The Office

New year, new office. What better way to kickstart 2010 but with a little re-thinking of the apartment/home office?

With a couple of freelance gigs on the go for both of us, we've realized the need to make a better, more functional workspace at home to get our work done. The two of us plugging away on our laptops in the same room has been fun, but there's a lot of "Hey! Check out this cool Lego version of The Matrix!" and "Oh my god! I totally want this USB flash drive that looks like a slice of strawberry cake!" Not that these aren't totally awesome finds, but well... maybe it turns out we're really good at finding random cool things online and not getting our work done.

So it's an IKEA sort of lesson: making the most of your small living space. Though our apartment consists of only four rooms (kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom), we've managed to squeeze two more "rooms" out of it. By arranging furniture in little clusters, our apartment actually feels a lot bigger. Our living room has an area to relax in, with couch, TV, and coffee table. On another wall is a desk, with a computer and printer- our 'living room office'. We were lucky enough to inherit a desk already built into a bedroom wall, so with a little rearranging, it's no longer a a storage area for our art supply boxes and now a snazzy plant-filled workspace next to our big front window (great light too). It's even got a baseball autographed by former Blue Jays star third baseman, Kelly Gruber (thanks Neil!) for inspiration.

By the way, did anyone read about the recent shark attack in South Africa? "Longer than a minibus"? Yikes! We're glad we did our surfing lessons in Australia. OK, now back to work...

Running on Malaysian Time

We're on the go again! A few days ago-- night of July 3rd-- we made it to Indonesia, but not without a bit of trouble first. Although we consider ourselves pretty good planners, careful travellers, and things usually work out along the way. Our quick jaunt through Malaysia proved us otherwise...

We left the bliss of the Thai islands on July 1st and took a very comfy night train across the border. By noon the next day, we'd had a seamless crossing over to Malaysia (receiving a three-month visa, free of charge-- why aren't more travellers taking advantage??) and soon ended up in a town called Butterworth. Now, although we quite enjoyed the name Butterworth, our research said there wasn't much of interest there; however, it was right on the west coast and the train station was walking distance to the ferry to Penang, an island with a lot of history that DID indeed sound interesting. For 1.20 Ringgit (about 30 cents), we scored round-trip ferry tickets and we were heading back out to sea for the night. We figured we'd do some sightseeing, absorb a bit of a new country in a scenic environment, and then the next morning we'd hop the bus to Kuala Lumpur, five hours away, as several bus companies told us. Our flight to Jakarta wasn't til 7pm so we figured we had oodles of time!

The city of Georgetown in Penang was pretty scenic-- old English colonial buildings, a fort, lots of old shophouses in Chinatown, grand mosques, and a CRAZY Little India district (chock full of flamboyant salesmen, loud music, sari shops, and even bottled cow urine in one grocery store, filed under "religious items"). Penang-- and possibly Malaysia as a whole-- had a very multicultural flavour. Our guesthouse was a bit of a slumhole: dark hallways, our walls didn't quite reach the floor, ripped-out pages of Playboy in a drawer, and the staff graciously allowed us one towel to share. But it was cheap, and we were really tired from the long haul across the border!

The next morning we hopped the ferry back to the mainland and got on an "ekspres" bus due to leave at 9:45am. Plenty of time, we thought, to get to KL. We settled back into our massive (we're talking movie-theatre-size!) reclining seats and got ready to head further south... except the bus kept sitting there until, oh, about 11am. Apparently it seems 9:45 means something else in Malaysian time! And then we hit construction on the mega-highway south. And then a traffic jam, and another. And then our driver decided to stop and wait for more passengers for what felt like an eternity at Ipoh and a few other stops along the way. We arrived in downtown Kuala Lumpur around 5pm, getting a bit panicked, as Air Asia requires customers to check in at least 60 minutes before.

We sprinted a few blocks through terrible traffic to the subway that would whisk us to KL Sentral station, where we could catch a super-fast airport "ekspres" train, that arrives in 28 minutes from the station to the airport (74km away!). Now that's efficiency! The panic dissipated a tiny bit...

We arrived at the airport at exactly 6:55pm, dashed up five floors of escalators to find a giant lobby of airline check-in counters. We just made it! we thought. Turns out we celebrated too soon. The only Air Asia desk around had two uniformed ladies sitting under a "customer service" sign. Sorry, they said, but check-in is at another terminal. OK, where is this other terminal? we asked. They ask us what time our flight is and then shake their heads. "It's 28 minutes away by taxi," they tell us. (Why is everything 28 minutes away in KL??) Check-in's nearly closed and there aren't any refunds for you either, boo hoo. Pleading did nothing.

But lucky us, we were still able to buy a plane ticket to Jakarta on the next flight out-- the last flight of the day at 8:50pm. Of course, it cost twice as much as our original one, and we couldn't transfer or buy the extra 5kg of luggage allowance that we had for our original flight (had to buy it 6 hours before, aha, more wasted money!), so somehow we had to shrink our usual 20kg each into 15kg, unless we wanted excess baggage charges. Lovely!

Pissed off with the contradictory attitudes towards transport schedules and then the bureaucratic rules where WE needed to be early, but no one else needed to run on time, we hopped in a taxi to the other terminal and asked our driver to drive extra fast. He was all too happy, and we rewarded him with a few presents-- a raincoat, drinks, books, whatever might have put us over the weight limit-- as we put on layer upon layer of clothing and our heaviest shoes, layered purses inside purses, and stuffed anything weighty into the carry-ons. We arrived in about 15 minutes, and dashed to the check-in desk like we were contenders on the Amazing Race. A smiling girl greeted us, weighed our bags-- 14.1 kg for Adrian and 15.7kg for Dayle-- and we cheered like we'd just won first place! A small victory... we treated ourselves to a leisurely McDonalds' snack and slowly made our way through security, and arrived in our departure lounge to find quite a lot of people hanging out. Later on, as we were fighting with our computer, trying to connect to the free wifi, we hear the announcement: "Flight AK392, we are now ready for boarding..." Yup, that's right, our 7pm flight, with its first boarding call just after 9pm. (pictured left) ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The morals of this story:
1. Murphy's Law can strike anytime.
2. You too, can shave 5kg off your baggage by wearing a lot of clothing and sneaking more stuff into your carry-on bag (which they never weigh) and oversized "purse". Just try not to sweat too much and make sure to pick up the 20kg carry-on like it weighs nothing at all.
3. Don't trust Malaysian bus companies to get you anywhere on time, even though Malaysia appears to be much more organized and modern than Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma put together.
4. Despite the similarities in spelling, "Ekspres" doesn't really translate to "Express" in Malaysia. It probably actually means "Silly tourist! We'll get there whenever we feel like getting there."

Off we go! (Well, sort of...)

The long-awaited day has arrived-- it's time to hit the road!

After 11 months in Melbourne (we arrived on December 23, 2007), it's finally time to ship out and see the rest of Australia. Time to venture to the Outback, visit Uluru, take a cruise around Sydney harbour, and explore the little-discovered west coast. We're super excited and have been preparing for ages...

But as we keep learning, there's never enough hours in a day! Yesterday was spent feverishly cleaning (the apartment and Daisy), packing, and tying up loose ends, in anticipation of an early-morning departure today. We thought we could get our mile-long to-do lists done--no worries!--but it was around 9pm or so last night, when we were eating one last pizza delivered from our favourite pizza joint, Crust, and watching CSI Miami (hey, no more TV for ages!) in a VERY messy and chaotic living room, thinking about the late night ahead... when we thought, hey, would it really hurt our schedule THAT much if we just left on Tuesday?

The thought of enjoying our solid walls and our fiery gas heater (yes, it's gotten cold here again!), a TV, internet, our own bathroom an kitchen, and perhaps one more beer on the balcony while watching the sunset over the city was pretty enticing. Not to mention the chance to sleep in! It wasn't a very tough decision at all...

It's true, we originally planned a Sunday departure (the 22nd), but as Adrian just finished work on Friday, we thought it would be too chaotic. Monday seemed like a good idea. But now, Tuesday seems like an even better one!

So here's the plan: Tuesday morning we'll head off early, drive about 6 1/2 hours northeast to Canberra. We'll check out the leafy city of civil servants (which apparently has the biggest concentration of porn and drugs in the country, is what we keep hearing... too funny!) and see the sights before heading off to Sydney on Thursday morning (about 4 hours east). We've booked a budget (ghetto?) hotel room cuz we're sick of hostels... and we'll stay there, enjoying that good city life til Sunday morning, when we head off to the nearby Blue Mountains. We'll post our whole (rough) itinerary on the blog here so everyone can follow along, but as we know, plans change, and if we've learned nothing else on our travels, it's to be flexible!

So stay tuned, and we promise to bring you lots of stories, photos, videos, and more of our trek around the great wild world Down Under. But for now, we'll just be enjoying one more chai latte from that trendy teak-couched & silk-cushioned cafe down the street! We'll miss this city...

Working for 'the man'

Yup, that's right, the news is out. We're now BOTH bank monkeys, typing up files and looking at data and following protocol (kinda like CTU but a bit less glam). Although she was getting lots of annoying errands done, 3 weeks of 'vacation' was enough for Dayle-- and she's landed herself a temping job at ANZ as well. Although we're in different ANZ bank offices, in different city suburbs (Adrian's in the heart of the downtown business area and Dayle's building is in Richmond, nestled in between a Ferrari dealership and countless wacky interior design showrooms), we're both part of the same bank family now. Dayle got the call last Tuesday and began work the very next day in the "Travel Card" section, processing forms for this cooler version of the travellers' cheque. It's amazing to see how many people have 12,000 Euro to slap down in card form, and also sad to see people's Aussie dollars get decimated by the British pound. But there's plenty of folks heading out on vacation now, that's for sure... and it's making our poor little (constantly growing) team work really hard. But nice people, decent pay -- ah, a job's a job. And way better than fruit picking! Luckily we've just discovered our company email address book, so we can chitchat under email subject lines like "Further information needed re: application". Too cool.

We went on a little shopping spree this past week, finally giving into the chilly Melbourne weather and buying ourselves winter coats. And of course, now it's 18 degrees in the day! Nonetheless, we are very excited to wear our new coats. We're learning some tips on how Melburnians stay warm, living in old houses without insulation- layer, layer, layer! We've actually even turned on the furnace lately (it's freezing at night!), something that led to great debate and a week's worth of household tension between us and our New Zealander housemates; we've since learned that in New Zealand, people simply DON'T heat their houses, and if they do, it's with a fireplace/wood stove. (Reminds us of our rustic cottage in Stanthorpe!) And they consider heat "a luxury", which was equated to owning a dishwasher in the 'heated' discussion. Ha! It was getting so cold in here that we were feeling like we might as well been sleeping in our van outside, and we were beginning to wonder if we'd just acclimatized so much to the tropical weather (not that it's been tropical here for ages) that we can't take the cold anymore. We are so sick of hearing "This is nothing! You're from a cold country!" And then we went out for drinks with an Irish and an English couple and discussed the philosophy of heating-- and as it turns out, they've all been using the furnace for weeks now. Sure, we're from countries which get cold, but you know what? We heat our houses to make it bearable. It's just how it works in the northern hemisphere. We felt much better after that.

Last weekend we also did a little exploring, and checked out the insides of the Hotel Windsor, a grand old 19th-century hotel which is on the edge of the CBD, right across from the state parliament building. Apparently many Aussie prime ministers have stayed there over the years since it was built in 1883, and it reminded us of the grand old CP hotels in Canada. The chandeliered lobby is beautiful and it was cool to read through the historical blurbs & photographs, including how a politician (a premier?) took ownership and sold booze there illegally for years. One day when we're rich and visiting Melbourne again, maybe we'll stay here instead of good old Miami Hotel (our Xmas abode). It's funny how there's so many buildings one might take for granted in their own city, passing them every day without any notice or understanding of their history. It's fun to be a tourist in your own town! Next mission: read up on the history of Melbourne. We'll relay what we find!

Our Year in the Merde

We can hardly believe it-- today marks our one-year anniversary of travel!

Saturday, January 20, 2007 was the day we finally packed up our gear (and left a lot of it behind as well), dragged our families and friends to the airport for sad goodbyes, and hopped on our Cathay Pacific flight to Bangkok. It didn't feel real until well into the 22 hour flight, and somewhere along the way we even lost a day (so tomorrow will be our first Jan 21 in ages!). We arrived sleepy, confused, and overwhelmed in Bangkok... and you all know the story from there.

It's been a fabulous year! We've learned more than ever this year that plans will always change, and to "carpe diem" every day of our lives. If you want to go somewhere, go! And if you see something cool in a shop, buy it (unless it's zillions of dollars, or something)! There is something to be said for hard work, but what's the point if you don't enjoy it afterward? These have probably been our most important lessons this year. And saying that, we've STILL left places and things to do till "later"...

And as for keeping flexible-- well, we certainly never envisioned ourselves as cherry pickers, construction workers, living four months in the tropic jungle, flitting off to Hong Kong for 10 days, camping for almost three months, moving into a cottage in the country (with the biggest spiders we'd ever seen!) and then, never really getting out of Queensland. But it's been awesome anyway.

For those of you who keep asking the BIGGEST question of all : "When are you coming home?" We really don't know. Now that we've slaved away on the harvest trail for our three months, we'll be applying for our second year visas soon, and we'll probably stay as long as we can in Oz. We also didn't realize before we left Canada that this country is massive, and that there are fabulous things to see at every end of this land. Daisy's just resting up now for the road trip of a lifetime-- we still plan to travel around the centre (Uluru!), Northern Territory (Crocodile Dundee land), and Western Australia (an untouched beauty and THE place to explore here nowadays). And then who knows? Tassie's still on the list, New Zealand's just a short plane trip away, and then there's all the wonderful countries between here and Canada.

Only now we're starting to run into all the lovely hassles of long-term travel: expiring health insurance, OHIP paperwork, invalid return flight tickets, expiring credit cards and drivers licenses (Adrian's a Queenslander now), and digital cameras going wonky (and there's a wee bit of occasional homesickness too). But we'll tell anyone who's thinking about doing what we're doing: IT'S ALL WORTH IT. Because you just never know when Australia will be too dried-up, Hong Kong will be too polluted, or the political climate of some other country will be too dangerous to go. And with technology today, mail travels halfway across the globe in two weeks, email keeps us instantly close, and cheap long-distance calling can keep us chatting easily for hours.

If anyone needs any travel ideas, there's heaps of exotic destinations you'd never think of and gorgeous photos in Lonely Planet's The Blue List. Adrian quite enjoyed reading about tourism, Kim Jong-il-style, in Tony Wheeler's Bad Lands, and Dayle's just starting to read Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor's travel memoir chronicling Ewan and his best mate's motorcycle ride around the world. Three cheers for travel!

Up and running; T-Minus 3 days and counting

Whew, all this setting up for blogging has taken my mind off the big trip. And here it is in all it's majesty!

Well what Dayle and I are trying to do here is to keep in touch with our friends and family back home, but as well , giving all those travellers out there the 'heads up!' on preparing for any trip.

First Advice: Plan well in advance, read up on the destination, and DON'T do any of that pre-planned crap. You know, the tours that all you have to do is show up and they take you everywhere!

Our trips have never been like that, our style is shoot-'n-scoot. Get off the plane and carve your own travel. You'll be happy you did.
Speaking of, we leave for our flight out of Toronto in about 3 days! It's getting exciting, and there's been some happy tears along the way. But we'll be back soon, (roughly 2 years from now *knock wood) you guys!

Love you, and travel safe!
- Adrian & Dayle Questionmark