Australian differences

Nobody cares about the things that are the same between the US and Australia. The flags are pretty much the same damn thing. The only two flags which are possibly similar are the Aussie flag and the New Zealander flag. Anyway, I’m going to dive into a few observations and whatnot about Aussieland.

Driving
Driving deserves it’s whole section to rant about. Because it’s all BACKWARDS. Ridiculously so. Not only do they drive on the left like their imperial roots, but they also have the steering column on the right side. This is ridiculously confusing. Every day, driving to the office, I’ve continuously sat behind the driver. Our driver is an America… my reason for sitting behind him? Humans, by nature, preserve their own life. We’re much more likely to sideswipe someone on the left of the car, than we are to run headfirst into traffic and hit the right side of the car. Seriously… read that again. backwards.
First day driving, we managed to take down a couple side view mirrors of some parked cars on our left…

Now that we’ve established they drive on the left, driver on the right, we need to establish that they only reverse SOME aspects of the driving. Blinker still functions the same, but it’s on the right of the steering wheel rather than the left, and the windshield wiper functions are on the left. However, Gas and brake are still right/left, to completely match the US. And of course, ebrake is on the left.

Now, this doesn’t only influence driving. While walking around the streets, everyone in the US is accustomed to looking left for traffic. You need to reverse that way of thinking too. Entertainingly, if you approach a crosswalk and look at the ground in front of you, on the lowered part of the curb they will tell you, “Look Right” or “Look Left” for which direction the traffic is coming from. I don’t doubt that some American sued Sydney for being ass backwards when it comes to driving, and not knowing where the hell traffic was even coming from to be able to cross a street safely.

Moving on, the streets are confusing as hell. We have a GPS in the car, but there are so many layers in the city between bridges, tunnels, 4-5 lanes of every street, that it’s a very common problem for the GPS to mix up whether or not your on the lower level of a bridge, the upper level, or on a street below it. Then of course, it loses all reception in a tunnel. The lanes are so narrow, and there are so many cars, it’s impossible to cross 4 lanes of traffic within 1 kilometer to turn. Seriously, if you go to Australia, ride a bike, or rent a motorcycle. We have only managed to take the most direct route from the hotel 2/10 attempts. The other 8 attempts we’ve taken an extra 30/60 minutes due to just getting lost.

Lets not forget the impact of driving on the left side of the road when it comes to something as simple as walking around the office. People don’t just drive on the left, they walk on the left. Pay attention next time if you have a crowded office, people will stay to their right (you know, the proper side), people here stay to the left. Furthermore, if you ever find yourself about to walk into someone, their natural reaction is to shift to their left. This makes for awkward scenarios, as the US person’s reaction is to shift right. Their left, our right is shifting together… endless awkwardness, amazing results. Good times if you’re walking towards a hot chick.

Ok, that’s enough about driving, lets touch on some other subjects.

Food
Food here sucks. They can’t do ANYTHING right. I’ve decided to stick to unhealthy fried food because they can’t mess it up. They’ve messed up stir fry, they’ve messed up burgers (who decided it was a good idea to put a beet on a burger without including it on the menu?), they’ve messed up stir fry, sushi, Brazilian barbecue, hot dogs, pizza, and sandwiches. French fries (ie: chips), and potato chips (ie: crisps) are the only things they do right in this place. The safest places to eat are subway and Pepper Lunch (a Japanese chain restaurant). I haven’t even tried their Vegimite crap, but whenever I hear the name or think of the green texture, I think of those parasites bars that Carl ate on Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Actually, the best potato chips I’ve ever had are here. Instead of sour cream and onion, they do a sour cream and sweet chili. I’ll try to bring some back to the states with me…

City/weather
City itself is absolutely beautiful. I haven’t seen any trash on the street anywhere. It reminds me a bit of Stockholm in that respect. Tons of people walking around (more like Stockholm than Tokyo), but there are so many places to go, that things are typically empty.

The weather here reminds me of early October at Bentley. Mid day is nice and warm, but not hot, and nights have a crispness about the air. Warm enough to wear shorts, but cold enough to wear a jacket over a tshirt. The weather just reminds me of nights after class at Bentley. I’ve talked to many of the natives about the weather, they say that this is as cold as it gets. Their winters get to 40-50F, and their summers no higher than 90F, with the occasional heat wave up to 100F, that they said typically doesn’t last.

Also, southern hemisphere is backwards also. The guy I was talking to about the weather kept telling me I need to go further north to get warming, and that they only get snow in the southernmost areas of Australia… backwards…

Sports
This deserves it’s own, small section. While I was wandering the streets this weekend, I noticed a pickup game of soccer/football/whatever in a park. They were ridiculously amazing at the game. I’ve never seen such professionalism in a pickup game of anything before. They were drawing a crowd of spectators, and I could understand why. I must have stood there, dumbfounded, watching them for about 10 minutes.

Besides the pickup soccer game, I also watched some Australian rules football. This is their take on American football. I’ll do my best to describe it. 10 guys line up on the field, about 3 meters apart from each other. One person has the ball, and they run straight into the opposing line of players, who are also lined up on the field, about 5 meters away from their opponents. I didn’t really see any blocking occurring on the offensive side, just the 3 closest people on the defense line tackling the guy with the ball (the other people down the line barely reacted). Once the handler was tackled, the action would not stop. While he was getting up, he would roll the ball back towards a person adjacent to him in the line, and it would be that person’s turn to run.

Supposedly, they can only pass by kicking it, and there’s no such thing as an incomplete pass. But I didn’t see that when I was just watching the game out of the corner of my eye this weekend.

Wildlife
We hit a zoo this weekend. Koalas are the most lazy creature in the world. Seriously. It was a waste to even try to see them. They sleep or eat, and nothing else. They barely even move when their awake, as all they sleep in the trees with the leaves they eat. They went into a long explanation about how their diet causes them to sleep and whatnot. It really doesn’t matter, all they do is sleep. Makes for an uneventful zoo trip.

Birds here are messed up too. Long beaks, sound like catbirds, all in all weird things. I have some pictures I’ll post.

I don’t move, the world moves around me.

So I’m actually working out of Lexington MA at the moment.  Since I last posted, I actually moved up to Waltham MA. So this’ll be the closest I’ve ever worked to where I actually live, and probably the only time it will happen as long as I work at my current company.

So just a quick update. I was stuck in traffic yesterday, when I got the strange sensation that I was completely staying still, but the entire world was moving around me. I wasn’t moving around the world, the world was moving around me. Yes, there were relative bumps, ups and downs, but as far as moving forward (stuck in traffic, so really never got above 40 or so), I was motionless.

I’ll update soon

I promise….

Stockholm, first impressions

So, I arrived in Stockholm bright and early at 6:50 AM.  So in normal people times, that puts me on the ground at the airport at about 1 AM.   Just late enough so that I didn’t feel it necessary to sleep on the plane, plus with flying coach due to budget cutbacks for the company, it’s not like the seats were comfortable enough to sleep in anyway.

I took a train in from the airport into Stockholm central city, and the scenery on the way was unlike anything I had seen before.  There were open fields that were interrupted by intermittent patches of immensely dense forest.  The fields were beautiful too, they all seemed well maintained.  The best thing that I could compare it to would be something like a ski slope in the summer in terms of forested patches / sporadic fields, except flat.  The trees themselves didn’t look too different than what you would see in Massachusetts.

We passed a few small towns too, which seemed to have grass everywhere.  There were no curbs to the road either, so it almost looked like the land was trying to recapture the town.  There were the same intermitant patches of dense trees even in the town as well.  It was very impressive.

Arrived in Stockholm City Center 20 minutes by train, cost me some unknown amount of Krona… which is the coolest sounding currency name I’ve heard in a while.  The city instantly reminded me of Boston’s North End.  The city is a string of islands with CLEAN rivers flowing between them.  All the buildings are old, yet well maintained, and the city is spotless. 

Having no idea where I was going, I wandered the streets for only about 15 minutes before finding myself in front of my hotel.  Went in to check in, and of course, the room wasn’t ready… as it was only 8 AM if even by this point.  I was able to check my bags in with them though, and wander the city a little more.  (Note:  I did not leave my computer bag with them, as it contained all my electronics, two laptops, and basically my life… so at this point, I’m carrying around a 60 pound bag with me)

I knew the weather wasn’t going to be good, but it wasn’t bad enough for me to justify an umbrella.  There was a light rain outside.  Not a light rain like a few big droplets, it was a bunch of little ones.  A little heavier than a mist.  And if I devote an entire paragraph to talking about the quality of the rain, I think my 3 readers may stop reading, so anyway.  It was also windy!  A wind that could only rival the wind of Bentley College.  So combine the low temperature, with the light rain and the wind, and I really felt nostalgically at Bentley (probably not the proper use of the word, stfu).  I started out by going back to Stockholm City Central Station, and just people watching for a bit.

I cannot believe how beautiful the women here are.  Not only do they outclass American Women in body, face, hair, and eyes, but there’s also a higher ratio of attractive to unattractive ones.  In the US, you might get 1/5 women that you’d actually give a second glance (even that may be overstated), but here in Sweden, it was easilly 1/2 (and this may be understated).  I’m looking forward to hitting a bar this weekend.

After getting a quick bite to eat at a very overpriced, and exactly the same as the US, Burger King (they spoke English), I wandered the streets for hours.  The main point of interest for differences is the shopping district.  There were a ton of clothing stores, and one costume store for Halloween (which I was surprised about).  Tons of shoe stores that all seemed to specialize in high leather boots… which I’m sure my ex-girlfriend would go berserk over and probably claw my arm in excitement.  They also have more coffee shops than we have Starbucks.  3-4 per block.  probably 40 per square kilometer.

Skipping ahead, I get my hotel room, and it’s very modern.  Standard European comforter, no sheets.  Blah blah blah, skip ahead to dinner, and I went out with two team members.  I ate Raindeer with potatoes in a cream sauce.  Reindeer was absolutely amazing.  I highly recommend slaughtering and eating Rudolph next Christmas.  The cream sauce they used for the potatoes was so strong in it’s cream flavor, I couldn’t get over it.  Usually a lot of the flavor gets cooked out when preparing, but just wow… The food was awesome.

That’s all for now… way too much time taken away for writing this, I gotta get back to work.

No handlebars

So yeah, been a while since I’ve updated.  The first two assignments in Raleigh and Somers were pretty mundane overall; small assignments handed to me, not much to do, tons of time to write about whatnots.  Not so much when I was in Endicott.  Even less when I’m going over to Stockholm in October.

Anyway, back on topic; ranting about life.  I met up with an old friend from high school that I hadn’t seen in about 6 years.  It was refreshing.  Even after 6 years, we didn’t have too much to talk about, but we were just enjoying the time together after so long apart.  It’s very interesting to get another person’s view on your life.  He told me that I was always the person that could accomplish anything I wanted to.  No matter what.  He always called me by my last name (I’m careful never to mention names on the blogosphere), and never by my first.  My family name had always been attributed to strong willed people that could accomplish anything.  I think I lost a lot of that in college.  I need to get it back…

Back to Bentley… eventually

Urgh… Severity 1 system outage going on right now for the people we’re auditing… So they’re too busy doing their own work to give me more information.  It’s infuriating!  They’re supposed to completely devote themselves to my whims!  I’m an auditor!  The corporate cop!  It’s alright though, it gives me time to write in my blagoblog.

I’m still in Armonk at the moment.  It turns out that the more people I talk to who have graduated this year, the more of them are having people from high school get in touch with them.  It’s almost time for our 5 year high school reunion after all.  It’s strange.  Back in High School I was always identified with my last name, which has been one that’s always been associated with an elitist, egotistical, intelligent, no BS connotation.  In college I was always referred to by my first name, which is gentile, more relaxed, kinda awkward.  Freshman year I was known by my gaming callsign… which really was a pleasant alternative to my first name.

It’s just strange to be going by my old name, and I can think back to how much times have changed.  Whatever though.  I wonder if just hearing this old name of mine has brought back some of my old attitude.  All in all, I kinda need it, I’ve become weak since high school.

Regardless of this, I was fortunate enough to talk to one of the recruiters who had interviewed me two years ago for my current position.  She asked me to help out with recruiting events up at Bentley whenever we actually get around to doing them.  And needless to say, I’m psyched at the opportunity.  I get them to completely flip the bill for me to be hanging out with my old friend, fraternize with the new students, and rip them apart with questions just to make them squirm.  I love for that!

I have absolutely no specifics of the recruiting stuff, but I’m looking forward to it.  I’ll take any and every opportunity to go visit friends again.

On a completely unrelated note… I’m thinking of getting an iPhone as a complete waste of money for a high tech thing that I just kinda want.  My 2 year contract with AT&T is over, and I can get a slight discount on the phone, but I still need to pay the higher amount for the service.  I’m still undecided, and I want to hear more personal takes on the phone.  But currently, I’m still functioning at minimal monthly expenses… but that doesn’t mean I should be wasteful with my money.

Do you want some cream with your skim milk?

So, since I’m commuting each morning, I’ve been making a stop at the local Dunken Donuts before I make the 45 minute drive to work.  Before I continue with the story, I’d like to compare Dunken Donuts to Starbucks for a moment.

Starbucks has better coffee, hands down.  They’re more professional, higher quality, but unfortunately, it’s reflected in their price, and the amount of time it takes to prepare and serve.  In the mornings, I don’t have the excessive time to spend waiting in a line for some coffee, even if it is much better.  I want speed, service, and decent.  I want the ramen of coffee…  Ok, maybe not that cheap and fast, but we’ll say I want the Wendy’s of fast food rather than Subway.  

I tend to get the same thing when I order.  Mocha Iced Latte, with skim milk.  I definitely sound like one of those starbucks uppities ordering in fritalian (best DD commercial ever, btw).  It’s basically a couple espresso shots, with chocolate, sugar, and skim milk.  Now, when I order this, they always ask me if I want whipped cream on it.  This brings up an interesting question:  Why would I get whipped cream, cream… meaning high concentrations of milk fat, on something if I specifically just ordered it with skim milk, milk that contains absolutely no milk fat.

I’d think it would go without saying that if I order something to contain no milk fat, that I wouldn’t want them to put a heaping glob of milk fat on top.  This leads to another question:  What type of people WOULD get whipped cream on the top of their skim milk latte?  Probably Matt, who has been known to get a diet soda with his dinner of potato chips, or Rich/Tom who get a diet soda with their 6 foot long steak subs from D’Angelos.

Next up: Somers

Now that the Raleigh work is done, I’m spending a few weeks on Somers NY.  This is located very close to where I grew up, only about 20 minutes away.

So far, the weather has been very hot.  Ironically, even though I’m a few hours north, it has definitely been much hotter here in NY than it was back down in NC.  Of course, it was raining 90% of the time in NC, but at least it was cool.

Sadly, since I’m so close to home, I cannot get the company to get me a hotel room for the duration of this assignment.  This means that I need to stay at home.  This is a lot harder than it seems.  Even though I only spent a few weeks down in Raleigh, I already became aclaimated to doing my own thing.  I go to the gym immediately after work, I eat what I want, when I want, I go out whenever, and I don’t really need to answer to anyone.  It’s like I’m an adult, amirite?

Unfortunately, now that I’m ‘home’, I need to abide by the family timetables for nonscense that I’m not particularly interested in.  Sure, it’s nice to get a good homecooked meal, but it’s kinda a pain when I have 3 hours to relax, and half of that time is spent sitting at a dinner table, while my mother and brother argue about some stock nonscense that I haven’t been paying attention to.

Regardless, enough about that.  Lets move onto more pressing matters.  Raspberries.  Raspberries are awesome.  Luckilly, they also grow wildly around this area.  Even luckillier (if it’s not a word, it is now), is that I’m actually around for the raspberry season this year.  Let me tangent back to a story that everyone reading this blog probably already knows.

Back in the summer of 2004, my family was moving.  We sold our old house and were rebuilding a new house.  Unfortunately, the contractor of our new house sucked, and the completion date was constantly pushed back, so we were already entirely moved out of our old house before our new one was finished.

This lead us to be illegally squatting in our own house.  In order to not get arrested, we all needed to be up and out of the house before workers arrived at 5 AM in the morning.  So I decided that I’d spend a day wandering around the county, picking raspberries.  ’cause… Raspberries rock…

I found this giant patch next to my old girlfriend’s house, and I started picking.  This was right on the side of a state route, so hey, public property, good times.  There were some private property postings on some trees, but they were about 10 feet away from the road.  If I can read the signs, and don’t pass the invisible wall they make, I’m fine.  This was not the case

About an hour into my harvest, some car pulls up behind mine.  I stop picking for a second, walk out onto the road and greet the individual… individual wearing a uniform.  The conversation starts with the retarded, easilly answered question, “Hello, what do you think you’re doing here?”

I look down, at the extravagant amount of raspberries I’ve picked, (I’m up to approximately 4 pounds at this point), point to them, and state, “Exactly what it looks like I’m doing, I’m picking raspberries.”  I hold out the bowl slightly towards him, “Would you like some raspberries?”

“No, no, I’m alright, thanks though.”

“Are you sure?  They’re perfect this time of year.  Take a look at these patches, there’s tons of them fresh for picking!”

“Are you trying to bribe me?”

“No, no, just being hospitable.”

The tone changes slightly as he digs deeper into the real reason he stopped from his mid day drive, “Are you aware that you’re trespassing on private property?”

I point over to one of the numerous private property signs posted on the trees, “Yep, they’re posted all over the place.  However, this is a state route, and as my memory serves me, 4 or 6 feet along the state route is considered public property, which is why those postings are so far back from the road.  The postings that I haven’t once crossed.”

He chuckles slightly, “Well, normally, you’d be absolutely correct, however, that lake behind those woods,” he points past the trees to a lake.  The lake is why the raspberries are so good, so much extra water to make awesome awesome berries. “That lake is the reservoir of the county.  We can’t allow anybody to get near that lake and threaten our water supply.  And now since we’re up to Red Status, we can’t tolerate any potential terror threats.”

I look down.  I’m wearing some cargo pants, collared shirt (probably from J.Crew), and I probably still had my nice Fosil watch at the time.  I reply to his comments, “Yeah, I can understand what you mean.  I clearly fit the part, and I know all terrorists have a sweet tooth for raspberries.  If I were to go put something in the water supply, I know I’d stop and pick raspberries here for 2 hours afterwards.”

He becomes amazingly unfun after those statements, “Let me see your liscense.”  I hand it to him, and he goes back to his car.  In the meantime, I go back to picking raspberries.  I figure I could at least get a handful while he’s preoccupied looking over my pristine criminal record.

He comes back about two handfuls later, “Alright, I took down your information.  I’m going to be doing rounds again in an hour, you can pick until then, but if I catch you again, I need to arrest you for trespassing.”  He hands me my ID back.

“Well, what’d you need my ID for then?” I ask, puzzled as to what took him so long.  Not that I minded, I picked more raspberries.

“Ever since 9/11, we can’t take potential terror threats lightly, so I needed your name and information to report it to the proper authorities.”  And with that, he got back into his car and drove off.

I’ve been back to that patch every year since.  This year, I weighed in at obtaining 4 pounds of raspberries in a 90 minute harvest.

Finished with Raleigh

I got yelled at to write another entry!  I have pseudo fans!

The Raleigh assignment is done.  Overall, Raleigh was a very beautiful place, even though for my final week there, it RAINED every day.  The roads were large, rarely any traffic, the people were generally nice.  Girls were hot.  Tons of blondes.  With regards to the accent, I find it attractive to find a girl with the accent, but I find it makes guys sound uneducated.  Sexist?  Yeah, definitely.  Care?  Nope, not at all.

The strangest thing about Raleigh was their foliage.  They had some weird trees that I had never seen before, with huge white flowers on them.  Overall pretty cool area.  I did some wandering around the NYC: Chapel Hill college, and it seemed very similiar to the University of Maryland campus, and it’s quasi integration into the town.  NYC CH was HUGE too, went on forever.  Chapel Hill itself was a fairly classic college town that you’d see surrounding a bigger college.  We didn’t really get a town like that around Bentley.  Bentley was too much of a bubble inside of Waltham, rather than Waltham existing because Bentley was there.

Regardless, Raleigh was a nice place.   A good starting point of my journey.

My next stop, and current place of work is Somers, NY.  Right next to my hometown.  I’ll probably be seeing some of my old high school peers over the next few weeks, maybe get a trip over to Poughkeepsie NY to visit a few friends from the new hire session.

New to this blog:  I’m creating another page to reflect how many flights I’ve been on, how many delays there have been, the total time for delays, and how many miles I’d have to drive for commuting!  Just some interesting stats to track!

4th of July

Yeah, a bit late for a post, but better late than never, amirite?

I decided to go back to my college for the 4th.  I left Wednesday night, hit some major traffic, and worked out of a classroom on Thursday, and got to catch up with a lot of old friends on Thursday night.

It started off with EVERYONE being busy, so I drove a bit and saw Dan and Scott down in Northborough.  We hit an Outback for dinner, where the waitress clearly hated Dan, and loved me beyond a reasonable doubt.  I don’t think she liked Scott too much either, since she completely messed with our check.

We went back to Scott’s, played some brawl, with hilarious consequences.  As a geeky tangent, the most memerable fight was Scott’s Sonic versus my Marth.  Even match throughout the whole game, final life, he’s at about 120%, I’m at only 40%, and a smash ball comes up.  I break it, and line up my smash.  I use it, miss the ledge, and fly off the side of the screen for a win to Scott.  Memorable, and classic Smash Brothers good times.

I heard back from Tim first, and Scott, Dan and I decided to go back up to Waltham.  Scott packed his CPU while I drove Dan to his house to grab his laptop.  We arrived at Kyle and Tim’s places at exactly the same time, even though we took clearly different paths and such.  Very awkward.  We played some Age of Conan together in two groups, I was with Kyle/Katherine in their room, and Scott and Dan were with Hannah and Tim in their room.

Tangent.  Hannah and Tim have the cutest kitten ever.  His name is spaz.  He loved attacking Scott.

Anyway, Friday was the big day of my BBQ.  It started out with nasty weather.  Luckilly, it kinda cleared up for the day.  I’m still on an early sleep schedule from work, so I was up nice and early, got a chance to hit the gym before starting the prep for the night.

Hannah came to the store with me, so I got to spend some time with her.  We managed to spend about $170 between the two of us.  All good stuff of course.  Scott and Dan yelled at me when I asked whether I could downgrade the hot italian sausage I usually get to some hot dogs.  So I ended up buying Hot Kilbasa (sp?), Bratwurst, and hot italian sausage.  Additionally, I made Carne Asada (top round cut), Burgers (90% lean ground sirloin), and grilled vegitables (carrots & asparagus).

The BBQ itself was awesome.  EVERYONE brought additional beer and alcohol with them.  Foremost, the people that showed up:  Scott, Tim, Kyle, Dan, Hannah, Katherine, Alex (Kyle’s friend), Andy, Lexie, Rich, Lit, Hally, Jarman.  I had picked up 24 coronas, 6 Sam Adams Summer, 6 Mike’s Lemonade, and 6 Schmernoff Ice.  Andy brought a cooler worth of Bud Light, Lexie brought her own 3 Corrs, Rich/Hally/Jarman brought somethingorother.  Lit brought a 6 pack of Sam Adams.  And halfway into the BBQ, a group of people left to go get a 1 litre of Captain, some unknown amount of Sam Adams, and honestly, I have no idea what else.  The table was littered with bottles by the end of the BBQ.

The food itself turned out good too, Kyle made his steak tips on top of the aforementioned food purchases.  I didn’t overbuy food, so it was all gone, and nobody hungry at the end!

Afterwards, Lexie and I went to the fireworks.  The fireworks themselves kinda sucked.  The air was heavy due to some rain, and there was absolutely no wind.  So when they lit off fireworks in rapid succession, if there were more than 2 going off, the smoke cover would almost completely envelop the 3rd, so that you couldn’t see anything.

It was great to see Lexie again, but I didn’t realize how shy we both are.  We don’t have too much in common, and it was a bit awkward of a night.  It was still great to spend time with her.  I’m still gonna have a slight crush on her, but I’m sure it would take a lot of work before we break the awkwardness between us.  I don’t think I’d have the time to devote towards it with my travels.  Don’t know if she’s that interested anyway!  Regardless, moving on.

Slept like a log that night, and checked out of the hotel in the morning.  I tried to get some work done in the morning, but no new information was given to me, so there wasn’t much I could do.  Chilled at Kyle and Katherine’s, and played some Age of Conan and Team Fortress 2 until that night, when we all (Scott, Tim, Hannah, Kyle and I) went to go see Hancock.

Hancock sucked.  They introduced a plot twist halfway into the movie that was poorly developed, no background information on it, and poorly concluded.  Other than that, it was good… but that’s not really a minor point in a movie to fault it on.

And now I’m back in NC.  Don’t know when I’ll have time to get back up to Waltham to see them again.  Maybe Halloween.