subway pix

i’m a big fan of travis ruse’s commuting photoblog who got highlighted in the ny times the other day. i caught the first pix of his strike series and then missed them with going away for xmas but just caught up. i esp like dec 22nd’s no entry.

several months ago his site inspired me to start a melb photoblog but i think i put up about 2 pix and abandoned it. it takes so much discipline.

merry xmas/happy holidays!

hi all! in case i don’t get to post again before xmas, hope u all have a good one. i’m headed to tassie for a few days. flying back on my bday so i can spend at least part of the day in civilization.

i have finished off the SA trip pix but i want to write some commentary so that prob won’t happen til after i return.

i can’t believe weatherbug currently sez it’s -4c at 823am. SHIT! i hope everyone is bundled up for their walk to work & i hope everyone is getting around the strike ok.

did i mention it’s going to be 88f on my bday????

hope u all have a merry xmas / happy holidays.

watching usa tv

even though au gets lots of american tv shows, there’s stuff i’d love to see that we never get… the macy’s parade, times sq ball drop, the occasional football game, etc. these are also usually the things that i can’t find to download (though i did find the thanksgiving day parade this year). but i was just reading about slingbox.

the website left me with a bunch of questions concerning how it really works but it looks interesting. has anyone tried it? (jonathan or jesse, i’m thinking u guys are probably all set up….)

specials from nyc

qantas has some deals going on now – esp from nyc. u have to book soon (one expires this week, another expires in a couple weeks). from nyc the prices are under U$1400 so it’s def a good price. and if you’re coming from SF you’ll get it for around U$1k. this even includes trips during our summer (that would be your winter!)

let’s see…. it’s been freezing for weeks in nyc and here there’s been days of 80 & sunny…

the local news

i was just emailing with jen re: how her florida news is so unprofessional compared to nyc news. this has been a subject i’ve bitched about on the blog before. so with it in my mind and it being 6pm, i’m now going to recount the news in melb.

we’re watching ‘the national 9 news’ with

the top 3 stories which were promo’d and then each story is gone into in detail: (times are approximate, i tried to use the stopwatch on my phone but i wasn’t intensely focused on it)

(2 min ) the backpacker killer gets 28 years of no chance of parole.

(1 min ) design changes to the commonwealth games housing ups the cost of the whole thing by like $52 million

(2 min) rolling in money… the country’s treasurer announced the country has 11 1/2 billion dollars more than they expected (how in the world does that happen?!?) and he’s hinting that there will be tax cuts

( 1 min) about a pub in melbourne where last nite there was a fight outside which lead to a guy going to hospital with severe head injuries.

(1:30) court appearance of some guy who broke into this famous business guy’s house. the bad guy was caught after stabbing someone else on the street & was found to have 5 laptops in his backpack including some stolen from the biz guy’s house

( 1 min) a guy in some small town who has been charged for murdering his 3 kids. there was a car accident several months ago where the 3 kids died but the dad survived.

(30 seconds) an update on the race riots in sydney’s beach burbs

promo before a commercial of the stories to come (it’s now 18:11)

(30 sec) the mom of a convicted drug dealer who is in prison in bali tries to get copies of pix of her daughter from the police. it’s alleged there are pix of the daughter (who has always said she’s innocent) with a known drug dealer and obviously this is hurting the case which is being appealed. no one seems to have seen the pix but their existence is all over the news.

(1 min) coverage of bail application for 2 guys who were arrested last month on terrorist charges also covered some new details about the raids (when they were arrested)

(1:35) the govt is giving money to defense. new helicopters! new tanks!

(30 sec ) iraq election – including george

(30 sec if that) time for finance. on the screen they show 1 graphic which illustrates 6 aussie companies, their stock price at close and if they went up or down today. the same graphic shows the close of the ‘all ordinaries’ which is the aussie equiv of the dow jones or nasdaq.

change the slide to show the currency exchange rate (au vs usa, uk, eu and japan)

the announcer person doesn’t really talk about these. they voice the us dollar rate & said x company went up & x went down but there wasn’t any explaination

and you might notice that there is no business news at all.

(1 min) the 104 year old woman, violet, who’s pix will be on the side of melbourne trams advertising some company that does independant aged care (ie they stay in their home and she’s one of their clients). and violet is older than the tram system

promo before commercial. promo is all for sports (now 18:20)

(1:30) cricket. the ashes. the dates of games & that the stupid trophy will be brought to AU & ‘displayed to the public’

(1:30) cycling. some guy who was kicked out of the aussie team months ago has now returned to australia saying he def wants to ride for australia (when a few months back he left saying he’d go ride for another country. then that the dragons have a new uniform. i have no idea who they are but it looked like a basketball uniform. and that the melbourne guy who’s now on an NBA team met up with shaq in a game last nite.

(30 sec) men’s hockey. which is field hockey. and no, they don’t wear skirts. what a shame.

(15-30 sec) lotto results

promo for weather coming up (‘a cool change coming’) (now 18:26)

(1:30) time for weather. first a cloud map of the country. then highs in victoria (victoria is the state melbourne is in). map of rain across the country. weekly rain map for victoria. map of temps in victoria for 2nite. radar showing rain for tonite. temps for 2morrow in melb area. 7 day outlook for melb including direction fo wind, temp (high) and little icon showing sun or rain or cloud

and that’s it. it’s 18:30

it’s an eastery christmas

u know those chocolate eggs you can get at easter where the entire center is this solid coconut mass? they’re a bit bigger than your fist. and insanely sweet. well, they don’t have them here. but today i was walking past a choc shop and noticed this thing in the window called a ‘christmas nougat pudding’ and it looked the same (except it looks like a xmas pud not an easter egg). have just tasted it and yes! they are the same! although this is not quite as sweet as the american kind. now i’ll just have to stash some away til easter time! now if i can only find malt balls!!!!

the mba & getting a gig

there’s an article on wsj about int’l mba students having a hard time finding jobs in the states. these are int’l folks who get the mba in the states. 1/3 of recruiters in some survey said they would not hire an int’l student.

SHIT.

the article points to the visa situation (ie the extra paperwork) and that’s why they wouldn’t be hired but also mentions communication skills and cultural differences. there’s also a mention of the student may want to go back to their home country so they wouldn’t be around long term (who hires for long term?!?!).

this is disturbing for a couple reasons. first and selfishly, i wonder if this is the sort of crap i’m going to run up against. i can’t tell yet if there’s a ‘hire australian’ mindset here. i think the interview i had the other week was partially b/c i’m american and it was assumed i’d be grateful to be given a visa (i already have one) and would be hard working.

more disturbing is the ‘another nail in the coffin’ of america. recruiters saying companies just aren’t interested in diversity? international viewpoints? insight the students would have to different countries? i don’t know the details of filing a H-1B visa but I know what is involved in work visas in the UK & AU and neither are very horrible nor very expensive so an excuse involving a visa is bullshit in my opinion.

it’s just sad. very very sad.

snow?!?!

got an email from dad this morning who said there’s 5 inches of snow in PA. and found this link about NYC weather coverage. how fantastic!!!! (btw, that blog seems to be obsessed with nyc tv news).

this makes me homesick for 2 reasons. i love snow and of course with the holidays approaching, i’d be sooo digging a walk past the tree with snow all around!!!

the other reason is the news. i will have to take some pix of the tv like that blog did for you to understand. i have never seen a weather report here that covered anything so comprehensively. a good example is how last week we had this huge rain storm overnight. thunder and pissing rain. i remember hearing on the news that it would rain but that’s about it. and the next day there was a news report about the damage and how much rain fell and how great that was because we need the rain (we always need the rain because aussies are obsessed with water). there was NOTHING like what you’d get at home (and i’m not talking NY1 even).

in fact i think the whole aussie tv news industry is a joke. business news generally gets about 30 seconds. weather is closer to 45 seconds. sports get about 5 minutes and quite often there’s a sporting story in the first few leading stories so actually it’s more than 5 minutes. i’ve been thinking i should sit there with a stop watch. the only good thing i can say is there is a lot of int’l news which we don’t get at home. i’m going to stop the rant there as it’s time to get up & enjoy my saturday with a little bit of outdoors time.

tv warnings

was just checking the tv listings for the evening and saw this:

Return of the Chef
8pm – 8.30pm ABC
Friday 9 December 2005
The New Angel is scheduled to open its doors to the public for the first time and last-minute preparations are underway. On the menu, John has the finest in local produce including fresh lobster, Dartmouth crab and lamb shanks. (The preparation of live seafood may offend some viewers.)

WOW!!! a warning about harming animals on a cooking show?!?!? WOW! that’s a first. i wonder if they announced that before the tv show started (they always have a warning bout nudity or strong language or sexual references before the show). if so, i wonder if they said something like ‘this program contains violence against lobsters’.

stumble upon

i was updating my foxfire tonite when i found stumble upon. it’s an extention that lets you find new sites based on topics you define. it also lets you rate the sites, add new ones and do things like add comments. i’ve only set up my topics and stumbled upon a few sites so far.

this is one of the first ones i’ve found: public toilets in australia from the department of health & aging. how interesting! when i searched on melbourne, i found out theres 39 of them. the most bizarre thing about this is you have to use the website to find anyting – there’s no palm or phone access from what i can see.

i also found this national geographic site about what’s under nyc streets!

and future me where u can write yourself an email and have it sent sometime in the future (like 2035).