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October 28th, 2008

12:32 pm - It's like herding lolcats! *snorting tea through nose!*

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August 1st, 2008

01:52 pm - I am now a paid tech writer/journo type! Hi all Just letting you know that I have taken on another role in my life of tech writing/journo'ing. I am writing a series of articles about the ease of transitioning from Windows to Linux (and yes, it's Ubuntu). Please go here: http://www.itwire.com/content/blogsection/53/1162/ Hamish (Caveat: vested interest in publicity = I get paid per 1000 clicks!)

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June 27th, 2008

09:11 pm - How did I miss this??!! http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/20/bbc.television2 Moffat named Doctor Who supremo Scriptwriter Steven Moffat was today named lead writer and executive producer on hit BBC1 drama Doctor Who. Moffat, who has written a number of episodes of the show - including the acclaimed Blink episode which won him the writer prize at this year's Bafta Craft Awards - will replace Russell T Davies *squee*

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February 21st, 2008

04:29 pm - Massage??? Heya folks. Anyone know a good remedial massage therapist in the inner melbourne area? Am not too fussed about finding the cheapest out there - am more concerned with getting someone who knows their stuff. When your shoulder and back seize up five days in a row despite your best efforts to look after them, it may just be possible that your body is trying to say something :-( Current Mood: sore

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February 20th, 2008

05:41 pm xkcd comic for today... http://xkcd.com/386/ I think this just about sums up my life! H

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February 7th, 2008

09:36 pm - My my, what a difference a BIOS update makes! I finally managed to get a USB based external floppy disk drive, and updated the BIOS on my laptop, and my, my what a difference it makes! I am FINALLY able to turn off the hpet=disable (High Performance Event Timer) kernel boot switch for Linux, and its like the laptop just got a turbo boost! Anyway, am happy now :-) H

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January 25th, 2008

09:36 am - IT requests... Hey everyone I am trying to build a multi-purpose Media Centre PC (needs to be a functioning desktop PC too) at the moment, and I have a few problems: * I have a 54cm CRT TV, that only has component (three cables from DVD) and composite (yellow RCA plug) inputs * I have a new AGP video card, that only has S-Video out, with an adapter for changing to composite * I only get greyscale on the TV I have spoken with a few people and Googled a *lot* and they all say that I need to get: * a better TV with S-Video input (not going to happen!) * a video card with composite out * an X-Box (or similar) I have looked at all the video cards that I can get new, and it is not possible to get one with composite out, so I need to get a second-hand one. So, I'd like the following: * AGP * 128 MB RAM or more * NVidia chip set preferred * composite out Please help if you have an old card (or an X-Box!) that meets all of even most of these Thanks in advance :-) Hamish

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January 20th, 2008

07:21 pm - Random thought... I hate soup spoons. Can't stand the little round &*^%$#! H

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January 7th, 2008

04:17 pm - Still busy... Christmas and New Years was absolutely fantastic and packed with fun things to do with wonderful people. Only problem is, I was having so much fun that I neglected various things that I really should be doing...such as Uni work. Oh well...shall muddle through, do everything in a mad rush, berate myself for the shoddy quality of the work I submit, then remember 6 months down the track that no-one really seems to care about marks, as long as you pass :-) Anywho..there is much else happening, but I must stop procrastinating. Hope everyone is well *waves* See you when the assignments are done *sigh* Current Mood: lazy

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December 22nd, 2007

09:22 pm - Melbourne summer storms! The power of a Melbourne summer storm!

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November 18th, 2007

02:29 pm - Where did that month go??? So. We've been back for just over a month now. The fact that I haven't updated LJ once may be an indication of how busy that month has been, but I still can't believe how quickly the time has gone, and how much we've done over the last five weeks. I won't go into detail about what we've been up to, other than to say how wonderful it has been to catch up with nearly everyone, and to thank the lovely seedy_girl and thorfinn for being absolutely the best hosts imaginable while we were waiting to get into our place. We're really missing running into you two in the hallway in the morning/evening - and I'm definitely missing the trips to the Prahran Market! Anyway, we are now, finally, thankfully, back in our place and falling utterly in love with it again. The place has looked like chaos until this weekend, but with a big effort it is now looking almost organised. The final piece to feeling at home was getting the cats back from the fantastic Emma and Dylan on Monday night. They've settled back in more quickly than us, it seems, and are already back to their old routine (sleep, eat, sleep somewhere else!). Now that we're a bit settled, we're hoping to sort out the final lot of photos and get them up online, as well as catching up with more people now that we can invite you all over :-) With both of us back at Uni, however, and the Christmas madness about to descend, it may be another month before I update again :-( Feel free to get in contact and invite us to stuff, we're a bit disorganised, but love hearing from people!! Current Mood: happy

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October 26th, 2007

02:48 pm - Brief general update Hi to everyone, H here with a general update of what I have been up to for the last few weeks... Since leaving Kunming (sniff!), we have been kept fairly busy catching up with people, including a lovely Yum Cha a few days after our return and various scrumptious dinners after that. I installed the latest version of Ubuntu 7.10 onto my laptop, which I am enjoying immensely (3D desktop effects!). Also most of the niggling issues with the previous version are no longer problematic. I was contacted by my old boss and asked if I wanted a short-term contract to cover for an employee who is currently on holidays. I accepted this, and am working 3 days per week (Tues-Thurs) for the next couple of weeks. I am going back to full-time study (Master of Business Information Technology at RMIT) and to make the budget work we need me to be working about 5-10 hours per week. I have a couple of leads at the moment, but if anyone knows of any casual/contracting jobs going (preferably, but not limited to the IT Help Desk arena), then please let me know ASAP. Well that's about it for this brief update. Please enjoy the rest of your Friday and weekends! H Current Mood: busy

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October 17th, 2007

07:14 pm - Borrow an external hard drive? Does anyone have a 250GB (or bigger) external hard drive that I can borrow for a week or so? Thanks in advance Hamish

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October 2nd, 2007

08:22 pm - LJ without proxy servers!!! The above must mean that I am no longer in China... Which is indeed correct, I am in Changi Airport (Singapore) waiting for K to arrive and then get the red-eye flight to Melbourne. Now, must go find out which gate to go to...can't be late :-) Bye for now, H

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September 29th, 2007

06:02 pm - Farewell to Yunnan Well, it's my last day in Kunming. Our bags are all packed (and are of course too heavy). Our house no longer looks like the home we have lived in for a year, but like the empty shell I moved into last October. All my work farewells were said this morning - tearfully in some cases - and we have a dinner scheduled to farewell all our wonderful Kunming friends this evening. We spent the afternoon wandering around our favourite haunts - eating a final dish of jiaozi and drinking a final cup of tea at Salvador's. We rode our familiar bus route one more time and laughed as it predictably broke down at a traffic light. I will definitely miss Kunming. Six months ago I would not have expected to say that. An earlier AYAD told me that a time warp occurs during a year in China - the first six months drag on forever then the second six months pass in the blink of an eye and just as the place feels like home, you leave. That has certainly been true for us. Tomorrow I head to Beijing to meet with the China AYAD manager, then on Tuesday I leave China. Hamish will stay in Kunming until Tuesday, then fly to meet me in Singapore. Excited as we are to be coming home, it feels we are leaving just as we got into stride. Thank you to everyone who made Kunming feel like home - we will miss you all. Kirsten Current Location: Kunming (last night for K) Current Mood: nostalgic

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September 22nd, 2007

03:12 pm - We're (almost) back - there shall be Yum Cha! Hey All Xinjiang was fantastic, but more on that later. The very important point of this post is to remind you all that we'll be home soon (as if you could forget). As our return is imminent, and we have missed you all very much, we thought we should organise a catch up. So, here is what we want to do, we would love to see anyone who can join us :-) Yum Cha Extravaganza* Where: Dragon Boat, Lonsdale St When: Sunday 7 October at 1:00pm RSVP: 4 October - if you are on facebook, please RSVP there, otherwise leave a comment here or email Kirsten Please feel free to let others who may want to see us know as we haven't time for an extensive mail out :-( * Ok, so we know we've been living in China for a year, but Yum Cha is Cantonese, not Yunnanese and we want it and it's our welcome home party so shuddup! We would also love to catch up with people individually over the next few week. The catch will be that, as we've been traveling and living on a volunteer allowance, the budget will be a bit tight. Please feel free to get in touch with Kirsten to organise cheap catch ups :-) Current Mood: excited

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September 18th, 2007

07:48 pm - Kirgiz yurts are NOT made of beaver skins! Last night we stayed in a “Authentic Kirgiz Yurt”! We know this as it had a large sign out the front proudly proclaiming that fact (photos to follow at some stage). Unfortunately, we were not allowed to stay in the *actual* genuine yurt where we had dinner with the nomadic family, as the government has a decree saying that foreigners are not allowed to do that. We instead settled for the “authentic but no-one lives here” version. Nevertheless it was very nice, and we woke to views of the sun rising over Karakul Lake. After a breakfast of yak milk tea and nan bread, with a different family in another *actual* genuine yurt, we went for a walk around the lake. This ended up being a little longer than the quick amble we expected, and turned into a 3 hour trek, with requisite sunburn. We are now writing this from John's Cafe back in Kashgar after driving back, checking back into the hotel and having an almost hot shower. The last week or so has been pretty hectic. From Lhasa (and we promise that we will write more about that at some stage, or just talk to us when we get back in 2 weeks time), we caught the train to Xi'ning. The train line from Lhasa was only opened mid-2006, and is one of the highest in the world. Parts of it are built on perma-frost and it is an engineering marvel (if a slightly contoversial one). One of the mountain passes we went over was above 5050 metres. We were on the train for 24 hours, but it passed very quickly with many games of Settlers of Catan (to the other passenger's amusement as they tried to work it out over our shoulders!), K brushing up on her Chinese homework and much staring out the windows at spectacular scenery. From Xi'ning we caught a flight to Urumqi and then to Kashgar, as it's not possible to get to Kashgar direct from anywhere except Urumqi. We were very happy to check into the hotel that night, as we were very tired. We are now enveloped in the Uyhur Muslim world. This has the benefit of great food, however, as it is the month of Ramadan we have tried to be discrete about when and where we eat. Our poor guides and drivers have been having a difficult time, as they have to fast during the day with no food or water. Luckily, they don't mind stopping and helping us with getting lunch, and we feel a little bad asking them to do this, but we really don't speak Uyghur, and most Uyghurs don't speak much Mandarin (the reason for this in the LP, is that there aren't many Mandarin teachers, and they are mostly employed by richer people). It is ironic that we have learnt (some) Mandarin and then travelled into Tibet and Xinjiang, where the people don't really speak it! So far, we have made a quick trip out to the Talkimaken Desert and an overnight jaunt to Karkul lake (see earlier enthusiastic references to Yurts). We've been a little underwhelmed, but think it is mostly a combination of us being tired, and comparing everything we see to Tibet. Xinjiang is definitely interestin, the lack of water is just getting to these two piceans! The night before we left on the trip to Karakul Lake, we went to the Kashgar mosque, watched people arrive for the sunset prayers and then joined the crowds as they broke the days fast at the street-vendor stalls surrounding the mosque. It was very busy and great fun to walk around and look at all the food. We broke ALL the “food rules”, as we ate chicken and fruit and ice-cream, directly from the street-vendors, all of which was great. Tonight we stay in Kasgar, then to Urumqi tomorrow morning, then off to Turpan we will go. We stay overnight in Turpan, then back to Urumqi in the afternoon. We stay overnight in Urumqi and then head to Lijiang in Yunnan Province. There we will meet up with Annie, our Chinese teacher and her Swiss boyfriend to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge, and trek for the weekend. PS: Kirgis yurts are made of woven sheep and yak hair PPS: The photo count is currently around 2100 Current Mood: calm

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September 13th, 2007

09:21 am - From Lhasa to Kashgarn Hi all Sorry for the lack of posts, but things have been crazy, and there's been very little Internet access. We've spend the last week and a half traveling across Tibet and hanging out in Lhasa. Tibet is absolutely amazing. It is a land of water, mountains and yaks. We have had a fantastic time being shown through temples, wandering around amazing scenery and trying Yak Butter Tea. There is so much more to say, but it will have to wait for a future post. Today we are catching the train out of Lhasa in the first step on our journey to Xinjiang. It will take us two days to get to Kashgar and we are looking forward to having a bit of a rest while in transit! Unfortunately, this also means we are saying goodbye to the crew of people we have been traveling with so far, and a final farewell to one of our good friends from Kunming. However, we have so far enjoyed our exploration of the most remote places in China and are looking forward to the second half of the trip. We should have internet access again in about a week - so expect another update then (and soon after that, we'll be home!!!) H & K

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September 1st, 2007

02:16 pm - And we're off!! Oh my. We just posted THIRTY SEVEN KILOS of various stuff to Australia. Fingers crossed that it all arrives safely. And with that final task completed, we are now officially on holiday! The traveling beginns tomorrow when we catch a (very early) flight to Zhongdian. For those who are interested, our travel itinerary for September is: 2 - Zhongdian 3-9 - Driving from Zhongdian to Lhasa 10-12 - Exploring Lhasa 13 - Train from Lhasa to Xining 14 - Flying from Xining to Kashgar (yes - it will take the whole day!) 15 - Go see the Taklimakan Desert 16 - Explore Kashgar (silk road bizzare people!) 17-18 - Karakoram Highway and Karakul Lake exploring 19-20 - Exploring Turpan 21 - Day of rest/Fly to Lijiang 22-23 - Tiger Leaping Gorge 24-26 - Make our way through Yunnan back to Kunming So. There you are. We'll be exhausted at the end of it, but won't have any regrets about not squeezing enough in! We don't expect to have much Internet access on the way, so probably won't make any updates. Feel free to keep sending emails through - we'll get to them when we can :-) Current Mood: excited

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August 30th, 2007

11:53 am - Coming home, and stuff... So, for those who haven't realised it...we will becoming home soon! As arrival dates are now all set, unfortunately we will miss some folks birthday parties :-( We are in the process of packing up, shipping some stuff home, selling stuff and giving lots of stuff away (much of which was given to us in the first place from AYADs who were leaving). This is far from an easy thing to do, and H has spent quite a bit of time this week going through drawers, medicines, etc to get it all organised. So far we have two medium sized boxes of "stuff that we don't care how long it takes to get back to Australia" and will be sending them as soon as they are finalised (most likely on Saturday). Courtesy of the lovely Secretary to the Manager of the Singapore Airlines office in Melbourne, we both have an upgraded baggage allowance of 30kg + 7kg carry-on, making 74kg in total!!! This is fabulous and makes a huge difference, especially as in a few days we will be travelling around China for a month, and only returning to Kunming to do a final shop and pack, end the lease on the apartment, have a going-away party and then head home. K has to go through Beijing to do a sign-off on her programme, H stays in Kunming for a day longer, and we both meet up in Singapore. We are also in the process of finalising our itinerary for "The Big China Trip (tm)". Early Sunday morning we head to Zhongdian (where we spent some time in May. If you realised this already, then you get a Gold Star!). For this part of the trip, we are travelling with 5 others, so we can show them around a bit. On Monday morning we pick up two 4WDs, drivers and a guide and head off on the way to Lhasa in Tibet. It takes a week (on the South Road for those who might be interested), through what I hope will be some of the world's most spectacular scenery! After a few days in Lhasa we are planning to take the train to Xining (26 hours or so) and then fly to Kashgar (all flights go via Urumqi). Xining is in Qinghai Province, and Urumqi and Kashgar are in Xinjiang Province, which is in the far west of China. We will not be far from the borders with Kyrgyzstan and Russia. We were advised to avoid the more tourity eastern setions as they have had a LOT of rain recently, and are not so nice. We have a few days in Kashgar, seeing Karakul Lake, including an overnight stay in a Yurt (*) and the Taklimakan Desert, and then a few days in Urumqi, probably seeing Turpan. We then fly to Lijiang, in Yunnan, and do Tiger Leaping Gorge (which we have completely failed to do so far!) and then to Dali for a day or so (which we ahve also completely failed to go to even though it is quite close to Kunming!), and then back to Kunming. Yep, we cover a lot of the country in a month, and it is a big country! I think we'll be looking forward to the return flight to Australia just to get some rest! There will, of course, be LOTS of photos! :-) Anyway, that's it for the moment. Back to the grind of getting stuff organised once again, oh, and preparing for my Karate grading tonight *excited*! H * "Fran: What's a yurt? Iosef: A tent, made of beaver skins. It's not so good." Another Gold Star to whose who know where this quote is from!

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