Cycling in Sydney

I used to cycle to and from work once or twice a week when living in Balmain, mainly because I had things to do when I finished and no car at the time so it was convenient. Having now moved house, had a baby and bought a car all since my last blog post things have changed just a bit... I now cycle to and from work 4 or sometimes 5 times a week mainly because it's the quickest way to get from Clovelly to Walsh Bay and back each day. It means I can leave work around 5pm (I know, but I have a baby to bath now) and be home in 30-40 mins depending on what gets in my way. If I'm lucky and ride fast I even get time for a dip in the ocean to cool off as well!

Anyway enough about me. Cycling in Sydney is not half as bad as everyone told me it would be and as I had expected. I find vehicles (especially buses) taking a wider birth from cyclists that they ever do when I'm driving by (my new) car. Let's face it, Sydney drivers are some of the worst in the world (from my experience travelling - which includes Buenos Aires, Argentina!!) for lack of patience and road-rage. Only once since starting to cycle approx 80-100km a week have I had a motorist deliberately cut me up - I get cut up just about every time I get in the car! The funny thing is, the prat in the Suzuki was just annoyed I was catching him up at every set of lights and getting in front of him again so proved the point he was (marginally) faster in his over sized motorcycle with 4 wheels by trying to knock me off - I'm deliberately careful to keep a good distance from cars as much as possible so it' wasn't as close as he would have liked I'd say!

So why are Sydney (and maybe it's Australia wide) drivers so aggressive toward other vehicles? You could hardly say it's the busiest city in the world for traffic, it just seems everyone is in such a hurry they lose all disregard for other drivers - I feel safest on a cycle or in a bus for sure.

One other debate between cyclists seem to be whether listening to music whilst cycling is acceptable? I personally do listen to my ipod everyday and would go insane without it but I have taken on-board friends comments and only listen through one ear now - leaving the other ear to listen out for trouble behind me. I'm pretty good at knowing what's going on all around when I'm cycling and keep a good eye left and right and behind regularly as well - but I guess a tooting motorist about to hit me could be a welcome warning some day!

Happy cycling to those who are brave enough to try, I can recommend it in Sydney but keep your wits about you, be careful and take it easy. To those who drive around Sydney on a daily basis - you have my pity but don't be a plonker, slow down, chill out and don't take it personally if I wizz by on my bicycle!

Cheers
Tim

Bring back traditional Fish & Chip wrapping in Australia

Twice now I've had fish & chips in Sydney from what I'd regard as traditional fish & chip shops (not restaurants selling takeaways as well) and they've been served in a ridiculous box with more cardboard than food. Aside from the extra cost this must bring, its environmentally insane and to top it off the fish & chips go cold before you get out the shop door.

I asked the guy in the shop I went to most recently what the story is, he told me they would prefer to use good old fashioned paper but health and safety don't allow it - WTF is going on here! He also mentioned it costs them (and therefore us) a lot more to package in boxes, will someone give me a good reason why paper is less hygienic than cardboard, unlikely because THERE ISN'T ONE!!

I don't want to blame individual shops as it seems they may not have a choice but, I'd like to list my experiences of cardboard craziness here and have others add theirs as well, please help me stop this charade and use this blog post to start a petition to "Bring back traditional paper wrapped fish & chips".

My two offenders so far are:

Dockside Seafood - 4/314-322 Darling St, Balmain, NSW, 2041
Bay Seafood - 485a Darling St, Balmain, NSW, 2041

Add a comment with your experience and where it occurred.

Cheers
Tim

Jägermeister & the Jägerbomb

How can a drink so nasty taste so good!

Take a shot of whisky or tequila - you practically have to close your eyes and groan just to remotely enjoy the event. Now take a Jägermeister, it's a completely different story for me. This is the first shot since the ole days of that very drinkable peppermint liqueur called Clarise or something (I can't remember how to spell it properly but it was good) or the more recently popular Goldschlager that I've come across something so smooth. It doesn't seem to hurt a bit!

I had the pleasure of enjoying a couple of Jägermeister (one of which turned into a Jägerbomb after some arm-twisting) at a work colleague Krysten's (aka America) 25th birthday party up at the Glenmore pub in The Rocks Sydney. They certainly set us up for a fun night of good old fashion 'talking crap', priceless!

The worrying thing for me is, the past few times I've had Jägermeister I've absolutely looooved it. The longer I can keep a bottle of that stuff out of the house the better I think - anyone going through duty free Sydney soon?!

Salud!
Tim

Diving at Shelly Beach near Manly in Sydney

It'd been over 5 months since my last dive so was great to get underwater again and take a look around at the Shelly Beach area, about 30 mins North East of Sydney.

I was diving with a mate Paul and through the guys at Pro Dive Manly. The team at Pro Dive are cool guys with a lot of experience and a good set-up, our Divemaster Rob was open to ideas of what we wanted out of the dives and as we only had a small group of four we didn't have to wait around for too long.

Given Shelly Beach is a marine reserve (no fishing allowed) the sealife seemed larger and more mature than usual. On dive one we saw a massive Cuttlefish that took a liking to my mask (the Divemaster seemed to think they like bright colours and mines purple and orange) and swam slowly toward me like playing chicken getting very close before I moved to avoid a collision - it's eyes we're amazing, we definitely had a moment! Apparently they have a strong jaw and can grab onto things quite quickly and aggressively, I was right to move away I guess.

On dive two we saw a massive Flathead, I didn't know they got that big, this one was about a metre long and would've tasted brilliant I'm sure.

The visibility was generally good and the bottom temperature a mild 18 degrees considering it's winter in Australia now. It did get cold about 15 mins into the second 45 min dive when we all wished we had dry suits on!

I'll definitely dive with Pro Dive again, hopefully Long Reef and soon!

Cheers
Tim

My Worthy Watch blog

Over the past few months I've been watching a lot of DVD's at home. I've always enjoyed films but more recently have almost become addicted. We have a local DVD rental store just a few minutes walk from home, who know us well enough now not to have to ask for a card or name - they don't even expect us to pay at the time and generally say 'just bring the money next time if you don't have it on you'!

Also, given Mel (my wife) is heavily pregnant we don't spend as much time socialising or 'going out' as we used to which is all part of the nesting process of having a child (so I'm told).

Anyway, I've started a new blog to document the films I'm watching and will give my own unprofessional and potentially useless view on them. I've added a ratings module (which kind of works) so anyone can rate the film if they've seen it too and a comments module to write personal comments on the film or my blog post.

http://worthywatch.blogspot.com/

Cheers
Tim

Losing my Mac virginity

Thanks to the clowns who broke into our house a few weeks back and stole our HP laptop, we're now the proud owners of a new MacBook Pro! A few years back when I was a programmer I wouldn't have contemplated using a Mac for fear of loss in efficiency and productivity. I was not alone in this thinking, there was only one Mac in the office used mainly for testing our websites actually worked on one - not that we really cared too much if they did or not back then! Fast forward to present times, I work at Yahoo! with many talented developers and engineers walking around with their MacBook's tucked under their arms. Gone are the days of only designers, gadget geeks and rich folks using Mac's, but why is that all of a sudden? It was well known back in the mid-late 90's that only around 10% of computers we're Apple manufactured and most of those we're used by design folks.

Personally, I switched for a few reasons but mainly because of build quality, software & hardware from the same manufacturer (always been the case I know but...) and my increased interest in photography. As I'm no longer programming that's not really a factor but with even developers now turning to Mac for their front-end experience if I did decide to chip the rust off the coding side of my brain again I'm confident I'd be in good hands.

I'm still learning the ropes (thanks Seb for the Mac Command = PC Ctrl tip last week) and must get a mouse to bring back the right-click but so far I'm impressed. Looking forward to when I get time for a decent session with the camera, that's when it's value will truly manifest I think!

Concluding point, stuff just seems to work on a Mac (and how many years have I ignored pesky people saying that to me).

Cheers
Tim

Holidays

Twelve Apostles
Originally uploaded by timbo262

Having spent the best part of the last month on holiday I've plenty to blog about, sadly I'm a bit short on the photo front given my camera was nicked from our house; but I won't dwell on that!

Mel's parents arrived end of March, we had a full itinerary set up on tripit.com and wasted no time getting into it. Long walks around Sydney, a trip down to Melbourne with drive on the Great Ocean Road and a night in the Blue Mountains we're highlights with plenty of nice dinners and a good few beers along the way too.

I have to admit to being surprised and astonished at the beauty of the Great Ocean Road and Blue Mountains, it's often hard to get excited about other countries natural beauty coming from NZ but it did not disappoint - there we're even some friendly Aussies to chat with here and there too! My fav accommodation on the trip has to be in Apollo Bay where our place was within spitting distance to the ocean boasting empty beaches and some near perfect waves.

My return to work was short lived (1.5 weeks) before setting off again to NZ on a trip based around two Super 14 Hurricanes matches in Wellington. Mel stayed at home in Sydney while I 'swanned off' (Mel's words not mine) to NZ for a week. I spent a lot of time with family and friends and two nights away fishing (unsuccessfully) with my mate Tavis. It was awesome to catch up with everyone again.

Now it's back to work until Bruce arrives in July when I'll take yet more time off to go surfing (I mean look after him)!

Cheers
Tim

Flickr Interestingness, Contacts and The Commons

Some of the most interesting things happening in my life over the past couple of weeks have been work related, presenting and evangelising Flickr to external partners (sadly nothing particularly interesting personally) so I thought I'd plug some pretty cool features on the photo sharing site (which those of you who know me well know I not only love Flickr but happen to work on it at Yahoo! as well).

Interestingness
Flickr takes a whole bunch of things into consideration when selecting photos for the interestingness photostream, for instance where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favourite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing (I copied that last bit straight from flickr.com, sorry). One feature within interestingness I particularly love is where you can browse using a calendar and see most interesting photos from a particular month like March 2009, wicked!

Contacts
Flickr has recently redesigned this page to make it easier to browse your contacts and to straight away see who your most active contacts are, you need to be logged in to see this feature, just head for 'Contacts List' in the nav bar. You can even sort so you see who out of your contacts has uploaded the most public photos to Flickr, one of my Flickr meet-up (another story) contacts has over 15,000 public photos!

The Commons
Another fantastic initiative from Flickr is The Commons where you can find the "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives". You can add tags and leave comments on photos to make the collections even more descriptive and worthwhile to others. I could (and sometimes do) spend hours browsing these, we even have a few Commons partners from Australia & NZ including the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, State Library of NSW, Australian War Memorial, State Library of Queensland and the National Library NZ!

With holidays on the way in April I hope in my next post I'll be able to show off some new pics from my own Flickr photostream and tell some stories, or perhaps I'll just end up plugging the cool (and very useful) tripit.com website we used to build the holiday itinerary!

Cheers
Tim

Coldplay gig at Acer Arena in Sydney

Coldplay at Acer Arena
Originally uploaded by timbo262

It's rather ironic that this post is about the very thing I said I wasn't planning to do again in my previous post! Mel had been talking a lot about how much she wanted to see Coldplay in Sydney but given the previous experience of the Acer Arena we hadn't really bothered looking around for tickets.

I've seen Coldplay at a festival in England before, in their early days together as a somewhat less popular band. They were good but not hugely memorable. Anyway knowing how much Mel wanted to see them I went onto Gumtree Australia to see if I could pick up tickets last minute from someone who could not make it after all. I sent a few emails to people advertising tickets at face value $140 each, telling them all I'd be willing to pay $200 a pair. Fortunately one guy wanted a quick sale and even drove over to Balmain to make the exchange, result!

I have to say, I really felt like I was taking one for the team by going along and tried to show enthusiasm beyond what I was feeling before the gig. I had no idea Chris Martin and the band would put on such a great show, worth every cent we paid and more... One of our friends in NZ said when she found out I'd bought Mel tickets as a surprise "has Tim had brain surgery or something", I'll take that to mean I'm losing my "squeaks when he walks" reputation!

I'd definitely recommend seeing Coldplay live if you've not already done so; Chris Martin is lively, energetic and bloody funny at times. The floor show is fantastic, enough said and it would be like telling you the end of a movie to say more.

Oh and the sound in Acer Arena was great this time round!

Cheers
Tim

Fall Out Boy gig in Sydney

Weekend before last Mel and I went to see a Fall Out Boy gig in Sydney. It was actually my birthday that day which I decided to keep pretty quiet this year, must be something to do with turning 33!

I booked the tickets quite a while back and missed out on standing, they only had seated tickets left and I'd contemplated not going for that reason as last time I sat at a rock concert (Linkin Park) I vowed to never do it again! It turns out sitting was better in Mel's condition anyway, well it would have been if it weren't for so many overweight (not really relevant but a fact) screaming girls who we're acting like they'd never been let out of the house before. I've got nothing against people having fun but was never stupid enough to buy a seated tickets at a gig and then stand the whole time so no one else could see (unless everyone stands up therefore defeating the purpose of a seated event). We certainly felt our age as well!

Fall Out Boy we're OK and played all the favourites as expected. I was disappointed with the quality of sound, not sure if that was the fault of Patrick Stump (lead singer) or the Acer Arena acoustics. Sound did not seem to be an issue when The All-American Rejects played as backup, they rocked!

As with the experience last year in going to a game of Rugby at ANZ stadium in Homebush, I'll be unlikely to return to Acer Arena (also in Homebush) - it's just too far out of the city and not good enough to be worth the hassle in my opinion.

I'll not stop listening to Fall Out Boy on my ipod at the gym though, where I can enjoy the music without the loud obesity looming!

Cheers
Tim

Great viral video... confirming the history of NZ and Australia (from a Kiwi's perspective anyway)

Many famous historian has debated over the times when Australia and NZ we're part of the African continent and eventually broke away to form a new land mass. This viral video gives you an idea (from a NZ perspective) of what happened next (or rather over millions of years).

www.aust.keanewzealand.com

Cheers
Tim

Australia day in Sydney

Australia Day in Sydney
Originally uploaded by timbo262

Not being Australian I've never really thought too much about what the Australia Day celebrations are about. We have Waitangi Day in NZ to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, a treaty between Maori and British people to essentially make NZ part of the British Empire but Australia Day is slightly different and perhaps even more controversial.

Despite the controversy surrounding Australia Day where many believe it's more a celebration of the destruction of Indigenous culture by British colonialism it's a day off work and Sydney puts on a number of events in and around the city.

Mel and I spent the day with friends Ian and Jane, we decided to take it pretty easy and not try to plan things too much. I cooked up some bacon and egg pie, made a salad and took a chilly bin (esky, cool-box etc) with some beers. We jumped on a ferry from Balmain East to Circular Quay and had the opportunity to see some of the 'dressed up' ferries that has previously raced in the harbour. The most unusual one being a ferry with a huge yellow duck on top of it!

The city was alive and after a walk through The Rocks we found a spot under the bridge up on the grass bank where we chilled out, had some food and beers and waited for the tall ships to finish their race from further up the north shore. We had a couple of games of Boules (Pétanque) and a game of Grass (the card game) too.

Darling Harbour was our next intended destination, having run out of beers Ian and I we're keen to stop somewhere on the way for a quick pint. Strangely enough we ended up in the Captain Cook which is one the local pubs I go to from my office in Millers Point. It was relatively quiet compared to other pubs in the area (it's not as trendy and generally full of a considerably older crowd) but quickly became much busier when the heavy rain came down. Our intended one quick pint turned into quite a few more (well it was raining pretty hard outside).

The rain was not going away in a hurry so having consumed more than enough beer for one day we all grabbed a taxi and headed back to Balmain. The rain really did spoil the day a bit and the fireworks display in Darling Harbour later in the evening must have been a lot quieter than if the weather was fine.

All in all we had a fun day but I do question whether it should be such a celebrative day given the sensitive controversy surrounding it. I know all too well from NZ that we often celebrate things we really don't fully understand and treat it more as 'just an extra day off work' than for it's true meaning!

Cheers
Tim

Whitsunday Islands trip

Most fun to be had on a pontoon...
Originally uploaded by timbo262

Some might say we we're greedy to take a second holiday (after NZ) this past Christmas/New Year and they'd probably be right - but I've always been one for plenty of holidays to different places and remember something a good friend mad Geof once said "you've got to be out there doing stuff and not sitting around thinking about it"...

Anyhow, the trip to Whitsunday Islands up in Queensland, Australia was the idea of Kris and Sarah, friends from the UK who planned to be over for New Year. They suggested it way back in mid 2008 before I knew much about the Whitsunday area but knowing Kris as the well traveled bloke he is let them do all the organising. Him and Sarah got us a great apartment in Airlie Beach called Portside Apartments and Kallan and Nat the other couple coming along sorted cheap flights.

Airlie Beach is pretty small but has all you need and is a good base for trips out to the Islands themselves. After some debate (you know me) we all kinda agreed to go on one larger boat trip to the outer Great Barrier Reef and one smaller one to Whitsunday Island and the famous Whitehaven beach. Only two operators go to the GBR and unfortunately both take huge groups of people with not a lot of adventure involved. After a horrifically long journey to which Mel felt seasick all the way to the reef (our boat broke down) we we're dropped on the pontoon where the hoards of people filed off and into the enclosed area for snorkeling around (and over if you dare evade the security who are circling in boats which Mel and I did) a rather worn out and colourless reef. Before snorkeling with Mel I did shoot down for a scuba dive, the deepest we could go before hitting the bottom was about 13 metres and the diving was pretty unattractive but worthwhile only for the huge Maori Wrasse fish who pretty much followed us on the dive the whole 45 mins we we're down - awesome!
The only other activity worth mentioning on this day trip was the water slide off the pontoon into the ocean, always a crowd pleaser and a whole lot of fun for the big kids among us.

The second day trip we took on a smaller, faster speed boat with only 25 people was a lot better. We could get around Whitsunday Island quickly and go places the bigger boats couldn't get. Our captain, a friendly South African was great to talk to and very cautious while making sure we had some fun and got the adrenaline going. Hats off to Ocean Rafting, an award winning business who know how to organise a great day out on the water.

The rest of the trip was spent either in the apartments pool, eating, drinking or getting plenty of sleep.

A few tips if planning a trip to the Whitsundays:

1. don't believe the hype about 'stingers', they are there I'm sure but we didn't see any and the suits you can hire to protect yourself are no fuss at all
2. don't try to get to the outer Great Barrier Reef from Airlie Beach, save that for when you are further up North as I'm sure it's more spectacular than the disappointingly destroyed spot they take you to
3. go on a trip with Ocean Rafting, they rock in my opinion! Oh and make sure they take you to Mantaray Bay to snorkel, stunning!

Bonza
Tim

P.S. Mel's pregnant, but most of you already know that right...

New Years Eve in Sydney

New Years Eve fireworks, Sydney
Originally uploaded by steverofe

Crikey, two blog posts in one day but I'm on a bit of a catch up again!

It's hard to believe I'm 32 and only just had my first Sydney based New Years Eve. It's long been regarded as 'the place to be' and did not disappoint. It was always going to be touch and go if we made it back from NZ in time to host a party at our place as our flight was scheduled to land in Sydney around 5:30pm on NYE. Fortunately Air New Zealand did not let us down and we even managed to meet friends Steve and Sara Rofe at the airport (they we're coming down from Queensland for the party) to share a cab to Balmain.

Some other friends Jane and Ian had kindly been round to our place earlier in the day to get the meat out of the freezer and drop in some balloons, lights and poppers. After setting these up the drinking started around 7pm and then the BBQ got cranked up. As far as NYE goes it was pretty tame for most the evening (we’re getting old eh) although we did have a few extra 'cheers' when Kris and Sarah returned from 'getting some fags' to announce they just got engaged! Sarah then spent a lot of the night talking to family and friends back in her home country Canada – bless her.

The kiddies’ fireworks at 9pm we're pretty impressive but nothing compared to the main event at midnight. The view from our bedroom balcony lived up to expectation, the photo next to this blog post an example of what we saw for around 15 minutes non-stop.
The last of us finished up at around 3am after a quick drink at our local, The London Hotel in Balmain and then a final session involving red wine and lots of cheese and crackers back at home - nice!

If we're in Sydney to see in 2010 it might be good to go right into the city somewhere and soak up the atmosphere there, we'll have to wait and see if that’s an option.

Cheers
Tim

Christmas Day

Christmas Day
Originally uploaded by timbo262

It was SO good to be able to spend Christmas with my family in NZ this (now last) year!

We started the day with mothers home-cooked eggs benedict which was pretty bloody good and washed down with some champagne. We then moved on to my sisters place (just round the corner) where a full-on turkey lunch awaited us. Kelly made some pudding (pics on my Flickr photostream if we're connected as friends or family) which was like a layered cake thing with cream, puff pastry and some chocolate - it was pretty darn good too!
The highlight of the day for everyone was watching Ella (my new niece) open her presents and just be generally entertaining like kids are.

Last but not least was another turkey dinner at my Nan and aunt Jodi's house. I've not had much of a chance to spend time with them over the past few years so it was nice to have a good catch up with everyone, enjoy some good food and be entertained by Brynn, Jodi and Shane's new baby boy (who is a cool chap to hang out with already!).

Another highlight was watching Nigel open a 1997 bottle of red, it took a while to talk him into it but once open we had no trouble getting through it - as you do!

The idea for this next Christmas day of 2009 is for Mel and I to host in Sydney. It will be awesome if mum, Kelly, Nigel and Ella can make it!

Bonza!
Tim