Why do the staff at Valve (i.e. Steam Support) have to be such useless shits?
Seriously, for two weeks or more I have been asking them to reset my password. Nothing more, just that. But will they? Noooooo, they insist on trying all of this useless shit that we all know is not going to achieve anything. Please send us a system info file (note that you have to 'save' not 'export', same output, but they are too useless to convert it). Please turn off all of these programs if they are running in the background. None of this achieves anything, and we all know that it won't. Only two things ever work with steam; reinstall or reset.
Just that, nothing else. Uninstall and reinstall the application, or reset your password.
But, as usual, it is my password that is the problem. And, as is often the case, I cannot reset it because their application (more probably at their end methinks) won't accept my answer to my secret question. So I have to ask them to reset the damned password. This is not the first time that I have had to do this, it is not the second, nor the third, nor the fourth, nor the fifth...
You see how useless the application is.
But will the stupid prick at the other end do what I ask?
Noooooo.
Fuckwit has to try all the shit that they always want to try to absolutely no avail.
Won't just reset my password as I asked for two weeks ago.
Dickwads.
Monday, December 6
Friday, December 3
Just Quickly
I have not been blogging, principally because I have been depressed, principally because I have been 'between contracts' for too long. I have exams this week and next, indeed two tomorrow, so don't expect this to be too long.
Let me start by saying that I like Lee Hsien Loong's view on social welfare; the burgeoning welfare state is the biggest single challenge to the Anglo world but few have the inclination to recognise it for what it is. In my view the leadership of Singapore has been wise in avoiding this trap.
My younger brother is a father; his girlfriend has given birth to a daughter - at present she only has two states; crying or sleeping. She kind of looks Asian, I am guessing this comes from my brother's mother who has Asiany looking eyes, I have no idea where she gets that from, but the little girl looks more Asian than my friend's children - who have a Chinese mother. I wonder if it will stay that way as they all grow?
I am having a 'cultural' issue; I am getting pissed, totally pissed, at the ethnics at uni, specifically at the fact that their stupidity and ignorance wastes an hour of most lectures. On one hand there are really dumb questions; we have to use a financial calculator, for financial functions you enter a number, press the button for that variable, you enter all variables except one, then you press 'compute' and press the last variable button, a slide shows all of these buttons, it has numbers above the buttons for all except one, it has the answer below that button. How hard can it be? Apparently it is still quite difficult if you are Indian. But then there are the totally irrelevant questions; if we are talking about interest rates some Indian will have to ask the lecturer if they think bank interest rates are fair and then make some comment about them being mercenary. Then there are questions, lots of them, from Indians that have supposed to have done degrees (we are doing a post grad) and done them in English, that show a total lack of understanding of basic English such as how to write a list of numbers.
My younger brother was complaining about how this was wasting so much time in his lectures. There are about four hundred in his class, of which six or so are White, the rest are Indian and Chinese. He says that he understands the Chinese having troubles and can sympathise; English is not their first language and their accounting system is different from the European model, but the Indians are meant to have studied in English and they are meant to use the same accounting principles, yet they are wasting the lecture with stupid-level questions. My observation is that they also have a tendency to throw out seemingly random answers, perhaps hoping for some recognition for participation, although to be fair, randomness would entail a fifty percent chance of being right whereas they are almost always wrong.
The bottom line is that I am being significantly held back by having to share my lectures with foreigners and our universities should offer Australian-only classes so that we can study at a faster rate. The other major point is that catering to these ethnics is lowering the overall quality of education provision.
I am having trouble with Steam again. I can log in offline, but it will not let me log in online. I tried to reset my password, but it would not let me, it would not accept the answer to my secret question. I have asked Steam Support to reset the password, but rather than simply do as I ask they insist on a lengthy series of email exchanges and a system info output. Why? All they ever do is tell you to reinstall and reset the password; they have no other answers to anything.
I have a contract starting on Monday, it is in the same division of the same department as one of the long term contract offers I had a while ago. I am hoping that I will impress them enough to get this other one happening again. It was advertised in the government notice of vacancies and they did not like any of the applicants, it was advertised in the public press but they got no responses, it was taken to recruitment agencies and I am the candidate that they got offered (indeed I was the only candidate put forward by the largest agency in town) but they then said that they had to get approval to actually progress the position. What does that mean? You advertised it three times without permission to fill the job?
I had a health scare recently; I had a choking problem. My father said that he had the same problem and it was only resolved when he lost weight, and further that the only way he lost weight was through starvation and totally no bread and no potato. ARRGGGGHHHH my two most favourite foods! Anyhow, I have been pretty good with this, I have stopped eating so much bread and am only having flat bread to make 'roll-ups' for lunch, I have reduced the number of times I eat a day, and I have reduced the amount that I eat at each meal. Almost immediately I could swallow better and have had only a few minor issues there. I have not noticed being any thinner though and was whinging about how no amount of exercise and diet got me any skinnier (remember walking the entire length of East Coast Park (two to three hours) every day for six months and not losing any weight?) HOWEVER; my underwear is all suddenly too loose. This must mean something...
Let me start by saying that I like Lee Hsien Loong's view on social welfare; the burgeoning welfare state is the biggest single challenge to the Anglo world but few have the inclination to recognise it for what it is. In my view the leadership of Singapore has been wise in avoiding this trap.
My younger brother is a father; his girlfriend has given birth to a daughter - at present she only has two states; crying or sleeping. She kind of looks Asian, I am guessing this comes from my brother's mother who has Asiany looking eyes, I have no idea where she gets that from, but the little girl looks more Asian than my friend's children - who have a Chinese mother. I wonder if it will stay that way as they all grow?
I am having a 'cultural' issue; I am getting pissed, totally pissed, at the ethnics at uni, specifically at the fact that their stupidity and ignorance wastes an hour of most lectures. On one hand there are really dumb questions; we have to use a financial calculator, for financial functions you enter a number, press the button for that variable, you enter all variables except one, then you press 'compute' and press the last variable button, a slide shows all of these buttons, it has numbers above the buttons for all except one, it has the answer below that button. How hard can it be? Apparently it is still quite difficult if you are Indian. But then there are the totally irrelevant questions; if we are talking about interest rates some Indian will have to ask the lecturer if they think bank interest rates are fair and then make some comment about them being mercenary. Then there are questions, lots of them, from Indians that have supposed to have done degrees (we are doing a post grad) and done them in English, that show a total lack of understanding of basic English such as how to write a list of numbers.
My younger brother was complaining about how this was wasting so much time in his lectures. There are about four hundred in his class, of which six or so are White, the rest are Indian and Chinese. He says that he understands the Chinese having troubles and can sympathise; English is not their first language and their accounting system is different from the European model, but the Indians are meant to have studied in English and they are meant to use the same accounting principles, yet they are wasting the lecture with stupid-level questions. My observation is that they also have a tendency to throw out seemingly random answers, perhaps hoping for some recognition for participation, although to be fair, randomness would entail a fifty percent chance of being right whereas they are almost always wrong.
The bottom line is that I am being significantly held back by having to share my lectures with foreigners and our universities should offer Australian-only classes so that we can study at a faster rate. The other major point is that catering to these ethnics is lowering the overall quality of education provision.
I am having trouble with Steam again. I can log in offline, but it will not let me log in online. I tried to reset my password, but it would not let me, it would not accept the answer to my secret question. I have asked Steam Support to reset the password, but rather than simply do as I ask they insist on a lengthy series of email exchanges and a system info output. Why? All they ever do is tell you to reinstall and reset the password; they have no other answers to anything.
I have a contract starting on Monday, it is in the same division of the same department as one of the long term contract offers I had a while ago. I am hoping that I will impress them enough to get this other one happening again. It was advertised in the government notice of vacancies and they did not like any of the applicants, it was advertised in the public press but they got no responses, it was taken to recruitment agencies and I am the candidate that they got offered (indeed I was the only candidate put forward by the largest agency in town) but they then said that they had to get approval to actually progress the position. What does that mean? You advertised it three times without permission to fill the job?
I had a health scare recently; I had a choking problem. My father said that he had the same problem and it was only resolved when he lost weight, and further that the only way he lost weight was through starvation and totally no bread and no potato. ARRGGGGHHHH my two most favourite foods! Anyhow, I have been pretty good with this, I have stopped eating so much bread and am only having flat bread to make 'roll-ups' for lunch, I have reduced the number of times I eat a day, and I have reduced the amount that I eat at each meal. Almost immediately I could swallow better and have had only a few minor issues there. I have not noticed being any thinner though and was whinging about how no amount of exercise and diet got me any skinnier (remember walking the entire length of East Coast Park (two to three hours) every day for six months and not losing any weight?) HOWEVER; my underwear is all suddenly too loose. This must mean something...
Tuesday, November 2
So Many Thoughts
I haven't blogged for a while, mostly because I just haven't bothered 'netting, whenever I have turned my pc on I have played. But I have had quite a few things that I wanted to write about and so I thought that I should get them off my chest.
The Kommunists
Spider Wasps
More Kommunists, specifically perverting justice
The SGX attempt to buy the ASX, second bite of the cherry
Elders selling their share in Rural Bank for 27M
Bob Brown's comments on SG being an oppressive dictatorship
Councillors
Rare Earth
Tax Returns, or rather the effect tax has upon returns
Window Dressing
Let's see if I can get through them all.
Australia, like most Western nations, employs far too many public servants. One in three people that work in AU work for government; our income tax is one third of our pay, so effectively one third is taken out of two people's pay and given to the third who is told that he was paid three thirds but one third was withheld for tax. Our non-income taxes pay for all of government's non-salary expenses. These bureaucrats don't do anything; for example, Health SA employs 35,000 people but there are only 9,000 hospital beds. Do you think that there are three and a half people to every bed? No way! There is only one nurse for every ten beds, one doctors for every thirty, one ancilliary for every ten, the rest are all administrating! Most tax dollars in Australia are spent on welfare, but for every dollar actually given to a recipient, four are spent on salaries for bureaucrats to make sure that one dollar isn't being ripped off!
So when the South Australian Treasurer says he is going to get rid of a couple of thousand leaches I think it is a small start, SA could get rid of 90,000 of them! But four thousand of these bureaucrats take to the streets and march. They have fire engines leading the parade; we pay our taxes to have them on station ready for emergencies, not being used as political props.
Spider Wasps
Ichy subject, I know.
The other day a woman in the next office (with the door open) made some statement about Aboriginals bludging at white man's expense. I thought of popping my head in and saying that she could get into trouble for making comments like that. Then I thought; only if someone that didn't agree with her heard it.
Then it reminded me of spider wasps...
If you have ever watched Discovery Channel (or Animal Planet or any of a dozen doco channels you can get on cable) then you have seen a wasp hunting a spider. Maybe you saw the spider behave in fear and try to escape.
Funny thing is that apparently if you put the spider in a glass cage in a white laboratory, i.e. out of his environment, and release the wasp into the cage, then the spider will hunt, and kill, the wasp.
Freed of her programming she knows that she has the upper hand. It is only because she has been 'programmed' into submission that the parasitic wasp can have her way.
This is the world that we live in.
This is Socialism, Feminism, and Humanism.
Perfectly, to a 'T'.
More Kommunists.
And this time perverting justice.
In civilised nations you are innocent until proven guilty.
Not so in Australia.
Specifically whit regards to unions accusing employers of OHSW breaches. The legal onus is on the employer to prove his/her/its innocence.
That is sick.
But it is specifically the situation that the Labor premier of NSW wants to keep.
The SGX is trying to buy the ASX.
That is to say the Singapore stock exchange is trying to buy the Australian stock exchange. They initially called it a 'merger' to make it sound more pallatable, but I don't think it is still going to be swallowed.
Funny thing is though; they tried something like this before, well more the real merger thing, with the two exchanges connecting live and traders being able to access the other. It didn't work, well to be more precise, it didn't get used.
This time around it is really just one company taking over another.
Bob Brown, our resident 'Green', that should, of course, be 'Red', doesn't llike it. His speech on the subject accused Singapore of being a totallitarian and oppressive state and therefore the deal was no go for him.
I think he lives in la la land, but he has proven that often enough.
Elders is selling its share in Rural Bank. For a mere $27M. Well, that may be all it's worth. Two things get me about this; firstly my total amazement that Elders is still alive, and secondly their fascination with selling everything that makes money so that they can keep running the things that lose money!
Rare Earth.
What can I say?
Well, something it appears.
Okay, the name means minerals that are scattered, as in 'rarefied', not actually rare as such. And that they all come from China, and the evil Chinese have decided to ration them so that they don't run out. How dare they think like that.
What it makes me think though, is what did we do before China opened up and traded with the world? Did we not have any 'rare earths'? Did we get them from somewhere else, but they were more expensive so we have forgotten how? Did we not build high tech equipment until China gave us these magical ingredients?
All seem pretty stupid to me.
Tax Returns
Ah yes, I made a model (that's what I do, remember?) for currency trading. Highly compounding, daily trading, each week at a set level before ramping up a level for the next week, taking out tax and safety margin each month, with tax rates, return rates, risk levels, etc built in.
I ran it to find out the starting funds I would need, at a conservative leveraging level (half what is common in the market), with a conservative rate of return (less than half what is common in the market), with a conservative risk level and a very safe safety margin withdrawal rate, blah blah blah, in order to find out what starting funds I would need to get a given return for a year.
The next bit is where it gets exciting.
I then changed the tax rate to SG to see the effect, since as you know, I am partial to moving there (again). The result was astounding; the return increased tenfold!
I then put in SG's currency trading tax rate (as opposed to ordinary company tax rate), the return increased another fourfold!
The funniest thing is; that although the tax rate was going down, the amount of tax being paid was going up! At 20% tax versus Australia's 30% tax SG would actually receive five times more tax, this is because it allowed a much faster rate of compounding, therefore far more profit was made. And by halving the tax rate for currency trading SG would double the tax it received.
I did some further modelling to find out what tax level would actually maximise the amount of tax a country would receive; 9.05% is what I got, so Singapore's 10% is not far off the mark.
Window Dressing
This is a funny one, the US SEC went public with an accusation that some accounting firms, they named Lehman Bros, were temporarily selling assets to 'cook' the books and improve companies' credit ratings. What I got from this was that they named Lehman, of all the companies that you could kick, they kick one that is down, in fact truly dead! Why not shame one that is still trading?
And I am not going to bother about councillors.
The Kommunists
Spider Wasps
More Kommunists, specifically perverting justice
The SGX attempt to buy the ASX, second bite of the cherry
Elders selling their share in Rural Bank for 27M
Bob Brown's comments on SG being an oppressive dictatorship
Councillors
Rare Earth
Tax Returns, or rather the effect tax has upon returns
Window Dressing
Let's see if I can get through them all.
Australia, like most Western nations, employs far too many public servants. One in three people that work in AU work for government; our income tax is one third of our pay, so effectively one third is taken out of two people's pay and given to the third who is told that he was paid three thirds but one third was withheld for tax. Our non-income taxes pay for all of government's non-salary expenses. These bureaucrats don't do anything; for example, Health SA employs 35,000 people but there are only 9,000 hospital beds. Do you think that there are three and a half people to every bed? No way! There is only one nurse for every ten beds, one doctors for every thirty, one ancilliary for every ten, the rest are all administrating! Most tax dollars in Australia are spent on welfare, but for every dollar actually given to a recipient, four are spent on salaries for bureaucrats to make sure that one dollar isn't being ripped off!
So when the South Australian Treasurer says he is going to get rid of a couple of thousand leaches I think it is a small start, SA could get rid of 90,000 of them! But four thousand of these bureaucrats take to the streets and march. They have fire engines leading the parade; we pay our taxes to have them on station ready for emergencies, not being used as political props.
Spider Wasps
Ichy subject, I know.
The other day a woman in the next office (with the door open) made some statement about Aboriginals bludging at white man's expense. I thought of popping my head in and saying that she could get into trouble for making comments like that. Then I thought; only if someone that didn't agree with her heard it.
Then it reminded me of spider wasps...
If you have ever watched Discovery Channel (or Animal Planet or any of a dozen doco channels you can get on cable) then you have seen a wasp hunting a spider. Maybe you saw the spider behave in fear and try to escape.
Funny thing is that apparently if you put the spider in a glass cage in a white laboratory, i.e. out of his environment, and release the wasp into the cage, then the spider will hunt, and kill, the wasp.
Freed of her programming she knows that she has the upper hand. It is only because she has been 'programmed' into submission that the parasitic wasp can have her way.
This is the world that we live in.
This is Socialism, Feminism, and Humanism.
Perfectly, to a 'T'.
More Kommunists.
And this time perverting justice.
In civilised nations you are innocent until proven guilty.
Not so in Australia.
Specifically whit regards to unions accusing employers of OHSW breaches. The legal onus is on the employer to prove his/her/its innocence.
That is sick.
But it is specifically the situation that the Labor premier of NSW wants to keep.
The SGX is trying to buy the ASX.
That is to say the Singapore stock exchange is trying to buy the Australian stock exchange. They initially called it a 'merger' to make it sound more pallatable, but I don't think it is still going to be swallowed.
Funny thing is though; they tried something like this before, well more the real merger thing, with the two exchanges connecting live and traders being able to access the other. It didn't work, well to be more precise, it didn't get used.
This time around it is really just one company taking over another.
Bob Brown, our resident 'Green', that should, of course, be 'Red', doesn't llike it. His speech on the subject accused Singapore of being a totallitarian and oppressive state and therefore the deal was no go for him.
I think he lives in la la land, but he has proven that often enough.
Elders is selling its share in Rural Bank. For a mere $27M. Well, that may be all it's worth. Two things get me about this; firstly my total amazement that Elders is still alive, and secondly their fascination with selling everything that makes money so that they can keep running the things that lose money!
Rare Earth.
What can I say?
Well, something it appears.
Okay, the name means minerals that are scattered, as in 'rarefied', not actually rare as such. And that they all come from China, and the evil Chinese have decided to ration them so that they don't run out. How dare they think like that.
What it makes me think though, is what did we do before China opened up and traded with the world? Did we not have any 'rare earths'? Did we get them from somewhere else, but they were more expensive so we have forgotten how? Did we not build high tech equipment until China gave us these magical ingredients?
All seem pretty stupid to me.
Tax Returns
Ah yes, I made a model (that's what I do, remember?) for currency trading. Highly compounding, daily trading, each week at a set level before ramping up a level for the next week, taking out tax and safety margin each month, with tax rates, return rates, risk levels, etc built in.
I ran it to find out the starting funds I would need, at a conservative leveraging level (half what is common in the market), with a conservative rate of return (less than half what is common in the market), with a conservative risk level and a very safe safety margin withdrawal rate, blah blah blah, in order to find out what starting funds I would need to get a given return for a year.
The next bit is where it gets exciting.
I then changed the tax rate to SG to see the effect, since as you know, I am partial to moving there (again). The result was astounding; the return increased tenfold!
I then put in SG's currency trading tax rate (as opposed to ordinary company tax rate), the return increased another fourfold!
The funniest thing is; that although the tax rate was going down, the amount of tax being paid was going up! At 20% tax versus Australia's 30% tax SG would actually receive five times more tax, this is because it allowed a much faster rate of compounding, therefore far more profit was made. And by halving the tax rate for currency trading SG would double the tax it received.
I did some further modelling to find out what tax level would actually maximise the amount of tax a country would receive; 9.05% is what I got, so Singapore's 10% is not far off the mark.
Window Dressing
This is a funny one, the US SEC went public with an accusation that some accounting firms, they named Lehman Bros, were temporarily selling assets to 'cook' the books and improve companies' credit ratings. What I got from this was that they named Lehman, of all the companies that you could kick, they kick one that is down, in fact truly dead! Why not shame one that is still trading?
And I am not going to bother about councillors.
Tuesday, October 12
Time to Blog
I have been slack on blogging the last few months, a sign of the stress I have been under, but I should keep it up, after all - the main purpose of this was to document my journey to living permanently in Singapore and I am not there yet.
Okay, first up, I get a new contract, great rate and a long project. It stalls. It is still out there, but lagging a few months. I get another contract offer, it hangs for a couple of weeks whilst people are off sick, then it goes belly up. It is a month and a half now. Then I get a new contract, the rate sucks, it is a tad over half what I got before the GFC but anything to pay the rent right now. It gets delayed, first by two weeks, which I don't mind as I have exams, then by another weeks. Then on the day that I get the call delaying it I get another offering a short one to fill this week.
So I spent today at a radio station. Office to myself off in some quiet corner, only five minutes walk from home. And the rate is a little better.
Originally it was because they couldn't roll their financial reporting model over for their new year. They have a UK owner so their year is different. I look at it with the Financial Controller, "seems like ten, maybe fifteen minutes work" after all, wrapping a formula inside an IF statement to deal with there being no 'previous period' data at the start of the year would do it. I get to work, I uncover that once this problem is resolved there are others that will become visible, previously hidden by the lack of data flowing through the model. I have a good look at this, at least for fifteen to twenty minutes, I undo the previous work and I make one change to one formula in one cell on one sheet. Problem solved.
Fun
But then I ask the philosophical question; you have previous period data, it is from the previous year but it could be shown, so why not? They like the sound of this, so I do it. Then I correct a few formulae errors through the model, simplify things, cut out some redundancy. Take it a lot further in one day then they thought that they would get in a week. But a chat reveals that there is a lot more work that they would like if I am willing to stay the rest of the week. Who am I to say no?
But the repeated false starts of this were echoed at uni. I have received three different course schedules for next semester, each time the reception ask me not to enrol as it will change again. I get told that it is finalised and that the last one I received is right to go, but the next day I get another one. I ask reception to enrol me in the two evening courses, whatever they may be. It doesn't happen. I meet the IT guy at the desk on my last day there last semester, he promises to do this. It doesn't happen. So I am using the printed form method.
Paul and Cheng fly off to Singapore this week. They will spend a month there, one week will be in MY seeing Cheng's family. The last two weeks staying with Jaz, Cheng's sister in SG. I was thinking of flying over for their last weekend there but I suspect that I will be too busy and so will drop that idea.
Have only been half watching the post-election games; Gillard seems to be lying and conniving at every chance. But the main thing was that I have noticed several times that the text stories on Foxtel's news multichoice have been very strongly, indeed outright aggressively, worded pro-Labor, pro-Gillard and anti-liberal, anti-Abbott.
So much for fair, balanced reporting.
People try and engage me in political debates and I respond only partially. I always come back to "I really don't care anymore, the country is going down the gurgler and I have made the decision to leave". This even happened with my step-mother at the agricultural show when she was getting upset at most of the orchids being foreign and I made some comment about non-Australian not worrying me and she responded with "you're already half in Singapore though". So true. I admired the beauty of those that I like without any consideration for their botanical political correctness.
Oh, yeah, exams last week. I expect to come top in both my subjects. The economics exam was outright FUN! The management accounting was, true to form, all cost accounting but not as bad as it could have been and my decision to actually revise paid off. I won't know the actual results for a while, but I am confident enough to judge that I can take on a heavier load and undertake three subjects next semester.
Okay, first up, I get a new contract, great rate and a long project. It stalls. It is still out there, but lagging a few months. I get another contract offer, it hangs for a couple of weeks whilst people are off sick, then it goes belly up. It is a month and a half now. Then I get a new contract, the rate sucks, it is a tad over half what I got before the GFC but anything to pay the rent right now. It gets delayed, first by two weeks, which I don't mind as I have exams, then by another weeks. Then on the day that I get the call delaying it I get another offering a short one to fill this week.
So I spent today at a radio station. Office to myself off in some quiet corner, only five minutes walk from home. And the rate is a little better.
Originally it was because they couldn't roll their financial reporting model over for their new year. They have a UK owner so their year is different. I look at it with the Financial Controller, "seems like ten, maybe fifteen minutes work" after all, wrapping a formula inside an IF statement to deal with there being no 'previous period' data at the start of the year would do it. I get to work, I uncover that once this problem is resolved there are others that will become visible, previously hidden by the lack of data flowing through the model. I have a good look at this, at least for fifteen to twenty minutes, I undo the previous work and I make one change to one formula in one cell on one sheet. Problem solved.
Fun
But then I ask the philosophical question; you have previous period data, it is from the previous year but it could be shown, so why not? They like the sound of this, so I do it. Then I correct a few formulae errors through the model, simplify things, cut out some redundancy. Take it a lot further in one day then they thought that they would get in a week. But a chat reveals that there is a lot more work that they would like if I am willing to stay the rest of the week. Who am I to say no?
But the repeated false starts of this were echoed at uni. I have received three different course schedules for next semester, each time the reception ask me not to enrol as it will change again. I get told that it is finalised and that the last one I received is right to go, but the next day I get another one. I ask reception to enrol me in the two evening courses, whatever they may be. It doesn't happen. I meet the IT guy at the desk on my last day there last semester, he promises to do this. It doesn't happen. So I am using the printed form method.
Paul and Cheng fly off to Singapore this week. They will spend a month there, one week will be in MY seeing Cheng's family. The last two weeks staying with Jaz, Cheng's sister in SG. I was thinking of flying over for their last weekend there but I suspect that I will be too busy and so will drop that idea.
Have only been half watching the post-election games; Gillard seems to be lying and conniving at every chance. But the main thing was that I have noticed several times that the text stories on Foxtel's news multichoice have been very strongly, indeed outright aggressively, worded pro-Labor, pro-Gillard and anti-liberal, anti-Abbott.
So much for fair, balanced reporting.
People try and engage me in political debates and I respond only partially. I always come back to "I really don't care anymore, the country is going down the gurgler and I have made the decision to leave". This even happened with my step-mother at the agricultural show when she was getting upset at most of the orchids being foreign and I made some comment about non-Australian not worrying me and she responded with "you're already half in Singapore though". So true. I admired the beauty of those that I like without any consideration for their botanical political correctness.
Oh, yeah, exams last week. I expect to come top in both my subjects. The economics exam was outright FUN! The management accounting was, true to form, all cost accounting but not as bad as it could have been and my decision to actually revise paid off. I won't know the actual results for a while, but I am confident enough to judge that I can take on a heavier load and undertake three subjects next semester.
Friday, October 1
Keyboards
I surrender, I give in, I give up.
Microsoft wins.
I can no longer tolerate having to constantly change the fracken keyboard setting because Microsoft Vista cannot understand that just because I speak English English, as opposed to American English, that I do still us a US keyboard, and not what Microsoft seems to think is an English keyboard - which Microsoft is adamant has the '@' and '"' signs transposed, so my email addresses always turn out someone"somewhere.
So I have turned the language back to US English since that is the ONLY way to get Vista to keep the keyboard setting as 'US'. Seriously, if my language is set to English (UK, Australian, or Singaporean) the keyboard reading goes stupid. Thank you morons at Redmond. Now I will have to constantly be resetting the dictionary when I use Word.
ACCA v CPA
Google it, see what you get.
I get either English people considering their options 'cos they are moving to Australia, Asian students chatting amongst themselves with no idea of the facts, or USers not understanding how the world works outside their own small universe.
I have been pondering it for a few days and have come to some conclusions.
1) ACCA is a British organisation. Yeah, I know, they 'claim' to be the biggest international accounting association, but that is because they are the only one that accepts international membership per se. ACCA is not recognised anywhere but Britain, if you come to Australia then you will have to join either CPA Australia or ICA Australia. The latter has a relationship with ACCA but is less than half the size of CPA Australia.
2) ACCA offers no real benefits for me vis-a-vis working in the Orient. CPA Australia has a joint membership arrangement with CPA Singapore, and the legislatively mandated body in both Singapore and Hong Kong is called 'CPA'.
3) The total world membership of ACCA is less than the combined memberships of CPA Australia and ICA Australia, so they aren't that big after all.
All of which totals up to ACCA being an irrelevance.
With regards to the snob value. There is a tradition in Australia of CAs thinking that they are better than CPAs. It is based on their requirement for one or two extra subjects when studying, so it limits your choice of electives in your degree, but other than that, no diff. In my experience, having had to clean up after both for twenty years, I find them, in the main, equally incompetent.
ACCA also requires one more subject; the MPA I am doing qualifies for both CPA and CA, but not for ACCA - for that I need to do advanced management accounting. Now given that 'management accounting' in Australia is actually not management accounting, rather it is cost accounting, and given that I do work in that area, I am considering doing that extra subject anyhow. But having done that, I then see no reason to apply for ACCA membership. As I have said, it seems irrelevant, meaningless, of no benefit.
Some of the English lecturers speak highly of it, and say that it is big in Asia, but I cannot find any proof of that, and I strongly suspect their prejudices are due to it being and English body. All I can find is that membership will work for you in Britain, but in any other country you will still need to join the local body.
It is my birthday next week, the day is sandwiched between two exams so I will be spending my birthday studying said management accounting. Not that my birthdays mean anything to me, I gave up on that back in my mid twenties.
I have postponed starting my next contract until after this exam week. They did want me to start earlier, but were having trouble with line managers all going on leave (long weekend coming) and so I pointed out that I had exams and would not mind postponing the start - my consultant at the employment agency called back within ten minutes to say the offer had been accepted.
I just got three assignments back. A distinction for one, a high distinction (well, 100%) for the other economics one, but a strangely low mark for management accounting. Even though the lecturer could only point out one error when we went through it (I did find a second later on my own), still I only got a credit.
Now why is that?
I was checking SG blogs the other day, ones that I have had bookmarked for years and used to regularly check, and noticed that several have gone quite stale, as in the authors are no longer posting. Big names in the SG blogsphere too. I guess people grow, change, and move on.
One of my best friends and his Chinese Malaysian wife and their two children will be visiting SG later this month. I was pondering flying over for a weekend whilst they are there. I have enough points in my KrisFlier account for one leg of the trip. It would be a chance to catch up with friends (my SG friends that is). Funny thing; I have more friends in SG than in AU.
Microsoft wins.
I can no longer tolerate having to constantly change the fracken keyboard setting because Microsoft Vista cannot understand that just because I speak English English, as opposed to American English, that I do still us a US keyboard, and not what Microsoft seems to think is an English keyboard - which Microsoft is adamant has the '@' and '"' signs transposed, so my email addresses always turn out someone"somewhere.
So I have turned the language back to US English since that is the ONLY way to get Vista to keep the keyboard setting as 'US'. Seriously, if my language is set to English (UK, Australian, or Singaporean) the keyboard reading goes stupid. Thank you morons at Redmond. Now I will have to constantly be resetting the dictionary when I use Word.
ACCA v CPA
Google it, see what you get.
I get either English people considering their options 'cos they are moving to Australia, Asian students chatting amongst themselves with no idea of the facts, or USers not understanding how the world works outside their own small universe.
I have been pondering it for a few days and have come to some conclusions.
1) ACCA is a British organisation. Yeah, I know, they 'claim' to be the biggest international accounting association, but that is because they are the only one that accepts international membership per se. ACCA is not recognised anywhere but Britain, if you come to Australia then you will have to join either CPA Australia or ICA Australia. The latter has a relationship with ACCA but is less than half the size of CPA Australia.
2) ACCA offers no real benefits for me vis-a-vis working in the Orient. CPA Australia has a joint membership arrangement with CPA Singapore, and the legislatively mandated body in both Singapore and Hong Kong is called 'CPA'.
3) The total world membership of ACCA is less than the combined memberships of CPA Australia and ICA Australia, so they aren't that big after all.
All of which totals up to ACCA being an irrelevance.
With regards to the snob value. There is a tradition in Australia of CAs thinking that they are better than CPAs. It is based on their requirement for one or two extra subjects when studying, so it limits your choice of electives in your degree, but other than that, no diff. In my experience, having had to clean up after both for twenty years, I find them, in the main, equally incompetent.
ACCA also requires one more subject; the MPA I am doing qualifies for both CPA and CA, but not for ACCA - for that I need to do advanced management accounting. Now given that 'management accounting' in Australia is actually not management accounting, rather it is cost accounting, and given that I do work in that area, I am considering doing that extra subject anyhow. But having done that, I then see no reason to apply for ACCA membership. As I have said, it seems irrelevant, meaningless, of no benefit.
Some of the English lecturers speak highly of it, and say that it is big in Asia, but I cannot find any proof of that, and I strongly suspect their prejudices are due to it being and English body. All I can find is that membership will work for you in Britain, but in any other country you will still need to join the local body.
It is my birthday next week, the day is sandwiched between two exams so I will be spending my birthday studying said management accounting. Not that my birthdays mean anything to me, I gave up on that back in my mid twenties.
I have postponed starting my next contract until after this exam week. They did want me to start earlier, but were having trouble with line managers all going on leave (long weekend coming) and so I pointed out that I had exams and would not mind postponing the start - my consultant at the employment agency called back within ten minutes to say the offer had been accepted.
I just got three assignments back. A distinction for one, a high distinction (well, 100%) for the other economics one, but a strangely low mark for management accounting. Even though the lecturer could only point out one error when we went through it (I did find a second later on my own), still I only got a credit.
Now why is that?
I was checking SG blogs the other day, ones that I have had bookmarked for years and used to regularly check, and noticed that several have gone quite stale, as in the authors are no longer posting. Big names in the SG blogsphere too. I guess people grow, change, and move on.
One of my best friends and his Chinese Malaysian wife and their two children will be visiting SG later this month. I was pondering flying over for a weekend whilst they are there. I have enough points in my KrisFlier account for one leg of the trip. It would be a chance to catch up with friends (my SG friends that is). Funny thing; I have more friends in SG than in AU.
Tuesday, September 7
More Green
What I forgot to put in the last post was what I thought the outcomes would be.
I feel that if Labour gets (sorry 'Labor') enough indies then they will deliver a short term government. Firstly with the two 'green' indies they only need two of the three country indies, therefore there is a high possibility of one of them going Conservative. And then it will only take one by-election to change government, because you can guarantee that if any borderline left or indie seat goes up for by-election it will go to the right strongly.
However, if the Conservatives get the three country indies, then they will only pick up any by-elections as well, and, the next full election they will get one or two of the three country indie seats and at least one of the green seats. So they will only get stronger and thus they will deliver a longer term government.
Still on politics, but SG not AU.
Senior Minister Goh has flagged the idea of approaching 50,000 of the 500,000 permanent residents in Singapore and strong-arming them into taking citizenship.
I think that this is a no-win situation, specifically a lose-lose-lose.
Firstly, half a million PRs is a lot, just as a general observation, for a country of four and a bit million citizens. I know that there are going on a million foreign workers and a few hundred thousand tourists at any one time, but these PRs are the business expertise that built Singapore's thriving economy. If he is planning on approaching some of them, then I am betting that it will be the better, or the longer term, one tenth. These people may have good reasons for not taking citizenship and by cajoling them Singapore will probably drive them away. And it makes a mockery of the term 'Permanent' Resident, you know, the kind that isn't permanent. So these PRs will probably leave, they lose, and Singapore loses them, and the SG government loses face over a failed policy.
Mind you, I would like to see the demographics. And I would also like to see the results of any interview based survey on why they didn't take citizenship.
Mind you, I could be reading this wrong, maybe they are the Malaysian Chinese PRs? I know two of those that took citizenship a few months ago (well, one's husband did, she kept her MY citizenship and SG PR-ship). In this case maybe a squabble between Chinese? But what I see in my Malaysian Chinese friends living PR in Singapore is that they don't like MY, but they have so much family there that they feel compelled to return. And also they like that they can work for good money in SG and buy a good house in MY to retire to. Dual citizenship would resolve that, but create its own problems. So in this case I see them all leaving SG, moving to Jahore Bahru, and commuting to SG to work. This will free up a lot of HBDs, forcing their price way down, and it will move a lot of grocery shopping over the bridge, forcing prices way down. Maybe both are good things, but will it achieve much else?
I feel that if Labour gets (sorry 'Labor') enough indies then they will deliver a short term government. Firstly with the two 'green' indies they only need two of the three country indies, therefore there is a high possibility of one of them going Conservative. And then it will only take one by-election to change government, because you can guarantee that if any borderline left or indie seat goes up for by-election it will go to the right strongly.
However, if the Conservatives get the three country indies, then they will only pick up any by-elections as well, and, the next full election they will get one or two of the three country indie seats and at least one of the green seats. So they will only get stronger and thus they will deliver a longer term government.
Still on politics, but SG not AU.
Senior Minister Goh has flagged the idea of approaching 50,000 of the 500,000 permanent residents in Singapore and strong-arming them into taking citizenship.
I think that this is a no-win situation, specifically a lose-lose-lose.
Firstly, half a million PRs is a lot, just as a general observation, for a country of four and a bit million citizens. I know that there are going on a million foreign workers and a few hundred thousand tourists at any one time, but these PRs are the business expertise that built Singapore's thriving economy. If he is planning on approaching some of them, then I am betting that it will be the better, or the longer term, one tenth. These people may have good reasons for not taking citizenship and by cajoling them Singapore will probably drive them away. And it makes a mockery of the term 'Permanent' Resident, you know, the kind that isn't permanent. So these PRs will probably leave, they lose, and Singapore loses them, and the SG government loses face over a failed policy.
Mind you, I would like to see the demographics. And I would also like to see the results of any interview based survey on why they didn't take citizenship.
Mind you, I could be reading this wrong, maybe they are the Malaysian Chinese PRs? I know two of those that took citizenship a few months ago (well, one's husband did, she kept her MY citizenship and SG PR-ship). In this case maybe a squabble between Chinese? But what I see in my Malaysian Chinese friends living PR in Singapore is that they don't like MY, but they have so much family there that they feel compelled to return. And also they like that they can work for good money in SG and buy a good house in MY to retire to. Dual citizenship would resolve that, but create its own problems. So in this case I see them all leaving SG, moving to Jahore Bahru, and commuting to SG to work. This will free up a lot of HBDs, forcing their price way down, and it will move a lot of grocery shopping over the bridge, forcing prices way down. Maybe both are good things, but will it achieve much else?
Post Election Greens
Still no government.
We are meant to hear today from the three independents that have been holding the country to ransom. As in, they said that they would deliver their final decision today. So I wanted to write this before I find out what way they go, then I can see how well I went.
I think that they will back Socialism.
These are my reasons:
1. Costings.
The Conservatives' costings were savaged by the Civil Service. Despite lots of experienced commentators reminding people that the government bureaucrats are not very good with numbers the majority of journalists still believe that 'Treasury' are somehow sacrosanct. Despite Treasury using a fallible interest rate projection, despite Treasury applying current government policy to the Conservatives' budget to warp it. And despite the Socialists' 43 billion dollar broadband project not being included in their costings. The independents still made lots of comments about the Conservatives being fiscally irresponsible. Yet after adjusting for all of the smoke the Conservatives will deliver nearly a billion in surplus versus the Socialists delivering more than four billion in deficit annually. In short the independents are economically naive.
2. Politics.
The independents come from seats that the Conservatives will contest and may take from them, so any alliance would be fraught with danger. The Socialists will never get those seats and so they will welcome the independents and value them, their alliance would be far more secure.
3. Personalities.
The three independents are all renegades from the minor party in the Conservative Coalition. They have severe issues with the Nationals' leadership; they will never sit well together.
4. Politics 2.
The independents have all made quite a lot of leftist sounding policy statements; therefore it seems more likely for them to side with the left. An alliance of Agrarian Socialism, Environmental Socialism, and Union Socialism.
In the meantime, they have been holding the country to ransom, to ensure that both sides of politics would agree to a range of demands prior to their making a decision. That is to say; they laid out a list of demands, and demanded both sides to affirm these, then they would decide which side they would support.
One of the 'Environmental' Socialists, as opposed to the Agrarian Socialists, and I put 'Environmental' in single quotes because he is a member of the Greens and they are red not green in this country, demanded a hospital as the price for his support. The Conservatives offered him one billion dollars, the Socialists offered him one quarter of a billion, with ongoing funding - which is to say a billion dollars but with a schedule. He then went public with both offers and condemned the Conservative offer as irresponsible.
The Agrarian Socialists also published the Conservatives' offers and costings. Which the Conservatives had only given them on the understanding that the content of the negotiations remain confidential.
So complete under-handedness and untrustworthiness on the left.
What's new?
We are meant to hear today from the three independents that have been holding the country to ransom. As in, they said that they would deliver their final decision today. So I wanted to write this before I find out what way they go, then I can see how well I went.
I think that they will back Socialism.
These are my reasons:
1. Costings.
The Conservatives' costings were savaged by the Civil Service. Despite lots of experienced commentators reminding people that the government bureaucrats are not very good with numbers the majority of journalists still believe that 'Treasury' are somehow sacrosanct. Despite Treasury using a fallible interest rate projection, despite Treasury applying current government policy to the Conservatives' budget to warp it. And despite the Socialists' 43 billion dollar broadband project not being included in their costings. The independents still made lots of comments about the Conservatives being fiscally irresponsible. Yet after adjusting for all of the smoke the Conservatives will deliver nearly a billion in surplus versus the Socialists delivering more than four billion in deficit annually. In short the independents are economically naive.
2. Politics.
The independents come from seats that the Conservatives will contest and may take from them, so any alliance would be fraught with danger. The Socialists will never get those seats and so they will welcome the independents and value them, their alliance would be far more secure.
3. Personalities.
The three independents are all renegades from the minor party in the Conservative Coalition. They have severe issues with the Nationals' leadership; they will never sit well together.
4. Politics 2.
The independents have all made quite a lot of leftist sounding policy statements; therefore it seems more likely for them to side with the left. An alliance of Agrarian Socialism, Environmental Socialism, and Union Socialism.
In the meantime, they have been holding the country to ransom, to ensure that both sides of politics would agree to a range of demands prior to their making a decision. That is to say; they laid out a list of demands, and demanded both sides to affirm these, then they would decide which side they would support.
One of the 'Environmental' Socialists, as opposed to the Agrarian Socialists, and I put 'Environmental' in single quotes because he is a member of the Greens and they are red not green in this country, demanded a hospital as the price for his support. The Conservatives offered him one billion dollars, the Socialists offered him one quarter of a billion, with ongoing funding - which is to say a billion dollars but with a schedule. He then went public with both offers and condemned the Conservative offer as irresponsible.
The Agrarian Socialists also published the Conservatives' offers and costings. Which the Conservatives had only given them on the understanding that the content of the negotiations remain confidential.
So complete under-handedness and untrustworthiness on the left.
What's new?
Monday, August 23
Post Election Blues
We had an election on Saturday, by midnight on Saturday we had a projected result of Socialists 73, Conservatives 73, Independents 4. However 4 seats were still in doubt. They had all Sunday to keep counting, but it hasn't changed. What have they been doing? Concentrating on counting the safe seats?
One of the independents is a 'Green', which in this country means a 'Red'; there is nothing pro-environment about them, they are just a cover for the Socialist Alliance (Socialist Workers Party (full of students, not workers) and the Socialist Party of Australia). There is no CPA (Communist Party of Australia) anymore, they disbanded; but they were pure Maoist - they all moved into the left wing of the Labor Party, you can recognise the Maoists in the Labor Party because they learn to speak Mandarin, like our recent ex-Prime Minister.
Given that the other three independents are all ex-Nationals (the minor party in the conservative coalition) then we would normally expect them to make a pact with the Coalition. But remember that here in South Australia the National Party member joined with the Labor Party. Yes, at the next election her voters turned on her ferociously. Those three ex-Nationals have said that they will move as a bloc, whilst the 'Green' has said that he will support the left.
But right now no one has a majority, and one major party will have to get three of four independents to form government.
We probably have a week or two of negotiations before we get any outcome.
I did not say last post, but I am back on Spellforce 1. I realised what I had to do to get past that point and went back to it. You see I had been following a strategy suggested in a walk through, rather than my usual play style. He had said that if you build up the Orcs on the left and then go kill the boss monster the little monsters will pour out of the Rift in a flood to the west and destroy your Orc base and that there was nothing you could do about it. You would be left to build a Troll base in the east to take the map with. His suggestion was to run through the Rift, kill the boss on your own, the horde have nothing to destroy so you can then build both bases.
Well, my strategy, which worked, was to build the Orc base, use an Orc army to fight through the Rift and kill the boss, and then build the Troll base. The demon horde flooded out of the Rift to my Orc base alright, but apparently this walk through author is not too good on his defensive strategies because the horde never got through my tower line. Well, more of a tower field.
Turned out to be a pretty boring map really.
I am now two or three maps beyond that point.
I am still unemployed, by Thursday last week I was suspecting that I might spend this week not working. I have two assignments (both nearly finished) and a test this week, so will be busy. But I would like some positive cashflow.
I have been back in Australia for a six month contract, two months off over xmas new year, a three month contract, and then a four month contract, so a year. A year that I could have been in Singapore and working if only I had accepted that last offer. I regret that so much now. Hubris; it has definitely been my downfall.
One of the independents is a 'Green', which in this country means a 'Red'; there is nothing pro-environment about them, they are just a cover for the Socialist Alliance (Socialist Workers Party (full of students, not workers) and the Socialist Party of Australia). There is no CPA (Communist Party of Australia) anymore, they disbanded; but they were pure Maoist - they all moved into the left wing of the Labor Party, you can recognise the Maoists in the Labor Party because they learn to speak Mandarin, like our recent ex-Prime Minister.
Given that the other three independents are all ex-Nationals (the minor party in the conservative coalition) then we would normally expect them to make a pact with the Coalition. But remember that here in South Australia the National Party member joined with the Labor Party. Yes, at the next election her voters turned on her ferociously. Those three ex-Nationals have said that they will move as a bloc, whilst the 'Green' has said that he will support the left.
But right now no one has a majority, and one major party will have to get three of four independents to form government.
We probably have a week or two of negotiations before we get any outcome.
I did not say last post, but I am back on Spellforce 1. I realised what I had to do to get past that point and went back to it. You see I had been following a strategy suggested in a walk through, rather than my usual play style. He had said that if you build up the Orcs on the left and then go kill the boss monster the little monsters will pour out of the Rift in a flood to the west and destroy your Orc base and that there was nothing you could do about it. You would be left to build a Troll base in the east to take the map with. His suggestion was to run through the Rift, kill the boss on your own, the horde have nothing to destroy so you can then build both bases.
Well, my strategy, which worked, was to build the Orc base, use an Orc army to fight through the Rift and kill the boss, and then build the Troll base. The demon horde flooded out of the Rift to my Orc base alright, but apparently this walk through author is not too good on his defensive strategies because the horde never got through my tower line. Well, more of a tower field.
Turned out to be a pretty boring map really.
I am now two or three maps beyond that point.
I am still unemployed, by Thursday last week I was suspecting that I might spend this week not working. I have two assignments (both nearly finished) and a test this week, so will be busy. But I would like some positive cashflow.
I have been back in Australia for a six month contract, two months off over xmas new year, a three month contract, and then a four month contract, so a year. A year that I could have been in Singapore and working if only I had accepted that last offer. I regret that so much now. Hubris; it has definitely been my downfall.
Friday, August 20
Cuddly
I have just rescued a baby brush-tailed possum, well, six months so maybe 'child' not 'baby'. Found her under a tree in the sparse parkland at the corner of Grenfell and East Terrace. Just at that moment, as I was bending down to pick her up, a man walked passed that is a member of Fauna Australia and he gave me a ride to a 'participating' vet. Although by law all vets have to take in native animals and pass them on to a carer organisation.
It had heaps of fleas mind you, I got four of them either off her or off my shirt. Curled up she just fills a double handful. Her main need for the next day is warmth, she was on the way to dying from exposure, but by tomorrow she will be able to take milk (special marsupial milk, not cow milk). (And also banana, rolled oats, stuff like that.) I have raised a few ring-tails in my time, but I have never held a brush-tail before. Fed wild ones a few times.
I am still unemployed. One contract, the better one, is in government and as usual for our wonderful Australian public service, they are not organised and need to delay for a few months. The other I just haven't heard back from the agency about. I have tried calling the consultant, but he hasn't answered yet.
We have to vote tomorrow. I must try not to forget. And I must remind Radar, 'cos he used to forget a lot. The polls are close, the last two that I have seen both said about fifty-fifty, but polls and 'town halls' in the marginal seats show a dissatisfaction with Labor. All the people in the world could vote Labor and I wouldn't care, so long as they live in safe left-wing seats. The way the Australian democracy works it is only a few thousand voters in the dozen marginal seats that matter, the other ten million voters are effectively marginalised.
Still, it is not as bad as the USA where Clinton got elected on forty percent of the vote.
I live in a close seat, the city of Adelaide, i.e. the CBD seat. It has swung a few times, currently red, was blue not long ago and may go blue again this time.
The Democrats, this is a laugh, have discovered that one of their South Australian candidates is a convicted paedophile. By law it is too late to remove him from the ticket. This late revelation should hurt them in the polls; they won't get any lower house seats anyhow, but I wonder if it will cost them an upper house seat or two. SA has always been their stronghold, they only need to lose a couple of seats to lose the balance of power in the Senate.
And just to close off; I regret having left Singapore, I should have taken one of the jobs offered to me there and stuck it out, risen the ranks, studied part time, and above all, not come back to Australia. I so regret this. I miss it so much. I miss my friends there, I miss the culture, it was just a totally better place to be. But if I was there I would still be expected to vote in this election tomorrow. How does that work? I would not reside in any lower house electorate, so how do they do that? I do know that one senator wanted Australia to have a seat for the diaspora, like Italy has two seats for them. I'm going to google how this works.
No, the electoral commission says that it is not compulsory to vote if you are living overseas. Further, if you have been overseas for less than three years and intend to return to Australia within six years then you may register to vote. That makes nine years, and yet if you have been living overseas for more than six years, or you intend to be doing so, then you are meant to be removed from the electoral roll and cannot vote. This would mean that if I moved back to Singapore, as I intend to do, and it is my intention to stay there, as it is, then I will lose the right to vote in Australian elections. I would not gain the right to vote in Singaporean elections until I obtained Singaporean citizenship (of course). This means that Australia disenfranchises its citizens.
Kind of similar to the health care situation if you live overseas. If you ever return to Australia you will be 'fined' every year for not having been paying for private medical coverage in Australia during that period that you were not in Australia. How stupid is that?
What the electoral commission doesn't elucidate upon is who are you voting for? If I am living overseas and still get to vote, then for what lower house seat am I voting? Quick google! According to the Southern Cross Group (advocacy for Australians abroad) you either stay registered where you were last registered or where you have near kin (as a lot are children that turn eighteen whilst living with their parents overseas, so have no previous enrolment in Australia).
There are about two thirds of a million Australians living overseas and old enough to vote; this would be enough for a few electorates on their own. Like Italy or Portugal, Australia could have two or three 'virtual' electorates. I don't see it happening though, principally because most Australians are hostile to anyone that leaves the country for anything more than 'a trip to Bali'. But as it stands it seems that less than two percent of Australian citizens living overseas are allowed to vote. Whilst the government states that ten percent of Australians overseas vote, that is mostly tourists only out of Australia for a short time.
Further more, whilst changes have been made in the last ten years, many long term OS residents have, under both the previous laws and the current laws, permanently lost the right to vote for the country of which they are a citizen. And that kind of sums up the way the Australian government and public service thinks about issues like this.
When Australia does so little for Australians living overseas, why should they do anything for Australia? The Senate enquiry in the Australian Diaspora looked at using Australian residents in other nations as 'ambasadors', but in reality these nearly one million Australians overseas are treated like shit by their own government (both bureaucrats and politicians), so why should they think nice thoughts about their nation?
It had heaps of fleas mind you, I got four of them either off her or off my shirt. Curled up she just fills a double handful. Her main need for the next day is warmth, she was on the way to dying from exposure, but by tomorrow she will be able to take milk (special marsupial milk, not cow milk). (And also banana, rolled oats, stuff like that.) I have raised a few ring-tails in my time, but I have never held a brush-tail before. Fed wild ones a few times.
I am still unemployed. One contract, the better one, is in government and as usual for our wonderful Australian public service, they are not organised and need to delay for a few months. The other I just haven't heard back from the agency about. I have tried calling the consultant, but he hasn't answered yet.
We have to vote tomorrow. I must try not to forget. And I must remind Radar, 'cos he used to forget a lot. The polls are close, the last two that I have seen both said about fifty-fifty, but polls and 'town halls' in the marginal seats show a dissatisfaction with Labor. All the people in the world could vote Labor and I wouldn't care, so long as they live in safe left-wing seats. The way the Australian democracy works it is only a few thousand voters in the dozen marginal seats that matter, the other ten million voters are effectively marginalised.
Still, it is not as bad as the USA where Clinton got elected on forty percent of the vote.
I live in a close seat, the city of Adelaide, i.e. the CBD seat. It has swung a few times, currently red, was blue not long ago and may go blue again this time.
The Democrats, this is a laugh, have discovered that one of their South Australian candidates is a convicted paedophile. By law it is too late to remove him from the ticket. This late revelation should hurt them in the polls; they won't get any lower house seats anyhow, but I wonder if it will cost them an upper house seat or two. SA has always been their stronghold, they only need to lose a couple of seats to lose the balance of power in the Senate.
And just to close off; I regret having left Singapore, I should have taken one of the jobs offered to me there and stuck it out, risen the ranks, studied part time, and above all, not come back to Australia. I so regret this. I miss it so much. I miss my friends there, I miss the culture, it was just a totally better place to be. But if I was there I would still be expected to vote in this election tomorrow. How does that work? I would not reside in any lower house electorate, so how do they do that? I do know that one senator wanted Australia to have a seat for the diaspora, like Italy has two seats for them. I'm going to google how this works.
No, the electoral commission says that it is not compulsory to vote if you are living overseas. Further, if you have been overseas for less than three years and intend to return to Australia within six years then you may register to vote. That makes nine years, and yet if you have been living overseas for more than six years, or you intend to be doing so, then you are meant to be removed from the electoral roll and cannot vote. This would mean that if I moved back to Singapore, as I intend to do, and it is my intention to stay there, as it is, then I will lose the right to vote in Australian elections. I would not gain the right to vote in Singaporean elections until I obtained Singaporean citizenship (of course). This means that Australia disenfranchises its citizens.
Kind of similar to the health care situation if you live overseas. If you ever return to Australia you will be 'fined' every year for not having been paying for private medical coverage in Australia during that period that you were not in Australia. How stupid is that?
What the electoral commission doesn't elucidate upon is who are you voting for? If I am living overseas and still get to vote, then for what lower house seat am I voting? Quick google! According to the Southern Cross Group (advocacy for Australians abroad) you either stay registered where you were last registered or where you have near kin (as a lot are children that turn eighteen whilst living with their parents overseas, so have no previous enrolment in Australia).
There are about two thirds of a million Australians living overseas and old enough to vote; this would be enough for a few electorates on their own. Like Italy or Portugal, Australia could have two or three 'virtual' electorates. I don't see it happening though, principally because most Australians are hostile to anyone that leaves the country for anything more than 'a trip to Bali'. But as it stands it seems that less than two percent of Australian citizens living overseas are allowed to vote. Whilst the government states that ten percent of Australians overseas vote, that is mostly tourists only out of Australia for a short time.
Further more, whilst changes have been made in the last ten years, many long term OS residents have, under both the previous laws and the current laws, permanently lost the right to vote for the country of which they are a citizen. And that kind of sums up the way the Australian government and public service thinks about issues like this.
When Australia does so little for Australians living overseas, why should they do anything for Australia? The Senate enquiry in the Australian Diaspora looked at using Australian residents in other nations as 'ambasadors', but in reality these nearly one million Australians overseas are treated like shit by their own government (both bureaucrats and politicians), so why should they think nice thoughts about their nation?
Tuesday, August 17
Post and Non
So, the mid semester exam turned out to be this and that.
Okay, firstly it was pretty easy, I took it slow and read everything twice, and took my time on the answers, and still left ten minutes passed half-way.
But it was interesting that after the lecturer told us it was in room 102 on the first floor, and wrote it on the whiteboard, and said again very slowly that it was not in our normal room but on a lower floor, and it was listed as 102 on the calendar, I was the only person to show up at 102; everyone else, including the guy that set up the room, showed up at our normal third floor room.
Obviously, on this occasion, the rhetorical question "is it just me? or..." has the rhetorical answer, "yes, it was just me".
I am unemployed. You knew that was coming from last post, but the contract promised to me has not come through and, I have been told, may not for a few months. Public sector. But I was asked about another one on Friday. Today is Tuesday and I haven't heard anything about that yet. But it is a previous client and I am reasonably confident. It won't pay as much as the other, and these are the people that last time paid me half my normal rate. I am trying to split the dif between that and what I was paid on the one just finished, that will do a bit better than cover my rent and will allow me to live a bit. Although in my case 'live' means dine out a couple of times, buy a game or two, and pay off my cards.
I am pretty sure that next weekend is the election, wait, let me just Google that, yep, next Saturday. The two major parties have yo-yoed a bit, which is a good sign in that it means the communists are not a shoe-in. Maybe even might lose, wouldn't that be nice. Methinks that Tweedledee is not quite as odorous as Tweedledum. Funny watching the Liberals try to compare themselves with "the desire for change that elected Obama". Funny that "Obama" passes the spell check but Tweedledee and Tweedledum don't.
I am playing Spellforce 2. Yeah, quick change of subject, but be honest, the last one wasn't exactly riveting, was it? This is crashing more often than Spellforce 1, and on its own as well, not when I make it think two things at once. It must only be the Spellforce Universe pack, because I don't remember either of them doing that before. Anyhow, I found out why I never played the two Spellforce 1 expansions - there is a monster that I can't get passed. We are the same level, but my hits do little to him whilst his severely hurt my character. Shame that. Good game kind of ruined. Neither of them crashes cleanly, they kill Windows on the way, but without causing a reboot, just lock it up, so I have to hard reset the machine. Which is very annoying.
Other than that, life in general sucks and I am starting to severely question why I bother.
Okay, firstly it was pretty easy, I took it slow and read everything twice, and took my time on the answers, and still left ten minutes passed half-way.
But it was interesting that after the lecturer told us it was in room 102 on the first floor, and wrote it on the whiteboard, and said again very slowly that it was not in our normal room but on a lower floor, and it was listed as 102 on the calendar, I was the only person to show up at 102; everyone else, including the guy that set up the room, showed up at our normal third floor room.
Obviously, on this occasion, the rhetorical question "is it just me? or..." has the rhetorical answer, "yes, it was just me".
I am unemployed. You knew that was coming from last post, but the contract promised to me has not come through and, I have been told, may not for a few months. Public sector. But I was asked about another one on Friday. Today is Tuesday and I haven't heard anything about that yet. But it is a previous client and I am reasonably confident. It won't pay as much as the other, and these are the people that last time paid me half my normal rate. I am trying to split the dif between that and what I was paid on the one just finished, that will do a bit better than cover my rent and will allow me to live a bit. Although in my case 'live' means dine out a couple of times, buy a game or two, and pay off my cards.
I am pretty sure that next weekend is the election, wait, let me just Google that, yep, next Saturday. The two major parties have yo-yoed a bit, which is a good sign in that it means the communists are not a shoe-in. Maybe even might lose, wouldn't that be nice. Methinks that Tweedledee is not quite as odorous as Tweedledum. Funny watching the Liberals try to compare themselves with "the desire for change that elected Obama". Funny that "Obama" passes the spell check but Tweedledee and Tweedledum don't.
I am playing Spellforce 2. Yeah, quick change of subject, but be honest, the last one wasn't exactly riveting, was it? This is crashing more often than Spellforce 1, and on its own as well, not when I make it think two things at once. It must only be the Spellforce Universe pack, because I don't remember either of them doing that before. Anyhow, I found out why I never played the two Spellforce 1 expansions - there is a monster that I can't get passed. We are the same level, but my hits do little to him whilst his severely hurt my character. Shame that. Good game kind of ruined. Neither of them crashes cleanly, they kill Windows on the way, but without causing a reboot, just lock it up, so I have to hard reset the machine. Which is very annoying.
Other than that, life in general sucks and I am starting to severely question why I bother.
Friday, August 6
Whoa!
Sometime things happen so quickly.
Last week was the end of my contract, and I was asked to extend to the end of September.
Today I am told that due to some fundamental mismanagement the project has run out of money and can I please leave.
Or put another way:
Yesterday I was asked to start a job.
Today I was asked to leave a job.
Yeah, I got asked if I had 'capacity' to undertake some other work if it did not threaten the project that I was on. And now I find out that I won't be staying on that project, so I can focus just on the other one.
And now begins the game.
The contract comes to me, and I take it to the agency, not the other way around. So the agency is meant to only add a payroll handling fee on top, but of course they try to get as much gravy as they can.
So I start with the client, and I introduce them to the going rate for BAs (Business Analysts), currently in this town about $135 an hour. From that the BA will be getting about $80 an hour. The rest goes: as it is a government contract then the department of admin services takes a twenty or thirty percent cut depending on whether it is a financial or an IT contract, there is nine percent superannuation which in my opinion is dead money, there are work cover and payroll taxes, then there is the agency cut, and what is left over goes to the worker.
Of course, most contracts the employer goes to the agency who then goes to the contractor. In my case almost always the employer comes to me and I take the contract to the agency. This means that I get a better deal because the agency takes a much smaller cut, just a payroll handling fee in theory. Admin services still take their huge slice for doing nothing, but that is the Australian public sector for you.
Which means that I can give a little ground on that $135.
Conversely if I under value myself too much then other people just get paid more than me for not being any better. So I need to toughen up. After all, the reason contractors and consultants get paid a higher rate is because we don't get paid holidays, we don't get paid sick leave, we don't have secure jobs - I had spend most of this damned GFC living off my reserves! There was just no work around. And when I got some I had to take some hefty rate cuts to get anything to pay the rent.
Anyhow, the whole point to this was how quickly things can change on you.
One day being told that you have a job and being asked to extend it.
The next being told that you don't and being asked to leave.
Last week was the end of my contract, and I was asked to extend to the end of September.
Today I am told that due to some fundamental mismanagement the project has run out of money and can I please leave.
Or put another way:
Yesterday I was asked to start a job.
Today I was asked to leave a job.
Yeah, I got asked if I had 'capacity' to undertake some other work if it did not threaten the project that I was on. And now I find out that I won't be staying on that project, so I can focus just on the other one.
And now begins the game.
The contract comes to me, and I take it to the agency, not the other way around. So the agency is meant to only add a payroll handling fee on top, but of course they try to get as much gravy as they can.
So I start with the client, and I introduce them to the going rate for BAs (Business Analysts), currently in this town about $135 an hour. From that the BA will be getting about $80 an hour. The rest goes: as it is a government contract then the department of admin services takes a twenty or thirty percent cut depending on whether it is a financial or an IT contract, there is nine percent superannuation which in my opinion is dead money, there are work cover and payroll taxes, then there is the agency cut, and what is left over goes to the worker.
Of course, most contracts the employer goes to the agency who then goes to the contractor. In my case almost always the employer comes to me and I take the contract to the agency. This means that I get a better deal because the agency takes a much smaller cut, just a payroll handling fee in theory. Admin services still take their huge slice for doing nothing, but that is the Australian public sector for you.
Which means that I can give a little ground on that $135.
Conversely if I under value myself too much then other people just get paid more than me for not being any better. So I need to toughen up. After all, the reason contractors and consultants get paid a higher rate is because we don't get paid holidays, we don't get paid sick leave, we don't have secure jobs - I had spend most of this damned GFC living off my reserves! There was just no work around. And when I got some I had to take some hefty rate cuts to get anything to pay the rent.
Anyhow, the whole point to this was how quickly things can change on you.
One day being told that you have a job and being asked to extend it.
The next being told that you don't and being asked to leave.
Saturday, July 31
Mid Terms 01
"01" because there is a high probability of another post on this one.
Yeah, mid-terms are in two weeks.
Scary, I haven't done real serious study for so long and I want to get this right.
Only in one subject, the other does a couple of assignments instead, one of which I have just emailed to the lecturer.
If I do well at this, i.e. get distinctions or better for both subjects, then I will seriously consider taking on another subject. Not a day one - the two that I do are the evening ones - but an online one in another course. Currently doing the Masters of Professional Accounting (which always make me ask "is there a masters in amateur accounting?) and the other being the Masters of Applied Finance, the trading major, i.e. options, derivatives, rates arbitrage, etc.
The MAppFin has four core subject, and two other compulsory at masters level (since it has a nested diploma and certificate which also include the four core but not those other two) and four electives which can be taken from a shorter list of five each to get different majors. Those two compulsory subjects I could get status for from the MPA. So, with the MPA having eight subjects, and taking me four trimesters, then I could have four plus two equals six of the ten required for the MAppFin completed by the time that I finish the MPA, and thus need only two trimesters to finish it.
This in two years I could have two masters degrees.
The plan would then be to move back to Singapore and do the SMU MBA.
When I was looking at MBAs this one caught my eye due to its cosmopolitan nature. Australian MBAs make small talk about multiculturalism and globalisation and might offer one relevant subject as an elective, but the SMU MBA has things like 'communicating across cultures' as a required subject and a few like 'trading in ASEAN' as an elective. So more realistically a global (although specifically an Asian, and even more specifically an Oriental) education.
On to other things.
A contract has been signed, but the project still hasn't really begun and I have been on this contract for three months so far.
That is SAG for you.
(i.e. South Australian Government for anyone that strolls in from out of town.)
I was going to blog about this months ago, but here it is now because I have noticed the effect far more of late.
Used to be that Oriental girls here had long hair, there weren't many and they stayed within their cultural groups, but they kept that long hair thing from their culture. Then more Orientals were noticeable, and the girls started cutting their hair short and being more like Anglos. Now there are LOTS of Orientals in Adelaide, and a lot of them are short term (they are foreign students mostly now) and so do not take to the local culture. So their hair is longer, not as long as it was in the first wave though, and they are keeping the styles and fashions from whence they came.
The main point to this is that they tend to show a lot more skin than the local girls. i.e. mini-skirts and shorts. When winter started coming on they started wearing shorts with pantyhose underneath, so they could still 'show' more, but not be as cold (logical really). What I noticed was that after a few weeks the Anglo bitches started to copy this style. Maybe they noticed the lack of attention that they were getting. I found this very interesting.
Adelaide girls are probably the most boring in Australia, and Australian women are the most boring of all Anglo Bitches, and Anglo Bitches are the worst of all Western women, and Western women are the worst of all White women. You know the way this one goes, you have probably heard it from so many guys, especially middle-aged guys that are on better incomes and so have travelled and have some experience to make the judgement. Like me.
Interesting that they felt the need to change their appearance.
What do you think the chances are that they might realise that they have to change their behaviour as well?
Not going to waste too much time on the upcoming Australian federal election. The Socialists thought that appointing a woman as prime minister could save them, and it had some initial effect with female voters, but that has decreased a lot as women realised that this woman has nothing in common with the average woman and is not a champion for women.
Interesting though that my economics lecturer, who I would have pegged as a wet liberal, i.e. the typical type of Liberal Socialist that would have voted for her, pointed out in class that the Labor government was the most incompetent government that Australia had experienced for a long time. He illustrated this with such things as the 'alcopop' fiasco where they brought in a huge tax on low-alcohol drinks (vodka mixers etc) that kids were drinking, in an attempt to curb their use. As any economist would tell you, the result was that the kids moved on to something else, in this case hard spirits like Jack Daniels. Further he pointed out the mis-use of terms like 'super profit', which economically means a profit in excess of that which you would get from moving your investment into something else. In this case the government was using the term pejoratively against the mining industry which had come out of the GFC ahead of the rest of the country due to other nations getting out first (Australia typically lagged) and their demand for resources ensured that our resources industry made good profits. So the government automatically (as all Socialists do) decided to punish them for their success.
The lecturer didn't word it like that of course, but it is a standard rant of mine that our Socialist culture in Australia is always seeking to punish success and reward failure.
And yes, they spell it 'Labor', we don't in English usually of course, but that is how the party concerned spell their name.
Avcon was a bit of a fizzle for me this year.
I didn't enjoy last year that much either, it is kind of like it lost something in the move out of the Uni and into the Convention Centre. I don't mind the increase in focus on games (that is what the government sponsors are behind) but it has come at the expense of the anime/manga. For example, one of the theatres that would have been showing anime was used for a series of presentation on game design.
It's not that I don't want there to be a series of presentation on game design - after all, I attended a few myself - but I do not want there to be a decrease in the amount of anime being screened.
Also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vendors have withdrawn. Less than half of the displays/booths/whatever were anime and manga oriented. There were a few game oriented, and there were a lot of government ones (TAFE, libraries, Trade and Development, etc.).
It's just not the same.
And just to finish off.
I left Metro 2033 unfinished somewhere half way through and moved on to a Spellforce that I had bought - it had 1 and the two expansions and 2 and its one expansion all on one disc. I started from the very start and am redoing Spellforce 1. Not using any cheats, but using a walkthrough for its map, i.e. where to find people, you know, when you have a mission to take this to that person but it doesn't tell you where they are and you can't remember which of the maps they were on. Playing as a necromancer, but currently in reasonably good armour, with a sword and shield, I am not using the magic so much. I was raising skeletons a lot, but I am getting to level 20, although my magic skills are still only at level 5 and so I am not finding the skeletons much use right now.
It was the first game to mix role play and strategy, and playing a necromancer is always way cool dude.
And it has a long story ahead for me. Weeks, if not months, of gaming.
Yeah, mid-terms are in two weeks.
Scary, I haven't done real serious study for so long and I want to get this right.
Only in one subject, the other does a couple of assignments instead, one of which I have just emailed to the lecturer.
If I do well at this, i.e. get distinctions or better for both subjects, then I will seriously consider taking on another subject. Not a day one - the two that I do are the evening ones - but an online one in another course. Currently doing the Masters of Professional Accounting (which always make me ask "is there a masters in amateur accounting?) and the other being the Masters of Applied Finance, the trading major, i.e. options, derivatives, rates arbitrage, etc.
The MAppFin has four core subject, and two other compulsory at masters level (since it has a nested diploma and certificate which also include the four core but not those other two) and four electives which can be taken from a shorter list of five each to get different majors. Those two compulsory subjects I could get status for from the MPA. So, with the MPA having eight subjects, and taking me four trimesters, then I could have four plus two equals six of the ten required for the MAppFin completed by the time that I finish the MPA, and thus need only two trimesters to finish it.
This in two years I could have two masters degrees.
The plan would then be to move back to Singapore and do the SMU MBA.
When I was looking at MBAs this one caught my eye due to its cosmopolitan nature. Australian MBAs make small talk about multiculturalism and globalisation and might offer one relevant subject as an elective, but the SMU MBA has things like 'communicating across cultures' as a required subject and a few like 'trading in ASEAN' as an elective. So more realistically a global (although specifically an Asian, and even more specifically an Oriental) education.
On to other things.
A contract has been signed, but the project still hasn't really begun and I have been on this contract for three months so far.
That is SAG for you.
(i.e. South Australian Government for anyone that strolls in from out of town.)
I was going to blog about this months ago, but here it is now because I have noticed the effect far more of late.
Used to be that Oriental girls here had long hair, there weren't many and they stayed within their cultural groups, but they kept that long hair thing from their culture. Then more Orientals were noticeable, and the girls started cutting their hair short and being more like Anglos. Now there are LOTS of Orientals in Adelaide, and a lot of them are short term (they are foreign students mostly now) and so do not take to the local culture. So their hair is longer, not as long as it was in the first wave though, and they are keeping the styles and fashions from whence they came.
The main point to this is that they tend to show a lot more skin than the local girls. i.e. mini-skirts and shorts. When winter started coming on they started wearing shorts with pantyhose underneath, so they could still 'show' more, but not be as cold (logical really). What I noticed was that after a few weeks the Anglo bitches started to copy this style. Maybe they noticed the lack of attention that they were getting. I found this very interesting.
Adelaide girls are probably the most boring in Australia, and Australian women are the most boring of all Anglo Bitches, and Anglo Bitches are the worst of all Western women, and Western women are the worst of all White women. You know the way this one goes, you have probably heard it from so many guys, especially middle-aged guys that are on better incomes and so have travelled and have some experience to make the judgement. Like me.
Interesting that they felt the need to change their appearance.
What do you think the chances are that they might realise that they have to change their behaviour as well?
Not going to waste too much time on the upcoming Australian federal election. The Socialists thought that appointing a woman as prime minister could save them, and it had some initial effect with female voters, but that has decreased a lot as women realised that this woman has nothing in common with the average woman and is not a champion for women.
Interesting though that my economics lecturer, who I would have pegged as a wet liberal, i.e. the typical type of Liberal Socialist that would have voted for her, pointed out in class that the Labor government was the most incompetent government that Australia had experienced for a long time. He illustrated this with such things as the 'alcopop' fiasco where they brought in a huge tax on low-alcohol drinks (vodka mixers etc) that kids were drinking, in an attempt to curb their use. As any economist would tell you, the result was that the kids moved on to something else, in this case hard spirits like Jack Daniels. Further he pointed out the mis-use of terms like 'super profit', which economically means a profit in excess of that which you would get from moving your investment into something else. In this case the government was using the term pejoratively against the mining industry which had come out of the GFC ahead of the rest of the country due to other nations getting out first (Australia typically lagged) and their demand for resources ensured that our resources industry made good profits. So the government automatically (as all Socialists do) decided to punish them for their success.
The lecturer didn't word it like that of course, but it is a standard rant of mine that our Socialist culture in Australia is always seeking to punish success and reward failure.
And yes, they spell it 'Labor', we don't in English usually of course, but that is how the party concerned spell their name.
Avcon was a bit of a fizzle for me this year.
I didn't enjoy last year that much either, it is kind of like it lost something in the move out of the Uni and into the Convention Centre. I don't mind the increase in focus on games (that is what the government sponsors are behind) but it has come at the expense of the anime/manga. For example, one of the theatres that would have been showing anime was used for a series of presentation on game design.
It's not that I don't want there to be a series of presentation on game design - after all, I attended a few myself - but I do not want there to be a decrease in the amount of anime being screened.
Also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vendors have withdrawn. Less than half of the displays/booths/whatever were anime and manga oriented. There were a few game oriented, and there were a lot of government ones (TAFE, libraries, Trade and Development, etc.).
It's just not the same.
And just to finish off.
I left Metro 2033 unfinished somewhere half way through and moved on to a Spellforce that I had bought - it had 1 and the two expansions and 2 and its one expansion all on one disc. I started from the very start and am redoing Spellforce 1. Not using any cheats, but using a walkthrough for its map, i.e. where to find people, you know, when you have a mission to take this to that person but it doesn't tell you where they are and you can't remember which of the maps they were on. Playing as a necromancer, but currently in reasonably good armour, with a sword and shield, I am not using the magic so much. I was raising skeletons a lot, but I am getting to level 20, although my magic skills are still only at level 5 and so I am not finding the skeletons much use right now.
It was the first game to mix role play and strategy, and playing a necromancer is always way cool dude.
And it has a long story ahead for me. Weeks, if not months, of gaming.
Wednesday, July 7
Metro
There was something that I forgot last night about Metro 2033, the installation process really pissed me off - I bought a disc and yet it installed via steam and took more than an hour, then it wouldn't play saying it was missing some PhysX thing and that I needed to reinstall.
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
Tuesday, July 6
Netscape
I am a grumpy old man. I know that, I acknowledge it, I even take some pride and joy in it. And I know that as I am getting older, I am getting grumpier.
Being old and single kind of adds to it...
I have just returned from an evening lecture. These are meant to be phone-free zones, but routinely three or four people have their phones on and each goes off a few times, quite a few times in one girl's case (and yes, all of those that I clocked were girls). They have them on buzz, not on ring, but it still makes noise, especially in said girl's case as she lets it keep buzzing as she finishes writing whatever. Bear in mind that this is a small evening class of twelve or so students.
But one guy at the front had his laptop open and on and spent the entire, and I mean the entire, lecture surfing for cars.
I will be extremely interested to know how he scores in the subject.
Young girl goes out drinking alone, gets picked up by three guys, follows them willingly somewhere lonely, gets raped repeatedly, only actually realises that she was raped the next day. Yes, I know that rape is a bad thing, but one of the crimes committed here was stupidity. In cases like that I seriously question whether valuable police time and resources should be wasted, she should just be told that stupid girls that go out alone and get drunk then go somewhere with strange men are going to get raped. She should count herself lucky to be alive. Where is the personal responsibility thing? Sure, in a civilised country blah, blah, blah, but she went with several guys from a not civilised place so what did she think was going to happen? That they wanted to play tiddley winks? You can say that she was drunk; she wasn't able to think at all. I will say; good girls don't get drunk, good girls don't go out alone, good girls don't go off with several strange men. Why is it that good girls are so rare now and we seem to have so many stupid bitches and sluts? In a word; feminism. Call it the rant for the day, though I don't think just one makes for a very grumpy old man, I should do a few more.
Played Wolfenstein last week. It wasn't as good as Return to Castle... Sure, it has weapons upgrades, but it has too many stupid boss levels and too much search every-fracken-where for intel, gold, tomes. Did not really enjoy it so much at all.
Steam was offline last weekend (as in the one before the one just passed), apart from the obligatory rant about what right do the wankers at valve think they have to take my hard earned money and then not let me play the games that I have paid for. Yeah, it wasn't just that the steam servers were overloaded and you couldn't download anything that you had just bought (though that too) but that fracken steam wouldn't run anything without fracken connecting to the 'cloud', which, of course, is just what it couldn't fracken do. So I put in a Stalker disc, only realised a few hours in that it was Stalker 1 - after my friend made some comment about it and I said that I wasn't playing 1, I was playing 2, but sure enough there was no swamp, I was in 1. Mind you 2 was heaps buggier. Eventually I bored out, took a few days, but eventually the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose got to me. Naturally I was refusing to go to Pripet (Pripyat, I think they write it in Stalker 1) and follow the game mission, and in 1 there isn't really the faction war to get into.
So I ended up buying Metro 2033, which is what I am playing at the moment. Kind of a Stalker thing (lots of Stalker references), with something like the Wolfenstein engine by the look (no damage meter, get blurry around the peripheral vision and hide somewhere whilst you regenerate). But some really fracken hard bits here and there, and no save option before one. Anyhow, it kept refusing to read the game pad part of my Zboard gaming keyboard, specifically the run button, which I eventually noticed when I had a bit where I was hand-cuffed and had to run or die. And as each failed attempt got me to have to reload the whole map section it was not retaining the changes that I made each time to the key bindings so that it would fracken run. So I found that quite tedious. Also had some issues with people giving me instructions, and vital details not being shown in the objectives list - I was to go where and do what? In Stalker, at least by Stalker 3, you can check your message log if the details in the objectives list is a bit vague, and you can re-read the whole conversation. I am not too sure about the guns, find versus buy etc, I suspect that it will take a few plays to get the knack of that. But, all in all, I am enjoying it, I enjoy the darkness, the Russian-ness, in this way I enjoy the whole Stalker series. And it seems to have some depth, I don't know how far through I am yet, but Stalker 3 was definitely too short.
So that is my life right now; I wake up, I work, two nights I have lectures, otherwise I play games. I do need to get some discipline about studying; dedicate Saturday morning or Thursday evening. And I need to do a bit more housework. Also I need to buy some food.
Being old and single kind of adds to it...
I have just returned from an evening lecture. These are meant to be phone-free zones, but routinely three or four people have their phones on and each goes off a few times, quite a few times in one girl's case (and yes, all of those that I clocked were girls). They have them on buzz, not on ring, but it still makes noise, especially in said girl's case as she lets it keep buzzing as she finishes writing whatever. Bear in mind that this is a small evening class of twelve or so students.
But one guy at the front had his laptop open and on and spent the entire, and I mean the entire, lecture surfing for cars.
I will be extremely interested to know how he scores in the subject.
Young girl goes out drinking alone, gets picked up by three guys, follows them willingly somewhere lonely, gets raped repeatedly, only actually realises that she was raped the next day. Yes, I know that rape is a bad thing, but one of the crimes committed here was stupidity. In cases like that I seriously question whether valuable police time and resources should be wasted, she should just be told that stupid girls that go out alone and get drunk then go somewhere with strange men are going to get raped. She should count herself lucky to be alive. Where is the personal responsibility thing? Sure, in a civilised country blah, blah, blah, but she went with several guys from a not civilised place so what did she think was going to happen? That they wanted to play tiddley winks? You can say that she was drunk; she wasn't able to think at all. I will say; good girls don't get drunk, good girls don't go out alone, good girls don't go off with several strange men. Why is it that good girls are so rare now and we seem to have so many stupid bitches and sluts? In a word; feminism. Call it the rant for the day, though I don't think just one makes for a very grumpy old man, I should do a few more.
Played Wolfenstein last week. It wasn't as good as Return to Castle... Sure, it has weapons upgrades, but it has too many stupid boss levels and too much search every-fracken-where for intel, gold, tomes. Did not really enjoy it so much at all.
Steam was offline last weekend (as in the one before the one just passed), apart from the obligatory rant about what right do the wankers at valve think they have to take my hard earned money and then not let me play the games that I have paid for. Yeah, it wasn't just that the steam servers were overloaded and you couldn't download anything that you had just bought (though that too) but that fracken steam wouldn't run anything without fracken connecting to the 'cloud', which, of course, is just what it couldn't fracken do. So I put in a Stalker disc, only realised a few hours in that it was Stalker 1 - after my friend made some comment about it and I said that I wasn't playing 1, I was playing 2, but sure enough there was no swamp, I was in 1. Mind you 2 was heaps buggier. Eventually I bored out, took a few days, but eventually the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose got to me. Naturally I was refusing to go to Pripet (Pripyat, I think they write it in Stalker 1) and follow the game mission, and in 1 there isn't really the faction war to get into.
So I ended up buying Metro 2033, which is what I am playing at the moment. Kind of a Stalker thing (lots of Stalker references), with something like the Wolfenstein engine by the look (no damage meter, get blurry around the peripheral vision and hide somewhere whilst you regenerate). But some really fracken hard bits here and there, and no save option before one. Anyhow, it kept refusing to read the game pad part of my Zboard gaming keyboard, specifically the run button, which I eventually noticed when I had a bit where I was hand-cuffed and had to run or die. And as each failed attempt got me to have to reload the whole map section it was not retaining the changes that I made each time to the key bindings so that it would fracken run. So I found that quite tedious. Also had some issues with people giving me instructions, and vital details not being shown in the objectives list - I was to go where and do what? In Stalker, at least by Stalker 3, you can check your message log if the details in the objectives list is a bit vague, and you can re-read the whole conversation. I am not too sure about the guns, find versus buy etc, I suspect that it will take a few plays to get the knack of that. But, all in all, I am enjoying it, I enjoy the darkness, the Russian-ness, in this way I enjoy the whole Stalker series. And it seems to have some depth, I don't know how far through I am yet, but Stalker 3 was definitely too short.
So that is my life right now; I wake up, I work, two nights I have lectures, otherwise I play games. I do need to get some discipline about studying; dedicate Saturday morning or Thursday evening. And I need to do a bit more housework. Also I need to buy some food.
Tuesday, June 22
Remember Me
So, the little "Remember Me" tick on this thing doesn't work, at least on XP.
On Vista I have so many damned things prompting me with stored passwords I wouldn't know if it was the Blogger site remembering, Vista, or the Asus.
I was offline over the weekend. I blew up my modem, well, I was setting up my desktop and moved the modem and the plug pulled out and when I stuck it back in there was a little blue flash and then the modem's lights went out. Turns out it only needed a reset, and there is a reset button recessed and hidden, not where the Telstra person said it was, but knowing it was somewhere I just kept searching, and it worked. But I need a new cable since that one has its little clicky bit broken off.
Why is it that most of the female project managers that I have had to work with are so forgettable? I am being polite; something more along the lines of "wouldn't want to work with again" would describe it more accurately. They just don't seem to make good leaders; don't have vision, can't form strategies, can't manage people. Sure, not all of the males have been that good; but 1) most were okay, and 2) few were as bad as most of the females have been.
Did I tell you about the time one was so bad that when our team was talking about who to ask to have replace her I suggested we use a teddy bear? Couldn't have been any worse. After the team stopped laughing and asked for a serious answer I pointed out the cute Chinese girl that was junior to everyone in the Finance area. All she had to do was be a channel for communications, take minutes, and do what I told her to do / say what I told her to say (to management) and she would have been fine. Seriously.
The number of times that I have been 'managed' by someone paid less than half what I get can't be counted. What do you expect when a project team is composed of subject experts brought in just for the project but the project manager is the person in-house that is not too busy with other stuff? It is not a bad thing, and most experts are so wrapped up in what they are doing that they don't notice, and really, the pm's job is mostly communication. Most of the time anyhow. People skills - that is what is important for a team leader. And everybody always says that women have people skills.
You know what I think that it is? The women that have all been good pms have been professionals, consultants, well paid. The women that have been bad pms have all been, shall we say, not so professional, internal, not that impressively paid. Maybe women panic when they feel out of their depth. (Hell, when they are out of their depth.)
Remember when I was at my last contract and I said that the largest consultancy in the state (one of the biggest in the country) had asked me to speak with them? Never heard anything more. I suspect that it was just a bit of bait to try and get me to wheedle them a deal from the inside. Chalk that up as a learning experience.
Here is something that hurts; when you take a new rental here you have to pay up six weeks rent as bond and two weeks rent in advance, then two weeks later you have to pay a months rent. So twelve weeks rent paid in two weeks. All this before you get your bond back from the previous rental. Ouch! Well done South Australia.
Odd thing; the SA Government body that takes bonds is very quick about taking your money, but rather slow about giving it back. Never thought that did you?
I was in the bank the other day, and the woman helping me felt the need to get quite personal, as in tell me her life story. Asian woman, went on about how she wants to be a good wife, loves her husband, wants to serve him. Later was saying something about being loving and subservient. The whole discussion (one sided) went on for longer than I really wanted, but I was intrigued by the thought processes that you will never see in an Anglo woman. Can you imagine an Australian woman (at least one younger than fifty) talking about being happy with her destiny to serve her husband? Kind of like the times Eastern European women have prefaced their expression of an opinion to me with "just being a woman, but...". It may be dead feminine, it may melt your heart and threaten to instantly enthral you, but it is definitely something that you will never hear from an Anglo bitch.
One thing about Rome Total War - Total Realism is that it does have a habit of corrupting the autosaves. Almost seems guaranteed to happen at some point in a campaign (they will last a few weekends remember). Must remember to save frequently, because it is only the autosave, which happens just after you press the next turn button but before it makes that turn. And the bitch only keeps the one autosave, so you can't go back to the previous one and only lose one turn (no big deal). No you have to go back to the last time that you remembered to save a few hours ago.
Doesn't seem to happen so much in the vanilla game, just the mega mod.
A friend was telling me that there is a baby boom amongst the foreign students. They come here, and away from their social structures they do a little more PDA, moves beyond just holding hands and kissing in public (but that next bit doesn't happen in public mind you). And they are having a higher pregnancy rate than they would at home or that native students do. Who is going to pay for this? Just as I don't believe that foreign students shouldn't get free bus passes like native students (I am not saying that they do, I wouldn't know, just that they shouldn't), I also don't believe that they should get free medical. Although emergency medical treatment is part of an international agreement, but this one shouldn't be, they should be sent home to deal with it there. But I have noticed how so many little dark-haired girls are holding tightly on to dark-haired boys around town. In a way that wouldn't be allowed back home.
My first thoughts were why the silly little things were wasting their time with a boy, he wouldn't be able to provide for them, he wouldn't have the experience or knowledge to make a good husband, he wouldn't have the maturity to be a good father. And if they went too far then they (the little girls that is) would be less desirable a catch to some man that would be a better husband. But there you go, just what you start thinking like when you get to be a grumpy old fart.
On Vista I have so many damned things prompting me with stored passwords I wouldn't know if it was the Blogger site remembering, Vista, or the Asus.
I was offline over the weekend. I blew up my modem, well, I was setting up my desktop and moved the modem and the plug pulled out and when I stuck it back in there was a little blue flash and then the modem's lights went out. Turns out it only needed a reset, and there is a reset button recessed and hidden, not where the Telstra person said it was, but knowing it was somewhere I just kept searching, and it worked. But I need a new cable since that one has its little clicky bit broken off.
Why is it that most of the female project managers that I have had to work with are so forgettable? I am being polite; something more along the lines of "wouldn't want to work with again" would describe it more accurately. They just don't seem to make good leaders; don't have vision, can't form strategies, can't manage people. Sure, not all of the males have been that good; but 1) most were okay, and 2) few were as bad as most of the females have been.
Did I tell you about the time one was so bad that when our team was talking about who to ask to have replace her I suggested we use a teddy bear? Couldn't have been any worse. After the team stopped laughing and asked for a serious answer I pointed out the cute Chinese girl that was junior to everyone in the Finance area. All she had to do was be a channel for communications, take minutes, and do what I told her to do / say what I told her to say (to management) and she would have been fine. Seriously.
The number of times that I have been 'managed' by someone paid less than half what I get can't be counted. What do you expect when a project team is composed of subject experts brought in just for the project but the project manager is the person in-house that is not too busy with other stuff? It is not a bad thing, and most experts are so wrapped up in what they are doing that they don't notice, and really, the pm's job is mostly communication. Most of the time anyhow. People skills - that is what is important for a team leader. And everybody always says that women have people skills.
You know what I think that it is? The women that have all been good pms have been professionals, consultants, well paid. The women that have been bad pms have all been, shall we say, not so professional, internal, not that impressively paid. Maybe women panic when they feel out of their depth. (Hell, when they are out of their depth.)
Remember when I was at my last contract and I said that the largest consultancy in the state (one of the biggest in the country) had asked me to speak with them? Never heard anything more. I suspect that it was just a bit of bait to try and get me to wheedle them a deal from the inside. Chalk that up as a learning experience.
Here is something that hurts; when you take a new rental here you have to pay up six weeks rent as bond and two weeks rent in advance, then two weeks later you have to pay a months rent. So twelve weeks rent paid in two weeks. All this before you get your bond back from the previous rental. Ouch! Well done South Australia.
Odd thing; the SA Government body that takes bonds is very quick about taking your money, but rather slow about giving it back. Never thought that did you?
I was in the bank the other day, and the woman helping me felt the need to get quite personal, as in tell me her life story. Asian woman, went on about how she wants to be a good wife, loves her husband, wants to serve him. Later was saying something about being loving and subservient. The whole discussion (one sided) went on for longer than I really wanted, but I was intrigued by the thought processes that you will never see in an Anglo woman. Can you imagine an Australian woman (at least one younger than fifty) talking about being happy with her destiny to serve her husband? Kind of like the times Eastern European women have prefaced their expression of an opinion to me with "just being a woman, but...". It may be dead feminine, it may melt your heart and threaten to instantly enthral you, but it is definitely something that you will never hear from an Anglo bitch.
One thing about Rome Total War - Total Realism is that it does have a habit of corrupting the autosaves. Almost seems guaranteed to happen at some point in a campaign (they will last a few weekends remember). Must remember to save frequently, because it is only the autosave, which happens just after you press the next turn button but before it makes that turn. And the bitch only keeps the one autosave, so you can't go back to the previous one and only lose one turn (no big deal). No you have to go back to the last time that you remembered to save a few hours ago.
Doesn't seem to happen so much in the vanilla game, just the mega mod.
A friend was telling me that there is a baby boom amongst the foreign students. They come here, and away from their social structures they do a little more PDA, moves beyond just holding hands and kissing in public (but that next bit doesn't happen in public mind you). And they are having a higher pregnancy rate than they would at home or that native students do. Who is going to pay for this? Just as I don't believe that foreign students shouldn't get free bus passes like native students (I am not saying that they do, I wouldn't know, just that they shouldn't), I also don't believe that they should get free medical. Although emergency medical treatment is part of an international agreement, but this one shouldn't be, they should be sent home to deal with it there. But I have noticed how so many little dark-haired girls are holding tightly on to dark-haired boys around town. In a way that wouldn't be allowed back home.
My first thoughts were why the silly little things were wasting their time with a boy, he wouldn't be able to provide for them, he wouldn't have the experience or knowledge to make a good husband, he wouldn't have the maturity to be a good father. And if they went too far then they (the little girls that is) would be less desirable a catch to some man that would be a better husband. But there you go, just what you start thinking like when you get to be a grumpy old fart.
Thursday, June 17
Forgotten Blog
Yeah, I kinda forgot that I had a blog for a few days. Too busy.
I have moved apartments. My old rental manager tried to cheat me out of another two weeks rent on the way out. I got the power and phone relocated, then to have Telstra drop me two days claiming that it is illegal to reconnect me so soon. And I got my power disconnected; as in I got it transferred to the new address, and then after the address was in my name it got cut because the previous tenants had moved out. I came home to a cold, dark house - had to go out for dinner, boo hoo, took a couple of calls but someone came around that night to reconnect it. I had to throw the main switch, apparently it is illegal for him to actually do the connection.
I had been reconciling two systems at work, well I was asked to check that one was in the other. I did a weeks worth of data out of one which checked to three days in the other (weekend thing) and asked my project manager if she wanted me to finish the next few days given that it wasn't going to add any value. She said it was okay. That was last week. This week it was "I asked you to reconcile the whole week, not just five days!" So I did the next few days. It did not add any value. What can I say?
My new flat is kind of nice. It has pros and cons. But I think that I will enjoy it more as I am closer to the 'busy' end of town. Lots of restaurants just steps away, the mall is just a few minutes, also closer to the river and gardens.
I had an Adult Friend Finder account three years ago, it was a one year pre-paid thing and then I closed it. They started billing my card every month about nine months ago, lasted for seven months. Unauthorised, in fact pure credit card fraud. Apparently it is legal in the US for US companies to commit fraud so long as it is not against US citizens. Anyhow, the bank closed that card, and it had only just been replaced. So now I am frantically changing all of my automated accounts, but not to the new card from this bank, remember, but to my new SingAir AmEx card so I get KrisFlier points. Both my new Westpac and my new HSBC cards are meant to have the zero or 1% on transferred balance offers, but I can't see that either of them has actually taken any of previous card's debt. I guess 'cos it was, coincidentally, just closed as they were opening the new accounts.
(The AFF account was meant to find me an Asian girlfriend in Singers before I moved there so that I could move straight into a relationship. I would have stayed with that sort of leverage to keep me there.)
As I come out of Hotmail I get the Singapore screen since I haven't updated MSN to the fact that I am (unfortunately) back in Oz, today there were lots of pics of Singers flooded by rainfall - it all made me so homesick!
I have moved apartments. My old rental manager tried to cheat me out of another two weeks rent on the way out. I got the power and phone relocated, then to have Telstra drop me two days claiming that it is illegal to reconnect me so soon. And I got my power disconnected; as in I got it transferred to the new address, and then after the address was in my name it got cut because the previous tenants had moved out. I came home to a cold, dark house - had to go out for dinner, boo hoo, took a couple of calls but someone came around that night to reconnect it. I had to throw the main switch, apparently it is illegal for him to actually do the connection.
I had been reconciling two systems at work, well I was asked to check that one was in the other. I did a weeks worth of data out of one which checked to three days in the other (weekend thing) and asked my project manager if she wanted me to finish the next few days given that it wasn't going to add any value. She said it was okay. That was last week. This week it was "I asked you to reconcile the whole week, not just five days!" So I did the next few days. It did not add any value. What can I say?
My new flat is kind of nice. It has pros and cons. But I think that I will enjoy it more as I am closer to the 'busy' end of town. Lots of restaurants just steps away, the mall is just a few minutes, also closer to the river and gardens.
I had an Adult Friend Finder account three years ago, it was a one year pre-paid thing and then I closed it. They started billing my card every month about nine months ago, lasted for seven months. Unauthorised, in fact pure credit card fraud. Apparently it is legal in the US for US companies to commit fraud so long as it is not against US citizens. Anyhow, the bank closed that card, and it had only just been replaced. So now I am frantically changing all of my automated accounts, but not to the new card from this bank, remember, but to my new SingAir AmEx card so I get KrisFlier points. Both my new Westpac and my new HSBC cards are meant to have the zero or 1% on transferred balance offers, but I can't see that either of them has actually taken any of previous card's debt. I guess 'cos it was, coincidentally, just closed as they were opening the new accounts.
(The AFF account was meant to find me an Asian girlfriend in Singers before I moved there so that I could move straight into a relationship. I would have stayed with that sort of leverage to keep me there.)
As I come out of Hotmail I get the Singapore screen since I haven't updated MSN to the fact that I am (unfortunately) back in Oz, today there were lots of pics of Singers flooded by rainfall - it all made me so homesick!
Monday, June 7
Why am I doing this?
I am moving house.
Fed up with my rental manager's total ineptness, replacing my fridge-that-was-okay-except-for-missing-door-shelves with a fridge-that-is-beaten-up-dented-scratched-has-cracked-plastic-shelves-a-much-smaller-freezer-and-is-as-noisy-as-hell-but-has-door-shelves and his entering my apartment without getting my permission to make this swap so I gave notice that I was going to give notice.
That was all mid last week, I enquired about five places, looked at three, and applied for two by Friday, and today, Monday, have been told that I was successful getting one - my preferred one too. All much quicker than I expected. So I gave written two weeks notice to the 'grand manager' after work and have just been online filling in disconnection, relocation, and new connection forms. I will still have to phone a couple tomorrow since not everyone will accept a cancel via the web.
I'm really buzzed.
The new place is in the old East End Market complex, an inside apartment so the balcony faces the quiet courtyard and trees and greenery.
My sister dropped off a few big plastic boxes (the wheeled kind) and I am going to start packing tonight (hence the title, I should be doing that now and not writing this). I will get a lot of packing done in the evenings, then finish Saturday morning, then move Sunday, then next weekend will clean the old place.
I am hoping that I can get the power on there in time, I use TruEnergy and they only take relocations by phone, and want four days, if I phone first thing Tuesday, then Wed, Thurs, Fri, will it by on for the weekend? Still, it is CBD so it should be easier. Phone won't be on until mid next week (Telstra...), broadband and cable TV follow it by a few days. And then Monday the week after I have everything cut here so that I have power and hot water for next weekend's clean up.
I had another little mishap with Australia Post; an eBay delivery was running late, so I emailed the merchant who swore that he had posted the item and gave me the registered post number, I phoned AusPost and lo and behold, it had been delivered a week ago, but they hadn't told me about it. Or perhaps more likely, the card had exactly the same info as for the last one (reference number '1', seriously) and naturally I thought that it was a second card for the first parcel. But then they moved it to the GPO, without me asking for it. True, I asked for the first one to be moved, but they never told me of this new event. Useless AusPost courier. He is an Indian of course (you know rings your buzzer saying 'please come down, please come down' [buzz buzz buzz endlessly] without saying who he is or why you should go down - something like 'Australia Post courier, please sign for a parcel' would work so much better). So is the new rental manager that is the reason why I am leaving this apartment. Do I foresee major 'cultural' difficulties ahead for Australia?
You do realise that over the last year Indians have become almost as much hated and despised as Muslims in Australia? They are more annoying, but have been committing less violent crime against Anglos (the nine year old girl being raped by one last week aside). But they have been blaming Australia for being racist for all of these attacks on Indians when we all found out that they were carried out by other Indians. Except for that guy that burnt himself trying to torch his car for insurance and then screamed that it was a racist attack against him. That wasn't 'another' Indian.
You know what all Australians are saying.
You don't like it here? Then fuck off back where you came from!
Seriously, when will Liberal Socialism gasp its last breath?
Still, if it did then I wouldn't be so keen on leaving here myself, would I?
All of this left wing humanist crap is a big part of why I want out.
That and the high taxes to pay for a plethora of useless public servants and welfare addicts, the government bureaucracies that strangle business ventures. And blah blah blah, I could go on for days.
But then you try to explain to a Singaporean how their one party Fascist state is like a breath of fresh air to us. They want to whinge about the lack of social services without accepting that providing them, and paying for the huge resultant civil service, will lead to crushing taxes. Which in turn will mean that families will not have the wherewithal to provide for their own family members and so will become even more dependent upon government handouts. By whatever deity you worship in whatever abode He/She/It resides in, your public transport system WORKS! Try finding one in Australia that does. (Admittedly, I live in Adelaide and it is worse than most AU cities in this regard, as in so many others.)
And seriously, do you want to live in Malaysia, where you know that you will suffer great persecution and oppression because of your religious beliefs, well Australia is a lot like that for those of us who follow traditional European beliefs rather than that false and foreign, indeed Asian, construct that most Whites profess to follow.
Speaking of which.
I just got a SingAir 'mail (KrisFlyer newsletter) which had a SingAir/AmEx card thing in it. (Well, a link thereto.) Two of the three cards were available to Singaporean residents only, and the third's best benefits were only available in SG. Kind of thought it was a funny thing for them to be sending out, but I guess maybe most of their members are Singaporeans. Maybe most Australians are members of QANTAS's club. Not in Adelaide of course, 'cos QANTAS doesn't service Adelaide. I have two best friends, that makes three of us, two of us have well paying jobs, both are KrisFlyer members, not QANTAS whatevers. I can only go on what I know; you know, it is a 'generation x' thing, we only trust anecdotal evidence.
Why do I use TruEnergy?
I made that choice years ago, but is it still valid? Maybe I should re-investigate.
Anyhow, big changes ahead.
Well, not really big, just moving home, but it seems big.
Fed up with my rental manager's total ineptness, replacing my fridge-that-was-okay-except-for-missing-door-shelves with a fridge-that-is-beaten-up-dented-scratched-has-cracked-plastic-shelves-a-much-smaller-freezer-and-is-as-noisy-as-hell-but-has-door-shelves and his entering my apartment without getting my permission to make this swap so I gave notice that I was going to give notice.
That was all mid last week, I enquired about five places, looked at three, and applied for two by Friday, and today, Monday, have been told that I was successful getting one - my preferred one too. All much quicker than I expected. So I gave written two weeks notice to the 'grand manager' after work and have just been online filling in disconnection, relocation, and new connection forms. I will still have to phone a couple tomorrow since not everyone will accept a cancel via the web.
I'm really buzzed.
The new place is in the old East End Market complex, an inside apartment so the balcony faces the quiet courtyard and trees and greenery.
My sister dropped off a few big plastic boxes (the wheeled kind) and I am going to start packing tonight (hence the title, I should be doing that now and not writing this). I will get a lot of packing done in the evenings, then finish Saturday morning, then move Sunday, then next weekend will clean the old place.
I am hoping that I can get the power on there in time, I use TruEnergy and they only take relocations by phone, and want four days, if I phone first thing Tuesday, then Wed, Thurs, Fri, will it by on for the weekend? Still, it is CBD so it should be easier. Phone won't be on until mid next week (Telstra...), broadband and cable TV follow it by a few days. And then Monday the week after I have everything cut here so that I have power and hot water for next weekend's clean up.
I had another little mishap with Australia Post; an eBay delivery was running late, so I emailed the merchant who swore that he had posted the item and gave me the registered post number, I phoned AusPost and lo and behold, it had been delivered a week ago, but they hadn't told me about it. Or perhaps more likely, the card had exactly the same info as for the last one (reference number '1', seriously) and naturally I thought that it was a second card for the first parcel. But then they moved it to the GPO, without me asking for it. True, I asked for the first one to be moved, but they never told me of this new event. Useless AusPost courier. He is an Indian of course (you know rings your buzzer saying 'please come down, please come down' [buzz buzz buzz endlessly] without saying who he is or why you should go down - something like 'Australia Post courier, please sign for a parcel' would work so much better). So is the new rental manager that is the reason why I am leaving this apartment. Do I foresee major 'cultural' difficulties ahead for Australia?
You do realise that over the last year Indians have become almost as much hated and despised as Muslims in Australia? They are more annoying, but have been committing less violent crime against Anglos (the nine year old girl being raped by one last week aside). But they have been blaming Australia for being racist for all of these attacks on Indians when we all found out that they were carried out by other Indians. Except for that guy that burnt himself trying to torch his car for insurance and then screamed that it was a racist attack against him. That wasn't 'another' Indian.
You know what all Australians are saying.
You don't like it here? Then fuck off back where you came from!
Seriously, when will Liberal Socialism gasp its last breath?
Still, if it did then I wouldn't be so keen on leaving here myself, would I?
All of this left wing humanist crap is a big part of why I want out.
That and the high taxes to pay for a plethora of useless public servants and welfare addicts, the government bureaucracies that strangle business ventures. And blah blah blah, I could go on for days.
But then you try to explain to a Singaporean how their one party Fascist state is like a breath of fresh air to us. They want to whinge about the lack of social services without accepting that providing them, and paying for the huge resultant civil service, will lead to crushing taxes. Which in turn will mean that families will not have the wherewithal to provide for their own family members and so will become even more dependent upon government handouts. By whatever deity you worship in whatever abode He/She/It resides in, your public transport system WORKS! Try finding one in Australia that does. (Admittedly, I live in Adelaide and it is worse than most AU cities in this regard, as in so many others.)
And seriously, do you want to live in Malaysia, where you know that you will suffer great persecution and oppression because of your religious beliefs, well Australia is a lot like that for those of us who follow traditional European beliefs rather than that false and foreign, indeed Asian, construct that most Whites profess to follow.
Speaking of which.
I just got a SingAir 'mail (KrisFlyer newsletter) which had a SingAir/AmEx card thing in it. (Well, a link thereto.) Two of the three cards were available to Singaporean residents only, and the third's best benefits were only available in SG. Kind of thought it was a funny thing for them to be sending out, but I guess maybe most of their members are Singaporeans. Maybe most Australians are members of QANTAS's club. Not in Adelaide of course, 'cos QANTAS doesn't service Adelaide. I have two best friends, that makes three of us, two of us have well paying jobs, both are KrisFlyer members, not QANTAS whatevers. I can only go on what I know; you know, it is a 'generation x' thing, we only trust anecdotal evidence.
Why do I use TruEnergy?
I made that choice years ago, but is it still valid? Maybe I should re-investigate.
Anyhow, big changes ahead.
Well, not really big, just moving home, but it seems big.
Saturday, June 5
Birthdays
Yes, there is one tomorrow, but rather than a 'present' I wired my sis a thousand. I know that she needs a hand at the moment and could use it, but somehow it doesn't feel 'right'. I have this thought that I should now buy some useless trifle and gift-wrap it. Odd. Emotional and not logical, I know. I get a tad annoyed at how my father always gives me a few hundred for my birthday, I think that I would appreciate a book (or something) more, even though it costs a lot less and even if I didn't actually enjoy it. But this is a particular situation.
Normally I would say it doesn't seem much, but at this point it is threatening my ability to pay my own rent. Financially I have been having a bad year. I could get really melancholic here...
At the moment my pet hate is cyclists.
The last few days I have been thinking of getting a t-short made up saying something like "When I drive a car I take revenge on the cyclists that make being a pedestrian so dangerous." Seriously, they are pissing me off. Riding on footpaths, blocking pedestrian crossing zones, shouting abuse at you as they cowardly ride off after they nearly run you over, thinking that no laws apply to them. Everything that cyclists like to whinge about car-drivers can be applied to themselves.
I am having a busy time right now. I lost patience with the new dick of a rental manager after the fridge fiasco and so have been looking for a new apartment, which will involve paying eight weeks rent before I get the previous bond returned. And I will soon be studying again and had to pay fees and buy text books. So kind of financial worries. At the point at which I am changing banks and starting new cards and have (still) to move my automatic deductions/charges to new accounts/cards. And Australia Post has been pissing me off all week not being able to give me something that they held at a post office ten minutes walk from me. Took nearly two weeks, eight interactions with them, and a total cost of about eighty dollars to me to resolve.
I have been playing Rome; Total War on this laptop, which runs Vista and the development console doesn't seem to work in vista, so the cheats available in xp are not. Given that the game seems to randomly hit hard with money lost to 'corruption', which you can't do anything about, like hiring constables or such, I resolved to use the money cheat to counteract it. But of course I can't get to it in vista, so I copied the save file onto a flash drive and tried to open it in a R:TW on my desktop (which runs xp), but that crashes the game. I had a similar problem with something else a while ago as I recall, cheats not working on vista. Seems to be not a gamer-friendly os.
Anyhow, I went out last night, Friday night, and walked down the road to the city centre. Initially planning to go to a text book shop in Renaissance Arcade (? I think, anyhow that same arcade that has the vegetarian place at the end near Pultney), but it wasn't open, wasn't open this morning either, sign (which I read at that point) said 9:30 to 4:30 Mon-Fri so obviously they don't want business. Ended up trying the new EB Games shop, not that it is 'new', rather that they have moved into a new store (not too far from Shin Tokyo). I am not kidding you, the only game I could find that vaguely caught my attention was Pharaoh! Marked to only thirty and then with a half price sticker on that. So old, but a fun game - I do not enjoy Children of the Nile, I bought it on Steam only because I forgot that it wasn't Pharaoh, forgot which was which. And every time that I would look through my steam list wanting to play a decent strategy game (an area steam is weak in) I would wish that it was pharaoh and end up playing a shooter. This says something for how weak on story line or original ideas games are lately.
I look at bioshock 2, but bioshock 1 was only a play-once game.
I looked at supreme commander 2, but nothing on the box indicated anything different from 1.
I was so desperate I even looked at civilisation what? 27 or something it is up to now? But I didn't like the first half dozen and couldn't see the latest being worth installing.
Remember when doom 2 was awe inspiring?
We could hookup the old co-ax and play TOGETHER!!!!
Oh, and then dune 2!
These two games defined us.
They gave us meaning.
Dare I say it? They made life worth living!
When fear 2 came out not too long ago my comments ran something like; the graphics are good enough to masturbate to but the story line is nothing much new and the weapons are no biggy, definitely it is not as frightening. Bearing in mind that fear 1 was the most frightening game that I have ever played. Seriously, when you saw that eight year old girl you just shit yourself! Started shooting at her whilst running backwards as fast as you could, knowing that you couldn't hurt her but hoping to slow her down enough until you fell out a window or something and so got away.
That was a fun game!
Normally I would say it doesn't seem much, but at this point it is threatening my ability to pay my own rent. Financially I have been having a bad year. I could get really melancholic here...
At the moment my pet hate is cyclists.
The last few days I have been thinking of getting a t-short made up saying something like "When I drive a car I take revenge on the cyclists that make being a pedestrian so dangerous." Seriously, they are pissing me off. Riding on footpaths, blocking pedestrian crossing zones, shouting abuse at you as they cowardly ride off after they nearly run you over, thinking that no laws apply to them. Everything that cyclists like to whinge about car-drivers can be applied to themselves.
I am having a busy time right now. I lost patience with the new dick of a rental manager after the fridge fiasco and so have been looking for a new apartment, which will involve paying eight weeks rent before I get the previous bond returned. And I will soon be studying again and had to pay fees and buy text books. So kind of financial worries. At the point at which I am changing banks and starting new cards and have (still) to move my automatic deductions/charges to new accounts/cards. And Australia Post has been pissing me off all week not being able to give me something that they held at a post office ten minutes walk from me. Took nearly two weeks, eight interactions with them, and a total cost of about eighty dollars to me to resolve.
I have been playing Rome; Total War on this laptop, which runs Vista and the development console doesn't seem to work in vista, so the cheats available in xp are not. Given that the game seems to randomly hit hard with money lost to 'corruption', which you can't do anything about, like hiring constables or such, I resolved to use the money cheat to counteract it. But of course I can't get to it in vista, so I copied the save file onto a flash drive and tried to open it in a R:TW on my desktop (which runs xp), but that crashes the game. I had a similar problem with something else a while ago as I recall, cheats not working on vista. Seems to be not a gamer-friendly os.
Anyhow, I went out last night, Friday night, and walked down the road to the city centre. Initially planning to go to a text book shop in Renaissance Arcade (? I think, anyhow that same arcade that has the vegetarian place at the end near Pultney), but it wasn't open, wasn't open this morning either, sign (which I read at that point) said 9:30 to 4:30 Mon-Fri so obviously they don't want business. Ended up trying the new EB Games shop, not that it is 'new', rather that they have moved into a new store (not too far from Shin Tokyo). I am not kidding you, the only game I could find that vaguely caught my attention was Pharaoh! Marked to only thirty and then with a half price sticker on that. So old, but a fun game - I do not enjoy Children of the Nile, I bought it on Steam only because I forgot that it wasn't Pharaoh, forgot which was which. And every time that I would look through my steam list wanting to play a decent strategy game (an area steam is weak in) I would wish that it was pharaoh and end up playing a shooter. This says something for how weak on story line or original ideas games are lately.
I look at bioshock 2, but bioshock 1 was only a play-once game.
I looked at supreme commander 2, but nothing on the box indicated anything different from 1.
I was so desperate I even looked at civilisation what? 27 or something it is up to now? But I didn't like the first half dozen and couldn't see the latest being worth installing.
Remember when doom 2 was awe inspiring?
We could hookup the old co-ax and play TOGETHER!!!!
Oh, and then dune 2!
These two games defined us.
They gave us meaning.
Dare I say it? They made life worth living!
When fear 2 came out not too long ago my comments ran something like; the graphics are good enough to masturbate to but the story line is nothing much new and the weapons are no biggy, definitely it is not as frightening. Bearing in mind that fear 1 was the most frightening game that I have ever played. Seriously, when you saw that eight year old girl you just shit yourself! Started shooting at her whilst running backwards as fast as you could, knowing that you couldn't hurt her but hoping to slow her down enough until you fell out a window or something and so got away.
That was a fun game!
Tuesday, May 25
How many things?
Raining again. Not that cold, in fact I got too hot wearing a coat to work, so tomorrow I'll just go with the suit jacket and a large umbrella. You start to think that winter is here, and then it gets warm, dry, and sunny for a couple of weeks, then it rains again. No real winters like there used to be when I was a child...
(Anyone that tries to post any comments about global warming will be burnt.)
Got a card from the Australia Post couriers, took half an hour off work, and since I am a contractor that meant forgoing thirty bucks, to find the post office closed when I got there. Just on five maybe. No five thirty or six like anyone running a business. I intend phoning tomorrow and telling them that they can deliver it to my work. I am not going to forgo any more pay because they can't provide a decent service.
One day when I was obviously quite bored I went to the Singapore Expats site and ended up trying their friends/dating sub-site. As I recall it turned out to be rather disappointing. I had thought that it would be full of SPGs trying to catch a good foreign guy, but not a scary of them. Anyhow I just got an email of 'likely matches' from them and one caught my eye; a cute Russian red-head with an interest in anime. Strangely none of the 'mails links worked, so I tried logging on, only to be refused, so I tried the 'resend password' button, only to be told that it didn't recognise my email address. You know, the one it had just sent a 'mail to...
Anyhow, I found a 'contact us' link that didn't require logging on (Steams old problem) and got a very rapid reply. A really stupid reply, but quite quickly provided. This guy wrote, in rather bad English, that I couldn't log on because my address city was not filled in. Just how I had been able to log on previously is a mystery. But a further mystery is how he expected me to log on to change the basic details so that I could then log on...
Also amusing was the bit "you details is not incorrect..." followed by instructions on how to click on my home city from the list of cities in China...
If this wasn't filled in then I am guessing that the list was deficient in the Australia area. (And why is 'deficient' i before e when it is after a c?)
Other than that I have sweet fanny adams to talk about.
Actually that's not true, I recall, just as I am closing, that I do have some politics to rant about.
Rudd, sweet little communist that he is, has decided that to try and balance his budget he is going to add a new tax on the resources industry.
Now you will all be aware that Australia is pretty much the end of the World, and is taking longer to get out of the GFC than most (and Adelaide is the arse end of Australia, which is why my hourly rate is still not up to where it was three years ago). The only sector to come out sooner was the one driven by foreign demand, the resources that we export to everyone else. So they have now got a forty percent tax on them, before they pay interest on their business loans, before they pay their shareholders, and before they pay their normal income tax.
This is justified by saying that the resources that they mine are the property of all Australians and that they should pay for them. A reasonable argument; which is why they pay royalties; royalties to the indigenous peoples and royalties to the state governments and royalties to the federal government.
How many companies will now look somewhere else for their next venture?
How many jobs will Australia forgo because of this?
How much future tax revenue on those projects will now not be received because these prats wanted to grab some more now?
(Anyone that tries to post any comments about global warming will be burnt.)
Got a card from the Australia Post couriers, took half an hour off work, and since I am a contractor that meant forgoing thirty bucks, to find the post office closed when I got there. Just on five maybe. No five thirty or six like anyone running a business. I intend phoning tomorrow and telling them that they can deliver it to my work. I am not going to forgo any more pay because they can't provide a decent service.
One day when I was obviously quite bored I went to the Singapore Expats site and ended up trying their friends/dating sub-site. As I recall it turned out to be rather disappointing. I had thought that it would be full of SPGs trying to catch a good foreign guy, but not a scary of them. Anyhow I just got an email of 'likely matches' from them and one caught my eye; a cute Russian red-head with an interest in anime. Strangely none of the 'mails links worked, so I tried logging on, only to be refused, so I tried the 'resend password' button, only to be told that it didn't recognise my email address. You know, the one it had just sent a 'mail to...
Anyhow, I found a 'contact us' link that didn't require logging on (Steams old problem) and got a very rapid reply. A really stupid reply, but quite quickly provided. This guy wrote, in rather bad English, that I couldn't log on because my address city was not filled in. Just how I had been able to log on previously is a mystery. But a further mystery is how he expected me to log on to change the basic details so that I could then log on...
Also amusing was the bit "you details is not incorrect..." followed by instructions on how to click on my home city from the list of cities in China...
If this wasn't filled in then I am guessing that the list was deficient in the Australia area. (And why is 'deficient' i before e when it is after a c?)
Other than that I have sweet fanny adams to talk about.
Actually that's not true, I recall, just as I am closing, that I do have some politics to rant about.
Rudd, sweet little communist that he is, has decided that to try and balance his budget he is going to add a new tax on the resources industry.
Now you will all be aware that Australia is pretty much the end of the World, and is taking longer to get out of the GFC than most (and Adelaide is the arse end of Australia, which is why my hourly rate is still not up to where it was three years ago). The only sector to come out sooner was the one driven by foreign demand, the resources that we export to everyone else. So they have now got a forty percent tax on them, before they pay interest on their business loans, before they pay their shareholders, and before they pay their normal income tax.
This is justified by saying that the resources that they mine are the property of all Australians and that they should pay for them. A reasonable argument; which is why they pay royalties; royalties to the indigenous peoples and royalties to the state governments and royalties to the federal government.
How many companies will now look somewhere else for their next venture?
How many jobs will Australia forgo because of this?
How much future tax revenue on those projects will now not be received because these prats wanted to grab some more now?
Saturday, May 15
I am
I am blogging for no reason other than that I am alive, and blogging.
Rounding up reading things, facebooks, emails, chatting online with friends in Singapore, checking other blogs, so I felt that I should write something.
What to write though?
Hmm,
I left Santos and am back at Transport. That is good, not just 'cos I am being paid a bit more than half as much again, as the people have more character and I enjoy being there. Also it is on Leigh Street and has lots of good restaurants. "Lots" and "good" in the context of being Adelaide of course.
I am having the new contract pay into my HSBC account, and when it has something decent in it I will transfer my automatic deductions to it. It has a VISA card as well. Also applied for a VISA card from WestPac; it has an interest free period on the balance that I transfer from the NAB card and it has a loyalty/reward programme with SingAir. I wanted the Citi one, but they no longer have a relationship with SingAir here, they are with Qantas, and how useless is that? Hello, I am in Adelaide and Qantas don't fly internationally out of here, they only fly via other cities, so add on connection and at least half a day, plus at least a few hundred bucks expense, to your trip. So that is all good, moving at last. 'Cos the NAB were so useless when I was overseas.
I have enrolled in a masters, in accounting. Studying part time to start with, but I would love to work only three days a week and study full time. So I will have a certificate and a diploma and a degree in accounting. How overkill, but unfortunately the way that I have to go to do the things that I want to do.
I was not paying my rent since the manager was not fixing my fridge. This was my third month of not paying my rent, and finally someone called me to ask about that. I said "fix my fridge". It seems that it is finally being fixed, but I am holding back rent until it is done and I have seen it with my own eyes. Lesson learned; don't move in or pay anything until the bastards have got everything perfect, 'cos once you move in they will have no incentive to fix anything. Human nature sucks.
I was online chatting with my friend Javier in Singers last night saying that I have lots of Japanese music (J-pop rules!) but nothing Chinese and she sent me lots of links to clips on you tube. I spent hours watching S.H.E. and Sammi Cheung. Yeah, a few others, but that's where my attention got hooked, so lots of watching Landry shake her butt, and she tried to get me to watch a few that I said were like Chinese Barry Manilow :D So is cool, I got exposed to a new cultural experience, and I like that.
People keep asking me if I am going back to Singapore. Most seem to accept that it is inevitable. I find the psychology of that interesting; they are sad, but impotent, observers in the demise of their own culture and economy, their very social fabric is rending, but what can they do? I say maybe, maybe somewhere else; I can't be sure of how long it will take before I am ready to make the move again, but next time I will have to be independent of the local economy and the market vagaries. And I say that I would love to live in Hong Kong for three months and see what it is like, and maybe Taiwan, and definitely after I finish the degree I would love to get one of those teaching English jobs in Japan for a year and soak up that culture. I don't know which way it will go, I just think that in two or three years I will be at another cross-road making another decision. And right here, right now, I cannot give a firm commitment on what I will want in the future.
And here is the funny thing; I am happy with that, I am comfortable with that.
Like I am comfortable with consulting and working by contract and not having a fixed, guaranteed job.
I have been asked a few times recently what do I do. In circumstances that make answering with "I'm an accountant" seems meaningless, and "business consultant" or whatever seemed not to work either. For example, moving away from the few instances of people asking, the bank asked for my card application, and then asked for my position. Well, my 'position' is director of my own company, but then what follows from that doesn't work well with any of their drop-down lists. My company is just me, but I work in corporations and organisations that usually have a few thousand employees. But how do I describe my crust earning endeavours these days? Used to be easy, now it makes me pause and think; how best to describe it to this person, 'cos different people need different explanations.
So, all in all, I am generally feeling better about things than the last few months, the economy of little ol' Adelaide hasn't quite picked up yet, but it's getting there. And I am comfortable.
Rounding up reading things, facebooks, emails, chatting online with friends in Singapore, checking other blogs, so I felt that I should write something.
What to write though?
Hmm,
I left Santos and am back at Transport. That is good, not just 'cos I am being paid a bit more than half as much again, as the people have more character and I enjoy being there. Also it is on Leigh Street and has lots of good restaurants. "Lots" and "good" in the context of being Adelaide of course.
I am having the new contract pay into my HSBC account, and when it has something decent in it I will transfer my automatic deductions to it. It has a VISA card as well. Also applied for a VISA card from WestPac; it has an interest free period on the balance that I transfer from the NAB card and it has a loyalty/reward programme with SingAir. I wanted the Citi one, but they no longer have a relationship with SingAir here, they are with Qantas, and how useless is that? Hello, I am in Adelaide and Qantas don't fly internationally out of here, they only fly via other cities, so add on connection and at least half a day, plus at least a few hundred bucks expense, to your trip. So that is all good, moving at last. 'Cos the NAB were so useless when I was overseas.
I have enrolled in a masters, in accounting. Studying part time to start with, but I would love to work only three days a week and study full time. So I will have a certificate and a diploma and a degree in accounting. How overkill, but unfortunately the way that I have to go to do the things that I want to do.
I was not paying my rent since the manager was not fixing my fridge. This was my third month of not paying my rent, and finally someone called me to ask about that. I said "fix my fridge". It seems that it is finally being fixed, but I am holding back rent until it is done and I have seen it with my own eyes. Lesson learned; don't move in or pay anything until the bastards have got everything perfect, 'cos once you move in they will have no incentive to fix anything. Human nature sucks.
I was online chatting with my friend Javier in Singers last night saying that I have lots of Japanese music (J-pop rules!) but nothing Chinese and she sent me lots of links to clips on you tube. I spent hours watching S.H.E. and Sammi Cheung. Yeah, a few others, but that's where my attention got hooked, so lots of watching Landry shake her butt, and she tried to get me to watch a few that I said were like Chinese Barry Manilow :D So is cool, I got exposed to a new cultural experience, and I like that.
People keep asking me if I am going back to Singapore. Most seem to accept that it is inevitable. I find the psychology of that interesting; they are sad, but impotent, observers in the demise of their own culture and economy, their very social fabric is rending, but what can they do? I say maybe, maybe somewhere else; I can't be sure of how long it will take before I am ready to make the move again, but next time I will have to be independent of the local economy and the market vagaries. And I say that I would love to live in Hong Kong for three months and see what it is like, and maybe Taiwan, and definitely after I finish the degree I would love to get one of those teaching English jobs in Japan for a year and soak up that culture. I don't know which way it will go, I just think that in two or three years I will be at another cross-road making another decision. And right here, right now, I cannot give a firm commitment on what I will want in the future.
And here is the funny thing; I am happy with that, I am comfortable with that.
Like I am comfortable with consulting and working by contract and not having a fixed, guaranteed job.
I have been asked a few times recently what do I do. In circumstances that make answering with "I'm an accountant" seems meaningless, and "business consultant" or whatever seemed not to work either. For example, moving away from the few instances of people asking, the bank asked for my card application, and then asked for my position. Well, my 'position' is director of my own company, but then what follows from that doesn't work well with any of their drop-down lists. My company is just me, but I work in corporations and organisations that usually have a few thousand employees. But how do I describe my crust earning endeavours these days? Used to be easy, now it makes me pause and think; how best to describe it to this person, 'cos different people need different explanations.
So, all in all, I am generally feeling better about things than the last few months, the economy of little ol' Adelaide hasn't quite picked up yet, but it's getting there. And I am comfortable.
Monday, May 3
Whatever Again
I guess this is more just to prove that my net connection is working. Since Steam is being such a pain. I went off and left it updating for most of the day so that I could play C&C4, for which you have to be online or you lose your progress, Steam was finally saying that the downloads were complete and that I could play. Why it needed to update so much when the damned thing is only a week or two old is both beyond me and unforgivable to start with. But lo! I click 'play' and Steam instead goes to 'updating steam' mode.
Fuck that!
Log into Steam Powered dot com and, as usual, I cannot log in under my real account name and have to use a shadow account that I created some time ago since every time I log an issue with Valve the site thereafter refuses to recognise my password. Petty little shit of a website that. Six fracking times I have had that password reset. The Valve staff say that the password has to be numeric only, which is crap 'cos the shadow account is an alpha-only rude phrase about Steam and my main account used to work with an alphanumeric until they started screwing with it.
Anyhow, whilst I am here, so the NAB pissed me around with their online help (online, but three or four days later...), they sent me a link and some directions to download a PDF form to lodge a complaint about FriendFinders unauthorised use of my credit card. So I phoned them, but after twenty minutes on hold dropped that idea and decided to go to an actual branch and speak to real people. More than an hour later and nearly fainting from hunger (tip, eat lunch first next time) the woman says that the transaction was in GBP! Britain? I have not transacted with anything UK ever that I can recall, certainly nothing recently, in fact I know that I haven't done anything since I got back from SG nearly a year ago. At first I thought it was something to do with Adult Friend Finder, 'cos I know that company is a credit card thief, but they are based in the USA (like most net crims) not the UK. Puzzling. It will be a race to see whether the NAB refunds the thefts, which they say will take six weeks, or I finalise moving everything to HSBC and shut the NAB card. Either way, they have lost a twenty-year customer.
They used to be a good bank, but they stopped providing service a few years ago. Started using Indian call centres, even the online is Indian and does nothing but spew lots of words but no help. I reckon it was when they tried being the 'National' and forgot the 'Australia' part, kind of like how Community Aid Abroad merged with Freedom From Hunger and the resulting body was called Community Aid Abroad, surprise, surprise, but the CAA people got promoted, the FFH people got side-tracked, the FFH programs (which actually helped people) got strangled, and the CAA method of programming became the norm. I think you lose your soul with something like that. Yeah, CAA was never a good organisation, they funnel money into socially invasive projects that force their liberal socialist paradigm onto the recipients whereas FFH used to dig wells and build shelters and actually do something useful for people. Hasn't changed with the name change to 'Oxfam Australia' either.
Mind you, if there is one thing that I have learned in life, it is that if you give someone charity then they depend on it. They give up on trying for themselves and start parasiting on society. It is a bad thing to give freeloaders a dime, better to tell them to get a job. Seriously, I know that twenty years ago I would never have thought that I would think this, but it is what I have seen. This country is going down the gurgler with all of this welfare state mentality and the requisite humungous civil service bureaucracy it engenders. Yes, I sound like a grumpy old man, and I am, I know, but it's for their own good.
Fuck that!
Log into Steam Powered dot com and, as usual, I cannot log in under my real account name and have to use a shadow account that I created some time ago since every time I log an issue with Valve the site thereafter refuses to recognise my password. Petty little shit of a website that. Six fracking times I have had that password reset. The Valve staff say that the password has to be numeric only, which is crap 'cos the shadow account is an alpha-only rude phrase about Steam and my main account used to work with an alphanumeric until they started screwing with it.
Anyhow, whilst I am here, so the NAB pissed me around with their online help (online, but three or four days later...), they sent me a link and some directions to download a PDF form to lodge a complaint about FriendFinders unauthorised use of my credit card. So I phoned them, but after twenty minutes on hold dropped that idea and decided to go to an actual branch and speak to real people. More than an hour later and nearly fainting from hunger (tip, eat lunch first next time) the woman says that the transaction was in GBP! Britain? I have not transacted with anything UK ever that I can recall, certainly nothing recently, in fact I know that I haven't done anything since I got back from SG nearly a year ago. At first I thought it was something to do with Adult Friend Finder, 'cos I know that company is a credit card thief, but they are based in the USA (like most net crims) not the UK. Puzzling. It will be a race to see whether the NAB refunds the thefts, which they say will take six weeks, or I finalise moving everything to HSBC and shut the NAB card. Either way, they have lost a twenty-year customer.
They used to be a good bank, but they stopped providing service a few years ago. Started using Indian call centres, even the online is Indian and does nothing but spew lots of words but no help. I reckon it was when they tried being the 'National' and forgot the 'Australia' part, kind of like how Community Aid Abroad merged with Freedom From Hunger and the resulting body was called Community Aid Abroad, surprise, surprise, but the CAA people got promoted, the FFH people got side-tracked, the FFH programs (which actually helped people) got strangled, and the CAA method of programming became the norm. I think you lose your soul with something like that. Yeah, CAA was never a good organisation, they funnel money into socially invasive projects that force their liberal socialist paradigm onto the recipients whereas FFH used to dig wells and build shelters and actually do something useful for people. Hasn't changed with the name change to 'Oxfam Australia' either.
Mind you, if there is one thing that I have learned in life, it is that if you give someone charity then they depend on it. They give up on trying for themselves and start parasiting on society. It is a bad thing to give freeloaders a dime, better to tell them to get a job. Seriously, I know that twenty years ago I would never have thought that I would think this, but it is what I have seen. This country is going down the gurgler with all of this welfare state mentality and the requisite humungous civil service bureaucracy it engenders. Yes, I sound like a grumpy old man, and I am, I know, but it's for their own good.
Whatever
Probably won't be the last time that I use that for a title.
Nearly two and a half months without blogging. It roughly equates to the time I was at Santos, it was kind of soul-sapping. It wasn't a 'bad' place to work, just dull, the people insipid. Okay, the system setup is bad, their account string is cripplingly short, they have just expanded it, to something that is still cripplingly short, their OLAP setup is criminally bad, seriously, the implementation consultant (UXC) should never do that again, and won't, since they have withdrawn from that market.
The other contractors there have told me that they all feel that they get the cold shoulder from the employees as well, one woman transferred to permanent but it took a few months before people warmed to her. They just don't go to lunch together, and don't give the time of day to contractors. It is not a 'friendly' place. Also it is not nice for other reasons; they wank on about their focus on safety, but don't have mirrors on the ceiling at blind junctions in the corridor. Other than that, whilst the building is nice and open, very light and airy; the top floors get very hot and the aircon doesn't cut it. Their elevators have no fan and stay closed all day, so during summer they get very hot and stuffy; I could walk to work very early whilst the day was still quite cool, and then the five minute ride up in the elevator just standing still got me covered in perspiration!
All of this, of course, is on top of the fact that they pay shit.
This is the third time that I have interacted with them, the first time that I have taken a contract with them, and only because I knew that there was nothing else on the market at the beginning of this year. But now I have a week off and then on to something that pays a little more than half as much again.
We have recently voted here in little South Australia. I did my usual draw a little box at the bottom and tick it then write next to it "none of the above". In the lower house anyhow, in the upper house where there are far more options I did my usual start by putting the socialists last and then arrange the other fifty-odd choices in the order they least offended me. Putting people at the front that might provide the most entertainment should they get in.
Steam, ah Steam, it is a good thing to have an app that lets me buy a new computer in a new country and just go online and reinstall a big swag of games. It is a bad thing that I pay for a bunch of games but cannot play them for two weeks because Valve can't be bothered providing the servers required to handle the traffic they force the app to generate. I am seriously thinking about using cracked servers. And I don't particularly like the new look either.
I am coming up on my third monthly rent payment not being paid. I gave up asking for the fridge to be fixed, and being promised by the manager that it was happening soon, and stopped paying rent. I thought that this would get a quick resolution, but this week I will be not paying for the third month. I never saw that coming!
I have had another unauthorised transaction on my credit card. I suspect that it is the Adult Friend Finders company; I joined their site some years ago but did not renew. I think that they have dug through their records and hit old credit cards hoping that they don't get noticed, and in truth it wasn't for a while. Now I am having that battle with the National Australia Bank where they say that they are not involved in any agreements that I make with a merchant for automatic deductions and I have to take it up with the merchant. To which I responded that I don't really know who the merchant is!
I am in the process of moving all of my business to HSBC and will soon close the NAB accounts anyhow, but along the way I wanted to open a Citibank credit account 'cos they had a really good deal with a Singapore Airlines rewards programme, but now that I am actually doing it I can't find it on the Citibank Australia site and the only answer I get from them is that I can transfer my reward points at a rate of 1.5 to 1.0 to any airline programme. The old programme offered 1.5 points for every dollar spent, now they making this generic offer that is worth 0.66 whilst they have moved their main linkage to Qantas. I live in Adelaide, Qantas doesn't fly direct out of Adelaide, a Qantas program does not grab my attention. My friend has opened an account with Westpac because they have a SingAir offer and he is suggesting that I do the same. Certainly Citi is not offering anything that will get my business.
I have gone full vegan; my neice talked me into it over xmas. I am not finding it difficult in that I am not missing anything and I can cook dinner without much hassle (takeaway pizza and grating cheese over pasta are the two biggest loses) but I am noticing that it is MUCH harder to eat out. Well, eat out in Australia, I did comment previously on being vegetarian in Singapore that it would be so easy to go full vegan there, and indeed I did think about doing so. I find this an interesting comparison between our culinary cultures.
I have played through Stalker 3 again, this time choosing to stay and not depart with the military team, and thus enter the free form part of the game, but I am finding it kind of boring. I have the best guns, the best suit, the best artefacts, I have killed the best monsters; what else is there to do? I was pondering just killing all of the bandits. I would love to be able to shoot Sultan, but you are not allowed to draw guns in the bases, huh, what's with that? Also, whilst in the previous ones I tended towards Freedom, I find in this one that I cannot help but work with Duty; Freedom is just presented as bad guys too much, so maybe I will try and take out Freedom. But again, you can't shoot in the base, so how? It took several attempts to wipe out the Duty base in Stalker 2, I had to make sure that I had killed every duty member outside of the base before the base would stay dead. And I couldn't get the bandit base to stay dead at all.
Some of the forums commented that there were no bugs in Stalker 3. Dream on, maybe nowhere as bad as 2, but still more than any other commercially available game that I have ever seen. Yet despite this the Stalker series remains my favourite shooters, despite the huge log of often quite pathetic bugs, and bugs that often seriously impact upon game play, the story line, the setting, the realism, the weapons offered, and the repair/upgrade style all add up to more fun.
I tried playing Wolfenstein recently, I thought it was a copy of Escape from... that I had lying around, but it turned out to be a new game, next in the series, next generation graphics etc., etc. that someone had given me and just hadn't played for who-knows-how-long. But it had a boss level that was too crazy, I hate bosses in games like that, it is a stupid interruption of the storyline. Anyhow I searched and found a cheat to get through it, except that it doesn't work in older windows and I can't play it on my laptop at the moment for various reasons. So that went unfinished.
Anyhow, I should get some lunch, then go down to the bank and ask for the forms to deal with an unauthorised transaction since the link their online people sent me had nothing and their call centre just kept me hanging for twenty minutes. Whilst I let Steam update C&C4, which I have only recently bought and must be onlined to play (it stores your progress on a server, disconnect and you have to start the campaign again!) and yet Steam insists on spending half a day to 'update' before I am allowed to play.
Nearly two and a half months without blogging. It roughly equates to the time I was at Santos, it was kind of soul-sapping. It wasn't a 'bad' place to work, just dull, the people insipid. Okay, the system setup is bad, their account string is cripplingly short, they have just expanded it, to something that is still cripplingly short, their OLAP setup is criminally bad, seriously, the implementation consultant (UXC) should never do that again, and won't, since they have withdrawn from that market.
The other contractors there have told me that they all feel that they get the cold shoulder from the employees as well, one woman transferred to permanent but it took a few months before people warmed to her. They just don't go to lunch together, and don't give the time of day to contractors. It is not a 'friendly' place. Also it is not nice for other reasons; they wank on about their focus on safety, but don't have mirrors on the ceiling at blind junctions in the corridor. Other than that, whilst the building is nice and open, very light and airy; the top floors get very hot and the aircon doesn't cut it. Their elevators have no fan and stay closed all day, so during summer they get very hot and stuffy; I could walk to work very early whilst the day was still quite cool, and then the five minute ride up in the elevator just standing still got me covered in perspiration!
All of this, of course, is on top of the fact that they pay shit.
This is the third time that I have interacted with them, the first time that I have taken a contract with them, and only because I knew that there was nothing else on the market at the beginning of this year. But now I have a week off and then on to something that pays a little more than half as much again.
We have recently voted here in little South Australia. I did my usual draw a little box at the bottom and tick it then write next to it "none of the above". In the lower house anyhow, in the upper house where there are far more options I did my usual start by putting the socialists last and then arrange the other fifty-odd choices in the order they least offended me. Putting people at the front that might provide the most entertainment should they get in.
Steam, ah Steam, it is a good thing to have an app that lets me buy a new computer in a new country and just go online and reinstall a big swag of games. It is a bad thing that I pay for a bunch of games but cannot play them for two weeks because Valve can't be bothered providing the servers required to handle the traffic they force the app to generate. I am seriously thinking about using cracked servers. And I don't particularly like the new look either.
I am coming up on my third monthly rent payment not being paid. I gave up asking for the fridge to be fixed, and being promised by the manager that it was happening soon, and stopped paying rent. I thought that this would get a quick resolution, but this week I will be not paying for the third month. I never saw that coming!
I have had another unauthorised transaction on my credit card. I suspect that it is the Adult Friend Finders company; I joined their site some years ago but did not renew. I think that they have dug through their records and hit old credit cards hoping that they don't get noticed, and in truth it wasn't for a while. Now I am having that battle with the National Australia Bank where they say that they are not involved in any agreements that I make with a merchant for automatic deductions and I have to take it up with the merchant. To which I responded that I don't really know who the merchant is!
I am in the process of moving all of my business to HSBC and will soon close the NAB accounts anyhow, but along the way I wanted to open a Citibank credit account 'cos they had a really good deal with a Singapore Airlines rewards programme, but now that I am actually doing it I can't find it on the Citibank Australia site and the only answer I get from them is that I can transfer my reward points at a rate of 1.5 to 1.0 to any airline programme. The old programme offered 1.5 points for every dollar spent, now they making this generic offer that is worth 0.66 whilst they have moved their main linkage to Qantas. I live in Adelaide, Qantas doesn't fly direct out of Adelaide, a Qantas program does not grab my attention. My friend has opened an account with Westpac because they have a SingAir offer and he is suggesting that I do the same. Certainly Citi is not offering anything that will get my business.
I have gone full vegan; my neice talked me into it over xmas. I am not finding it difficult in that I am not missing anything and I can cook dinner without much hassle (takeaway pizza and grating cheese over pasta are the two biggest loses) but I am noticing that it is MUCH harder to eat out. Well, eat out in Australia, I did comment previously on being vegetarian in Singapore that it would be so easy to go full vegan there, and indeed I did think about doing so. I find this an interesting comparison between our culinary cultures.
I have played through Stalker 3 again, this time choosing to stay and not depart with the military team, and thus enter the free form part of the game, but I am finding it kind of boring. I have the best guns, the best suit, the best artefacts, I have killed the best monsters; what else is there to do? I was pondering just killing all of the bandits. I would love to be able to shoot Sultan, but you are not allowed to draw guns in the bases, huh, what's with that? Also, whilst in the previous ones I tended towards Freedom, I find in this one that I cannot help but work with Duty; Freedom is just presented as bad guys too much, so maybe I will try and take out Freedom. But again, you can't shoot in the base, so how? It took several attempts to wipe out the Duty base in Stalker 2, I had to make sure that I had killed every duty member outside of the base before the base would stay dead. And I couldn't get the bandit base to stay dead at all.
Some of the forums commented that there were no bugs in Stalker 3. Dream on, maybe nowhere as bad as 2, but still more than any other commercially available game that I have ever seen. Yet despite this the Stalker series remains my favourite shooters, despite the huge log of often quite pathetic bugs, and bugs that often seriously impact upon game play, the story line, the setting, the realism, the weapons offered, and the repair/upgrade style all add up to more fun.
I tried playing Wolfenstein recently, I thought it was a copy of Escape from... that I had lying around, but it turned out to be a new game, next in the series, next generation graphics etc., etc. that someone had given me and just hadn't played for who-knows-how-long. But it had a boss level that was too crazy, I hate bosses in games like that, it is a stupid interruption of the storyline. Anyhow I searched and found a cheat to get through it, except that it doesn't work in older windows and I can't play it on my laptop at the moment for various reasons. So that went unfinished.
Anyhow, I should get some lunch, then go down to the bank and ask for the forms to deal with an unauthorised transaction since the link their online people sent me had nothing and their call centre just kept me hanging for twenty minutes. Whilst I let Steam update C&C4, which I have only recently bought and must be onlined to play (it stores your progress on a server, disconnect and you have to start the campaign again!) and yet Steam insists on spending half a day to 'update' before I am allowed to play.
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