Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Compare and Contrast

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:51:00 GMT

It is a mantra from my highschool days studying English Literature, we were always asked to "compare and contrast."

When travelling between places I'm always compelled to do just this, though it is mostly futile — the world is far too complex. Travelling to Sydney brings in yet another dimension, I'm comparing Sydney now to my bits of the UK now and also to Sydney then. I lived in Sydney for around 6 years, from early 1999 to late 2005. The subsequent 3 years have mostly been spent in the UK.

Sydney of 2005 is a little different to Sydney of late 2008. In no particular order:

It is now possible to travel from Kellyville to the City in a single bus ride which takes just an hour.
Some shop fronts have changed, but mostly everything looks the same.
Ferrari's on William street are replaced by art.
Oporto's chilli sauce has changed, for the worse, it just isn't right any more.
It is finally possible to get near perfect espresso in the heart of the city, thanks to Mecca Espresso on King street.
Sydney University is looking good.

That last point is worth further words. When they first built the Eastern Avenue building I thought it was pretty awful. Then again, Carslaw and the Chem building are downright ugly (from a more utilitarian era of building.) Now that it has a friend in the new Law building, the road has been paved over, and the landscaping improved that whole stretch looks brilliant. Some of the improvement even seems to rub off on the old Chem building, amazing what some well thought out landscaping can do.

Stand on Eastern Avenue in the early evening, sun still just in the sky, and look through the large glass section of the new law building. It is a painting of Sydney, featuring the UTS building, done in shades of gold. Unexpected beauty.

The new school of IT (etc) building works well too. Standing in the foyer looking up. It is, certainly, less personal and friendly than Madsen was. Little sign of humanity, a small box with a screen to greet and guide you. Perhaps appropriate for a house of techno-worship.

The masterpiece, in my mind, is the refashioning of the lawns between Wentworth and Eng. Smooth lines drawing the eye to the old schoolroom, rather than away from it. A very Australian blend of modern design, curves, sandstone, and bush.

There's still work in progress, I look forward to visiting again next year.

How about comparisons with England? I'll wander into these waters, though they be muddy and maybe even dangerous.

Eating out in Sydney wins. The seafood cannot be beaten, the prices are insanely good. People living here are unbelievably lucky in the seafood stakes, and eating out in general.

Sydney isn't safe on a gourmet pedestal however. While the UK lets us down, severely, in the seafood stakes it makes up good ground for just about everything else. Money buys your dearest desire, so they'd have us believe, and the brute financial power of London draws in everything. You name an ingredient, you can get it. Lamb from New Zealand, oranges from South Africa, apples from Australia, herbs from Israel. I find it hard to believe. This is not the good stuff though, it is merely a guilty convenience. I can leave the lot of it.

They can do meat over there, Australia may be known for its beef but the UK really knows about it and does it right. I'm let down by what I can find in supermarkets, and even butchers, in Sydney. The local produce movement in England is also brilliant. I can usually know exactly what town my fruit and vegetables came from, and how far they've travelled. I know where my pork grew up, and what mountainsides my lamb enjoyed. Quite often this is even so in the supermarkets.

I'm sorry to say that the UK wins on food, as far as the environmentally conscious home-gourmand is concerned. If eating out is more your style then stick to Sydney, unless you have money leaking out your orifices.

Beer? Here be dragons. The beer in England, the good stuff, Real Ale I mean, is astounding. Australian beers, even some of my old favourites, are flavourless fizz by comparison. Now, I don't mean to say that Aussie beer is bad … is just isn't beer to me any more. More like a beer-flavoured fizzy drink, it has its place.

Chutney, Stew, Beer, iPhone, and Game

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:26:00 GMT

As I write this there's 5 litres of chutney simmering on the stove. I find the name used in one of my books rather apt: Glutney! I'm doing away with 2kg of courgettes, nearly a kg of green tomatoes from my poor blight-stricken plants, and a kg of apples lopped from the tree hanging over our fence (from which we've sadly binned many kg of apples that've fallen onto the concrete over the last few weeks – just think of all the starving piglets that could be enjoying them.) I only wish I had more jars! If the chutney works out well I'll put some words together along with the photos I've taken and whack it up here when I have the time.

There's also a full, large, Chasseur of beef, potato, and celeriac stew in the oven. This is part of my "decent lunch" scheme. Trying to make up enough food on the weekend to carry through the week. I have so much less free time these days – welcome to the normal world! Thank goodness for boiled eggs and dried fruit, is all I can say. Not that I'm complaining, being busy is both enjoyable and fulfilling as far as I'm concerned. Right now I'm regretting buying pre-chopped "stewing steak" rather than my usual beef shin. Shin always works out juicy and tender for me, but I usually encounter dryness with "stewing steak" – as I seem to have this time around. Oh well, it'll taste good all the same, hard to go wrong with celeriac.

Last weekend we went to the Letchworth Beer Festival, a CAMRA event, and drank far, far too much Real Ale. Walking back in the chilly evening was a lesson to us: drink enough beer and you don't notice it is absolutely freezing. This weekend we went to yet another beer festival, a smaller do at the Plume of Feathers pub over in Ickleford (a 30 minute walk away.) The smaller do was far more satisfying I felt, with 15 beers available rather than 50 there is much less pressure put on by bewildering forests of choice. We also met an interesting older (offspring post-university age) couple who seemed to have an interest in "greener" living, allotments, reduced carbon footprints, and all that malarky. There's some "Green Drinks" meeting every first Tuesday in Hitchin, sounds interesting. Might go an heckle some Greenies sometime, will write about it if we do. Never know, they might be the sensible sort.

There's plenty I could say about the iPhone at this stage too, after almost a month with the thing. But it'd include a lot of whinging of the "but my Symbian/IQ phone 5 years ago did this so much better" sort, it isn't worth bothering. Apple aren't winning any friends of the non-iBimbo sort by being total fascists about the platform either. Too many shitty apps of the same general type, yet they don't permit apps that "compete" with their built in shitty-apps. Face it, their calender, email, and contacts apps are all painful to use. And talk about lack of any sort of neat integration between applications! (I've already complained about the actual phone functions of the iPhone over on that facebook thingymo.) Sadly the new gPhone looks like a pile of dingo crap… but there will be more to come, I expect (hope) to see a good gPhone surface in the future. Not that I'm at all comfortable with a platform that seems to be geared towards giving Google yet more of my information. Despite all the complaining I'm generally happy with the iPhone and do think that it is the best thing currently available on the market for me. The lack of real progress over the last few years is sad though, the iPhone has broken a popularity barrier but not pushed any technology barriers at all.

Getting back away from the technocrap front, we haven't had much fungal luck lately. We're hoping for better results from this season, nothing to beat our little Amethyst Deceiver stash from last year yet though. A nice, but rather small, puffball is about it. We've come across a couple of fairy rings, but both times in inconvenient circumstances. We'll keep at it! The haws, sloes, and hips are starting to look good though. Some rosehip and haw jelly could be on the cards, and possibly (post duty-free) some sloe-gin (or vodka.)

On a similar topic, we're well into the game season now, so some birdies must appear in the not too distant future. It is well past the "Glorious 12th" (of August) after all. Just today we were overhearing a man talking about the 6 grouse in his freezer – my thought on the topic being "you utter bastard." I'd be happy to have just a couple. I must endeavour to know someone, who knows someone, … etc. High-street market rates for these things are entirely fixed at the "ho ho, we'll rip off some stoopid yuppies" level. I'm entirely unhappy about paying £4.50 for a little bunny, even if it is a pretty darn good bunny. When we were in Ricky, and before Hambings closed, we'd get excellent bunnies for 3 quid. I need to know a bunny man I think. Or snare them myself, my earlier attempt to snare a pesky squirrel wasn't successful enough (I snared it alright, but it snapped my insufficiently strong snare wire.) Squirrels are supposed to be rather good about now in fact, fattened up for the winter.

Freckle past a flea

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:33:00 GMT

As can probably be imagined, I've been somewhat busy lately. What, with moving from a work-at-home schedule back into commuters' clothing. My commuters' clothing happens to be florescent yellow with helmet and wheels – which, as it turns out, transforms a 1.5 hour commute into a 1.05 hour commute. Significant! Say what you like of "public" (bus) transport, it is as slow as a wet weekend and lacks a certain something. That something being the daily joy of trying not to be run over by a lorry. It's worth 2x20-minutes of my day though.

I now work for Zeus, and, as my contract essentially states, must serve Zeus faithfully and efficiently. Really, I could be hacking up perl scripts to present cows as a factor of goats and "working for Zeus" would make up for it. That aside, however, this seems a pretty cool group. The sociological difference to Sensory is close to nil, the primary contrast being accents.

On to business. I'll be back in Oz between October 31st and November 14th, the first week being in Sydney and the second in WA. I dearly miss many people on both sides of my island continent, so that means you should try to keep some appropriate time free … or I'll be sad! At the Sydney end I'm thinking Sunday (2nd Nov) lunch at James Squire being a minimum requirement. I'm up for just about anything else that week though.

Bring. It. On!

New Job, New Windows, and Devon

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:36:00 GMT

Work

What a week! First and foremost, it marks the beginning of a new job. I've moved on from the company I've worked with since leaving University (before leaving actually) to a new employer up in Cambridge. It's a significant one for me. My last job always felt like a simple extension of University, in a sense this is my first real move into the "real" world… maybe. Leaving was a very tough decision to make, especially after 5 years. But in the end it was working from home for a year on the opposite side of the planet from all my friends-cum-colleagues that did it. Working from home is truly overrated.

My new company seems a most excellent place. It's up in Cambridge, so I don't have to subject myself to London. I like London, but don't want to go there every day – poor Kat :( Now I'm a commuter of course, and the journey is at least an hour each way. I should be able to keep it down to that once I streamline the travel process and get a bike up in Cambridge (a faster way to get around the town than the buses.)

So, first week down and rather good.

Windows

Unfortunately this week is the week the landlord decided to replace all the windows and doors in our place. They did it all in 2 days, impressively speedy – now I'm just waiting to see if they all fall out. That's 2 doors, 8 windows, and 2 huge front bay-windows. They left the place in a mess too, not happy about that. Not much we can do about it, except tidy up. It is nice having secure windows though, and being able to see out of them is a nice bonus. We're told the previous double-glazed windows were the first in the street, they were installed 20 years ago. That probably explains why they were all misted up.

Devon

To add to the business of the week we've had a trip to Devon planned since far before I decided to move jobs. It's part of a little ritual of ours. We're keen attenders of the Watford LUG meetings. When we lived in Rickmansworth this was our closest LUG, it was pretty close to home in fact. Moving to Hitchin puts us a 40 minute drive away – and we don't own a car. There are closer LUGs now, and maybe in time we'll attend one or two others, but we want to try and stick with Watford as long as is practical. So, our little ritual is to hire a car on the first Thursday of every month so we can go to the LUG meeting on this night. Then we have the car for the weekend and drop it back on Monday.

So we get a weekend of mobility about once a month. To to cap off the week I drove the 3ish hours to south Somerset (just above Devon) after work on Friday.

This weekend we're going to Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall's River Cottage HQ in Dorset for a "festival." That'll take up most of today, then we stay in Weymouth for the night and explore the coastline on Sunday before driving back up to Hitchin.

A long and busy week, but a good one!