitchen and patio, with front and backyard and some services around the corner will cost you a$450,000.

Do you think the price is sky high? What about if I tell you the same house in Sydney will cost a$1.5 millions, if you find it at a good price?

In other words, Perth is more budget friendly if you want to own your place quickly... and probably if you want to invest in the Australian economy as well... But prices keep going up and with bigger demand for space in Perth, the number are starting to get difficult for them.

EIGHTH

Perth is BLOODY HOT or at least, hotter than Sydney.

I know that I was there for a week... and probably it was the worst week of the entire summer... but every single day (with the exception of the last one) we were above 34C, including nights.

Even the poor roo was hot that day.

Some of our friends told us that a good air conditioning system is required if you want to live there, otherwise you will be living in a 24/7 sauna but we didn’t believe it till we were there. So hot that even the water from the ocean (which in Australia seems to be taken straight away from the freezer) gets horribly warm.

These were many of the things that stood out for me; obviously there were many other that stood for us... but I think the one, the more important of all... were the presence of our dear friends, this element, and this element alone made the entire experience a hundred times better that we could ever get by ourselves.

Thanks to all of them.

How did we get to Perth?

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 06:57:00 +0000

We flew from Sydney to Perth with cheap tickets that we bought from Virgin Blue website at least three (3) months ahead; the difference (in price) was huge when you purchase your tickets weeks ahead.

Why was I trying to get a cheap fare?

Making the story short, Kathy wanted to go there for Christmas and the cheapest tickets we found started at $1200 per person; to which I wasn’t willing to pay it. But the story is a bit different when someone plans an event based on your schedule, cheapest fare and availability... To which if I wanted to say no, I would have become the meanest person alive.

At first I thought that cheap tickets are great season to travel! And I couldn’t understand why the bloody hell is cheaper to fly to China or Los Angeles than flying within Australia?

Cheapest air fare fight!
Virgin or Jet? Who knows?

But anyway, I think I used the correct phrase ‘I am not going to spend more than $800 for the both of us to get there!’ when Kathy and I were having the argument of spending thousands of dollars to grab a glimpse of our friends versus spending it in more important biz. Kathy felt compiled to dig into the websites to find the best deal till she got it... A $650 deal within our schedule to meet our friends and assist to the event...

Woohoo!

The 26th of February, we got to the airport very early (because cityrail, Sydney’s train transportation system, was track working again!), checked in and went to get some food when Kathy asked... ‘Why are you going to buy breakfast? Aren’t they supposed to give us a meal or something once in flight?’

How can I describe it?

Have you ever had the feeling when you are about to commit to something in which you are going to be squeezed out? Well, in this case, I had the feeling that my wallet was about to go through a money black hole... Everything was about to be sucked in and nothing good will come out.

His belly is jolly...
Mine... not so much.

I remembered previous experiences with airlines in the US were very nice prices were related to very small portions or just snacks like one bag of pretzels or peanuts and just one (small) glass of water or juice (very few cases)... and I had a vision of the future in which, Kathy and I were arriving to Perth starving and with headaches with those few peanuts filling up our bellies.

Even still, I wasn’t quite ready for the sinister money sucking scheme Virgin Blue was about to perpetrate on us, once we were defenceless and confined in the plane cabin at thousands of feet above the ground...

An angelical, yet robotic voice, called us to board the airplane using the malevolent phrase

‘welcome to our dear customers... the aircraft ABC123 is ready to board... Virgin Blue is delighted to have you as our customer and we can wait to give you first class services as only Virgin Blue can...’

But if you play it backwards it will say

‘Virgin Blue is going to remove your skin very slowly while some of our assistants will try to tempt you into bankruptcy offering you sweet soft drinks, some sandwiches, maybe wine and leaving you no choice but to pay even for the air, stealing everything for you have being working for... BUHUHAHAHAHAHA.... BUHUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA’ (I am having chills as I type it...)

Took Kathy’s hand as hard as I could and said “Honey... you know that I love you very much... don’t you? Remember to take your sit... close your eyes and open it when I tell you to... Don’t worry... God will protect us... I think...”

They are beautiful...
But their uniform is red as everything else in hell...

We started walking to take out seats and one of the assistants told us “Hello? How can I assist you today?” I was trying to be strong, for Kathy.... for us... and I said “nothing, thanks...” and as we walked by I think I felt the forked tongue moving close to my left ear while she said... “Ok sir, have a nice flight”... But I know she really wanted to say

“damnation is waiting for all of you... there will be no escape... BUHUHAHAHAHA!!”

The plane started moving, the speed was incrementing rapidly and some people started noticing winged angels flying outside the aircraft; they were crying... crying for us... there was nothing else god could do for us... we were doomed. We were totally defenceless in their absolute and sinister power and it was at that precise moment when the horror took control of our lives...

“Are you thirsty or want a bite? Well... keep those credit cards ready because in few minutes we are serving with the trolley cold beverages, snacks, great sandwiches and delicious dishes”

And I thought

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not ready for $5.50 a bottle of water... NO GOD... WHY??? WHY GOD WHY!? Are we worth it of your mercy???”

While one of the assistants was walking around saying to one of our fellow martyr neighbours:

“Yes sir... a sandwich is $9.90...
No, is not a subway sandwich and it doesn’t include a bottle of water... If you want something to drink it will be $3.50 extra for soft drinks or $3 for the water... $15 if you want a cheese and crackers with a bottle of wine... a 50ml bottle of wine... sir...
... Don’t be silly, sir... we don’t serve tap water...”

But something worst was about to happen when the entertainment system displayed

“The entertainment system is a premium package not included in economy class... if you want to enjoy our outstanding program and TV shows or watch first class movies you will have to pay just $9.99!*

*The entertainment system might be turned off at any time (especially at the most exciting part of it) and it will last 3 hours... at the end of which you will be forced to pay again to keep watching.... Muhuhaha!”

All of the sudden came to my mind the scene acted by my mate Frank saying...

“We provide really low prices!!! By the way, if you want your seat belt... you will have to pay $15
In case of decompression, oxygen masks will be deployed... if you payed $20 extra. The oxygen will flow naturally after your credit card payment has been processed.
In case of landing in the sea, remember to pay an extra fee to open the emergency door.
Your money safety is important to us.”

As the flight went on... more and more people fell on the temptation... Kathy was shocked and horrified because of the bloodshed... it was like watching Quentin Tarantino’s latest release

“Slaughter plane...
You do not know what’s waiting for you up in the sky... your wallet won’t be the same“

All of the sudden the time seems to be stopped... People was watching the monitors with a look “it can’t be!!!!” and we started hearing our captain

“Ladies and Gentlemen... Sorry to interrupt your entertainment system. We are getting closer to Perth city, the weather is a lovely 34 degrees outside... probably more at the time we land... I would like to thank you all for being a terrific cabin crew and in the name of... John, Mary, Shawn, Eddie, Michael....” (People were starting to get mental because they were cut off at the best or more intense part of their movies, shows or whatever they were watching...) “... Mary... yes, Mary again... Paul and the chef... of whom I don’t remember his name but it doesn’t matter... Did I tell you guys the weather outside is very warm??? Well... now we are getting even closer to the airport...” (And the guy kept talking for 15 more minutes...) “... anyway... cabin crew get ready for landing... entertainment system will be suspended now.”

Worthless to say... some... couldn’t watch the end of... “How I meet your mother” marathon... Some stood there... waiting to get the final results of Parramatta’s game... did they win? Did they lose? They will never know...

Maccas... I'm not loving it.

Some stood there... waiting as someone who paid to go to the cinemas, watched the trailers and watched 90% of the movie and at that moment the power went off...

The plane landed and taxed to the port... where people, was still in shock, trying to watch anything in the screens of Perth airport.

As for us, we found our friends... and they carried us to the glory of the next Maccas (McDonalds in Aussie slang).

In conclusion

If you are going to fly in economy class with Virgin Blue get the stuff you are going to eat with you... They are going to try squeezing the money out of you in every single possible way. And try to get your own entertainment system to keep you busy as long as for the flight.

Or just try to use a different airline, which is more concern about their customers instead of how much money they can suck at once.

PS: I did not take pictures of Virgin Blue air plane or the airport. So please, forgive me the lack of my pictures... I know that I said I wanted to publish just my pictures... but sometimes is just not possible =P

Hop, hop, hop... and off to Perth we go

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:05:00 +0000

Actually, we went and came back... two months ago...

The next paragraphs will be “I am going to give you excuses so you don’t get mad at me because it was my fault”.

I am really sorry... that took me such a long time to post this compilation of posts...

It was just... just...

I was missing my muse...

I was lacking of strength...

I could not express myself efficiently...

I could not find the inspiration and...

I was really not in the mood to write (even though that I wanted to share something) or look for the right images to publish.

But anyway, I am back to the biz and ready to post pictures!

Yeeeeeeeeyyyy!

My first idea related to the ‘Off to Perth we go’ blog post series was to publish a post per day (maybe two) related to our holidays in Perth. But those days were extremely busy and I didn’t have time to take a sit and write down everything. Being totally honest, I was delighted with their lifestyle; I will talk more about it later.

The content of the following series is a post-mortem (or should I say... post-‘eo ire itum’... or post trip) and digested story of our holidays in Perth.

Cranes everywhere...

For those of you who doesn’t know... Perth is the most important city of Western Australia, known on recent years as the ‘crane city’ because of its permanent state of construction in the CBD, city infrastructure and transport, and new suburbs. In general, Perth is home of lots of professionals working for the oil and mineral extraction industry, which is the main reason why this city is in constant motion of expansion in late years.

Yeah... Why???

But, why did we go there?

Well... we have dear friends living in that wonderful city, some almost family, and we wanted to come visit and get the full understanding of the ‘Perthfection’ described in blog posts, chats and conversations with them. Also there was an event to which we needed to assist... but that’s not going to be covered in these posts.

As usual (and to avoid long/unreadable posts) I am going to split it into different topics as listed below:

How we got to Perth?
Perth: first impressions.
Comparison Sydney/Perth
(List is going to be publish as I publish each post...)

The world is a hanky...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:34:00 +0000

I am not mad or rambling... well... not that much... turns out that in Spanish there is an expression or idiom to denote ‘is a small world’ which is 'the world is a handkerchief'

I remember the boat ride in Disney World and the song...
the image is not mine... Just in case..

Reading Nena’s blog, I started wondering for how long I was wishing to come to Australia and then I remembered the very first time I meet someone moving down under.

I was a lot younger (high school kind of young) and I was chatting with one of my best mates (He was 5 years older than me, smooth with the ladies, careless, cool kind of guy... He was to me a big bro) what we were planning to do... College or Uni... The magic formula to be rich... You know... stupid stuff... And it was at that precise moment when he told me ‘I am moving to Australia, bro... My dad and I were planning to set a good transport biz in Darwin and I told my dad I want to move there...’

To which I asked if he was referring to the same Australia at the other side of the world... Wondering why my best pal wanted to move here, when the more exciting event I had ever read about Australia was that it was supposed to host the Millennium Olympics Games.

Beautiful torch, isn't?

My mate moved to Darwin... and then went back to Venezuela... And here I am... 15 years later... Living in Sydney... totally in love with the Aussie society (with its ups and downs, pros and cons)... at the other side of the world... Now the world doesn’t look that big... It looks like petite, small, little, teeny tiny; like a hanky that looks bigger when is flat open, but very small when is folded and stored in your pocket.

Oh... I can see the evilness of this hanky...
Look mom! I have killed six villagers with one booger!

Yeah... I know... it was an useless post... Shame on me...

And back to the boxes...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Almost two years ago I said ‘I don’t want to see boxes anymore... not in a very long time...’

But apparently the owner of my unit thinks otherwise...

Ever since we arrived to Oz we have been living in the same flat... We rented from Caracas to arrive to our friend’s home, but with a place in which we could leave our boxes, bags and luggage.

This flat saw us picking up two sofa chairs from the rubbish and a wood dining table used by our mates, and their mates and the mates of our mate’s mates. I think it also hated us filling up two beanbags (our very first furniture acquisition) and then trying to get out of unimaginable place the f-ing little beans.

The glass tables weren't among the rubbish...
But you can see both sofa chairs :P

We had our first job phone-interview, helped us to receive more friends, shared it cool things (and not so cool). It helped us to imagine how our Aussie life could be, what we want to improve and what we want it just like it is.

It waked us up with birds singing.

A magpie singing...

It waked us up sweat up and afraid of the crushing, earth-quake alike sound of the freight train passing by at full speed at 3 AM.

Little difference... Mine... sometimes... is longer.

It gave us amazing sunsets.

One of the outstanding sunsets... The entire sky orange-reddish.

It gave us amazing sunrises (but I couldn't find any of my pictures to show you =S ).

But at the end... it... wasn’t the flat... it was Australia. And so we decided to move out and go far away from this flat on the ground level of a building in Hornsby...

That’s why we are going to move to the 9th floor of the same building =D

Woohoo!

So... boxes are back... ‘Freaking boxes’... with crates and bags and luggage again... so, we will see how it goes =P

Till next time ;)

What about the Australia Day?

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:20:00 +0000

---------------------------------------------------------------

Warning: I got over excited with the camera...

You are about to watch the biggest photo display I have ever shown in here.

Read it at your own peril as the post you are about to read is powerful, complex and probably filled with redaction or grammar issues.

I am not responsible for over-excitation, dizziness, headaches, bladder control or diarrhea.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, yeah, I know I haven’t put a word in the blog related to this year Australia Day (or any Australia day as the matter of fact)... But I got pretty cool pictures to show you...

The Australia Day is celebrated every January 26th and is one of the coolest events in the Aussie society...

And you may ask, why?

For starters, is the anniversary of being found... or I should say the day in which the first fleet arrived to Sydney; because the term ‘found’ could be incorrect for people with aboriginal background... to them ‘Australia Day’ is known as ‘Invasion Day’ (an educated guess tells me the British did exactly the same as the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British people when they arrived to America... Obliterated everything local; raped every single woman – to ‘purify the local race’ – and stole every valuable item they could find in their way...). In any case, fortune or disgrace, that day marked the birth of a great nation, blessed with tons of natural resources, ease mind people willing to enjoy everything and great sense of patriotism. If you want to read a bit more, click here.

Nice couple amused with the beauty of the harbour bridge

Also... Australia Day is a perfect day in the middle of the summer (well... almost in the middle) to share the company of mates, family, neighbours or strangers... Why not to spend it walking around getting amused with ten (or more) different distractions? Or visiting some friends? Anything... but outdoors...

See? everybody outside having a great time

Then you have the beautiful beaches waiting for you... to lie on its sand, swim or surf...

Imagine what you can do in the country/island... Cool isn't it?

Not to forget the parks everywhere equipped with good barbies getting hot to cook that fillet, t-bone, or any type of meat you may want to eat.

Beautiful green areas to take a sit and rest

And what about events in every corner of the city? Those charming events that keeps your mind busy so you can be worriless.

I was trying to be artistic... and Failed

And the awesome weather... Doesn’t matter if is raining or cloudy... at some point the sun will rise and shine (although right now we have a hell of a cyclone on the north coast).

Sweet girl, enjoying the sunny day

Plus... some people gets the chance to say ‘I do’ on holy matrimony to the state and the country... becoming Australian citizens.

Kathy said this image left a mark on me...
'You were thinking that's gonna be me in 3 years, right?'

And last but not least, (maybe the most important reason I could think so far) is a bloody public holyday! So NO WORK!

Let's smash the kiwis to get one Monday off!

(If you are a Kiwi think about it... you will get it too!)

What can I tell you? I couldn’t resist starting taking pictures and try out our new camera. Well, I have to be honest... I tried to get cool pictures. You’ll tell me if I did a good job or not!

Our Aussie Day begun with some 'Lazy Town'... (Not very exciting for us... but it was outstanding for most of the kids there)... Then we moved to more interesting things... like site sighting... and vintage cars...

And I give you... the Stang!
Kathy loves them... I am still waiting for her to get one =D

These things are really teeny tiny... I could wear a couple of those as shoes!

A Parliament visit... which I must confess... it was thrilling to be inside, in the same place where the laws are conceived and defined... and a bunch of people grabs tons of money to tell others how to behave... In any case, it was very nice.

If you want to take a look to the details, click on the image.

A panoramic view of the legislative assembly room

A chimney in the Jubilee Room

And a fountain... I was really trying to get a bird flying around...

Also mirazozo...

Yup... Mirazozo... is not a Japanese word and is well-written... Mirazozo is an exhibit of the architects of air, very impressive and highly recommended by the way, that shows structures made of simple materials that create immersive and mesmerising alien environments. It really is a dazzling experience (but the queue is not... took us one hour and ten minutes to get in... I recognise the waiting time was aggravated by the day and the volume of attendees).

Look at the eyes... at the eyes... you are under!

Mirazozo is filled with nice spots to sit to stare the colours, shapes and optical illusions.

The colours inside are the consequence of captured light in optic fiber!

But once inside... you can't really associate the exterior with the internal structure...

The picture above shows you the external structure of the blue and red picture previously displayed.

Thankfully the tubes are big enough so I could walk freely.

I couldn't help to feel inside Tron a little bit...

Having as ending fireworks launched at Darling Harbour. It was packed at the time we got there... but we managed to get a very good spot and take some pictures, a video and the panorama at the end of this post...

Australia Day Darling Harbour fireworks...

I took a bit of my time to take this panorama of Darling Harbour with its lights
and everything. Click on it to view it on its full resolution
(well... the down sampled version, because the real image is bigger than 17000 pixels width :P)

Well boys and girls... Hope you liked my pictures... I tried hard to get cool images (as well to extend my skills as photographer). I am going to stop writing so you can get new underwear or recover from this.

Cheers and till next time.

Power Plant

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 03:30:00 +0000

I think everyone knows what a Power Plant is… but I am not talking about that kind… The one that I am talking about a bit more artistic…

Uhms... not that artistic either... I didn't travel to Johannesburg...

Power Plant is an exhibition at Darling Harbour in the Chinese Garden which will blow your head… if you are not careful with one of the branches…

See? some people never listen... Another guy who loses his head with the f**ing branch.

Anyway… Last Saturday Kathy and I went to take a look and we really liked it… The idea is to present an array of electronic sounds, kinetic sculptures, projections and music to delight you and your senses with the magical experience of the Chinese Garden in the middle of Sydney’s CBD.

We were there at 9PM, being inside just 10 minutes later. I have to say, is not necessary to be there before hand, we walked Darling Harbour end to end… at 8:30 my legs were crying for a bit of relax, but Kathy was too excited taking pictures to literally everything (water, kids, sky, buildings, boats, people jumping, more water, birds, etc). The first exhibits you will find is pretty simple but remind me a game called ‘Echochrome II’, you have a bunch of bonsai trees on tables and light properly arranged so it projects a scene as background…

I am really sorry about my picture... it doesn't make any justice of how cool is the scene in shadows.

The game I was making reference to...

As you keep moving forward you will find more interesting stuff such as glowing bellflowers hanging from trees, disco balls giving you the illusion of being in the middle of a lightning bug’s dance, creepy dresses suspended from the floor with women singing in the background, to a forest of floor lamps to an outstanding garden of colourful little windmills.

Colourful windmills... Imagine a world like that...

The experience is wonderful and in addition you get to watch Sydney in a total different view… At this you feel in the middle of an alien world or miles away from here... Very surreal. I highly recommend it, especially if you have kids. They will love the sounds and the scenery, plus there are tons of things to watch.

Absolutely fantastic... don't you think?

Cheerios and till next time :)
PS: almost every image was taking by me =) (that explains why they look so crappy... again, Johannesburg, Sleepy Hallow and Echochrome... not me)...

Meet the bluebottle...

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:57:00 +0000

Having a cultural inspiration... I wanted to share with you what is a bluebottle.

Well... yeah... This is a blue-bottle...
But is not the kind of bluebottle that I am talking about.

The bluebottle is a funny looking zooid (part of a bigger organism) which looks like a jellyfish, inflated like a balloon, floating in warm waters, resting and enjoying the day while tides, wind or waves carries it away to beaches, open ocean and occasionally to a swimmer, surfer or visitor of the beach.

Meet the bluebottle...
Say 'Oi!' little fella!

As I am sure you are aware right now, any jellyfish is related to painful (and maybe deadly) venom contained in a tentacle hanging behind (or under) the organism itself... In the case of the bluebottle, you will find that pretty blueish translucent (3cm long) balloon floating placidly, but beneath the surface is dangling a very thin and long tentacle (up to 10 metres long) which most of the time is impossible to see in the water.

Balloon on top... tentacles underneath...

Why is it relevant to Australia?

The name bluebottle was given by Aussies because it appears to be little blue bottles buried in the sand; but in the rest of the world is known as Portuguese man-of-war, linked to its sailing warship appearance... although I haven’t seen a Portuguese blue caravel sailing somewhere...

OH NO! A Portuguese man of war!!!!

Anyhow, the bluebottle is responsible for up to 10,000 human stings on the east coast each summer (just in Australia) and some more all over South and Western Australia... So it is important to know when you take a look to a beach in which there are lots of bluebottles stranded long wide in the beach, you should never ever ever ever ever jump in the water... Unless, of course, you think you might get away without being stung or you have a fully body protective suit or you are very stupid.

A real caravel or man-of-war.
When I was reading it from Wikipedia I imagined Mel Gibson painted in blue as in braveheart
screaming 'Bluebottle FREEEEEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMM!!!!!'

What to do when you are stung by a bluebottle?

Before any other action is taken... Try to identify if it was a bluebottle or any kind of jellyfish (remember that bluebottles aren’t really jellyfishes)... How? Take a look to the sand, if you find bluebottles beached take action as specified below, otherwise go to the doctor:

If you are not highly allergic (or have weak allergic reactions):

Don’t try to remove barehanded the tentacle... It will continue to sting if you keep touching it. Try to remove it with something else.
Take some salt water and apply it to the affected area.
Try to apply hot liquids on the wound... Urinating the affected area might help to ease the pain and it will denaturalise the venom.
If the pain is not eased after a while, or you get more symptoms other than burning sensation, light muscle cramps and pain (such as intense pain, fever, lost of consciousness, etc)... you should go to the doctor immediately.

If you have strong allergic reaction (or more sensitive area is compromise such as eyes or mouth) you should:

Wash the area as fast as possible with tap water (to try to remove the tentacle as much as possible).
Get medical assistance.

They are easy to spot... Is not like they are trying to hide or something.

How did I get this inspirational moment?

...

I was stung by a bluebottle... three times...

Yup, three times...

Someone with the bluebottle mark.

It wasn’t the same though... but that doesn’t mean I feel less stupid.

So here is the story...

Yesterday (Saturday) it was a lovely day for a swim in the beach. Day was warm, sky was blue and the water it was beautifully warm... I think you are starting to understand how this is going...

I received a buzz from some mates to go to the beach (Narrabeen) and I couldn’t resist. Once we applied twice sunscreen to prevent nasty burns (and avoiding terrible insulation with a 12 UV index) wear the bathing shirt and shorts, we packed our stuff, hooped in the car (their car) and drove to Narrabeen.

I was amazed at first to find so many bluebottles beached... so my first comment was ‘is there bluebottles in the water?’... Someone said ‘I don’t think so! I haven’t seen one in the water...’ and I believed it.

Mistake number one... If someone tells you ‘I haven’t seen one in there...’ it doesn’t mean that there isn’t in there...

I decided not to jump straight away in the water... Instead I started to apply sunscreen (more) to Kathy’s back... just in case the UV index decided to go a bit further... In a separate post I will try to explain why is important to have sunscreen down here (as well as some other protective wearing suit).

Do you remember when I was saying the tentacle can be up to 10 metres?
I wasn't joking.

Later, I was starting to feel a bit hot, so I decided to jump in the water (despise Kathy’s pleads not to) to refresh myself and I must say the water lovely, not too cold, not too warm... it was nice; it wasn’t completely translucid, but good enough to see seaweed and the sand... No bluebottle in the water... none that I could see.

Mistake number two... Everything comes with a price. The water can’t be that good without something waiting to emerge. This was the same kind of mistake the people of the black pearl in pirates of the Caribbean had... I bet they thought in the second movie:
‘Oh... the water is so nice today’ and BOOOOOOM, SQUATCHSSSSSSSSSS, BLAAAAAAAAAAM, SPUTWAAAAAAAAAATSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!! GLUUUB... GLUUUBB... GLUUUB.... The kraken attacked.

Poor bastards... Maybe they got stung as well by bluebottles.

It was at the precise moment that I was walking to deeper waters when I felt it.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAP!
It wasn't precisely a comic plugging me in...

An electric sensation running through my left leg which made it retracts backward really fast; making me trip off, almost losing balance. My immediate reaction was to turn around and started running out the water as fast as I could. Thankfully I was out in no time and Kathy asked me what happened (she already knew... you could pretty much imagine her face of ‘I told you so’) trying to dry me up and check where I was stung... It took me about 2 minutes to show a chain of little red marks in my calf. About ten to fifteen red mark that starting an awful burning and beating pain.

I stood there, immobile for a little bit till everyone else checked me out and applied some cream on it. And it was the first time that I heard... ‘You should try to pee on it... it will ease your pain...’

I thought ‘What?????????? WHY?????????’ ignoring the comment at first... then he started explaining... ‘When my son was stung by a bluebottle, the lifeguard told him to pee on his leg... and that remove the pain almost instantly...’

Still... I didn’t do it because I was thinking... ‘In case I really pee my leg... how the bloody hell am I going to clean it? I am not going to jump back in the water!’

45 minutes later... the pain was long gone, replaced by very sensible reddish skin but I was back playing on the beach. We took some rackets and started playing it... But as you can imagine, after another hour and half playing... I felt suffocated and needed to refresh myself. Kathy and I walked to the showers and rest there for a little bit. It was at that precise moment when a bloke approached to us asking...

‘What’s that thing in the water?’ pointing to a reddish spot, floating 10 metres away from the shore.

‘Looks like krill... I have seen it before...’ (At that moment everything made sense... krill... bluebottles... warm waters) ‘... but if you are thinking about swimming... forget it. I was stung by a bluebottle’ I said.

And the guy replied ‘ouch! Well, you know how they say... in blue skies and blue waters; aware of the bluebottles!’ turning around and walking away... So we did as well...

The legend of the mysterious bluebottle nursery rhymer

But I wasn’t refreshed enough. I was still feeling too warm to be comfortable and the first chance that I saw someone walking towards the water I decided to walk with her... I mean, is not possible to be stung again... right?

Mistake number three, never underestimate the power of Murphy ’s Law. ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong’.
Mistake number four, ignoring a mysterious man warning nursery rhymes about blue skies, blue waters and bluebottles.
Mistake number five, ignoring Kathy’s disapproval look... again.
Mistake number six, ignoring all previous five mistakes and continue on.

Both of us jumped into the water (not too deep, where we could see enough to avoid any bluebottle) and she asked how it feels to be stung by a bluebottle... to which I reply:

‘Oh well... the first thing that you are going to feel is a ZAP where it touches and then a burning....’

ZZZZZZZZZZZZAP ZAAAAAAAAAP ZAPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!

ZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!

And I wasn't as happy as the bloke in the image.

Both of us started screaming. Now the electric shock was coming mainly from the back of my right leg and some bits of the back of my left leg. I wasn’t willing to find why she was screaming as well... but I started running... again to the safety of the dry land. Just to find Kathy speechless, with a bit of a smile in her face and ‘I told you so’ look; what can I say... again sitting in my towel waiting for Kathy to apply the cream in my new set of red marks. In this second occasion I was heavily stung in comparison to the first time... My left leg had something very mild, while the back of right leg had three thick red marks.

Turn to face my friend and she tells me ‘you don’t need to explain me anymore how it feels. We should pack up; we can’t be in the beach today.’

I hope you find the story more entertaining that I did... Worth of sharing it with you, but at least I could share my newly acquire wisdom through painful training so you could avoid it yourself.

My Advice... In blue skies and blue waters with blue things beached... aware of the fucking bluebottles...

Cheerios.

My new love

noreply@blogger.com (Rod) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:53:00 +0000

Yes, I must confess that I have a brand new love. Is not going to displace Kathy at all... In fact, Kathy is digging it as well...

Lads and lassies... Blokes and Sheilas... I present you my love:

Canon EOS 60D
(Now that I think about it... I have been faithful to Canon for a very long time...
With the exception of one Epson Camera, everything else has been Canon...
Oh yes... I remember the blurriness in every single picture I took with the Epson; it was
a permanent, irremovable, always on feature of the camera.)

Isn’t she lovely... what curves! It feels so sexy in my hands!

Turns out that Kathy and I have been talking about replacing our old Canon PowerShot A550... but we couldn’t settle in one model in particular. All my mates at work have great cameras (it really helps because I can hear them talking about the different features and qualities of each of their cameras) but at the end, everything comes to us. So we went to JB HI-FI to check out a couple of cameras (trying it and getting the feel with the intention of buy it before New Year Eve and get outstanding pictures) getting a wicked rebate including the camera body, 2 lens (one 18-55 and one 55-250) and the bag...

But I wasn’t willing to buy it at once...

I wanted to try and find a better deal... And what a better place for that than the Internet? (By the way, never ever ever ever say those words in front of one of the JB guys... otherwise you will be exposed to an assassination look... being there... not nice...)

So I jumped in Amazon and some other websites just to find a better deal (about a$400 less) including the tripod, bag, two memories (16 and 32 gigs SDHC ultra fast), cleaning kit, protective layers, instructional video, SDHC reader (though is pretty standard in any notebook, PC or Mac these days) and two battery packs. Just in case, it wasn’t the mega super saving... At the end I had to pay the Aussie tax (because I was buying something expensive in the U.S.) plus the shipping. I find it as a reasonable price because I was saving up to a$200 including all the additional stuff and shipping fees.

In any case, Kathy is extremely happy of the end result of each picture. The next image was taken with the Canon PowerShot A550...

Again... Jack-o being the photo-shooting model.
As you can see, I lost a lot of space and details from the sky just to let enough light...

And this one with the Canon EOS 60D...

I could capture more details and better light...
But you can also notice how I could focus your attention on Jack-o
... Maybe it doesn't look the same position and that's because he felt on his back...
Totally recovered now.

You can tell the difference, aren’t you?

Now I can upload more great pictures for you guys, hopefully promoting the beauty of down under. I will need to start paying serious attention to Jackie (maybe taking her photography course) or get good techniques from my mates... Anyhow, I will try to upload more (of my own).

... And yes, I need to put away the Christmas decorations till next year... Is about time. Jack-o will be sad though...

Cheerios!