Book Editor

In the movie "the Holiday" Jude Law's character is a book editor. That seems like an excellent job. I read so many books, and to get paid for reading books, and commenting on how to make them better... that must be the best of jobs. I am on to the job site right now!

And Martin did not get angry, he just asked me to make a DVD of RHEL (Linkux RedHat) and I have not stopped multi-tasking as still writing my blog, looking for houses, watching the DVD, drinking wine and helping Martin start up the computer... (he has a degree in Computer Science, I just remember one of our old ones had 2 x power on buttons, one at the back and one at the front ;-)

In Trouble

Martin has spent the past 2 hours downloading a new operating system, called Fedora for his new toy. It had not quite finished by the time he went down the pool for a swim, so he left it running. He has also just spent 30 minutes carrying his new mega-big computer-toy back from China-town and looked absolutely exhausted, but there were no taxis as the police had closed off the street for some reason.
In the meantime I have been watching "the Holiday" on DVD, drinking red wine and looking at houses for sale in Cambridge, UK. It is frustrating not being able to buy a house here, so I look elsewhere. I did find house in my old street, Harvey Goodwin Avenue, which I quite fancy. In any case I decided to stop multi-tasking and focus in the movie, so I closed the computer.
That killed the almost finished down-load.... so, I am not really looking forward to Martin coming back from his swim hoping to install it.
I did re-start it... it has done 5% and estimates another 3h 22min.
In the worst case I will offer him a copy of the latest Linux Red-Hat, but it has no license ;-(

Girls Night In

Martin was away for after-work drinks so I invited some of the girls from work for a Girls-Night-In. We played Nintendo Wii, ate cheese and managed to drink almost 9 bottles of wine between 5 of us. We had great fun though and I now have a whole creation of Miis that will run around when I play. We were all pretty quiet at work today. Maybe next time we pick a weekend. Unfortunately I have no pictures.

A Rainy Sunday

Weather here has been deteriorating for a while now. Spring does not seem to be a very nice time weatherwise. Today it rained, so decided to stay in and move things around. That included furniture, books, CDs (and copy them to my Laptop), VCDs (and copy them to an external HDD), DVDs, Singles, Stereo (and connect it up), etc. Not sure if it is any better, but getting slightly organised. Still many months to go before it is really liveable, and hopefully we have found something nice by then.
Martin is cooking Lobster tails with oven fries, and I am drinking Tyrell's Verdhelo with that.

Car Shopping

As the weather was not too good we decided to go car shopping. we really do need a nice-ish car. The Mazda 121 we have on loan is not much fun to drive and not very comfy, as not A/C. We are not sure what we are looking for, so just wondered around the car dealerships to see if we saw anything we fancied. I found an Audi A4 Estate, a few years newer than my Audi in the UK, but it was around AUD 35k and too much for a car I think. I also quite liked a 3-series BMW coupe, which was just under AUD 40k.
Martin was quite keen on getting some sort of flat-bed truck ??? then a Volvo XC90 as it had DVD players in the back and he could put me there ??? but he also quite liked a baby-blue Audi A4 convertable or a larger version of the Toyota Yaris.
I think we have a while to go before we find something suitable.
It is a shame the German cars are so expensive here, I don't know much about Asian ones.
Karin, we did look at Hyundai and they suggested something smaller than the Santa Fe, just slightly smaller and still 4-wheel drive, but I think it is too large to drive around in. However it was fairly cheap, around AUD $25k brand new.

X-mas Party

Yesterday we had the company Christmas party. Very early, wonder if the city venues are all booked up in Sydney or if the company is just trying to save money. I was a bit concerned with the dress code which was stated as cocktail dress / formal attire. I really did not want to wear a dress so settled finally on black trousers and a silk shirt. However the trousers I has in mind had no pockets, and as was not wearing a jacket there was no place to put keys, money and phone. How do these people think that design trousers without pockets?
Finally I found a pair of black trousers that have always been to small, but I have had hopes to get in to. As the Wii Fit is telling me I am doing well, I had a go as a last resort, and I could wear them. They were not even uncomfortable, so I am very happy.
The party was not anything special. Just a closed off area of a Sydney bar, about 5 minutes walk from home. It was dark, the wine was pretty horrible so I ended up drinking beer, and the food was passed around on little trays. Just nibbles like pieces of chicken and lamb, small portions of risotto in "Chinese takeaway"type containers and bits of veggies. However I ended up talking to a nice crowd from work so not bad overall.

Nearly Perfect

We decided to go to and look at the house yesterday afternoon and it is nearly perfect. It has very large living and dining areas, large modern kitchen, separate study & guest bedroom/bathroom on the entrance floor, with large balconies of the dining and living areas. Downstairs there are 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms and an additional living room opening out to the pool. There is also a large double garage. It is really too good to turn down.
I had a look at commuting times and by bus it is around 2 hours each way, so I will probably have to drive. Unfortunately Sydney traffick is terrible and I will have to keep renting a garage space near work, as there is no parking.
I will try to find someone else who lives in that area to see how they get about getting to/from the office.