Chill out

I'm slowly getting back into the local time zones but last week has taken its toll. Jet lag is a weird & insidious sensation best summarised by a colleague who said ' I woke up in the hotel and found I'd locked my chewing gum in the safe but left my passport on the desk'. You lose the initial doziness and spaced feeling fairly quickly but for me at least it takes a few more days for everything to start feeling right again. I'm also waking up every night panicking that I'm late for my flight home and not recognising that I'm in my own bed, and now I think of it I think I get this after most overseas trips (but oddly I never get that confusion when I'm overseas). It's a shame because the weather over here is perfect for evening rides but I'm just not feeling it right now. Hopefully I'll be able to kickstart myself over the weekend - I have a bike rebuild on the cards as well which should inspire me....

Until then I'm just relaxing and recovering. Which brings me to the tune - the seminal, beautiful and quite possibly unique 'Chill Out' by the KLF. This last for just over 44 minutes (I'm sure it's not a coincidence that that is the length of one side of a C90 cassette) but it's worth listening to the whole thing. So sit back with a couple of your favourite relaxing beverages close to hand, turn off your phone, close the door, relax, enjoy and of course chill out...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S_lktstwrs

Living the high life

It's been a hard few days in Dubai. Not so much the work, but more the socialising. I've been out later and more often in the last week than in the last year, and I'm suffering from 'age-lag' - my mind thinks I'm 20 years younger than I am. One of the places we frequented was '43', on the 43rd floor of a local hotel. The view from the top was OK I guess...

Note the unfinished tower on the left, a victim of the GFC

 

The seaward side is still awaiting development

and then the sun went down as we drank beer and relaxed

 Of course the thing with Dubai is that there's always someone doing it better than you...

I think you could say that the place is growing on me. Many more photos to come!

Bonus tune!

I'm off to Dubai on Sunday (I still have no real idea why, but I'll take it) so this has to be the song of the week....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ9r8LMU9bQ

 

The other option was the Cure's homage to Camus, but that didn't seem to be culturally appropriate...

Overseas jolly

Generally when I go overseas with my company it's to visit a client. It's always good to see new places but those visits can get pretty hectic as the client is expecting a specific set of results, most of which I'm generally not aware of until I get there and some of which have been oversold by the sales team and are simply not possible to deliver. So I'll spend all day talking to 4 or 5 guys who all have differing and often contradictory views about exactly what it is they want the system to do and a lot of my evenings frantically trying to figure out how to make the system do that. And the weekends catching up on everything else that I haven't had time to look at during the week.

Some people love that pressure. My old boss, a fiercely intelligent lady, thrives on being put in that situation and pulling something out of the bag. She's left us now and is working for a company where she's on site three weeks in every month, and she raves about her new job. I can do it for a week or two but I find that it puts a lot of pressure on me, both body and soul. I don't exercise, drink too much, eat bad food and only get a few hours of sleep a night because my mind will never shut up. My old boss has offered to recommend me to her new company and in some ways it's tempting, but I know it's not something I could do long-term.

However after 8 years with the Australian arm of the company I get to go on my first 'jolly' at the end of the month. I'm off to Dubai for three days of meetings to discuss various procedural & corporate-type things with colleagues in a sister office and then I'll be staying on for a couple more days for a look around. It'll be good to be able to relax and enjoy the visit, and somewhat sadly I'm even looking forward to flying on the A380 over there. That may change after a solid 14 hrs on the plane though.

Todays tune & video is dedicated to the trip - it's worth viewing on youtube and maximising the size as it's a pretty awesome video 

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uYs0gJD-LE

 

Not really Dubai-related as the singer (MIA) is an English / Sri-Lankan artist and the video was inspired by automotive craziness in Saudi Arabia and was directed & filmed in Morocco by a Frenchman. But you get the idea.

 

Some will think that I'm verging on the popular here (sorry Marin) but I have a soft spot for MIA. Catchy songs, interesting instrumentalism and kick ass videos like the above and the below...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMvUlxXyz8

 

Luggage Scooter

Marin posted up something in the comments section of my Ti post which I think needs to be highlighted - the next big development in luggage design, a suitcase with a built in scooter which according to the advertising blurb lets you 'glide through the airport like a rockstar' (sic)

I'm fully aware of how ridiculous it is and how idiotic and un-rockstarlike I'd look gliding through the airport, and that's assuming I wasn't immediately crash-tackled to the ground for causing a safety hazard, but I still want one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XExrOK6gipA

"We have to pull together..."

Have you noticed that the people who say that are generally the people who can or will do least of all to actually resolve the problem? This one is for my boss (again)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy-Ifv-nzQk

 

I have a potential way out, but if I leave now I'm not sure how the office will continue to operate in this country, and I won't get to work on taking the bully down.

Plus of course the commute is a breeze....

More consultant humour

What's the difference between an IT salesman and a used car dealer?

A used car dealer  knows when he's lying.

Views of Sydney, slight restrain

The bedroom views are going downhill. I'm just glad that this is my last trip for a while, next time I could be sleeping in the car park..

Views of Sydney, slight refrain

The bedroom view isn't quite as good this time around...that'll teach us to complain about the smoke smell in the apartment!

I did get some validation in the lift though, when a weightlifter type bloke get very excited about my shoes and asked me if I know how heavy they were. See, it's not weird to weigh your shoes at all.

Three more days to go this week, roll on the weekend.....

Views of Sydney

For this visit to Sydney we somehow scored a penthouse apartment on the 13th floor - fantastic views over the suburbs and in the distance Sydney CBD and the Harbour Bridge, although you can't really see that in this pic because of the strong sunshine. There's also lots of birdlife over the river - micky birds, flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos, magpies and small swift / swallow things like my mate perched on the top right of the photo checking me out. This picture doesn't do it justice, it's a beautiful 180 degree view

 The mooring for the Parramatta 'River cat' is next door and must be a nice way to commute to work, even if it is just a bus that floats...although at low tide there's apparently a section that actually needs a bus to get you through...

Unfortunately I had to leave the bedroom and go to work, no more than 20km away but a journey which took more than an hour each way.

I could have ridden faster, and I'm a slow fat bugger. Slower & fatter every week I spend down here too....

Unicycle

Another wee, another Sydney trip. Back in Paramatta for a couple of days - up at 5am yesterday, flew down, worked 'til 5, found my hotel, ate, worked 'til 9.30pm. Slept badly as I was next to a main road, up at 6.30am, spend the day with the client, now I'm at the airport waiting to fly back and (theoretically) arrive back in Brisbane at 7.30pm, but it's almost always delayed. V tired!

I did get to try another Paramatta Indian takeaway, this time I had Pani Puri, which is a puffy deep-fried hollow dough ball that you fill with spicy potato and a tart tamarind sauce

Followed by a chicken Vindaloo that I was warned was 'very hot', but which was more sharp than spiced. And not at all greasy.

To wash it down I had a 'Haywards 5000' lager, with a strength that 'was guaranteed not to exceed 8%'

I should have gone for a run instead, but such is life!

Anyway, just a quickie this week...can't embed this for some reason, so just follow the link and enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXCnAhr9baM

Living in interesting times

Sorry, this is a bit of a whinge and I have a more entertaining post lined up for later today which includes the words 'rillettes', 'bavaroise' and 'ceviche'. So probably best to scroll down to the tune, skip the words and wait for the next one...

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic, and it reminds me of a curse raised by the great Terry Pratchett - 'May you live in interesting times'. Our new rental fell through spectacularly on the day we tried to move in – we were supposed to gain possession last weekend (the owners being the ones who pushed the tenancy date forward two weeks from what had originally been discussed), but when we rocked up it was still being worked on by the owner. When we questioned it we were told that the owners kids had been sick so he hadn’t had the chance to fix it up, 'it wasn't like a bought house' (I have no idea what that means) and they didn’t appreciate our attitude in requesting that the place be clean, empty, unbroken and ready to move in to on the agreed date. There was a bit of low grade shouting, he told us to piss off, we gave him the keys back and we’re on the hunt for a house again (with a month to go before our lease ends).

In some ways it's a blessing as they obviously would not be good people to have as landlords, but dear god I'm bored of driving around & looking at houses. It seems to eat into every part of my life -  to spend time doing anything but hunting through the real estate sites, booking viewings or driving around checking out suburbs feels like wasting valuable time. I'm not exercising, not riding and I can't get any cheese or beer brewing on as it would be a pain to move. Terry Pratchett also says that 'people say there's no place like home. That's rubbish, there are a million places just like home, it's just that you haven't chosen to live there' and I'm trying to keep that in mind as we view one broken down house after another...

Works pretty full-on at the minute as well. It seems like I'm the backstop of every problem so something similar to this seems to happen far too much in both the software side and the project planning side - 

• Another consultant finds an issue in their specialist area
• They ask me if I know why it's happening
• I have a quick look at the configuration, try and figure out what it's supposed to be doing and say no, I can't see anything obvious. It'll need to get logged with the UK team.
• The support guy gets told to log it, but as he's new and the information he's given is overly brief he has no idea what the problem is.
• I sit with him and show him how the area works, what the problem is and how it should be logged
• I proof-read his call and make sure it makes sense
• The UK team ask some dumb questions that our support guy doesn't know enough to answer, so he sends them on to the consultant
• The original consultant can't understand the questions and asks me to assist
• I send back the reply they need to give, which goes back to the UK via the poor support guy. I try to spend some time with him as part of this to help train him up, as he's a good kid and he wants to learn and not just shuffle emails about.
• The UK respond with a fix
• I send the fix on to our technical team who installs it on one of our local systems
• I tell the original consultant that the fix is on and needs to be tested 
• They tell the support guy to test it
• They local system isn't set up the same way as the clients system so the support guy can't test it
• I configure the local system so that the support guy can test it
• I assist the support guy in the testing process
• The support guy decides the fix is OK but asks me to double check
• I send the OK to the tech guy to install the fix on the clients site
• The original consultant then reports in the project meetings that they've fixed the issues on site.

All of this whilst overloaded with my own stuff to do. It's also worth noting that all three of the people I'm supporting in this way are all paid more than me..... I don't really handle stress that well and although I should be meditating, practicing mindfulness or other such zen noodling I just seem to be wandering round in a permanently tense state with a constant vague sense of unease in the pit of my stomach (which if you think about it is the source of the phrase 'worried sick'). I'm also waking up every morning at 3am and worrying for a couple of hours before dozing off just before my alarm sounds, which isn't the best.  

 Alrighty, thanks for letting me get that off my chest..... 

 

Another week, another Sydney visit

I was back down in Sydney for a few days this week. Work was dull as always, but I try to get out a bit and make it worth my while.

Escaping this gloomy weather is never a bad thing, even if it is 6am

When I got to Sydney I found my hire car had been upgraded to an Nissan X-Trail. This was probably my favourite hire car so far - a bit noisy and not as well equipped as some of the Fords & Holdens, but fun to drive and surprisingly responsive. Once I figured out the sequential gearbox - put the gearstick in the slot on the right and you flick up and down through the gears manually without a clutch. I didn't realise that and thought it was in normal 'drive' position, and I redlined it out of the carpark trying to get it to change up..... 

Paramatta has a large Indian community around the Harris Park train station, just a short walk away from my hotel, so after the first day I went to pick up a takeaway and spotted this little guy just loose & minding his own business in an empty lot

The takeaway was good - chicken dophiaza, naan bread, deep fried stuffed mushrooms and some IPA. Not up to Manchester level, but still good

The next day I avoided the unhealthy and overpriced hotel breakfast by soaking oats in apple juice overnight and mixing with fresh yoghurt. It tasted better than it looked, unlike the instant coffee.

After another same-old same-old day I managed to get out a little early, so caught a train into central Sydney. After all that rain in Queensland it was good to see a blue sky again 

and a bit of shopping culture

My main reason to visit the CBD was to get a new pair of minimalist running shoes - I think I've given myself a stress fracture running barefoot so am trying a pair of 'barefoot shoes' (sic). There's a minimalist running shop called Shoeological in Kent St and after trying on several of their range I settled for some Innov-8 F195s. 3mm sole and a 3mm heel - toe drop means they're halfway between barefoot and normal runners , so hopefully I'll be able to get some more miles pounding the concrete before I break or strain something else

Whilst I was there it seemed a shame not to visit the Redoak brewery as it was just around the corner....

  

At the airport about to head home now - can't wait, it's been a long week.....

It's all about the bikes. And ducks.

I was in Sydney last week for a few days, staying at a new hotel. I wandered in and the first thing I saw was these above the bar / restaurant area

 A Tomasini, a Leopard Trek plastic wonder and a Cinelli

 A Merckx, a hideous Trek time-trial abomination and an unknown classic old singlespeed roadie

Always a good omen to start the visit. Alas they weren't available to be lent out, and although it was great to see them it was also a shame to think of them just sitting there gathering dust. Especially that old singlespeed.

They also had an in-house coffee roaster, with green beans on racks on the walls. The coffee was pretty good, but we have fresh Merlot beans in the office and it's hard to beat that.

 Cutest of all was in the lake outside, with these blue-tip beaked ducks doing synchronised begging

Do you reckon the the Queensland variety has evolved a maroon tipped beak?

Elizabeth Farm

Another two day, one night trip to Sydney. In some ways these short trips are worst because you don't get to settle - you get up stupidly early, do a hard days work, find your way to a hotel and by then it's 6pm or later. The next morning you check out, do another days work and catch an evening flight home. This doesn't give you much time in the trip to wander around. Longer trips are harder in some ways as I'm away from home for longer but it does mean it's easier to relax in the evening. Or maybe even go to the gym. Maybe.

Luckily I can easily stretch my legs as there are some local sites that are easy to walk to, like Elizabeth Farm

No, not the place where they harvest Elizabeths (there would be no need for me to visit as I am living with the best Elizabeth I could possibly ask for) but Australia's oldest building. It was built in 1793, which for this young country is pretty impressive as it was only 5 years after the first convict boats arrived. Paramatta sits at what was the furthest inland navigable point on the Paramatta river and is also where the water becomes fresh, and it was a source of rich farmland to feed the growing sister city of Sydney.

The building itself is not that impressive - from the back it looks like a 1960's low-set brick house in a 2000m2 block

It's only open at weekends and I'd like to come back and have a more detailed nosy round instead of looking like a stalker.

The other joy of site visits are hire cars. I seem to be getting a run of plush hire cars - this time a Falcon GE6

If I get the chance I'll post a better pic tomorrow. It confirms what I was saying last week, for me the Ford is a better driving and more comfortable car. But the leather seats were a bit much after sitting in full sunlight for an afternoon..... 

Think positive happy thoughts...

A motivational message this week, something I like to watch on the plane before visiting a client...

 

My Sydney local

I escaped the 39 degree heat in Brisbane with a two day, one night visit to Sydney. I was based in Parramatta but managed to escape the client at 5pm on the first day, so it was a perfect time to check out the Sydney Local Taphouse. I've been to the Melbourne branch before but not the Sydney one, and so just over an hour after leaving my hotel I'd walked up to the station, got a train into the CBD and then found the pub. Maybe not so local after all!

It may not have been the easiest trip but it was worth it. Walking to the pub meant that I explored some new parts of Sydney - a city I know less well than Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and even Perth - and with a cool breeze and low sun I even shivered every so often. I tried to take some stealth shots of the pub - they didn't come out too well but you get the idea. The piece of paper is the beer menu

A pint of 'Women of Beer' Hildegarde's Bier De Garde and a plate of Chipotle spice chicken wings with a blue cheese dressing. On the company. That makes up for the early start....

The pub has 20 taps. They use around 5 for lager, 1 for a cider and the rest for ales - including 3 saisons but surprisingly only one IPA. I could have spent a long time sampling their selections but after a  few beers the selection board started to look a bit like this

so it was time to head back to the hotel.

I woke up the next day in need of a big coffee, and luckily there was one to hand

My 7pm flight home got cancelled in the afternoon and I got bumped to an 8pm flight, so instead of sitting around at the airport I amused myself going for a quick hoon around Botany Bay in my Holden SV6 hire car.

The last time I was down I had a Falcon XR6, and personally I think that the Ford drove better and had a better design. I think that makes me a Ford man. But I still got to drive past my boss, wave out of the window, honk the horn and rev the engine as he was getting into his tatty hire Kia Sorrento. It's the little things.....

Apollo 440

The Friday music club this week is dedicated to my idiot boss, who in response to a comment about a lack of resources suggested that we watch Apollo 13 to 'learn how to confront adversity and to work together as a team'. Way to go boss, that will help us learn how the plant module works now the expert has left. Which episode of The Office are you from?

It did get me thinking about other Tom Hanks films that may be appropriate - "Catch Me If You Can" if we need to do a runner, "Cast Away" because that's what they could end up doing to the software or "Forrest Gump" because we'll be standing in front of them looking like a bunch of slack-jawed idiots. It also turns out that a large IT corporation uses the same concept in its leadership training courses, so he didn't even think of the idea himself.

Anyway - I was going to include something from the Apollo 13 soundtrack but when I was hunting around I found this and it reminded me of time hanging out in Manchester in my late 20's and made me smile. And smiling is always better than cynical whinging. Enjoy!

 

Commuting - finally!

Today I finally got around to riding in to the office with a pannier full of stuff. All up I reckon the bag weighed around 7kg so I decided against hanging it on the pannier mount and instead strapped it to the top of the rack to centralise the load.

Riding with a load is an interesting experience and I've figured out a few things -

• Going up hills is a lot harder! Especially on a single speed - at times it felt like I was doing a series of single leg squats just to keep the bike moving. Luckily the Roadrat has very good geometry for standing & climbing, and allows me to have a completely straight back. Throwing the bike from side to side also feels cumbersome, but not as much as with a single-sided load.  
• You pick up speed quicker going down hills too. You don't notice it until you hit a downhill corner and find yourself running wide after picking your usual line.
• Bike handling generally is also compromised. All the weight at the back makes the front wheel feel lighter, so you have to compensate when cornering on loose surfaces by leaning forward more. I can see why regular tourers use both front & back racks to balance the load. It also feels like you could get into a front wheel wobble 'tank slapper' if you weren't paying attention. Would be very interesting riding singletrack with a load.
• The additional bangs and rattles from the bag were a bit concerning going over rough stuff and hucking off kerbs, although it's an old laptop and it' not even mine so that shouldn't really bother me. 
• The Freeload rack is working well now, but I'm glad I did some shopping runs to bed it in as at first it was slipping and the mounts needed tightening a few times. Didn't help that I was carrying a single pannier, which skewed the load to one side and caused the rack to rub on the tyre.
• I can now see why tourers like bike stands. Getting the bag loaded up with the bike leaning against a wall was awkward. However a top-tube pad, whilst not perfect, will go a long way towards saving both the paintwork and your dignity.
• I need to figure out the weight of my 'touring' gear before I embark on an epic single speed weekend away, only to stall on the first hill and roll gently backwards to home.

For the commute I'm using a Deuter laptop bag with an extendable compartment which was perfect for fitting my 15" laptop (in a padded case), shirt, smart trousers, smart shoes, undies, tools and spares. The top mounting seemed to help reduce clothing creasing. The shoe are heel-less 'minimalist' business shoes so don't take up much space - don't you just love it when two fads coincide?

 The one thing I did forget was my belt, but fortunately the Freeload setup provided a classy solution

 Don't want to brag, but that's a 1m long strap there :)

Edit - if anyone is interested in buying a Freeload rack then you may have to wait - it looks like the design has been bought out by Thule.  

Barefoot in the belly of the beast

We had a demo in Sydney this morning, and to make sure we could get there on time we had to fly down last night. I was at another client in Brisbane during the day yesterday so I didn't check into the hotel until 9.30pm, but luckily the demo didn't start until after 9am the next day which gave me time to go for a early morning run through the CBD, through Hyde Park and out onto the bridge that crosses Darling Harbour.

It was a bit nippy out at first but once I got moving it was fine, although the locals I passed on the way seemed to be a bit more dressed than I was. 

 A couple of hours later I was suited and booted and doing my stuff high up in the matrix.

 We finished early which gave me time for some bike ogling

and then some liquid recuperation - IPA from the Redoak microbrewery

Brisbane had a public holiday today, which means that I get a day off in lieu for todays efforts. Maybe I'll have a long weekend in Sydney?