Letter From DIMIA

We received a letter from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs yesterday. Shawn was granted his Partner Visa (temporary). Very exciting and so quick! We only gave all requested information to them a couple of weeks ago. This visa goes for two years and then he gets the permanent partner visa. We were battening down the hatches in preparation for interviews, requests for more information, general interrogation and discomfort. Whilst I don't exclude these things from future enquiries, it's good to know we got to this stage without them. So happy.

While Asleep

Last night, while sleeping, I was very active. Shawn woke me up with hugs because I was having nightmares, or so he thought. I was actually having annoying-mares. The first one: I was going over something that happened at work. I had to make a fix to some game backgrounds ( a lot of my work is fixing other peoples work), but each background was slightly different in areas where it was supposed to be identical, so I had to fix that too. Waking up while making a deep, slightly Marge Simpson sounding, disgruntled "Mmmmm." is an odd sensation.

Coding Again

I've been enjoying coding for Anguish again. I have one small project (one room and one object) in the approval queue and I'm working on a larger project at the moment: 11 npc (Non-Player Characters) files, 40 object files and 40 room files. Most of it is finished, except for the hard stuff. There is quite a lot of hard stuff, so I haven't been too inspired to work on it, thinking that what's left is going to be a struggle. This is, probably, mostly true, but I've found that after a long break from coding, I can see how to code some things instantly. I have no idea how this works. It may be that coming back to it with fresh eyes, I see it old problems in a new light, or that I've had time to soak up certain concepts and add new code knowledge to my brain in the meantime. Probably all of the above.

Although not a visual pursuit, I think it's good for me to be getting into creative projects outside of work.

Backyard Visit

This beautiful red cyclamen grows between the pavers and a brick wall in our backyard. If I have to have weeds, this one rates pretty highly with me. If only it'd grow in place of all the other weeds in our courtyard.



I let Kimba join me since, sadly, she's only allowed in the backyard when accompanied. If we let her out by herself, she tends to get set upon by some cats that live two doors down. This has at least twice resulted in visits to the vet. Physically, she isn't the tough young thing she used to be, but she still won't be run out of her own backyard (and fair enough). There are pros and cons about Kimba staying indoors most of the time. One pro is that the vet told me she probably shouldn't sit outside in the sun any more due to being all white and having some sun damage on her nose (which thankfully went away after a winter indoors). Pro #2: other cats can't attack her while she's inside. Pro #3: no unnecessary vet bills! Con: she loves it out there and doesn't get all the same catty stimuli inside. As the weather starts to improve we'll spend more time out there with her.

I haven't been out into the backyard for weeks. Too cold at this time of year to spend any great deal of time out there, but I noticed the cyclamen flowering and had to get a better look. I took a look around at how all the plants were going while I was there. The Parsley was going nuts, as was the Lemon Thyme so I used both in a massive Shepherds Pie I made last night. Looking forward to the weather getting warmer and doing some general gardening, as well as repotting some bonsai and giving them some love and much needed attention.

Free E-mail Account Security

A comment prompted this one. I think my response is too big to put in a comment. This is my understanding of the subject.

Do free email account providers collect your personal information? Yes. When you sign up they ask for your real name, postcode and country. Actually, they ask for more than that, but that's the only personal info you have to give (at least with yahoo. I'd assume they are all pretty generic).

Do they sell your personal information. No.

Do they collect information about what sites you navigate to on the net. Yes. They set cookies and check what they cookies has collected later on. Can you prevent this? Yes. Go into your prowsers security preferences and delete any cookies you don't want.

Are there any cookies you would want? Yes. These email providers set cookies to provide a timeout for you email account so that if you forget to log off no one can wander up and go through your email.

Do they collect information about what ads you click on from your email page. Yes. Then they know what products and services you are interested in and will show you ads for similar services next time. They will also make this information available to their marketing department so they can more effectively sell advertising space. So they would say something like "Oh yeah, there's a huge market for pink, knitted dog coats. We've had 327,486 click-throughs on that in the last week!"

Do they capture your IP? Yep, but then anyone can do that. _I_ can do that. Most sites want to have a vague idea of where their traffic is coming from.

Do they read your email. I highly doubt it. This would contravene privacy laws in any developed country, but like our phone conversations, these can be acquired by a subpoena.

Do they capture keywords from email subject fields. Yes. This is good and bad. Good because they use this tool to keep spam out of my in box. Bad because it's something they are allowed to read and most people think all communications are private. Solution: Just don't put anything personal in your subject lines. If you don't want your subject lines used for market research, don't stick product names in there.

My Conclusion: It depends on how gung-ho you want to be about it. I figure that I get massive amounts of storage, an email service I can use anywhere in the world, they don't get as much browser info from me as they would probably like and I don't pay for it. Outside of the net you expose information about yourself all the time. I signed up for a booklover card with a bookstore. I noticed that they spelled my name incorrectly and weirdly. Amazingly I started receiving junk snail mail with the same weird spelling. When people in the street ask you to answer a few questions for research. Do you acquiesce? Lastly, your name, address and phone number are in the phonebook.

Four Things List...

A friend asked me to fill in the four things list, might as well add it to the blog as well.

Things you may not have known about me ...

(A) Four jobs I have had in my life... (other than graphic design stuff. Everyone knows that already):
1. Kitchenhand
2. Data entry clerk
3. Artist
4. Volunteer sales person for a charity

(B) Four movies I would watch over and over
1. Blade Runner
2. Labyrinth (14 times baby)
3. Lord of the Rings
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

(C) Four places I have lived
1. Newcastle (2 different places)
2. Melbourne (3 different places)
3. Sydney (6 different places... i think)
4. Sydney... again (see above)

(D) TV shows I love to watch:
1. Gardening Australia
2. Dr. Who
3. My name is Earl
4. Farscape (missed it on tv. watching it on dvd now)

(E) Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Death Valley, USA
2. Kyoto, Japan
3. London, England
4. Wagga Wagga, Australia (school holidays at my Aunt's farm)

(F) Websites visited daily:
1. loobylu.com
2. mail.yahoo.com
3. shayley.blogspot.com
4. somethingpositive.net

(G) Four of my favourite foods:
1. Chocolate
2. Nutella with strawberries
3. Chicken and basil risotto
4. Hickory smoked lemon chicken

(H) Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Somewhere warm, nice beach, warm water.
2. Blue Mountains, in front of fireplace, looking out onto Megalong Valley.
3. Beach cottage, again in front of fire, uninterrupted view of the rain over the ocean.
4. In a house that I own.

Visa procession

First came the Fiance Visa, then the Bridging visa, next will be the Spouse visa, followed by the Permanent Resident Visa. We've been piecing together lots of bits of paper to send to immigration. So we're all about photocopying, tracking down a Justice of the Peace who is not out of the office, getting statutory declarations from family, getting things signed, printed and continuing the serial that is Relationship History Statement. Next is passport sized photos. It's all very tedious and expensive. At least after the Spouse visa we get a break for two years until the permanent resident visa comes up.

A friend is moving...

away from Sydney. I get it. It's hard to maintain lifestyle in Sydney because it's so expensive to live here, but it doesn't make it any easier to see them go.

Left work in time...

to see a burnt orange horizon.

Settings Changes

I've made some changes to the settings for my blog. You no longer need to be a registered user to comment, but you do need to do a word verification (simply type the word they display into a text field). This prevents me from getting bot generated spam in my comments.

Suit, Superman and Sleep

Yesterday was kind of busy. After work, I went and picked up Shawn to go shopping for a suit for him. He's lost so much weight (35 lbs!!!) that his old suit just doesn't fit properly and looks a little off. We decided he could get away with wearing it, but that should get another one. When he tried it on the visual difference really struck me. He looks so good in the new suit. Whilst the finances would rather we didn't buy it (it was on sale though!), he needs it for interviews now that all the travel and wedding stuff is over. He's actually in at a temp agency right now and has an interview on Friday as well. You can do it, baby.

So, after the suit shopping we stopped for a coffee. That is to say that we both stopped so I could have coffee. Shawn just fights off the sleeping sickness (jetlag) au naturalle and doesn't want me pushing me filthy, filthy habit on him. We then wandered down to the cinema on George Street to see Superman Returns. This is not something I would go and see of my own volition, but Shawn is a comic fanboy and I'm happy to do things that make him go: "Eeeee!" like a small child with a sugar rush.

After fighting off the very strong desire to sleep towards the end of the movie, we went home. I slept deeply. Instead of waking up at 5am or earlier, I woke to my alarm and could've kept sleeping. I'm hoping that staying up so much later last night will mean an end to the jetlag.

Katamari Damacy

What's that you say? It's a PS2 game that has reinvigorated my interest in video games. Shawn bought it while we were in the US. It is the strangest game I've ever played. Strange, fun, original and addictive. Let me give you an idea. The King of the Cosmos got drunk one night and broke all the stars in the sky. How irresponsible. He's not a very good parent and as such he's making you, the prince, his son, do all the work at fixing the problem so the night sky can be all shiny again. How do you do this? The King gives you a small sticky ball (a katamari) and you have to roll it around on earth and collect lots of objects, making each Katamari big enough to make a star out of, to replace all the stars that were broken. You start off by collecting small things such as push pins and stamps, then work your way up through sushi, shoes, cats, people, to cars, houses, larger buildings, etc. Don't expect the King to be very supportive either. At the end of your efforts he may respond by telling you to get out or by saying how disappointing your katamari is.



The other thing about this game is the music. The theme song by itself is extremely infectious and it often finds it's way into my head during unrelated activities, but aside from that, you'll find that with each katamari you'll get one of several different songs. It might be cute Casio-like techno, or swing, or jazz. It's also worth mentioning that when the King speaks, the sound that comes out is vinyl record scratching. I love this game. I try not to play it too often though. I need my eyes for other things.

I still have jet lag...

but at least Shawn has it with me. We woke up early, but continued to laze around in bed for a while. I made myself some coffee, returned to bed with it and Shawn read a few chapters of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to me. I would've had this book finished a long time ago, but my eyes don't like having to stare at a computer screen all day, then have to focus on printed text. They give me an ultimatum: read and get eye pain and headaches, or don't. This is very annoying given that I love to read.

After that, we walked to our local growers market, ate bacon and egg rolls for breakfast while we watched kids getting pony rides, then returned home with dessert of a chocolate crepe to share.

The rest of the day has been filled with watching old Angel and Farscape episodes. Good day.

Good riddance Vegas, byebye US, hello Sydney

Shawn and I have decided to never go back to Vegas. Everyone drives like a crazy person, all the main casinos and hotels have near zero available parking, we missed the service part of the wedding that we went there for in the first place, we seemed to have a lot of trouble meeting up with friends who were there with us and I came down with an unholy combination of alcohol poisoning, heatstroke, dehydration and emotional exhaustion. Basically we had a whole bunch of things go wrong and it's really put us off. It did have it's moments though. I got to spend some more time getting to know some of Shawn's friends better and there's really not too much opportunity for that while we live in Australia. In addition to that, the night before we left, I remember looking down onto all the cars and lights over the edge of the upstairs, outdoor bar at Margaritaville at the Flamingo and thinking how visually awesome it was. Of course I was drunk at the time, but nonetheless, the visual spectacle that is Vegas can not be denied.

Although we both feel as if we were being given the hint to go home by unkown forces, it was sad leaving the US. Knowing what a great bunch of friends Shawn has, makes it hard. I don't like seeing them being separated.

We arrived home just after 10pm on Wednesday Night. Bed never felt so good. I love you bed.

Family welcome and trees

I can't believe it's Thursday already.

On Saturday, we went to a second celebration of our wedding. This was held by Shawn's Mum and Tía (this is Spanish for Aunt). I was introduced to a lot of Shawn's family that I hadn't met before, ate some amazing cake, received some lovely wishes for our life together and was made to feel very welcome as a new addition to the family.

On Sunday we went to San Diego to catch up with friends.

Wednesday, we did a day trip to Sequoia National Park.

It should probably be mentioned that this is not really a day trip from LA, or at least, should not really be done as a day trip. We're strapped for time, love road trips and wanted to get out and see some of the natural beauty of this part of the world before we left, so that's our reasoning.

Part of this trip involves driving along a large portion of the Kern River. We were teased by glimses and decided to get out and have a look.

Very pretty area. We only stayed for only a little while then headed back down to the car.


Our real destination was the Sequoias. I really wanted to see these huge and beautiful redwoods I'd been hearing about. I had seen photos of these before and thought they looked pretty amazing, but it really was beyond imagining for me. Just as the photos I'd seen did them no justice, neither does this one, but it might give you a vague idea of the scale involved.



We only had time enough to make it to the Trail of 100 Giants, we didn't make it to the main national park further north. Not complaining though. What I saw was enough to keep me going until next time.

Today we dropped off some books for Shawn's Dad and picked up a huge tray of Shawn's Mum's enchiladas. I haven't tried them yet, but I hear they're great. Looking forward to that.

In the U.S.

I arrived in the US yesterday. I didn't get any sleep on the plane (Robyn, a quarter of a Restavit does not work... not on planes anyway). This is surprising since I'm usually capable of at least five hours sleep between Australia and the US whether I have chemical assistance or not. After this I feared that jetlag would hit me pretty hard, since it usually does anyway. Surprisingly, I've felt really good. I napped for about four hours that afternoon, was awake until 3 am, then slept for seven hours. I could've slept longer, but I didn't want to over-compensate. So I think the sleeping pattern will be okay with minimal assistance... even though coffee seemed to taste extra good this morning.

Our second day in the US was good. I'd forgotten how cheap food and clothes were here. We went out for lunch and did some clothes shopping for basics that would've cost a lot more in Sydney.

Here is a t-shirt I bought:


Here is a skirt I bought:

My Eyes Hurt

Work has been a little insane over the last couple of days. Always the way just before I go on holidays. Glad it's all done with.

Tomorrow, Shawn and I fly to the US. I wish I had a little more time before flying. I dislike not having any time to wind out of work mode before I go somewhere. I'd also like to have more time to give my cat guilt pats. I hate putting her in a cattery when I go away. I try to not do it at all unless it's unavoidable.

So I've been off to the supermarket to buy some neccessary last minute trip things: big bottles of water, eye drops, small packet of Lavazza ground coffee. Despite the fact that I've wound my coffee intake down to only one (1) a day, I still can't travel without a small coffee press and some decent coffee. It's like a security blanket almost. I don't feel comfortable unless I know I can get coffee when I and wherever I need it. This is especially true of a trip that will result in jetlag. I used to try to deal with jetlag naturally, you know, getting right into the new timezone by eating, sleeping and staying awake in the new time, but it just doesn't work as well as caffeine and sleeping tablets (although not at the same time).

Hoping I can post updates while I'm away.

Away

Yesterday we drove up to my Sister's place at Port Stephens. Shawn did the driving so my eyes could have a rest. This meant I got to take a few photos. I also got to have a good look at the things around me whereas I'm normally in driver-mode.



The F1 was very wet, sometimes misty and always hard to see the turns of the road.



We were very happy to get out of the car and inside to a wood fire and welcoming family.

Today, after a sleep in and coffee, we picked some fruit from their mandarin tree and were sent on our merry way after being fed some pizza. I was just in the mood for pesto and cherry tomatoes too.

Happy...

Birthday to Narelle. Happy thoughts to you today.

Today I had a sleep in after staying up late to work on some code (C) for Ancient Anguish. For those who don't know, this is a text based RPG (Role Playing Game) that I program on. Sleeping in is great, at least right up until the impending caffeine headache.

This morning I went to our local growers market with Shawn. It was raining so we both just dropped in to buy tasty turkish Gozlemes. These are a dough filled with either organic honey, bananas and chocolate, mince and spinach and various other things. All very tasty with some lemon.

Rain Much?

I woke up this morning to the sound of heavy rain. It's been like that in Sydney for over a week now. I've been kind enjoying the winteryness of it, but getting out of a warm bed when you'd rather lie there and listen to rain, isn't really ideal. Thankfully I get to drive to work, so I feel far better off than everyone I see trudging through wind and rain to get to work.