January was the height of summer here, and our first-ever vegetables were beginning to bear some fruit. The tomato plant was a success, but unfortunately some unknown animals (most likely possums) thought so, too, and ate a bunch of them. This year we are better prepared with nets.

Summer inevitably brings with it some critters, and it must be said that despite Finland having lots of forests etc, nature comes closer to you in Australia, even in the cities. Many people are not particularly fond of spiders, such as these pretty big huntsman spiders captured here on our fence in February. You may not learn to love them, but you do learn to live with them – and, as far as spiders go, the furry huntsmen are sort of beautiful, aren’t they?

I spent half of March working in Europe, in Brussels and Paris; over the weekend there, I think I exhausted most of Brussels’ interesting sights, from the Atomium pictured here to breweries and museums. While early March is not a particularly pleasant period to visit either city weather-wise, with spring yet to arrive, I do like Europe a lot, though Paris much more so than Brussels – even the ubiquitous crepes in Paris win the ubiquitous waffles in Brussels hands down

In April we went on a road trip, touring to Lakes Entrance, Buchan Caves, Snowy River National park (the edge of which is pictured here) and Canberra. Canberra turned out to live up to its reputation – clean, orderly, uncrowded, and somewhat boring. The kids, however, loved the wonderful science museum there, Questacon, and the War Memorial was pretty impressive as well.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve gotten to know and love the local farmer’s markets, like the closest one at Sir William Fry Reserve, a couple of kilometers from where we live – pictured here in May. The quality & selection of the produce is excellent, supporting local farmers is crucial and you can get some things you can’t easily find elsewhere; stuff like like venison, which makes for a very passable substitution for reindeer when making poronkäristys.

In June, for the first time in Melbourne, I hired a set of studio flashes for a photoshoot gig I did for a friend. Testing the equipment at home, our kids were the natural guinea-pigs and made for supremely cute subjects.

Late July we set off for Singapore for a couple of days’ stop-over on our way to Finland. Singapore is a great place to visit, particularly if you like good food or shopping – really all there is in the city are shopping malls and restaurants, or at least that what it seemed like. I wouldn’t want to live there, though – the climate is too hot & humid, people often not very nice and it’s not what you’d call a family-friendly city either. And I don’t like shopping. It was, however, good to catch up with some of the friendlier people in the city with our friends as guides.

After Singapore, we spent the entire month of August in Finland; it was the first time we went back after moving to Australia in 2009. I took some 7,000 photos during the month, many of which still need to be sifted through, selected and sorted, but the best moments were spent with family and friends; like this one, where me, my father and my son – three generations of men – are going fishing. Perfect, like many moments. Even the weather co-operated, with a sunny and warm August pampering us.

Some three days after returning from Finland, at the very beginning of September, I was off to San Francisco / the Bay Area for a business trip. What made this trip particularly great was that there are now some three good friends living in the area, and that I got to spend a weekend there which meant lots of hiking at various National, State and County parks.

By October, summer (by Finnish standards anyway, the official one starts in December) was in full swing in Melbourne, and many of the warmer evenings were spent on the beach – the kids never get tired of water and sand, and hanging around at the beach is not an entirely unpleasant way to spend time for adults, either One of the highlights was when Amanda found a bunch of live starfish from our local beach.

In November, we spent some time at the local botanical gardens; this flower is from the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne that has great picnic areas and interesting tasks for kids, whereas the Melbourne version has some great water features in the summer, like water vapor fountains, artificial rain in the “rainforest” section of the children’s garden and a small artificial river for wading in.

At the end of December, we went on a vacation for a week to a destination that raised quite a few eyebrows here; we were going to Canberra. Again. Most Australians are generally perplexed why anyone ever bothers going to Canberra, let alone twice within a year – but really it’s not all that bad.

The primary reason for going back was that ever since our visit in April, our kids had been begging to go back to Questacon (the great science museum). And since a) science is a good thing to be excited about, b) one of the best sources of joy is seeing kids happy and c) it wasn’t a good time of the year to visit other destinations on our to-do list (Uluru and Cairns), off to Canberra it was. To be fair, we did include a few other places in the itinerary, too – wonderful experiences like seeing kangaroos in Tidbinbilla, good food in Canberra and quite a few good sights in Cowra (of all places!). We finally made it to a couple of cave tours at Jenolan Caves, too, which were simply awesome:

It felt like 2011 was a year when I did very little traveling in, but looking back it seems I’ve been traveling abroad or domestically in Australia for over 20% of the year, most of it on vacation, which doesn’t feel so little after all. Anyhow, it’s been mostly a great year for me personally (I’ve learned a lot) & our family, and despite the alarming emerging macro trends I’m hoping that streak will continue in 2012.

As for the first day of 2012, I am writing this on January 1st, 2012 and it’s a scorching ~+35C outside with the UV index at 11. I’ve raked a couple of hundred liters of flowers from our driveway (this is a daily exercise this time of the year, as the 20m tree generates a near-infinite number of flowers), the kids have had their water play in the balmy morning weather, and are now enjoying some downtime. A siesta would sound attractive, as would hitting the beach – but probably won’t do that until later in the day after some of the heat dies down. Tomorrow the temperature is forecast to head beyond +40C, but luckily it’s a day off to compensate for January 1st falling on a Sunday – so it’s shaping up to be a rather relaxed start for 2012. Maybe I can even read some of the books that I meant to read on our vacation this past week, but didn’t even open

Happy 2012!

The $35 bagel and the curse of the “luxury” hotels

I’ll tell you one thing; upscale hotels are ripping their customers off left, right and center. I stayed at one of the supposedly best hotels in the city for the first few days, Mark Hopkins San Francisco. The room rate was reasonable (although, I later found out, so deeply discounted I didn’t even get points for the stay!), but the more or less necessary extras were far from it. Parking? $52/day. Internet? $19/day. Breakfast? $32 + tips. Bottled water? $6.50/bottle. Shower? Malfunctioning. Water pressure? Nonexistent. The list goes on. Thanks to one busy morning, I once had just a bagel. Because the breakfast was a fixed-price buffet, this meant I had a $35 bagel; and that only by tipping far less than is the generally accepted norm nowadays.

And no, the price-quality ratio was not too great at that level. It was a pretty ordinary $1-level bagel.

On top of that, “basic” luxury amenities like swimming pools were nowhere in sight. The typical clientele is obviously from a different socioeconomic group than me, which became apparent when I asked if there was a swimming pool nearby. The concierge said sure, there’s a pool a couple of blocks down the hill. The catch? They charge what the hotel concierge said is “a nominal fee of $20” to use the pool. Now I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t think $20 is a “nominal” fee for a swim.

Sure the company paid for the stay, but there is a limit to how much I like even them to be fleeced, so for the latter part of my stay I switched to Crowne Plaza in Palo Alto. Not only was it more convenient considering my last day’s schedule, it was a much better deal. At a lower room rate, one got a bigger, better equipped-for-work room, a swimming pool with hot tub and all, free breakfast, free (actually truly high-speed) Internet and free bottled water. Oh, and a shower that works with decent water pressure and that works without having to call maintenance in the first place.

Enough with that, however. During the weekend I managed to get out and take some photos:

Photos

First, the Muir Woods National Monument; gotta love the big trees.

Another walk took us to the Big Basin area; nice environment for walking and driving alike:

While the forests were ideal bushwalking destinations for the day, The Dish at Stanford was better experienced in the not-too-hot late afternoon sun. This scorching jogging track near the dish is most likely not a pleasant destination in the midday summer sun:

Hotel fountain:

San Francisco, though often foggy, had a couple of sunny breaks. This view is from the Top of the Mark, the restaurant of the first hotel, which admittedly had some pretty splendid views:

The sunny breaks were followed by copious fog pretty much every evening:

It was my first time that I flew on an A380. It was a very pleasant experience, though the inner decor that Qantas chose – various shades of grey – was boring to say the least. Apart from being new, the biggest plus was probably that it’s a noticeably quieter plane than, say, a Boeing 747. Supposedly the cabin is also pressurized to a lower altitude than is typical, so one should feel less jet-lagged. Based on just two legs on it, I don’t feel I can comment on whether it really made a big difference or not. On a negative note, the in-flight entertainment system was a bit flaky, with some ground crew idiots performing a remote system upgrade while the plane was airborne, resulting in an hour of reboots and restarts before it started working again. Btw, it runs Red Hat Linux.

Oh, and the Rolls-Royce engines contained themselves well, thankfully.

On another note, I can’t believe how many people take long-haul flights in full business gear, i.e. suit and all. I felt very positively out of place in my ultra-casual flying attire. It’s not that hard to do a clothing switch at the airport, but it makes flying so much more comfortable.

Over my free weekend in Brussels, I toured some of the main sights. Brussels had a pretty good free aviation museum, that had some old planes, newer planes, small plans and bigger planes – a fairly extensive selection.

Then there’s the Atomium, originally built for the World Fair expo of 1958. Giant spheres, 18m in diameter, that house a science museum of sorts.

One of the more positive surprises was the Cantillon Brewery that turned out to be an educational experience on the nice tour they have there. Lots of interesting beer facts that managed to lift my respect for beer, particularly lambic, a little bit. No, I still don’t particularly like beer.

The Justice Palace was a pretty intimidating place. I could imagine it being an inspiration for, say, the game Doom (which is the most recent FPS that I can remember playing..)

All parks were, in the typical Central European fashion, very geometrical. They would’ve been a lot more pleasant had it not been freezing.

Probably the #1 attraction of Brussels, the peeing dude (aka Manneken Pis) was having a wardrobe crisis and was covered in strange clothes every day. Probably for the better, I mean it was cold..

Trains. Gotta love the high-speed rail in Europe. With 1h20min to Paris (with poorly functioning WiFi on board) it was a joy. However, not all logistics was quite up to scratch. On my way back, I had a horrible time getting to the airport in Brussels, with the train system messed up and the information – particularly in English – lacking badly. Frankfurt airport, on the other hand, was a disaster both ways – almost worse than Heathrow. The more I travel in Asia, the more I prefer Asia to Europe. For example, the Singapore airport was still perfectly functioning and a pleasant place as far as airports go; yet they were completely redoing the terminals. In Europe (as well as in the US) everything tends to get run down past their useful lifetime and only then do people start thinking whether something perhaps should be done to fix them. Airports are a prime example.

In Paris, I had a sunset view of the Eiffel tower. The most entertaining part of the tower was watching the guys who sell the metallic mini-Eiffel towers near the real one. They run back and forth, spreading their mini-towers for sale and then scooping them up and sprinting away the next second when the cops approach, only to return 30 seconds later. It’s like a real-life Tom&Jerry-show. The cops obviously didn’t care enough to actually sprint after them and the security forces didn’t care at all (nor did the salespeople care about them).

When departing Brussels, I saw the most contrails I’ve ever seen at once. It reminded me of their impact on global warming, which apparently is still being debated. There is a recent Nature-article on them, suggesting contrails have a significant impact.

Upon return to Melbourne, I was greeted with what was a truly warm morning and a nice sunrise. A welcome event after being in the cold for a couple of weeks. Also, Melbourne airport was a remarkably easy place to get out of early in the morning. With nobody around, it took me under 15mins to get from the aircraft door to the taxi with the luggage and everything. The taxi part, however, sucks. Seriously, Melbourne should get a rail line to the airport, no matter what the people with vested interests against it say (who seem to be the most vocal in this issue).

Summer was full on in January; spending the New Year’s eve at blistering temperatures, brought down by a massive thunderstorm was an interesting contrast to the typical freezing January-temperatures in Finland.

Our small yard is home to a plethora of interesting creatures. From the early summer cicadas to year-round possums, in February this praying mantis was casually walking around. Later in the year it was followed by stick insects and other critters, but luckily no snakes or poisonous spiders around – yet.

One of the best things about Melbourne (for a family anyway) are the numerous suburban parks; this shot from March is from one of the about dozen parks within a half an hour’s walk from our home.

Another cool thing are the zoos; this shot from April from the Werribee Open Range Zoo is a good example – zoos here are very nice, from both the animals’ perspective (to the extent captivity is good for any animal) and the visitors.

I have been very positively surprised how well we can go on bush- and other walks with our kids. There are many pram-accessible trails and recently even our almost-2-year-old Benjamin has been bravely walking over 3km trips. I think that’s awesome; it means we can get back to our long nature walks much sooner than I anticipated. In May we visited Phillip Island, this shot from the end of the island.

June, the first “summer month” in Finland is fall time over here. While there are not that many coniferous trees in the Melbourne area, Carlton Gardens in the city becomes a spectacular sight in June.

July, the mid-winter, is a good time to enjoy the city and escape to some of the art galleries or cafes to escape from the “cold”. National Galleries Victoria always has some nice installation around their outdoor fountains:

Melbourne is famous for its innovative architecture; this shot from August is a walking bridge near South Bank. The construction reminds me of the typical house insulation here

In September I had the opportunity to take an all-too-rare business trip to one of my favorite cities, San Francisco, for a mobile conference. Loved the city, as always.

In October we took a road trip to Sydney and Blue Mountains. In Sydney we had some hot days perfect for hitting the famous beaches, some cooler days better for sightseeing – Blue Mountains, however, were more like White Mountains. As we didn’t quite expect this chilly conditions, we will have to return to Blue Mountains later for a proper bushwalking experience.

Organic produce and excellent selection of fruit and veggies is a delight to foodies like us. This is our local organic food store in November. Now, with the Queensland floods, the prices of some fruits is bound to go temporarily up by as much as 50%, but thankfully Victoria has fared better without catastrophic crop losses this year, even if we, too, had a drought-breakingly wet spring.

In December summer finally started properly, with the first over +40C day late in the month. This picture is from a place called Hanging Rock.

You’ll find more photos from the appropriate section in the photo-gallery.

Other than that, it had been a few years since my previous US trip. Among the interesting observations that I made were:

• AT&T still sucks. Seriously, how hard can it be to build a decent network? (Ok, so actually, it can be pretty hard in the US, but still, it shouldn’t take this long)

• Silicon Valley is a pretty ironic place when it comes to environmental awareness. On one hand, it felt rather uncomfortable parking my V8 Dodge Challenger rental (thanks to Oracle OpenWorld participants for renting out the city’s normal cars..) next to the Teslas and Priuses. On the other hand, the whole place is still 50% parking lot and 50% one or two-story office buildings. Incredibly inefficient.

• Surprisingly, particularly in light of the crappy networks, Silicon Valley has quickly become the place for advanced mobile services development and incubation. The transformation that has happened in just the past 5 years is amazing – not only the speed activity has ramped up in the Valley, but also the speed at which much of the rest of the world lost the lead.

All in all, I still love San Francisco. Too bad it has to sit on the San Andreas fault which will likely deliver some bad news in the not-too-distant future.

]]> http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/2010/06/18/butterflies/feed/ 1 http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/2010/04/01/everyday-life-suburban-nature/ http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/2010/04/01/everyday-life-suburban-nature/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:51:25 +0000 sim http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/?p=2292 Continue reading →]]> Since the arrival of the kids, we have been spending a fair amount of time at various parks – conveniently they often come with good playgrounds. Below are some photos of these urban oasis near our home; click to enlarge.

Basterfield park has a pond and is especially nice at this time of the year (at least this year, since we’ve had good rainfall over the summer):

Braeside park is a huge (312 hectares) park a short drive away; it has a variety of areas as the following three photos indicate:

Dendy park, especially popular with people with dogs:

This little critter – Green Mantid – I actually caught roaming our back yard – and discovered that if you don’t shut the blinds / curtain in the evening, you will discover them walking on the window, lured by the light.

Sunsets are often excellent here – and happen at a decent hour year round so you’re actually awake to take photos of them The first example is from our back yard..

.. and another one from Basterfield Park.

]]> http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/2010/04/01/everyday-life-suburban-nature/feed/ 1 http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/2010/01/15/great-ocean-road/ http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/2010/01/15/great-ocean-road/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:30:10 +0000 sim http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/?p=2211 Continue reading →]]> I have a terrible backlog of posts to do, but this thing called life nowadays seems to be interfering with blogging. Anyhow, a few weeks back we took a small road trip along the Great Ocean Road for a few days. A few selected photos follows.

Of course, the one thing that cannot be overlooked when driving the Great Ocean Road are the beaches. Many awesome beaches dot the coastline, along with many world-class surf spots. Spots like Jan Juc, which could be classified as not very crowded:

One fascinating place was the Otway National Park and a feature called the Otway Fly – a long steel canopy walk built up to 45m high among the forest. Very impressive, almost had an Avatar-like feeling of a different world being among the massive trees and ferns the size of eight meters across.

The scale of the cliffs (this one near the 12 Apostles) can best be understood by looking at the dozens of people standing on top of this cliff below. Yes there are people there.

Another great place was the Loch Ard Gorge:

And we return to the Otway National Park; what would be a bushwalk without seeing some koalas?

.. or Kookaburras for that matter:

Finally on the way back, we took a walk to the beautiful Stevenson’s Falls waterfall before returning home:

Overall a great trip with some breathtaking and diverse views.

Anyhow, without further ado, some night photos (click on the photos to get 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.