Issue Number 55
      (June 2000)

Report to the antipodeans from a peripatetic perl programmer

by David Evans

Hello to all and sundry.

This is the long letter I promised about what's been happening. After this there won't be much since it's calming down a lot now, thank ghod.

The quick summary is I'm having fun and working hard. I've got a car, license, a place to live and my green card. Is that short enough?

Oh, you wanted details ...

The first thing I organised, as most of you will know, was accommodation. Given the size of the place, I'm tempted to use the pun on commode but it isn't that bad. Its about 5.5 to 6 sq: one bedroom, a living area, a small but servicable bathroom and a totally inadequate kitchen. It came with a refrigerator and electric stove and oven (no griller) and a washer/dryer.

The electric stove is wide. It's shocking. I think it's for the Thanksgiving turkey for 20 people but the apartment would be full with four people. The fridge is late 70s/early 80s and has an unfortunate habit of collecting water internally. So twice a week I have to empty the bottom of the fridge out before it cascades onto the floor. I have learnt it is better to clean it out while awake than open the door at 2 in the morning and have your feet frozen off by the sudden stream of mountain cold water while still half asleep. (Brings a new meaning to the word chill-blains.)

The washing machine is a "two storey" job I've never seen before. The dryer is above the washer. This interesting contraption (apart from its small capacity) has a few quirks. The lid can't open all the way, only to 45 deg. so you have to feed things in and out carefully. Not a big problem except the latch that holds the lid up is a bid old. The lid may only be light sheet metal but when it comes down over the fingers and you're not ready for it, well, the neighbours found I had a grasp of the vernacular that I'm sure they don't want their young'ns to find out about.

However that's the bad part over. The place itself is a cross between Edward Scissorhands suburbia and Victorian terrace houses. I'm on the 12th floor at work and looking out the window you can see the groupings of houses. A group can be easily distinguished as having the same basic shapes and the one colour. The colour grouping does more to make the association than the architectures. Each group has three or four designs repeated in the community. It's not ugly but it is a bit repetitive. The Scissorhands comment is the colours are pastels or earthy tones with the place I'm living in being an earth brown. The terrace house comes to mind through the repetition of designs.

One thing that shook me was shingles. No, I haven't let my health slip and picked up some highly contagious disease. I had always thought of shingles as roofing material (or a sign of bad health). Some of the places around here use them for walls too. It made me think of a European village in the middle-ages (but never having been to Europe you can make your own opinions of my views since I'm not 400 years old) It was just unexpected.

On the other hand the view from the 12th floor is lovely. My office faces north-west so I get the afternoon sun and I have a view for about twenty miles. In the afternoon and evenings I can see the clouds come down and settle into the hills. It's very picturesque and makes a nice view when working late. After five years of not seeing any natural light, this is quite a nice change.

Oracle has some nice office benefits. I think it could be more of a Silicon Valley type thing but it's quite nice. They supply free Pepsi, tea and coffee. So what, I hear the Aussies say. Well it's fresh coffee and every second floor seems to have an espresso machine! I'm on one of those floors and I love my coffee black and hot. Now if I could just get the taste right .... Yes, I know I'm gloating but it's so much fun.

Oracle also, like a few other large companies here, has its own gym. There is a 25m heated outdoor pool, a full size basketball court, three squash courts and ~200 machines to run, bike, climb, row and otherwise abuse an aging body on. And three or four stands of free weight for the people who want that Schwarznegger look.

Being spring here and the tallest building, we also have some wildlife making this building home. No, not that sort of wild life, get your minds out of the gutter. There is a pair of hawks, I think they are, using this building as a nest. They spend quite a bit of time calling to each other in the morning and evening. The screeches aren't at all musical (still better than my voice) and it's frustrating knowing they are two floors above me and I can't get a good look at them. However I do get a few wonderful moments most days when I can see them flying over the parklands looking for food.

Some of the smallest things are the items that still get me. A small list of examples are:

• The power points are all live! No switches. Remind me to jump on a table if the place floods. [Editor's note: "power point" = "electrical outlet" in American. Australian electrical outlets, being 240V instead of 120V, have individual on-off switches.]

• The light switches (and power switches where they exist) all work in the opposite direction from Australia: up is on and down is off.

• In the Bay Area (here) they complain about a lack of water but sprinklers are going all the time.

• Toilets, well the cisterns to be correct, are all full flush and use a passive method. Makes me appreciate the half flush cycle and the active flush in Australia.

• You can use a stop light like a stop sign if you're making a right hand turn. Just come to a full stop, check for traffic and turn. It would be great if I could've done a left turn at stop lights in Australia. [Editor's note: in some places in Australia, including many intersections in Sydney, you can do what David describes.]

• You can spend your money on all sorts of stuff. There are Monopoly sets for just about everything: a Star Wars edition, a Star Trek edition, a 3D puzzle edition, a NASCAR edition (car racing), an heirloom edition (wooden board etc), an NFL (American football) edition and who knows how many other editions are in the stores.

• A lot of people don't understand the term "fortnight".

• You have to sort your money regularly. Since they are all the same size and colour/color you need to keep it sorted to make sure you don't hand over a $20 instead of $1. Most people are honest but they may miss the difference too.

I've met a number of the local science fictions fans and everyone has been very nice. This has been thanks to the efforts of Janice Gelb, Jean Weber and Eric Lindsay; without them some of these weekends would have been very long and slow.

A good example was a party for the Brits who went to this year's Potlatch and Corflu (two sf conventions here in the USA). I'd met Paul and Maureen at Aussiecon Three, around 11pm after finishing registration for the evening with Jamie Reuel, when I was in need of beer. So I grabbed a can and sat down with a small group who were talking and I had a great time. Two of the people were Paul and Maureen.

When I met Paul at the party here, his face went into all sorts of contortions. He recognised me but couldn't place me. It provided a small amount of fun for myself and Maureen (who placed me right away, drats). Sorry Paul, but thanks also, you uplifted my spirits a good deal.

There have been other highlights that some of you know about so I'd better cough up the details before I get ostracized for teasing.

The first and most dramatic was the saga of The Cancelled Credit Card. Andrea (enters stage right) takes the credit, as it were, for this.

I'd had a good night's sleep and been in the apartment about a week. I was starting to think of buying some chairs, as sitting on the floor was getting a bit hard on the gluteus maximus (such are the signs of my incipient decrepitude sneaking up on me). The office chair was nice and I had a hot cuppa in my hands when the phone rang.

I thought it was a bit early for a call: 8:00 am on the nose. I didn't know many people had the number. Was it a head hunter trying to recruit me? I heard the area was full of that sort of activity and I was hoping it would be that sort of call. But my aspirations of being offered lots of filthy lucre dropped and my heart started racing when I heard Andrea's frantic voice on the other end of the 'phone. I immediately did the sums: 3:00am in Melbourne. My God! Must be a disaster....

Andrea was a bit frazzled; I'm sure she would admit it herself. So I started by asking the questions: was she all right, her parents, my relatives — all were OK. Hmm, not a personal disaster: what about the house and car — fine.

So what was bothering Andrea that she was still awake? She had lost her credit cards ... well, our credit cards. So for safety's sake she had cancelled the lot. I asked all the stupid questions: did she check the house and where she'd been before cancelling them. The obvious answers came back — she had. She'd lost her handbag and looked all over for it.

So there I was, in the heart of the world's most capitalistic society, an area which runs on credit. The credit card I had been using to keep myself in food (and some other not so critical refreshments [hic]) had been cruelly cancelled. I could see the immediate future and it looked poor — in the most literal sense. This was grounds for divorce — no, assassination!

However the cruellest blow was yet to fall. Andrea had cancelled the cards during the evening, well before midnight for her. And in the intervening time she'd found her handbag. Beside the couch. With everything in it. Needless to say I was my normal charming self when told this last fact. So not only was I without a credit card, waiting for my first pay check, it was all for no reason! With only my bare wits and native cunning to get me through the next few weeks, I knew I was in trouble.

Those who know me also know I had several backups so it was only a minor annoyance. I think Andrea knew this too and really cancelled my credit card to stop me shopping. I'd been talking about buying chairs and a table and her trust in my taste obviously inspired terror and the resulting credit squeeze. Next time I'll keep my mouth shut and just buy the furniture I need.

During the short time I've been here the second highlight was the flying visit from Andrea. About a fortnight before she arrived I'd bought a roll of butcher's paper for lining the drawers and cupboards with. This was a roll about 20cm in diameter, not small. Due to the events with my lack of a credit card, I was using the remains of the roll (reduced to 19.5 cm) as my chair. I had mentioned this fact to my loving wife before her trip.

Well, I picked Andrea up from the airport and drove a rather weary person back to the apartment. I opened the door, Andrea went inside and burst into a fit of laughter. She'd seen how much I hadn't bought and saw my "chair" and realised I hadn't been joking. I got a lot sympathy at that point. In the gear Andrea bought with her was a soft bag full of jumpers. And being the gentleman I am, when I got back from work I did the most appropriate thing: I kicked her off the bag and graciously gave her the paper roll to sit on. Cancel my credit card will you? It would have had an effect on most people: she just went into another fit of laughter. Hmmm.

During the visit we agreed on furniture. We agreed we couldn't agree on anything. So for another month I used that bag. I now have two folding canvas chairs. The second one is in case anyone visits. They are an ugly green canvas that would be unlikely to match anything inside most houses. But they're so solid they'll outlast me. And it's more comfortable than the floor, the paper roll or the bag.

The final item is the green card. Well I have mine and I've sent Andrea hers. So if you're interested you can see it. It's a creamy yellow plastic card with a green tinge (to my eyes). The writing on the back is in green. The front has some nice laser etched images of the Statue of Liberty and the USA. The back has presidents and the flags of the fifty states on the back.

Well that's all the interesting events for now. Hope you found it amusing.

You can contact David Evans at djve@acm.org.