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Everywhere has it's ups and downs I guess. It snowed here in Cambridge yesterday, and continuing with the university tradition of intellectual prowesss yada yada yada, last night we sneaked out and killed two snowmen with tomato ketchup and took incrimintating photos, and then today had a snowball fight after the most boring physics lecture in the world  .
Snow is sooo cool!
--
Andrew.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
It's the little things about moving to a new country that really get ya!
So have you figured out what those flashing green stoplights mean?
You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.
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Navin wrote:
So have you figured out what those flashing green stoplights mean?
Dude, THAT freaked me out. Of course, it didn't help that I was in Montreal and didn't speak enough French yet to read the sign explaining that it was the equivalent of a green arrow. 
--Mike--
The Internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens.
-- Strong Bad
1ClickPicGrabber - Grab & organize pictures from your favorite web pages, with 1 click!
My really out-of-date homepage
Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
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Yeah, when in Montreal one of the hotel clerks explained that to us. And they seemed to have that same meaning in most of the rest of Canada. However, when I went to Vancouver, they did NOT seem to have the meaning of a green arrow. I still can't figure that one out... 
You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.
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Damn, when I read down this list I'm impressed to realise I attended a good number of these and didn't appreciate their significance. Cool
You forgot at least one though: Freezing your tongue to a slide or an aluminum door. (and before you say why the hell would you lick either of those, now that I've mentioned it you'll be uncontrollably compelled to try it)
Begs the question though, what would you list as the experiences a newcomer to Oz would have (and don't embellish).
David
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Don't worry - you are pretty much to thank/blame for most of these anyway, and I'm pretty sure there are a whole bunch more you can enjoy seeing me go through (at a suitably safe distance of course). Those black flies sound especially appealing.
OK - so I went and licked an aluminium door. I couldn't help it. It was salty. (am I doing something wrong here? :P)
David Cunningham wrote:
what would you list as the experiences a newcomer to Oz would have
Off the top of my head here are some things I know would make you grin and/or curse.
- Our money. You'd be wondering what the plastic see-through stuff is all about and the significance of the massive 12-sided 50 cent piece was
- Mono-lingual signage and product labels
- Being the only passenger in a taxi and sitting in the front seat.
- Being able to buy some amazing wines down at a supermarket at midnight on a Sunday night. Also - walking into a bottle-o (alcohol vending house of happiness) and having it wall to wall Aussie wines. Not a foreign drop of plonk in site
- Paying exactly the amount written on the price tag. No tax added.
- no 1 cent pieces
- (obvious one) driving on the left hand side and bumping into people as you walk down a corridor
- The sun being overhead, not somewhere vaguely above the horizon. I hope I'm down there the first time you go there because I'm going to call all directions by the compass. Instead of saying "turn right" I'm gonna say "head west". Then I'm going say "See? SEE????" each time you have to pause and perform that extra mental step.
- (if you're lucky) 45C. And no, that's not including the humidex. Only really happens a couple of times a year in Sydney or Melbourne.
- Weather reports discussing the "freezing temperatures overnight". ie -3C (inland only)
- Galahs. Again, if I'm there when you are then I will take you to watch 50 galahs try and balance on power lines without falling off. It's more fun during winter when the lines are frosty
- Real yoghurt and thickened cream.
- A hamburger with beetroot. Maybe not something you'd partake in but you'd have to at least see one in the flesh.
- Walking into a spiders web and doing the 'ohmygoddidyouseewhereitwent' dance. Mwahaha. Similarly,the first time you leave your shoes outside at night over summer then go to pick them up the next morning. Did something crawl in? Maybe I better check...
- Walking into a typical back yard and looking underneath a paver, brick or lock that's been sitting for more than 2 weeks.
- Seeing your first mob of kangaroos bounding along.
- Turning on your first bedside lamp. You'll wonder just what the hell those strange twisty things you've been using all these years are all about.
- Your first trip to a butcher's to see what meat is meant to look like.
- Turning on a TV and wondering where the other 60 channels went. Most of my home town doesn't have cable.
- Watching a one-day cricket test. Admit it - you wanna do it.
- Watching the games the kids play in the streets.
- Watching a news report about Australia winning gold in hockey and getting confused.
- Being near a tree full of cockatoos when they go nuts. The noise is something to behold.
- In the middle of summer, looking up at a sky so clear it's almost purple, or, not being able to see the sky at all and being able to smell the bushfires hundreds of kilometres away.
- Being in a restaurant and wondering why all the entrees appear to be appetisers.
- Sticking out like a sore thumb because you have an accent. And, unfortunately for you, Dave, being asked whereabouts in America you are from.
- One experience that shouldn't be missed is a B&S ball (Bachelor and Spinsters). Typically held in rural settings. Bring your own ute (pickup).
- The thousands of kilometres of amazing beaches. Manly and Bondi in Sydney, Brighton in Melbourne and anywhere north of Sydney up to Cairns.
- If you get out of the cities then the interior. It's another world.
- No tipping
- Seeing tiled roofs instead of shingles, and no basements.
- Calling your first 'shout' in a pub.
- Taking a slash in a trough.
I could go on... 
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I really shouldn't read these Chris. You're making me so damn nostalgic for Australia!
I have two to add
Going into an electronics shop and not only paying the ticket price but also NOT having those damn rebate coupons to send back to get the marked price. I've learned to read the ticket very closely indeed to be sure I understand what the in-store price is going to be (and then have to juggle figures to estimate what the tax is going to be). Who picks such strange figures as 7.85% anyway?
Real Australian Tomato Sauce! I brought two 600 ml bottles of Rosella with me from my recent trip back to Australia.
Rob Manderson
http://www.mindprobes.net
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A couple of my friends back home have been out of contact for a while which is frustrating. Knowing that they aren't a fatality is one thing, but not knowing if they are in hospital with burns, smoke inhalation or a broken leg after falling off a roof is another (last I heard about 30 people were in hospital after falling off roofs while trying to protect property)
So today I got a flurry of emails from friends who have email access again from work after being cut off due to phones and electricty being out in their area.
The main onslaught of the fires was in the south/central west of Canberra. 10 km north is the area of town I used to live in and in which most of my friends still live. A friends mother's house is roughly half a kilometre away from any grassland, separated by street after street of suburban housing and roads. Even so, her backyard is covered in spot fire burns and her next door neighbour has lost half her yard to flames. Imagine coming home one sunny day to find that half the lawn, trees and shrubs in your backyard have caught fire from embers that have been blown a kilometre away.
There was a newspaper report that summed up the ferocity: "the mountains behind Colquhoun Street [were] blazing, but the real attack arrived without warning, tearing trees from the ground and ultimately destroying his home, on the corner of the street and Beilby Place, of nearly 30 years.
'At first it looked like a little grass fire, and then the whole mountain erupted in a ball of flame,' he said.
'I slithered off the roof as quickly as I could and got my wife and the animals in to the car. I thought we were going to be okay, but within 15 seconds the whole house was gone.'"
Another friend lives just one suburb north of the suburbs most affected and rang my folks in Melbourne to let them know he was OK. He said that a fire ball came over his house and a house two houses down was burnt to the ground. The sound, he said, was like three low flying jumbo jets passing over. The noise was so loud that the ground seemed to tremble.
Another friend who is usually kinda sensible but on the weekend kinda wasn't emailed me to let me know he was OK. He spent Saturday afternoon at Duffy (one of the worst affected suburbs), protecting a friend's house from the fires. He wrote:
"Many of the houses surrounding them were ablaze - flames rose 20-30m high and the frames of houses could be seen glowing like earie skeletons as the homes were razed.
"The winds were very strong, made worse I think by the flames. This is one of the major reasons for the firestorm - the fires moved too quickly to anticipate or contain. Standing on top of my friend's roof, I was blown off my feet a number of times.
"Southside was certainly the worst affected, with the fires coming in from Namadgi [bushland close to Canberra's south]. I do not exaggerate at all when I report that at 2pm the smoke was so thick (even in areas not immediately close to the flames) that it was as if night had surrounded us - there was no light glowing through the soup of smoke, from above. Streetlights and car lights were turned on and having little effect.
"When I returned from Duffy my face and clothes had been blackened by the smoke and even now the interior of my car smells like a camp-fire (no joke - it's as if I'd been cooking a damper in there). The interior of many houses is the same, and until this morning it was almost impossible to remove the smell of smoke from your hair.
"Coming back from Duffy I turned on to the Parkway, which I later discovered had been closed, but the on-ramp I took had been left unattended. Both sides of the road were covered with fire, and every time I drove past those spots I could feel the heat physically hit the car. The winds from the fire at these points was so strong that it actually buffetted my car as I drove - gives you some idea of house fast the fire was moving.
"Fires currently surround Canberra to the South, West and East, although the general feeling is that significant danger has past. Queanbeyan [a neighbouring city] at least is still on evacuation alert. I don't know about elsewhere. Evacuation centres have been established, although the one at Phillip [near affected suburbs] was itself evacuated - ironic, huh."
20% of Canberra was (is?) without electricity and the sewerage treatment plant has been fire affected, meaning raw sewerage may be entering the river the flows through and out of Canberra. Water pressure difficulties are continuing so people have been urged not to use washing machines or flush their toilets. Yikes.
On top of all this whole swathes of the power grid have been knocked out because of burned power poles. Some traffic lights are being operated by portable generators but an even further risk on the roads - apart from the spot fires, blowing embers and high winds - are the wildlife who have been forced into Canberra and are wandering across roads. Hit a kangaroo at 80km/h and you know about it.
Fire-fighters have been brought in from New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland. The NSW ski resorts of Thredbo, Guthega, Smiggins are under evacuation alert andsnowmaking machines have been used to provide some protection. My favourite resort, Mt Hotham in Victoria has suffered considerable damage.
[update: Just read that the suburbs surrounding mine have been placed on high alert. My house back home is km's away from any grass or bush but it's really weird hearing the names of the suburbs on three sides of your suburb being named.]
All up 530 houses were lost in Canberra on that weekend.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I've just been on the phone to some friends back home who have lost everything when one of the fire fronts ripped through their suburb. One of those friends knew there were fires close to his suburb but usually if houses are affected it's because they are surrounded by trees backing onto bushland. In his case his house was 3 streets back, the suburb was ringed by a road and there's a decent break between the trees on the other side of the road and the road itself.
Canberra is Australia's capital city and after a year without decent rain everything is tinder dry. It's called the 'bush captial' for good reason, being surrounded mostly by grassland and eucalypt forests. Check out this image. The suburbs of Canberra are shaded orange. The red blurry line shows suburbs affected. The blue circle is the suburb where my friends house was.
Yesterday the temps were up around 38C/98F and the wind was so strong that trees were being uprooted. The fire had broken through the containment lines and the first thing my friend knew was when he was in the shower late in the afternoon and the water pressure dropped to nothing. He looked out and the sky was black and full of smoke, but there was no sound of police cars or fire engines. His neighbour had grabbed a garden hose and was trying to wet down his house but without water pressure it was no good. Besides - they were streets away from any bushland so he didn't honestly think there was too much to worry about.
Within a couple of minutes sparks and live embers started raining down on him and the house, carried hundreds of metres by the wind. His neighbour yelled out that he was outta there, so he raced inside to grab his dog and man-handled her into the car. Soon after leaving, the houses across the road from his went up, then jumped across to his house and continued on into the suburb, eventually taking out a petrol station, an animal hospital and a fire station. It's weird - I know that suburb well and the petrol station is deep in the middle of the suburb surrounded by roads and concrete. It's the last place you would expect a bush fire. It's so suburban.
All afternoon and into the night the local radio station had been in emergency warning mode, sounding a siren every 15 minutes and relaying a list of suburbs to be on stand by for evecuation. Everyone was told to get home to their houses, remove dry leaf litter from their roof gutters and property and be ready to put out any spot fires caused by embers.
Police placed roadblocks to stop people getting into the affected areas and people weren't allowed back to their houses for any reason - not even if they wanted to grab precious items or save family pets.
Two other friends of mine stayed up until 3am listening to the reports, bags packed, angry pet cat in arm. They lived on the edge of one of the suburbs named and even though they didn't feel they were in too much danger they'd been told to prepare so there was nothing to do but sit and wait. Two suburbs over, just up the road from another friend another spot fire had sprung up and taken out more homes just up the road from them. The houses are on the other side of a 4 lane highway that backs onto grassland.
The next morning my friend went back to survey the damage and there was nothing left. It was earily quiet and already hot, and as they waited by one of the road blocks a resident came running down and shouted something at the police. They followed him back to one of the raised houses and minutes later an ambulance roared past after them.
All up 388 homes have been lost, most of them in the same are that was devastated last year. So much forest had been lost last year that it seemed that the cycle of fires had done their duty for another few years at least, but a friend told me on the phone that the fires last year - the worst we've ever witnessed - were a weekend barbeque compared to this.
Just before I left Canberra a week ago to come back to Toronto I drove through the parts that had been burned last year and I remember thinking that in one way it was good the fire had happened since it meant the houses near the remaing trees would be safe. Obviously I should not be trusted for fire safety advice.
It's now 11 am back home and the temperature is again expected to soar. The Weather Bureau expect that conditions will remain the same for a few more days, meaning slim chance of getting the fires contained any time soon.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Wednesday, Jan 22
A few flurries
High -18°C Low -18°C Wind 20 km/h N P.O.P 60%
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Chris Maunder wrote:
High -18°C Low -18°C Wind 20 km/h N P.O.P 60%
*shog does quick conversion to real UOMs in his head*
A balmy 75° with a light breeze?
*shog vows to stop doing UOM conversions in his head*
---
Shog9
The siren sings a lonely song - of all the wants and hungers
The lust of love a brute desire - the ledge of life goes under
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test
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Don't you hate those cold and flu tablet commercials where someone on death's door takes a cold and flu tablet and 10 minutes later is busy climbing Mt Everest or competing in the Boston marathon.
achoooo.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Absolutely! What about the pain and misery I'm going to be in for the next week or two? Why must they lure me in with a false sense of hope? "Oh yeah! If I take this pill, I'll be better by tomorrow." Riiiight...
Are you alright Chris? You aren't sick are you? If you are, don't go anywhere near Bob or the servers unless they have the proper PChealth measures installed. 
I don't know whether it's just the light but I swear the database server gives me dirty looks everytime I wander past.
-Chris Maunder
Microsoft has reinvented the wheel, this time they made it round.
-Peterchen on VS.NET
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I've been pointedly, painfully healthy while everyone around me has succumbed to some kind of soul destroying bug that turns people into quivering piles of phlegm. I got back from Redmond and immediately turned into said pile of phlegm. Life has a sense of humour.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I think I have a big bit of paper on my back with "Will listen to anyone's life story. The longer and more gruesome the better".
I was standing at a bus stop waiting in what must have been -100C for, obviously, a bus. An old guy comes up to me and asks me what I'm doing on this fine morning. I looked at him, looked at the ice forming on my fingers, and even watched in a meaningful sort of way a frozen pelican tumble from the heavens just to make it clear that 'fine' was something I wasn't willing to concede just yet, and said 'just waitin' for a bus'. He then tells me about his life as a professional snooker player and marble sculptor, and his new hobby of passing on his wisdom at his local church. It was truly fascinating.
About 2 hrs later I'm at a subway stop. This time a guy from San Salvador starts explaining to me in great detail how deep the subway's in Toronto are and how often Toronto has earthquakes. So far, so good. He then tells me about his life 25 years ago where he watched 12,000 people in his city die in a volcanic eruption. He was trapped in his house for 3 hours and he painted me gruesome pictures of people half buried in the rubble and landslides - or more often, the remnants of bodies after they'd been tumbled along with the slides.
Two glimpses of strange lives from total strangers. It was great.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
how deep the subway's in Toronto are and how often Toronto has earthquakes
That is like a safety inspector telling you off handidly two hours into the Nuclear Power Station Tour that this particular power station has the highest leakage incident record in the country... 
Chris Maunder wrote:
"Will listen to anyone's life story
You should add " for food, booze or a ticket to a warmer climate" to the end of the paper...
You must just have one of those friendly faces Chris.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Colin Davies wrote:
...can you imagine a John Simmons stalker !
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Chris.. how the hell do you attract these people???? Seriously though. Get Dave to see if there is a piece of paper back there...
Regards,
Brian Dela
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if a pretty girl talks to you, you don´t want to check your back, right?
 ;);)
sunny
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I also live in Toronto, but you seem to have a much brighter view of this city than I do, that's for sure. WHY on earth did you ever leave Australia??
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jpercival wrote:
WHY on earth did you ever leave Australia??
For Code Project. For us.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
Everybody just wants to be naked and famous, Paul.
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Paul Watson wrote:
For Code Project. For us.
ROTFLMAO  I love the way you put that
Regards,
Brian Dela
"There should be an amendment to the constitution, that every president must be examined for paranoia before moving into office." - peterchen
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