Only slightly bent

.. as opposed to Melbourne by night, which is coming up a bit later. Anyhow, I finally managed to gather a few shots of the city, so here goes the first rough batch. (click on the photos to view a bigger version)

The CBD – or the “city” – is a nice and compact area that is quite walkable; photography-wise, however, the skyscrapers are a bit dispersed and distributed on both sides of the river in three or four clusters. Therefore, getting comprehensive skyline photos is more challenging than it is in many other cities.

One thing that there are plenty of in Melbourne are cafes. And the cafe culture is starting to grow on me, too – to the great surprise of everyone, including myself. I have drank approximately 10 times more coffee over the past month than in my entire life before that. I kid you not.

There’s also lots of interesting architecture in Melbourne. Federation square, one of the happening places downtown, is one example:

Flinders Street station and the old city circle tram in the foreground represent a somewhat older style of the city; none less compelling, the sporadically preserved older architecture make a nice touch to the feeling of the city.

The Southern Cross railway station, on the other hand, is yet another example of cool modern architecture. It’s kind of like the Pasile station in Helsinki, only much nicer

There really isn’t a subway system in Melbourne as such, but there is a “city loop” with stations mostly underground via which some local area trains travel. The local trains are quite nice and the tram network is pretty extensive (even though we live outside of it), plus there are buses – overall the public transportation is quite good.

As far as shopping goes, it unfortunately seem Melbourne is a very good city to do some serious shopping. We’re (un)lucky enough to live within a 15-minute drive of the biggest shopping center in Australia, Chadstone. The place is positively huge with over 400 shops and it looks pretty nice, too:

While these don’t even scratch the surface of what’s worthy of taking a photo, I expect to get some pretty nice shots of all kinds of things as time goes by. There is no shortage of subjects for sure.

Apologies for the continued absence of photos – my real computer is still(!) on its way in a container, and I’m itching on getting some real photo editing and selection done. It’s highly annoying not having decent equipment to look at the shots. So while we’re still waiting for the photos, here’s a second round of first impressions about Australia. Since I’ve lived in the US and Finland most recently, it’s sort of obvious to compare Australian things to how they are in the US and Finland. Fair? No. Natural? Yes. So here we go:

US vs Australia

• Package sizes – while the GFC has brought back some smaller sizes in the US, everything is still big there. And the same disease of 1kg potato chip bags has been infecting Finland for some time, too. But over here, stuff like that is generally sold in reasonable quantities. Sure there are jumbo-sized this & that available, but it’s sort of refreshing being able to buy a whole bag of potato chips, eat them all in one evening and not feel bloated or gain 1kg from one bag.

• General knowledge aka are people “dumb” here, too? Luckily, no. Not to disparage the Americans – some very smart people there, too – but Australians in general do seem to have a better grasp of the rest of the world than Americans. Take Finland – even though Finland is only half the distance from US than it is from Australia, comparatively few “average” people knew about it in the States. When saying we’re from Finland, comments from Americas were to the tune of, and I quote, “Oh what state is that in?” and “It’s somewhere near Fiji, right?”. Over here, they’re more like “Oh nice place, we went there a couple of years ago!” and “Oh really?! I have good friends in Sweden but never been in Finland.” etc.

• Attitudes towards immigrants seem friendlier here than in the US; and this doesn’t mean that anybody was hostile towards us in the US either, but it just means that Australians are clearly very used to heavy immigration and all kinds of basic things, like getting a local drivers license, are quite easily taken care of.

• Lack of superlatives; with Americans, many things are “awesome!”, “wonderful!” or at least “great!”. Not so much here; things are mostly just “good”. Which is good. Because if you call everything awesome, what do you call something that’s truly awesome?

Finland vs Australia

• Perception of safety is a funny thing. Whether you feel safe may have very little to do with actual safety, but it’s got a strong influence on what you’re likely to do or not do. For example, I was kind of disappointed to notice that streets in Australia are mostly very poorly lit compared to Finland. When it’s dark, it’s dark almost everywhere, hence, going for a run after sunset doesn’t feel like a good idea. It might be, but it doesn’t feel like that.
  
  On the other hand, some small curiosities make Australia feel more safe than Finland; mailboxes are one. Mailboxes in Finland tend to be locked and made of bomb-proof armored steel or something like that. Here, mailboxes are openings or just very flimsily locked. Packages can be left on the doorstep, and apparently nobody steals them – not sure if anyone would steal them in Finland either, but it’s unheard of that the mail guy would leave a package unattended outside your door in Finland. House or unit door locks are a similar story – like in the US, locks here in Australia are the kind that can be picked by an amateur or kicked in. In Finland doors are like mini-safes that can withstand any assault.

• Job titles are for the large parts identical in spelling, but differ in contents. This makes it a bit more challenging in finding the right position content-wise; for example, a business development manager here is typically a salesguy-type of a position, whereas my past years as a BDM were not quite like that.

• People are certainly more friendly and open towards strangers here. Finns come out as positively xenophobic compared to US, let alone Australians. Also, say what you will about the “how are you”s and “fine”s, I like that kind of meaningless small talk. The indifference exhibited in Finland may be more honest, but it certainly doesn’t make your day any happier.

• Potatoes. Oh the irony – the Finnish staple food, potatoes, taste better in Australia than they do in Finland. I couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s now been conclusively and repeatedly proven – potatoes are better here. Why, I have no idea.

People say that you can only make the first impression once. This is not only true for people, but also for countries. And it’s also related to the fact that after about a year in a new environment – a company, a country, whatever – people lose their ability to see things as an “outsider”.

That in turn means they start “fitting in” better after a year – a definitive asset in some types of organizations. However, it also means that there is good potential for innovations to happen in the first year. Hence, people should be listened to especially during their first year in the new environment as they may be able to offer valuable ideas with their genuine outsider’s perspective.

I have no such delusions about the observations in this post, but it’s still good to point out a few things that I have experienced during the first month of living in Melbourne. I’ll save some others for future posts, but to get started:

Debunking some myths

Prior to moving, we were told by some supposedly knowledgeable people that Australians cannot be trusted to keep on schedule, to turn up at the agreed time and stuff like that. We were also told to expect bad bureaucracy and problems in finding certain products.

I’m happy to report that most of this has been a myth. So far each and every appointment has spot on time. Bureaucracy has been far easier, more efficient and friendlier than it was in the USA for new migrants. Most products are readily available and the selection as well as price is typically much better than in Finland. However, there are two products that are proving challenging to find: first, good-quality children’s shoes. Second, certain types of flour and flakes.

Traffic

I’ve noticed that people in most countries seem to want to brag how “terrible” the traffic is in their locale. Most of the time, I don’t agree. And if anyone complains how “terrible” traffic is here, I won’t agree. There is obviously lots of traffic in Melbourne, traffic jams are as bad as in any big city and the grid-layout of the streets makes it annoying to travel diagonally, but the drivers are generally friendly and courteous. Often more so than in Finland. Even red lights are obeyed quite well – so well that I occasionally find myself stepping on the accelerator to get through the yellows when the others are breaking..

Weather

Daytime highs have been around +14 – +18C; most days are at least partly sunny. Now, we traded summer for winter when we came here, so in that respect the weather sucks. But when you think of it objectively and consider that this is as bad as it gets, it’s suddenly quite okay. The winters here are clearly windy and the weather is volatile in the sense that the rain-sunny-cloudy-rain-sunny-cycles can take place about five hundred times a day. However, due to my definition of winter, I can’t agree with the locals’ saying that you can experience four seasons in one day. Two maybe.

Food

One word: mostly excellent. This is bad news for our weight. Since our cooking equipment is still traveling in a container, we’ve had to resort to takeout more than ever before in our lives. It’s great. And comparatively cheap. But I still want to start cooking myself.

Mobile & fixed Internet

This is a mixed bag. On the other hand, my mobile “broad”band works nicely and has good coverage and is decently priced for a pre-paid broadband. Mobile services and things like mobile Facebook usage are also advertised quite a bit and it seems Australia is not as much behind Europe as I was led to believe. Behind, maybe, but not the five years some say.

However, the fixed broadband side has one HUGE minus: all connections are metered and usage-limited. The maximum cap you can find is generally around 60GB per month and that’s bloody expensive – now, 60GB is what I sometimes used in one weekend, so this presents obvious challenges. Or rather, will present when I get a connection. If I get a connection. A “no worries” BigPond guy said my cable broadband (30Mbps would be considered very fast indeed here) should be installed in 5 or 7 or 13 business days, depending on which guy you talked to; the initial sales guy said 5, the actual order processor said 7 and the technical people said 13 business days. Figures. We’ll see.

Energy paradox

This is something I will likely dwell on much more in the future, but I’m perplexed: Australia has one of the worlds’ best potential for solar power – and the country produces pretty much all electricity with coal. There are – now, finally – some good incentives for insulation and solar heating, but even brand new houses have single-glass windows. Many things like these don’t really compute, so I’ll get back to this after further study.

A little over two weeks ago, we switched hemispheres. This has had quite a few impacts, one of which as you can see has been a dramatic slowdown in posting frequency here.

As we’re slowly settling down and getting connected, that hopefully will change back to normal within a few weeks time – but until then, bear with me for a little while longer. Thanks for reading though and I hope to post something more meaningful sometime soon!

Apologies for the uncharacteristically long break since the previous post; I’m on semi-vacation and semi-disconnected from the Internet, counting down the days until switching seasons. I’ve also been visiting relatives, eating way (way!) too much, BBQ’ing almost every day, test driving cars as a purchase of one is imminent and a bunch of other things, but most importantly I’ve tried to enjoy the wonderful summer weather that finally landed itself over Finland:

Anyhow, here are also some random thoughts of the day that I thought are good to write up about:

Ready for another recession? And gas prices of 2 euros per liter?

There is an important topic that has been sorely missing from mainstream media; once we get out of this recession and oil demand rises, so will the prices since supply cannot – and never again will – keep up. However, most of the world cannot afford prices of $150 or $200 per barrel, so the increasing energy costs will drag the world economy into another recession. And so it will continue until alternative energy supplies will be scaled up to make some meaningful impact; let’s say 20 years minimum.

As a consumer in Finland, this means gas prices (and the prices of everything else, too, for that matter) will rise soon enough. They may even hit 2 euros per liter or even higher, whereas in many other parts of the world the relative impact will be even greater “thanks” to our tax structure. Now would be a good time to start tracking and comparing prices at the pump with crude prices as the general feeling is that companies always hike prices when crude prices go up but “never” lower them. Might make for an interesting graph in a few years’ time.

Elsewhere, this and related topics have been covered nicely lately. I recommend at least:
• The Oil Drum: The trouble with energy
• Resource Insights: Which matters most? The size of the tap or the tank?
• Peak Oil News: Peak Oil Crisis: stifling a rebound

Swine flu making its rounds

So it seems swine flu is quickly becoming established pretty much everywhere. Even here in the remote Northern parts of the world, there has been the first confirmed “local” infection. The good news, of course, is that the strain is proving to be a very mild one indeed – reportedly even milder than “normal” influenza, which is great. But the worry remains that it might mutate into something significantly worse while it’s making its rounds.. so perhaps it’d be better to catch it now and be done with it? Maybe a swine flu infection now would offer immunity even against the potential new mutations? Or not.

Another thing I wondered was whether there have ever been studies on whether people using public transport get more (or less) influenza infections than people driving private cars? It might seem that people on a bus are in a greater risk, but they might also have better resistance to bugs in general due to broad exposure of all kinds of viruses. Anyone know of any studies to this regard?

Spring seems to be finally making some headway into Finland, with temperatures reaching +12C today. With every spring, there comes some sort of a desire to clean up a little at home. If you ignore the urge long enough, you can get away without actually doing anything about it – but unlike most springs, this spring we actually went ahead and started doing a major spring cleanup. And when you do that, at least the following observations can be made:

• People gather amazing amount of useless stuff over the years; all unused storage space eventually becomes inundated.
• Much of the supposedly important stuff becomes gradually less and less important over the years until it’s just junk taking up space.
• Most small kitchen appliances are evil; for example, who needs a multi-function kitchen machine when you have a good blender and a set of knives? And just how often do you use that fondue pot? Or the egg / rice / water / some other stupid cooker?
• People say “Your junk is someone else’s treasure”, and sometimes it’s true: you can indeed sell some of your junk. Sometimes, however, junk is just junk.
• You have too many of them anyway. This applies to lots of things; I had maybe 20 kitchen knives – I only ever use three of them, four max. The rest? Junk. I have hundreds of books, but how many of them do I read even occasionally? Not hundreds, that’s for sure. The rest? Junk.
• Finnish climate sucks – you actually do need like ten types of clothing minimum (see this old post from three years ago).

I wrote about clutter about a year ago and I can now wholeheartedly agree, along with 66% of the population, with the statement “It makes me feel better when I get rid of some of the clutter in my home”.

This isn’t important, and neither is this or this … hey wait a minute!

There are also dangers in cleanups, especially if one is a bit over-zealous in the execution phase. A day after throwing away lots of old books that nobody, including myself, wanted, I was looking for a pile of library books I was supposed to return to the library. I couldn’t find it anywhere and neither could my wife, so she told me to go check the trash, just in case. So I’m thinking “no way are they there”, but after enough unsuccessful searching at home I did go check, just in case.

Turns out it’s a good thing the trash room isn’t emptied every day. I found the library books sitting neatly in their own paper bag, along with lots of other books that I actually intended to throw away.

*oops*.

Oh cool – but what the heck is it?

Finally, one of the joys of doing an inventory of things is finding weird stuff. Like this one below; DVDExpress was an excellent store for ordering DVDs from some 10-15 years back and I used them extensively. One time I found this card along with my order:

I still have no clue whatsoever what that’s supposed to mean. But it was weird enough for me to keep it all these years – until now. Now I tossed it.