We missed out on the iPhone 4 launch in the UK by jumping on an Airbus A380 bound for Singapore instead of queueing up at an Apple Store. We both had the older iPhone 3G, had skipped the 3GS model, and were wanting an upgrade. So, when the iPhone 4 launch parties at midnight on the Thursday were announced we made sure we were going to be there. Initially, I suggested we grab a movie in town, and then wander over to join the queue. The film I wanted to see finished after 11PM, so we knocked that on the head and thought we’d go for a nice meal instead. When Alison came into town to meet me, there were already 30 people queueing, so we decided to just go and join the queue (at 5:40pm).

It was a great experience queueing in the main shopping mall in Brisbane for over 6 hours. The people queuing around us were great, and there was a good party experience. We learned loads about the area, and good places to go, shop, etc.. The grand opening at midnight was a massive anticlimax, as it took a further one and a half hours to get to the front of the queue. Optus only managed to serve 50 or so people in that time. They had loads of staff on, but when we got served ourselves we realised why. The processing was so archaic, with large chunks of the contract being explained and highlighted to each and every customer individually and it took half an hour to complete the process. At 2am after queueing 8 hours, I don’t think many people would give a stuff over the contract specifics!

In fact, it was easier buying my car, a much bigger commitment, which I picked up two weeks ago. It is a Holden Commodore International 3.0L V6 Sportwagon. It is a lovely machine with a nice throaty roar when you feed it some juice. Not exactly the most economical car on the road, put with fuel at around 60p/L fuel economy isn’t on many peoples mind here.

All our things eventually arrived from the UK a couple of weeks ago. I had declared a couple of electronic items that were less than 12 months old, so customs wouldn’t clear the container until the $58 duty was paid. A whole house’s content held up for $58! Even better, when I went to pay the phone payment service kept dropping my call and the internet payment service didn’t recognise my reference number. When I phoned the office and spoke to a human, I was told that electronic payment would take 3 days to clear and if I wanted to clear my container we should go and pay at the office in person. So, the next day Alison travelled to the office near the airport and paid up.

Of course things didn’t end there. The next stage was quarantine. I was slightly concerned as we have loads of wooden things, and the movers packed some things we didn’t want to bring, such as opened cleaning products, which we knew could cause problems. We received notice that quarantine had seized three muddy shoes, and we were given the choice of professional cleaning at $300+, or destruction at around $100. We went for the destruction. It turned out that the three shoes were one of a pair of wellington boots and Alison’s trail shoes which she had run through the washing machine, so shouldn’t have been a problem. We had other shoes that were definitely dirtier.

So, we sent the payment details through to the movers and heard nothing. Alison chased them up, and was told that there had been a change of manager, and the payment details had been mislaid, could she send them through again. She did, and again we heard nothing.

A couple of days later, we tried to find out when we would get our stuff, and was told we would be notified when they had a slot.

Another couple of days (we are in Queensland, by the way, so this is normal and I am teaching myself to accept it) and Alison phoned to see if they could give us some idea, so that I could book time off. This call was at 4PM, and guess what? “Oh, has no-one called you? Your delivery is first thing tomorrow morning!”. There was no way I could get the next day off.

Anyway, Alison wasn’t going to be on her own. Tiffany had been thoughtful and already had agreement from her employers (Specsavers in Indooroopilly) that when our delivery came she would be able to take the day off. So, she rang them up and explained that we had had short notice ourselves, but that she wanted the pre-arranged day off. The manager was not impressed, to say the least. She accepted the request, but not without making Tiffany upset with her attitude.

The next morning, while they were both unloading a 20 foot container (a fairly busy and slightly stressful time, with boxes everywhere), Tiffany took a call from Specsavers. Apparently, she was considered to be unreliable (because she followed up on a prior agreement for a day off) and was told that she was no longer required. They then withheld her wages on the next pay run pending the return of a work shirt. My feelings over the matter are fairly obvious, the management of the Indooroopilly store are petty and dishonourable and have shown me their true colours. I recommend that you don’t have anything to do with them.

Alison and Tiff worked at everything for the whole of the coming week, gradually straightening the house out from a position where it looked like our things would never fit to a comfortable warm home again.

There are a load of other things to tell you about. How my jobs going, places we’ve been out to, BBQs and rejoining the gym. But, this has gone on quite long enough for now.

We are so looking forward to receiving our first visitors from the UK in October, now we have our house in order. Dad and Wendy are visiting at the beginning of October and Martin and Pearl towards the end. We are also looking forward to Samantha’s wedding in Adelaide, and catching up with everyone there.
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Some of our regulars may be confused as to our housing arrangements as they have changed a few times. The house Alison originally liked had a couple of practical problems, the living area was a tad small for our furniture and we didn’t really have any practical way of finding space for those few guests we knew would be coming over the next few months. So, with great difficulty she gave up the idea of living there and we started searching again.

We then found a lovely house in Augustine Heights, with a killer feature of a range cooker. We even got as far as signing up the application forms at the agents, and then Alison asked questions about the school catchment areas. It transpired that the school we had picked for James wouldn’t take children from that street. Great sadness ensued, and the agents then pulled out the stops to find us a good alternative.

We then found a nice house in Springfield Lakes, which seems to tick all the boxes. So, we signed up and are moving in today and tomorrow. Since then, we have ordered two new beds, a new sofa, fridge freezer and microwave. We have rush purchased a dirt cheap dinner service, kettle, toaster and various essentials. Arranged for electricity to be connected, and phone and broadband. All while organising and sorting the rest of the things below…

So, with a house organised we went down to the school on their child-free day just after their two week school holiday. The principle was amazing, and sorted James out a place. The school looks really good, and we hope it turns out well for James. He started the next day, so we have been having to run him to and from school, a journey of 20 miles each way every day. Now we have moved that will be much easier,

While all that has been going on, I have still been applying for jobs. The early part of this week was getting progressively more and more disappointing as some of the roles that I had previously been getting hopeful about started to fall by the wayside. On Wednesday, I did a trawl of seek.com.au and applied for three interesting looking jobs. On Thursday, I arranged a face to face meeting with the agent that had been making a really strong effort to get me placed, so was all suited and booted when I got a call that resulted in me being required for an interview immediately in the CBD. By the end of the day, I had had two interviews and had been offered a really interesting looking job. I start on Monday.

We bought a car for Alison, and for Tiffany to learn to drive in, on Monday. It is a slightly aged Golf GTI, but in really good nick. So, we have also been running around getting the car “roadworthy” sorted out (which was really the sellers job, but we wanted to get the car quickly), getting our Australian driving licences and getting the car registered to Alison. Add insurance and buying and getting fitted the replacement car stereo system to all of the above and you start getting a picture of what a wonderfully relaxing time we are having.

Just took a call, our beds are being delivered at 7am tomorrow morning, have to get up early to drive over to the house before then, at the weekend too! Gulp.

We are having beautiful winter days at the moment. Bright blue skies, 21 degrees in the shade, 26 in the sunshine. Also, checked the best way to get to the city, and the train is only £6 per day, return. Sounds good.

I’ll try and get more regular updates in…Share

Just as we left the UK, apparently they have had a mini heat wave with temperatures rising above 30 degrees Celsius. I say apparently, because there is always the remote possibility that absolutely everyone is lying. Just to rub it in, the winter here is going through an uncharacteristically cold snap with daytime temperatures of only 15 degrees, and it falling to near freezing at night. I was talking to someone in Melbourne the other day, and they have had to scrape ice off their car – a rare treat for Australians.

The journey was the usual mundane endless drone of jet engines for about 21 hours, punctuated by a brief 3 hour respite at Singapore airport. This 3 hours sounds like a nice leisurely break, but it is amazing how quick it disappears if you allow for the time to disembark one plane and then the time it takes to go through the boarding process for the next plane. Singapore airlines were much better than Qantas/British Airways. The interior of the planes were in much better condition than any of they planes from BA that we used last year. The entertainment system was cleaner and much easier to use. And, the staff were very attentive and helpful. The best bonus was the comfort of the seats, which on the longest haul flights is probably the most important thing.

While we were on route, the sale of our house moved on, and we exchanged contracts. We completed a few days later, and the money is on route to Australia as we speak. My savings account gets 6% interest!!

Since we have been here, I have applied for a few jobs and had two interviews. We have looked at 12 houses,visited friends for a BBQ, opened bank accounts, registered for Medicare, applied for tax file numbers, moved from one unit to another and bought a car. Tiff has got a job, too.

The Australian people have been amazing, too. Everywhere that we have needed help, they have taken their time, and been very encouraging about living here. The time that sticks in my mind was when we were trying to work out if a train back from the theatre late one evening would have worked out. We asked the guy at the ticket counter, and he painstakingly worked out every combination of trains while a queue was building up behind us. We were getting embarrassed, and I said that it was OK, we could work out the rest as there are quite a few other people waiting – and he said it was no problem, they wouldn’t mind!

This relaxed attitude combined with the fact that the end of June is a tax year end has meant that it is taking longer to hear back from interviews than I am used to. When I mention this to the agents, they say “welcome to Queensland”.

Better get going, we need to get out for another BBQ today.Share

1. Meeting up with my close family to say our sad farewells to my Mother as her ashes were laid to rest in the church yard.
2. Saying good-bye to my three oldest boys, Thomas, Robert and Christopher, who over the past year have become closer than they have for a long time.
3. Saying good-bye to my sister Sally, nephew and niece Matthew and Robyn, and my cousin and her family, Sue, Kendall, Mica and Regan.
4. Alison has sold her car, and drove back to Colchester in mine leaving me at the mercy of the car I am borrowing from my Dad.
5. Possibly found a buyer for my car.

Over the past couple of weeks a number of other big things have been happening…

1. We’ve sold our house, and are moving in with neighbours for the last few days in England.
2. We’ve been getting rid of possessions that we don’t want to drag around the world, the hardest so far being my poor book collection.
3. We had a MASSIVE party to say goodbye to friends and family, some of whom travelled 100′s of miles to be with us.
4. Alison and I have finished work.

So, we’re starting to float around with nothing tying us down and ready to find somewhere new to start putting down those roots again. Very weird, uncomfortable and exciting.

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It’s been a hell of a journey so far, 21 months from when we started. 21 months where we have had on hold all those things that we would have done, had we not been planning to emigrate. 20 months of wondering how long we would have to wait, and 1 month of mad preparation. Several disappointments along the way, where our timetable has been pushed back by changes in the visa process or by other events outside our control.

This is how the 21 months breaks down…

• 2 months research and planning. Appointing a migration agent, pre-assessing our situation, and deciding on which visa to go for. We chose the 175 independent skilled migrant visa.
• 3 months collecting paperwork, such as university academic transcripts, copies of original marriage certificates, work references, etc.
• 4 months awaiting the ACS skills assessment.
• At this point, after the latest changes, we switched to a 176 sponsored skilled migrant visa.
• 6 months awaiting the Queensland state sponsorship.
• 5 months waiting for the 176 visa grant.
• 1 month so far, preparing to move!

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There are many reasons to be in business. The one that is topmost in almost every business these days is profit. Which, of course, is the cornerstone of existence, because without it a business will eventually cease to be and people would lose jobs. But, other reasons, such as being the best at doing something, keeping customers happy, supplying things that customers actually want and general goodwill are no longer reasons on their own merit. They are only valued if they are are profitable enough, and only then if they are profitable in the short term.

Fake Steve Jobs has recently taken AT&T in the USA to task over this, since they appear to be skimping on investment in their own infrastructure.

Every time you phone a company, and find you have to repeat your complaint multiple times, or can’t understand a word that the offshore call centre operator is saying, or a company fails to deliver something you’ve paid for and it takes many days to get a refund you are seeing another case where profit is valued more highly than something else that is important.

Not a week goes by without seeing a good example of this decay. Last night alone, our Tescos delivery failed to come (maybe, it was the 7 inches of snow), but maybe a phone call explaining their problems, or even an email. Maybe an offer of reattempting delivery today? Afraid not, all our slots are taken until after Christmas – overtime anyone? Extra effort to help customers that have been let down? They can take our money instantly, but the refund takes 3-5 business days, so when we went to buy the shopping today, twice the weekly shop money has been debited from our account until Tesco or Natwest get around to letting us have the first lot back.

Anyway, I wanted to write again about switching Broadband providers. Broadband in this country is going to the dogs. Five years ago, when I had been forced to switch from cable to ADSL by a house move, I did some research and found that Pipex was one of the best – and they were. They gave me exactly what I wanted, a bare wires service – I provided the router and they provided a connection. No proxies, no traffic shaping, no filtering email ports. And it was the speed they advertised – brilliant. I recommended them to several people, and how embarrassed am I by the recent rounds of acquisition. Pipex got bought by Tiscali, one of the broadband providers that had the lower reputations when I did my original research. Almost overnight the quality dived. Now they have merged with TalkTalk.

My father has had no end of trouble since Pipex became Tiscali. Where he lives there are NO unbundled operators, which means that every provider is actually provided by BT.

About a year ago, my parents were constantly irritated by the loud buzzing on their phone. They reported the problem to BT, who weren’t interested since testing showed that the noise was caused by the Broadband. They said it was Pipex’s problem. Pipex did tests and said the broadband was working fine, hence it wasn’t their problem, but it could be my parent’s equipment (router or microfilters), or wiring in the house. Being a gadget freak, I had spares and we could also rule out the wiring. The problem continued despite equipment swaps and running everything off the master socket. My parents jumped through hoops, getting an old wired phone out the loft, making many phone calls to each, getting myself to try another router, other microfilters – moving equipment from the study to the living room for days on end. Buck passing continued, and no-one would come out. In the end, my dad accepted the threats of a £120 callout charge from BT should they find the fault to be his equipment, OR the broadband providers.

What he, and I, couldn’t understand is that the broadband provider subcontracts back to BT anyway, since the local exchange doesn’t have any unbundled providers, so in effect the issue only rested with one entity. Why should my dad give a shit about which department it was?

So, they came out, and it was wet wiring in the street. One month, 20 odd phone calls, many hours of aggravation and it was sorted, by the first company my dad rang who did everything in their power to avoid responsibility. Did anyone care how much goodwill they destroyed? I don’t think so.

This story has a second part, when my dad decided that he should put everything with one company, so that he would only have one company to talk to if there was a repeat of this issue. I’ll post that part in the next couple of days.Share

Buried in most broadband contracts there is an innocent little phrase basically saying that you have to give notice of termination, typically 30 days. Fair enough, you think. Well, it would be if the notice period started at a reasonable time, like when you told them you were moving.

Unfortunately, they can’t do that.

Apparently, the day you give them notice, they give the cancellation order to BT, who will cancel within 30 days. Which, could be the very next day. So, of you want continuous service you can only give notice on the day your new connection starts.

The bottom line is that you have to pay for one month twice, with both the old and the new providers.

So, the contract is a way of saying someone wants your money for doing fuck all, regardless of your intent to give fair notice.

I told them that their contract was unfair, and would not hold water, but they weren’t going to back down. I then asked to speak to someone about cancelling our 3 iPhone contracts, and they backed down – amazing! Yes, O2 were the culprits this time, but I understand the practice is widespread.Share

The other influence has been watching my father come to terms with the 21st century. There isn’t really much choice about whether of not you are going to embrace the world of the internet any longer. Adverts no longer list a phone number, they show web addresses. Big companies don’t want to talk to you, they want you to read FAQs, send emailed enquires, etc.. My father dived in with both feet – on-line banking, national lottery, email, Facebook, the lot.

Watching his struggles has made me realise that the creators of such websites don’t give the slightest consideration for relatively inexperienced users. And the help desks assume knowledge that typical people simply don’t have – have you tried this, have you done that? Loads of jargon ridden gobbledygook – I understand what is being asked, but I think “How the hell is my father supposed to understand that?”

So, lets start with the National Lottery web site. What an user interface disaster. My dad simply wanted to pop in his regular numbers and wait for the winnings to roll in.

So, he has to create an account, and there are really complicated password complexity rules, and he needs a unique username. So, he takes about a dozen attempts to get a combination it accepts, neither of which is something he really wanted, so not surprisingly he forgot what it accepted within about two seconds – which of the myriad combinations was it again? In my opinion, the email address could have been the username, reducing the complexity by one step, and the password rules could have been a tad less intense.

Once you are in, it is not at all obvious how to put in your numbers – choices abound, menus down the left, menus across the top, and choices in the middle of the page. Eventually, dad stumbled on the direct debit configuration page, and puts in his details, then he goes to put in his numbers and he is prompted for a credit/debit card. Oh, and what is his password again, oh bugger, we forgot that, and we need to reset our account, and we have yet another password.

So, now dad is sat waiting for his winnings to roll in. He has emails galore. Direct debit this, direct debit that. A couple of weeks later, he goes to check whether he has won anything and finds that none of his numbers had been placed. One of those multitude of emails was to tell him his direct debit had been cancelled, but why? No-one knows. He has set it up again, and all seems ok now. But, why are these systems so complicated?

Now, my dad is a keen Lexulous player, and the version he got addicted to is embedded inside Facebook. So, he is also a Facebook user. He hates Facebook. He gets notification emails when people send him messages, which he can’t reply to. It makes total sense to reply to a message, but it doesn’t work (BTW, it works correctly on LinkedIn). The little notification counter in the bottom right of the screen always reads 99, no matter what he does because every time someone makes a move on Lexulous, every time someone messages him during a game, every time someone sends him a Facebook message, every time someone invites him to join some stupid game he’s not interested in the counter goes up, which is dozens and dozens of times per day. So, playing a nice relaxing game of Lexulous results in never ending stress.

Throwing all this shit in his face constantly isn’t going to make him sign up, join in, buy or anything else, but it is going to stop him from playing, one day. (I know there are ways and means of reducing the noise, but HOW IS HE GOING TO FIND OUT?). A simple notice on each annoying message saying “click here to never see one of these again” would help.

If you’re one of dad’s friends on Facebook, do him a favour, don’t invite him to play Farmville, Social questions, or whatever spam system that is stealing all your social network information this week because he isn’t interested, honest. (But do send him personal messages, we’ve got that bit sussed now).

Now, the banks get quite a thumbs up, mostly. Even the Spanish one has an English version of the site that is mostly understandable. But, quite regularly the HSBC online bank just refuses to let him log in. When he rings the help desk they say it’s because he has the web site in his “Favourites” (Hey, help desk people, not everyone has Internet Explorer, so don’t confuse my dad by mentioning something that isn’t even on his machine). Now, as a web developer I struggle to see how having a bookmark can break the authentication system, but if I found a way, I would make sure I fixed it so my site didn’t behave that way. I mean, why should someone have to always type in the web address? (Oh, and I checked, the bookmark was to the login page, not somewhere deep in the site). Now, that is crap.

My dad has done amazingly well to start using computers in his 67th year, and being able to do email, banking, play games, book flights, and loads of wonderful things, but I suspect he hates it, and all because there are so many bloody lazy developers. If you want to find out how crap your website is, drop me a line and we’ll arrange for my dad to do some web usability consultancy for you.Share

I was supposed to do 4 miles at 10m40s. Which, after Saturday, seemed very achievable. This was not the case, and I only managed 2.8 miles and I had a couple of rests, even then. How could it have all gone so wrong?

Quite simply, I was too keen (or maybe cocky!). The 10 minute warmup jog should be a SLOW jog, I did it 1 minute per mile faster than I had planned – the bloody watch was bleeping and flashing “Slow down”, but I couldn’t. Then, the tempo run part started badly too. I ran the first mile 20 seconds too quickly, now a tempo pace is meant to be pushing your ability so to go off this much too quickly was inviting trouble. At this point I needed a brief walk (45 secs). After that, I nailed the pace, but I was knackered and needed to keep stopping until I gave up.

Hopefully, the next one will be more disciplined and that will be enough to make it doable.Share

I had been training since the beginning of July, with the goal of merely being able to run the 13.1 miles. Also, so that I was targeting my training, I wanted to complete the race in less than 2 hours 30 minutes. At the outset, I struggled running 6 miles, as my first race at Brentwood proved. So just over three months to build up to a half-marathon was quite a challenge.

Those three months turned me from a reluctant runner, only running while I could stay disciplined with my fitness, to a keen runner. A keen runner that is still a beginner.

I had still been struggling with longer distances and stamina, but was a much stronger runner than I was in July, the previous week I had ran another 10k race at Southend, much faster and I finished strongly. So, full of optimism we made our way to Peterborough for the start.

Supporting Alison and I this time was my dad, with his trusty camera, and my cousin Sue from Australia who had been visiting. We knew that the entrant limit was 7000, so I was a little worried about finding a car park with spaces. I shouldn’t have worried, we found a space in the first car park I went to. The weather seemed ideal for a long run – cool, overcast, and slightly miserable with not much threat of rain. Perfect.

Alison looking ready

Waiting, waiting, waiting

Looking a bit lost

At last! The start! It was great, I was full of energy and forcing myself to slow down. I had to run 11 minute 20 second miles to hit my self-imposed target, and I was averaging 10m47s until the first water station at around three and a half miles. The atmosphere was fantastic, my pace was keeping me with a bunch of guys and gals dressed in pink tights, wigs and tutus that were collecting money while pushing a chap in a wheelchair. They had loud horns and had a party atmosphere that helped keep me full of energy.

That water station was a relief – not for the water, but for the lone portaloo that had only one person queueing at it. Ahh! A two minute pause, much needed.

The next point of interest was the “motivation mile” around 5 miles in. Loud, motivating music played from a very effective speaker system along the mile, along with some inspirational comments from a presenter pushing us on. I was still maintaining the same pace, and felt I could go all day.

The Course

I was so wrong, and things started to fall apart around mile 9. I started to intersperse my running with some walking, and did that mile in 12m50s – if I could have maintained that pace, I would have still come in ahead of my target, but the running got less and the walking more, and the next three miles were at a consistent 14m00 pace. It was a shame to lose sight of the pink tutus around this time.

I think I would have gone even slower, had I not been rescued. A generous lady saw me struggling about a mile before the end, and stopped to talk. We chatted about running, and I must admit I can’t remember much of the conversation, but we ran and walked together to the finish. The camaraderie and distraction helped me forget my discomfort a bit, and spurred me on to the finish. I discovered her name after reading the race results, so I can say “Thank you, Mim Baczkur”.

The sight of the finish line was even more welcome than the portaloo near the beginning. Everyone was waiting, and I think I managed a strained smile.

Happy?

Going strong

I have a medal now! For a half marathon, and 160 more people followed me over that line. I was impressed by the goodie-bag too – Lucozade Hydroactive, Mars Bar, a banana, the medal, a decent tee-shirt and a bottle of water. It didn’t look impressive in the sponsors carrier bag though!

Crashed out