A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

I have come a long way from Venezuela to be here but every time I try to compare the States, Australia and Venezuela I notice clear differences between its societies... as well as the dangers hidden in the state of the well being.

Trying to explain these points of similarities and hidden dangers I am going to use three short phrases to state the obvious (yet so many times forgotten in the past).

Three great phrases everybody has to remember every time they look up onto the depth of the sky, breathing fresh air (well... as fresh as you could get) enjoying every single bit instant of freedom.

Why? You may ask...

Well... let me take you through a small tale, introducing as I go along each of these phrases... How about if I tell you:

Once upon a time there was a young boy, sitting in front of a cliff facing the ocean, thinking to himself “How marvellous earth is... creating something as beautiful as this scenery where the waves crushes against the walls of the cliff, bursting with foam and sounds and colours! Marvellous indeed because I could take a seat every day and enjoy such a wonderful permanent painting in motion as it is!”

Eventually the young boy grew up, he became a man with a family to maintain; moved to a bigger brighter place to be happy and work until one day... when he was old and grey decided to come back to his favourite place to contemplate this painting once more... but this time he couldn’t find the cliff in front of the ocean; instead a beautiful beach laid in front of his eyes and he couldn’t believe it.

“Where did the small mountain go? Am I at the right place?” – He could definitely tell he was where the mountain used to be as it was located in front of his town; the very same between the valleys and neither the valleys nor the town had moved. At that moment he understood the waves were not just making sounds on each coming hitting the wall; it was eroding the rock little by little; imperceptibly until it disappeared completely into the white foam of the sea.

Don't fool yourself taking things for granted

Hence, “Nothing lasts forever” or as any old Venezuelan granny would say “nobody will suffer a sickness for hundred years... neither the sickness will be that strong nor the victim will endure it that long” but you could apply the same logic and reverse the direction, instead of something bad like a disease it could be: “well being won’t last forever”

If you are an optimist this shocks you (although you might think is obvious at this point), like a cold bucket of water thrown at you while sleeping forcing you to wake up.

But why does it apply to me (that I live in the States, Canada, UK, Australia or whatever)?

Because of a bitch called entropy. 

A bloody attribute of our universe that states everything has certain level of chaos that can’t be taken away, only displaced to a different system in order to create a temporary state of order.

This is the chaos star (designed by Snoopydoo) the perfect symbol of chaos. The symbol represents forces pushing outwards of a circle (not on this drawing) breaking the balance of things.

It means that if your country wants to be rich with well coordinated society and high standards of living it has to take all the unwanted things and dump it somewhere, as well as take the wealth out of somewhere else (lands, producers, markets... the money has to come from somewhere, right?).

(Sigh...) I wish that picture would be just that simple but no!... entropy tells you as well if you want to preserve that ordered state, you will need to constantly use energy to push that chaos away from your ordered system.

The Yin/Yang symbol represents the balance... but in order to maintain it both parts needs to swim around each other. (Drawn by Chinese Ranger)

Well... first world nations achieved (via hard work, war, battles and education) an ordered system where each citizen contributes to maintain the order by being polite with their neighbours, participating into political, economical, social and scientific aspects of it all; while those of the third world are struggling to gain that fine balance needed to succeed as a rich and developed nation. Look at it as every citizen is an agent of order or chaos, if you do your part the order is maintained but if you don’t, little by little, just like the waves crushing against the walls of that cliff, the energy used to maintain the system ceases to circulate, the system starts its slow degrade to its natural state of chaos, collapsing eventually the system.

But if people know this, they surely will keep doing their good work, right? 

Prosperity makes people go blind... blinded by the illusion of well-being maintained over several generations until... one generation that doesn’t really remember the what or why of several rules and dropping it as “everything works as it should so why bother?”

There is when I remember the second phrase by Albert Einstein - two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.

Speechless... Albert, you said it perfectly after you realised how humans used your discovery of the formula of energy to build bombs.

And true it is! Humans are a silly stupid race; instead of studying "why the weather is more extreme each year?" or "how can we all live better?" we sit down to discuss who is right and how's wrong? Is it really getting hotter or colder? What’s the secret agenda behind everything everybody does?

Instead of helping each other (as collaboration has been proved to be more effective than individual work) we sit down with pointing fingers, blaming whoever committed a mistake. 

Instead of forcing ourselves into consider the implications of our acts we prefer to ignore certain situations and relay in others to solve any problem; to which my mind praises the third and last phrase of this post, wrote by Mr Martin Luther King Jr. - the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

And what of this ramble is related to Venezuela and how can we all learn about it?

Venezuela is a nation of wealth and natural beauty to such extent that it holds one third of world oil reserve with massive amounts of minerals (iron, copper, gold, titanium, etc) yet most people tend to forget their duties and responsibilities (such as voting in national elections or actively pursuing the truth), hoping for a messiahs of some kind to come down from heaven to take them to paradise without any kind of effort or sacrifice.
Venezuela is a country so dependent of its wealth that has forgotten it won't last forever and it has decided (actively) any kind of investment on any other source of income such as its people.
It has become a nation where its politics seek a way to secure power and become richer and faster without thinking of future generations, feeding chaos into the destruction cycle of those systems created by previous delegations of countrymen.

Is difficult not to establish a comparison between the Venezuela I knew and the nowadays Australia (the so called Land of Plenty), when walking down the streets I overheard somebody criticising the government followed by a "but you know what? I don't care... we will be fine." or when you turn on the TV and listen to people trying to 'protect' as much as they can the carbon industry of Australia because their retirement depends on it instead of proposing new ways to generate wealth or develop this nation... I know, I know... is not as bad as the rampant corruption, street gangs, daily violence and number of death Venezuela suffers at this moment... but my parents didn't think the current situation of the country that was known as "the Switzerland of America".

Here comes the ultimate lesson to learn: all it takes is you to do nothing to contribute on the destruction of order. Do you take your part as an agent of chaos? Or do you try to maintain the order by teaching morale, ethics and the importance of good education to future generations?

Still think the voice of just one person doesn't make a difference? Take a look to the following video...

Think about it.

Cheerios!

Have you ever felt identified with a book, TV series or movie?

In my case I have felt identified lately with How I Met Your Mother because I found myself going through certain aspects of my life and can’t help to notice similarities between my Ted’s emotional state and mine own.

Ted is the kind of guy who is always trying to find the bright and romantic side of the story, filling with hope every corner of his mind with his dream girl yet reality hit him straight on his face every now and then to remind him how life really works and to stand up and keep looking forward, remembering the details of his life to later on tell the story to his kids.

In a way, I am Ted; loving the story telling and trying to compose it in such detail a matter that the audience enjoys it as if they are watching my life on their minds.

That doesn’t explain the title of this post, does it?

Trilogy Time is How I Met Your Mother’s 20th episode of the season 7 where Marshall, Ted and Barney agreed to watch Star Wars trilogy every three years just to imagine at the end of it how their lives will be different in three years time. As for me there is no trilogy to watch on my comfortable couch but it is a time to remember the sacrifices I have done over the time to achieve part of my dreams.

Three years ago I was for the very first time taking my first breath in Australia, waiting for friends to pick us up (Kathy and I) at the airport to then enjoy the rest of the day waiting for the night to arrive and finally, give some space where to rest our exhausted/jet lagged bodies.

Three years ago I took a seat in the balcony looking west as nightfall came upon us gazing at the starry sky, trying to understand this familiar yet different celestial vault; searching for the location of Orion’s belt, Southern Cross, Arcturus, Vega and then Spica (my favourite stars).

Three years ago I couldn’t imagine the types of changes I was going to go through neither the challenges I was going to be facing. My dreams were different to those I have now and definitely there have been changes I couldn’t foresee...  

But... three years ago Australia gave me a marvellous sunset and an amazing night sky to allow me to energise for a new tomorrow and a new start.

That is, one thousand and ninety six days since I arrived to this fantastic place and I don’t regret any of it.

So... What is 2015 going to look like?

Short answer, I don’t know... but whatever it is... is going to be amazing!

Keep posted cuz more is coming ;)

Let’s face it, is pretty rare to find someone whom does not know anything about Easter and its general meaning. Although I have always found interesting how different countries or cultures celebrate it.

For instance, in Venezuela the tradition dictates you should get communion with god, realise the value of the sacrifice of his son (Jesus) and the realisation of his divinity after his resurrection, although everybody tends to go to the beach, drink and party like there is no tomorrow and get wasted… Basically the religious context is set aside but the last day (resurrection day) where people march to the nearest church to spend that day in communion.

Easter looks like this in Venezuela

In Australia (probably in every Saxon descendent culture) is a bit more disconnected from the church and a closer to a festivity for kids and teach them about what’s the meaning for these days; rebirth.

In case you did not know the history behind Easter eggs or baby chicks I will tell it to you, they are symbol of rebirth and renewal; which for most parts of the world, matches the season (spring) and everything else grows around you. This concept might not apply environmentally (because we are in fall) even though the spirit keeps the same, finding enormous queues to buy chocolate eggs, bunnies or bilbies.

Oh yes, the chocolate Easter bilby. Not extremely popular in Australia but you could find it as part of  the Aussie tradition.

And… how do I know of such long queues?

Well, the explanation is… Kathy (my missus) wanted a new phone to replace her old (and extremely slow at the moment) Nokia E71, which was a bit more than troublesome taking is two good minutes to open up an SMS and a lot more to start up the email application. The frigging phone was starting to show its two years of intense usage by crashing every few hours but the envisioned replacement provided enough hope for Kathy to hold on and keep using it until the service contract was due.

Two months ago, Kathy pointed me out the date of termination to get her new phone (an iPhone) and she started to count down the days to be able to go to the store, picking one of those beautifully designed devices and begin a world in which calls were not dropped because of phone crashes (although I am not sure the antenna gate is totally fixed) and application can be purchased and installed without having a software engineering degree. But I took over those expectations and shattered like a delicate crystal glass being smashed against the ground by telling her 

At this moment you probably think I am the sickest man alive and I am doing this just to make her suffer… but you are wrong! MUHUHAHAHAHaaaa….


(the evil laugh doesn’t help on my point)… Anyhow, I had the plan of buying the phone, but how to present it so it was a nice surprise? Some of the following ideas came to my mind:

Scenario 1 – The Restaurant Mystery

We could arrange dinner at a nice restaurant (we have been trying to reserve a nice decent restaurant for the last two months) to then wait for her escape to the bathroom (every woman does this) and at that moment place the phone in a noticeable area… but where to place it? On the plate? What about if we already started to eat could I place it in front of her place? What about if she never when to the bathroom? This plan was flawed from the very beginning plus the surprise level wasn’t going to be high.

Scenario 2 – The Glorious Delivery

I could try to arrange the delivery of some flowers to her office and get the phone included with the flowers. Sounds perfect, but… Then she had to walk three blocks to home with everything on and the one thing I will never do to Kathy is to put her under that situation. I know women love intense and big displays of affection, but I have seen lots getting pissed off because of that giant 25 kilos teddy bear her partner sent to cheer her up followed up by ‘you should have come early enough to pick me up …’ (as in you pick the gigantic shit you sent me) ‘… to then have a romantic dinner’. Soooo nope; another plan goes to the rubbish bin.

Scenario 3 – Easter is coming, right?

Here is where everything makes sense. At the beginning of this week, I decided to share some of my ideas with one of my friends and went though many different scenarios. Some evil and some… totally evil! But at the end the ideas diverted to buying a box of chocolate that looked uninterested to give it to her and let her find the phone inside. The only problem with this was the level of difficulty; had to be aware of details such as the wrapping and presentation (trying not to be suspicious) but overall it was a simple plan.

That night I went to bed, trying to formulate the perfect plan to delivery multiple surprises and then I thought… What about a chocolate egg with an awesome surprise inside? If I could pulled that up it would be legend.

On the next day the opportunity arrived, Kathy told me she was going to a chat (or presentation) of one re-noun belly dancer from Cairo, checking with me if we had anything scheduled, to which I respond nothing special other than ‘Ok’ while in my head I was fast forwarding every step I needed to complete… 

I had to buy the phone, the egg, set up everything on her phone (mail, calendar, contacts, favourite applications and music) to then find a way to cut the egg open, place the phone inside, shut it as it was never open and give it to her avoiding suspicion…. Everything had to fall in place on the next 20 hours if I wanted to succeed on it.

Setting things into motion.

Early on the given day and after calling Apple to check stocks and be certain I could go there to pick up the specified flavour of the phone, went to Chatswood Chase and then to Big W to find the biggest chocolate egg I could fit the phone in; got two of those (intelligence purposes to be explained later). On my way back to the office got a micro sim just to receive calls and set up the phone with it so Kathy don’t lose her line while I was preparing the surprise and more importantly to allow me to ring it while in the egg. Back to the office, charge the phone and installed all her favourite apps and once I was home loading her music and final touches.

Ingredients of the surprise

Now all I needed to do was, cut open the egg, put the box and phone inside, seal the phone and put it back in the box... Easy right?

To cut open the egg I used sharp and flat cutting knifes, preheated with hot water, allowing me to melt the chocolate without too much mess; it was a good idea to pop the egg in the freezer every now and then to maintain its shape.

Getting the egg ready to be cut open while the phone charges a tad more.

Egg ready

Phone ready

Sealing everything up!

Once I had two shells, I could fill up the egg with notes and the phone in the box, and proceed to close it. Taking one of the shells and place on a hot surface to then carefully place it in position and back to the freezer; is not supposed to seal it perfectly because you will need to fill up the gaps with melted chocolate then wrap it with the same foil paper.

It took a bit of work and patience. But once I was done it looked like new.

In case I had any accident and the first egg got destroyed in the process I would have used the second trying to save as much as possible from the first one. But given everything ran smoothly I was ready to give her the present and now all I needed to do was to wait for her to crack the egg open.

Now... Which one has the prize?

She got back home around 11pm and I told her I got those two eggs to celebrate Easter, Aussie style. Also specified to her some of the eggs contained toys for kids (sort of like kinder surprise) just in case she started wondering the weight of the egg, which she pointed out as soon as she had it on her hands.

I had to hold it a bit more, trying to resist the impulse to tell her to open it once and for all, she pulls the wrapping foil and cracked the egg just enough to notice a bunch of pink notes inside saying 'surprise!'

Took out my mobile and rang her four times to which she replied 'what kind of toy rings like a phone? How did you get all these notes inside the egg?' Dug a bit more and there it was a box wrapped with pink paper, ringing again and vibrating. With a confused face took the paper off the way and stood quiet staring at the white box with the apple logo on one side and the picture of the iphone on top.

Must be honest, at this point I was on edge because she did not said anything for 3 or 4 seconds... but then turned around and said 'Oh my god! Oh my god! How did you do this?'

She kept asking me for two days how I did it.

Is not necessary to describe her reaction, she really loved it :) and so, the miracle of the Easter egg was born. I must admit, I am not the kind of guy that is planning for weeks a surprise, in fact I am pretty simple on that aspect but it felt so damn good... (she kept playing with the phone for three hours until at two AM when I was pretty cranky and told her to play with it in the morning).

Well fellows, I have shared one of my Easter stories. If you have one post a comment :)

Cheers.

Ever since I came to Australia I always wondered what's the look of Melbourne, its spirit and how would you feel living in there

And you probably wonder,


Why? 
Didn't you decided Sydney from the start?
Are you planning to move to Melbourne?

The why is:

Melbourne is an interesting city of Australia (the second biggest) and curiously enough it was our first option when we first take the decision to come down under.

The Sydney decision:
Moving to Melbourne was a short lived dream because after a little research and a bit more of crunching numbers (and understanding the meaning of it) we realised Sydney was better option; it provided more jobs with equal to almost less competition, which meant quicker insertion into the work force and more metropolitan (closer to our taste) lifestyle.

Am I planning to move there?
Nope, I think it was a bit of curiosity but that alone wasn't the driving force for our trip, the real reason why we went there was to celebrate the engagement of two dear friends (it was their Aussie wedding sort of thing... difficult to explain without writing another post... and is sort of private) which allowed us to go there for two days and enjoy the city.

NOTE:

Please be aware, it was a weekend getaway (forced to three days thanks to bloody jetstar) which could be a complete overlook of the entire Melbourne experience. By the way, jetstar is a piece of shit; never fly with them (promotional spot was promoted by Rod’s Rage... and Colgate!).

First impressions of Melbourne

Its architecture is extremely interesting; evolving gradually replacing spaces of the old city without removing its architectural heritage as Perth has done during the last twenty something years... But if you know nothing about architecture or don't care about it, you probably will notice that is definitely cleaner than Sydney.

In my case I noticed both at the same time, causing me instant wonder and surprise.

Would you like to take a look at some of my photos of Melbourne?
Click on the slideshow and it will take you to my flickr photo sets.

Is very easy to find yourself walking on the streets, looking at a Victorian building from 1890’s near by a brand new art-deco or post-modern house with solar panels on its roof and a vintage shop at the entrance; so well done that it refreshes the old Victorian building without breaking its style neither tendency; it just plays beautifully.

Worthy to include: their general dress code.
Melbourne dress style is very European with a hint of hipster; that is, elegant yet including young elements into the mix which makes you think they are outgrown children with a keen sense of fashion (don’t hate me for saying the truth).  Obviously not everybody uses the same style but you can get the general idea with the following image.

Also worth to note on ‘first impressions’ is (with the exception of Mel CBD) the city is two stories high in every direction our eyes look upon, having as consequence zero to none point of reference while you are walking around. This is not entirely a bad thing as Melbourne adapted its flatness to its advantage building up the tram as main transportation system.

A tram gives you the possibility to move around the city easily without losing contact with the surface or the city, resulting in a more appealing, interactive and enjoyable ride towards your destination, although I found myself quite often thinking ‘every tram should be a bit bigger, I feel cramped’. If getting into the tram is not your thing and you are more sport oriented, the city is super adapted for bicycle riders and it has lots of dedicated roads for all of them.

And riding the tram, bicycle or walking around get me into another point of interest, shops and restaurants. Melbourne seems to be designed as a big shopping area with plenty of restaurants established in every corner with music (lived or recorded) to engage your senses with its aroma, texture, taste and sounds. Certainly you could find something to captivate your curiosity to drive you to one of those establishments, spending most of your time in there. In my case I was captivated initially by Flinders street and its multiple parisienne alike galleries with numerous restaurants and beautiful smells (someone told me they are called Flinders’ Hallways, no idea if that is correct) especially after starving for three hours while we were leaving our bags to then go back to Flinders Street to get something to eat.

Finally (and this is what stood up all the time) was the lack of mimes running on the streets entertaining everybody.

At this stage you probably think... WTF is he talking about? (Yes, what the FAQ...)

Everybody (from Melbourne) has told me so many times that the best way to describe Melbourne was with the word... ‘Cultural’

But what does it mean?

I am going to cite a dictionary definition of culture: ‘The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.’

Cultural as in there is lots of history in there just like Greece or Italy? Nope...

Cultural as in you will be able to find people walking down the street dressed and dancing with their own very cultural background? Again, no.

Well... Melbourne does have lots of sculptures every now and then and it does have a huge number of graffiti’s in every single wall of alleys, semi old houses, etc, etc. And the concentration of museums, theatres and public spaces where to demonstrate a play seems to be greater than Sydney... But does it qualify as cultural? I don’t know... I have seen some pretty cool art on the street of Brisbane and tons of public sculptures, drawings or paintings on the far away Perth. (Oh yeah, forgot to mention I went to Brisbane a couple of months ago...)

My expectations were set by Melburnians as if I was going to be received by cirque du soleil acrobats jumping out of hot air balloons, guided by the magical old man with a set of rolling dices in his hands telling me where to go, while legions of mimes walked down the street entertaining everybody.

So, cultural is a word that will apply for every other city in the world as every city in the world as well, as it has the capability to ‘manifest human intellectual achievements’.

Certainly is a refined city, with refined taste for food as well for some fashion (I am not thrilled about the hipster thingo) and undoubtedly exposition to great architectural tendencies. Melbourne is the New York’s fifth avenue of Australia; I would dare to say (just the fifth avenue).

How about that for a first impression! Uh?

Was there anything I didn’t like?

Three things came to my head straight away.

First, the beaches; I am terribly sorry for you Melburnians... but St Kilda is anything but dreamy and any comparison to Bondi beach (which is not nearly one of the best in Sydney) will be more than unfair to Bondi’s crystalline water, soft sands and outstanding panoramic of its surroundings, and apparently surfing beaches are too far away for the discussion of this post.

Second and this one could be highly related to a very bad coincidence... but in two days I saw no less than seven drugs consumers, sharing or consuming drugs on the street; leading me to think one of two things: Melbourne has big drug traffic or Melburnians are not discrete at all! For instance, on two and half years in Sydney I have seen two drugs users, definitely not cool.

Third and last thing I did not like, the Yarra River and I think is heavy attributed to my mental image of what a river should look like. Its water is anything but clear; in fact it has a brown turbulent muddy colour giving you the impression of being dirty all day long. At the end of the day, my dislike is more related to its appearance more than anything; can’t complain about bad smell (because I couldn’t get any odour) but there was no connection what so ever to the river.

How do I compare Sydney to Melbourne?

There is no comparison what so ever. Both cities are so bloody different to try to establish a comparison.

Australian cities are so different between each other, so diverse and (at the same time) so into their own fashion and lifestyle that any comparison between each other will be unfair and disproportionate to both.

Melbourne offers an interesting mixture of fashion, gastronomy and architecture compensating a lot its uninteresting beaches, few slopes (or very poor elevation, I should just say lack of panoramic views) or extremely bad weather.

Unfair comments between Sydney and/or Melbourne

I have heard comments from different sources about what to expect from Melburnians or Sydneysiders and I can tell you... there are some nasties in the bag. I will try to show two of them and my counter argument.

Comment #1

"People from Melbourne is friendlier and less interested on how much money or what type of stuff you have. Sydneysiders are d-bags on this aspect" - Shared by some fellow Melburnians.

Dear people from Melbourne, what type of people have you met in Sydney?

Sydneysiders are not classist or segregationist as far as I can tell. On my two and something years of life down under I have bumped with pretty cool people with little pretensions or preconceptions at the time of socialising with somebody. In fact, our conversations will focus on many things but money, class or social  level you're in; they try to avoid it as much as possible!

Now, I know I can't speak in absolutes and it is possible that I have been blessed to be in a circle without awful social activities such as discriminating people because of their monetary/financial status or type of education, but as far as I have seen, that behaviour does not apply here.

Comment #2

"Melburnians are ice cold with everybody other than themselves... a bit boring but definitely cold people... like Europeans." - Shared by a fellow Sydneysider

I have to say, on those two days of my visit to Melbourne and the day at the airport, everyone was kind and curious of our origins; sharing a laugh while we were browsing or walking around.

Those are comments that I have to add to the 'list of things to never apy attention to', I really don't know why people express things like those.

In conclusion

If you are taking into consideration living in Melbourne I think is a pretty good choice. Even though there are things that I don’t like, it offers really nice options when it comes to food (the city is packed with restaurants), nice transport system (trams and trains) and liveable standards.

Everybody has an issue they must live with.

Some people have strabismus... 

Some people have one leg... 

Almost anybody have at least one condition they have to learn to live with... 

What’s mine?

I... I have... sorry to all of you... is difficult to admit it... But I am going to share my terrible problem with all of you. If you suffer hypoglycaemia, bladder control or aspersers’ syndrome, hold on tight to your seat... 

I have... 

two last names!

Reaction of a chipmunk moments after my last name was revealed. 

Hispanic cultures use multiple last names as ‘the last name’ to indicate their origins and pay respects to both father and mother. A better explanation (if you are interested on reading it) is here. In Latin-America is extremely common to meet someone with two last names and in very rare cases they even use more family names (grandparents or grand grandparents). Someone even wrote an article about it.

Now, why am I writing about my last names? 

Because I would like to recognise the person who had that marvellous idea, he or she should be taken to a podium in front of the thousands of Hispanic descendents living on English, German, French speaking countries... and stone him/her to death! 

Who in their right mind thought about prolonging your name until it doesn’t fit on one piece of paper?

To me it wasn’t such a big deal until I came to Australia (in the States is not a big deal because of the increasing number of Hispanic descendents blending in the American culture, and still they struggle with it at first) and it was totally manageable with almost no consequence until today...

Today I was ready to take the knowledge driving test to eventually be able to drive free in Australia... and have proper identification other than my passport, when I get to the RTA (transport and marine services) and an officer calls me by number to inquiry ‘what can I do for you?’ 

After telling him I had a booking for the knowledge driving test and handover my documents and other papers the guy tells me:

‘Well... everything seems perfect. So you are Rod FatherLastname MotherLastname? Good...

Do you have your passport? Good! 

Silly me... asking for everything when I have it all in my hands.

Let me check... let me check... uh! This is interesting.

Why is your last name in here (pointing to the gas bill) with a hyphen in the middle?’

To what I reply kindly ‘the guy at the gas company got confused with the last name and thought the system could find it easier to understand if he used a hyphen to connect both last names.’ 

He looked at me and said: ‘I am very sorry... but that hyphen changes everything! I could take your last name and consider you are stealing the identity of someone else! ...’ (Yeah right, someone on their right mind will steal a last name with 30-ish characters in it) ‘... So I will need a different document as proof of your address. I am afraid you will have to come back some other day...’

I stood there... silent for 25 seconds... to what I replied ‘Are you serious???????? One hyphen changes everything???????? Every other document matches everything, every single letter of my name and one hyphen in a piece of paper will force me to come back later to take the test?’

To what he replies ‘do you have any bank statement on you at this moment?’ 

‘Uhms... I don’t know, let me materialise my Tardis to then go to level five where the archive is to get you the frigging bank statement!’.... Is what I thought... But my real answer was ‘I have the electricity bill right here (I think)... but it has written my name as Roderiko and if you complained about a hyphen I don’t want to imagine about Roderiko.’

He turned around and handed me over a piece of paper while telling me ‘that is your new appointment, come back on Thursday with a document or reference properly spelled. I am very sorry, but the last name on your gas bill is totally different to the one on your passport.... Bye.’

Seriously, I cannot understand how someone can be so square.

Dear boys and girls... Madame et Monsieur... if you are an unfortunate soul with multiple last names thinking to move to an English speaking country, please take some of my advices:

First, check every identity documents to validate the full name appears identical in all of them. If your name is Mary Jane Watson Smith where your last name would be ‘Watson Smith’, check all your documents appears as Watson Smith instead of Watson S. or Watson-Smith.

Second, at the time you are getting new services, take the time to spell everything until they actually get it right.

Third, do not follow recommendations of ‘is going to be easier for the system and/or consultants to understand your last name’. That is utterly false, they still get it wrong and now you will have a document you won’t be able to use as proof of address (or anything else).

Fourth, if you can and you are willing to, sacrifice part of your last name and change it to their standard version. In my case I have been thinking about it for a while now; today just gave me another reason to do it.  

‘Until next time’ says Rod With-A-Last-Name-Very-Long-And-Troublesome

This is a public announcement.

Good Lads and Ladies, please... chill out! 

There is nothing to be afraid.

I know the latest news has been confusing and rumours spread fast, out of control.

But I assure you everything is and will be OK.

There is no reason for mass evacuation (or the other type of evacuation, nobody wants a shitty situation) and the police is having a hard time trying to control the chaos.

Please, do not compare with September 11; do not call homeland and security, eventually the crisis will be over! (Now my blog is probably being tracked by 6 agents just because I said that).

So I am going to say it again without prelude (in case you freaked out before getting to the end of the previous post)

I AM NOT CLOSING MY BLOG

I was rambling about why people decides to shut it down because one of my mates (frank) decided to close his and made me reflexive, pondering about the reasons and motives. 

I know my posts aren’t short and most of the time confuse people with bladder control problems... but read to the end before cursing my mom.

By the way, to the anonymous (who sent me an email this morning signing as Anonymous but his email address has his last and first name... yeah, clever!) my mom said 'Thanks!', and she is fine. You probably won’t understand the sarcasm, but it doesn’t matter... you probably won’t read this either and jumped of the balcony screaming ‘this is the end of the world!!!!!!!!!’

I repeat, 

I AM NOT CLOSING MY BLOG

Cheers.

In the next few words (or paragraphs) I will try to explain in my point of view why some blogs die and why you should not be upset about it. I understand the feeling and that is why I am writing down some of my digested thoughts.

Ever since I started reading blogs (mostly from people whom I have not met until later) I wondered what kind of motives they would have to write it down and then publish it?

Why these people share their thoughts in such a personal way in an open media such as the Internet?

That is the question. Image taken from creativeeducation.co.uk

When I started Uni (at the end of the 90s) I was the kind of guy who was totally comfortable being anonymous; my facebook was closed to everyone except those very few close friends (although facebook as much much later) as well as my IM or any other type of contact. In other words, I was the most asocial person you could probably meet. But that never stopped me of being curious, frequently checking the Internet for interesting and appealing stuff with my rampant 128kbps modem (translation for the new generation that was the fastest broadband you could get at that moment, at least in Venezuela).

One of the first blog I started reading frequently (by adding it to my bookmarks) was in 2003 and those posts were written from Florida, by a photographer on his mid fifties who decided it was about time to retire and take lovely pictures of kids buying ice cream, eating lollies or running around in playgrounds, which at the time was a big deal with lots of paedophiles on the loose and people complaining about strangers taking pictures on public places. I guess he was trying to protest or argue with control freaks, more than fighting with angry and concern parents... 

He used to post every Friday or Saturday about his life and how society had changed on the last 30 years in Florida, but after a while the blog posts stopped; very few people were following him (or understood the concept of virtually follow someone) and 16 months later, his blog was shut down by his son with a final and explanatory paragraph indicating a fatal blow to his father’s heart; it was just out of the blue. Not long after, the blog was deleted from wordpress and with it, the incredible tales of his author. The content of the blog and the blog itself died with his author.

Image taken from andrewcaldwell.org

At that time I was reading more and more blogs, each of them with different topics; from silly poetry to music, videogames and software development.

There was one in particular I remember the most; it was themed on cakes and desserts, called Caroline’s Cakes blog... but in reality the blog talked about anything but cakes and it was a way to vent different situations in her life (business decisions, life, friends, etc), and the reason of why I remember this blog in particular was because I always felt ashamed of reading it in public with its bright pink and yellow pastel colours and corky midi music in the background, which by the way made its way to the internal speakers of the computer, at loud in the laboratory; it happened once and I said it was one of those frigging pop-ups and I was trying to kill it... yet no one believed me.

But somehow I felt connected to her; connected as if I was her close friend like if I knew her, her thoughts, her way of writing and her silly jokes.

That is one of the many reasons why I felt offended when she decided it was about time to move onto different things, closing down her site and erasing her blog without warning, excuse or the expected ‘that is all folks’ sort of thing; she just closed her blog. To me it was a ‘facebook un-friend’ sort of deal, where someone just decides to take you out of their lives. But who the bloody hell was I? She knew nothing about me! Not even a single peep; never left her a comment or let her know I was reading her gobbledygook. There was no reason for me to be upset, and yet I felt she killed it.

Why would she dare to share feelings and mood to total strangers? 

How did she realise that is better to keep her life to herself after almost two years of constant bickering

When did that happen? 

And why did she remain silent when she had followers and cyber friends?

There was a missing piece in my puzzle, why would someone take the effort of opening their world, putting it into words and writing it down then close that chapter in their life and pretend it never happened?

Radicalised on not spending more time reading someone else useless mumbling I decided to stick to just tech blogs. It was the safest approach as very few IT people, writing down code and ‘best practices’ decides to shutdown their blog to do more entertaining things. 

Let’s face it, we communicate better with a keyword than with our mouth.

But my radical solution started to fall apart as I took the decision of leave Venezuela behind to move somewhere else, making our mind to choose our destination and familiarise with the culture of our soon-to-be home; reason enough to invoke the-daemons-who-find-it-all and browsed for hours any related story about Australia, filling up my head with more stuff than I could possibly remember, keeping me busy and distracted from many problems and situations of Venezuela.

It was amazing how much people have had shared when it comes to migrating to Australia. Is at that moment when you realise it does not matter the differences of culture as long as you find something in common to start a conversation, which later on leads you to friendship.

Sadly enough, very few of all those blogs were active; in fact, half the blogs were already dead! And the cause of death seemed to be Australia (arriving to it or settling in it), causing the flow on entries to dwindle for several months until total stop or the expected ‘we are going to close/end/finish blogging, it was a lovely experience but... [insert-excuse-here]’ blog post.

Could not understand why it happens. I could not possibly understand it because I was not living in Australia and the blog was an escape pod from the atrocious reality of Venezuela.

But you know, eventually I got my visa, moved here and started my life all over again and after a year of adaptation I begun to understand the motives behind the desertion of those moving to Australia.

It was like meeting with an old acquaintance whom you have not seen for a very long time: Greetings, profuse conversation about family, parents, exes (strangely enough someone will ask you about that someone who everyone knows but him/her should not be named), business or bad decisions in life and that is. End of the conversation, both parties look awkwardly to the sides and cheers goodbye.

You just ran out of conversation topics.

Of course, you could mention any funny anecdote of sometime ago but you don’t want to delay the inevitable... So you stay quiet, tapping your glass to make the other one a bit more uncomfortable to then say ‘hey, there is Mary! Has been so long since we talked! Let me check her out!’ Ending the conversation without the nasty and impolite ‘I think we don’t have anything else to talk about... off you go!’

Yes, we know... Mary was part of the plan all along. She was your escape pod from that dangerous situation of uncomfortable silence. You told her to stay there and call you out or wave hello in case you started looking to your right and left. Or even better, you just had enough beer and have to go to the loo.

Finally I was getting it, why blogs were dying! I was not because the authors decided to regain privacy of their lives... It was because they got to the point where they would have to share the private details of their mind and lives, the little details they were hiding all the time and all of the sudden, without any new source of events will be forced to share their precious intimate moments!

So the best tactic to apply is run for Mary or escape to the loo, killing the already dying blog.

To those who gets angry at the authors (like I did) whom leave their blogs in a painful state of abandonment, this post is for you. Learn to forgive and move on.

To those who decided to abandon their blogs. Respect your readers and send them one final post. Dolphins would say ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ although the mundane crowd won’t understand it. Eventually it will be appreciated.

As you might notice by now... my blog is not dying given the amount of gibberish I just wrote.

If makes sense, good onya!

If it doesn't, eventually you will get there.

Until the next time.

As some of you might know by now, I have decided to switch to a different ISP motivated to find better speeds, awesome browsing experience and compelling customer experience...

Cultural parenthesis on; 

Do you know what ISP is? I am going to stop here to explain what ISP stands for (just to be on the same context).

ISP stands for Internet Service Provider... Or at least that is the definition I am going to be using on this post; actually is going to be the only definition I am going to be using on this blog as I could check with urban dictionary... 

Some other usages of the abbreviation are ‘international shit provider’, ‘inscribed signed photographer’ or ‘I suck penises’ as I could find on urban dictionary.

Cultural parenthesis off;

But before getting into deeper waters, why did I want to switch to a different company?

My initial contract (the very first service I acquire in Australia, after my mobile of course) was my Internet service; a must-have-service to track and hunt down the desired and needed job to bring food to my table, and I set it up with Optus.

Why Optus?

When you arrive to the country there aren't any references on quality of services, how they treat their customer or how great their networks are... In fact, you got to be glad to get some response from some of these companies because they will ask for those marvellous 100 points to open up a contract.

Now, 100 points are kind of easy to get: You need a credit or debit card (it will be 96 points out of 100... demonstrate you can pay).

Identity document showing your pretty face and names (if you have an Aussie driver’s license you are done... but remember you gotta pay... In my case was my passport... so another point to the bag).

At least one bill with your current address. Electricity and gas could be among your first set of bills, was not my case; I was more interested on getting Internet than electricity. Now I wonder from where would I get power for the modem? 

Finally but not least, your lease agreement; they need to know you are connecting services to a valid address where you have access to. Obviously!

I know... I know... 100 points does not explain why Optus, but I have to build up the expectation, isn’t? Plus, it is related.

Initially I was going to sign contract with iinet; someone told me about their great service and excellent rates, but after a call in which they asked me if I had an active phone line to do the installation and enough money to pay for installation, activation, connection, fornication, insemination and gestation of whatever they wanted to charge me for I decided to look a different horizon. I must be honest here, I was trying to get any service for very few money, and the fact they were asking for a$350 dollars just on equipment was a big deal in my budgeted and super planned future.

Someone else recommended TPG as ‘They are cheap but not great’. What I heard was ‘they are cheap and awesome-because-they-will-fit-on-your-tight-budget-and-they-are-utterly-awesome!’ so decided to give them a call.

The initial conversation was a bit confusing, partially my fault because I did not say ‘I would like to set up an account with you’ but said instead ‘I don’t have Internet and I would like to...’ to which the representative asked me if I had username... username of what???

Took me 12 minutes to fall into the realisation, the guy thought I had connectivity problems instead of trying to set up a new account. This was the very first lesson when dealing with sales representatives: ‘be direct and concise’; had to hang up and call again because the guy stood blocked when I told him I did not have an account with TPG.

Now... I want to explain why it took me 12 minutes... I am not an indigenous bloke extracted from the middle of the tropical rain forest with no social skills... I think... The representative did not ask if I had an existing contract (to which the answer would have been 'no'), did not ask me about any pre-existing connection in my unit and finally (an probably more important) the building manager told me 'some services will be pre-connected for you and all you need to do is to call and set up your name to start the proper billing'... I thought the Internet was one of those services.

Second attempt was better in comparison, this time I got to the right representative to which the guy asked me if I had land line (home phone) for my naked broadband. I don’t know many things about networks but to me ‘naked broadband’ meant I don’t needed a land line to get Internet connectivity, so as you might guessed by now, the conversation went very wrong as the guy kept saying I needed a phone line to hook up the modem to it and I kept refusing opening any contract to get a phone I was not going to use at all.

After a third call and my negative to open a Telstra contract for whatever months, I decided to talk to someone else.

Later on that day, walking on the mall I was engaged by one of the Optus sales person, inquiring about my inexistent connection, imaginary broadband speed and low desire of opening a contract with Telstra (as it was shown to me to be the very devil in Australia). The guy asked me if I had the papers with me, which I did, and pulled the contract; checking with me with possible installation dates. I was marvelled, it was so easy that I was almost in love. The guy told me I need a phone line, but they were going to provide it for me and there were no huge costs upfront, everything was going to be paid with the monthly fees and I had not to worry, just enjoy the ride.

Needless to say I signed up a contract for 24 months without reading in details the contract; just skimmed the doc trying to find the words ‘your soul is ours’, ‘you are automatically an organ donor and we are going to get it out soon enough’ or ‘Buglabu’ (you will probably won’t understand this last one... is an internal joke and I won’t write it down here... just you know is pretty bad... very very bad). Everything was set with Optus, in 7 working days I was going to have Internet connection at home, and in reality it took just 6 days to finally have everything connected and fully functional. It was a 20 GB data transfer with unlimited calls within Australia (that I used to the maximum until I start working, later on the phone was as decorative as a picture frame), it was good but you got to be careful not to exceed the data allowance; otherwise I was going to be paying 2 extra dollars per MB in exceed... Now that I think about it, the contract did specified the buglabu section!

But... If everything was pink love story... what happened? Why did you decide to move away from Optus?

They sell you the kind of relationship exhibited on the graphic below.

As any relationship, you got through different stages: 

The everything-is-perfect stage: there are no flaws, you like and love absolutely everything from it. They could be getting you impaled but you love it.

The is-all-good stage: you are digging the service or the relationship; is not entirely perfect but there are a couple of things that would be great if improved.

The meh stage: you don't really care as long as it works. This stage is also known as 'the cheap-prostitute-from-the-bar-after-you-came-back-from-three-years-of-solitude stage'

The there-is-something-better stage: unsatisfied complaints and poor performance has dug a hole in your mojo; you could choose to complain with what you got or start moving to a different provider.

The I-am-sick-of-this-friggin-shit stage: you know it is hell. If you open up your mouth to express yourself is going to be shut quickly by two tons of manure freshly produced. Most users never get to this stage because it requires constant abuse and very poor ethics from your provider.

With Optus I moved to the second stage within two months with very few details every now and then but inconsistent Internet speed, staying on stage two for almost 14 months. I was pretty happy with them (even though the $99 plan really costs $102 because they will charge you printing your bills or administrative fees – that is 3 extra dollars a month). Needless to say, I became a compulsive reviewer of my Internet consumption, knowing what to download and when to download it just to be within the plan avoiding costly mistakes.

One day close to the year and half of signing contract with them, a mate tells me he is on the same plan with Optus (freshly captured by their offer) to which I noticed we have the exact same plan with a tiny difference, his broadband had bigger cap than mine expanded to a 120 GB broadband allowance.

I thought to myself that I would be great if I could get that ‘upgrade’ in my plan, eliminating my concerns of exceeding my data quota.

Calling Optus was very challenging... they changed their data centre to a voice recognition system in which you had to say the motives of your call to later on be redirected to a proper representative. My faith with the company was going downhill but my determination of getting a more appealing deal was stronger than their complex and confusing system... It took me at least 6 minutes to talk to a real human (with strong Indian accent) but I was finally exposing my interest of upgrading my plan, charge-free on exchange of renewing the plan for another 24 months.

I must confess... to the guy, my proposal must had been confusing and difficult to understand, he asked me several times if I was going to cancel my current plan to move to another company or if I wanted to pay more money to be upgraded on the data allowance. The conversation continued for another 25 minutes to end in my realisation of not a chance in my wildest dreams. Apparently Optus needed to cancel my current plan to open up a new one, but since my plan was still 6 month to be over I had to put on the table money for early termination fees plus the money I was supposed to pay Optus for the next 6 months... that was a grand total of 700 dollars to be upgraded to a plan with them... Seriously... What the funk?

That day I thought I did not want to spend any more time and money with Optus... If they were willing to treat me as rubbish, I was going to move my money to a different company.

Checking again on the Internet, noticed TPG and iinet had pretty good plans. Decided to call TPG first (given some refreshed recommendations at the time) to check rates and plans, but after 5 minutes I was complete convinced with their service (the representative even explained to me what to say to Optus to cancel my current contract waving any residual fee).

So... new love story begins?

Erm... no. The conversation with the first representative was awesome, their guy explained to me they were a bit collapsed with the demand, but he was going to book a day to my convenience to perform the installation of the new service and enjoy wonderland. But the technician never called or arrived to my place on that day. Calling tech support I received the news their guy called me to the wrong number and because of that they were going to charge me more for whatever reason... the conversation went for another 20 minutes, with me raging full of anger super volcano style and ask them what’s missing in my connection, when was I going to be connected again to the cyber world?

I had to call private technicians and understand technical issues related to the line and details that I really don’t want to get into my head!

Story short, it took 3 weeks after the period they claimed everything is going to be operational and some serious blows to my wallet to get my Internet connection working... at last!

At least I got some money refunded after complaining a lot.

What do I think about TPG?

Some of their technical support is good and some others are a total mess.

It was hell to get everything working and I recognise is partially because of their lack of commitment or extreme bureaucracy between contractors, providers and Telstra; I was requested multiple times to contact different specialist with zero or close to zero promise of any resolution for my problems. Guys... come on... I am paying to get the service working, I don't want to know what a MDF is or who's part of the cable isn't working, just get it working!

After everything was connected there have been no flaws or downsides. I am still waiting for the first issue to pop but only time will tell. Until then I will keep posting my funny incidents and stuff worth sharing.

Later!