Its a Sony...

The latest Reason For Not Going To The Gym that I've been able to come up with is that I don't have any music to listen to. I have an MP3 player, and, if I was organised enough, I could quite easily fill it up with enough music to occupy my intended gym time (and remember to charge the batteries), but I'm never that organised. The solution to this problem, I decided, was to buy an MP3 player with a built in FM tuner, so I would still be able to listen to the radio even if I didn't have any other music.

So on Sunday, I went to JB HiFi to make said purchase. I wanted a 1GB MP3 player with an FM tuner. Simple. So I got a 2GB Soniq player for $97 plus an extended three year warranty for an extra $30. I got it home and discovered that it didn't have integrated USB. Which means that I need a cable to transfer music from my computer to the player. Inconvenient, though not a huge problem, if I'm at home. A downright nuisance if I'm at someone else's house and want to, er, borrow some of their music.

So I took the Soniq player back today and swapped it for a shiny new Sony player. It's got 1GB of memory, integrated USB, an FM tuner and it charges from the USB port of my computer, for a mere $30 more than the original Soniq player plus the warranty. I took it home and unwrapped it, read the instructions and installed the software on my computer (whilst vaguely wondering what the software was actually for). The instructions quite clearly state that you must use the included software to transfer files onto the player, but, as a technical person, I figured I wasn't the intended audience for said instructions. Shunning the nasty interface of the Sony software, I attempted to upload my music the old fashioned way. Boy was I in for a horrible surprise.

There is a point to the nasty software. It converts my lovely MP3s into a horrible Sony proprietry format known as ATRAC. My fantastic new MP3 player can't play MP3s!

I'm just not sure how I feel about this. Fanatical audio buffs aside, there isn't too much difference between the two formats, quality-wise. I mean, there's always people out there who refuse to listen to MP3s because of their supposed inferior sound quality, but I personally can't hear it. And I can still store MP3s on my player, I just can't play them. But it's damn inconvenient - after all, I wanted an MP3 player. And the program that I have to use to transfer songs onto the player is a massive pain. It's probably alright to use if you're the kind of person who carefully categorises all their music by artist and album and puts nice tags full of random, useless information on all their files, but seriously, can you see me doing that?

So can I take this one back too?

Wire Less?

So, it turns out my wireless router has this really cool feature whereby it can work as a wireless router or a wired router, but not both at once. Cool, huh? And once something's been plugged into the LAN port, a computer with a WLAN connection can't access the router (or internet) at all, unless it's first connected via the LAN.

In other interesting news, I went to Queanbeyan for the first time today. It was everything I'd imagined it would be. Flannel shirts and mullets abounded. It was just like being in Ipswich, right up to the obvious effort the local council had put into making the centre of town nice, while ignoring the outlying areas. The sign on the way in says something along the lines of "Queanbeyan: country lifestyle with all the advantages of city living". Now whereas I would list 7-11s and public transport as the advantages of city living, I suspect the authors of this sign had things more like street lights and paved roads in mind. There's a reason Queanbeyan is called No-Hopetown. Seriously, the businesses there won't even hire the residents if they can at all avoid it.

So, what else happened this week? (I hear you ask). Not a lot. I went to work. I drove one of my friends to the airport on Thursday and got to drive around in his Peugeot for the day, which was fun. It went "zooom" and had power windows and power steering and all those fun things.

Oh, and yesterday I went to the Department of Transport to change my licence over. Which didn't go quite as well as I might have hoped. Apparently my car has run through five red lights since I moved to the ACT. I find this quite interesting, as I certainly have no memory of running any red lights. Dale was driving my car a fair bit when we first moved here, so I immediately quizzed him, but he claims not to have run any red lights either. And I'm inclined to believe him. Running red lights is just not one of those things that people do. I mean, everyone speeds a little bit every now and then, but who runs red lights? And there's red light cameras all over the ACT! Even if a person did have a secret red-light-running fetish, surely they wouldn't do it here?

We've come up with a few possible explanations, starting with "maybe the car was just a little bit over the line or something" and getting more outrageous from there - in Canberra, sometimes it's legal to turn left on a red light, maybe we got photographed doing that? At any rate, they're sending out the infringement notice next week, and I've requested to see the photos too. After all the problems they've had with fixed speed cameras in the last couple of years, I'm willing to entertain the idea of a fault with the camera. I just hope the picture shows enough to prove it if there is (and that it shows Dale driving, not me!).

Spring has sprung?

It snowed today. No really. If you're not keeping track, it's November. Summer officially begins in two weeks. And it snowed. Not proper snow, I'll admit - it never made it to the ground. And I didn't actually see it myself. But I'm willing to take the word of random people I've never met before. And there was definitely icy rain at the very least.

Canberra really has odd weather. The maximum temperature today was 13 degrees, at 1am. The minimum was 6 degrees at 4pm. It's going to be 0 tomorrow, with frost.

The one thing that I am slightly worried about is the weather warnings for today - there was a small boat warning for the lakes and a sheep grazier warning. So far I've managed to stay clear of sheep graziers, but you can never be too careful...

It just keeps getting better...

Today was one of those days. I woke up late and cold. I got to work and realised that I'd left my AccessCard (which gives me access to buildings at work and my computer) at home. I went to have a cup of tea and discovered I'd run out of tea.

Then, after lunch, I found out that one of my friends was killed in a car accident over the weekend when the car his girlfriend was driving collided with a truck towing three horses. Don't worry though, the horses were fine (according to this news article). So, how was your day?

Tempis Fugit

It was my first day of Daylight Savings today. Well, actually technically the first day was yesterday, but as it was a Sunday, I didn't really notice. I feel robbed - one whole hour gone from my weekend without so much as a by-your-leave. Plus it meant that I got to work an hour earlier than usual today (even though it was the same time), so it was an hour colder, which I was not well pleased about. I did, however, take perverse pleasure in using "2:15, Sunday morning" as the time in all my test cases at work. (Daylight savings started one minute after 1:59am on Sunday). Plus I left the clock on the wall at non-daylight savings time and called it Brisbane time for most of the morning, and then, when the day started to drag a bit, moved it forward so it felt like I was that much closer to home time.

For those of you who have never experienced (or have forgotten) the joys of Daylight Savings, I took this photo at 7:00pm today:

The sun doesn't actually go down until about 8, and Daylight Savings only just began. Who knows where this madness will end? (Incidentally, the white car in the middle of the photo is the one we are borrowing at the moment. If you look very closely you can see its crazy Tasmanian number plates.)

Apparenlty they're also considering introducing Daylight Savings into Queensland again (which I think is a stupid idea). The current argument against it is that kids will get sunburnt more, which is kind of valid, but I'm just not sure they need a reason to not introduce it. Surely the onus is on the people who do want it? I did hear a suggestion I liked though - give the Federal government control of daylight savings (as they are in charge of weights and measures apparently) and make a North-South split, rather than dividing by states. That way places like Brisbane (and all those shopkeepers at Tweed Heads who keep complaining) can save daylight, whereas the people in the north to whom it makes no difference can carry on in blissful ingnorance. And for those people who say it will be too confusing with all those time zones, there'll be like six. Six is not a big number. You can count it on one hand, provided you have a slight genetic mutation that gives you an extra finger.

**************************

And in a follow-up from last week's story in which I bought a bike helmet, I went for a ride today. Here is my bike, complete with snazzy red helmet to make me go faster:

The bike is actually Dale's, which means that when I sit on it with my legs fully extended (toes pointed and everything), my feet are about two inches off the ground. As a result I kind of have to get the bike moving before getting on, which I'm sure amuses any passers-by immensely.

One of the odd things I noticed about the area around my house while out riding today is that it all seems to be downhill. Even on the way home. Obviously there are some uphill bits, but they seem vastly out of proportion with the downhill bits. I'm strongly beginning to suspect that there are problems with the space-time continuum in Canberra. Some kind of secret government project, no doubt.

At any rate, it's completely dark outside, so it must be getting late (the clocks are no longer reliable - some tell daylight savings time, some tell Brisbane time and the clocks in my car tell two different times, neither of which is Brisbane time or daylight savings time). I'd best be off to find me some dinner.

Arriverderci

Oh, and yesterday I bought a pair of stockings, but when I went to put them on this morning, there was only one in the packet. How weird is that?

On ya bike

Today I ran out of excuses for not doing exercise. Some time ago I thought that a bike would be the perfect way to motivate myself to actually get out and do some physical activity. Fortunately, I didn't own one. Dale had one, but it was all the way out at Darra and (so I thought) irreparably damaged from living outside in the weather. Then some idiot had the idea of moving to Canberra, and lo, I have a bike living in my hallway now, nice and convenient, and apparently in good health, apart from suffering from flat tyres. And here's me with no bicycle pump. I tentatively suggested that I could go and buy one, but Dale assured me that it would easier (and cheaper) just to take the bike to the nearby petrol station. It quickly became apparent however that neither of us was willing to expend the effort required to walk the bike to a petrol station that neither of us was even sure existed (according to the refidex, it's about 500m away from our house, but I still have not seen it to this day).

A new plan was suggested - one of our friends owns a bike pump - we can just borrow hers! Unfortunately, she was in Melbourne during the single ten minute period when we felt motivated enough to go and borrow it (she lives on a different side of town and living in Canberra for any length of time makes you intolerant of drives longer than ten or fifteen minutes).

Eventually I succumbed and went to a sports store to buy a pump. It turns out that the kind of bike pump I remember having when I was younger is no longer an option. These days bike pumps are lightweight and snazzy and aerodynamic, with folding parts and clip on bits and things. I fled the store in confusion.

Two weeks ago I managed to overcome my fear and ventured into a specialist bike store (with Dale holding my hand). I won through the confusion by simply choosing the cheapest pump on display. I took it home and (eventually) managed to master using it well enough to pump both bike tyres and my football. I was keen to go riding but, alas, I soon discovered that our house was completely lacking in a bicycle helmet.

So my next mission was to buy a helmet. I spent minutes and minutes wandering the hyperdome and Westfield alike searching for suitable headgear. Surprisingly, Big W at Woden didn't have any bikes or bike equipment and the hyperdome doesn't have a Big W (it does have a bike shop, but I chose not to go there for a very good reason which I'm sure I'll think of soon).

Today though, I did it. After two weeks of occaisional thoughts that I should get a bike helmet, today I went to some sports store and bought one. It's red, so it should go really fast. I no longer have any excuse not to go out and do some exercise - except that I've spent enough time writing this blog that it's dark outside now so I can't go today. And Thursday is poker night, so I can't go tomorrow. And then it's the weekend, and nobody exercises on the weekend... ;)

Show & Tell II

Previously, on the Little Girl with the Curl: We visited the War Memorial, New Parliament House and Old Parliament House. For details of our adventures, see below.

Following Old Parliament House, we attempted to visit the Art Gallery (or the Film and Sound Archives, or something). Unfortunately, we took the wrong turn off and ended up at Floriade (Canberra's garden festival) where we battled traffic for twenty minutes just so we could turn around and leave again. In the end, we did find an Art Gallery - not the National Gallery, but a Gallery nevertheless. There were paintings and sculptures and ladies singing a song about frozen peas. Most entertaining.

As it was five of the evening clock by this stage, we made no further attempts to visit indoor tourist attractions, instead opting to go home. On the way home, however, I was distracted by the dam at the end of Lake Burley-Griffin, so we took a detour, which proved quite interesting. After much searching (and driving in a circular fashion) we found a road that goes over the top of the dam, then passes the National Zoo and Aquarium (which we declined to visit) and vanishes off in the distance. Driving over the top of a dam is quite an odd experience. Although the photos don't fully do it justice, I've decided that, in the spirit of boring everyone with What I Did On My Holidays, I'll show them to you anyway.

Here is Lake Burley-Griffin (complete with cyclist - it wouldn't be Canberra without a cyclist):
And here's the view from the other side of the dam:
Notice how small and far away the water is (you can't actually see it at all when you're driving). It's much cooler in real life.

While investigating the dam, we also found the Governer's House Lookout, which, as it turns out, is a lookout aimed at the Governer-General's very own house, allowing you to fulfill all of those Governer-General watching fantasies you've always had. I know you're dying of curiousity, so here's a photo:


And so ended our tourist adventures for Sunday.

But the story doesn't end there! On Monday it was Labour Day in Canberra (yes, I got two Labour Days in one year, aren't I lucky?), so we had a whole other day to tourist. For our last excursion we decided on Questacon and the Museum.

Questacon is much like the Science Centre in Brisbane. Not only is it full of cool things to do, you learn stuff at the same time (apparently). I learnt that I can't balance on a balance beam or shoot an air cannon accurately. There's all sorts of cool stuff, like a zero gravity slide, real life holograms, an earthquake room and a lightning generator. Unfortunately it was the beginning of the school holidays, so the whole place was infested with small children. I did try to chop Dale's head off though:

Following Questacon, we visited the museum, which contained much amusing and informative Australiana - from pickled platypus specimens to recordings of Australian story-telling, complete with fair dinkum Aussie lingo and everything. Unfortunately we were a bit too footsore and weary to fully appreciate the exhibits, but I did make sure to visit The Future, where Dale and I designed a futuristic house in four minutes or less, then viewed it in 3D, along with a whole city full of the creations of our co-inventors (who were, almost without exception, aged 12 or younger).

Unfortunately, it all came to an end on Tuesday when Daniel returned home, after a frantic game of car trading in which Daniel and I drove Dale to work, Daniel dropped me off at work then went to visit a friend at ANU. Following this, Daniel picked Dale up from work, Dale drove Daniel to the airport and then drove himself to a job interview. A friend from work then drove me to Woden, where I quickly swapped cars back to my car and drove home with Dale.

A good time was had by all.

Show & Tell

Last weekend Daniel came to visit and we Did Canberra. As a result, this post is going to be quite long and full of pictures of no interest except to the people involved. You have been warned.
Extra warning for Dad: Note, very few of these photos contain people.

D arrived last Friday, which provided an excellent excuse for me to use some of my flex and come into work late (after I picked him up at the airport). On Friday we partook in the traditional activities of impulse purchases of expensive things (but expensive things that I need, like a microwave and super fantastico ginormous electric frypan that you can cook cakes in!) and sitting around the lounge room playing with our laptops. Just like old times.

Saturday saw the beginning of the real tourist action. We went to Mt Ainslie and looked at Canberra. All of Canberra. I won't include the photo though as I've put a similar one in an earlier entry (see below). After Mt Ainslie, we visited the War Memorial, which is bigger on the inside, and really, really cool. They have a minature Japanese sub there with a big hole in it and everything. Unfortunately, after hours of wandering around the Memorial, we were too tired to do any further real touristing, so we drove to Tuggeranong (aka Tuggers) to show Daniel where I worked and how much it looked like Forest Lake. I'm afraid I don't have a photo to confirm this similarity, but I shall endevour to get one for the non-believers.

Sunday saw Daniel and I going alone (Dale opted to stay at home sleeping - although he complained when we got back that we'd left without him, he was quickly subdued when we told him where we'd been).

The day began at New Parliament House:



We opted to take a free tour, which began in the Great Hall (or something like that). There is a big tapestry on the wall of some significance (although I can't remember what). The tapestry is
based on a painting, but, in order to date the tapestry, the tapesters added a white blur which represents Halley's comet (which presumably passed by in the same year that the tapestry was made). I didn't get a picture of the tapestry, but here is a picture of the original painting. Note the absence of Halley's comet in the upper left corner.

I learnt a lot of interesting and (Daniel assures me) not entirely accurate things about Australian government while on the tour. I won't regale you with them here, but here is a picture of the House of Representatives (green) and the Senate (red) where the politicians do all their voting for stuff. Apparently the colours (red and green) are based on the colours used in their British counterparts, but we were a bit rebellious and used different shades of green and red, opting for colours which occur in the Australian bush. Aren't we wild?




Following the tour, we took a trip up to the roof to check out the view. If you really want, I can show you the pictures, but they're not that great. Really. Don't get me wrong, the view is great, the pictures just didn't turn out all that fantastic. I also found some chairs that I think I would like to have in my dining room (when I get a dining room).

(Dad, note the inclusion of Daniel in this photo to satisfy your urge to have people in photos.)

I also took the obligatory photo of the flagpole from directly below:

Following our tour of New Parliament House we walked (yes! with our feet and everything!) down to Old Parliament House, which is very, very different to New Parliament House. Where New Parliament House is all shiny marble and polished wood and expensive artwork, Old Parliament House is all corridors and offices and eighties decor. New Parliament House is a lovely building which the tour operators show to the public while the politicians work away behind the scenes. At Old Parliament House you can actually see where it all happened. New Parliament House is nice, but old Parliament House has atmosphere. To give you an idea of the difference, here's a photo of the Senate at Old Parliament House:

As you can see, it's a fair bit more crowded (which pretty much sums up all of Old Parliament House)

Ok, Blogger is starting to play up now (I don't think it likes me having all these photos in the one entry) so, if it's alright with you I might just continue this in a new entry.

Humdrum

I have to admit straight up that not a lot has happened recently. We've settled into the house enough that I can generally find whatever I'm looking for on the second or third go at most. I can give directions to my house (although they're generally along the lines of "follow the signs to the Holder shops, we're in number 14"). And I can remember most people's names without having to check their name badges (although this doesn't hold so well with people outside of work, which is unfortunate, as they tend not to wear name badges).

Work... well, work continues. I've successfully created two screens (computer programs) for internal use (ie only people in my team use them). I've also read a fair bit of Dr Karl's Great Moments in Science column in the copious amounts of free time that I have. I know the best place to get curry for lunch (butter chicken from Chalisa at the Hyperdome). And I've successfully caught the bus home from work twice (and subsequently found someone who is willing to drive me instead).

I paid off my credit card in full, but then Dale and I went and did some food shopping. We ended up spending $350 on grocery items alone. Fruit and veg and meat brought the total closer to $500. The result:


Yes, the bottom three shelves are filled entirely with fresh fruit and vegetables, and the freezer is completely lacking in party pies, sausage rolls or frozen pizza. I don't even think there's any ice cream in there.

Don't worry though - we are leading a balanced lifestyle:

Danger Will Robinson

Yesterday our TV reached critical mass. It was already kind of complicated, what with the TV, DVD player, VCR, x-box, PS2 and sound system all enjoying a kind of symbiotic relationship with each other. Due to a lack of inputs, there were some interesting connections - for example, the X-box connected to the TV and the sound system via the VCR/DVD player (which itself requires two connections to the TV due to the digital nature of DVDs and the analogue nature of VHS). Still following? Well, yesterday we decided to take our part in the digital revolution by way of the purchase of a digital set-top box.

Unfortunately, it was necessary to sacrifice the PS2 to the gods of RCA connections in order to make digital TV a reality in our house. Fear not though - I believe that through a combination prayer and the purchase of an optical cable it will be possible to reinstate the PS2. The real problem came when I attempted to watch the TV this morning over breakfast.

It is now necessary to not only find, but also operate four remote controls in order to watch TV in our house. Not to watch videos, or DVDs or operate the sound system (although these all require their fair share of remotes), but to simply watch TV (in all its digital glory, amen).

In other news, I narrowly averted vehicular catastophe today when my car ran out of oil. Ten years of being driven to the shops and back has left the poor Barina ill-prepared for the 80km a day it's being driven these days. Fortunately, I've killed a car through oil-attrition before, so I recognised the signs early on (the temperature gauge pointing to the red section is generally a dead give-away) - although there was some brief confusion when we opened the bonnet to discover that everything is labelled in German. The prognosis is good though - we put 4L of oil into it and all the water we had with us, but the engine didn't overheat again for the rest of 15km trip home. Praise be to German engineering.

Until next time...

Mmm, donuts...

And herein lies my biggest problem with living in Canberra:

Yep, that's right. There's a Krispy Kreme in Kanberra, 4.9 kilometres from my house, according to Whereis.com. Eight minutes travelling time. I just can't deal with this kind of pressure.

On a similar note, this is the view from my front/back gate (there is some ambiguity as to the orientation of the house - the door on this side has the doorbell, but, as you can see, there's no street):

The bright light with the van in front of it is our local supermarket cum bottle shop (they're one and the same thing here). There is no question of driving down to the shops, ever: the shop is, in fact, closer to the house than my car is.

So basically, I'm left with beer, chocolate and Krispy Kreme, all incredibly easily accessible, and no reason to do any exercise, ever. Sometimes it's hard being me.

One important thing I've learned in my short time in Canberra is that apparently nobody here can drive. I briefly entertained the idea that the government was partly to blame for this - the city abounds with "Form 1 lane" signs, but "Form 1 lane ahead" signs are sadly lacking, so the realisation that the lane you were driving no longer exists and that you are, in fact, now driving down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic and are likely to die quite soon in a horrific car accident can come as a bit of a surprise. But then I saw this sign below a set of traffic lights:

Yes. That's right. Just in case you hadn't figured out how traffic lights work yet. I wonder how many people stuffed that one up before the council saw a need to install the sign?

While we're on the topic of pictures though (I've been saving them up until I could find the cable that attaches my phone to the computer):

This one's not all that clear, but for good reason. First off, it was 3 o'clock in the morning and I was in a moving car, so it was dark and hard to focus.

Secondly, and more importantly, it's a photo of the thermometer in my car (yes, my lovely, European-engineered car has a thermometer in the dash). In case you can't see, it says 0.0 degrees C. Until this point in time, I'd never seen a thermometer do that before! I was further horrified when, a minute or two into our (blessedly short) journey, it dropped to -0.5 degrees! Since then the temperatures have been more reasonable, if you can call 3.5 degrees during the day reasonable. I have never been so cold in my life. Everybody says you get used to the cold, but, so far, all that's happened is that I remember to wear a coat whenever I go outside. Always. No matter how reasonable the temperature might seem inside. And a scarf. And gloves. The people at work think it's hilarious.

And finally, one more photo - Canberra as seen from the top of Mt Ainslie (I was up the top of said mountain and felt I should do the touristy thing):


I can't quite see my house from here, but I think that the white smudge just to the right of centre up the back is a building in Woden, which is where Krispy Kreme is. For information regarding the location of my house relative to Krispy Kreme, see above.

Actually, I lied. I have one more photo which I feel the need to share with the world. It's a picture of one of the paintings in our rooms at the Bentley suite. There were several, all similar. The picture's actually sideways and I can't be bothered fixing it, so you'll need to turn your computer monitor on it's side to get the full effect, but I think you'll agree that it's the ugliest and most pointless picture you've ever seen:



As this post is now quite long and full of pictures, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave any actual writing until next time. Until then...

Answers

And in answer to your questions, the new house is in Holder, but I know not what it is like, as I have not yet viewed it.

Dale is working part time in a supermarket and secretly seeing a recruitment agency on the side.

Hi ho hi ho

Today was my first day at work - actual work that is, rather than sitting around being talked at work. Unfortunately, I can't actually do any work until I learn M204 (crazy old database system that nobody uses except Centrelink and the NSA - and anybody else who wants an incredibly hardcore database that SQL can't cope with). Luckily Centrelink is sending me on a course (or three) so that I can learn said crazy database system, but not until September.

I did get a mug though. Complete with minties, fantails, a Tim Tam and the necessary ingredients for a cup of coffee or tea and a glass of Milo minus the milk. I also got STATIONERY. Like you would not believe. I have paper clips, staples, bull dog clips, funny paper clippy things, two different kinds of sticky tape, post it notes, three colours of pens, a pencil, a rubber, a sharpener, a ruler, sticky note things for marking your place, an in tray, a notepad, a hole punch and a desk calendar - with daily quotes.

Unfortunately, I do not have anything to do at work. I tried reading the ISIS Survival Guide, but, I am afraid to say, had my life depended on said Survival Guide I would not now be blogging away for your entertainment. The hour after lunch was almost my undoing - I suspect that falling asleep on your first day at work is frowned upon, even in the public service.

It's not my fault I was so tired though - I went to bed early last night, after a BBQ and a quiet game of Monopoly with me and seven of my new friends.

I have some pictures that I feel would enhance this missive, but, alas, the cable for my phone is in storage.

Until next time.

Another hard day at work

Today I got to work at 9:00. We had a mentoring workshop this morning, which basically involved an old lady and an old man talking crap. "If your mentor doesn't have time to have meetings with you, what should you do?" Apparently "get another mentor" is not the appropriate answer.

I tired of this game quite quickly, so at 10:30 (I waited for morning tea) I skipped out to go and look at a house. I then spent the next three hours getting lost, trying to find Dale's work (in Ainslie, for those playing along at home) to get him to fill in the application form, then trying to find the next house to inspect (somewhere near Kingston), back to the real estate (Tuggeranong) to hand in the application form and finally back to Parliament House. The next hour or so was spent wandering around Parliament House. The grass is all a funny green colour (not yellow like it should be), and soft, but we decided that it wouldn't be appropriate for employees of the Australian Public Service to go rolling down the hill while at work. Also there was a man guarding said hill.

We finished the day off by driving past all the foreign embassies and a trip up Mt Ainslie to see all of Canberra at once. I was a proper tourist and took a photo. The embassies were most amusing. The American Embassy is about three times the size of any other embassy (think they're compensating for something?), the Embassy of Iran is just a vacant lot with trees and the Canadian Embassy had a man dressed up as a mouse on a scooter out the front.

Are you satisfied with how your tax dollars are being used?

In other (good) news, we seem to have a house to live in. In case you're not up with what's happened, the rental market in Canberra is horrible at the moment (unless you happen to own a rental property). The situation was not improved by the arrival of 45 Centrelink IT graduates two weeks ago. Dale, quite cleverly, found an out of the way real estate, with minimal online advertising to increase our chances of being the only applicants to apply for a house. This was all going quite well, until it turned out that one of our previous real estates had black listed us. It just so happens that we took this real estate to the small claims tribunal and won. Also they were crap. The Canberra real estate wasn't willing to just take our word on the situation (apparently the Brisbane real estate told a different story). Instead they asked us for a list of all the other real estates we've rented through in the last couple of years and rang them all. They must have all said nice things because today the real estate rang back to tell us we had a house. Which is nice - I was beginning to think I was the only Centrelink grad left without one, and we only have one more week of free accomodation left.

And finally, something freaky. This afternoon, I left my car (a white Holden Barina) in the car park downstairs. When I came back, it had multiplied (ie another white Holden Barina had parked next to it). Closer inspection revealed that this second car was also toting Queensland plates (although the unfashionable maroon ones, whereas mine has stylish green). Closest inspection of all revealed that the car was bought at Ross Lewellyn (or possibly some other combinations of l's) Motors in Ipswich - the exact same car yard that mine was purchased at. Ah, a little bit of Brisbane, right here in Canberra...

Canberra, Week One

So, it's the end of my first week in Canberra. If I had to pick one word to describe my experiences this week, I'm afraid I would have to go with bor-ing (although I do expect things to improve at some stage).

Monday was my first day at work. Or, more precisely, my first day of a two week orientation program. We had a couple of important type people come and say hello and met our team leaders. I'm one of three new grads in my team, but the other two don't arrive until next week, so I'll be way ahead of them for the first two weeks. There's also a few grads from previous years in the team, so I'll have someone to go running too who'll understand what I'm going through. We'll be doing fraud investigation - or rather, writing the software that does the fraud investigation - so if you've lied to Centrelink, I will catch you.

We also got our security passes and name badges on Monday and I've still got mine (ie I haven't lost either permanently yet). While the security passes were being sorted out, we also had a tour of the Data Centre and BTV. The Data Centre is where all the mainframes and servers and stuff that Centrelink uses are. The lady doing the tour was super excited about it all, but as far as I'm concerned it was just a bunch of different coloured boxes - purple for Sun Microsystems, black for IBM, grey for everything else. BTV is Centrelink's TV studio from which they broadcast via satellite into Centrelink offices around Australia. Mum once starred in one of their productions.

Monday afternoon we met with My Mate Jeff (aka Jeff Whalen, the CEO of Centrelink). He gave us lots of good advice, like "get enough sleep" and "work hard, party hard". He also promised us things he couldn't deliver on, but all in good spirit.

Tuesday we met some of the previous grads and got some more helpful advice, and then had lectures on topics such as Security, Privacy and Fraud and Workforce Planning. One thing I'm beginning to notice about these lectures is that, regardless of the title, they all seem to contain similar information - Centrelink is big, Centrelink is important, the way Centrelink does things is the best way and Centrelink watches everything its employees does, so don't screw up.

For some reason, Tuesday also contained a lecture about our AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements), which was not very informative because the lady basically just stood up and read it, and also wasn't very helpful as we'd all signed one a month earlier. Too late to read it now.

Tuesday night, Dale and I went out for dinner with Brigid. It turns out there are Chinese food shops in Canberra - we went to a noodle place at Manuka, which would have been quite tasty except that I wasn't feeling very well.

Wednesday was more lectures from people who for some reason believe that a talk on, say, Welfare to Work should begin with a summary of their life so far. The best bit about Wednesday was that my car finally arrived, so Dale was able to go out looking for houses.

Thursday we had more talks, a visit to the library ("This is where the books are, and this is a computer, and here is the library assistant. That's all") and a visit from the Secretary of the Department of Human Services, which we all had to be on our best behaviour for. She was actually reasonably interesting, and the new Accesscard (or Australia Card) program looks fascinating. Apparently 25% of people with concession cards aren't entitled to them. I have two concession cards I'm not entitled to, so I wonder if I got counted twice?

On Friday morning we had one of the IT support people come in and talk about the IT systems, which was kind of amusing (in a really boring fashion) as nearly everyone in the room had a degree in IT (or something similar) and so had a much better idea of what he was talking about than he did. The highlight of Friday was going home early and putting in an application for a house.

And on Saturday we came to realise just how little there is to do in Canberra.

Here We Go...

So, we (D and I) arrived in Canberra yesterday afternoon. We flew down in a Qantas Dash. If you are not familiar with this particular aircraft, then lucky you. Imagine a rather cheap coach with wings. It had propellors! And no TV or free beer. Generally, the flight was icky.

Canberra though, is not icky. It's cold, in a casual kind of way - you just get the feeling that it's really not trying. Yes, the temperature in the middle of the day is colder than Brisbane in the middle of the night, but you know it could get a lot colder if it tried.

We met some of the people I'll be working with at dinner last night at the Italo-Australian club. We got stuck at the geek table though because I was too tired to try fighting for a place with the interesting looking people. They all laughed at me for wearing two pairs of gloves, but in turn I laughed at their primitive smoking laws (you can smoke inside), ridiculously expensive beer ($17 for six Extra Drys) and lack of Paul's milk. It turns out though that the beer and milk is just a local phenomena in Manuka (pronounced Mah-nu-ka apparently).

Manuka is just like South Bank, with lots of expensive food shops, clothes shops and pharmacies. Breakfast this morning cost us $50, but by god was it worth it. I was a little skeptical at first about a $15 sandwich, but what I got was a huge pile of salad with rashers of bacon, swiss cheese, a whole boiled egg and half an avocado, with two little slices of bread at the side. And the avocado was a whole heap nicer than any I've seen in Brisbane for quite a while. I think the kinds of fruit and vegies available in Canberra are going to suit my Victorian-bred taste buds. I never could bring myself to like all the tropical fruit so fashionable in Queensland (with the notable exception of pineapple).

For some reason, half of the trees here are dead. They have no leaves at all. The grass and all the little plants are green though (there are even flowers - you know the floopy soft looking kind that like to get watered regularly), except for big yellow patches that I'm guessing are frost bite or something. Apparently, ice just appears here out of the blue. You wake up in the morning and your car is covered in ice and the water in the radiator has frozen. I'll believe it when I see it.

And the last crazy tale with which I will regale you is that there doesn't seem to be an Asian food industry here. I've seen one Thai restaurant and one sushi shop which was closed. The sub-culture is more European, with Italian appearing to be the flavour of the day - we went to the Italo-Australian club last night and I've seen a couple of Italian restaurants, an Italian cultural centre and an Italian baby clothes shop - "Bamboozle - The boutique for bambini".

Alright, that's all for now. I'll keep you posted when we've actually done something - I start work on Monday and we get the car on Tuesday so next time I post I'll have actually moved more than a km from where we're living.