Driving: Useful International Road Rules

• In Canada, all their speed signs have the speed and the word 'maximum' underneath. For example '40 km/h maximum'. This is just a nice touch, but it also emphasises that the speed is not a minimum
• In the USA, in areas where construction is going on, there are signs that say 'Speeding fines are doubled when workers are present'. This would definitely discourage some Aussie drivers from disregarding lower speed limits in construction zones.
  

Travel: Orlando, Florida, USA

This week I stayed at the Royal Pacific Hotel which is part of the Universal Resort in Orlando. I was there for a conference and wasn't aware until I got there that it was part of 'theme-park central', which includes about 6 resorts. I was able to buy a two-park pass to Universal and the new 'Islands of Adventure' resorts. The latter was a much better option since it included more exciting rides.

Here is the Hulk roller-coaster from Islands of Adventure, which was pretty decent, but not as fast as the duelling dragon roller coasters.

I was pretty lucky when I arrived because the hotel has an express pass which comes as part of the hotel cost. This lets you skip past a fair chunk of the queue in most of the more popular rides. It also wasn't too busy so the most I had to wait for a ride was about 15 minutes or so.

I wouldn't recommend Universal unless you have kids, since the rides were slower and often just involved watching a brief movie. The Shrek 4D movie wasn't too bad, but the Twister ride was terrible, despite quite a good buildup including hyped up segments with the actors and actresses like Helen Hunt.

At night-time, the 'main street' area opposite the theme parks came alive with people, although it was all very manufactured. I was struggling to find any vegetarian food, but apparently that is to be expected in the American south.

So a quick summary: Orlando has nice weather (if a little stormy at times). It has a very manufactured Disney-style theme park atmosphere. Prices are expensive, but you can have a pretty good time while you're there.

Travel: Niagara Falls, Canada

I made it to Niagara Falls yesterday, to the Canada side. I didn't have much time there because I went from work and had to make it back to Toronto, but it was great to make it. I drove from Hamilton and it was about a 60 km drive to the falls. There was some pretty heavy traffic close to Hamilton, but it cleared out closer to the falls. I arrived at around 6 pm and there were still a heap of tourists there.

The picture below shows the approach to the falls. The water flows down and hits the rocks so hard that it is thrown up into the air. I was actually pretty drenched just walking to the falls because of this misty rain-like shower that resulted from this effect.

I got to the side of the falls and the following pic shows the top of the water. It was spectacular to see that volume of water flowing down so quickly. The sheer power of the water was incredible.

Here you can see an instant rainbow generated by the mist thrown up by the water hitting the rocks.

Travel: Toronto, Canada

I've been working the last few days so I haven't done very much site-seeing. I did get out for a drive last night and I went to the Eaton Centre, which looks like it would be the kind of place to be for a New Year's countdown. I only had one minor mishap, driving down the correct side of the street (the right), but unfortunately on a one-way road. I blame my GPS navigator though - I'm sure it told me to go there!

Here's a pic of the centre:

Doctors: Always late?

I've been training a doctor (psychiatrist) for work the last couple of days and I showed up on the first day and he wasn't in. I then had to wait in his waiting room for 20 minutes or so while he showed up. The next day he stressed that we needed to get through a lot of things so I made sure to be on time and once again he showed up late and I was left in the waiting room. This was without even being one of his patients!

So the question is 'do doctors get used to people waiting for them?' This doctor was quite a nice guy, so he wasn't deliberately keeping me waiting, but maybe for him other people waiting has become the norm. He did seem pretty oblivious to the fact that I had been waiting for quite some time for him. If this is the case, I wonder what sort of occupational norms have rubbed off on me? I know at times I can be a bit of a perfectionist (always wanting to make things perfect and to improve the way I do things), but maybe there are other things as well, that I'm not even aware of...

Alarms: False Alarm

We just had a false fire alarm here, at 2:30 am. It is still going off now, despite the fire department coming to turn it off. The instructions were pretty strange as well. "Please wait for instructions", when the message on the back of the door says to evacuate when the alarm turns on.

On the plus side I got to take a picture of a fire engine...

Software: Google Blog Search

Google has created a tool for searching blogs creatively called 'Google Blog Search'. Typing 'vegish' into the search yielded three pages that are all from my blog!

Travel: Toronto, Canada

I've had a couple of days here in Toronto now and it is still feeling like a great place to be. On Saturday I went out about midday to have a bit of a stroll around the city and it was buzzing. There were plenty of uni students asking you to sign their shirts or throw food at them or even just to give them money for cystic fibrosis research. Then I noticed that just down the road there was a Canadian Football game on.

I continued my walk, noting that the game started at 2 so I could make it back for it. I walked down to Queen's park and saw a squirrel. Actually there was a bunch of them, but this is the first one I saw.

They were quite happy to be approached by tourists, as long as you didn't get too close.

The images below show a few Canadian flags which were flapping nicely in the wind.

The next pic shows a building that looks like a quaint old cottage, but it is actually the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.

The final pic shows the cheerleaders at the U of T Varsity Blues vs the York Lions college football game. There was a crowd of around 1000, but they were very vocal and supportive. There were cheerleaders, there was music and surprisingly there were very people drinking beer. Very different to a Saturday arvo AFL/league game back in Aus. For a start, none of the crowd was paying out the cheerleaders, except when they weren't cheering enough.



It was interesting to watch a game with so many referees that they need numbers on their back. Actually, I'm not sure what the numbers are for, other than for the crowd to keep track of who is making the bad calls. I counted 9 refs in total, which is quite high for two teams with 12 on each side.

So a few thoughts. Canada is a pretty friendly place. The cars even stop for pedestrians to cross the road, although strangely despite the almost endless patience for pedestrians, if a car driver pauses for just a second they get honked. Traffic here is pretty bad and parking around the city is about $15 for a day.

My taxi driver told me a few things about Toronto that reminded me of Canberra. For a start, house prices have basically doubled here in the last couple of years. There are a heap of apartments going up and the economy seems to be booming. Unlike Canberra, Toronto is a big city, with a population of around 5 million.

The city is very busy, but there are some places that are surprisingly quiet. On a night stroll last night I wandered down King st west of the downtown subway area and it seemed to be the place to be. It was midnight and still there were traffic jams. There were heaps of people just going out then. Check out the stretch SUV that was driving down King St.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I tackle the scary roadways around Toronto airport as I pick up my car in preparation for the trip to Hamilton on Wednesday.

Travel: Getting to Toronto, Canada

The trip from Canberra to Toronto involves 3 plane trips and about 19 hours of actual flying time. I started from Canberra at 6:50 am, meaning a considerably earlier start given that you have to arrive 1 hour before for international flights. It is just a 45 minute flight to Sydney.

From Sydney I was scheduled to leave at 10:50 so I cleared through customs in fairly quick time (around half an hour) and then went duty-free shopping. I perused the shops and decided to buy a deodorant for the benefit of any unfortunate soul that would have to sit near me towards the end of the long flights. My eye was also drawn to the new Sony PSP (Playstation Portable), which was for sale for $429, including the car racing game Ridge Racer. This is probably a good price given that a basic PSP sells for about $399 and the game costs about $72, but I wasn't sure I'd actually use it after a few weeks.

Anyway, so I finished up and went along towards gate 8 to wait, and I found that the gate was closed. There is now extra security for flights to America and you can't wait at your gate until close to the time your flight will leave. I also noticed some bag searching was going on, which was a little weird because it was all by hand.

The earlier flight to Los Angeles (LA) took off and so I went to the gate and fortunately ended up in the line for people that didn't get their luggage searched. I was quite surprised to see that in the other line, in plain view of everyone else, people were having their bags searched quite thoroughly. Yes, underwear was being displayed. Toiletry bags were being opened. What is wrong with an X-ray machine I wonder, or at least some privacy for those unfortunate enough to be searched?

As we waited for the plane there was an unfortunate announcement that the flight was going to very full today and that we would be boarding from the back first. Being at row 66 I figured that was probably me and soon I was boarding. I had an aisle seat on the left side of the plane, because despite a good suggestion by a friend from work I was too polite to ask for a seat in the middle area. His theory is that there are two benefits from sitting in an aisle seat in the middle of the plane (for planes with a 3 - 4 - 3 seat configuration):

1. People often travel as couples, so if the plane isn't full you are likely to have a spare seat next to you.
2. In the worst case, if the plane is full (like mine), you only have to get up for one person next to you.

Fortunately the couple sitting next to me were a nice older couple from America who had just visited Cairns for a week and they were happy enough to talk for a bit at the start and then watch movies later. The captain announced that we were going to have quite a short flight today of just 12 hours and 20 minutes (down from more than 13 hours).

Qantas service was very good as usual, although they didn't have a veggie option on the menu so I had to go with beef. We were served lunch soon after leaving and then later on as we neared LA we were served breakfast. In between I watched movies on my personal in-flight entertainment system.

I saw 'Unleashed' first and being a bit of a Jet-Li fan I quite enjoyed it. There were many brutal fight scenes and the plot was pretty straight-forward but it was still good to see it. I followed up with 'The Whole 9 Yards', which was an Adam Sandler movie. I'm not a great fan of his, but maybe because of the relief from being able to watch a few movies (on my previous long flight from the UK with Gulf-Air I didn't have an entertainment system) or maybe it was the red wine, but I enjoyed it. Then I was coming to the end of the interesting movies so I watched 'Fever Pitch', a romantic comedy with Drew Barrymore. What can I say other than it filled the time and was pretty light and fluffy.

Towards the end of the flight the older gentleman asked me to send a few postcards for him and since he didn't look the kind to hide drugs or other strange substances inside a postcard I said yes, so some American folk will be getting some postcards from a little place in Australia called Canberra. He also warned me that American Airlines doesn't serve food on their flights (although you can buy it if you like, Virgin Blue style).

We landed very smoothly in LAX and I got off the flight and had to go through immigration and customs again. I had to get patted down by some poor man who got much closer to my armpits than anybody would want to and this was before I had a chance to use my deodorant!

A while later I wandered up to my gate and withdrew a few US dollars from an ATM just in case and decided that I didn't need any food for the 4.5 hour flight given my sleepiness. The flight to Toronto boarded on time and fortunately it was a little emptier than the previous one. Security was much less strict than in Australia. The flight attendant didn't even look at my boarding pass at the entrance to the plane. The seat-belt sign was also basically ignored, especially by the flight-attendants.

The plane landed in a gloomy, rainy, Toronto at around 5:00 pm their time (which is 14 hours behind Canberra), so I was arriving on Fri, after leaving on Friday and travelling for about 24 hours. The wait in Toronto for immigration was the longest on the trip, taking more than an hour. I got through to pick up my bags and my suitcase handle was almost completely removed (see pic). The airline couldn't do anything then and said that since the contents were still secured, they usually didn't cover damage to 'peripheral' items. I can, however, lug the suitcase back to Sydney without being able to wheel it and they may fix it.

Toronto airport was chaotic. People were milling everywhere. Taxis seemed to be coming and going in no particular pattern and there wasn't a clearly defined taxi queue. I was offered a flat fare to my hotel so I took it. The roads around the airport were big (up to 3 divided areas of 3 lanes each going each way) so I'm glad I didn't drive in such a sleepy state. The city itself looks very interesting... More about this soon.

Health: Insurance

Today I went to my private health insurance fund to make claims for a couple of items during the year and after handing over my card and a couple receipts I waited while the customer service assistant pressed about 1000 keys just to enter the claim details. It is something that I've noticed a few times going to Medicare or my health fund. Surely the software they are using could be better written, especially since many of my claims are for things like dentists, which must be pretty common things to claim for.

In other news, I had a strange experience at Medicare today. One of my previous claims was sent to the wrong address and rather than making me wait while a new cheque was prepared, the nice lady at medicare phoned up the places I was claiming from, gathered faxes from all the places and then was able to pay me right there. Oh, and I only had to queue for about 5 minutes at lunch time. This is definitely not how I remember it from last time...

Music: Krill

Last night I also went to see Krill, a band started by a friend of mine from uni, her 3 sisters and brother. They are touring supporting the release of their EP 'the Sweet Side of Cider'. The gig didn't draw huge crowds but I caught up with a few friends from uni that I hadn't seen for a while as the music played.

At the end I bought the EP and a Krill T-shirt. Krill are doing pretty well for themselves, having just won the Coca Cola Live n Local competition. They'll be playing with bands including 'The Living End' and 'Spiderbait', to sold-out crowds!

Food: Vegish dilemma

So last night I went to Hog's Breath Cafe, which is somewhere that I used to love going to get a steak that is slow-cooked for 18 hours. As their slogan says, it's "The Best A Steak Can Get". So here is the problem. I would probably still rate their steaks as one of my favourite tastes, but it doesn't really fit in with my Vegish diet.

After a discussion with my fellow diners and some deep thought, I decided to skip the steak and go with Atlantic Salmon. Sure, it isn't truly vegetarian, but symbolically I think it was a big step. Admittedly there isn't much on the menu for vegetarians at a famous steak house, but I guess that is to be expected.

I can see now how people that have followed a certain diet for most of their life and are then forced to change (typically for medical reasons) would find it very difficult.

Travel: Canada and the US

There is a saying that when it rains it pours and that has been the case for me recently with work travel. I've been to Sydney, Perth, now I'm heading overseas and when I get back I've got to go to Melbourne the week after.

My OS trip starts in Toronto, Canada. I go to Hamilton briefly, hopefully stopping by Niagara falls, then I head to Orlando, Florida and then to Liberty, Ohio, stopping via Cincinnati. Then its back home via LA. I'm away for about 2 and a half weeks and it is looking like a pretty hectic schedule. I haven't been to Canada before though so I'm looking forward to it.

Travel: Perth

Last week I was fortunate enough to have a whirl-wind trip to Perth and Fremantle for work. I didn't get much chance to do too much siteseeing because I was only there for 4 days, but fortunately I did have a free day on the Sunday to see Fremantle and Perth.

It was my first trip to WA and it was a nice place to visit. I've been told it is better to go a little bit further south to places like Bunbury, but I still enjoyed my time there.

I was fortunate enough to be staying at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle. It is very close to the water and has some nice features like spas and even a sauna.

Fremantle is quite a nice place to visit. There are about 70,000 residents and around 200,000 visitors each year. It feels a little bit like Bateman's Bay, but unfortunately there aren't any decent beaches at Fremantle itself.

I had some fish and chips at the iconic Cicerellos, which is a weird cross between an efficient fast food place like McDonalds and your local fish and chip shop. Apparently it was the original fish and chip shop in Fremantle, but there are a couple of others there nowdays.

I also went to Rockingham and Perth City:

The Wedding: The Cake

One of George's relatives, Helen, has graciously offered to make a cake for our wedding. We think the cake will be two tiers, with either two circular cakes or perhaps a heart-shaped cake at the top with a circular cake on the bottom. The cakes will be fruit cake with a fairly thin layer of marzipan icing since neither George nor Helen are very fond of marzipan. Helen has offered to make me a special small marzipan-loaded cake which has more icing than cake. Now that will be sweet.

The Wedding: The Photographer Take 2

In an earlier post I reported that we had selected a photographer for the wedding. Unfortunately it looks like we'll be going with someone we don't know, for a couple of reasons. The first is that the new photographer (from Fusion Photography) uses a digital format and the second is that he also has a much better Copyright policy, which enables us to make unlimited copies of the photos for our own purposes.

The standard policy for photographers seems to be that they don't provide you with negatives (in the case of film photographers) or they encrypt or provide low-res digital versions, thus making you contact them whenever you need a reprint. We weren't happy to have such limited access to the IP of photographs that we are paying for, so we sought an alternative photographer. In the meeting I was pretty impressed, especially by his commitment to detail and his friendly manner. The only downside is that we don't personally know anyone that has worked with this guy, but otherwise it all sounds good.

Linux: Frustrations

I installed Kubuntu 5.04 a while back and it was pretty easy to setup. As usual I had to jump through a few hoops to get my wireless USB adapter working (Prism2_usb), but after that it was basically smooth sailing.

I have been using Kynaptic to update packages from the Ubuntu security sources and one of those packages happened to be a kernel. So when I installed the package there was no problem at all. The problems started when I rebooted my machine a few weeks later. During startup modules for my graphics driver, Network and wireless connection no longer loaded. So I downloaded an updated kernel package from another computer, but upon reboot I found that it did not compile in support for ISO9660 (Cdrom) filesystems. My wireless connection is also still broken.

While I was at uni I was quite happy to spend a couple of days fixing corrupted setups, recompiling kernels etc. etc., but now I'm much more interested in actually using my computer rather than wasting time fixing what was a perfectly good setup. I'm really surprised that this happened, especially since I'm not using the 'universe' sources, just the base and security sources.

Situations like this just reinforce my view that Linux still has some way to go before becoming a beginner's OS. For example, where do I go now to fix this problem? A brief look through the Ubuntu forums yielded no results, as did a search of the web. So I could post a message to the community for help, but there is no one responsible for answering these sort of technical questions. This means that if someone else has experienced the problems you have, you will likely get a quick response, otherwise the response time is variable.

Distributions like Linspire have very good community groups, but they focus almost too much on beginners and usability, which has meant in my experience the kernel is configured to work for all configurations at an average performance level, but they don't even have things like hyperthreading kernels by default.

So what I'm looking for is a distribution for power users that don't have much time. It should be configured for maximum performance and be easy to setup and most importantly it should be difficult to break, or alternatively it could have a nice rollback feature so if you install a new package like the aforementioned new kernel and it doesn't work, you can just rollback to the previous configuration. Surprisingly (or maybe not depending on your point of view), this is starting to sound quite similar to a Windows setup, with System Restore Points.

Arghh...