Here I am blogging again while 11km up in the sky over the "java sea" (the irony isn't lost on me) doing just under mach 1. I have come to the realisation that the problem with long distance flying is not now lack of options, it's that you don't want to do anything. They still have the antiquated system in place where you need to turn up 3 hours before an international flight, which means that even if your flight was at a reasonable hour, you still had to get up at some horrible time because you had to get to the airport (invariably located a long way away from where you are staying) 3 hours before the flight started. This time round I actually timed how long it took me from when I turned up at the check in desk with no ticket to when I was waiting at the passenger lounge having gone through customs and 2 security checks, total time - 11 minutes. Then I just had to sit down and enjoy Sydneys International airport (Kingford Smith) hospitality, which unsurprising to those of you who use it regularly, sucks badly. To top it off my plane was about 1 hour late leaving Sydney, though I actually prefer that as now I have one hour less to spend in Singapore occupying myself waiting for the London leg of the flight.
Now I'm sitting on the plane wondering if my next flight will have wireless net coverage or if I should use up my remaining time on this one, I think I'll assume that it does and just use up MOST of my time :) I might even try a skype voip conversation shortly and see if the prohibitive rates they charge for making phone calls is a thing of the past once and for all or if the telephone companies are in cahoots with the isp. Fortunately my headphones are still taking me to a world of sonic bliss where I am able to ignore all the crap going on around me. On which note it has to be said travelling with Australians is a good thing, on the whole all Aussies are used to travelling LONG distances and consequently spending long durations travelling, the result is that they are actually a fairly pleasant bunch to travel with, far less annoying then other cultures / socities I often find myself in the company of while travelling.
So here I am, I can do anything on my laptop (well for another 10 hours or so), including things like programming or watching various shows I have downloaded, or I could watch some in flight on demand videos or I could read. In fact I want to do none of the above as I am too tired to really concentrate well and I'd rather just catch up on some sleep, which is also fairly problematic due to the fact that there is drone of jet engines in the background and more annoying, the habit of planes to randomly drop a few feet every 10 minutes or so which sets of your body's sense of equiblium which in turn startles you out of sleep with a vague sense of impending doom. Fun. Perhaps I'll go back to baiting the nearby baby with scary faces (enhanced by my recent shaved head I've found) and generally making myself popular with people who arn't as audibly protected as myself.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Australia
Well I'm back in Australia. It hasn't even been a year since I was last here and I'm back again, the reason, Best man at my friend Adam Skovron's wedding. I have decided that I won't be coming back for a couple of years so I took off 3 weeks and have made a real trip of it this time, even to the extent of not spending a few days in Japan like I wanted to, so that I can catch up with everyone that I wanted to see (i'm not quite there yet, but I'm close!). I find it really interesting seeing Australia now, it doesn't feel like home, London doesn't either for that matter, and whatever ties I once had here are now only in the form of memories. There are some key differences that I've noticed this time around though.
The sun. You just can't explain it to someone who hasn't spent time in the Australian sun. People from other sunny parts of the world think they know, but they still don't, the sun in Australia is harsh, really harsh. Sydney still sits underneath the hole in the ozone and you can actually discern a clear difference standing out in it. Yesterday I decided to walk into the city over the harbour bridge. I looked out the window from my mothers apartment (in Milsons Point) and saw an overcast day and so left my sun glasses at home and didn't bother with sun screen. I left the apartment and start walking, I had just started to cross the harbour bridge when the sun said "theres ben! rare spot! kill him" and the clouds parted and the sun light washed over me. I guess that I was walking for about 13-18 minutes in the sun all up by the time I arrived at my destination. I was absolutely soaked with perspiration and, predictably, thoroughly sun burnt. For those of you that don't know I have recently decided to act on an age old promise to myself, where I always stated that when I got to the point with my hair that I had a bald patch on top and I personally thought it looked stupid I would just shave it all off, which is precisely what I did. Personally I don't think that it looks too bad, but what little protection I had gained before from my strategically placed hair has now vanished and as a consequence I currently look like a beetroot. I look around and see everyone, even the "geeks", are brown. You just can't help it over here, if you move around in the sun at all, then you will be brown. Interestingly though, it doesn't look healthy to me, it looks in fact, like they are being slowly spit roasted by the Australian sun. It's no wonder that Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
Something else that I found interesting was the cost of things. You'd think that living in London that I could rightly expect that everything was cheaper, pretty much regardless of what it was, or at the very least food. Food is something that Australia unquestionably has it better then London. There is an abudance of top quality fresh produce that London can just never match and so even when the chef isn't that good, the fact that all the produce is so good makes up for it and you are still left with a decent meal, but if you can get a good chef, then its heaven. So you could say that food was something that I was really looking forward to, and it hasn't let me down, but what was interesting was checking out the prices. It's still accurate to say that the cheapest meals in Sydney are less then half the price of something comparable in London, that is that it is still possible to eat well for AUD $10. That is not really possible in London. It is also fair to say that if you want to go and drop 200 pounds per person on a meal that you actually can't spend that much (short of alcohol) in Australia, but what has changed is the middle of the road meal. In London I regularly dine out, so I can comfortably say that a nice meal will normally cost you around 10-18 pounds, depending on whether you are having entres or not. I can now say after eating out pretty much exclusively since I arrived at all kinds of places that the cost is very similar now in Sydney, and, in some cases its even more expensive. It really took me as a surprise, I don't object to paying a little more but it really shattered the image of Australia being cheap in my mind.
Body culture. It's the largest difference between the Australian population and that of any in Europe, especially England. When I walk around in England you notice that many people while not overweight, are definitely well padded. On the whole it means that the guys look fairly big and the women quite curvy (i'm not complaining mind you!). When you walk around Australia though, you notice that neither the guys nor the women have ANY excess body fat. The result is that the guys all look muscle bound, simply because you can actually see their muscles, which in most cases are actually quite small, but I was so used to not seeing any muscles (ie I can't think of one person at work who strikes me as being "muscley") so I had this feeling that I was walking around surrounded by people that live in the gym. The women are noticibly hotter on average then their european counterparts, but again you can almost see the obsession with their appearence and the effort it takes to keep themselves looking like they do. It's a testamount to the difference that weather plays in profile of an average citizen. The final thing of note is about perspective.
Most city people, regardless of which city it is in the world (at least in my experience) are happy to tell you about how different they are from their "country" brethren, normally heavilly laced with quips and derogatory observations about how the country folk are slow, dumb or even inbred. In many cases it is true, not that there is necessarily anything intrinsically wrong with country people, or living in the country for that matter, but simply that there is a measurable difference in the average opinion on many topics and a slightly slower pace of life. What I found interesting this time around is that I now see such a difference between people that I know that have lived in many large cities and those that havn't left, for example, Sydney. Living in London (but the concept is applicable to any other large city) is very different from living in Sydney. The easiest explanation is of course culture and population and that is very true, but there are also different psychologies at work and different approaches of the government and businesses as well. The result of all of this in my opinion is that if you live in a few different large cities you generate a kind of "meta-city" person, someone that has adapted to live in ANY city, which means a very open mind, that has been forced to see things from a number of perspectives. This time around i've noticed that a number of the people that I've chatted with seem to be really stuck in the "Sydney' frame of mind, where their only reference and the only meaningful perspective for them is that of a Sydneysider. While living in the country or just one city is not a bad thing, it does seem to mean that you have to work harder to not get stuck in a given frame of mind, especially where in a country like Australia, all the media is controlled by one or two people. It almost raises the question to what extent are we already generating populaces in the image that the governments want via popular media.
The sun. You just can't explain it to someone who hasn't spent time in the Australian sun. People from other sunny parts of the world think they know, but they still don't, the sun in Australia is harsh, really harsh. Sydney still sits underneath the hole in the ozone and you can actually discern a clear difference standing out in it. Yesterday I decided to walk into the city over the harbour bridge. I looked out the window from my mothers apartment (in Milsons Point) and saw an overcast day and so left my sun glasses at home and didn't bother with sun screen. I left the apartment and start walking, I had just started to cross the harbour bridge when the sun said "theres ben! rare spot! kill him" and the clouds parted and the sun light washed over me. I guess that I was walking for about 13-18 minutes in the sun all up by the time I arrived at my destination. I was absolutely soaked with perspiration and, predictably, thoroughly sun burnt. For those of you that don't know I have recently decided to act on an age old promise to myself, where I always stated that when I got to the point with my hair that I had a bald patch on top and I personally thought it looked stupid I would just shave it all off, which is precisely what I did. Personally I don't think that it looks too bad, but what little protection I had gained before from my strategically placed hair has now vanished and as a consequence I currently look like a beetroot. I look around and see everyone, even the "geeks", are brown. You just can't help it over here, if you move around in the sun at all, then you will be brown. Interestingly though, it doesn't look healthy to me, it looks in fact, like they are being slowly spit roasted by the Australian sun. It's no wonder that Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.
Something else that I found interesting was the cost of things. You'd think that living in London that I could rightly expect that everything was cheaper, pretty much regardless of what it was, or at the very least food. Food is something that Australia unquestionably has it better then London. There is an abudance of top quality fresh produce that London can just never match and so even when the chef isn't that good, the fact that all the produce is so good makes up for it and you are still left with a decent meal, but if you can get a good chef, then its heaven. So you could say that food was something that I was really looking forward to, and it hasn't let me down, but what was interesting was checking out the prices. It's still accurate to say that the cheapest meals in Sydney are less then half the price of something comparable in London, that is that it is still possible to eat well for AUD $10. That is not really possible in London. It is also fair to say that if you want to go and drop 200 pounds per person on a meal that you actually can't spend that much (short of alcohol) in Australia, but what has changed is the middle of the road meal. In London I regularly dine out, so I can comfortably say that a nice meal will normally cost you around 10-18 pounds, depending on whether you are having entres or not. I can now say after eating out pretty much exclusively since I arrived at all kinds of places that the cost is very similar now in Sydney, and, in some cases its even more expensive. It really took me as a surprise, I don't object to paying a little more but it really shattered the image of Australia being cheap in my mind.
Body culture. It's the largest difference between the Australian population and that of any in Europe, especially England. When I walk around in England you notice that many people while not overweight, are definitely well padded. On the whole it means that the guys look fairly big and the women quite curvy (i'm not complaining mind you!). When you walk around Australia though, you notice that neither the guys nor the women have ANY excess body fat. The result is that the guys all look muscle bound, simply because you can actually see their muscles, which in most cases are actually quite small, but I was so used to not seeing any muscles (ie I can't think of one person at work who strikes me as being "muscley") so I had this feeling that I was walking around surrounded by people that live in the gym. The women are noticibly hotter on average then their european counterparts, but again you can almost see the obsession with their appearence and the effort it takes to keep themselves looking like they do. It's a testamount to the difference that weather plays in profile of an average citizen. The final thing of note is about perspective.
Most city people, regardless of which city it is in the world (at least in my experience) are happy to tell you about how different they are from their "country" brethren, normally heavilly laced with quips and derogatory observations about how the country folk are slow, dumb or even inbred. In many cases it is true, not that there is necessarily anything intrinsically wrong with country people, or living in the country for that matter, but simply that there is a measurable difference in the average opinion on many topics and a slightly slower pace of life. What I found interesting this time around is that I now see such a difference between people that I know that have lived in many large cities and those that havn't left, for example, Sydney. Living in London (but the concept is applicable to any other large city) is very different from living in Sydney. The easiest explanation is of course culture and population and that is very true, but there are also different psychologies at work and different approaches of the government and businesses as well. The result of all of this in my opinion is that if you live in a few different large cities you generate a kind of "meta-city" person, someone that has adapted to live in ANY city, which means a very open mind, that has been forced to see things from a number of perspectives. This time around i've noticed that a number of the people that I've chatted with seem to be really stuck in the "Sydney' frame of mind, where their only reference and the only meaningful perspective for them is that of a Sydneysider. While living in the country or just one city is not a bad thing, it does seem to mean that you have to work harder to not get stuck in a given frame of mind, especially where in a country like Australia, all the media is controlled by one or two people. It almost raises the question to what extent are we already generating populaces in the image that the governments want via popular media.
Sunday, February 5, 2006
Technology penetration
Well its finally happened, I'm writing this blog from 10km up in the sky currently over the Black Sea at little under mach 1, and as you can plainly tell, I'm on the net! I must admit I was pretty sceptical when, bleary eyed, waiting to get on the damn plane this morning I was greeted by two attactive lasses who tried to give me some cards, and were muttering what I took to be something for sale. My normal scepticism almost cost me the best freebie I've had in a while, one free hour of wireless net access on my flight. Of course, as a geek I normally find it hard to engage women and ask for favours, but with the right incentive I've found that its quite easy... needless to say I now have enough net access to make my flight bearable :) Its not blisteringly fast, but its actually far far better then I thought it would be, perhaps at about ISDN speed, maybe even slightly faster just with an unusually high latency of around 2 seconds or so, which I assume is the time taken for it to bounce of various satellites.
On a different note I recently bought a pair of new ear phones, or more accurately, in canal ear phones. The concept of the in ear phones is simple, put the sound as close as possible to the ear drum directly by making you insert the head phones into your canal, it sounds a little odd, but after a few attempts you get used to it (for those of you, who like my father, panic about the idea of putting anything into your ears and the consequences of loud bursts of noise from your audio source, you needn't be worried as it comes with a sound filter that will block out any loud spikes in the audio feed). The benefits of doing this are that you need less power to drive the speakers and the speakers can be smaller, there is much more clarity as there is no interference due to sound traveling through the air. What this also means is that you effectively make a seal by inserting the ear phones, which means, you guessed it a MASSIVE reduction in back ground noise. This is the key thing on a flight, I'm sitting here surrounded by people talking, babies screaming and some lovely big Royles Royce engines and I can only hear Beethovens 9th symphony. Bliss, no really, its fucking bliss I have my own private world of sound. There are other benefits as well, most ear "buds" are actually detrimental to your ears, primarily because they don't block out ambient background noise and result in the user turning up the volume to drown it out and thus causing long term hearing damage. Due to the fact that the speakers are so close to my ear drums and the seal I lose about ~30db of background noise, meaning that I have to turn down the ear phones in order for it to be comfortable, from my reading it would appear that the in canal ear phones are actually the best of ALL the different personal speakers you can get for your long term hearing.
So you'd think with my ear phones, and wireless net connection I'd be able to amuse myself, and you'd be right. What's even more amazing though is that I am still spoilt for choice, I have on demand movies, not the normal timered, 4 or 5 heavily edited movies, but a solid 150 all of which I can play when and how I want. I just watched the "Edukators" are really good german art film which I meant to catch when it was at the cinemas a few months back but that caught my eye when flicking through the on demand movies.
Now if the plane doesn't drop out of the sky I might JUST be able to have a pleasant flight :)
On a different note I recently bought a pair of new ear phones, or more accurately, in canal ear phones. The concept of the in ear phones is simple, put the sound as close as possible to the ear drum directly by making you insert the head phones into your canal, it sounds a little odd, but after a few attempts you get used to it (for those of you, who like my father, panic about the idea of putting anything into your ears and the consequences of loud bursts of noise from your audio source, you needn't be worried as it comes with a sound filter that will block out any loud spikes in the audio feed). The benefits of doing this are that you need less power to drive the speakers and the speakers can be smaller, there is much more clarity as there is no interference due to sound traveling through the air. What this also means is that you effectively make a seal by inserting the ear phones, which means, you guessed it a MASSIVE reduction in back ground noise. This is the key thing on a flight, I'm sitting here surrounded by people talking, babies screaming and some lovely big Royles Royce engines and I can only hear Beethovens 9th symphony. Bliss, no really, its fucking bliss I have my own private world of sound. There are other benefits as well, most ear "buds" are actually detrimental to your ears, primarily because they don't block out ambient background noise and result in the user turning up the volume to drown it out and thus causing long term hearing damage. Due to the fact that the speakers are so close to my ear drums and the seal I lose about ~30db of background noise, meaning that I have to turn down the ear phones in order for it to be comfortable, from my reading it would appear that the in canal ear phones are actually the best of ALL the different personal speakers you can get for your long term hearing.
So you'd think with my ear phones, and wireless net connection I'd be able to amuse myself, and you'd be right. What's even more amazing though is that I am still spoilt for choice, I have on demand movies, not the normal timered, 4 or 5 heavily edited movies, but a solid 150 all of which I can play when and how I want. I just watched the "Edukators" are really good german art film which I meant to catch when it was at the cinemas a few months back but that caught my eye when flicking through the on demand movies.
Now if the plane doesn't drop out of the sky I might JUST be able to have a pleasant flight :)
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