Five Minutes

As Western Australian readers will likely already know, the Guildford Hotel burned down last night. It’s quite upsetting on a number of levels — as anyone who’s lived in the north-east of Perth for any length of time will attest, the Guildford was a major landmark in the area and was, along with Alfred’s Kitchen, the night-time heart of the town of Guildford.

Beyond that significance, on a more personal level it hits home because my father has been working at the Guildford Hotel for the last couple of months. Fortunately, the owners of the Guildford own a number of other businesses around Perth, and nobody’s lost their jobs due to this. Still, having talked to Dad about the plans for the hotel and what was in the works, it must be incredibly frustrating for them to have to go back to square one — and that’s in the best case scenario where the façade can be saved, which is hardly guaranteed at the moment.

Tonight I went out to Guildford after work to see it for myself. The really surprising part is the loss of the bell tower — it changes the entire James Street skyline, and not in a good way. I’ve popped a few photos up on Flickr, and linked a couple below that show some of the aftermath. Dad tells me that the inside, bar the bottle shop at the back, is just a mess of twisted building material and rubble.

For comparison, Dad’s been nice enough to let me reproduce a couple of photos he took a few weeks back as part of an application for a heritage grant for improvements to the façade and the interior. Below, the Guildford as I’d prefer to remember her and as I hope to see her again.

At least I got to eat some pea and ham soup at Alfred’s. I’ll be really upset if anything ever happens to that.

Seen on the GNU home page…

I promise this won’t turn into a photo-blog (or at least if it does, I’ll set up a fresh blog for that so it’s not picked up on any planets), but this caught my eye (and my mind’s desire to play with my Nikon D60 and its 55-200 mm lens) while looking out the window about half an hour ago…

I’ve been rather frustrated with my camera (an old Pentax point and shoot) for a while. It’s not that it’s a bad camera, but the lack of manual control over things has been irking me after spending a couple of years playing with increasingly nifty video cameras at uni. So I resolved that, once I had the money, I’d be upgrading to a digital SLR.

Well, I had the money yesterday, so I exchanged it for this:

Specifically, a Nikon D60, which is one of their entry-level DSLRs, along with 18-55 and 55-200 mm lenses. Even after a brief play with it, I wish I’d done this a year or two ago.

Should be good for my upcoming trip to Latvia and parts beyond in July. More details on that soon. You know, whenever we figure out where the hell we’re actually going. Current candidates include Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Should be fun.

For the record, that’s not my bear. I was involved in the tie situation, however.

It’s a little difficult to believe that I haven’t blogged since the end of January. I haven’t just lost the habit, I’ve buried it in a secret location in the Gobi that only male-line descendants of Chinggis Khaan can find. So, rather than bore people who are still reading and haven’t just hit j or k already in Google Reader (depending on their reading habits — I’m a ker myself), I shall instead rapidly summarise the last six weeks.

I got a real, paying job, which I start on Monday. It’s a Perl <insert inarticulate grumble here> programming role (people in Perth probably already know who it’s with just based on that). I’ll likely post more details on that when I figure out what it’s really all about. For now, it just feels strange to be going back to full-time work after 54 weeks out of the saddle.

After dithering on the subject, I did end up signing up for a Graduate Certificate in film stuff. I only have time to do one unit a semester, but that’s enough to keep the creative juices going. I hope. First project: a music video, due in about three weeks, give or take. Now I just have to resist the urge to do everything in stop motion.

Frustratingly, not only am I still not allowed to drive after my overly dramatic collapse in Melbourne in January — barrels of fun when you live in the sticks with wildly inadequate public transport — but I haven’t even had the required follow-up with a neurologist yet. (I have, however, had all the requisite tests, and everything has apparently come back normal. Yes, that means I now have scientific proof that I actually have a brain.) Most of the neurologists in Perth have, as a minimum, three month waiting lists even for private patients, and having found one who didn’t have such a long waiting list and who had a good reputation, he’s since cancelled my appointment six times. We’re going for number seven tomorrow, and if it doesn’t go ahead, it’s going to be mighty awkward mighty fast with my forthcoming work commitments to schedule another appointment — with him or anyone else.

Truthfully, given the difficulty I’ve had getting places since I got back from Melbourne (friends and family have been good, but there’s only so much you can ask), I’ve spent entirely too much time at home feeling sorry for myself in the last few weeks, and not enough time doing stuff. Including blogging. Really, it’s time to kick myself out of this funk. So, to summarise this self-indulgent post:

…because, hey, it beats the hell out of just watching TV all day.

Base image Mastermind Azrael taken by Kjirstin, and used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence.

A few people have asked about whether there’s a feed for Planet LCA 2008. The good news is that there is, and it’s at http://planet.linux.org.au/rss20-lca2008.xml. It just seems to have been a fairly well kept secret for some reason.

A number of people have asked, so I shall state for the record that I’m not dead. Nevertheless, I’m extremely grateful to everyone for the concern shown for me after I was taken ill yesterday, and particularly to the guys — Andrew and Brian (I think; if I’ve gotten your name wrong come find me during the conference and smack me, just not in the head) — who came with me to the hospital.

Fortunately, today’s been a much better day. Since I’d already spent the money on a ticket, I decided to go to the Big Day Out for a little while this afternoon. I got there just in time to see Regurgitator and left after seeing Arcade Fire, not wanting to push my luck too far. It’s the first time I’ve seen Arcade Fire live, and it was everything I could have hoped for and more. Against that, Flemington Racecourse was warm, very dusty, and almost totally devoid of shade. I’ll just make sure I’m back in Perth for the Claremont Showgrounds show next year.

Tomorrow: Miniconfs! No idea which one I’m going to yet, but it should be fun anyway.

There’s some fuller blog posts (and software releases) coming in the next few days (Shanghai’s awesome, but it’s been a pretty hectic fortnight here, hence my dropping almost completely off the grid), but I just had to share this screenshot, having been increasingly uncertain whether I’d passed my Internet and Java Programming exam after all:

For the record, I ended up with three distinctions and a high distinction for the semester, so I’m pretty happy with how things worked out. As for finally being done, I’m deliriously happy.

Stalkers Regular readers of this blog will know that I was supposed to be in Shanghai this afternoon to represent my university on a two-and-a-bit week cultural exchange trip. Unfortunately, I find myself sucking down some free Internet at Changi Airport in Singapore still, although I have a boarding pass in my hand for a flight leaving in a bit over an hour.

Long story short: I was sent out a paper ticket for the Malaysian Airlines legs of my trip from Singapore to Shanghai and return. For whatever reason, I never received said paper ticket, and laboured under the misapprehension that it was an e-ticket. Wackiness ensued when I came to check in this morning — although I had a confirmation number from Malaysian Airlines, they (understandably) wouldn’t let me on the flight without the expected paper ticket. It’s mostly my own fault for not re-reading the fine print on the itinerary more closely (it does say paper ticket

under the additional charges section at the end which, frankly, I ignored when I first read it, since I figured it was just taxes — that is the only place it’s mentioned, though), but it does leave a slight lingering sense of general irritation. (Certainly not at Malaysian Airlines or Expedia, though, who both pulled out the stops to make sure I got to Shanghai as quickly as possible. This isn’t like my infamous missed flight in Beijing, which I maintain was Air China’s fault to this day.)

Anyway, once the rescheduled flights were sorted out this morning, I ended up with several hours to kill in Singapore. I decided to hop down to the Hive Backpackers, which is where I’m staying on the way back, and managed to secure a single room for the afternoon to get a bit of sleep courtesy of the helpful staff there. They then excelled themselves by giving me some tips on good places to try in Little India for dinner, which resulted in my enjoying an excellent rogan josh.

Random notes before I go back towards my departure gate:

• I saw a guy on a Segway this morning here at the airport. Yes, really. He didn’t appear to be doing it for any work-related reason, either.
• Starbucks hasn’t improved.
• Bus drivers + torrential rain + overflowing stormwater drains + crosswalks = drenched jeans. I’m not sure they’ll be dry when I get to Shanghai tomorrow morning.
• I’m really dreading my next phone bill. The roaming charges are going to be enormous.
• Two nights of red-eyes in a row split by only about four or five hours of sleep isn’t going to do a lot for my ability to be coherent tomorrow for the first day of the study trip programme. It’s a full day, too — I might have to see if I can beg out of the acrobatics show tomorrow evening to catch up on my sleep.
• The free Internet access here at Changi is pretty sweet, particularly with the array of laptop stations available with Ethernet cables and power points.

Now, off to Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai! Again!