We had a smooth run on the way back but traffic on the opposite direction was moving at a snails pace.

We spend a few days in Sydney at Kim’s place, joining Kim’s boot (booze?) camp. Lexy, Megan and I where planning to go to the CBD on New Years Eve to watch the fireworks. I wanted to click pictures but by 31^st afternoon most vantage points where full. As we left the house we decided to not go to the CBD, instead we gate crashed a friends party, had dinner at a restaurant and spent the night talking and drinking wine out of the bottle!

Today I went to the bike shop to buy myself a new helmet. Spoke to the sale person for a while and as I was paying for the helmet, he asked, if I was South African! People beside me thought I was South African too! This is not the first time this has happened. Once before someone thought I was South African; one thought I was a New Zealand Maori(One of the native of New Zealand) and one of them thought I was Irish (Although she only heard me over the phone)! None of the people I have asked to guess got it right. I think of myself as very Indian though. Anyway after the bike shop I went to a super market and asked a sales women where I could find cable ties and she pointed me to Canberra Times I could not stop laughing.

It has almost been two weeks since we moved into our rented house in Canberra. Megan and I have been both sick since then The dogs are not allowed in the house so they have to brave the Canberra cold in the shed Took the day of yesterday and made a few phone calls to change our address and also applied for naked ADSL2 from iinet. No TV and no internet and feels like there is not much to do at home.

Tonight, Megan and I are going to my companies staff dinner! Looking forward to the free three course meal and drinks! Wish we where both not sick.

Had my first lesson of Chinese last night for 2 hours! Seven more sessions to go. Our cute teacher Tilly Tan started of teaching us Chinese characters and for a second I thought I was in the wrong class. We soon let her know that we where only interested in speaking and could not be bothered learning Chinese characters.

It was interesting that four out of five students where learning Chinese because their partners are Chinese. Made me wonder if Chinese ever learn other languages! Anyway my reason is no different.

We learned five sentences and numbers from 1 to 10.

The skill level in the class was varied. Some already knew basic pronunciation. I found it really hard to just listen and pronounce rather that look at the persons face and see how they are pronouncing it. I think I will ask Megan help me with that.

Now I’ve got to find someone to speak Chinese with and practice.

Once I am done learning Chinese, I will know four languages: English, Hindi, Tamil and Chinese!

I went to the Autumn Balloon Spectacular this morning. I did not want to miss the start when the balloons are inflated so I went early, but when I reached at 6AM, there where only few security guards getting ready for the day. Found the best free park though! Had a big breakfast and weighted for the balloons to arrive. One by one four wheel drives pulled up with balloons on the trailer. They use a hot air fan to inflate it first and then turn the flame on. The flame is bloody loud when it is on!

As I was walking out of the door this morning, a delivery van pulled up to deliver my HTC Touch Cruise I’ve been waiting for! Opened the package at home to give Samy, Anni and myself a quick look at the shiny new phone.

I had initially wanted to get this one for Megan, as she would probably get more use of it than I would.

Brought it to work with me, unpacked it and turned it on. Looks great! Put the screen protector on first, worried that I might scratch it. The unit is from Taiwan (Supplied for the Taiwan market) as it was supplied with a converter for the charger plug. I was disappointed at first, but then thought to myself that most electronics I have are from Taiwan (Two ASUS laptops, Canon 400D, HTC Touch Cruise now ) and have the to use the convertor.

I will post some pictures when I get a chance.

Last weekend we had to wind our clocks back an hour for the finish of daylight saving. I thought I had set the right time on all the clocks I used, but I had forgotten to change the one in the car. On Tuesday, I was getting ready to attend the CBS weekly meeting and amazingly I only looked at the car clock and never bothered to  look at my wrist watch or my phone clock. I ended up an hour early. Anyway, I spend the next 45 minutes speaking to Bill Tully who presents a few shows on community radio 2XX. We discussed almost everything in that hour from politics, poverty, history, Hitler’s games, British empire to classical music money in sports!

Before and during Earth Hour pictures of Canberra city does not look like it changed at all, except the parliament house has the lights turned off!
There where around 150-200 people gathered at Mt Ainslie to look down ANZAC Parade and Capital Hill to see the city with lights turned off. I with everyone else
was pretty disappointed that the city did not look any different Most business except restaurants may be had to have their lights on and the street lights where
obviously left on. We had the lights turned of at my brothers place.

Talking to my sister in law about Earth Hour and she mentioned how, Earth Hour is not a new concept in India. In India it is forced Earth Hour, sometimes with
notice but mostly without for couple of hours.
Could we do the same in Australia. Have a forced hour of black out every week during scheduled times? we could surely get used to it. I certainly did get used to
it when I was India!

Got my new pc today but it was not what was ordered and looks like it will not be replaced too Got introduced to a lot of staff yesterday and today and don’t remember any names except one person who is working on SharePoint. My boss is spend half the day trying to figure out how to get our work space clutter free. Workmates seem good, four guys and one girl (Vietnamese). One of the guys prides himself as a geek, looking forward to meeting him.

My boss was sending me links to houses he thinks I should have a look at to buy. All around 450k to 500K I will need to spend a lot of time this weekend looking at open houses.

Missing Megan, Henry and Lama. Hope they join me soon!

Drove to Canberra this afternoon to start work tomorrow. I’ve never seen th freeway as busy as today. All the stops on the freeway where so crowded that I did not feel like stopping anywhere. I stopped for lunch and had to join a long queue

Anyway, I am in Canberra, in the shed at my brothers place. He is not home and not picking up his mobile Lucky I have my eeepc, I can at least browse the net!

Starting work tomorrow! Hope it is a nice place to work for and hope the team I work with are nice people.

For tonight, I hope my brother is back home because all my work clothes are in his house.