Climate Shock?

People talk about culture shock, and they talk about acclimatising to different environments - I've had a couple of experiences that are a mix of the two.

The sun sets here between 6pm and 7pm during most times of year, so on my way home from the office the sun is pretty low. Add to that the clear blue skies, and the cold aircon on the train, and I find the sensory cues add up to the feeling of 4pm on a clear winter's day in London. The "climate shock" happens when I get off the train, and find that the temperature is in the high 20s.

The other regular shock I get is when there's an overcast day here. My office, the lifts in the
building and the atrium on the ground floor are all heavily airconditioned to what feels like the temperature of a cold day. Looking out the office window on a grey day, subconsiously I'm expecting that I'll walk out of the building and shiver - but in fact I have the exact opposite experience. I'm colder under the aircon than outside under the grey clouds.

spend, spend, spend

I'm very pleased to report that we were successful with our rental application, and moved into our new home on Saturday. It's a lovely place, it feels very us, spacious and homely. It's going to be a joy to come home to in the evening, and that back deck will be great for entertaining (when we make some friends!)

I've started posting photos from our new home on fatcat.

It'll still be a few weeks until my first pay packet comes in, but undeterred by that we've been spending money like it's going out of fashion :) The house is entirely unfurnished, right down to white goods, so we've been shopping whenever we can for however long we can manage. Late night shopping last thursday, we bought a factory second huge Fisher and Paykel fridge freezer (cool feature - the freezer section is at the bottom!) and a 32 inch LCD TV :) As if that wasn't enough cash burnt, on the morning that we moved in we bought a queen size bed and mattress, glass-topped cane table with cane chairs and an electric space heater second hand off a client of Nat's. Still not content with our outgoings, we upped the ante by ordering a new L-shaped leather sofa on Sunday (roll on the 6-8 week delivery period!), followed by a grocery shop to stock up on cupboard items.

Phew! And there are plenty more requirements - bedside tables, computer desk, bookshelves, TV stand, barbecue, microwave, washing machine, wardrobes... the list goes on.

I'm having a little fun researching the ISP situation here, but there's pressure to get a connection in quickly, rather than the pleasure of looking into it in detail for a couple of weeks. There is some ADSL2+ being rolled out in Brisbane, but unfortunately not to our local exchange (yet....). Internode look like a good bet for DSL, or we might end up with Telstra or Optus for cable. I don't want to go with the incumbent if I can at all help it :)

Came across this very useful website full off forums, news and advice about choosing as ISP in Oz. Very much like the old adslguide.org back in the UK.

Video chat rocks, and rip currents suck

It's been a busy few days - here's some highlights:

• caught in a rip current alongside a rocky point along a beach break south of Currumbin Alley, helped some guys out by lending them my surfboard to get back to shore, then ended up in pretty dire straights along with one of them. Bit of a wakeup call, but no harm done.
• had a great time chatting to Naomi and Dave using webcams over Skype, showing them around the house here and getting a tour of their flat. Great to be able to say "nice to see you" instead of just "nice to talk to you" - it makes a real difference. Same goes for seeing Adam, Amanda and Annabel over their newly-setup webcam. Sunday evening's are turning out to be a good chance to catch up with folks back in the UK
  
• Currumbin wildlife sanctuary is a great place, with lovely animals and beautiful setting, but I don't think we can really have our wedding ceremony there. It was worth checking out (and we got a free tour around the place!) but it didn't feel quite right to us for what we have in mind
• Elephant rock cafe, though, will suit us perfectly for the reception - had a tasty dinner there on saturday night.
• And we've found a place to rent that we really like - fingers crossed that our application will be chosen from the pile that will surely be sent in!

Plenty of photos from Brisbane and Currumbin up on fatcat, here.

More excellent news

I start work on Thursday :)

I've landed a contract as a Network Engineer for the IT&T company that services the energy companies here in Queensland. The work looks promising, with lots of hands-on Cisco work and exposure to VoIP implementations, and nice small team of 3 engineers reporting to a single project manager. I absolutely aced the first interview, which was over the phone, even managing to drag out an explanation of BECN and FECN in frame relay from the dim depths of my memory in response to a technical question that just came shooting out of left field. I later heard that another candidate, who had a CCIE I might add, simply couldn't answer the BECN/FECN question :)

It's my first time as a contractor, so that should be a learning curve too. As far as I can tell, I'm on a decent hourly rate. I've taken up the services of an umbrella company to manage all my tax and payrolling so that I don't have any headaches with the financial side of things, and can also get my head round all this talk of tax deductible expenses and see what the hell that actually means for us practically :) I can imagine that lunchtime chats with colleagues are going to be about how best to work the tax system, rather than about where the best surf is ;)

Probably the best thing about this job, though, is that it's based right in the centre of town, on the 20th floor of a huge golden monolith of a building on the bank of the river - should be a nice place to go each day. Probably the worst thing about the job is that it's formal dresscode mon-thurs, which will be something for me to adjust to - luckily fridays are jeans and t-shirt, otherwise I'd probably be suffering after a few weeks.

Getting this job means a number of things for us - firstly, we can get on with searching for a house to rent, and secondly it takes the pressure of Skye for finding a job too. With just my income rolling in we can get started on moving in to our own place, and we afford to be a little patient until the right business analyst role arrives.

My first eBay win!

Very exciting - I won an eBay auction, and bought a surfboard! We'd been watching it for the last few days, and the price was way low with 24 hours still to go, so I created a login (pancakesclimbingfreak) and got started with bidding. Great fun, and in the end I've got a good price for a second hand board. Think I'll get this board wet at the weekend, too :)