We're Moving Shop

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you all know that we're moving on to a new Blogging platform.  I have never used it before but we have decided to switch because of its expanded posting options.  With this new blog, Kara is going to be posting a picture a day and I will continue to be semi-responsible blogger.  Cheers and hope you join us at:

http://thescenicroute.posterous.com/

I have a lucky forehead.

On my way back to the office today, a 'Yogi' stopped me and said, "you are a very lucky man."  If you have ever heard me try to explain pedestrian etiquette and practice in Melbourne, you would understand just how caught off guard i was.  He continued,

"the shape of your forehead is very lucky.  i saw this as you were walking, but i noticed that you are in two places; you body is here and your mind is somewhere else.  you think a lot.  but it's ok--september will be a very lucky month for you.  you are a very lucky man."

I thanked him but let him know i had to rush off to a meeting.  he smiled and shook my hand, then turned around and continued down the street.  what a funny day.  it was too good of a story not to share.  looking forward to september!

My Second Biennale in Two Years!

Last time I attended the Bienalle, I was in Venice, 2006.  Although the Venice Biennale is...in Venice, and the one I went to last time was specifically for architecture, the Sydney Biennale was still very amazing.  Basically, think MoMA meets Alcatraz meets a wintertime high of 70 degrees.  The whole exhibition is set on Cockatoo island which has many old factories and warehouse sheds but used to also house a prison.  The funny bit about it is that they haven't bothered to take out any of the factory fitout so the modern art is juxtoposed with 50s heavy machinery, cranes, boilers, industrial shops, etc.  You've got 5 days to see it, so start planning your vacations now!  I took some pretty cool video while I was there too, and will try to upload it if i get the chance.

Modern Sculpture + Retro Machinery

A life sized Hubble telescope made entirely of plywood

Look Familiar?

CBD Bees

I told you guys before that Melbourne has amazing public sculpture!  These gold bees sit at the base of the Eureka tower across the river from our apartment.  

Richard Stringer, December 2007

Sculpture made from anodized aluminum sheet and cast aluminum for all the antennae and small bees legs.

As A Matter of Defacto

we're getting married. 

well, not really--but we will be having a defacto wedding soon to celebrate not only our new defacto relationship status with the Australian government but also our shiny new Temporary Business Entry (Class UC) Business (Long Stay) (Subclass 457) visas.  what this all means is that my visa through work is automatically extended to kara and that we can legally work and live in this country for the next four years provided that I am continuously employed with an approved sponsor.

don't worry guys, we don't have any plans for staying forever.  at least not yet.  we're lucky to have the flexibility now to choose where and when we want to be.  especially having just recently visited seattle i think our friends and family will reel us back in eventually or perhaps its the lingering parental grad school guilt trip that brings me/her/us back.  phew.

so that's the news guys.  for those of you who still have not yet visited, you get a year and a half extension to visit.  we miss you all a lot!

by the way, please please let me know if anyone finds a tuxedo tshirt in melbourne

Welcome to a city of immaculately dressed people

Our friend Ben is here visiting us this week and when meeting me for lunch during his first full day here, he told me he was surprised by how well-dressed everyone was here.  This is true.  In dress pants and a button up shirt, I am consistently the most underdressed on the sidewalk and in the elevator and honestly about 80% of men are in suits, with perhaps 60% those wearing ties.  For those of you not from Seattle--maybe this is an incredibly boring post--and for those of you in Seattle, you probably went to work in khakis, polo, and a goretex jacket.  The photo above is of our friend Drew, who was stopped by the fashion blogger of "Business Chic"  Ironically I'm not a big fan of blogs, but this one is pretty neato.

My Review of Osprey Waypoint 80 Travel Pack - Men's - '09 Closeout

Originally submitted at REI

The Osprey Waypoint 80 travel pack serves up ample volume and a detachable daypack. Going around the world just got a whole lot easier .

Osprey Waypoint 80 Travel Pack - Men's - '09 Closeout

in love with this pack

By davidka from Seattle, WA + Melbourne, AU on 4/20/2010

5out of 5

Gift: No
Pros: Good Capacity, Easy To Carry, Easy To Access Items, High Quality
Cons: Internal organization
Best Uses: Long Vacations, Weekend Trips
Describe Yourself: Modern, Career, Practical
Travel Frequency: 11-19 Annual Trips
Primary use: Personal

i absolutely love this bag! for me, it's the perfect backpacking pack whether for travelling or hiking/camping. the compression system works far better than any the straps i've used on any other bags, and although the suspension conveniently folds away into a zippered pouch it's comfortable and supportive enough to lug the bag around all day. would purchase again!

(legalese)

David’s list of Melbournian-Australian Pros and Cons:

Pros:

- I like Japanese food, and it’s great to be in a country where Japanese food does not come at a super premium and instead costs you the same as a kebab from the dodgy shop next door.

- Barbeque sauce.  It’s probably impossible to beat Mrs. Gibson’s barbeque sauce, however in the realm of store bought sauces, Australian barrangah sauce is a little tangier and slightly less sweet than it’s less tasty American cousin.

- This city was made for motorcycles.  I used to think that San Francisco was the motorcycle parking paradise of the world, but the system here puts it to shame.  You can literally park your motorcycle wherever you want just as long as it doesn’t obstruct pedestrian traffic.  This means that on business days in the zone where mailboxes, light posts, benches, and trash cans are—motorcycles also are.

- bars here are super cool.  This one only applies to Melbourne; Sydney probably has stupid bars (please excuse the rivalry).  You find the best ones in dead end allies after three turns or behind quiet unmarked doors that take you either upstairs to a rooftop bar, down to a posh basement lounge, or an open courtyard bar that is PACKED with people.

- Melbourne is a melting pot on par with New York City, which means several things both good and bad.  You can get expat Indian, Chinese, and Greek food that matches England, L.A., and…Melbourne, but you also get the complete disregard for standing in lines or deodorant.

- Public sculpture in Melbourne is fantastic!  Often times public art is a public obligation to put something up.  Here however, there are so many great pieces I’ve thought about putting together a scavenger hunt.  Just try googling the cow in a tree in Docklands, the gold bees in South Bank, or the suffrage sculpture near the Parliament Building.  Love it.

- Everyone has health insurance.

- Americans put trash and dumpsters in alleys.  Melbournians put cute little cafes, restaurants and shops in them.


Cons:

- the internet setup in Australia is actually from the dark ages.  One purchases internet plans based on the number of gigs they intend to use and once you spend your quota, you’re left in the dark.  This is without mentioning the evils of Telstra and the government plans for internet censorship.

- a kebab from the dodgy shop next door costs the same as Japanese food.

- driving in the Melbourne CBD (Central Business District) you have to wait in the far left lane—next to the parallel crosswalk to take a right turn.  This is because the tram tracks running through the city take up the space where you might otherwise have a right turn lane.

- you’d expect building and construction methods of a developed country to meet certain standards, but Australia will completely dispel those beliefs.  At one end, Americans throw away or demolish anything that is below standard, and at the other Europeans will fix or repair in the same situation.  In Australia things are patched with just enough effort that it will hold up for a few more moments.  This doesn’t even approach the standards of the Duct-Tape-Method, but is closer to the Push-It-Back-In-Place-And-Hope-It-Sticks-There-Method.  When our ceilings collapsed a few weeks ago during the storm, I looked up to see the sunlight coming through the roof sheeting in the following week.  Even Tim’s apartment which is about a year old had water dripping in through light fixtures pooling in the ceiling cavity and seeping in under the walls into the carpet.

- bouncers here are often Maori dudes big enough to wrestle an ox to the ground.  The also learn their behaviors from American television and will go out of their way to make your life inconvenient in miserable (whether or not you are standing in their line, and regardless of gender).  If the bar is not too full, you are either not dressed well enough, not dressed right (there is a distinction to be made), too intoxicated, not on the guest list, or not on the V.I.P. list.  These guys hate everything about you…unless you are a scantily clad 19-year-old girl widely accepted by American Television.  Fortunately this generally only applies to the CBD.

- a six pack of cheap domestic beer costs $17 at the store.  ‘nuff said.

Introducing an Australian to Melbourne

Our good friend Richenda and muse of our Australian adventure moved to Melbourne this last weekend.  Richenda was working for WorldVision back in the Seattle and has since moved to the Melbourne headquarters to do something bigger and better.

On a regretfully hungover Saturday morning, Richenda, Kara, and I sat at a café on Chapel street for some breakfast and coffee when everything made me want to believe I was sitting in Wallingford but I knew we were in Melbourne.  That weekend we visited the South Melbourne market, enjoyed some wine and appetizers (appropriately named ‘entrees’ here) and felt glad to have imported a little bit of home and family to this new city.

Welcome back to Oz Shena!

Our first Autumn Easter

Easter weekend we went back out to apollo bay.  This is the same place that we stayed at the coolest eco-hostel ever, the same place that kara and jen worked at while on the great ocean road, and the same place our friend jen went back to work for a couple months after leaving Melbourne.

This time around, we had nine people and we rented a vacation house down by the beach.  The visit, of course, started with a visit to Costco, where we purchased copious amounts of food and alcohol.  Unpacking the supplies at the cabin, our British friends were quick to poke fun at our “American sized” tub of salsa.  There wasn’t much more to add when the bottle was consumed within the first two days.

One of the redeeming qualities of Australia is their approach to vacation days.  Easter is a national four day weekend and offices typically close between Christmas and New Years.  Get this, the standard minimum annual leave starts at four weeks.  Because of the generous public holidays, however, I have found myself so far only having to take one day off (American Thanksgiving) leaving myself three weeks to make the 20hour one way trek back home in June.

Being in the Southern hemisphere really messes with your mind.  Although not quite on the scale of a 95 degree Christmas, it felt a bit funny to celebrate Easter as days were getting shorter.  Daylight savings occurred the same week where we gained an hour instead of losing an hour only to find the skies dark at 6.  Heading out to the coast added to the affect as the first couple days were quite chilly.  We had to fire up the wood stove and spent many hours playing monopoly and working on a 1000 piece puzzle of a Scandinavian harbor scene.  Luckily our schizophrenic weather patterns down here provided us with plenty of warm sunshine on our last day when we were finally able to head down with our beers to the beach.

From Apollo bay we made a quick run out to the 9? of 12 remaining Apostles only to enjoy it in marginally less windy, rainy and cold weather than our last visit.  We did however get much closer to the Koalas living in the Eucalyptus trees along the road this time:

just before the 4 horsemen with 13 horns bearing 6 lanterns...

Last weekend we had a massive hail storm of apocalyptic proportions.  In the hour it lasted we got hail the size of golf balls and 3 centimetres of rain.  Kara and I were sitting at one of our newest cafe favorite (St. Ali) when we heard "ping....ping-ping" as we heard some hail start to come down.  I jokingly gave Kara a hard time for thinking it was going to be sunny and leaving the umbrella behind and made a sarcastic remark about golfball-sized hailstones which I later regretted.  Sitting in the covered outdoor seating the downpour suddenly turned extremely intense and we watched a small alley turn into a raging river.  the scene was literally a flashflood comparable to the one on the universal studios tram lot tour.

pretty soon we realized the windows to our apartment were open, and headed out into the rain as soon as it started to let up a bit.  heading back, we were wading knee deep through rivers that used to be streets.  all along the road were cars that had been abandoned with water up to the headlights.  it seriously looked like a disaster had just struck, and people were wading through ice water with their shoes in hand.

Arriving back at our apartment, we found all of our neighbors standing outside.  Our next door neighbor found me and told me, "the ceilings have all come down, there's water everywhere!"  We were told that the lights had come down from the ceiling with exposed cabling and the fire brigade and emergency numbers were not responding.  We kept thinking about our laptops that were sitting around, our bed that is just two inches off the floor, and extension cords lying on the ground.  knowing that my passport and computer were upstairs, it was worth climbing 7 flights of stairs to the top floor to at least have a look and see how feasible it was to get in the apartment.  it was definitely a very scary site when i got up to the top...there was literally water running down the walls, all the light fixtures were hanging at eye level, and the emergency evacuation warning was repeating itself from loud speakers.  here is the view from the hall a few hours after we first got there:

When i opened the door to our unit i was expecting the same destruction to continue inside but was extremely relieved to find it looking like it would on any other day.  i frantically turned off all the computers, packed them in my back, picked up a few valuables and rushed down stairs.  our apartment turned up on the news that evening, and if you look very carefully you can see kara sitting in the lobby with myself sitting behind her in a white tshirt.  all the people standing outside are neighbors on our floor.



since then, we've moved back into our apartment, and everything is generally back to normal...except for our hallways that still smell of week old wet carpet and with a ceiling we can see sunlight through, all this lit by two shop lights set up at either end of the hall.  lame but not too bad :)

photo of our street from tim's apartment:

the news story in "the age"

dancing has never looked scarier

So we were at a bbq with our kiwi friend when some how the conversation got on to sports and the haka.  We were told that we have to go to the "All Blacks" game when it comes to Melbourne...you'll see why:



Romena once told me that if I came to Oz and got a tan, I could look Maori.  Thanks for that; I feel about fifty times more badass.

Officially Employed!!

Yaaaaay!

I am pleased to announce that I am starting a 6 month contract next week! It's a social media position for a University here in Australia.

I am really excited about this opportunity! Not only is it exciting to be doing 100% social media, but I will be working with college students and groups that are light years ahead of everyone else in this field!

Anyway. I'm excited. I'll have more stories to share once it starts. But for now I must go shopping for business clothes. Because unlike Seattle, people here can't get away with wearing sweat pants to work.

fyi:fly

(qantas)

Working in Oz

a friend of mine in LA keeps an architecture/designer blog, recently told me that about two jobs are listed in the whole of the United States every day.  That friend is moving to Melbourne.  I was fortunate enough to get a job after looking for a couple weeks and started within a week of arriving in this city.  Admittedly jobs aren't following out of pockets and littered along the road, but after being in the job market for a year back in Seattle the grass is greener in the other hemisphere.  

i am now probably melbourne's newest building surveyor and probably its only unchartered surveyor.  i wouldn't be surprised if i'm also the only one from the United States as it seems to be a profession based in the UK affiliated with the Royal Institute or Chartered Surveyors (probably with the addition of an extra vowel such as a "u" somewhere to make it more British).

back in the states, I feel that architects often straddle the roles of designers and project managers.  most of us probably went to school for the glamorous "designer" roles we thought architecture would be.  getting into the workforce, however, you find that three years of learning architectural history and theory, sketching, watercolors, cardboard models, and mountains of trace paper do very little to prepare you for life as an indentured autocad servant, or anything remotely construction or project management related.

i digress.

i've since made a leap over that threshold into the building/construction side of things working for a property consulting company.  this largely involves inspecting commercial and industrial properties and composing reports that are appended to new leases or used to facilitate end of lease settlements.  i'm not going to lie--it sounded rather dry when i first heard it, but i'm actually liking it quite a bit.  i'm usually out on site a couple of days out of the week, and have even had the opportunity to travel to Perth recently.  there's just something so nice about seeing the buildings in person and getting out of the office and away from the computer monitor to do it.  getting out to site wasn't ever really a big consideration to me, but i think i'm going to be looking for it wherever possible. my work in the office only scratches the surface of the services the company provides.  we do all kinds of reports, some of which include environmental/sustainability reports, and technical due diligence reports.

being in a new place, professionally, has gotten me to rethink my academic and career goals.  i spend a lot of time working with property management and investment professionals, and have more chances to dabble in construction management.  while my placement here is only a temporary contract position because of my visa, i'm very excited to see where this path takes me!

just throwing it out there:

seek.com.au

mycareer.com.au

Iced Coffee

So. One of the things I was warned about when I arrived was Iced Coffee in Australia. As all of you Yanks know, iced coffee is a delicious way to get your caffeine without sweating.

Exhibit A:


Of course this became more relevant in the Seattle summers working in an non-air conditioned warehouse in South Seattle..but I digress.

Seeing as Australia is hot most of the year, I was sure they would be Kings of chilled Coffee. But. But if you order an iced coffee here you get a smidge of coffee, ice cream, and milk. It's more like a root beer float.

Exhibit B:


At first I was offended. And saddened. It didn't give me a caffeine fix...it was dessert that all Australia cafes served.

But now, it's 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon. I just made some french press. And instead of milk, I added ice cream. Totally guilt free. Because I am immersing myself in Australian culture...that's what this year is about, right?

The Highest Low Ever

i am too poor and too proud to have an iphone, however if i did it would probably have looked like this yesterday:

that apparently is a screenshot taken from our friend Drew's iphone (i'll admit that however he did that--it's pretty damn cool).  although the night time forecast looks a little more promising, do not be fooled!  last night Melbourne broke its record for the hottest night ever.  we were there at the front lines in our top floor apartment with no cross breeze.  perhaps we were lucky not to have a cross breeze because when it's that hot it feels more or less like a convection oven.

the news this morning showed that the overnight low at 5:57am was 32.3 degrees centigrade or for you folks back home: 90 degrees fahrenheit.  that was the COOLEST it got last night.  this is not to mention all the heat radiating off of everything in the apartment.  putting my contacts in this morning was dipping my finger into an exceptionally warm puddle of saline solution, and reaching for the cereal gave me a box of surprisingly warm nutri-grain.  salvation in refrigerated milk.

i ate top ramen tonight to save up for an air conditioner.  poo.

I want to ride my bicycle--I want to ride my biiiike!

For Christmas this year, we got some bicycles!  This has been an awesome development for us since we haven't really had any mode of transportation for the past couple of months.  Unfortunately the bikes we got were used bikes off of gumtree (uk/aus craigslist) and are probably as old as we are.  Above, we are changing the inner tube of kara's bike that went flat within the first week of riding.  Adding to the list are the derailleurs which for one of us cannot stay in one gear and the other cannot reach all the gears.  My pedals also make a strange clicking noise with each rotation, and there are whole bunch of noises coming from the rear sprocket which I am pretty sure is harming my bike further with each turn.  It's been fun, however, to exercise the marginally mechanical side of me while relatively easy on the wallet--thank god I didn't get a motorcycle that was as old we are.

Aside from thrilling trips to the grocery store, we're starting to see more of the city.  Yesterday we did a 20km loop around West and North Melbourne.  If we can stay on task with our posting, you'll be seeing more of those posts soon!

Welcome to 2010!!

Our New Year's Resolution is to post soon.

New Year's Eve Torches at Crown