Wow, I just read the last post from April 2008 and thought it was worth following that up 20 months later.

2008/2009 were pretty busy years and I think 2010 will be much the same.

I wrote about my company being acquired in early 2008 and my anticipation of what that meant for me. What’s changed? A lot and nothing. We moved to a giant office designed for 30+ people then promptly entered the GFC and a bunch of people were made redundant. So there are about 10 of us floating around up there, but now hiring! Things are looking up! I was hoping that the expansion of the company into broader consulting would translate into broader work opportunities for me, but none have materialised so far. But I can blame that on the GFC, there just wasn’t enough work in the other areas and my business stream was the safest place to be. 2010 maybe. Almost 2 years later we are finally getting all the IT systems integrated. Wooo! Ok, boring! What is this? A diary for me, or a blog post for you?

We went through a really sad time in the family in late 2008 when my sister in law got progressively sick and passed away from melanoma aged 26, leaving behind my brother and 2 young kids. It broke my heart to see them go through that, and it still breaks my heart to think of it. But humans are surprisingly resiliant and it seems like everyone is taking life’s challenges in their stride. It certainly made me step back and realise what is important in life. And to get serious about skin checks  and sun protection! Everyone has to look after themselves – that’s an order!

Also late 2008 Alex and I finally bought ourselves a house! After almost 12 months looking we resolved one weekend to buy a house.  We did a bit of haggling, straining our brains and finally settled on a private sale town house. It was a big decision because we could see the economy collapsing around us. All doom and gloom that house prices were going to tumble etc etc. I”m not really sure why we did it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We managed to not get made redundant, and so far all signs are that it was a good little investment at a time when hardly anyone was buying. It was a cosmetic renovation job, so we called in the builders (the last owner had left sufficient evidence of why not to try to do your own renovations unless you know what you are doing!), ripped out the kitchen, painted the place up and have been progressively furnishing it with all our favourite things. Upstairs still needs doing (bathroom, and windows replaced) but it’s very comfortable and we love it! Location location – train, trams, buses, chadstone, ride to work if I’m feeling keen. Learning a few lessons though about body corporate life! Ahoy! On the committee this year, wish me luck!

In October we headed to India for Alex’s sister’s wedding! That was amazing and deserves its own little blog post, another day.

Oh, I’ve also been studying my Masters of Environment and Planning. I’m a third of the way through now. I’ve just realised that it’s another 4 years at the rate I’m going…arg…I’m really enjoying it though and I’ve had some awesome lecturers. It’s good to study something you are passionate about! Keeps me busy though!

So we’ve just had Christmas and New Year. We went up to Canberra to meet the new nephew, over to Pebbly Beach for a night, up to Sydney for a wedding for two nights then out to the Blue Mountains for a quiet new years, then back down the Hume! We had a great trip, but it’s pretty exhausting finishing with a 12.5 hour drive home! New Years day scrambling around the Grand Canyon in Blackheath was awesome though, well worth the drive!

Well that’s me done for now. I’m going to try to blog more so I can give you more interesting news rather than these christmas letter type one sentence updates. Pretty uninspriring!

Wishing everyone a happy new year! 2010 will be a good one, I can feel it in my bones….or is that arthritis? Cheers!

I’ve heard this argument more than once: Why would the sea level rise when the ice melts? When a cube of ice melts in a glass of water the level doesn’t rise. Correct! Sea ice melting in and of itself should not cause the sea levels to rise. I don’t blame people for not understanding the real reasons for the sea level rises – the media does a spectacularly poor job of communicating the link between global warming and sea level rises, and in fact almost seems to advocate this view that sea ice melting is the primary cause. So I did a bit of digging and in the interests of keeping this brief here are some quick facts about melting ice sheets and sea level rises.

1) Ice melts off the land and into the sea = extra water, but not that much
2) Fresh water ice melt does actually displace more salt water than frozen salt water, something about the density of it – look it up in the 2nd link below.
3) Ice melting is a sign that the atmosphere is getting hotter = the sea water is getting hotter = sea water is expanding. Water expands as it freezes and as it heats.This is the major cause of the increasing sea levels. Not extra water in the oceans, but the current water expanding as it heats up.
4) Ice sheets reflect up to 70% of the sunlight that reaches it, while water only reflects about 6% and absorbs the rest of the heat. Which in turn leads to hotter and ‘bigger’ water! When the ice sheets melt it means more heat is being absorbed into the water.
5) When ice sheets melt they release a lot of stored methane, which is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So more greenhouse gas= hotter=ice sheets melt=more methane = hotter…blah blah….

So it’s a lot more complicated that ice turning to water. Those ice sheets are very important for reflecting sunlight away from the oceans. So next time you see one crashing into the ocean, or Al Gore shows you a picture of a polar bear clinging onto a square meter of ice you’ve got a whole other reason to feel concerned about that.

Further reading:

Current Sea Level Rise – Wikipedia

Melting of Floating Ice Will Raise Sea Level

Ice Melting Faster Everywhere

Well I think my last post understated the infrequency in which future posts would occur. I’m sure you’re all wondering what has been happening in my life for the last 3 months…I’m sure..haha…

If I think in terms of interesting singular events then not much has happened, but I guess it has been an interesting few months for me in terms of settling back into Australia/Melbourne/work.

We had a really fun time driving our little Renault around NSW/QLD in Janaury and I think clocked up 5000k in two weeks which is pretty impressive. We camped up the coast to Brisbane, then stayed with some rellos and came back down through the centre via Tamworth and the Blue Mountains. We had a great night on our last night when darkness and cold and a bit of rain was setting in  and we planned to camp at Perry’s Lookdown in the Blue Mountains. After a bit of umming and ahhing and asking about accommodation prices in town we decided to go out and pitch in the dark. We were the only ones there and were a bit spooked out by how dark and rainy it was. We gave up on the idea of cooking dinner on our stove and bunkered down in the car for a bowl of cereal and baked beans! Classic. It was about this time that some other campers turned up and busted us eating Sultana Bran for dinner. Still we had a lovely evening sharing tea and biscuits with them and did a bit of sightseeing the following day. Of course we had to stop off at our favourite lookout, Evan’s Lookout, where we were married for a bit of nostalgia

Shortly after that we moved to Melbourne and have been living with my mum and dad ever since. We’ve got a pretty good set up with a bedroom and a study, and even got a free couch off the neighbour’s nature strip! I’ve caught up with a bunch of old friends and one friend in particular where relations had been a bit strained, I think mainly due to distance and miscommunication. It’s great to be back together with all the girls. Well there’s still one away in Europe until July, but went out for dinner with her twin sister the other day, so it was kind of funny to imagine that we at least still looked like the old school gang

Started my new/old job in February. Things were going quite well on that front. Working with only 2 other people in the Melbourne office. It gets lonely at times, but if there’s going to be nobody in the office I get to work from home, which I do about once a week. Sweet. But about 3 weeks ago it was announced that we were being taken over by a big US consulting firm. Here’re the scary stats: We had 40 people, they have 24,000 people!!! Here are the less scary stats: they only have 60 people in Australia, and only 10 in Melbourne, so really it’s not that daunting. I’m at a good stage in my career to deal with this as I’m pretty keen to get some broader experience rather than just focusing on one specialty as I have been doing since Uni (if you don’t count my 1.5 year mid 20s crisis masquerading as a teacher in Japan). Still, there’s lots of uncertainty and new ways of doing things and we’ll be moving to a new office down the road in about a month. Hope I can still work from home!!

On a more sobering note, a family member has just been diagnosed with malanoma which has spread to her lymph nodes. From what I understand it’s a bit of an uncertain stage. It’s not running riot inside your body, but you never know when it will rear its ugly head again. It’s just a waiting game. It’s making me think a lot of about life and family and at times I get very sad. But this is part of life. I always think back to a very strong reaction I had as a teenager to hearing my mum talk about someone close that was dying of cancer. My immediate thought was “He’s living with cancer!!!”. We’re all dying of something, we just don’t know what yet. Maybe I’m being naive, but it adds a bit of hope to the moment when you think in those terms.

Hrm, sorry to end on a sad note, but I haven’t got much more news to tell. I’ve just realised it’s almost 10pm and I haven’t had dinner yet. I think it’s time to break out the Sultana Bran!

I’m struggling with the decision to continue writing this blog now that we are back home. I don’t want to bore you with day to day life in Australia, but if anything interesting happens or we have any life milestones like buying a house or a dog I might put it up here. So this is really a warning that blogs will be more infrequent than ever before. I think it did have a strange effect in Japan in reminding me that I hadn’t done anything blog-worthy for a while so I should get out and do it. Maybe I can continue that in Australia.

I got some interesting Christmas presents in the form of Lonely Planet guides to Melbourne and Australia, walking tracks in Victoria and cycling tracks around Melbourne. Wonderful! I think we often forget that there is so much more to the city or country that we live in, and should set aside weekends to go off and be tourists, even locally. So my New Years resolution is to do that.

That’s a nice segway to our most recent purchase (no actually the most recent purchase was insurance) of a 2nd hand Renault Clio. Here’s some specs for those car savvy people reading: 2003, 3 door Clio Dynamique, 29,000kms, 1.6L 16V engine, alloy wheels, manual gearbox and it’s red. Goes like the wind and is very cute. Previously owned by a little old lady who only drove it to the shops on weekends – not true but close enough as you can tell by the kilometres on it. So I’m currently on a mission to learn to drive manual. It’s funny that you are allowed to drive manual once you are on you full license even if you have only ever driven automatic. I have a small advantage in that my first ever driving lessons were in a manual, but after the car was written off in a minor accident (it was an old car) had nothing to practice in so just went automatic from then on. Still, those hill starts are a right bastard. Getting there though. Anyway, we’ll be off for a road trip to nowhere in particular in a few days. Probably up Sydney/Brisbane way before aiming for Melbourne by late January.

Going back in time, we had a fairly eventful trip home courtesy of Jetstar. I’ve vented my frustrations with them enough, so I’ll save you the rant but if you are ever traveling internationally with them and want some tips to save your hair from going gray, then let me know and I’ll advise you.

We left Japan on a lovely 14 degree winter day, longing for the summer of Australia. We arrived in Melbourne to rain, wind, and extremely low temperatures for summer! Oh well. We had a great couple of days in Melbourne with a faux Christmas with all the family down there. It was great to see all the littlies who had grown so much while we had been away.

On Christmas eve we headed up to Canberra and enjoyed Christmas with the Fraser clan. Lots of champagne, food, pressies and general laziness were enjoyed by all (except Debbie who worked tirelessly to feed us all!).

Ok, on with life!! See you all when I do something interesting!!

7 more sleeps! only 6 if you count that we probably won’t be able to sleep on the plane on Thursday night. Things are progressing here. Sold almost all of our stuff, including our nightmare airconditioners. Actually we gave them away, but better than paying the man to take them. The only thing left here is the fridge..hrm…kinda big. There’s a lot of mess to clean up, but a few rubbish bags will have to take care of that I think. It’s such a waste, but I’m trying my best to give everything a good home. Not easy to do in Japan, where appliances are only considered good if they are less than 3 years old. I was talking to a student the other day and he told me that he had bought a “used house”! Yep, even houses here are disposable, they aren’t considered investments, but rather depreciating assets like cars. Kind of sad.

Last night we went out for dinner/karaoke with Chris and Julie. We went to our favourite okonomiyaki shop where the chef gave us free dessert because we are going home!

We are still sick, both of us having come down with the flu or something similarly nasty. Coughing a lot, losing voices, runny noses, fevers. the lot! But I think we are over the worst of it and will hopefully be ok for the big trip home!