Spider Bite

I'm the unlucky one! Living here it was bound to happen sooner or later and it happened to me - what a surprise! I've been bitten by, I think, a grey house spider (looked it up on the University spider finding website - very helpful) this is what it said;

"bites by Achaeaeanea species in Australia can cause moderate to severe local pain though probably no systemic effects."


Moderate to severe is right it bloody kills! I went to work this morning and showed my colleague she took me straight to the chemist who gave me an ice pack and told me to go to the Dr's. I went back to work and told my boss, she sent me home - I said I'd be fine and could go after work but they were having none of it.

I reluctantly gave in and went to the Dr he said I needed to rest and take anti-bi's as these things can be prone to more severe infection. He gave me a sick note and told me to go home and rest. I don't think he trusted me as he said "I mean really rest" as I was walking away! I now have some very strong painkillers and some very large anti-bi's and am $98 worse off (Dr's fee and prescription charge)

I hate Bloody Spiders

Books I've Recently Read

Here's a run down of some books that I've recently read:

The Spin Doctor's Diary: Inside Number 10 with New Labour by Lance Price

This book has been sitting on my to-read shelf for a while as it has been out since 2005.

The main insight I got from this book was the extent to which Tony Blair, in his first terms as PM at least, was obsessed with the media. It seems that everything that was ever written about spin was true. He really did try and control the story, manipulate the media and twist facts to suit 'the official line'. He was also very thin-skinned, obsessed with what journalists were saying about him in the papers. From what I can understand he got over that after a few years as PM but even so it's pretty scary to see the extent to which government policy was, and perhaps still is, led by the media, and Rupert Mordoch (News International Corp owns 42% of the nationals in the UK) in particular.

I've now started reading The Blair Years: Extracts from Alistair Campbell's diaries. All 800 pages of it.

Blind Faith by Ben Elton

This is another excellent satire by Ben Elton. Yet again he really seems to be able to capture the zeitgeist of modern day culture.

Blind Faith is set in a post-apocalyptic London where half the world seems to have flooded due to global warming. It's a society where Christian (of sorts) religious fundamentalism reigns supreme and where privacy is a sin. A world where everyone is virtually naked and obsessed with sex, or at least pretends to be obsessed with sex, because not doing so would be to disrespect the body that 'The Love' i.e. God, has blessed you with, which in turn would be disrespecting 'The Love'.

The story follows Trafford Sewell as he begins to discover what's hidden behind the curtain of the society that he knows and realises that he's not alone - he's not the only one who actually craves a little privacy and has doubts about the religious teachings.

It's a bit like George Orwell's 1984 but with a modern spin. Everyone is required to blog and add entries to their 'face page' (read facebook) about every single aspect of their lives, and being (famous) is more important then doing.

As the blurb on the back of the book says - 'A chilling vision of what's to come? Or something rather closer to what we call reality?

The Ghost by Robert Harris

The Ghost follows the story of a professional ghostwriter who is given the opportunity to ghost the memoirs of Britain's former prime minister. Soon after starting to work on the book he realises that not all's what it seems.

The Ghost is yet another intelligent thriller from the author who penned one of my favourite books - Fatherland. The fictitious former prime minister is clearly Tony Blair - a man who is on the verge of being indicted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes after authorising CIA rendition of British Citizens suspected of being Al Qaeda terrorists.

As well as being an excellent thriller, with twists and turns aplenty, The Ghost is clearly a damning examination of Britain's foreign policy since 2001.

The Utility of Force by Rupert Smith

The Utility of Force is basically a long essay by a very distinguished British General.

The books charts the history of warfare from the rise of Industrial Warfare during the Napoleonic wars to the conflicts of today. Moreover, the book examines the importance of the trinity (the military, the state, and the people) in winning wars and argues that today's western armies have to substantially adapt to face the conflicts of the future.

The book is a tad long and repetitive but he makes some very good points, and his analysis of the relationship between politics and warfare is excellent, particularly when he examines the 'wars-by-proxy' which were the Korean and Vietnam War.

Playing with Fire by Gordon Ramsay

After really enjoying Gordon's first autobiography 'Humble Pie', I couldn't wait to read this follow-up.

Whereas Humble Pie focuses on his early days and his extraordinary culinary skills and successes in the kitchen, Playing with Fire focuses on the business side of Gordon Ramsay Holdings.

Playing with Fire is a fascinating insight into both the 5 star restaurant business but also the commercial life of a celebrity chef.

He's very frank and honest in the book, to the extent that he even discloses the fees he earned and amount he paid for property, and his obsessiveness and determination are clear throughout. There are some excellent lessons in here about business and life in general.

Facing Up by Bear Grylls

Facing Up was first published in 2000 and I didn't even know it existed until I came across it in a book sale a few months ago, which I was surprised about as I'm a big fan of the work of Bear Grylls.

Facing Up is Bear's own account of his successful attempt, at the age of 23, to be the youngest person to reach the summit of Everest.

It is an inspiring account of what it takes to do what still only a relatively small number of extraordinary people in the world have achieved. As well as being a breathtaking read, it was a real eye opener to why climbing Everest is still the ultimate test for man.

Here's a few interesting facts I learnt from this book:

• There have been over 200 deaths on Mount Everest
• It costs roughly $25,000 to climb Everest. A good proportion of the cost is attributed to the permit and the fees for obtaining daily meteorological reports for conditions around the summit.
  
• There's only two periods during the year that an attempt on the summit can be made. This is due to the hurricane-scale winds that swirl around the summit during the monsoon season (the size of Everest means it actually creates its own weather system).
• In the book Bear explains how Everest is one of only a few places still left in the world which can only be reached by human endurance only, as Helicopters can't reach that high because the air is too thin for the blades to grip. This was written before the 2005 helicopter landing by Frenchman Didier Delsalle in a Eurocopter AS 350 B3.

If you're a fan of his TV programmes you'll certainly enjoy this book.

The West Wing

Last weekend I finished watching the final series of The West Wing, and sad as it may sound, there’s now a big hole in my life.

I only discovered The West Wing last year after someone recommended it to me. I never caught it when it was shown on TV so I went back to the beginning and bought the DVD’s. After watching the first episode of the first series, I soon new that this would become my favourite programme on TV.

Regularly over the last year I’ve sat down on a Friday night, opened a bottle of red wine, and watched a 4-episode disc. It got towards the end that I couldn’t watch an episode without first opening a bottle of wine – it somehow gave me a nostalgic feeling. You know you’re getting old when the nostalgia you feel on a Friday night is towards a bottle of wine and a political drama, rather than a night out on the town with the lads!

It may seem strange that a TV programme can have such an impact, but for me, The West Wing is the most intelligent, moving, insightful and intriguing TV programme ever made. The research that went into each series was outstanding; both the look and feel of the White House as well as the way the political stories were presented, many of which seemed to mirror present day events. Best of all was the character development. We followed the whole team from beginning to end of both terms of the Bartlett Presidency and watched as relationships developed, and individuals struggled to cope with the enormity of their responsibilities.

The series was very successful in capturing the dynamics and dynamism of the west wing of the White House, to a degree that you could imagine that is exactly how it would be working in arguably the most powerful offices in the world. I was often on the edge of my seat and could feel a palpable rise in my heart rate trying to keep up with the characters on screen working at 100 miles per hour as they were trying to simultaneously deal with incidents, power broking, and handling the demands of the 24/7 media. It was truly breathtaking stuff. The ‘walk with me’ lines, where fast-paced conversations flip from one topic to the next while the characters walk between meetings in the west wing are now written into popular culture.

Not sure what I’m going to do on a Friday night now. I may have to start again at series 1!

Prime Beef

Following up from my last post, when Mike mentioned he was taking me to a nice steak restaurant in Sydney I expected a 'Sizzler' or something like that. Instead, we went to the Prime restaurant in the GPO Sydney building where they have a steak on the menu for $155.

I thought I new about steak until I went there.

Their speciality is Wagyu beef and according to the menu:

Wagyu is a western term for a collection of Japanese bloodlines (Wa-Japan, Gyu-Cattle).

It is generally accepted that Wagyu beef is the highest grade, and tastiest beef in the world. The marbling of the Wagyu beef is the Prime characteristic that contributes to its tenderness, juiciness and most importantly its flavour.

The highest grade of Wagyu has a marbling score of A12. However, this is only available in Japan. While other breeds of cattle are not given a marbling score, it can be said for comparative reasons that other breeds of cattle having a maximum marbling score of 3.

In Australia, Wagyu branded meat is predominantly F1 crosses between Wagyu and Angus cattle. The Japanese preference when the Wagyu is not Full Blood, is for F1 crosses to be between Wagyu and Holstein cattle which we have chosen for your enjoyment in Prime.

Outside Japan there is a limited supply of Full Blood Wagyu and an even more limited supply of marble score plus 9 Wagyu.

The plus 9 Wagyu selected for Prime is the highest scored Wagyu product available outside Japan and has been sourced from David Blackmore, Australia.

So what did it taste like you may ask? God knows, the meal was on company expenses so I didn't dare go for the Wagyu. I would have been sacked on Monday!

Instead I went for the more modest Black Angus - Scotch Fillet (300g), Rib eye without bone, 200-250 days grainfed, full matured at 24-36 months old. It was nice, but I couldn't help wonder what the Wagyu would have tasted like.

I seem to be drooling.

Blogging from Sydney

I'm currently in Sydney for a couple of days meeting with a client - my first business trip of what I'm told will be many for my new employer.

I flew up yesterday afternoon with a colleague who I'm taking over from on this particular client project as he's leaving next week. We're staying in the Bayview Boulevard in the Woolloomooloo area of Sydney. The hotel is actually pretty good - it's recently been refurbished so everything is shiny and new, and I've got a partial view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from my room, as the photo below shows (taken with my camera phone).


Last night we went for a walk about and stopped off for a meal at a really nice side-street Italian Trattoria. I had Black mussels as an entree and a home-made fettuccine concoction for main. Finally had a decent Italian in Australia!

After the meal we went to a pub and caught the last 30 minutes of the Sydney FC v LA Galaxy game. David Beckham had managed to draw 80,000 to the Sydney Olympic stadium - unheard of for a 'soccer' match in Australia. They even showed the match live on Channel 10 (one of the main channels in Oz). Beckham pleased the fans scoring with one of his trademark free-kicks, although his side lost 5-3 in the end. I couldn't believe all the plaudits by the commentators after the game, and then on TV this morning. Beckham mania is still alive and strong, at least in Sydney anyway.

Mike, my colleague, has recommended a nice steak restaurant this evening so we'll be going there shortly. Don't you just love company expenses!

Last Weekend

A quick run down of what we got up to last weekend:

On Friday Rach took the day off and went to Australia Zoo with Steph and the kids. I managed to get out of it and stayed at home.


When they got back Rach, Steph and Julie from next door went for a night out in the city, returning about 2am - the dirty stop-outs!

On Saturday morning we all went to Manly for Bonny's birthday BBQ. Bonny, who's 11, is Cath's daughter (Cath is Rachelle's godmother) and both are the closest thing we have to family in Brisbane. It was really weird having a BBQ and eating birthday cake by the ocean at 9:30 in the morning. Nice though!

After the BBQ, I went home while Rach took Steph and the kids to Sea World. It only seemed like 2 minutes since we last visited Sea World so I gave it a miss.


When they got back we were invited next door as it was Reyce's birthday (George and Julie's daughter). One drink turned into many and before I new it myself and George were finishing off a bottle of rum. I left him at 1:30am passed out on the sofa - this time Navy had won in the Navy v Air Force drinking contest!

On Sunday we went in the pool in the morning (to sober up), then went out at lunchtime to Mcdonald's for Reyce's birthday party.

Not a bad weekend I'd say considering it's November. Sure beats the weekends I used to have in November - cold and wet is all I can remember about Novembers in the UK.

It's now been 6 months since we arrived and I still feel in holiday mode. I plan to stay in holiday mode!

More photo's on flickr.

A Long Weekend in Noosa

Last Thursday, Rachelle picked me up straight from work and we drove 2 hours north to Noosa on the northern end of the Sunshine Coast. I had booked an apartment for us at the Noosa Tropicana.

Noosa is beautiful, and includes beautiful white sand beaches; a large national park complete with spectacular coastal scenery, wildlife (including Koalas) and waterfalls; and the Noosa river which winds its way north for 85 km and continues past Lakes Cooroibah and Cootharaba to unspoilt Everglades.

Thankfully, Friday was hot and sunny so we were able to spend some quality time at the beach and make up for the crap weather we've had ever since Steph and Lucy arrived. The conditions were perfect - perfect for swimming but also with the occasional large wave to jump through/over/under. I wasn't as sensible with the sun cream as I usually am and ended up burning my back - it's still soar today!


Friday night we made use of our penthouse facilities. Having a penthouse apartment meant we had our own private rooftop with BBQ, so we chucked a few steaks on the barbie and cracked open a couple of bottles of wine.

On Saturday Rach took Steph and the kids to Eumundi markets while I went for a walk and explored the local area. When they returned Steph wasn't feeling too well so she stayed in the apartment while me, Rach and the kids went down to the Noosa river and hired a boat. We hired a 6-seater Bowrider and went exploring for two hours up the Noosa river. The boat we hired wouldn't do any more than 10 knots so there was no way we was going to make it anywhere near the Everglades. Lauren and Lucy loved it, they both had a go at steering. Lauren even took an interest when Rach taught her how to read the charts (of course we're experts now we've completed the 1 day boat course!).


On Saturday night we went to a Thai Restaurant. I drank far too much wine and woke up feeling like I was going to die on Sunday morning.

We had planned to go exploring in Noosa National Park on Sunday but it was absolutely pissing it down so we checked out and drove back home Sunday morning.

All in all it was a really good weekend, although I was a bit disappointed by the Noosa Tropicana. It's supposedly a 4 1/2 star apartment but it was in desperate need of a refurbishment.

More photo's on Flickr.

I'm on the Schmap Brisbane Short-list

Out of the blue I received an e-mail today to tell me that one of my photo's on flickr has been short-listed to be included in the fourth edition of the Schmap Brisbane Guide.

I finally get round to buying a decent DSLR camera and the photo that they've chosen was taken with my Sony Ericsson K800i camera phone. Typical! This is the photo they chose:

Two Little Witches

I'm babysitting tonight as Rach and Steph have gone to Rachelle's xmas work do. It's a good job Steph is here otherwise I would have had to go to it. I can't quite get into the xmas spirit on a Monday night near the beginning of November, especially after a long first day in a new job! I guess that's the hospitality industry for you - having to celebrate xmas when nobody else wants to.

You wouldn't think that Lauren and Lucy are 6 and 5 respectively by the way they've been running rings around me this evening! They're like two little old witches - forever conspiring to see what they can get away with, egging each other on to give me as much grief as possible. And they never shut up! I've finally got them off to bed but my ears are still ringing from their constant noise.

My First Day

Today was my first day in a new job - what will hopefully be my last working for someone else.

The role and work I've been given is much more like what I'm familiar with - security compliance. The first project I've been given is to help a client - a subsidiary of a well-known Japanese car manufacturer - achieve compliance with Japan's Financial Instruments and Exchange Law, which is Japan's equivalent of the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was brought in after the well-publicised financial reporting scandals involving the likes of Enron and WorldCom. The aim of the Act being to strengthen requirements regarding corporate governance and internal control. Amongst other things this means that companies listed on the US stock exchange must be able to demonstrate strong internal controls that can prevent and detect fraud. The Japanese equivalent, nicknamed J-SOX, was also established after scandals involving listed companies in Japan and has similar requirements.

My job is to help the client address the high-priority security weaknesses that have been identified and establish controls for these before March 2008 - when J-SOX comes into effect. What this means in practice is that I'll be carrying out interviews with different areas of their business to understand exactly what security controls are in place now and provide recommendations on additional controls. My company is then hoping that the client will ask me to help them with implementation - which will mean writing security policies and procedures, giving them guidance on securing their IT systems, as well as helping them implement new security systems where required such as Intrusion Prevention technology - the aim being to try and cross-sell as many of our companies' services and solutions as possible.

It's not the most exciting job in the world but it pays the bills.

A Washed-Out Weekend

Steph and Lucy's first weekend in Oz wasn't the best. We've had glorious weather for weeks now but since they've arrived it has been miserable.

We did take them to Surfer's Paradise on the Gold Coast on Saturday and braved the beach for a short while, but the wind was that strong we were getting sand-blasted.

We've not had much luck with restaurants either. We went to Amici's, an Italian restaurant on the South Bank in Brisbane Friday night, but the service was atrocious and the food pretty bland. Then, with the weather being bad on Saturday we went for a long lunch while down on the Gold Coast. And it was a long lunch. Again, the service was crap, we waited ages and when our meals finally arrived they screwed up the order. Gordon Ramsey could do with taking a trip out here for his next series of Kitchen Nightmares! Seriously though we're being really unlucky at the moment because it's not normally this bad.

Movember

Over the last few days I keep hearing people talk about Movember. It seems to be a big thing over here. Curious to find out what the hell people were going on about I looked it up.

Movember is a charity event held each November where men (and I'm sure a few women could qualify for this as well) start the month clean shaven and then have exactly a month to grow and groom a moustache, raising money and awareness about men's health issues along the way.

The participants, known as Mo Bros, are subject to the following rules:

1. You don’t talk about Movember outside of the month.
2. Movember runs for 30 days. No more.
3. There is to be no joining of the Mo to side burns—That’s a beard.
4. There is to be no joining of the handlebars—That’s a goatie.
5. A small complimentary growth under the bottom lip is allowed (aka a tickler).
6. You must remain clean shaven apart from your Mo for the entire 30 days.
7. You must speak with a dodgy Bavarian accent for the duration of the month.
   

Ok, I made the last one up.

Official Movember website

Just Typical

I've just picked Stef and Lucy up from the airport. Unfortunately, after weeks of glorious weather here we've now got heavy cloud cover and constant rain (the fine rain that wets you through as Peter Kay would say), and it's set to be like this right through until Monday. Bloody poms bringing the weather with them!

The Melbourne Cup

Today is Melbourne Cup day in Australia.

Billed as 'the race that stops a nation', the Melbourne Cup is the biggest even on the horse racing calendar in Australia and seems to be a pretty big deal judging by the fact that people have been going on about it for weeks now. Apparently, aussies are more likely to throw a sickie today than any other day (I thought it seemed quiet in the office).

Established in 1861, the Melbourne Cup is a thoroughbred race held over a distance of 2 miles.

The main race is on at 2pm our time so they're putting it on the big screen in the office (the one that usually shows the status of the IT Networks and major servers). I must be the only person who hasn't put a bet on. I did get given a sweep-stake ticket when I bought a coffee this morning though, so if Black Tom wins I'll get a free coffee. Whoo ooh! I tell you, they have got serious issues with gambling over here!

Melbourne Cup Official Website

UPDATE: Black Tom came 17th out of 21. There goes my free coffee.

What a shame - Ha!

It's been a little while since I last posted but after the phone call I had today I felt the need to share. I spoke to Craig (one of my technicians from Harvey Norman) I actually called him for some advice (I've dropped black eyeliner on my cream bedroom carpet but that's another story)

He said he was glad to hear from me and had news that may interest me, John, the guy who took over my job, has gone already. He lasted 6 weeks if that. Craig said he'd somehow managed to run the branch back into the ground and it was loosing money - again. How awful!!!!

Craig told me they're really struggling and haven't run as smoothly as when I was there since I left. I don't want to sound big headed but I did put a lot of work into that branch - what a mistake they made letting me go.

It actually did me the biggest favour I'm now earning the same money in a fantastic setting and without the stress - today me and my boss spent a good 15 minutes watching dolphins playing in the marina - where am I better off?

British Army Developing Invisible Tanks

If reports are to be believed, the Ministry of Defence in conjunction with QinetiQ (lots of MOD contracts), and the British Army, are testing technology that can make tanks and troops invisible. Apparently it works by using "cameras and projectors to beam images captured from the surrounding landscape onto a specially-adapted tank coated with silicon to maximize their reflective qualities". Now that sounds familiar, wasn't that exactly how the invisible car worked in Pierce Brosnan's last James Bond film - Die Another Day?

I gasped with despair in the cinema when that scene showed - thinking that they had surely gone too far into fantasy world this time.

The question is, do you think QinetiQ got the idea from Die Another Day? Just kidding of course. Mind you, it's not the first time that James Bond films have been ahead of the game when it comes to technology. The underwater camera in Thunderball (1965) and the digital watch in Live and Let Die (1973) are just two examples of gadgets that were shown in James Bond films before they became widely available to the public.

Come to think of it, Q Branch, QinetiQ. Could there be a connection?

Engadget - British Army looks to make tanks, troops invisible

I Was Wrong - It's Riise's Payslip

According to this BBC report, Liverpool FC have launched an investigation into how John Arne Riise's payslip has appeared on the Internet.

So, if Riise is on 120 grand a week base salary, what is Gerrard on?

Is This Steven Gerrard's Pay Slip?

This has been doing the rounds on some of the football websites. Apparently this is the payslip of one of the Liverpool players but no one's quite sure which one. By the salary amount, I reckon it must be Gerrard - there's only a handful of players in the country who are on over 100k per week.

Click on the image below to enlarge.

My 4-Day Week is Starting This Week

The project I'm working on is running out of money so they've asked me if I'd mind only doing 4 days a week for the remaining two weeks. Too right I don't mind!

So I'm already half-way through the working week. Well kind of, I'll be working on my business on Fridays but I don't count that as work because I'm doing that for me not someone else. Plus, no doubt some of the Friday work will be spent sat out on my balcony with a beer, or maybe in the swimming pool. I wonder if you can get waterproof laptops?...

One of Those Days...

It was one of those days today...

First I made a small change to a server at work which completely broke it. I was being rushed to make the change so didn't give enough thought to what I was doing. If I'd have sat back and thought about it for a second I would have realised that what had been requested would cause problems. Anyway, I tried to back-out the change but I couldn't connect to the server at all remotely - all communications with it had gone down. So I figured I'd have to go over to the data centre and log on to it locally at the console, but...

As I was about to leave, the entry system on the doors to our floors went tits-up and locked us in. Now that's a poorly designed entry system. I know most security systems are supposed to fail-safe into a secure state but surely a basic risk assessment would determine that allowing people to quickly get out of the building in an emergency should be an higher priority than stopping intruders getting in? We ended up being locked in for 90 minutes.

Luckily for me, the server in question isn't in production yet, it's still in UAT (User Acceptance Testing). Nonetheless I still needed to get it quickly up and running again as there are strict deadlines on delivering the milestones of the project.

Besides that when I finally made it out for a late lunch I went to the Queensland Transport Office to pick up my Recreational Marine Drivers Licence, only to discover, after waiting for 30 minutes, that I didn't have enough ID on me.

On my way back to the office I popped in to McDonalds to buy a relatively healthy sub-roll, and it was only when I was halfway through eating it that it dawned on me that I was in fact eating a cheeseburger. They'd given me the wrong order (honest, Guv)!

Back at the office I then discovered that the problem I had earlier with the server had caused another problem. I called out for help to Ken, the Check Point guru, and he quickly realised that we'd have to roll-back the entire server config and do a restore from the last backup. But of course, when Ken went to do the restore it completely failed - the backups hadn't worked properly. In the end we had to go back to a full system snapshot that we had taken on the 8th October, meaning that all the changes that I've made between the 8th Oct and now have been lost - I'd have to do it all again. Luckily I have a record of all the changes and it should be no more than a couple of hours work but even so it's a pain. It just goes to show the importance of testing your backups!

I hate stupid computers! And security systems! And McDonalds. And Queensland Transport regulations!

Extreme Weather

We're entering storm season now here in Brisbane. The weather has been pretty good during the day but most evenings we've had thunder and lightning. Last night we had a fantastic lightning storm. One really loud crack of thunder made us jump out of our seats. I ran upstairs to check Lauren was alright as I was sure it must have scared her to death, and unbelievably she was still asleep. How she had slept through that I'll never know.

It's getting really hot out here now, we were all wilting over the weekend. I've been trying to hold-off on using the air-con unless absolutely necessary, for a number of reasons:

1) It costs money;
2) It's bad for the environment;
3) It dries out your skin; and
4) It won't help us acclimatise.

We gave in Friday night though and switched it on for a bit. I don't mind the heat during the day but being hot and sticky at night is not very pleasurable. It's not so bad downstairs in our house but upstairs is a different matter - it's like a sauna even with all the windows open. We've got air-con and a overhead fan in our bedroom but there's nothing in Lauren's room or the spare bedroom. We've put a standing fan in Lauren's room but all that's doing at the moment is moving warm air. It looks like we'll have to buy air-con units for both rooms. My computer equipment is in the spare bedroom as it doubles up as my office so it's getting dangerous to turn them on without air-con.

We at least have one reprieve - it's so nice to be able to go and jump in a swimming pool whenever we want to to cool down!

Licenced Boaties

On Saturday, myself and Rach completed an official Boatsafe course and passed the exam which now allows us to hold a Recreational Marine Drivers Licence. This means we'll be able to take out 'hire and drive' motor boats which are 6 metres or less in length. In the future we may even buy a boat of our own.

It was a long day on Saturday. The course started at 7am - not a time I usually see on a Saturday morning! It involved a lot of theory - navigation, lights, safety, chart reading, etc; as well as a practical component which basically meant we each got to take a boat for a spin up and down the Brisbane river.

The exam at the end was ridiculously easy - due to the fact that it was an open-book test, meaning we could actually look the answers up in our course material. If you can read English you can pass the exam!

So I hope any visitors we get bring their sea legs with them as we'll probably be going out for a spot of sea fishing!

Farecast - Airfare Predictions

If you're considering taking a flight in the foreseeable future, you might want to check out farecast.com. The good thing about Farecast is that not only does it help you find the cheapest flight, it also predicts when the price of the flights will rise or fall. It's a US website so the prices are in dollars but don't let that stop you. We live in a globalised world - you no longer have to use UK travel brokers to purchase flights from the UK.

Blogging for dosh

Apparently there are over 50 million blogs in the blogosphere now, ranging from occasional bloggers like me, to full-time professional bloggers, some of whom get more readers and subscribers than many national newspapers.

If you've ever wondered how people make money from blogging, take a look at the links below.

A lot of the top bloggers who blog about Internet marketing are now posting their income reports online. The reason they do this is because it establishes their credibility, which is particularly important if you want people to 'buy in' to your status as an expert on a particular subject. By posting their income report on a blog about making money by blogging, they are showing that they 'eat their own dog food' so to speak and know what they are talking about.

Two of the blogs that I subscribe to that are seen as authorities on blogging and Internet marketing are www.johnchow.com, and www.entrepreneurs-journey.com by Yaro Starak (a fellow Brisbanite).

In September, John Chow made $20,512.17 and Yaro made $10,899.83. Not bad eh. Most top tabloid journalists don't make that much.

You can read John Chow's income breakdown here , and Yaro's income breakdown here.

This is what is truly exciting about the Internet. You can literally start a business from scratch - you don't need money to make money. It doesn't cost a penny to start a blog.

I personally have decided against adding advertising on this blog. This was never meant to be a commercial enterprise - simply a means of communicating to friends and family now that I'm on the other side of the world. I have considered launching a couple of commercial blogs. I've even registered some domain names. At the moment though I don't want to commit to something when I know my website projects will be ready within weeks. If I try to do too much at once none of the projects will get the attention they deserve.

Brief Update

Just a brief update for the last week:

We had a pretty quiet weekend with the exception of Saturday night which somehow turned into a beer fest. Our alcoholic kiwi neighbours - Julie and George - came round for a beer late Saturday afternoon and I somehow managed to stay up drinking with George until 2:30am Sunday morning! Needless to say I was feeling rough on Sunday so we never made it to the planned BBC meetup (British Brisbane Club) in the city. I blame George. He discovered our Wii Sports game and being an ex New Zealand Air Force PTI he doesn't like to lose at sport, even if it is virtual sport. The thing is, I'm quite competitive as well and don't like to lose (I even struggle to bring myself to let Lauren win a game!), so I kept playing him again and again determined not to give up my 100% record. At one point I thought we'd end up playing and drinking through until the Rugby World Cup final started at 5am Sunday. Luckily for both of us we agreed to call it a day at 2:30am. My right arm is still aching today - I'm not sure if it's from the Tennis or Boxing.

On the job front my start date for the permie position has been put back a week to the 12th November to give me more time to complete the operational handover of the project I'm working on. I'm really looking forward to those 3-day weekends. I know I'll be spending my free Friday working on the business but at least I'll be at home.

The only crap thing about the new position is the holiday situation. Australians don't tend to get as much annual leave as we're used to in Britain - typically 20 days per annum as opposed to 25. So pro-rata for me that will work out as 16 days (four weeks). As I mentioned previously, my employers shut down for two weeks over xmas and we have to use our leave allocation whether we want to or not, which will work out as 5 days for me. This only leaves me with 11 days for the rest of the year. I was planning on taking my leave to coincide with when we have visitors over. We haven't got any visitors over xmas! Mum, Dad, if you're reading this, I don't suppose you mind me and Rach going on holiday to Bali for a couple of weeks while you're over here do you? Just kidding.

Work is still continuing in India on the two websites I'm having developed. The first of which should be ready within the next month. The mock-ups of both sites that I have been presented with by the developers look really good - I'm very excited about both prospects! I wish they'd hurry up though, I'm really keen to get stuck in and try out my ideas.

This Saturday coming myself and Rach are booked into a full-day Boat Licence course. If we pass we'll be licenced to wreak havoc on the waterways! I might even take up sea fishing.

A sight for sore eyes

This morning I was jogging round our local park before work and I came across a family of deer grazing by the lake. It was an amazing sight. I probably wouldn't have spotted them if it wasn't for a group of people who pointed them out to me, as I've usually got one eye looking up into the tress for those bastard magpies and the other eye looking down at the ground watching out for snakes!

So far so good

Well I've completed my first week and I think I'll be happy working there. The club Manager is really nice. On my first day I went in with the intention of asking if there was any way I could alter the 9am -3pm shift which was advertised to 8.30am - 2.30pm so I can pick Lauren up from school, I didn't need to ask she offered. I get 1/2 hour break for lunch which I take in the bistro upstairs. I sit and watch the boats, it's so relaxing. I'm waiting for the Dolphins to come back. They were there one day but I was in the middle of banking and couldn't go and look.

The club has 20+ pokies (slot machines) and are looking at expanding this very soon. They couldn't get over the fact that the UK pubs only have a couple of machines in and asked how do they make money? The amount made from the pokies is unreal. Every Monday morning we have to empty the machines it's all very very precise and the gaming commission can come in at any time to inspect. You have to have a licence to touch the inside of the machines - it really is big business. (I'll be going for my licence soon)

There are quite a few expats members of the club and as soon as they hear me talk they are even more friendly. One woman is from Leeds, she's been here 45 years and has still got a very strong Leeds accent. My boss Jan is actually from Cumbria but has been here since she was 6 so is very Aussie - it made me realise that me and Daryl will probably keep our accents but after a few years no-one would ever know Lauren was a pommie! She has started to say words differently but we don't say anything as we want her to fit in at school and that's all part of it. Our neighbours love to listen to her Yorkshire accent but by the sound of it not for much longer!

Look What You've Done Radiohead!

On Saturday I wrote about how the news that Radiohead's decision to bypass the record labels and distribute their album themselves, at a price chosen by the customer, may signal the demise of the industry. Well guess what, this week Nine Inch Nails, Jamiroquai, Oasis, and, wait for it, Madonna, have all announced that they're dumping their record labels.

This is going to be interesting to watch. My bet is that in 10 years time the only artists on EMI's books will be X-Factor runners-up!

Swedish Presenter Chucks Up on Live TV

Handled very professionally me thinks...

Il Centro

Every now and again we like to treat ourselves and try out a really nice restaurant. With Rach starting a new job on Monday and with me securing a new job, and with Cath volunteering to babysit for Lauren, we decided to try out one of Brisbane's award winning restaurants last night.

We chose Il Centro in the CBD.

This is what I had:

POLPI E SEPPI SALTATI IN BURRO D’ OLIO E PREZZEMOLO CON CROSTINO
SAUTEED OCTOPUS AND SQUID IN GARLIC AND PARSLEY BUTTER WITH SLOW BRAISED VINE RIPENED TOMATO, EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL AND CRUSHED OLIVE CROSTINO

SCALOPPINE DI VITELLO CON FETTUCCINE CARBONARA
PARMESAN CRUMBED VEAL SCALOPPINE WITH FETTUCCINE CARBONARA AND WILTED SPINACH

FRITTE TIEPIDO CON GELATO E SALSA DI CIOCCOLATO CALDO
WARM PROFITEROLES WITH CARAMEL GELATO AND HOT CHOCOLATE SAUCE

Rach had:

CAPE SANTE IN PADELLA CON RISOTTO GLI ASPARAGI E PROSCIUTTO
SAUTEED SCALLOPS WITH LIME CARNAROLI RISOTTO,ASPARAGUS AND PROSCIUTTO AND TARRAGON JUS

ANATRA CROCCANTE ARROSTO, PATATE CON SPINACI E RUCOLA
SLOW ROASTED CRISP DUCK BREAST WITH AMARENA CHERRIES AND BLACK PEPPER SALSA,DUCK FAT BINTJE POTATO, CREAMED SPINACH AND ROCKET

TORTINO AL CIOCCOLATO TIEPIDO CON GELATO E SALSA DI CARAMELLO
WARM CHOCOLATE TART WITH PASSIONFRUIT AND WHITE CHOCOLATE GELATO AND CARAMEL SAUCE

All in all, whilst the setting and service was excellent, the food was a bit of a let-down. Whilst no part was particularly bad, the food overall was a little bit bland - it didn't live up to the promise of the menu. Looking again at the website I can see that whilst Il Centro has won awards, it has been a number of years since the last one.

The total cost including drinks came to $215 (£90) which was about what I expected for a prestigious riverside restaurant, although in the end it proved to be slightly overpriced for the quality of the cooking.

We had a good night nonetheless. Especially afterwards when we watched England beat the Wallabies in the Rugby World Cup. I think I'm going to enjoy giving the aussies some stick next week at work!

Go Ahead, Make My Day. Punk!

I've just been Clay Pigeon Shooting for the first time ever. There's a shooting complex only 5 minutes drive from where we live so I went along with George, my neighbour. He held a gun licence in New Zealand and grew up as a hunter so he'd done it all before but for me, the last time I'd held a gun other than at a fairground was the annual shooting test in the Navy, where I got to fire the SA-80 Combat Rifle.

To say it was my first time shooting moving targets I did alright, I hit roughly 70% of the targets.

It cost £30 (£13) and that included gun hire, cartridges, instruction and 25 targets. Good value for money I reckon. We'll probably make a regular thing of it.

Another Hammer in the Coffin for Record Labels?

On the 10th October, Radiohead will release their new album 'In Rainbows'. More interestingly however, the album will be made available as a download from their own website and we, the customer, can decide how much we want to pay for it. If we don't like it, we don't have to pay a penny! What's more, they haven't signed a deal with any of the major record labels or the major distributors, including iTunes, and there will be no promo's for the album. They'll be releasing it and distributing it themselves, and it will be made available to everyone at the same time.

Radiohead are regarded by many as the best band in the world, which is what makes this announcement even more important. According to an A&R Executive at a major label, as quoted in this Time artice - "If the best band in the world doesn't want a part of us, I'm not sure what's left for this business ... if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I'm not sure there's any going back".

This comes at a time when the record labels and the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) in particular are facing increasing criticism over their approach to music copyright protection. It wasn't long ago that it was discovered that SonyBMG was surreptitiously including Rootkit installers in CD's to enforce copyright protection - when the CD was placed in your computer CDROM drive an hidden installer would install the copyright protection on your PC without you knowing. Once this became public SonyBMG had to quickly backtrack after what become a PR disaster for them.

And just this week, in yet another RIAA lawsuit in America, SonyBMG's head of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, while testifying before a jury, stated that making a copy of purchased music was tantamount to stealing, even if you'd bought the CD and was simply making a backup. So in the eyes of the record labels, if we download music or buy it on CD and then copy it to our MP3 player, which most people do these days, we are in fact thieves. With an attitude like that it's no wonder that many people don't think twice about downloading music illegally.

The truth is , in every area of business, the Internet is introducing new business models that give more power to us, the consumer, and increasingly allows small business' to take on the big guys. It's truly democratising the world, well at least those parts of the world that have access to the Internet! If the big corporations don't recognise this and adapt to it, they'll quickly lose market share.

Another Step Closer Towards My Goal

I've been offered a new job and I've accepted. What's more, I've got them to agree to a 4-day week!

The project I'm working on for my day job is due to hand over to Operations in November, meaning my involvement would end at that point. Last week my employer called me in for a chat to discuss the future. Their Security Compliance arm of the business is really taking off and they need to strengthen the team to cope with the growing volume of work. They asked me if I'd consider joining their Compliance consultancy on a permanent basis.

I'm contracting at the moment and since becoming an IT Contractor I vowed I would never go back to being a 'permie'. However, circumstances have changed. Here's my thinking:

1. IT Contracting is not a lucrative proposition in Australia like it is in the UK. For a start, the rates mean I only get paid roughly the same as a permie, and secondly the legal and tax situation is different meaning I can't get the same financial benefits working under my own company like I did in the UK. Basically, contracting here is just like being a casual employee.
2. Christmas is not too far away and the company I work for shuts down for two weeks over xmas. As a contractor I don't get paid for holidays and sickness. Even if they found me another project straight away, if I stayed with them on a contract basis I would have to take 2 weeks unpaid leave over xmas. Signing on as a permie I get two weeks paid leave!
3. Everyone keeps telling me that their is a skills shortage in Brisbane but whenever I look on the job sites a) I'm not seeing much contract work, and b) most of the work seems to to be on the network/firewall side of things, similar to the project I'm assigned to now, which doesn't really interest me and is not my core expertise.

With all that in mind, I decided my best option would be to try and find a way to guarantee a decent income for the foreseeable future, but also reduce my hours doing a 'proper job' so I could devote more time to my Internet projects.

So, when they called me in for a chat I made it clear that I would consider going permie only if I could reduce my hours to four days a week.

Yesterday they made me an offer. They met my salary expectations and they've agreed to the four-day week. I love it when a plan comes together!

I cut over to permie at the beginning of November.

Hey There Delilah

For you Harry Potter fans you'll like this - one of many Hey There Delilah parodies on YouTube:

Another beautiful weekend

Another great weekend. On Saturday we went to the beach again. We've been trying different beaches each time for a little variety. The beaches here go on for miles and miles and there's never any problem finding a quiet one. The only problem being though that the quiet beaches often aren't patrolled by Surf LifeSavers so they don't advise you to go swimming. This weekend we fancied a swim so we went to one of the patrolled beaches. We chose Couloundra, the first resort from us on the Sunshine Coast about 1hr and 20 minutes drive. King's Beach at Couloundra turned out to be really family-friendly. For a change, the waves were only small so it was easily swimmable. Even Rach went in!

On Sunday we went for a community BBQ at the park near where we live. Everywhere you go in Australia you'll find public BBQ's provided by the council free of charge - every park, by the river and by the beach. Most are electric but you still find some wood-burning BBQ's knocking about. It was a wood-burning BBQ that we used on Sunday. Luckily there were already some pre-cut logs waiting for us as none of us had thought to bring an axe.

Besides us, there was a family from Scotland, a family from India and a family from France. We all chipped in and shared each other's food and booze, and me and Craig (Scotland) tended to the barbie.

It's so nice to be able to make plans for the weekend without having to worry about the weather forecast. It's 30 degrees every day here at the moment. It's got to the point where we've started to put the fan on at night. We've managed to resist the temptation to put the A/C on yet though - not good for our electric bill or the environment!

Scary Stuff

It is Spring here at the moment and the birds are doing their thing. Unfortunately the magpies here are EVIL especially at this time. Thank God I got my phobia sorted out (Thank you Pam Birchall) because I can honestly say if I hadn't I would never dare leave the house again after seeing what I saw yesterday.

A few mum's had met up at a friends house the kids were out playing on the bikes, all of a sudden it went quiet. We went out to see why? Lauren had come in for a tissue (thank God) but the other 3 kids were sat in somebody's garden their bikes left in the middle of the road. Jacqui (Daniels mum and fellow expat) went over and asked why they were in the garden and left the bikes in the road. The kids said they were hiding from the magpies. Obviously Jacqui told them to stop being silly and get out of the garden and move the bikes. Well..... The minute Lucas got on his bike this magpie came out of nowhere and started chasing him down the road really going for him. It was vicious, we were shouting and trying to scare the magpie away but the faster Lucas rode the more the magpie went for him. It was horrible. None of us could do a thing we were shouting for Lucas to stop but obviously a 6 year old boy being chased by an angry bird is not going to stop easily. Eventually after about 200 metres or more he jumped off his bike and came running back to the house screaming his head off. (who could blame him) The magpie followed him then sat in a tree watching him.

We got all the kids back into the house but then realised the bikes were still strewn all over the street left where the petrified kids had dropped them, the mum's had to go and get them! We all went out at the same time, one magpie can't attack us all at once. Sure enough it came down and swooped at Jacqui who had gone for Lucas' bike. She very calmly walked back to the house (never letting her eye leave the damn bird) and thankfully the bird flew back to it's tree. It was really really horrible - I would never have believed a magpie would do that if I hadn't seen it myself. You could actually hear it's beak snapping as it was going for Lucas' head. (thankfully helmet on)

When I took Lauren to the park last week there were signs up saying beware of the magpies but I never took it that seriously.

I do now.

Yorkshire Airlines

Classic!

Brits take over prime time TV in US

http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=Thursday/09277d

HMS Somerset blog

The Commanding Officer of HMS Somerset, a type 23 Frigate, has 'made waves' (forgive the pun) by becoming the first CO to write a blog.

The blog can be found at http://hms-somerset-co.blogspot.com

Reading this blog brought back a lot of memories. I particularly like this post which highlights one of the many tricks that are played on new recruits. I'm trying to recall but I don't think I was gullible enough to fall for any of them. It didn't stop them trying though. Like the first week on my first ship when I was presented with an electricity bill for my bunk light. And my first trip to Gibralter when there was a pipe (tannoy announcements) that foreign money changing was now open. It was amazing to see the line forming outside the onboard post office for changing Pounds to Gibraltar Giberoons!

Some of the pipes were pretty funny too.. like 'OM Thalidimide to the Small Arms Store'. You probably couldn't get away with that these days. I hear the Navy is becoming as PC as civvy street. I blame the Labour government...

Hello again

I thought it was about time that I posted again as I've neglected this blog over the last few weeks due to other distractions.

The truth is I've been obsessed with working on my internet 'projects'.

I've got two projects on the go:

1) I'm still a partner in Autonomy Business Solutions Ltd of which our main venture is a website selling Voice over IP (VoIP) phones and associated hardware. My original plan when I emigrated to Australia was to drop my share in the business down to 10%, however, this was before I decided that I was going to start an Internet business of my own. It quickly dawned on me that in the 'Internet age' I could still make a valuable contribution to the business in the UK, and I would be stupid to give it up, especially when it's making a profit (however small) even though it as always been a part-time project and we've hardly done anything to market it.

I've learnt a lot about Internet marketing over the last few weeks. My aim is to take what I've learnt, and continue to learn, about Internet marketing and apply it to the website. First of all though, it became clear that we had to start again with the website.

So in agreement with Michael (my business partner) we have put a project out for tender on www.elance.com to develop a new website to meet all our requirements. We've chosen a company to do the work, drawn up a contract and Functional Requirements, and as of yesterday, the terms of the contract have been agreed and development is underway.

I'm so glad I read the 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferris otherwise I never would have known about Elance. Elance has allowed us to outsource the work to a company in India for a fraction of the cost it would have been if we had got a local company to do it.

Once the new website is ready I'll give more details on what we're trying to achieve with the new site and point out the flaws (my flaws - I originally built the thing) in the old (current) site.

2) My second project is my 'Social Network'. I don't want to go in to too many details at the moment but this is what has been keeping me up working until 1am over the last few weeks and which nearly burnt me out.

In an effort to save money I decided to attempt to build the site myself. The site is going to be a social network along the lines of myspace, facebook, bebo, etc but for a particular niche demographic. I got stuck in to developing the site and made some good progress to start with. However, I soon got stuck on some of the technicalities of the site. You see, to achieve some of the functionality I want you need to at least have a decent understanding of databases (in this case MySQL) and the programming language that the site uses (PHP). I was so determined to build the site myself that I was trying to learn PHP and MySQL on the fly. I got absolutely obsessed with the site and spent hours working on the technicalities trying to get the damn thing to work. I soon realised that at the rate I was going it would be a good 6 months before the site would be ready.

It was at this point that I took onboard the advice in some of the books that I've read recently such as The E-myth by Michael Gerber, as well as Rich Dad Poor Dad and the 4-Hour Work Week which I mentioned in my posts about starting an Internet business. The point being that (1) I need to put a financial value on my time and (2) concentrate on being the Entrepreneur, not the Technician. I shall explain:

1. Sometimes, doing things myself to save money is actually false economy. This instance was a good example of that principle. I would have spent 6 months of my life working on the technicalities of building a site, whereas instead I could be spending that 6 months working on ideas, content, features and marketing to meet the primary objective of the site - creating passive income.
2. Many small businesses fail because the owner spends too much time working in the business and not on the business. If this thing is going to work I need to spend my time working on developing the business overall and not get bogged down on the technical stuff which someone else could do a lot better and a lot more quickly.

So I'm going to concentrate on the ideas and the vision of the business. I'll let someone else put my ideas into being. My social network project was posted on elance.com a couple of days ago and I'm reviewing bids as they come in. I've budgeted £1000 for the project which isn't much for the complexity of the site but I'm confident elance will come good.

I worked it out, at the rate I was going it would have took me 840 hours to build the site. So for a cost of £1000 that would have been roughly the equivalent of £1:19p per hour. I value my time at a lot more than £1:19 per hour!

When I finally gave up and made the decision to outsource the work it was such a relief. I was literally killing myself working a full-time job and then coming home every night working on the business until midnight. I know the dream of a 4-hour work week can only be achieved once you've actually established the passive income but even so, there are better ways to do it.

So these are the main two projects I've got going at the moment, and I've got ideas for many more in the pipeline. It's a bit of a gamble I know but I can't stand the thought of working for someone else doing a 9-5 job for the rest of my life. I'm still working hard every night on the business, but I'm limiting myself to a couple of hours rather than the ridiculous hours I was doing before. More importantly, I'm working on my business, not in my business.

I'm also making sure the weekends are dedicated to family time. We came to Australia for the dream lifestyle and I somehow forgot about that when I got obsessed with developing websites. I won't make that mistake again. The weekend before last, the day after I made the decision to outsource project 2, we spend Saturday at the beach and then most of Sunday afternoon in a beer garden! This weekend gone we spent some time doing some long overdue organising in the house, and on Sunday we had Cath and the neighbours round for a BBQ. Lauren even went for her first dip in the complex pool which is literally 30 feet from our front door. The pool is in the shade most of the day so doesn't really get warm but Lauren was straight in, no messing! I might even venture in this weekend.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still doing a bit of work on the business at weekends but I'm not going to let it overtake my life like I had been.

I got it!

I had the phone call I've been waiting for - I got the job. This is where I'll be working doing admin, Monday to Friday 9am - 3pm.

http://www.mbtbc.com/

I'm really looking forward to it. The best of it is Lauren breaks for 2 weeks holiday on Thursday and they're willing to wait till after that to let me start so I can spend some time with her. I just hope this one works out better then the last one.

Our first snake

Yesterday we had our first snake in our front garden. I didn't actually see it, but the gardener almost stood on it. He told me where it was so I went out armed with my camera but it was really well hidden in a big bush and I couldn't see it. Needless to say I wouldn't let Lauren play out (much to her annoyance) and have requested that the manager of our complex trim the bush back. The gardener said it was only a green tree snake which aren't poisonous but they do bite and it does hurt - alot!

Another fabulous weekend.

It seems that the winter has passed and we are now head first into Spring. We decided to make the most of our weekend and went to the beach on Saturday. We really must get more into the swing of beach visits. We forgot Lauren's hat, bucket and spade so had to go and buy yet another. Then there's the eski - we're just not used to taking water etc with us. I did remember the sun cream and Lauren's sun suit so I can't be that bad as a Mum! It was absolutely gorgeous we had a huge stretch of beach more or less to ourselves. We decided to go to a quiet beach rather than heading to the popular resorts the only problem is that the quiet beaches are not patrolled by surf life savers, there are shark nets though. It just means that people can't (or shouldn't) swim. (some mad Aussies still do!) I'll ask Daryl to put the photos on.

Sunday we finally made it to our first expat meet up at the Pig & Whistle English pub in the city. It was a great set up, we met a few people and will definitely go to the next one. The people who organise it (I think Gary and Margaret) did a great job making everybody feel welcome. It was red hot - 32 according to the temp reading near us. It was so nice. When we left the meet up we went and had some lunch in a restaurant on the riverside. Just the way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I'm still waiting to hear about the job by the way so keep your fingers crossed.

The reason I love Australia

A couple of reasons actually, small but when they add together it's what make this place what it is.

We got a leaflet through the door saying there would be a collection for garden clippings etc with details on about what size the clippings could be. All people need to do is leave their stuff in a pile on the path outside their house. All over the place there were piles of stuff far bigger than the leaflet said they could be, when the garbo's came to remove it all did they leave the big stuff - No they took everything!!!! I saw one of them carrying a huge log and it just made me smile. Would that happen in Doncaster? - they won't even take a bag at the side of the bin never mind lump a huge log into the truck.

Second I had an interview this morning for an admin job at a local boat club, during the interview the woman suddenly stopped talking and said look there. She pointed out to the marina about 500 yards out from the jetty at 2-3 dolphins were frolicking in the water playing with the boats. She said they had a wedding here last week and 3 dolphins came right in, it made the brides day. It made my day seeing them today hopefully they brought me good luck and I'll get the job.

Lastly when I took Lauren to school a few weeks ago one of the kids was really upset but her Mum really needed to go, the teacher took hold of the kids hand went and sat at her desk and gave her a cuddle. Within a no time at all the tears had gone and she was sat chatting with the teacher still sat on her knee while the teacher drank a cup of coffee! Health and Safety?, Risk Assessment?, Child protection?, not a problem if that had been Lauren I'd've wanted her to do exactly that.

I love Australia.

Brisbane Riverfire

Last night we went to the Brisbane Riverfire - the opening night of the 10-day Brisbane Riverfestival. The Riverfire is a spectacular fireworks display along the river from Story Bridge to Victoria Bridge, and includes a 'dump and burn' by RAAF F-111 fighter jets.

Because we new that it would be packed all along the riverfront with people trying to get the best vantage point, I booked us on a dinner cruise on a Kookaburra River Queen paddlewheeler.

Thousands of people lined the river banks waiting for the fireworks display to begin...


We boarded one of the two River Queens and sipped the complimentary champagne (coke for Lauren)....


When it started, the fireworks display was really spectacular...


In the next photo you can see the afterburner of the F-111 to the right of the fireworks...


The only let down of the night was the cruise, as for some reason we never left the side. The other boat did but ours didn't, and I'm still not sure why. The ticket office is close to my work so I'll be having words with them when I go in tomorrow!

See more of our Riverfire photo's on flickr

I've quit my job!

It's unusual for me to be posting but Daryl thinks I should. I walked out of my job on Wednesday. I've been very disappointed by how things have turned out, I'll explain.

When I went for my interview John (my now ex boss) explained that for the past few years they had had people running the branch as a franchise but this had not been working and the branch had lost most of the technicians (from 7 to 3) in the last 18 months or so as a result the branch had been loosing money and needed picking up. The company had decided to bring it back to be a company branch with a manager employed. He said that as I was new to Australia and no management experience as such he would take me on on a 3 month temporary contract as an administration/operations assistant, acting Branch Manager while I learned the job and he could assess if I would be suitable. I took the job.

After about the second week I had been trained in most parts of the job and was going solo managing the branch. I sorted out all of the filing systems, cleaned the office! and got the branch looking more like an professional office. When I first arrived I couldn't see how the branch had been running at all there was no wonder they had been loosing money. There was no organisation and no way anyone could know what was happening day by day. Most of the equipment was old and didn't work. To Johns credit he listened to everything I said and if I said I wanted it I got it.

In my first month I lost another technician (although he said nothing to do with me I must add!) I had 2 techs and enough work for 4-5 so the customer complaints were coming in thick and fast but I dealt with them and we recovered.

After about 6-8 weeks of my being there John came to Brisbane and asked how I felt things were going, I said I was happy for the time being but if I was to be taken on as manager properly after my 3 months I wanted more money as the job was very stressful and could be very demanding - I got phone calls from 6am to 6pm Monday to Saturday. He said as far as he was concerned he was very happy with what I had done with the branch and he said he would put a package together for us to discuss and he could see no reason why I wouldn't be made branch manager permanently. In the meantime I was to introduce myself as branch manager to anyone who asks.

Over the next few weeks things went smoothly I was trying my best to get more techs but with no luck. John saw that things weren't looking great and again all credit to him he sent a tech from Sydney to help out. He was initially supposed to come for 2 weeks then a month (all the time in a hotel) he ended up being in Brisbane for 7 weeks. Eventually I got a couple of calls from people interested in becoming techs and things stared to look up. Then another tech left. When I asked him why he said he didn't want to go into all the ins and outs but said it was nothing to do with me.

I was left with 1 tech and the borrowed one from Sydney. Both of which said they loved working for me and things had never been better. John said the figures were looking really good and said pro-rata Brisbane was number 1 branch in Australia (6 others). I had got 2 people looking like coming on board within the next couple of weeks and with work coming out of our my ears the branch looked like it had really turned a corner.

Monday John sent Bernie, another manager, to Brisbane he said to help me out with the new tech interviews and training. When he arrived he went outside for some fresh air and was on the phone. I noticed a ute pull up and a guy get out. He was talking to Bernie then they both came up to my office. Bernie introduced him as John, someone John (my boss) had met with and had sent to speak to Bernie. They went off for coffee. I got a phone call from another manager looking for John. She had been told John was in Brisbane. I told her that as far as I was concerned he was due to go to her so must be running late. While Bernie was out my tech came in to drop off some money and was still there when Bernie and John got back.

Bernie came into my office and John was in the other room speaking to Craig. Bernie asked if I knew who this person was as he was confused over the questions he had been asking him. I said I had no idea. I went out to speak to Craig and John went into my office. Craig didn't look happy but I told him to wait till later and I would phone him. When I got back into my office John asked me if there was anything I would like to change - I asked with regard to what. He said with the Branch. He went on to ask me to write a list of things I thought worked well, things that need improving, any ideas I had etc and to treat it 'like a little project' were his words. I was so dumbstruck I didn't know what to say. I must have looked like I complete idiot.

Bernie was due to go to do a quote so John asked if he could tag along I said yes - I just wanted him out of my office so I could phone John and find out what the hell was going on. His phone was off so I couldn't get any answers. I was utterly confused. Craig phoned and asked who the guy was and I said I didn't know but was trying to find out. Craig said he had said he was coming on as Manager to run the branch. At this I went from confused to supreme anger! Bernie came back, he said he didn't know what was going on. Eventually at about 8.30pm John phoned. He kept apologising and saying the guy was wrong and that nothing had changed I was still running the show and he had only spoken to the guy about the possibility of him buying into a franchise. I asked what that meant for me he said that even if he came in it would be on the proviso that I remained. I said I didn't believe that anyone would buy into a franchise only to let someone else manage it. John assured me nothing was going to change and I was to continue on exactly the same and to work on the presentation I was due to give at the Managers conference in September.

Tuesday I went into work as usual. Wednesday Julia phoned. (She is the Melbourne branch manager and a fellow expat from Leeds) She asked if I was okay? I said well I am now but not thanks to him on Monday. She said oh thank god you know. I said know what? I explained about what had happened and what John had said. She said Oh I've got to tell you he's lying to you. She said John had actually been in Brisbane on Monday. He had been interviewing the other John for the franchise. He had then flown to Melbourne and told Julia about it. She asked him if I knew about it and he had said no not yet keep it under your hat. She said she couldn't lie to me and had nothing to loose as she had handed her notice in the day before.

I couldn't believe what she was saying. He had completely lied to me. He had waited till I had built up the branch and made it more attractive as a franchise then pulled the rug from beneath me 2 weeks short of my 3 month contract. I phoned Daryl told him, he told me to come home straight away. I phoned John and told him I was going to leave Friday. He asked why, I told him I felt I had been used and lied to and completely disrespected. He said he didn't think he had. He said I was letting him down walking out in this way and could I at least give him 2 weeks notice so he could advertise for the admin job and give me chance to train the person up.

Needless to say I packed up my belongings into a box and left that day.

How dare he even ask me for any help after what he'd done to me. When I look back now I realise everything he promised was only verbal. On paper it appears that all I was was an admin worker. He knew exactly what he was doing and stupidly I fell for it. Right from the beginning Daryl had said this sounds too good to be true. It turns out yes it was.

I'm starting an Internet business - Part 2: The Lifestyle 2.0 Model

A few days ago I wrote about how I'd seen the light in terms of work and lifestyle after reading 'The Four-Hour Work Week' by Tim Ferriss.

In part 2, before I go on to describe some of the ways that I can generate passive income - the first step towards achieving the dream lifestyle - I'm going to expand some more on the general concept of going from where I am now (which I'm going to call the Lifestyle 1.0 model) to where I want to be (which I'm going to call the Lifestyle 2.0 model).

I've been using what I've learnt recently to generate my own strategy for achieving my goals. I believe it's important to develop the strategy first, as this will:

• Reduce the likelihood of failing at the first attempt;


• Give me something to refer back to and provide motivation when things don't got as planned; and


• Give me clear milestones that I can use to track progress towards my goals.
  

The strategy that I've started to develop is called my Lifestyle 2.0 model. I can't profess that the model is particularly revolutionary; it is something I've developed based on inspiration from 'The Four-Hour Work Week', as well as other books I've read such as 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' by Robert Kiosaki. My model takes the best concepts from these books, tunes them slightly to leverage the 'web 2.0' revolution that is happening right now, and also takes into account my experience and knowledge of risk management gained from my career to date in Information Security.

The purpose of my Lifestyle 2.0 model is to show how I'm going to use a few basic business and financial principles, as well as a commitment to taking advantage of the web 2.0 opportunities, to help me achieve my goals of gaining financial freedom and escaping the 9-5 so I can pursue my dreams full-time.

To understand my Lifestyle 2.0 model you first need to understand the Lifestyle 1.0 model. You will easily recognise the Lifestyle 1.0 model because it is what most of us live today. I've split the model into separate sub-models, including a 'cashflow' model and a 'living' model.

Lifestyle 1.0 Cashflow Model

This is a basic diagram that I've created of the Lifestyle 1.0 cashflow model that most of us can relate to:

The Lifestyle 1.0 Cashflow Model is a process flow that determines our financial wealth. The Lifestyle 1.0 Cashflow Model is the model that most of us follow, but also the reason why most of us will never be rich, or at the least will never achieve financial freedom.

Here's how it works:

1. Our sole income is from a salary. The salary comes from being an employee. The salary is dependant upon us providing x amount of effort and x amount of hours per week. The income we receive from our salary is paid after tax has been taken off.
   


2. Most of our income is spent on expenses. Our expenses is made up things such as living costs - bills, groceries, general expenses, etc, - but also payments to discharge our liabilities (debts such as a mortgage, credit cards, loans, etc).
   


3. If we have anything left over after expenses we may put this into a savings account. We can count a savings account as an asset because it is working for us - it is generating interest.

Knowing the difference between an asset and a liability

Here's a quick explanation of these terms, which is fundamental to understanding the model:

Asset: An asset is something that puts money into our pockets. Most of us wrongly consider our house as an asset. In most cases, an house is a liability not an asset because it takes money out of our pockets (mortgage payments, insurance, upkeep, etc). An house is only really an asset if you rent it out to provide an income, or you cash in on any equity that may be in the house, i.e. you sell the house and there's money left over after paying off the mortgage, or you re-mortgage the house to release some equity and you use the released equity to generate income that is greater than the proportion of the expenses inccured from the increase in liability payments (increase in mortgage).

Liability: Conversely, a liability is anything that takes money out of our pockets. One of the biggest liabilities that most of us buy is a car. A car loses value as soon as we get into it and continues to take money out of our pockets for as long as we keep it. A common misconception is that a car, like a house, is an asset. It's not because it's not making us any money. Also, unlike an house, a car will never become a real asset because it won't increase in value. A key principle in the 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' book is that rich people put their money into assets, wheras the middle class put their money into liabilities which they think are assets.


Lifestyle 2.0 Cashflow Model

This is a basic diagram of the Lifestyle 2.0 Cashflow Model, which I explain in more detail below:

Here's how it works:

1. Our income is derived not a from a salaried job, but from 'income generating assets'.
   


2. As a business owner, we pay tax after we pay ourselves, and after expenses. The beauty of being a business owner, rather than an employee, is that we can claim a proportion of our expenses as a business incurred expense. As an Internet business owner, we work from home, which means we can claim a proportion of our household bills as a business expense. Because we're a business owner, we pay ourselves the minimum wage so as to only pay the minimum amount of income tax. The rest of our income from our business is derived from dividend payments. Of course, we also have to pay corporation tax, but corporation tax is at a lower rate than income tax, and corporation tax only gets paid on profit made after expenses. Although we pay both income tax and corporation tax, our overall tax burden is actually less than a salaried employee in the Lifestyle 1.0 model.
   


3. Most of our income goes back into our assets column. As our assets grow, so does our income, which in turn grows our assets. This cycle continually increases our overall wealth.
   


4. We buy assets and avoid liabilities. If we want a luxury such as an holiday, nice car, etc, we make sure it is paid for by our assets. We must not incur liabilities due to luxuries.
   


5. If we do incur liabilities, it is to buy assets. However, we use risk mitigation strategies to ensure that the income generated from assets financed by liabilities will always be greater than the expense of the liability that paid for the asset.
   


6. Although we do buy traditional assets such as property and shares, most of our money goes into creating new Internet business opportunities - we understand that we have the potential to make more money in the short-term by capitalising on this thing that is being called 'web 2.0', than on traditional assets.

A real asset makes money while I sleep

In my model, an asset is only really an asset if it makes money for me while I sleep. A day job is not an asset because it is dependant upon my contribution, both in time and effort, and once I stop contributing, so does the income. Whereas if done properly, a Lifestyle 2.0 asset will make me money, and then continue to make make me money without requiring any further effort or time on my part - it should be self-generating.

How do you measure wealth?

Am I wealthy if my net worth is $1 million. What about $2 million? In my model, the measure of my wealth is not how much I am worth in the traditional sense. In part 1 I suggested that a man earning $250,000 a year but working 80-hour weeks is actually worse off than a man only earning $50,000 but working a ¼ of the time.

In my Lifestyle 2.0 model my wealth is simply determined by the following calculation:

• If I was to stop working today, how long could I continue with the same standard of living before I would have to work again?

At the moment, because I'm living the Lifestyle 1.0 model and have only just begun the Lifestyle 2.0 model, the answer to my wealth question is only a few weeks. So the success of my Lifestyle 2.0 model will be measured by calculating my wealth in days, weeks, and years, not in dollars.

That's it for part 2, in part 3 I will describe how my Lifestyle 2.0 Cashflow Model will be used to achieve my Lifestyle 2.0 Living Model.

We're getting visitors!

Our first set of visitors from the UK have been confirmed. Rachelle's sister is coming over with her daughter in November, and my Mum and Dad have booked their flights for next March.

We're really looking forward to having the chance to show people around so they can see exactly why we've moved here.

This is the first place I've ever lived where I can actually say I feel proud to live here. It's such a difference to the depressing drabness of Doncaster and Worksop.

Brisbane is a city of 1.8 million people, yet because it is spread over such a large area it doesn't feel congested. As a relatively new city, you can also tell that some kind of planning has gone into the layout. One advantage of this is that there are lots of parks and green areas. It seems like nearly every street or neighbourhood is separated by a park. And every house, street and neighbourhood looks different. It has variety and colour. You don't drive down a street in Brisbane where every house is the same build and look as in the UK.

I think our love for Brisbane has helped dampen down any homesickness we might otherwise have had, or should I say what Rach might have had. I've moved around regularly since I was 16 so I new I'd be ok. Whereas in Rachelle's case, up until now she's never lived outside of a 20-mile radius of Doncaster, so I was worried that she might find it difficult.

As it happens she's been fine. Both Rach and Lauren have settled in really well.

And as for me, it's now nearly 3 months since we arrived here, and although there are people and things in the UK that I miss, I can honestly say I haven't once had any inkling of regret.

There's no going back!

A wet weekend in Brisbane

It was raining constantly over the weekend which meant any plans we might have had were thrown right out of the window, although it was quite nice not to have to do anything, especially after last weekend's exertions.

It at least gave me the opportunity to make some good progress on my first 'project' - what will hopefully be a successful stream of my planned internet business. More of which later...

We live next door to party animals!

When we got back from the Ekka on Saturday, our next door neighbours - George and Julie - invited us round for what we thought would be a couple of quiet beers. This was about 3pm. Little did we know, we'd end up getting absolutely arseholed and wouldn't end up leaving until midnight.

George's brother and family were over from New Zealand so they were having a little celebration.

I'm hoping to get some pics of the night from George's family because by the time the party really started to get wild I was too drunk to remember to take any photos. In fact, I haven't been that drunk in years. At one point I had to go to the bathroom and hang on to the walls trying my best not to fall over. I must have been in there about half an hour trying to sort myself out. I'm glad I did manage to sober myself up just enough to see out the rest of the evening because it turned into a really good night. I'm surprised we didn't get complaints from the rest of the complex though. Our complex is usually quiet but from about 9pm Saturday night were were all stood around the patio heater singing along to Stevie Wonder at the top of our voices!

While were were drinking and singing outside Lauren was having a ball with her new friends inside. When we left at midnight we had to drag her away - she was still up partying!

It's fair to say were were feeling a little rough on Sunday. We were supposed to go to a pub called the Pig 'n' Whistle in the city for 12pm on Sunday for a BBC meetup (Brisbane British Club), but we couldn't face it. It's a shame really, as the Pig 'n' Whistle serves Boddingtons so it would have been the first decent pint I could have had since arriving. Oh well, we'll just have to make sure we make it to the next one.