Ye Update

Well. It's been quite the couple of weeks.

First there's been the big events with the election and the change of government. If you've been under a rock or in Outer Uzbekistan, there was an election last weekend and the Labour Party won so we now have a centre-right government instead of a slightly more to the right centre-right government! The new bunch seem like decent people and it's certainly time for a breath of fresh air. We'll all be watching with interest to see how they fare.

I watched the saga unfold on the telly (ABC, naturally!) at my friend's house with beer and pizza. The pizza delivery guy made a mess - when he delivered the pizzas one of them had slipped to one end of the pizza box! Not good! They supplied a fresh one after I called to register my unhappiness. My mate's girlfriend decided that this election stuff was boring so she spent a couple of hours surfing the Net and watching Star Wars! My friend had to do some much needed girlfriend maintenance the next day!

As far as my current casual job is concerned, it finishes next week. They're getting a full-time trainee so my time is done. It's been great to get some new skills under my belt (if you want fuel injectors stripped, cleaned, tested and kitted up - I'm your guy!) as well as spend a heap of time with my best mate. I'm sure he'll remind me to take him out for drinks to say thanks!

The weather's been lovely. I've watched cricket and basketball matches, been to the beach and the park, been people watching and garden viewing. It's been just wonderful.

I have just over a month of this to go then it'll be back to Japan; cold weather, hustling about trying to get everything together before my new job starts on the 7th of January. Yay...

Dry

One of the big things that really really hit you when you come to Australia is how dry it is. The nation is in the midst of a drought that has lasted more than 5 years in some places.

How do you deal with that?

On a practical, everyday level it involves doing things to minimize your domestic water usage, like take short showers, recycle grey water for the garden, install drip watering systems, rainwater tanks, extensive mulching, plant native species, etc.

The government also enforce restrictions such as not washing your car and limiting watering your garden to once a week.

So are all gardens dead and dying? To the contrary, a lot are looking beautiful right now.

A couple of good sites here and here provide some good points on what causes drought, as well as its impact on Australia. This one also looks at the drought situation in the U.S. but this article goes a long way to explaining the current global impact of drought.


Another thing I've noticed is how frightfully expensive houses are. Adelaide is one of the fastest growing housing markets in Australia - at least as for as appreciation of prices is concerned. This is despite interest rates rising in order to put a dampener on inflation.

The cause is hard to pin down, There have been a variety of influences at work over the past few years. For example, people have been investing in second (or third) homes - as individuals or part of investment companies; the economy has been growing steadily for the past ten years and so some people have had more to invest. There's also been the resources boom, causing high demand in certain parts of the country.

The population growth is outstripping the rate at which new homes can be built. Also people want their own home. There are rarely medium or high density projects going up outside of the city centre (and there are a lot of them going up anyway - with the apartments getting snapped up by investors, rather than tenants) and the long term planning isn't to develop regional residential centres based around shopping and business hubs.

Whatever the reason, I am even less likely to be buying a house here in the near future!


Znet had a couple of good articles, one about the possible implications of genetic testing for race, the other looking at how George Bush does actually kowtow to terrorists and the protagonists of genocide - namely in Turkey.

Also there was this delightful story of a maths text book in the U.S. being sent back after 109,263 errors were discovered in it!

A lot happens...

... in a month.

Nova has collapsed.

I've got a new job starting in January - teaching English to (mostly) kids in Tatsuno, which is the city next to Himeji.

And I'm now in Australia!

My new job requires a driver's license, so the easiest way to get that was to sign over my Australian one. The only problem was that I needed to have spent three months in Oz to qualify. So that's why I'm here now.

So, I'm working at my best friend's company. Ironically, I'm driving every day as part of my job, so I'm getting a lot of practice!

I'm starting to relax after the stress of the past few months. I'm getting back into the Aussie swing of things. The weather is coming good, there are all the awesome summer type activities to enjoy.

So, that's how my last month has been.