I’m wrapping up an eventful four-day weekend here in Australia. Day 1 - On Thursday night, I went to the Blue Mountains and stayed with a few friends. I’ve always enjoyed visiting the area; it reminds me how much I like mountain terrain. I made my way back to Sydney on Friday and began considering what to do with the rest of the weekend. Day 2 - On Saturday, I woke early and drove to the local supermarket to buy food for the week, as the shops would be closed on Friday and Sunday. Soon after returning home, I turned the car around and headed to Kangaroo Valley, about two hours south of my house. The drive was lovely, and traffic was light. I arrived at the campsite and was stunned by its size; it …

I first learned the term “white privilege” during my first year at university. I don’t remember whether it was in a general education class, at an ASPSU (student government) meeting, or through the NAACP, but the revelation has always humbled me. Today, I had another revelation. I woke up before 7:00 a.m., caught the bus, and attended my French class. After class, I hurried back to Granville train station to pick up a lost phone, then spent the rest of the afternoon reading at Borders. My mom offered to deposit about $50 into my bank account for my birthday, but I told her I would prefer a card or a small gift she thought I would like. In the mail arrived Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. I had …

I’m about to head off to bed, but I have to admit, today has been very productive. I woke up at 6:20am (it is a Saturday), had breakfast, and went into the city. At 9:00am I started my new French class, which looks like it will be great fun. My teacher has great energy, the students are interesting (and seemingly bright), and I’ve picked up a copy of Asterix. Although I haven’t made it past the first page, I’ve enjoyed looking up the words and reliving a comic book I read as a kid. I haven’t learned conjugation yet, so I might wait to read more until next week.

Last year I had a very special New Year’s Eve on one of the private piers next to the Harbour Bridge (arguably one of the largest displays of fireworks in the world). I had great food, good company, and jaw-dropping views. A friend was not in the country this year, so I had to find an alternative. Fireworks debris was falling around the train. My first plan was to try and go into one of the parks on the north side, thinking that somehow the view would be better. I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be able to get into the city until pretty late, and all the parks would likely be filled up. I pondered for a little while, and we came up with an idea: the train. Last year I noticed that the train still …

I’m about to make some major database changes. Afterwards, you’ll see a few useful new features and one ambitious blog post.

I’ve been a little delinquent in sharing my life stories, so hopefully this weekend will make up for the past few months. I decided it was time to go camping again, so on Friday night I met Remko and Daisy and drove north towards Colo: the middle of nowhere, yet only 45 minutes from the outskirts of Sydney. I set up my tent and started cooking dinner: curry! That’s right, I was not exactly roughing it. Soon after dinner, I curled up in my new two-person tent and quickly fell asleep.

Most weekends closely mimic each other: drinking a lot of wine, playing on the computers, eating lots of food. However, this past weekend was pleasantly eventful. On Saturday night, I met some friends in Windsor, a small suburb on the way to the Blue Mountains. After a stunning dinner of fish curry with numerous sides, I drove into Richmond to watch a local theatre guild’s production, A Dark Winter Night. Having been spoiled by theatre since childhood, I still enjoyed the performance. It was humble but entertaining. They even served free coffee and biscuits at intermission!

The laptop had 1 GB of memory and ran Windows Vista. I heard a memorable quote today: “I think Vista plus Office equals Monster.” That was followed by: “I just clicked the exsomething.exe with the somethingelse.exe and hit end task. Now my desktop went black.”

I had a mere 12 minutes until my laptop, running Ubuntu 7.10, finished upgrading to the newest release, so it seemed like the perfect time to share a few updates from my life. The last few weeks have been chaotic, to say the least. I found my own place at last! I am now in Pendle Hills. The commute to work isn’t much different, and taking the bus may even be a little faster. Living in a house again, rather than an apartment, is nice. I am quickly warming to the idea and generally enjoying the house.

This is a fairly inconsequential entry, but I found the incident amusing. I assembled my external drive enclosure this morning and noticed a bug crawling around inside it; I hadn’t used the enclosure in a while. I decided not to interrupt what I was doing to remove it, so I closed the enclosure and hoped for the best. About an hour later, while moving files from my laptop onto the drive, I heard a dreadful “blugrrrrrrrrrrrr.” I looked over and said, “Oh no!” For a few seconds, I thought the hard drive was failing. Then I realised the bug had tried to crawl out through the little fan.