To be or not to be...

Or have I used that title already?

I always have so many thoughts going through my head that I want to write. Commentary on this or that, opinions on everything, my views and beliefs, interpretations, etc., etc., etc. But when I get online I don't feel like it; maybe I don't feel that I have them quite sorted out, or my mood has changed, or when I write it down it somehow doesn't have the impact that it seemed to have in my head. Whatever the reasons are it just doesn't happen as often as I would like.

And so this ends up being a diary more than anything.

I have written about anti-perspirants before. I never needed them until I went to Singapore first time. Then when I lived there I had to use them every day and so got to test a few. Nivea was sold everywhere and at first was the only one I could get my hands on, but it was so useless; "24 hour protection" it says, as do they all, but two hours was all it was good for. I found Colgate Mennen Speedstick to be the best, often giving four to six hours worth of protection. Well I have tried Dove here, and it was even worse than Nivea!!! Hard to believe I know, but in a tee-shirt, in winter, with my arms bare and chilled, it still failed after one measly hour. But wait! It gets worse! The TV ad promises "no more white marks", but I have never had any other anti-perspirant leave more white residue on my tee-shirts than this stuff - it has got to be the most useless excuse for an anti-perspirant ever invented.

My new contract got delayed again. No real surprise, it is the civil service, finding their own arses with both hands is hard enough, trying to get a decision made is pushing it up hill. But my friend had hopes that he could get it started last Monday, then sometime this week, then next Monday. Now it is sometime next week, but my access won't be ready on Monday and they were worried about their budget limits - me costing so much more than most contract staff. But I have to start with meeting management and then talk to their staff and familiarise myself with the data maps that they have and undertake some discovery. So there is some work that has to happen at the start that is not reliant upon me having computer access. So I will go in late to meet management, then maybe leave early that first day.

They are being strict on five days of eight hours only. No six and a half day weeks and no fourteen hour days. And the initial project has been cut back to two months; something that most of their staff don't think can get done in six months! Still, at this point it is not sounding too difficult and I wouldn't be surprised if two months leaves me with lots of room to move.

I have bought Overlord II. I wanted to get Halo 3; it was the most interesting thing at Avcon, but so far it is only out on consoles (read kiddy toys, not yet available for grown-ups). So I got Overlord II which I saw Paul demonstrating (on console, projected onto a big screen) saying his Mum wanted it. It is fun, mostly, but it has some huge bugs and some outright impossible puzzles. It has that problem where after you have been playing for a while then when you try to walk forward you get a loud beeping and nothing happening. I had that recently in some other game, but here it has the added twist that boxes pop up with CHINESE writing!!!!!

Now I have heard of a lot of companies outsourcing stuff to India, but outsourcing their coding to China???? And how is it that such buggy programmes are released onto the public? Don't these wankers play test these things?

But aside from that; there is a bit that I just can't get; after you kill the spider queen and then you have to get the spider-riding green minions to run up the walls and activate a series of switches, then your platform rises and you have another similar puzzle. But in this second one I just cannot get from switch two to switch three in time, and quite frankly I don't think that it can be done. Not given the constraints put upon a player using a mouse to guide the minions; it is just not accurate enough. Or to be more precise; the little bastards just don't go where you tell them to go. Maybe it works with a console, and this game probably came out on console first and has just been ported to PC. But it sucks. The entire game quest progression is stalled because I can't get out of this with my spider riders to hit the next set of wall-mounted switches to get into the city that is holding everything I need to continue the game. Like most games it is linear that way. I can go other places, and do other stuff, but the central game story won't progress unless I can get through this little aggravating piece of shit.

Have to get birthday presents for both my father and my step-father. I have no idea what to get either of them, save that I don't want to get my father a book this year. I have gotten him books the last few presents and I don't think he reads any of them! Anyhow, my mum and her husband will be driving to Adelaide this Saturday, a drive of three and a half hours, then they will be driving through the city centre to a hardware mega-store, then back to my sister's and then back down south. They will probably drive right passed my new apartment, which address they do have, but they will not stop, they will not visit. I lived in a gorgeous house with a gorgeous view over the city and out to the sea at Blackwood for two years and they never visited. I lived for a year at Mt Barker and they never visited (even though they drive through Mt Barker on their travels to and from the city). I lived next door to my sister in Macclesfield for eight years and they would visit her and not me. Do you get the picture?

Favourite child syndrome. A common problem with their generation, and yet she has the gall to criticise my paternal grandmother for doing stuff just like that. Not that my mother hasn't been great, and I owe her heaps; she and Nanna put me through college and I wouldn't be earning the money I do now if it weren't for them (forget the concept of Australia providing a free education for its children, and this was twenty years ago). And my sister has had a hard life, and hard times with both of her parents, and I am okay with her finally being on the receiving end of some favouritism. But that doesn't reduce in anyway how much this sort of crap annoys me. So I am making a point of not being at home that day; will be visiting my father who was interstate for his birthday, and will leave my step-father's present at my sister's. Not that either of my siblings will be visiting my father, or likely giving him any present or even a phone call; but that is a reality of his own creation, so he can live with it. I didn't talk to him for twenty five years.

So this is it; back in a dull, boring, and fucking COLD little town (and I meant that thermally - I am freezing!), in a society that is emotionally crippled and sexually neurotic, culturally void, intellectually dead, but pays well.

Avcon

It was Avcon this weekend; Adelaide's Anime (and Manga) and Video (gaming) Convention. For the first time not held at Adelaide Uni, but at the Adelaide Convention Centre. A rather suitable place to hold a convention you might think.

Personally I am glad that it has finally moved out of the student union building; it is a sign of maturity. I have been saying for as long as it has been around that it shouldn't be there. I just don't like the 'kiddies' image it gives it.

Having said that, I didn't really enjoy myself. Not enough anime. There used to be six to eight anime screening rooms, now there were two, and one of those held other things as well. It was good that there was a lot more gaming. And the merchandising was handled, and placed, well. But a major reduction in anime and only two anime discussion rooms as well. So mostly it was a case of paying to get in to shop for me. Which doesn't make sense. But there just wasn't enough other stuff to justify the entry price in my view.

There did not seem to be as many people in costumes as previously. Lolitas and sailor schoolgirl uniforms excepted, 'cos there were enormous masses of those. And a jolly good thing too; can you name anything else so sweet, cute, and sexy? And any girl that enjoys dressing in lolita is not going to turn into a feminist bitch, is she? So bring it on!

Other than that nothing much has happened this week. I haven't started work yet, the promised contract is lagging, but I have an interview for another one on Tuesday. The Australian Labor Party can't seem to get to grips with labour, as in the unemployment problem; especially bad for them, on one hand they can't seem to successfully reduce unemployment, on the other they can't reduce the benefits that people get in this country for doing nothing. Tight spot to be in.

Don't know if Rudd has introduced his 60% tax rate yet, or if it will be brought in next financial year. I get my desktop computer back this week and then I will do my tax and find out. Imagine just how loyal you will feel to your country if it demands to take most of your money away. One thing you can always count on the Labor Party for; they will always punish the hard-working and the successful for being hard-working and successful. So, against this backdrop, how many will choose to vote with their feet? You know that I will as soon as I get the next chance.

So weird that Singapore turned out to pay less than half what I get in Australia. I think that I will make the move next time as a functioning business, and not as an individual looking for employment. But Singapore or Hong Kong? We shall see.

Kind of Back Online

I know, nearly three weeks. I have been down at Mum's (no access), I have been at offline hotels (common here, not what I have usually found overseas), and now I have moved into an apartment that is not yet online but a friend has lent me a wireless dongle.

So, mostly I am just reassuring you that I am still here, just been a little out of touch.

Firstly, living space. I have a new apartment, two bedrooms, fair sized living room, large entrance hall (as it would be called in SG) that contains office desk and dining table, toilet and laundry, and bathroom with both shower and a bath, oh, and a balcony. Fully furnished (including cutlery and crockery etc). All for a bit less than my tight little 2 bedroom HDB, but what do you expect? Rent is expensive in Singers, on par with Sydney (well, same size cities), and little old Adelaide is cheap. I am in the CBD, ten minutes walk to the North Terrace / King William Street corner - which is to say 80% of my clients.

Secondly, the other main living requirement. This one is sort of funny, I am having real difficulty with it. I used to earn about twelve thousand a month, I went to Singapore as a major life-changing event, I was expecting to earn good money (everyone says "come to Asia; earn twice as much, pay half as much tax") - but the best I was offered was four and a half thousand a month. I come back here to find the agencies trying to talk me into settling for about half the rate I got a year ago (something about some 'global financial crisis'...). I hesitate, and a good thing too - my private network then starts turning up some very interesting offers that are all pitched at more than I ever earned before.

This is really puzzling me. One of these is set to start this week. I have yet to settle the rate, but the initial discussion was about 30% up from what I got a year ago. I am expecting this to come down though, how far I don't yet know, but I think that the project will get a set budget and I will have to fit that. But we shall see. I am actually in a perceived position of power. My weakness is that I really need to have cash inflow soon, but I can wait a month or two before I am totally desperate. On the other hand; I am good at what I do, probably the best in Australia (honestly, I am not kidding you on that), and there is a near zero chance of the client being able to get anyone else to do what I can do in the timeframes required.

To me this is just a bit of database work. My contact in the client agency wants it done in three months, I think it will only take six weeks, most people are estimating that it would take six months. But I am used to this sort of thing. Been here before, seen this before.

Emotionally my life is void. I am beginning to really question my reality on this. Perhaps I need a major overhaul; dump the concept of 'love' and just go for 'sex'? Perhaps my focus on romance up to this point in my life has been a mirage, one that I should stop chasing. I am dealing with this issue for now by avoiding it; I give myself a year to focus on work and money, then stand back and reassess. I know that I want to get out of Australia - the 'culture' is killing me slowly. But I kind of like the comfortable level of income that I earn here - as shown by the fact that I have just taken nearly a year off to live (incomeless) in SG, and two years before that I finished a break of over half a year (during which time I also went overseas). I can handle taking six month international breaks every other year. I don't want to lose that level of lifestyle.

I can stay in Australia and live with a very good income but spiritually die, or I can move permanently overseas and apparently live at half the material level but feel alive. Unfortunately, I want both.

I am giving myself a year to figure this out.

Back in Town

I am back in Adelaide after my week down at my mother's farm.

Naturally, having spent time on the farm, I am sore. Not from gardening (moving garden beds and laying new ones), and not from installing a new fireplace in the living room; no, my thumbs and forefingers still ache from the fencing on the first day - Noel prefers to use a hard steel wire for his ties and I had to bend hundreds of the damned things.

Also there were Uncle Warren and Auntie Faye. She is half aboriginal and one of the 'stolen generation'; "best thing they could have done for me" she said, she has been re-united with her mother's family and is grateful for being taken away from that life and given what she considers a much better one.

My sister and her friend drove down to stay the night and give me a lift back. And I have returned laddened with scones and biscuits. My mother stated more than once something to the effect of not having liked one of her children being overseas and too far away from her.

I contacted two agencies when I got back last week, and both responded very quickly, and both have been talking to me today and running short-lists past me. I have one other agency that I do have to contact later this week. This is so different from my reception in Singers.

I am staying at my sister's again tonight, but am hoping to move into a small apartment tomorrow; I am calling one back when it passes seven and an agent about another tomorrow morning. But that second one is unfurnished, so I have to make a couple of calls about furniture rental first. Boils down to one furnished one bedroom apartment just out of the CBD for $375 per week, or one two bedroom apartment in the CBD but unfurnished for $275. I have looked at one online furniture rental site and it quotes about $200 a week, but I phoned another guy and he said it was possible to get a package together for one hundred or less but to call after ten in the morning.

I think that the CBD apartment would be worth at least $400 a week to me including furniture, but it is limited to a two month rental only, whereas the other place could be extended unlimited. Still, you can get student apartments in the CBD for less than two hundred a week, often for only about one hundred; not as nice, true, but cheap.