Four More Days of Temporary Bachelorhood

In eagerly waiting for E's arrival on Monday, work has really picked up and that's all I can say I really get to do during the week. It seems like I've fallen into the roll of taking charge of designing the tunnel portals, which is quite challenging in several respects, but the biggest being that the portals (there are nine of them) are always where our contract meets a different one (seven of them), and I spend a lot of the day trying to figure out who is who in the office. Considering that there are a couple hundred people in the office, plus some in Sydney and Melbourne, and people come and go every week, I meet a ton of people just to get to the one person who is in charge of interfacing the corresponding contract. Much more interactive than my work back in Seattle, though, so I get to work on my people skillz.

By the way, we have a second bedroom here, so feel free to come visit in the next couple of months if you feel like crossing the globe.

Here are some more photos, plus I figured out that you can assign them to a Google map in Picasa:

Move in day

After a week of scrambling to find an apartment for the time I am here, I moved into a place in the West End on Sunday and love it. It is probably way fancier than anywhere i will ever live again, and the neighborhood seems really interesting too, sort of the Ballard of Brisbane if you are familiar with Seattle or the Jamaica Plain of Brisbane if you are more familiar with Boston. Sort of sketchy but with a hefty dose of yuppie mixed in. I can't really walk to work (walking anywhere more than two blocks here results in profuse sweating), but each day this week I've chosen a different mode of transport. Monday I took the bus, which is very easy, Tuesday I biked which would be easy if it weren't so hot (luckily there's a shower at work), and today I walked the mile to the subway station and took that. They all take the same amount of time so I think biking will be my default.

I've also tried to be good about exercise by getting up early to run. Since there is no daylight savings in Queensland it's completely daylight by 5am, and it only took one day to learn that you can get plenty sunburned running at 6:30 in the morning.

But the big news is that I went to the cricket match on Sunday, Australia vs. West Indies. I made a friend at work from Bangladesh and he and his girlfriend took me and spent hours explaining. International matches last about eight hours and it took me five of those to understand what was going on. I'd put it on par with football in terms of interest. I'd watch it if other people are but only on tv from now on because it lasts too long and you can see better from your couch.

Here is a good website that shows what I am working on, and here is a map of the project.

Longest...day...ever

First of all, thank you for checking out my blog. I figure that I have a little time here before E joins me to do get things like this together. I promise that the posts that follow this one will not be a comprehensive history of our three months in Australia but rather a collection of randomness. Here we go...

First of all, I am dedicating this blog to Sven. The day I got here he was hit by a car and E had to put him down. He was really an incredibly fun cat, the best to come home to, and it's hard to believe he's gone. And poor Junebug lost her brother. They were independent from each other but relied on one another for warmth and play.

The flight from LAX to Brisbane was better than I thought it would be, thanks mostly to the empty seat next to me and the good luck to have switched to the back of the plane at the last minute. It turned out that 80% of the plane was filled by college juniors headed to Australia for a semester abroad, and free alcohol on the flight for anyone over 18 meant it was probably not where I wanted to be.

After arriving at 7:30 am, I took a cab to my hotel downtown and immediately realized why I was here. The traffic between the airport and downtown was horrendous since there is no highway, just surface streets. The project I am working on here is designing the final lining for a new tunnel that is being built from downtown to the airport, which along with a different bus tunnel and surface improvements will cost upwards of $4 billion dollars.

I am finally enjoying my first weekend here. I spent most of the week looking around for an apartment and finally get to move in tomorrow. I also found an old bike today that I got from this crazy German that fixes them up. Perfect.

OK, that's probably enough for now. I have a lot of random observations I'm itching to share with someone, like how books seem to be a luxury here because I've seen exactly one bookstore and they are quite expensive. But plenty of time for that.

Here are a few photos I've taken so far (and one of me washing Junebug cause she stank)