Sydney!
So I realized that I've been writing to my family about my trip. So I might as well post it for all 2 of you to read!
Hello everyone!
Well it's 4:33pm on a Friday down under, which means it's 11:33pm on Thursday in California and 2:33am on Friday in Michigan! I know because I have world clocks displayed on my computer. I need them because the project I'm on has resources in Sydney, San Mateo, Chicago, and India, so I need to know what time it is in a lot of places!
Leaving late at night for Australia was actually a really good idea. I was able to take cat naps on the plane and after a full "night's" sleep landed at 5:30am Sydney time. So it was almost like I didn't have a change. It was much easier to get used to than flying to the east coast. It was just kind of hard to stay up the first night. I really wanted to turn in at 7pm but forced myself to stay up to 7:30.
Canon (the client I'm working with) put me up in a HUGE hotel suite. Equipped with a full kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, 3-door closet, and even a washer/dryer! Yesterday morning I cooked myself some Australian bacon and eggs and had a stir fry for dinner. (Funny story. When I was shopping for stir fry ingredients one of the things I wanted was bell pepper. I asked one of the workers and they had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out that they call them capsicums. It took a while for us to figure out what we were talking about).
My hotel is two train stations from work. The trains are really nice but very expensive. A round trip is AU$6.40 which is about US$7.00. Luckily BigMachines is reimbursing me for travel expenses. Especially lucky considering that Sydney is the 14th most expensive city in the world.
My hotel is in a city/town called Chatswood which is a really lively place. There's a Westfield mall on the other side of the train station that is about 5-6 stories tall. And around that same area is a large outdoor mall as well with a lot of boutiques and (mostly Asian) restaurants. Every Thursday night is "late shopping night" where the shops stay open an hour later than normal and they have live music and food/jewelry/clothes/whatever venders in the street. The band last night was really good: a 3-piece string group (two cellos and one acoustic guitar) that did covers of popular rock songs like Stairway to Heaven and A Horse With No Name.
I was a little bit nervous about being dumped into a foreign country and into a project I have zero experience with and expect to provide technical guidance from day one. But I've been able to adapt pretty quickly, and much of the grunt work is being done by engineers who have been on the project for a while. I'm around to provide project guidance and design insight.
What I should have been worried about was crossing the street! Since people drive on the other side of the road you're supposed to look right first, not left. So I keep looking the wrong way. Just this morning my coworkers and I were going to get some coffee and we had to cross a small street divided by a median. When I got to the median I looked right to see if cars were coming and saw none, so I crossed. Wrong! A car was coming from my left (while I was standing on the median looking across the street). I'll hopefully get used to that quickly.
This Sunday I'm going to go to the Taronga Zoo in the city and do their Wild Australia Tour. I'm looking forward to it. One of my coworkers suggested doing the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb while I'm here, so I'm going to look into that. Definitely something I want to do.
All and all I'm pretty lucky to be over here. It's an interesting experience and I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of fun.
The only problem is that I miss everyone!
- Michael
Hello everyone!
Well it's 4:33pm on a Friday down under, which means it's 11:33pm on Thursday in California and 2:33am on Friday in Michigan! I know because I have world clocks displayed on my computer. I need them because the project I'm on has resources in Sydney, San Mateo, Chicago, and India, so I need to know what time it is in a lot of places!
Leaving late at night for Australia was actually a really good idea. I was able to take cat naps on the plane and after a full "night's" sleep landed at 5:30am Sydney time. So it was almost like I didn't have a change. It was much easier to get used to than flying to the east coast. It was just kind of hard to stay up the first night. I really wanted to turn in at 7pm but forced myself to stay up to 7:30.
Canon (the client I'm working with) put me up in a HUGE hotel suite. Equipped with a full kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, 3-door closet, and even a washer/dryer! Yesterday morning I cooked myself some Australian bacon and eggs and had a stir fry for dinner. (Funny story. When I was shopping for stir fry ingredients one of the things I wanted was bell pepper. I asked one of the workers and they had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out that they call them capsicums. It took a while for us to figure out what we were talking about).
My hotel is two train stations from work. The trains are really nice but very expensive. A round trip is AU$6.40 which is about US$7.00. Luckily BigMachines is reimbursing me for travel expenses. Especially lucky considering that Sydney is the 14th most expensive city in the world.
My hotel is in a city/town called Chatswood which is a really lively place. There's a Westfield mall on the other side of the train station that is about 5-6 stories tall. And around that same area is a large outdoor mall as well with a lot of boutiques and (mostly Asian) restaurants. Every Thursday night is "late shopping night" where the shops stay open an hour later than normal and they have live music and food/jewelry/clothes/whatever venders in the street. The band last night was really good: a 3-piece string group (two cellos and one acoustic guitar) that did covers of popular rock songs like Stairway to Heaven and A Horse With No Name.
I was a little bit nervous about being dumped into a foreign country and into a project I have zero experience with and expect to provide technical guidance from day one. But I've been able to adapt pretty quickly, and much of the grunt work is being done by engineers who have been on the project for a while. I'm around to provide project guidance and design insight.
What I should have been worried about was crossing the street! Since people drive on the other side of the road you're supposed to look right first, not left. So I keep looking the wrong way. Just this morning my coworkers and I were going to get some coffee and we had to cross a small street divided by a median. When I got to the median I looked right to see if cars were coming and saw none, so I crossed. Wrong! A car was coming from my left (while I was standing on the median looking across the street). I'll hopefully get used to that quickly.
This Sunday I'm going to go to the Taronga Zoo in the city and do their Wild Australia Tour. I'm looking forward to it. One of my coworkers suggested doing the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb while I'm here, so I'm going to look into that. Definitely something I want to do.
All and all I'm pretty lucky to be over here. It's an interesting experience and I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of fun.
The only problem is that I miss everyone!
- Michael