Anniversary

One year ago, today, an Air Canada 747 landed in Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith airport. One year ago today, my Canadian passport was stamped. One year ago today, I walked into the crowded International Arrivals area and waved at my friend Michele.

On this anniversary of my arrival, I want to say thank-you to some people who have helped me along, who’ve been friends when friends were needed, and given me places to stay.

Michele: She picked me up from the airport in Sydney, gave me a place to stay and one of the best jobs I’ve ever had: kitchenhand at a catering place in Sydney’s CBD.

Ben: He also gave me a roof over my head for a little while, and an Internet connection. Unfortunately, he’s looking for a job right now. If you’re in Sydney and need a really good computer person with media skills, let me know and I’ll get you in touch.

Diz, her friends and family: She’s one of the kindest, most gracious people I’ve met. She gave me a place to stay in Hobart, showed me Tasmania, and was an excellent Uno partner.

Jagg: First night in Melbn. It was 28c at 2am. I was flat broke and wondering why I ever left the pocket-sized paradise of Hobart.

Lisa and Tony: First couple of weeks in Melbn, I stayed with them out in Knox. They run an interactive media company and do very good work.

Cori: One day, there will be a whole entry about her, for the story is long and complicated. Coincidentally, she departed Australia (from Sydney) today, the first anniversary of my arrival.

Gayle and Michael: They run a guest house in Parkville, just north of central Melbn. They’re fantastic people, very friendly and kind. They made Cori and I feel very welcome, like we were part of the family.

Fleur and her insane share house: After Cori went to Sydney, I lived in an insane share house for about 2 months. That was enough. Fleur organised a very cool film festival in our lounge room. I video documented it, as well as my drunken (and surprisingly successful) flirting with a girl afterwards.

Josie and her pussycat: Josie went overseas for a holiday, and I lived in her place a few weeks with her cat and lots of ants.

Savarna, my current flatmate: Just for being all cool and stuff.

Marketcom, my current employer, for having faith in the skills of this weird guy from Canada, and doing the legal stuff to keep me in the country past the expiry of my original visa.

There are lots of others, like Josh who drove me to the airport in Vancouver, Vicki who’s storing half my stuff in her closet, the nice people in Sydney who helped me with my shopping cart full of suitcases, the train ticket checkers who decided to be on coffee break on the times I couldn’t afford a ticket… and I’m not even getting into the friends I’ve made since I’ve been here.

Coming to Australia was a great decision. It’s given me perspective, a forced change from the ruts I didn’t even realise I was in. It’s forced me to rebuild everything, reconsider who I am and what I do. It’s not so much “finding oneself” as “refining oneself”. I got rid of 80% of my possessions, and only brought along only half of what remained. It’s a forced change, exactly what I needed.

So cheers. Thanks, mates. Here’s to another 4 years.

Okay so it’s not exactly Friday anymore, but I’ve been offline for much of the weekend (for better reasons than most people). Here, somewhat belatedly, is my Friday Five:

1. Do you like to shop? Why or why not?

Depends what you mean by “shop”. I’m not big on wandering in shopping malls; frankly, I’d rather go to the dentist. I like to shop, but only in certain places. Not that I’ve actually ever bought anything in either of those two places, but it’s good window shopping. As for real-life places, I like the little Asian fruit & veg shop on Chapel Street, the lolly shop on Chapel, Readings Bookstore (sigh, reminds me of good old Duthie’s in Vancouver) – any good bookstore, actually.

2. What was the last thing you purchased?

I just came back from a grocery shop. Safeway for the market stuff (orange juice, Vegemite, Twinings Earl Grey Tea), then that fruit and veg shop for everything else to make some pasta and sauce this evening. I’m skint this week, so I’m going to make a ton of the stuff and eat it all week. If anyone would like to take me out to dinner, this is the week to do it.

3. Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?

Depends what I’m looking for. Australia’s online shopping experience leaves something to be desired, so I suppose I’d prefer real shops.

4. Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?

Yes, I did. I can’t really remember what it was though. Might have been $20/week? I entered the workforce early in life with a well-paying job, so the allowance thing didn’t last long.

On this note, I remember once a month, my dad would “bring home the bacon” and count out lots of cash on the kitchen bench (er, “counter”) and give it to my mother for shopping stuff. Very Ward and June Cleaver, I suppose. In retrospect, I wonder why he didn’t just transfer it into her account.

5. What was the last thing you regret purchasing?

Hmm. Last night, I went bowling with some friends. Someone was going to the bar, so I gave her $5 and asked her for a Cascade. She came back with a Cascade Light. So that was a regret, I suppose.

It’s nearly complete. Almost every one of my coupled friends who are around my age are pregnant or have a recent kid. I’m getting paranoid that it might be my fault, since none of these couples know any of the other couples, and only two of them are even in the same city.

If you know me, and you’re sexually active, be very very careful with your partner. If this sudden burst of children is my fault, I don’t want to cause any more. I feel a bit like little Am�lie with her camera.

On the other hand, if you don’t know me and you and your partner want a kid – send me an email. Perhaps I can help.

www.mjnews.us ... because www.iamnotafreakshow.com was already taken.

Love them or hate them (or be blissfully unaware of them), the organisation who was responsible for shaping the Internet as we see it today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, (ICANN) is in the hot seat in December.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is an ancient international standards body – they were there when the telegraph was invented, and the fact that you can call internationally is pretty much due to this mob. They want to take over control of the Internet (as much as you can “control” the Internet) from the ICANN.

At first glance, the ITU seems like a good idea. They’re international, based in Geneva; they’re not American, like the ICANN is; they’re responsible to international governments, unlike the ICANN. However, they’re very much in bed with the incumbent telcos of the world. It’s in their best interests to make the plumbing of the Internet as complicated and exclusive as possible. If we’d followed their original plan, the net probably wouldn’t be as open and free as it is today.

The Register, as usual, has a fantastic overview of the issues involved. It’s a bit of a lengthy read, but it’s a good backgrounder on this important issue. Even if you’ve never heard of ICANN or the ITU, what happens in Geneva in December will effect you and how the Internet will work for you in the future.

I like the idea of an international body to oversee things, but I really don’t want the ITU to be it. As I said, they’re stuck into the big telcos, and while those telcos were important for the beginnings of the Internet, they’re becoming less and less relevant. This trend isn’t really happening here in Australia – yet – but there’s hope.

Yes, I’m also going to join in the Opus love-in, and link to that MSNBC article because I just looove that cute adorable little guy. He was one of my role models, and the primary reason I’ve got this odd attraction to penguins. Pingu helped too, as did the kids book The Penguin that Hated the Cold (sadly, now only available used ).

Anyway, I can’t wait for my favourite penguin to make his triumphant return to Sunday papers. I’m going to have to download one of those comic downloading dodads.

An Australian guy decides to travel around the Greek Islands. He walks into a bar and Jill (the Australian Barmaid) takes his order, anything-but-Foster’s, and notices his accent. Over the course of the night they get to know each other quite well. At the end of Jill’s shift he asks her if she wants to come back to his place and have sex with him. Although she is attracted to him she says no. He then offers to pay her $200 for sex. Jill is travelling the world and because she is short of funds she agrees.

The next night the guy turns up again, orders a beer and after showing her plenty of attention throughout the night he asks if she will sleep with him again for $200. Jill remembers the night before and is only too happy to agree. This goes on for 5 nights. On the 6th night the guy comes in, orders a beer and sits in the corner. Jill thinks that may be she should pay him more attention and may be she can then shake some more cash out of him again. So she goes over and sits next to him. She asks him where he’s from in Australia and he tells her Melbourne. “So am I… What suburb in Melbourne?” “Glen Iris” he replies. “That’s amazing…” she says, ”...so am I – what Street?” “Cameo Street” he replies. “This is unbelievable…” she says, ”... what number?” He says “Number 20” and she is totally astonished. “You are not going to believe this but I’m from Number 22 and my parents still live there!” “I know…” he says, ”...your Father gave me $1,000 to give to you.”

Thanks to Hergy the giant floating head for this one.

_[Edit 2004-06-28: Due to spam volume, I’ve closed the comments for this particular article. I apologise for the inconvenience.]

Spellbound is a film about the peculiar American phenomenon of the “spelling bee”, which rewards young kids on how well they can memorise arbitrary rules and exceptions about how English words are constructed, and parrot them back on demand. D-E-M-A-N-D. Demand.

This glimpse of eight different American kids and their families is fascinating on a social level. Eight diverse backgrounds, eight different (and yet uniformly geeky) personalities, eight different slices of bizarre American life. That was the interesting bit. The actual spelling bee footage, although it was dressed up with dramatic music and intercut interviews, was stunningly boring.

Spellbound reminds me in some ways of Hoop Dreams, the fantastic 1994 film about young basketball players in the US. One of the best things about Hoop Dreams is that is had very little actual basketball footage in it. It was a film about two kids, not about basketball. The director of Spellbound ought to have remembered that about his film as well.

The kids themselves just seemed to be going along with whatever happens – they were excited to go and all that, but they didn’t really have very much to say. The parents, on the other hand, were fascinating. Their general attitudes about life, the world and their children were so different, and in some cases, simply bizarre. One father threw words at his son rapid-fire, and bragged of covering hundreds of words in a day. In contrast, another father owned a small bar, and just seemed proud no matter what happened (his wife, on the other hand, was a basket case).

Also interesting were the (unfortunately brief) interviews with past spelling bee winners. We see that for all the excitement, all the glitz and television, these eight kids (indeed, the rest of the participants in the bee) will turn into “normal” people, who simply have an interesting story to tell. As one relates, winning the bee had “a negative impact on [his] nascent love life”.

Furthermore (he says, ascending the soapbox), this film is another proof of my theory that people are inherently interesting. Everyone is interesting, to a greater or lesser degree. Errol Morris’s 1997 doco Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is another good example: it follows the lives of a wild animal trainer, a robot specialist, a topiary gardener, and a biologist specialising in naked mole rats. It was brilliant.

Okay, soapbox segment over. Spellbound is at the Nova on Lygon Street. L-Y-G-O-N.

<PRE>
Subject: jurgen.ca
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Well. Here we go again. I’m thinking that doing this on a Friday might not be such a good idea – by the time they get sent out, I’ve usually already had a bit of beer…

1. List five things you’d like to accomplish by the end of the year.

1. Become an Australian permanent resident.
   
2. Fix 5 annoying little things at work.
   
3. Get my debt down to CA$5000.
   
4. Get furniture for my bleak bedroom.
   
5. Drink my bottle of ice wine.
   

2. List five people you’ve lost contact with that you’d like to hear from again.

I’ve kind of already done this one

3. List five things you’d like to learn how to do.

1. Play a musical instrument, like a piano or guitar. I can already play the table (and am pretty good at it, too) but that doesn’t count.
   
2. Learn a real programming language. Or even Java.
   
3. I don’t know if this counts as “learning”, but I want to get back into Yoga. I’m an amateur now, at best.
   
4. I’d really like to know how to add.
   
5. Capoeria
   

4. List five things you’d do if you won the lottery (no limit).

1. Buy an Audi A4 Convertible. Yellow.
   
2. Give some away to interesting and worthy people and things
   
3. Buy some property in places I like (Vancouver, Hobart, Luzern )
   
4. Travel with friends
   
5. Contribute meaningfully to society
   

5. List five things you do that help you relax.

1. Music, music, music, music, music.
   
2. Farking around with BSD (I’m such a geek).
   
3. Drink beer. Especially on this patio, outside on a warm day
   
4. Lay down in the grass on a sunny day.
   
5. Walk slowly. Normally, I walk quickly, so it’s amazing what a stroll will do to one’s state of mind.