They've Gone

My parents are on their way home and so ends a fabulous 4 weeks. The time flew by but they definitely made the most of their first visit to Australia.

With the exception of Sydney most of their time was spent with us - I certainly haven't got much leave left to take from work for the rest of this year! While they were here they enjoyed trips to the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast; they had a couple of days in Sydney; they saw a lot of Brisbane and the surrounding area, including Redcliffe, South Bank, the CBD, Mount Coot-tha, and North Stradbroke Island; they took in Sea World, Australia Zoo, and Phantom of the Opera; and not forgetting the week in Palm Cove. We also enjoyed many a nice meal out, and got through enough bottles of Aussie wine to launch an Armada, and played countless games of Uno Attack, and Monopoly, and Trivial Pursuit.

In the most part the weather was fantastic for them - certainly better than the two times that we came before emigrating here. I think it's fair to say a good time was had by all.

The last full day that I spent with them was when I took them over to North Stradbroke Island (Straddie). If there's one place that shows off Australia at its best, Straddie is that place. This view is only an hour away from my house, and that includes a drive to the ferry, a ferry across to the island, and then a bus to Point Lookout...





Throughout their visit, most importantly we all had a laugh, particularly at my Dad's efforts with his video camera.

I copied some of his video footage to cheer me up when I'm having a bad day. This is from back in England when he was first trying out his new camcorder (ensure your sound is turned on) ...



Still having problems with the camera, this footage was taken by him when we stopped off at the beautiful Barron Falls on our Rainforest excursion from Palm Cove...



My Mum wasn't much better with it, their petty bickering cracks me up...



We're going to miss them very much indeed, and I'm going to miss my Mum making me a cup of tea in the morning (I've never been able to get Rach to do that for me on a regular basis). Rach is flabbergasted that we managed to get through 3 boxes of tea bags while they were here!

More new photo's on flickr.

Palm Cove

Last Sunday we returned from a fantastic week's holiday in Palm Cove.

Palm Cove is a small resort just north of Cairns in Far Northern Queensland, and an ideal base for exploring the World Heritage Sites of the Great Barrier Reef and Rainforests.


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While in Palm Cove we (myself, Rach, Lauren and my Mum and Dad) stayed at the Villa Paradiso apartments situated smack bang in the centre of Palm Cove overlooking the beach. The apartment was the best we've ever stayed in and I'd definitely stay their again if we re-visit Palm Cove.



Palm Cove itself is a beautiful little resort set against the long curving Palm Cove Beach with a backdrop of rainforest covered mountains. The Palm Cove promenade is lined with 500-year-old Melaleuca trees and all the hotels and apartments are set low so that out at sea, and even on the Pier at the northern end of Palm Cove, the resort is completely hidden from view.

Cairns Night Zoo

On the second night in Palm Cove we went to Cairns Night Zoo, which is only 5 minutes away from Palm Cove. Visiting a zoo at night is a completely different experience to the day, and only being a small zoo, Cairns Night Zoo go out of their way to make it a memorable, hands-on experience.

When we got there we were welcomed into the restaurant where we were treated to a traditional Aussie BBQ and a FREE BAR. I could have quite happily stayed at the free bar all night but in the end I'm glad I continued to the tour as it was quite an experience.

There was only a small group of us. We were all given a torch and followed a guide around while he took us around the main attractions. This being Tropical Far Northern Queensland, most of the attractions were things that can easily kill you!

It started off quite tamely with birds of prey swooping over our heads (it was that close that if I was wearing a wig it would surely have come off).



One of the guides seemed to spend the entire evening covered in Possum piss...



And of course, you can't go to a zoo in Australia and not stroke a Koala...



There was a fair share of the nasty stuff though, including Crocodiles, Snakes and the pest which is the Cane Toad. I had to laugh when my Mum was stroking the Cane Toad thinking it was just a normal toad, completely oblivious to the fact that the toad's paratoid glands contains venom that if exposed to could inflict cardiac arrest and kill you within 15 minutes! Aaah isn't it pretty!



The night also included billy tea and damper around a camp fire whilst feeding kangaroos. My mother was absolutely smitten with the Kangaroos, especially when she saw one with a Joey...



The night ended with us being entertained by a swagman and his band while singing along and dancing to traditional Aussie bush songs. It really was a perfect evening.


The Great Barrier Reef

The highlight of the holiday though for me was the trip out to the reef where I had my first go at SCUBA diving.

We booked the excursion with QuickSilver, who picked us up by coach from our apartments, drove the scenic ocean highway up to Port Douglas, and then transferred us to their huge Catamaran which took us out to their diving platform on the Agincourt Reef, which is in the Outer Barrier Reef.

Photo courtesy of QuickSilver

I did an introductory SCUBA dive. It only lasted about 30 minutes but it was a fantastic experience and something I hope to repeat. In fact, I'm now hooked and have added PADI certification to my to-do list.

I hired an underwater camera but of course the pics you take yourself of the reef can never look the same as what you see in the brochures, unless of course you've got all the professional gear and lighting equipment, and have gone to the right reef at the right time of day. Apparently the reef photographers sometimes spend weeks underwater just waiting for the right conditions to get the perfect shot.



The experience of swimming with the fishes (not in the Godfather way) and touching the coral was truly amazing. As everything is alive down there whatever you feel immediately responds to your touch, and every bit of coral has a different texture.

I put my hand in this thing and it gently closed up to my touch...



We also all got the chance to snorkel on the reef, and the revelation for me was Lauren. When I had tried to get her to wear a snorkel and mask in the pool in preparation for the trip, she wouldn't entertain it. However, out on the reef in fairly choppy water she was like a fish to water, figuratively speaking.

By the end I was having trouble keeping up with her. She had a perfect technique with the flippers and kept shooting out all over the place and wasn't bothered in the slightest by all the fish swimming around her. I've got high hopes for her - she's going to be an amazing swimmer.






Rainforests

Another truly remarkable day-trip was the SkyRail and Scenic Railway trip through and over Queensland's World Heritage listed Tropical Rainforest. Stretching for over 500 kilometres along Tropical North Queensland’s coastline, the rainforests are the oldest continually surviving rainforests on earth and once covered the entire Australian continent.

The day started with a 90-minute train ride on the historic Kuranda Scenic Railway. Built between 1882 and 1891, the railway is a remarkable feat of engineering. Built by hand, the railway winds for 75.1km through dense rainforest, rises to an altitude of 327.1m and includes 15 tunnels, 93 curves and dozens of difficult bridges mounted many meters above ravines and waterfalls. The railway cost the lives of many of the brave men who worked on it.



On the way up to Kuranda we had a brief photo stop at Baron Falls...



Kuranda itself is a picturesque mountain village in the rainforests, with many attractions, historic buildings, upmarket restaurants and coffee shops. At Kuranda, after the obligatory coffee and cake, we ventured out on the Jungle Walk which then went into the River Walk.

The best bit of the day though was the trip back down. The SkyRail Experience involved a 7.5km cable-car ride over the top of the rainforest canopy.



The view in every part of the ride was nothing short of spectacular...





The rest of the week was spent relaxing on the beach and by the pool, and sampling some of Palm Cove's excellent restaurants.

The whole week was one I'm sure none of us will ever forget, and serves to remind me exactly why we emigrated to Australia.



You can see many more of our photo's from this trip on flickr. Friends and family will need to sign-in to see all the pics.

Connected Ventures

I want to work for this company...

http://www.vimeo.com/173714

Daylight Savings Chaos

It was chaos on Monday here in Sydney. For the very first time, the New South Wales State Government had decided to extend daylight savings a week. Unfortunately I don't think they publicised it very well or thought through the impact, as a lot of computer software that was set to automatically adjust the time was not amended to reflect the change. I saw the result first hand when I went to the client site on Monday morning.

Microsoft quickly released a patch to fix the clock on Windows. However, the patch didn't extend to the Calendar in Microsoft Outlook - so everyone's appointments and meetings were out by an hour.

Apparently even many mobile phones were affected, and phone services, including the Telstra speaking clock. It comes to something when the phone company's speaking clock is an hour wrong!

We don't have such problems in Queensland as the Queensland State Government has so far refused to adopt daylight saving hours. A backwards and stupid decision if you ask me. We're only in Autumn and I'm already getting up in the dark and coming home from work in the dark.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23458405-5014239,00.html

They've Arrived

A landing time of 6:50am meant it was an early start on Sunday to ensure we were there to meet my parents at Brisbane airport. It was great to see them emerge through the arrivals tunnel after not seeing them for 10 months. My mum burst into tears, bless her, and Lauren was very excited to see her Grandma and Grandad. The excitement increased when she discovered they were bearing presents!

My Dad was sporting what looked like a very sore (red) head. He'd got himself sunburnt in Singapore. He'll never learn.

Luckily, after a long period of mediocre weather, Sunday was glorious for their arrival. It was about 27 degrees and barely a cloud in the sky.

I was expecting that they'd want to get their heads down when they got back to our house after a night flight from Singapore, but they instead decided to stay up and see the day through. I've always gone straight to bed after a night flight - I can't function when I'm tired. They're obviously made of sterner stuff than I am. Maybe I was adopted?

Later Sunday morning we took them out to see a bit of Brisbane. We drove to Bulimba and got the CityCat down the Brisbane River to South Bank Parklands. We showed them around South Bank and had a really nice pub lunch.

We got back to our house about 3:30pm, which we decided was a good time to take a swim in the pool. This time of year (Autumn here) the pool spends much of the time in the shade and as it's much cooler in the evenings it doesn't stay particularly warm during the day. You could say the water is 'refreshing'. That would be one way of describing it. Anyway we all braved it with the exception of Rach who I don't think I'll get in their again until Summer. Nesh! It's actually alright once you get in, honest!

After a swim we all played Uno Attack and had a few glasses of wine before it was time for me to depart to Brisbane airport yet again for my flight to Sydney, which is where I am now.

I believe my parents are in Mooloolaba now on the Sunshine Coast (1.5 hours north of Brisbane). Yesterday they spent the day at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast (1 hour north of Brisbane). So they're definitely making the most of their holiday.

I'm flying back to Brisbane mid-afternoon tomorrow so I'm back into time for us all to go out tomorrow night. We're going to see Phantom of the Opera.

All Work and No Play

The last few weeks have been work, work, work unfortunately, hence the lack of blog posts. However, there's light at the end of the tunnel - this weekend sees the arrival of my parents for their first visit to Oz, and I've made sure to arrange plenty of leave so I can get back into holiday mode again. In fact, we're all off up to Palm Cove in Far Northern Queensland to spend a week on the Great Barrier Reef. Before that though, I've got to make yet another trip to Sydney. The bummer about this Sydney trip is that I've got to go on the day my parents arrive. They arrive Sunday morning and I fly to Sydney on Sunday evening, coming back Thursday.

The reason I've been so busy is due to a combination of factors that have coincided. On the work front we had a major turnover in staff, leaving me as the only member of the Security Compliance team. So as well as having to juggle existing client work I was the only one available to take on new client work. It didn't help that my main existing client work has been at a critical point in the assignment meaning they needed a lot of attention.

Adding to that, the first of the two website that I'm having developed in India, which I previously wrote about here, has finally been handed over to me, which means it's now all on me to get the site ready for go-live. Due to a number of factors, of which I'm not going to go into now but suffice to say things didn't go exactly to plan with the web development company we used (that's an whole other blog post), there's still a lot of work to be done before the site can be launched. The current plan is that go-live will be sometime in June/July and I'm doing all I can to meet these dates, if not sooner.

Thank god I managed to wangle a 4-day work week. They're sure getting their money's worth out of me during the 4-days. With all the work they've put on to me it means I've been having to work during the evenings to keep on top of it - time I would have otherwise spent on the business. At least I've managed to draw a line and not let it run into my weekend time. That 3-day weekend is sacrosanct and has meant I've managed to make some good progress on the website - mainly reverse engineering what the dodgy web developers have done so I can improve it.

It's a slow process but I'm getting there. This time next year we'll be mill... we'll maybe the year after!

Office Move

We moved into new offices today at work. The company I'm working for as outgrown our previous office so had to look for new premises. The problem is, because of a rise in rental prices the company could no longer afford the lovely CBD (Central Business District) location for the office capacity that we now need. So we're now moved to Fortitude Valley.

I now have to get the train to Brunswick St station for work. The train service is pretty good, it's not overcrowded (I was able to get a seat easy enough this morning), and the commute time is roughly the same time as before. The problem is, Fortitude Valley is not one of the nicest places. When I leave Brunswick St Station to walk to the office I now pass sex shops, peep shows, strip clubs, druggies and drunken aboriginals sitting on the street corner yelling abuse at everyone who passes. There's a lingering stench of marijuana on the streets and you get the sense that you could be mugged at any moment. I'm sure I'll get used to it. At night I've been told Fortitude Valley (or The Valley as it's known to locals) is one of the best places in the city for nightlife, which isn't much of a consolation.

I've just been out for lunch to explore the area. I was nice and settled at our previous location but now I need to find new places to eat / withdraw cash / get my haircut / etc.

That's the moan over with. On the positive side the actual offices are much nicer with lots more space than we had previously. Plus my desk is positioned quite well so that I can at least have some privacy now.

As work goes I've just passed a major hurdle. The first Australian client that I'm taking through ISO 27001 certification has breezed through the stage 1 audit. So everyone is pleased with the work I did. I've been in Sydney every week for the past month but I've got a break now - I don't need to go back until the 18th March, in preparation for the Stage 2 audit which will hopefully result in a certificate. The break from traveling is greatly appreciated.