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chrisinhouston · 11-20-2012, 08:52 PM

Seems strange to be back in Australia for another 4 weeks. You know you have been traveling too much when driving on the left side of the road seems more natural than on the right and when you have a really deeper appreciation for roundabouts and wish your own country would use them more instead of traffic lights and 4 way stop intersections! Or when it becomes more natural to be buying veggies, meat or fish at the local Woolworths market and it makes sense to calculate the price per kilogram and you wonder why the USA still uses the archaic non metric system of measurements. And will it be chicken or kangaroo for dinner or Tasmanian salmon?

And you kill some time watching Australian television whose programing (at least in Geelong) leaps from those nutty folks out on Bondi Beach to the Polish news show to America's PBS News Hour and then to a rerun of Green Acres with a few cooking shows mixed in, and then commercials come on for Coles market and Curtis Stone is telling you how to create a really light summer meal this year for Christmas, perhaps a prawn salad. Did you know that they run American NFL football games on TV really early in the morning? But who cares because you now enjoy Aussie Rules Football where the guys have the legs of soccer players and the upper torsos of body builders and they keep crashing into each other with no kind of padding or helmets and get back up and kick the ball 200 meters down the field through the small space between the goal posts. And talk about full body tattoos!

So, we are here almost a week now and settled back in and it's warm enough to sit out on our balcony with the view of the pier and Corio Bay and eat dinner and drink lots of really good cheap Australian wine. We had a few days to adjust but on Monday, Sarah started work at the Shell refinery. I drive her as she won't attempt it. The security folks at the entry gate are so nice. Each morning and afternoon I pull up and look in the camera and the security guy says "Hello" and I say in my American accent, "Hi, I'm dropping off my wife", or "I'm picking my wife up at the ADMIN building," and they say, "Right, no worries." I love that term... No Worries. The next time I get forget to pay a bill and get a late charge I'm going to say, "Right, no worries!"

And yesterday as I ate breakfast at my little desk looking out on the bay I noticed that there was a plume of really thick black smoke coming out of one of the stacks at the refinery and then a 50 foot flame and my wife said, "Uh oh, must be a big release." In case you aren't up on refinery lingo, a big release means something is wrong and it's kind of like letting all the steam out of the pressure cooker on your stove before dinner ends up on the ceiling. Oh well, turns out they had an unexpected black out thanks to the power company and they had to burn off about 3 days worth of production of automobile gasoline. It wasn't a good day for Shell, Geelong to put it mildly.

So I brought a fishing reel from home and some soft baits and jig heads and I bought a fishing rod for $39 and got a $12 fishing license and have been killing time trying to catch dinner. So far, no luck but that's ok because they have a great fish shop not far away with REALLY fresh fish and even shucked Tasmanian oysters which are very tasty. I figure when we are leaving I will go down to the pier and pick out the guy with the crappies fishing rod and pay it forward by giving it to him as a gift... Something about teaching a man to fish?

And when I'm not fishing or driving or out taking pictures or even cooking dinner for my wife I'm trying to figure out Adobe Lightroom 3 on my computer which I bought last year and don't really like but feel compelled to try to figure out why so many other shooters like it. I brought a little 1TB drive with a copy of my digital photo archive on it and Lightroom says I have 62,000 some odd images and the import for the catalog will take a while to complete. Perhaps a month?

So that's life up until now down here on the lower edge of the southern hemisphere. I'll post some pictures once I get Adobe Lightroom figured out!

11-20-2012, 08:52 PM	#1
chrisinhouston Professor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Houston TX Posts: 1,857	Hello Cellar Dwellers, I'm back in Oz! Seems strange to be back in Australia for another 4 weeks. You know you have been traveling too much when driving on the left side of the road seems more natural than on the right and when you have a really deeper appreciation for roundabouts and wish your own country would use them more instead of traffic lights and 4 way stop intersections! Or when it becomes more natural to be buying veggies, meat or fish at the local Woolworths market and it makes sense to calculate the price per kilogram and you wonder why the USA still uses the archaic non metric system of measurements. And will it be chicken or kangaroo for dinner or Tasmanian salmon? And you kill some time watching Australian television whose programing (at least in Geelong) leaps from those nutty folks out on Bondi Beach to the Polish news show to America's PBS News Hour and then to a rerun of Green Acres with a few cooking shows mixed in, and then commercials come on for Coles market and Curtis Stone is telling you how to create a really light summer meal this year for Christmas, perhaps a prawn salad. Did you know that they run American NFL football games on TV really early in the morning? But who cares because you now enjoy Aussie Rules Football where the guys have the legs of soccer players and the upper torsos of body builders and they keep crashing into each other with no kind of padding or helmets and get back up and kick the ball 200 meters down the field through the small space between the goal posts. And talk about full body tattoos! So, we are here almost a week now and settled back in and it's warm enough to sit out on our balcony with the view of the pier and Corio Bay and eat dinner and drink lots of really good cheap Australian wine. We had a few days to adjust but on Monday, Sarah started work at the Shell refinery. I drive her as she won't attempt it. The security folks at the entry gate are so nice. Each morning and afternoon I pull up and look in the camera and the security guy says "Hello" and I say in my American accent, "Hi, I'm dropping off my wife", or "I'm picking my wife up at the ADMIN building," and they say, "Right, no worries." I love that term... No Worries. The next time I get forget to pay a bill and get a late charge I'm going to say, "Right, no worries!" And yesterday as I ate breakfast at my little desk looking out on the bay I noticed that there was a plume of really thick black smoke coming out of one of the stacks at the refinery and then a 50 foot flame and my wife said, "Uh oh, must be a big release." In case you aren't up on refinery lingo, a big release means something is wrong and it's kind of like letting all the steam out of the pressure cooker on your stove before dinner ends up on the ceiling. Oh well, turns out they had an unexpected black out thanks to the power company and they had to burn off about 3 days worth of production of automobile gasoline. It wasn't a good day for Shell, Geelong to put it mildly. So I brought a fishing reel from home and some soft baits and jig heads and I bought a fishing rod for $39 and got a $12 fishing license and have been killing time trying to catch dinner. So far, no luck but that's ok because they have a great fish shop not far away with REALLY fresh fish and even shucked Tasmanian oysters which are very tasty. I figure when we are leaving I will go down to the pier and pick out the guy with the crappies fishing rod and pay it forward by giving it to him as a gift... Something about teaching a man to fish? And when I'm not fishing or driving or out taking pictures or even cooking dinner for my wife I'm trying to figure out Adobe Lightroom 3 on my computer which I bought last year and don't really like but feel compelled to try to figure out why so many other shooters like it. I brought a little 1TB drive with a copy of my digital photo archive on it and Lightroom says I have 62,000 some odd images and the import for the catalog will take a while to complete. Perhaps a month? So that's life up until now down here on the lower edge of the southern hemisphere. I'll post some pictures once I get Adobe Lightroom figured out!