Dave & Dana in Australia

After, on reflection, a fairly short and painless apartment hunting process, Dana and I have signed on the dotted line for an apartment…in a place called Manly. Manly is the Southernmost of the ocean beaches on the North side of the Harbour. We’re quite excited!

The place is a 2 bedroom apartment right in the middle of Manly between the wharf and the beach. Since we’ll both likely be working from home a bit (maybe 10% for me, maybe 30-40% for Dana), we decided we would want the extra space of a second bedroom/office. That also means our place is very crashable for those who’ve gone to the trouble of making their way to Sydney. We also have a parking spot and place to put our bikes in the basement. Some pics below…(not our furniture)

Getting to and from work should be quite easy. We’re going to be about a 3 minute walk from Manly wharf in the mornings to catch the ferry - 30 mins to the CBD for the slow boat or 15 mins for the (more expensive) jetcat. Once in Sydney Dana has about a 10 minute walk, or 1 train stop and I have a 20 minute walk or 2 train stops to our respective offices.

So far Dave’s been our spokesperson so I thought I’d give it a go. About 2 weeks ago I was in Perth, meeting up with two of Springbank’s Partners out there. Perth is a really nice city - full of parks and the swan river snaking its way down the main part of town. It’s a sprawling city with a small downtown core of gleaming highrise office buildings. The sky is so blue and huge and cloudless. Every day is sunny - literally. When I was there people were complaining about the fact that they haven’t really had a summer yet - temperatures were only in the high twenties. They have no humidity either, unlike Sydney. I was there from Wed. to Sat. and on the Saturday it went up to the low 30s. I was struggling.

Every evening after work I met up with Dale and we went out for dinner and drinks. I met Paul, Dale’s friend from Perth, who is super nice. Dale’s apartment is really good - it’s about a 10 minute bus ride from the city centre and another 10 minute walk from the bus stop. From his balcony he has a sweeping view of the city skyline.

So it was a short but sweet trip, but I’m trying to set up a client meeting for next week in Perth so hopefully I’ll be back shortly. Can’t wait to ride on Dale’s new purchase - a shiny red scooter! This time we’ll have to take it down to Cottlesloe Beach (a great surfing beach) so I can swim for the first time in the Indian Ocean. The sharks better be elsewhere that day. I’ll also get a chance to experience Perth’s “summer” as they’re now experiencing “normal” temperatures - 39 degrees yesterday!

As I was walking home along the Pyrmont bridge to pick up my dry cleaning and a few beers after writing my last CAIA exam, a I had a funny feeling. This is definitely the last exam I’m going to write for a while, and while I think I’ve said that to myself before and then foolishly proven myself a liar, I think this time it might stick. A little less time spent adding academic qualifications to make room for the morning run or surf and a beer after work sounds about right. I’d be kidding myself if I said I won’t be reading various things at least in part for work-related projects on my own time, but I’ll keep a cap on it. After all, I haven’t really stopped since, well, never so far. Time for a break.

I’ve got some new priorities now, like finding a place to live here in Sydney on a more permanent basis. The timing is coming up to be right, so in the next few weeks we’ll look to have something settled. A few possibilities are already on the short list. We’ll go to the beach this weekend to continue the “hunt”, although it will likely be tough to see places from the surf. Apart from that there’s been little to discuss due to studying - went out for a bucks night a week ago last Saturday for a fellow at work, which was lots of fun and acquainted me with several bars in Paddington. This Friday it looks like I’ll be going to my first Aussie-Rules game - that’s going to be good. I’ll post pictures of that for sure. Dana and I are planning a nice dinner at a restaurant located on Woolloomoolloo wharf for Valentine’s day. Yes, Woolloomoolloo is a real name. Happy valentines to all you out there!

Short and sweet, but what the heck was going on during that Super bowl. That was some of the most questionable officiating I’ve ever seen in football. I know mistakes can happen, usually they kind of even out over time. If it’s unlucky, one big call gets missed and puts a team at a disadvantage. Not this time - so one sided..well, I’ll stop short of saying it was fixed, but basically the refs just handed that game to Pittsburgh.

- In the first half: really weak offensive pass interference call to take away the opening td from Seattle. You usually have to be pretty sure to make a huge call like that - I don’t know how the ref could have been with that garbage.
- Also in the first half: The Roethlisberger bootleg on 3rd and goal at the 1. They call it a TD (anyone can make a mistake) and went to video to review it and left it as a TD. The video I watched was unequivocal - he didn’t make it into the end zone. No guts on this crew - and what the heck do they have replay for anyway?
- Second half, Seattle is driving for the go-ahead score and they complete a pass to the Pittsburgh 2, setting up 1st and goal. Again, a really weak holding call calls it back. 2 plays later Hasselbeck is intercepted and the game is over. That’s not quite enough apparently, as Hasselbeck makes a nice tackle of the defender who intercepted the ball…and is whistled for a completely mythical personal foul. 15 extra yards.

I’m kind of in shock - I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I had paid $1200 for a ticket for that tripe, but I have an inkling it would be a bit disappointed. It’s a brave new WWE, I mean NFL world out there.

Gahhh - just under two more weeks to go until this exam is done but man do I wish it was over. I feel fine about where I am as far as preparation goes, but studying in the summer is terrible. Studying in the summer in a strange new playground is excruciating!

Nothing too much to update on otherwise from here. Work is starting to get busy - which feels good. Dana has started work as of this week and that looks like it’s going to be great. She’s out in Perth from Wednesday to Friday this week to work, so she’ll get to visit with Dale and stay until Saturday. I’m left on my own to study, which is nice since I don’t have to feel guilty about being a bookworm for a while.

We had a chance to have a look through some more neighbourhoods this past weekend, and we’ll officially add Tamarama and Bronte to the list so far, which consisted of Manly. We’re running out of ocean beaches with reasonable commutes to look at, so those are the favourites. We won’t start looking seriously at specific apartments until the end of the month or so. We’ll do some reserach on some of the closer neighbourhoods too.