The Times, They Are A Changin'

Egads. It's been a really, really long time since I've posted a blog here.

Well, in the interest of putting a conclusion to my very cobwebbed last post, no we did not meet the King of Tonga. However, we were greeted at the airport by his personal assistant and a couple of other attendants who gave us a tour of the island before we flew to Va'vau for our week-long sail about that group of islands. It was nice, but I would've liked to have spent more time actually on the islands rather than a boat. The snorkeling was very cool.

But, that's ancient history -- MONTHS ago!

Today, was a monumental day. It was the day that Barack Obama was elected to be the next US President! I am very happy about this news! I think he gave an amazing speech and I was quite impressed with John McCain's concession speech as well. He was extremely gracious and well spoken and I think he handled his rabid crowd of "supporters" well. Now, let's hope those rabid supporters don't do anything drastic in the next four years...

I'm even more excited about moving to Kenya now. (Oh yeah, did I mention that we're moving to Kenya in January?!?!). I mean, the thought of moving there has always been a bit scary and exciting. But now, I feel like I can go there and be proud that my country has elected a half-Kenyan president. I only wish that we were going to arrive in Kenya a bit sooner. Alas, the itinerary has been made and we'll be arriving 3 days after Obama's Presidential inauguration. I've been thinking that it would be cool to be in Kenya on that important day.

Already it feels like the negative stigma that has shrouded our country for the past 8 years is suddenly lifted. Obama is a man who is preaching words like "hope" and "change" and is inspiring a country that has become apathetic and despondent. People who have felt powerless and at the mercy of those who have abused their political offices. Obama's grassroots approach is giving power and inspiration back to the people. And, in his speech, he reminded people that they have to continue to help themselves -- that they cannot depend on him, a single leader, to carry them. This is an important distinction and, I believe, something that will be difficult for many Americans to take on. But how wonderful if the people of America take on this challenge and embrace stewardship of their country's fate and its global impact!

It will be interesting to see what transpires under this new administration. I know that Obama will restore the US foreign diplomacy which GW has so unwittingly tarnished. It's also clear that Obama is inspiring people in a way that is being compared to JFK and MLK -- BIG stuff! It was powerful to see the video footage of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey in tears as Obama gave his speech. Lots of people showing emotion -- when was the last time people reacted to a presidential election in this way? This is not only an American thing. The entire WORLD has been hoping that Obama would be the next US President. It is a global concern.

This has been a marathon campaign and I think everyone is glad that it's finally over. However, once he takes that office and the day-to-day events and decisions and negotiations start to take hold, will Obama still have the ability to inspire change?

Trip to Tonga: Part 1

A few weeks ago, Susan and I went on a family vacation with her family to the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. Before this trip was planned, I never even knew there was such a place as Tonga! Hey, I like to blame it on my American upbringing, but the funny thing is that we Americans hear about Fiji all the time and Tonga is practically next door to Fiji. What's up with that? It's a curious phenomenon for which I have no explanation...

Susan's parents decided that they wanted to rent a sailing yacht for a week to sail around Tonga and bring the family along. So, with much planning and intra-family-communication (which I blissfully delegated to Susan) a vacation plan was devised and off we went! In all, there were eight of us, me, Susan, Susan's parents, her brother Joff, his partner Min, sister Michelle and her friend, Leah. Susan and I flew into Auckland the night before to stay the night at her parent's house before taking off with the rest of the family on an early morning flight to Nuku'alofa.

Susan's father, Gavin, picked us up at the airport and on the drive to their house, he proceeded to tell us about how the King of Tonga had actually gone to his primary school in Auckland and that Susan's friend's father had gone to school with the King of Tonga and that they still keep in touch. When this friend of Susan's family learned of our planned trip to Tonga, he told Gavin that he would contact the King of Tonga (King George Tupou V) and tell his Royal Highness of our arrival. So, reportedly, this information had been conveyed to King George V (KGV) and there was talk that perhaps we might be invited to dine with the King. Gavin then explained that the King resides on the island of Nuku'alofa, but our plan was to go to the Vava'u group of islands and we would only be taking connecting flights from Nuku'alofa to Vava'u. However, the rest of the family was staying in Tonga longer than Susan and I and we actually had planned to fly back to Nuku'alofa and stay our last night there before a morning flight back to Australia (via Auckland). So, Gavin suggested that perhaps Susan and I could be the representatives of the family to have dinner with KGV. Gavin is a couple years older than the King, so although he went to the same school, was not in the same class. However, he did have photos that he took as a child when the young prince came to Auckland to see the school prior to his attendance, which Gavin later showed us that evening. We were all quite amused by the idea of having dinner with the King of Tonga and wondered if anything would come of it.

We had a nice dinner with Susan's family and a couple of her school friends that she invited for dinner and then went to bed. We had to get up at about 4 am to get to the airport by 5 for our 7 am flight (ugh). Leah and Michelle are quite into gourmet cooking and Michelle pooled her connections to obtain export-quality meats to transport from New Zealand to Tonga. Not only did they bring meat, but a whole host of other goods (cereal, crackers, jam, honey, butter, etc) to feed eight people for a week. Luckily, Susan and I only brought one check-in bag between us, as we needed to check in another whole bag full of food (as did several of the others). After checking in our bags (and the airport customs hermetically sealed the meat box in plastic wrap), we then stocked up on duty-free alcohol to keep us in good spirits on our sailing trip as well. While we were wandering around the airport before our flight, Susan and I realized that we had forgotten to stop our mail delivery at home, so Susan thought of sending a post card to our downstairs neighbor to ask him if he would get our mail out of our pathetically small mailbox. I was skeptical, thinking he wouldn't get the post card from Auckland until after we arrived back in Brisbane, but she sent it (and, miraculously, it made it to Brisbane before us and he did retrieve our mail for us!).

Soon, we were on the plane to Nuku'alofa. Stay tuned for more...

For those of you who can't wait for the next installment (who know how long it could be, with my blogging record?), you can go straight to the photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/Tonga2008

Internet Broken... will blog after it's fixed

!@#()&^#$(@!@$^&@#$% Telecommunication "services" totally suck in Australia.

Went to Tonga, sailed around Tonga, saw a whale and lots of coconut trees, snorkeled and got fed yummy food. Came back, had internet for a day, then it broke. Going on three weeks now... Fourth repair guy scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Perhaps he will actually fix the problem this time. Fingers crossed...

Second semester of uni has started. Busy busy! Now I must do school work.

Stay tuned...

Bad news, good news?

Well, it seems that I may be a gecko murderer after all. Susan took it upon herself to move the plants we keep on the balcony (I think it was to dump out excess water sitting in the trays beneath the pots) and next to the ring of dirt that the one plant left behind, lay the mummified body of a little gecko. I think it's the same one as the toaster incident. So sad...

In other news, I have decided to give myself the title of "Technical Business Analyst" for my job. I think that's fitting, although I might switch it to "IT Business Analyst" -- I think that might even be better. Hmm...

I have plans to go to the Sunshine Coast twice in the next week. Tomorrow, we're spending the day and night at my bandmate's house at Coolum Beach. The band is gonna jam, maybe record, and the significant others (+ children) will bond over sand and daquiris or something... It should be fun! Perhaps we'll even settle on a band name. Now, THAT would be exciting. Later in the week I have a business meeting for work that will take me to the coast again. Not nearly exciting, but a bit of a road-trip anyway. Reckon I'll be bonding with my boss on the way there & back. Good news is that he's a huge fan of live music, so I'll get one fan to my band's gigs at least!!

Oh, and the cover band went over quite well at the hippie party. It was a fun party and apparently the hosts have them frequently, so I'm looking forward to doing that again! I expect we'll be doing some real gigs in a month or two... the drummer's already working on some bookings for us.

Susan survived her microbiology exam, but she felt like she didn't do very well and was rather unhappy about that. I have a feeling she did much better than she thinks she did. Poor girl's been studying too hard -- she needs a break!

At the moment, I'm taking a break from Visual Basic programming for my practical exam on Tuesday -- yikes. I don't like "speed programming"! Well, guess I should get back to it... wish me luck!

Work, school, music, dougnuts...

Well, I've landed myself a job. It's a small startup company that only came into being this January. I must say that I was a bit unsure about the company when I first went to the interview - the thought of working for a startup company seemed a bit risky, even for part-time. But as time goes on, I'm getting a better feeling about them. I think they might just make it and it might actually be quite good. Anyway, I'm not really sure what my job title is. So far, I've been tasked with implementing a process for invoicing and payroll, implementing plans for the rollout of a couple of the products and a bit of ASP web interface modification. Anyway, they're nice folks and the office is in an old "Queenslander" style house, which is quite charming.

I'm nearing the end of the semester -- this is the last week of classes, besides a couple of makeup classes next week due to holiday conflicts. Final exams are sprawled across June, which is a bit annoying -- I'll have plenty of time to forget what I've learned by the time I get to them all! So far, I've been doing pretty well, but I've got a project due next week that's kicking my butt (yes, I'm procrastinating a bit by writing this blog).

The cover band and the original band are both cruising along. Neither band has settled on a name yet. The guitarist/singer for the cover band is throwing a fancy dress (i.e. costume) hippie party on Saturday and we'll be playing at it, along with a few other musical acts. Unfortunately, the working title for the cover band is now "Thick Crust" but I hope it doesn't stick by default! Anyway, I'm excited not only to play a "gig" again, but also because this is my first-ever house party in Australia! I'm looking forward to it. Unfortunately, Susan won't be coming along because she's frantically studying for her microbiology exam which is on June 6. The original band is really coming together and we've been bantering about band name ideas, at least. We're hoping to record a few songs for a demo maybe in June, so once we get those and a name, I'll be throwing together a little MySpace page to broadcast to the world!!

Speaking of bands, Viva la Venus is back in swing and they gave me a nice little mention in their press release recently.

Oh, and if anyone's wondering how the Krispy Kreme is holding up in Brisbane, let's just say that every day that I walk by it (which is many afternoons), there is a long line of about 40 people out the door... So I'd say they're doing pretty well.

Stickers and doughnuts....

Well, I guess I'm avoiding doing a bit of homework by trying to keep up with this blog a bit more. The good news for me is that I've finally got a big, fat sticker in my passport that says I'm allowed to work. Yay! Now I just have to find a job... I'm trying not to stoop to retail or food service and aiming for some web-development/IT-related job. There aren't that many part-time jobs in the field...lots of full time positions, but not part-time. I applied for a couple of jobs today, we'll see if anything pans out. Would be nice to offset the cost of my tuition. It's a good thing I got a Sugar Mama to take care of me! :)

Brisbane's first Krispy Kreme

Speaking of sugar and food service, all my peeps in NC ought to appreciate this one. The very first Krispy Kreme doughnuts store opened in Brisbane this week! Apparently, people camped outside overnight in hopes of winning a golden ticket for a year's supply of doughnuts. Gosh, I do love doughnuts myself, but I don't even want to think about the caloric intake involved with a year's supply of doughnuts! Anyway, Brisbanites reportedly scarfed up 60,000 doughnuts on the opening day!

Life in Brisbane

Brisbane is a nice city -- lots going on here, with no shortage of stuff to do. Susan and I got mountain bikes and we've been enjoying the many urban bikeways with new local Brisbanite friends Lauren and her father, Craig, who are into biking. We've ridden our bikes a couple times to the coast... we take the train to a 'burb called Mitchelton and there's a bikeway the whole way to Shorncliffe, on the coast -- it's about a 3 hour bike ride and lots of different scenery along the way.

Brisbane Botanical Gardens

We'd like to hit some offroad MTB trails, but ironically haven't been able to get to any very easily without a car, so that plus my music habit (amplifiers, etc.) and our desire to go beyond Brisbane have prompted us to buy a car, which we just got a few weeks ago. It's a 2004 Nissan Pulsar hatchback, which we hope will be good on the fuel economy. So far, driving for me has been scary, as I started out leaning TOO far left and I don't like the roundabouts! Oddly, Queensland gave me a driver's license with only a few forms of ID and no driver test. But, with each time I drive, it gets easier and more comfortable, so it's getting better.

I've been plugging away at "uni" and so far I've been liking it okay. I've decided that I'm not really into the academic theory type classes and much prefer the practical application classes (i.e. programming). This semester I took two of each, but I think I'll be avoiding the theory classes from now on! Susan seems to be liking her job well enough. She's recently started doing some research work at a lab in Coopers Plains -- a suburb at the south end of the city and she's also started working at an HIV clinic one afternoon a week -- so she's keeping busy.

I've now joined two bands -- one original band and one cover band. The original band is sort of psychedelic indie rock or something like that. We just found a drummer a couple of weeks ago and hopefully, we'll get some recordings and think of a name for ourselves so we can share our music with the world. The band includes me on bass, a Scottish guy on guitar, an Aussie (who just recently moved back to Oz after 14 years in the US) on keys/guitar/vocals and the drummer is the token local Brisbanite. We've got a number of songs, which we're still refining. The cover band doesn't really have a name yet either, but the drummer and guitarist/vocalist have been playing together for years and we may add a guitarist/backing vocalist (after I proved how badly I sing and play at the same time).

This past weekend we wanted to do our sea kayaking trip (for which we have vouchers) but we could only do it Sunday, so I guess we need to be better about booking further ahead!! So far, we haven't been very good at that... Instead, we went for a day hike in Lamington National Park, which is about a 1.5 hrs south of Brisbane in the Gold Coast hinterland (they seem to be fond of that word, "hinterland" here). We wanted to go camping as well, but ditto on the planning ahead thing... all booked up! The hike was okay, although the map I downloaded from the web was too small and didn't make much sense to us, so we were sort of wandering back and forth trying to figure out where we were. We encountered an older local couple on the trail, and they took pity on us and gave us their more detailed map. So, now we'll have to go back and get in a proper hike. This time we had gone to the Binna Birra area, but next time we want to go to an area called O'Reilly's.

I STILL haven't gotten permission to work from Immigration, which is annoying since they said it should take 7-10 business days and it's been over a month now. I've applied for a few jobs, but it doesn't do me much good if I'm not allowed to work! I called the Immigration help desk and they claim it should be processed by the end of this week. We'll see...

So... I've finally posted some pictures I've taken over the months. Some from the Brisbane area and some from Melbourne I took when we were there back in Decemeber (!!). Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/barckhoff/AroundBrisbane2008

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/barckhoff/MelbourneDec2007

Australian Wildlife

Today, I ran over a gecko with my toaster.

I didn't mean to! Really, it's not something I'd ever aspired to do or would even think was possible in one's lifetime. But I did it. Thankfully, the little gecko was okay, although I did think he was a goner there for a moment. Here's how it went down: I was cleaning up the kitchen and decided to clean the crumbs out from under the toaster. The little crumb catching tray is on the side of the toaster that faces the wall, so I turned it around to pull out the tray and there was the poor little gecko all turned up on it's side like a hip hop dancer doing that trick where they balance on one ear and shoulder. His little foot twitched for a moment and then it was still. I felt really bad for the poor little thing and I started rumaging around for a bit of cardboard to scoop him up with, thinking I'd have to flush him down the toilet. I came back with my cardboard and the little guy sprang up and started running around in circles. With a sigh of relief, I coaxed him onto the cardboard, but then noticed that he was still running around in circles and his head was twisted sideways. I think I might've damaged his neck and he might have a permanent crook, but at least he's alive... Anyway, I took him out to the balcony and put him in one of our potted plants, thinking he might like to hang out and eat the bugs off our little herb plants, but he promptly hopped out of the soil and hid underneath the pot instead. Anyway, I took a picture of him hiding under the plant. Interestingly, when I found him he was a pale, almost translucent yellow/green. By the time I took this picture, he had changed to a dark, brownish with yellow stripes. I'm not sure how he got inside our apartment, although we do have a window screen with a hole in it that would be big enough for the little guy to get in (he's only about 2 inches long, head to tail -- just a baby!).



I've had a couple of other interesting encounters with Australian wildlife. One day, Susan and I decided to eat our lunch out on our balcony. Shortly after we finished our sandwiches, a bird decided to land on our balcony railing. He landed on the far end and then proceeded to move over toward us, until he was staring directly at us from about two feet away. We assumed he was hoping to get a treat from us and would wait a few moments and then fly away. We didn't want to feed him and encourage him to keep coming back, so we stared at him and he stared at us. He sat there looking at us for a good ten minutes! Finally, he got bored and flew away, but I've never had a bird come and stare at me eye to eye like that for so long! Anyway, I haven't learned what sort of bird it was yet -- sort of raven-like in size and shape, but mottled black & white, with a sort of warbly call. One of these days, I'll learn what it is.

Another encounter with a lizard that was much nicer than the incident with the poor gecko was with a juvenile lizard I met on Australia Day. Susan and I had gone to South Bank, which is a lovely park area along the river in the city for the Australia Day activities. As we were strolling along, I saw a little lizard on the wall, which I found to be incredibly cute because it had a gigantic head, feet and a really long tail, with an itty bitty little body. It obviously had not grown into its appendages yet and I just had to get close to it to marvel at its cuteness! Suddenly, it sprang off the side of the wall and ran towards my foot, as if to say "play with me!" However, at that point, I felt the need to chastize the little guy for running up to complete strangers like that. After all, he was obviously just a child and it's a big, bad dangerous world out there...

So far, it seems that both the wildlife and the humans here in Australia are quite friendly. I've found that random people will strike up a conversation with you while you're on the bus or just walking down the street. Everyone here has been really, really nice and helpful. Unless it has anything to do with telecommunications or internet. The mobile phone plans here are horrifically complicated and nit-picky, the internet service is locked down tight, and the phone companies charge an arm and a leg for their services, while making you wait ages to get anything hooked up. But telecommunication services aside, I've found Australia to be a wildly friendly place.

Hello World!!!

Miracle of miracles, we are FINALLY online at our apartment. It's been excruciating not having real access to the internet. There is no such thing as free WiFi in Australia. You have to pay for it everywhere, EXCEPT the library -- which we finally became members of last week. Anyway, it took them 10 days to get around to connecting us, then they didn't send us the hardware until after we were connected. Add to the mix a couple of public holidays (Saturday was Australia Day, but it was also observed on Monday, so no mail on either day) and we finally got the stuff yesterday.

So, yes, we have an apartment. We met our goal of finding an apartment before Susan was to start work on January 14th. Unfortunately, the day that we got the keys to the apartment was the day that Susan got admitted to the hospital. She contracted a case of Brucellosis, which is a blood-borne bacterial infection. Basically, she had constant headaches and a fever until she started her treatment of three different antibiotics (one by injection), which immediately caused her extreme nausea (apparently her liver went a bit haywire for awhile) and she spent nearly a week in the hospital to receive IV fluids and anti-nausea meds. She needs to take the antibiotics for a total of six weeks. Anyway, it was a bit ironic that she ended up a patient in the hospital the weekend that she was supposed to start work there. Her doctor keeps suggesting that she should write up a case study on herself -- she doesn't seem too keen on that prospect. Thankfully, Susan is feeling better (tho not quite up to her usual self yet -- still gets tired easily) and she started work yesterday.

Anyway, we've got a little two-bedroom apartment that's about a 15 minute walk to the Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, and a short jaunt to the train station and various bus stops. It's about a 10-15 minute bus ride into the city, so it will be easy for me to get to school when I start at the end of February. Now, we just need some furniture. We have a sofa, a dining room table & chairs and two chests of drawers (which we'll use as bedside tables) on order. Luckily, we happen to live across the road from a shopping center full of furniture stores. Right now we have a bed (thankfully no more air mattress) a coffee table and two folding camping chairs. The camping chairs have taken their toll on our lower backs, but at least we have something to sit on. We ordered our sofa from a place called Freedom, so Susan's been singing "Freedom's just another word for f*cking hurry up and give us our sofa..." for the past week.

I was pleasantly surprised with a $3500 scholarship from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which is now the school I've decided to attend. I was going to go to Central Queensland University until I realized that it's campus consists of one building and it caters to international students. This was what first attracted me to the school, since I am an international student, but then I realized that I would be stuck in one building with a bunch of foreign students and I would rather be immersed in the Australian culture on a real university campus. I'll be going to the QUT campus in the Central Business District (CBD, i.e. downtown) right next to the Botanical Gardens, which are quite lovely. I've enrolled (paid) at QUT, but haven't done the student visa stuff yet. I have to do it online and couldn't do it until I got a Certificate of Enrollment from them anyway. Now I'm good to go and plan to start on that this week.

Well, that's all for now -- I'll try to write more soon! For now, here's a pic of the view of Brisbane from our apartment balcony. The Royal Brisbane hospital is in the right side of photo (just beyond the telephone pole in the lower corner).

Last Stop: Brisbane

Hello World!

Susan and I made it to Brisbane on Tuesday -- it's been pouring with rain the whole time (which is a good thing, since there's been a drought here) and we haven't really had easy access to the internet. We've been trying to get around to look for a place to live, but it's been a bit messy waiting for buses in the rain! We've been staying with Susan's friend's father who has the big family home to himself and he seems quite glad to have our company. He's been very generous for opening his home to us. They don't observe daylight savings here, so it gets light very early in the morning and there are lots of different sounding birds, so poor Susan has been waking up way earlier than she wants to, but hopefully she'll get back to a better sleep schedule soon.

Last night, we had dinner at Susan's colleague's (David) house -- he's the guy that picked up all our stuff that we shipped from the U.S. We met him and his wife and two of his colleagues -- they were all very nice and I felt right at home with them. David and his family lived in Pittsburgh for 10 years, so it was fun talking with them about my home town. We were reunited with our U.S. shipment and I checked to make sure that one of my bass guitars arrived in one piece (it did) and we retrieved some of our summer clothes so that we have more clothes to wear.

I've been visiting the schools that I applied to -- I decided that I'm not so crazy about Central Queensland University and may go to Queensland University of Technology or University of Queensland instead. I went to QUT to talk to the folks there today and I like it much better. I haven't gone to UQ yet to check it out, but will probably do that on Monday.

Currently, we have very limited access to the internet, so I will keep this update short, but just wanted to let folks know we're here and doing fine -- the Aussies are very friendly and have been quite generous. Hopefully, we will be able to find our own place to live soon so that we can get settled in.