Saorrento

The end is nigh. No I am not about to start preaching of revelations and the second coming, for the truth of the matter is we probably won’t last that long. We are quickly accelerating into a world where we attempt to destroy atoms by colliding them against one another just to see what lays beneath, where addressing the issue of road safety, rather than making the highways safer they simply lower the speed limit. A world where unless you grow it yourself, chances are your corn cob has spliced jellyfish DNA in it, making it more frost resilient. A world where each and every year children develop an allergy to something new, last year was peanuts; 2010 is bananas.

As we approach the height of the technological frontier forged by the creative geniuses of our generation’s time such as Bill Gates etc, we’re slowly rattling apart. The world, bent on religious warfare, with extremists turning to terror to alter the status quo. Where religious hot topics such as abortion and euthanasia are looked at negatively; by religious law, humans do not have the right to destroy a life. What about creation? What’s going to happen when teleportation and cloning become the new thing; does a clone have a soul? When the teleporter breaks down the subjects body at the molecular level and reassembles them on the other side do the newly assembled bodies have a soul? Will the church redefine their doctrine on souls so we can all get back to happy hour in these SciFi times?

Having just recovered from the second worst financial crisis in modern history the governments are still spilling billions of dollars into preventing global warming. But is the world warming up? If so, are we directly responsible or is it part of a natural cycle. Earth has been through an ice age before, is mankind going to fight Mother Nature and try to prevent the next blaming it on ‘Global Warming?’. Are we polluting the earth? Yes! Lets start with that, lets reduce the carbon emissions, but to it to clean the environment, don’t be too surprised if the climate around the world continues to change.

If aliens landed tomorrow, what would your first reaction be? To scream? To pick up a weapon? If this is true, pity the fool, you have seen too many alien invasion films. Chances are that a life form intelligent enough to venture into space has the cultural understanding of ethics and morals and not be interested in Armageddon.

Too many approaches to ideas and not enough order has lead the world into the chaos that it is today. Will we straighten ourselves up in time, or will we be the fate of some of our own Hollywood creations to the likes of ‘Resident Evil’?

The swift stroke of the second hand past midnight on the 31st of December will bring to close the first decade of the new millennium. Looking back on this decade one could easily sum it up by ‘we survived’. The millennium bug, the latest of doomsday scenarios in the late 90’s didn’t turn out a single light bulb. Satan didn’t waltz through the streets of New York City Gabriel Byrne’s style (as portrayed in End of Days) in search of a bride, nor was time itself sucked through the heart of the TARDIS by the Master’s great design (the Doctor Who Movie), no, the sands of time simply slipped through the beginning of an even larger hourglass and a new millennia began.

December 31, 1999. 11.50PM:
Having just completed watching Final Destination and End of Days, my sister, along with our lifelong friends Clinton and Adrian began the countdown into the new millennium. Clinton and Adrian lived with their parents in Canning Vale; my Mum, Dad and sister made the trip up to Perth from Bunbury for the New Year celebration. We had a lot to celebrate, not only didn’t we all catch up nearly enough, perhaps once a year if we were lucky, Clinton had just completed his first year of upper-school (year 10), and I had successfully completed year 11, my first year at a new school, having moved from Esperance at the beginning of the year. My first year at Australind Senior High was a good one, I made many friends, some of which I recall meeting on the very first day have turned into some of the closest friends today. Well, by some I mean really mean one, but I do keep tabs on a few others every now and then.

As I reached toward the VCR to push in another cassette (the movie things we used before DVDs) my eye caught the LED time display, it was 11.55pm. Quickly we scurried around making sure our cups were full and the party poppers evenly distributed between the four of us. From 60 we started counting down, the momentum and excitement building up as we left the 50’s for the 40’s and then the 30’s. we counted down till about 25 where we were then flooded with ‘Happy New Year’ cheering and celebrations by our parents in the lounge down stairs – with that, we did a quick 10, 9 , 8, 7 , 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and joined in the celebration, toasting each other and popping our poppers; the big 2000 was upon us.

Since then nine New Year celebrations have gone by; none are remembered more clearly than the night of 1999 – just four mates celebrating together, no wild parties, girls or alcohol that I can recall. In fact perhaps it is because all the other new years’s since have involved copious amounts of alcohol that I simply cannot remember them? I can only recall a few; one camping at a Dam outside of Mandurah on the scarp – at midnight from our altitude we could clearly see the fireworks from Bunbury, Mandurah and Perth. Another on a farm, one at my rental in Eaton (which got quite messy) and a few more in Perth at various mate’s houses.

So at a glance, life after that night went a little like this; graduating class of 2000 from Australind SHS and enrolling into a four year Software Engineering course at Edith Cowan University in 2001. Entered a local website design competition, the result of which lead to more work and therefore the catalyist for launching my own business ‘Equinox Website and Graphic Design’ whilst still studying. By the end of 2002 I made purchase of my first NEW car, a metallic blue 2002 Kia Rio. In the years that followed the business grew and an appropriate renaming took place and the more generic titled ‘Equinox Studios’ was born in 2003 servicing not just websites, but other aspects of business, including IT support, stationary ie Letter heads, logos, business cards, magnets etc. In 2004 Equinox Studios came runner up in the Telstra small business awards. At around that same time I employed my then girlfriend of 2 years into the business to further expand the company into the Education department and development of a sports management system for sporting facilties to use to draw up fixtures for various sporting events. We took the prototype as far as Queensland. Later in 2005 we broadened our horizons with a trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Not too long after this, my grandfather had to give up his car, a 1989 Mitsubishi Magna Elite. Being one of my all time dream cars, I bought it off him, selling my Kia Rio. Dispite the 13 year age downgrade, the Magna had more electrical features than the Rio ever did, not to mention a bigger engine and cruise control.

April 2006 saw me relocate to Perth, to begin work for a R&D software development firm having graduated with a degree in Software Engineering the year before. Months into the relocation my 4 year relationship came to an end, not able to withstand the long distance, and with it the future of Equinox Studios slowly but surely faded away. I closed down the company in 2007.

I stayed single for almost the better side of a year, avoiding women, instead getting my social life back on track that had been suffering, along with having plenty of time to spare to take up any projects I saw fit. Around this time I decided a few changes were in order, so getting my priorities right, I got a new car, then a new girl. My second new car ever; fourth overall; a 2007 red Mitsubishi Lancer Limited Edition sedan. Breaking up due to different life interests (ultimately we had nothing substantial in common, not even a TV show) I once again found myself single in early-mid 2008, but in a far happier state than I was in the prior breakup. For one, I didn’t avoid women and quite happily enjoyed the fruits of a single man’s lifestyle.

But life wasn’t all fun and flirtish, drifting between girls and cars; 2007 brought forth its fair share of shattering wake-up calls. On the sunny Saturday, the 27th day of January at 2pm, my Nanna passed away. She was the last of my grandparents, outliving them for a few years. I was very proud/honored to be able to be there in her final moments and the days leading up to it. When she breathed her last sigh her nursing home room suddenly fell very still, impervious to the 12 or so people, sons and daughters, grandchildren and cousins that surrounded her as she left this mortal realm for the next. She, like all my other grandparents will be missed.

A few months on my mum phoned me one evening, crying over the phone as she told me she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, my life at that moment stopped. For that whole evening, silence filled my surroundings, blurring everything out other than the uneven rhythm of my beating heart. I remember vividly talking a shower, and scrubbing myself down as someone with OCD would, never feeling clean. I wasn’t anywhere ready to go on with life without my mother. That year had to be the hardest I had ever lived through, though what I was feeling would of been nothing compared to what Mum was having to endure, throughout the treatment. I only wish that I spent more time at her side, to comfort her. I thank God every day for her making it through such a terrible year, and for her ever improving health.

Time, being the healer of all things, I eventually found myself at the end of 2008 on a paintball skirmish field, arranged through Renee, the high school friend I stayed in touch with and her co-worker friend. On the 30th of December that co-worker friend and I met up at the Broken Hill pub and shared quite a few drinks getting to know each other. Flirting wildly across the table; discussing exotic travel ideas of the likes of Russia. The evening ended by what I could only describe as fireworks – the most passionate and wild goodnight kiss in the car park. That was my new year’s kiss, for the very next day she set off on a week’s vacation to Singapore.

2009 brought on even more travel, with three overseas trips carried out; 9 weeks of annual leave. The first of which being a couple of weeks in Vietnam, the next a few days in Singapore followed by a mammoth 6 week trip around the world, including Russia.

So from starting out as something of an entrepreneur, to owing a handful of cars, skiing in Melbourne, various relationship pitfalls, supporting my mother through her cancer treatment, to traveling around the world, being at my grandparents sides, watching as they all moved onto the next realm, a lot has happened, a lot of life experiences some good, others horrible, all of which shaping me into who I am today..

I started this decade with three grandparents, no debt, not much travel experience, having owned one car and lived in zero houses by myself, no business experience nor that of love and ended with no grandparents, a bit too much debt that i am currently rectifying, having owned 4 cars, lived in 5 houses outside of home, a fair amount of travel and business experience not to mention the affairs of the heart.

Just what will this next decade bring?

By night I keep myself occupied with travelling, seeing concerts or even sitting back with a bottle of Jacks philosophically reflecting on life. By day I am a software engineer, working for a R&D company developing software for driving rotary and laser engravers. I specialize in a wide variety of programming languages from the depths of the Windows API in C and C++ to the I don’t want to cause self harm way of C-Sharp (those who are familiar with both these lower and upper levels of programming will understand).

With each day innovatively programming and pushing through new barriers in my own programming experience, I like many others turn to the net in times of need, websites of the likes of msdn.microsoft.com/forums, codeproject.com and for more general terms Google.

Although some online research can easily span a great many hours, and possibly the occasional plea on a MSDN forum I feel compelled to give something back to the community, so Google bots, if you’re out there, please link this, it could save a great many people out there who want to ‘Associate filetypes programmatically for Windows 7, Vista and XP’. I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to find relevant information regarding this on the net, solutions not shrouded by DLLs, just a basic run of the mill C# solution that does what it says on the box. So here it goes:

This came about for the need to automatically associate files of a particular type in an installer I was developing for a software product. Here is the snippet related specifically to associating a filetype of your choosing.

Britney Spear’s Circus Tour made its Australian opening performance in Perth last Saturday. Being a fan of some of her more popular hits like Toxic, Womanizer, Gimme More, just to name a few, and the fact that I considered it somewhat historic to be a part of, my girlfriend and I went to the opening performance of Circus.

In addition to some Britney music and seeing the girl herself dance on stage, the initial promotional media many months earlier at the ticket sales launch led me to believe that this was going to be much more than your average concert. This was for all intensive purposes (or as far as you can go still being a pop concert) a CIRCUS with live acts and other forms of entertainment. With this in mind, and thinking back to the Lyrics of Britney’s Circus album I envisaged (as probably she also initially did) a performance more like a theatricality piece rather than a concert. Sure there would be music and dancing, but there would be also an underlying ‘dark circus’ theme to the performance, a theme which was somewhat reflected in her music videos of the Circus album. Unfortunately the Circus tour itself was nothing like this.

Along with the odd circus performance which did not particularly marry in with what Britney was doing, the preparations for the Circus event were very poor. As with every concert/show there is usually a supporting act. In this case DJ Havana took the stage and performed a fantastic mix of various popular artists. She had the stage for about 20 minutes. Usually, when a supporting act finishes, the stage curtains go down for perhaps 2 minutes while the main act gets ready on stage. In the case of the Circus tour, the curtain went down and a animated countdown was projected onto it ‘The Circus will start in 25 Minutes’. The reception of this notice was like a kick in the guts. Three hours had transpired from the time the doors initially opened to the time Britney actually made it to stage.

Other than the poor performance of her Circus Tour, the Australian press hit hard over Britney miming her songs in the show rather than singing them. I would really like nothing more than Australia and other countries around the world to get off their high-horse about this. Since her last performance it has been well known that Britney chooses to mime her songs, whether or not that is a good thing isn’t the issue, what is the issue is that we all knew to expect this in Circus. Yet there are still thousands of people who have complained that she mimed… Well Duh!! where have you people been?? Why expect any different?

Personally, I still enjoyed the show. I enjoyed the music and I enjoyed the performance (what I could see of it) but it definitely wasn’t worth the price many Australians including myself paid for it. For the price you would at least expect a flawless dance routine, a larger stage or more thought given to seating and view.

Britney, if performers like Pink can perform acrobatics in the air and still hold a note, you should give it a go too. The one song you did perform live was fantastic, you have a great voice, do yourself a favor, go back to basics, get rid of the performanc/dance routines and just SING. Sadly, this time around you left many Australians saying ‘Gimme More’!

Toxic:

Womanizer:

Six weeks, seven countries and twelve cities later, our tour to Russia the long way round has finally drawn to a close. It has been the most incredible experience and I am very glad to say there isn’t any one thing that stands out well beyond the others, there were so many magical moments of our trip: seeing snow and wild Elk in Golden Colorado and dining out with Jon and Julie who we both had a fantastic time with; the neon extravaganza of both Las Vegas and Times Square in New York City; the climb to the observation deck of the Empire State Building; seeing Phantom of the Opera on Broadway; my first rail trip in England going out to Bristol and the Eurostar voyage to Belgium; pub crawls and luxury dining in Belgium; hiking through the snow in St Petersburg to various World War II monuments; getting up close to Soviet and German war machines and other various relics of the Cold War at a number of Museum exhibits; travelling from St Petersburg to Moscow by second class rail, with snowy landscapes out the window; cruising down the Rhine river in Frankfurt past the many vineyards, medieval styled castles and villages. These are just a few of the highlights, simply put; ‘The Long Way to Russia’ has been an EPIC adventure!

What’s next? Well this trip has wet our appetites for so much more travel; I personally would love to see a great deal more of Colorado during the ski season as well as re-visit Frankfurt and spend time touring about Germany. Things like a Route 66 road trip in the United States, a month long stay in Germany and other Euro Road trips are just some of the ideas buzzing through my head for the near future.

Of course then there are also new exotic locations such as the likes of Egypt, Antarctica and Dubai which are pretty high up on the list of new places too. So if nothing else, WATCH THIS SPACE!

Our Russian experience has been incredible and happily concern free. Upon preparing for this trip, we did what many before us had done, we read numerous Travel blog entries of peoples experienced in Russia, visited the Trip Advisor website for the dos and don’ts and for the most part they all painted a similar picture, that Russia wasn’t going to be easy.

Various blogs warned of trouble with corrupt policemen, requesting bribes and falsifying reports. Our research also emphasized that non-Russian speaking people will struggle and that Moscow was very expensive to live in. Although up until our last day we were wary of the police and kept a separate stash of bribe money on us at all times, not once were we or anyone else around us stopped to have their credentials checked. For the most part, even in Moscow we felt quite safe. Though in neither place did we temp fate by lurking about on our own at night.

The Russian people we found were very polite and most spoke some level of English, easily enough to get by.

We were prepared, entering the former USSR with packets of Lays chips, printed translated phrases specifically if we got detained by law enforcement; we even brought into the country a 6 pack of toilet paper - all of which were never used.

Choose your time of year carefully
My advice for anyone wishing to travel to Russia; carefully consider what it is you want to see. We arrived in Russia for two weeks in early October, by then the general tourist rush was almost over which was fantastic, we had Russia to ourselves. On the down side, since the tourism at this time has generally started to wind down and winter not too far off a few of the popular monuments and park areas had begun to close for renovations. On the other hand though October is usually when the first snow is expected, and we were very lucky to experience St Petersburg in its white glory for a day.

Shopping in Moscow and St Petersburg
In addition, we both went to Russia under the impression that Moscow would be a lot more expensive than St Petersburg, and although this is true to an extent it doesn’t necessarily extend to souvenir shopping. In fact we discovered that general souvenir items, especially Soviet marked ones were a good couple of hundred Rubles cheaper in Moscow. Although a few hundred doesn’t seem like much, it does add up after a while and could be better spent on evening drinks!

Dive in and try the local foods and drinks
Although popular western foods like McDonalds and Pizza hut do exist in Russia and at pretty reasonable prices, don’t be afraid to try some of the local cuisine. After all you’re in another country, you may as well give everything a shot… including the Vodka, which I must say is of much higher quality than anywhere else I have drunk it.

Borche Soup, a popular local soup, from memory consisting of beetroot and cabbage is very delicious, and fantastic for the cold days you can expect in October. Don’t assume soft drinks are cheaper - it wasn’t uncommon to find a pint (500ml) of Russian beer to be cheaper than a 300ml bottle of Pepsi. If you eat like a local, food will be very cheap for you in both St Petersburg and Moscow.

Public Rest Rooms
Public rest rooms vary greatly; we always tried to go to ones either in shopping centers which may cost you 20 Rubles entry, or those of more international standards such as the likes of McDonalds. If you can afford to be picky when looking for a WC, look for the golden arches! A lot of the general public toilets don’t encourage flushing of used toilet paper, as a result the bins that the paper gets thrown into stinks out the facilities pretty quickly.

Be sure you also carry a small packet of tissues and a small 100ml bottle of hand wash gel as not all public toilets will have ample supplies of toilet paper or soap dispensers.

Public Transport
Public transport in Russia, specifically trains is rather cheap. We only went on the Metro in St Petersburg once doing about 5 stops on 20 Rubles. Moscow on the other hand, we lived on the metro since it was a necessary means of transport between our hotel and the city center. You can purchase 10, 20 and 50 pass tickets for the metro. Unlike other city systems like London and New York, Moscow does not have a concept of Zones, so for all intensive purposes, the entire metro system is Zone 1. Simply swipe on to enter the metro station and that is it. We found the 20 pass cards very useful, costing around 320 Rubles. The metro itself, although all stops are written in Cyrillic, the system is exceptionally well colour coded. I found it easier to use the Moscow Metro than I did using the London Underground!