Workin Hard

It has been far too long since my last post! (Do i start every blog post like that?)

The past few months have been really busy, predominantly with work. There have been a lot of late nights, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel for this project. Maybe a few more weeks, fingers crossed. I'm working on helping a local technology company create an online tool to sign-up for their service, but the business rules and internal politics are exasperating, so I won't go into it. Let's talk about more interesting things.  

I renewed my passports last month. I would highly recommend everyone come to Australia to renew their passports. I did get a bit of Nostalgia visiting the US Consulate in Sydney. It's in this posh tower downtown, you have to go to the back tower, up through the lobby to an intermediary floor, through a processing/security station, into a ear-popping elevator to the 50-something floor, smile at the big portrait of Hillary (not Sir Edmund) as you pass by a massive bomb-proof security enclosure and through a door which ways weighs as much as a refrigerator, into an area that, i swear, feels just like the DMV. Unhappy people with bundles of papers and crumpled up ticker numbers and all. But, aside form that, I got my new passport in 6 days. 6 DAYS! Mailed. In my mailbox. No mistakes. I was fairly pleased. I now have 52 pages just begging to be stamped. <hehehehe> I love a challenge.   

Speaking of the fruits of the greatest of north american nations, a life changing event occurred in July in Sydney, Australia. Costco opened. Now I've been to Costco's in the US, in Japan, and places like it in South America and Africa, but I have never waited 30 minutes in a line, just to get in the door. Not in the checkout line, but literally to get in the door! It was crazy! I bought massive quantities of just the necessities.

Not only kosher style but made in New Jersey! I couldn't say no.

I'm slowly going through my haul of cheese, pasta, juice, and the rest.
Speaking of juice, i found the pulpiest orange juice in the world. You could pour it into the Macondo well to stop the leak. It's no Tropicana, but I've gone through a gallon already. I would make a Costco membership worthwhile just from buying OJ! Costco also had the King David wine. The kosher for passover wine that's always the last resort. not sure what their strategy was with that.


In further news, I was at a really fascinating conference a few weeks ago. UX Australia. It's the first conference I've been to in ages. It's a lot smaller than the professional conferences I attended in the US, but the speakers were very interesting and the ideas were reinvigorating. We have a thing at work called Friday Talks, which is a few 15 minute talks every other Friday by anyone in the office about whatever topic they find interesting or want to share about. I've spent last Friday presenting about what I learned and will probably have a few more presentations to go. Topics included designing for Mobile, user testing with mobile devices, design for cultural differences, thought leadership, and client engagement in design.


And lastly, last weekend I was out and saw the Sydney Roller Derby League grand finals; a competition between two teams who's names I don't remember.

In the end, just as I had hoped, one of the teams won. (-: It was a fun time, even if I still don't really get what happened, but something different to do.

More to come about sports and travel. Soon, i promise(-:

Skiing in New Zealand

I'll post a full write up in a bit, but thought I'd link to the pictures first.

New Zealand is magical.

Doggelganging

This is too good not to share.

http://doggelganger.co.nz/

It is a wonderfully designed online application which matches a picture of you with your ultimate canine companion. Really, it is a cheeky tool used by a pet rescue and adoption agency to get people engaged and looking at pictures of cute puppies.

My Results

!וואס אַ קוטע הונט

 I definitely see the resemblance. You?

A little dinner party

So, I had a few friends over for dinner this eve and tried out a few new recipes. As I'm sitting here, my stomach is aching from how much I ate, so I thought that was a good sign and wanted to share.

#1 I made a carrot, sweet potato, and acorn squash soup spiced with cumin and paprika and a bit of red and black pepper. It came out a bit spicy, which I liked, but I thought I'd tone it down so I put some pure creme and honey in the food processor and whipped them, and put a dollop into the soup. Delicious.

#2 A BBQ meatloaf made with breadcrumbs, spicy mustard, Worcestershire sauce, honey, salt, pepper, garlic, and BBQ sauce all mixed together, and then glazed with a mixture of the BBQ sauce, honey, and Worcestershire sauce. It was soooo moist. i made a take off of this recipe. 

#3 to get a few veggies on the plate, I sauteed chopped bok-choi briefly with onions, garlic, and ginger. Not very imaginative, but it was nice to have some green next to the huge chunk of meatloaf on my plate! This was the inspiration.

#4 One of my friends brought over uncooked chocolate chip peanut butter cookies which we popped in the oven after dinner then ate the freshly baked hot cookies with the left-over honey-creme from the soup.


It's about an hour away from July and if I weren't falling into a food coma, I might be wondering how half a year has flown by so quickly. Oh well. To my russian friends, я надеюсь, вам понравится июля!

Jumpin June

June has just been flying by! And that is likely because I have been busy between work and extra-curriculars.  At the very end of May I went to the Sydney Ski & Snow Expo which was at the Sydney Convention Center in Darling Harbour.  It consisted of about 60 booths with people from around the world trying to get you to buy a 7-day ski package to their resort. There were a few familiar trail maps for Western US and Japan which got me all misty-eyed from good memories and times gone by. And a few places which I would love to make happen. Particularly, a ski resort in the Himalayas, but I have no idea how I will make that happen. What I am making happen is 1) a ski trip to Thredbo here in Australia and 2) a ski trip in July to New Zealand. The Australia trip will be with a few colleagues. The mountain is about a 5 hour drive and I'm not too sure about the relative quality, but it's been easily 16 months since I was last on snow, so I'm due. The New Zealand trip will be 5 days in Queenstown skiing in the surrounding mountains and potentially a day of heli-skiing. If that happens, there will be video posted here for your enjoyment. But those vacations are still far off (at least they feel like it!). 

In June I attended 4 films from the Sydney Film Festival.  I saw:

• Happy Happy - Hysterical, Sad, Awkward, Great.
• My America - Interesting outsider perspective of post 9/11 perception of America
• Top Floor Left Wing - Cute, but meh.
• Exporting Raymond - Hilarious! Phil Rosenthal, creator, writer, and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond goes off to Russia to help create a Russian version of the show.

I also went to a few fascinating talks at a conference for folks in the digital creative field. I Won't do a write up of the sessions, but the conference was a three part series including talks, music, and a light show, pictures of which are posted here and a video here.

In sadder news, I hurt my foot playing soccer about 3 weeks ago. I landed poorly on my heel and could barely walk for a week. Luckily I was wearing my ankle braces or I think my whole ankle would have snapped. Anyways, it's still a bit sore, but the swelling and lovely purple colour (I'll spare you the pictures) have gone away. So I'm still hobbling a bit to and fro and haven't been able to play soccer or climb in far to long, but hoping for enough of a recovery by next week to start doing...well...anything.

Hope all is well. Feel free to leave a comment or questions. In looking at the blog stats it seems like the only person reading is someone in Russia. спасибо!


(In looking up спасибо on Google translate, I discovered Google translate has Yiddish as a language. cool!)