Tuesday, May 18, 2010
A couple of days ago I met a Venezuelan couple in the street and they asked me if I knew where they could find ‘Harina-PAN’...
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| Harina PAN package. |
If you are not Venezuelan or Colombian you might be thinking... ‘What the hell harina-pan is?’
Harina stands for flour and PAN stand for ‘Producto Alimenticio Nacional’ or national foodstuff. Is corn based flour widely used in Venezuela to make ‘Arepas’ (toasted bread alike), ‘Hallacas’ (tamales alike) and bollos (again... tamales alike)... Colombians used it as well but the same purpose (ish).
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| FreshCO Fruit Market in Hornsby. |
This product can be found in FreshCO Fruit Markets, in NSW; or in Woolworth in the city. If you want to try one Arepa and you have found ‘Mazeca’, ‘Harina PAN’, ‘Mazarepa’ or similar corn based flour, here is the recipe of how to make Arepas.
Ingredients
- One (1) cup of corn flour (Harina PAN).
- Half (1/2) tea spoon of salt. Or three good pinches
- One (1) to one and half (1 ½) cups of water.
- Anything as stuffing... Meat, Cheese, chicken, whatever.
Cook
Take one cup of water and put it in a bowl with your salt and mix it up. Then start powdering the flour into the bowl trying to get it really smooth.
One all the flour has absorbed all the water (around 5 minutes later the mixing process) you can check the consistency; must be soft yet firm enough to make dough balls in your hands (half tennis balls size). If the dough is too hard and crumbles, needs more water.
Flatten it with your hand, trying to get something round of 1 cm of thickness and then put it in a pan with a little bit a butter (... veeeery little, is not meant to be fried) and cook it using low flames... It might take around 10 minutes to be cooked.
You need every own and then to take it with your hands, hitting it gently. If it makes a drum alike sound (like hollow inside) is ready, otherwise need more time in the pan.
Once is ready, split it open by the edges and put whatever you want inside... A really common stuffing is cheese with some butter.
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| An arepa stuffed with cheese should look like this Yummy isn't? |
Enjoy it
=)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
A common question people (with brand new visas) do is...
How do I know where is my visa number?
How do I read the information in it?
Let’s see if I can dissipate as many doubts as I can =D
First, here is an Australian visa...
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| yup, I know you might have seen it before... |
And here is an Australian visa with numbers and legend (thanks to 'Visa HQ' to publish the info)
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| Our 'prreciouss' visa (Gollum voice) |
1. Australia visa category as defined by Australian embassy. Expose the number of times you can travel in and out Australia.
2. Australia visa validity. Grant date.
4. Name of Australian visa holder. That would be you (if you have one, of course).
14. Australian visa number. Pretty much self explanatory.
16. Date of Australian visa expiration. Maximum allowed date for you to arrive to Australia otherwise your visa is cancelled.
18. Purpose of entry to Australia. Why are you visiting of coming to Australia.
19. Forget this one... Applies to business visa only.
If that isn't enough description... I also found the image below...
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| Click on the image to get it in better resolution. |
Hope this is useful.
Comments are well received.
Cheers
I have been checking my blog visit logs and I have found some interesting topic made to Google and forwarded to me related to...
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| Hahaha, well... not precisely. I know the questions is not related to crazy love... But you got to admit, the image is nice. |
Do Venezuelans love for Australians?
In general, yes. Venezuelans are weird as people and I am not saying it as a negative note. Our culture is pretty weak in comparison to most of the Australians and thus, we feel curiosity about their culture, their manners and experiences. We love (in most of the cases) the Australian accent and somehow we would like to have it, but without losing that exotic ‘thing’ we have.
Now, if anyone was asking about actual ‘love’ I have found that we enjoy blending with Australians (or to be honest, with anyone who’s not Venezuelan as the matter of fact but those whom are already married).
What I have seen?
At least two friends are in serious relationships with Australians and some acquaintances (single or divorced) are married/dating Australians.
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| Yeah, maybe the image is off topic... but I love Australia so much ^.^ And I think it was brilliant to put it in here based that I am writing about Venezuelans and Australians... The girl has an Australian flag as shirt, but her hair, shirt and heart contains in the exact order the colours of my hometown's flag. |
So yeah, I can say Venezuelans enjoy Australians (as friends or partners). Or at least that is my perception...
What do you thing?
Monday, May 3, 2010
Writing the previous post noticed that.... I didn’t change my blog title since my arrival... I am fully living my dream... so I have decided to change the blog’s title...
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| Previous blog title. |
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| New blog title :P |
What do you think?
Last few weeks, several people have written me to know a little bit about my wife... Her current professional status to be precise...
Kathy is statistician and mathematician (as we already said it long time ago) and at the moment is finishing some volunteering at Mission Australia.
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| Don't you know if you want to go volunteer? Be noble and do something for your community... |
Volunteer??? What is that?
A volunteer or voluntary is someone whom provides their services without payment for their time, effort or expenses.
Why is she working as volunteer?
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| Mission Australia. |
Well.... several reasons, first she wanted to familiarise with the working environment in Australia, wanted to get some local working experience and wanted to learn new tools of wide use in the Australian market.
When we arrived and started looking for job, she was a bit worried about some tools required on most of the roles published in the Internet. One of those tools is SAS, which isn’t part of her working experience (or knowledge as the matter of fact) though she had worked with similar tools before.
Working as volunteer she managed to contact some people with the knowledge and position to start working with such tools (or Australian data).
Why should I go volunteer? Is there any benefit?
Yes... A volunteer is very noble activity; where people have fun, improve their people and technical skills.
Where can I find more information?
Kathy loves go volunteer web site; but there are tons and tons of them, such as seek volunteer or volunteering Australia. Check that out!
If you have comments or questions, write it below :P
Cheers.
Monday, April 26, 2010
To those who might not know... FAQ stands for ‘frequently asked questions’... And why am I talking about FAQ’s???
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| "We know you have questions... We don't know who knows the answers... But we try" |
Well... everyone seems to ask me the same questions related to my impressions of my new life in Sydney (or more related to Australia as the matter of facts) =P
So, here are the most common questions (and its answers) for everyone to know.
Why did I choose to move to Australia?
Well.... Why not? Ha ha ha, yeah, that’s not an answer so here is something more explicit:
Choose Australia over different other locations because I was attracted to its culture, ease-living and just because I fall in love of it.
But I think some of my initial posts actually had some serious reasons that I took into consideration. If you want to read more about them, click here to read my ‘Dream may come sooner than later’ post or here to read ‘Australia will be our target’.
How I have found it (Australia) as my home?
Excellent, magnifique, buenísimo, eccellente!!!! (English, French, Spanish and Italian, just in case you are wondering what I said).
Australia has excelled my expectations with better and higher standards than many American or European countries. On these months I have been able to do so many things! Relate with neighbours, walk the city, buy some home stuff... but the most valuable thing for me is intern peace. I feel good with myself and how things are at this moment.
Have Australia met my expectations?
It has exceeded every single one. I will not enumerate all of them ‘cause I don’t know if blogger accepts a 3 gigs text document (large document), plus is not the moment to write Australian bible or the 'Hitchhiker guide to the Australia'.
How long (in month) was the waiting for the Australian visa?
From the day I started the professional assessment up to the day that I got my grant letter... 28 months. Why? Short list to reasons... really bad assessment and financial crisis.
The thing that took the longest was the visa, fourteen (14) months to be approved, but it can take less (or more) time... Different reasons might apply.
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| Do you think clearly at work? |
Did I move down under with a secure job?
Uhms, why does everyone is worries about moving without having an income?
An entire government is certain that you are going to find a place to work in; they simply have faith in you... Why should you doubt on your talents?
I decided to move with a permanent visa, looking for challenges and totally comfortable of my experience, skills and knowledge as professional, so I can (somehow) say that I had a job waiting for me when my visa was granted.
Do I need to start from scratch in my professional area?
No. Australia provides plenty spaces for everyone to grow.
But that does not mean you won’t look other places to earn money. If you are in Australia for 6 months without a proper job, you must find something suitable in the meanwhile. Do whatever it takes to earn your living and be happy, eventually you will get your payoff.
Is it English language a most have?
I am going to be as polite as I can on this one...
OF COURSE!!!
You planned to move to an English speaking country. The least you can do is to communicate properly with your neighbours, mates and co-workers!
Something else in those ‘at least’ you most do is ‘RESPECT AUSTRALIAN CULTURE’... that doesn’t mean you need to lose your own, but it does mean that is not polite to keep talking your own language when your mates are all English speakers, or to keep doing your thing without any consideration of what locals does. I can start writing long and hard about things here, but I rather leave it for another moment.
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| Speak it or leave it. Ironic-ish isn't it? it is supposed for those who don't speak it at all. |
Do I need a migration agent to do my stuff?
Again, the answer is no. You don’t need an agent to apply for an Australian visa, isn’t that difficult in most of the cases and you can pretty much find a guide in the immigration website wizard.
I must admit that I did my process with an immigration assessment team called ‘Viva en Australia’... But at the end, I wasn’t really happy of how my process was handled.
If I want some help with my process... Who should I pick?
I don’t like to provide guidance related to immigration agents.
Why?
Because you will be settling down to a relationship (for good or bad); a relationship that might lend you pure love... or pure hate... or bankruptcy (depends on fees, watch out!).
Before starting a relationship, you need to have some backgrounds, references and something to compare against; that is my advice. If you want to take it, fine... if you don’t want to... fine as well.
Where should I settle? What city is the best?
Mate... The whole Australia is freaking bloody awesome!
Sydney is marvellous!
Melbourne has culture... (I don’t really know what people mean with that... but it has it =S)
Brisbane is brisbalicious (delicious).
Perth is perthfect.
Hobart is pure art (... fishing art).
Adelaide has some of the best wines in the world!
Darwin has meat... I guess =P
Canberra has politics.... Well, not everything in Australia is perfect... Poor people of Canberra... We really want to help’em.
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| Yeah... everyone loves politics... |
All you need to do is choose. Pick the one that you feel more related to and that’s it.
If you think I left out some questions. Type it in the comment sections and I will do a second post of FAQ’S
Cheers.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
In Venezuela (or Spanish speakers in general) people tend to pronounce letter differently of how it should. For instance, Spanish tend to pronounce ‘s’ sounds as ‘z’... that means Spanish people makes real emphasis on the sound of the ‘SS’ sound. Latin Americans tends to pronounce ‘c’, ‘s’, and even ‘z’ as the very same thing...
I didn’t think that would be the case when speaking English till my mates at work actually point it out with the following dialog:
Rod: (I was chatting about... I have not bloody idea, but wasn’t really important...)
J-man: Uhms... I am curious... Could you repeat that last word?
Rod: balbe?
J-man: uhms... again, say it slowly...
Rod: Val-ve...
(J-Man takes a marker and writes in the whiteboard ‘V – value’ ‘b – butter’).
J-man: Could you please read that to me?
Rod: ‘V’... ‘Value’... ‘B’.... ‘Butter’ (thinking what the hell...)
J-man: I am really confused... Sometimes I think I hear you saying ‘b’ instead of ‘v’... At the very first I thought Venezuelans tends to pronounce ‘v’ as ‘b’... But you really make it different so you know how to pronounce it right!
(All of the sudden the pieces fall into place and I remembered that most of the time I don’t really pay attention to my pronunciation which makes total sense to the current conversation).
Rod: Well J... To be honest you are right. Maybe is something unconscious that I do without noticing it... Maybe it has to do with different pronunciation among different languages and I have it all messed in my head :P... I will do better further on.
Thanks god, I had the fortune to find such a place where my team members take the time to actually point this kind of things (otherwise permanent unattended, which might become more severe in upcoming future).
The valuable message in this note is, if you think your pronunciation is flawless, have a nice chat with your friends (native speakers) and tell them to point your flaws :P
Cheers.
Monday, March 29, 2010
I find so funny when I am talking to someone (not Australian) and the beach topic and its creature emerge... Specially ’sharks’
I am starting to believe that is a fact that every 3 of 4 will ask ‘are you nuts?? Why do you swim at the beach? Doesn’t shark eat people?’ (All three at the same time...)
To all those whom keep asking if sharks will devour my flesh to the bones... find useful the next instructional video.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
If you are reading this post fearing I am publishing some kind of affair and that I am cheating on Kathy.... Wrooong!
Ha ha ha!
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| Rushing to catch the bus? |
The story goes like this, every single day (except for weekends of course) I have to take to train from Hornsby station to Macquarie University station and take the bus up to lane cove west; which have made me realise there is a lot of people doing exactly the same every day.
Why does this impress me? Well, in Venezuela people runs by them own time... That means if you have an appointment by 10 AM you might get on time, but others might get 2 hours later.... ‘On time’ concept is pretty much inexistent term in South American culture... So chances to meet a friend or neighbour in the train or bus are pretty much scarce.
I was impressed because I was just one of those in the routine of leaving at the same hour every single day. Bummer!
Moving on, on my second week working at Cochlear, I was walking from the train station to the bus stop when I notice that my bus was already stopped at 35 metres ahead, closing doors to departure. Chills run through my back just to think about waiting for another 20 minutes to take the next bus and I start running to the bus waving my arms up high yelling ‘PLEASE STOOOOP!!!!’... The bus was moving apart from the sidewalk and I knew at that very moment, just a miracle could make that bus stop... But I continue running toward it.
Then it happened, the bus stopped and the doors opened just in front of me (which was weird, most of the buses in Sydney don’t wait for anyone except they are ahead the schedule, more strange was watching it park 3 meters off the stop). I stood there a few seconds without thinking that much and jump into the bus saying ‘thanks’ very agitated... A blonde girl standing 3 feet behind the driver told me ‘no worries sweetie, thanks [driver] you saved my husband of getting late!... Come darling, you almost missed this bus...’
Without understanding a bit my body reacted to the command of ‘come’ but my mind was ‘who’s she??? Am I in a parallel universe? What’s going on?’
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Took sit at her side, still without understanding and then, she started whispering at me:
She: Hi, sorry for that. Act like my husband, say something!
I just replied ‘Thanks honey’ a little out of tone. She continued:
She: I saw you running toward the bus and I recognised you from before. You always take this bus, isn’t?
Me: Yes...
She: I am really sorry for that, I was telling the driver to stop because you were rushing... and the only thing that came to my mind was ‘Please stop for my husband! He's with me!’...
All of the sudden everything made sense for me... Maybe my face told her more than I was actually expressing when she smiled at me saying ‘I am not crazy! I did it because I have saw you every single morning in the last two weeks!’
That comment triggered my memory as watching her jumping off the bus, to what I reply: ‘Oh yes, I have saw you dropping near lane cove business park, I guess... I am sorry that you had to lie for me... Thanks though....’. The chat went on for few moments up to her stop, where she dropped off the bus saying (again loud enough for the driver lady to hear) ‘Cya home darling. Thanks [to the driver]!’
I continued to my stop and as soon as the doors opened wide the driver told me ‘You're not married!, aren't you?’ giving me an intense and inquisitive look to what I just replied: ‘What are you talk about... We are!!!’ jumping off fast enough to avoid any other question.
I was just amazed that a complete stranger wanted to extend her good will that day to help me take the bus, and then gave me a nice chat for a while. Something even better is that in Venezuela people is not like that (or at least wouldn’t react so warm to a complete stranger) and it just happened at that moment making up my day.
Funny thing is I have bumped with her twice more since then, and every time I got a ‘Hi darling!’ greeting as soon as she sees me to which I reply ‘Hey honey! G’day!’
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Feels like sharing... or at least for me. Today I have been a little reflexive even before getting to the office.
My morning routine to get to work is wake up (obviously he-he)... dress up, take a bowl of cereal (or other type of breakfast, but today I had some cereal with oat flakes) and sit to watch bits of the sunrise. Then I remember I have to catch the train and start running all over... Ha ha ha!
And I start having a thought or two about how important is my work... Obviously there is people who can take my duties but then I remembered a funny story my mom used to tell me ever couple of weeks about the role of everything in the human body.
The joke (or story) is:
Once upon a time, the organs and other part of the body start having a discussion about which of all is the most important. The heart, of course, was the first to jump saying ‘I alone... I am the one that makes the blood move through the body, moving the oxygen to every since spot in the body.’
As soon as the heart ended his dialog, the kidney said in a lower tone... ‘Hell no... If I don’t clean up the blood you will be stocked on junk and start failing... That makes me the more important part inh the body’There was a silent for two seconds when the lungs start screaming ‘you are two morons! I am the king in this castle!!!! If I don’t move there is no oxygen in the blood and you two start failing!’
The brain a little bit pissed off yelled ‘SILENCE!!!!!!!!!!!! I... and no one else... I am the most important! Because I made this symphony work! If I don’t tell the lungs to move, the heart to beat and the kidney to clean then nothing work!!’
Every organ in the body stood silent... but then the ass start laughing saying... ‘I am going to prove you all who matter the most!’... The brain, lungs, kidney and heart start laughing saying ‘Come on ass! You are not at all the most important part of the body... shut up!’
And the ass did what other commanded... shuts up for three weeks leaving the crap in and nothing out... At the third week, the brain was collapsed with massive headaches. The heart was nearly attacked; lungs and kidney didn’t know what to do anymore. And then, the ass spoke... ‘Am I important or not? Cause I can 'shut up' for three other weeks!’.
Every other organ admitted that the ass is the most important part of the human body.
So... why did I come up with this story? Because that man was saying that his job was even more important than public transport itself... My first thought at the moment was ‘wow, that guy should be extremely important... But wait... if he is using the train means he doesn’t have car or doesn’t like to bring it to work... wait if public transport stop working... how the hell people gets to work?’ getting to one marvellous conclusion, public transport is the blood in our cities bodies and once more, if ever single piece stop working the right way, everything will collapsed as the ass showed to others :P
Some time people just don’t give enough credit to others works.
Then I looked through the window... My stop was near, so I stood up saying a big ‘thank you’ to the bus driver waving my hand, which smiled happily back at me and sort of satisfied by the appreciation gesture.
I have made something so little (saying thank you and being nice) and yet, meant much to someone that barely knows me at all.
Till next post.
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