DSGamer Down Under (Australia) and back

Happens to all of us sometimes :). Japan is like that too round June/July.

Japan is surprisingly horrendous in summer. I was in Takatsuki a few years ago and the midsummer period was equivalent to the worst tropical north Queensland days, except with a lot more concrete to radiate the heat back up at you. 36C and 90% humidity for weeks on end was not what I signed up for :p

It's 86% humidity in Sydney today, 81 degrees F (I can't do the conversion yet).

I think that's about 30C DS, which is on the slightly lower end of average this time of year for Sydney. The humidity more than makes up for it though

Yeah it's a pretty sticky, unpleasant day. Might get storms through later that may or may not make it better.

It's been a weird summer in that it's either been really really hot, or raining. Nott a lot of in between.

Normally this time of year we get 30ish and a lot of sunshine. Had a lot of days creep up into the 40s though (which is bullsh*t hot and the point where I stop functioning properly!)

Goo wrote:

Normally this time of year we get 30ish and a lot of sunshine. Had a lot of days creep up into the 40s though (which is bullsh*t hot and the point where I stop functioning properly!)

Basically. I'm taking it super easy so I don't die of a heat stroke. I want to die of an exotic animal bite, as is the norm here.

Not sure how much of this I'm going to play here, but I got a pretty good connection.

I start work tomorrow. I'm starting to get nervous. I hope my brain doesn't betray me.

DSGamer wrote:

I start work tomorrow. I'm starting to get nervous. I hope my brain doesn't betray me.

Go DS go! Go DS go!

DSGamer wrote:

I start work tomorrow. I'm starting to get nervous. I hope my brain doesn't betray me.

Best day to start. EVERYONE in the office will be sporting a Post Australia Day Hangover. The fact that you'll be there in the office will put you ahead of about half the regular people (even if they're in their chairs, some will still be *absent*).

Best of luck mate, and remember, enjoy it!

So how did it go? Or did everyone call in 'sick' lol?

No updates for a while - haven't been eaten by dropbears I hope?

Sonicator wrote:

No updates for a while - haven't been eaten by dropbears I hope?

No. I have been really depressed lately and in a bit of a holding pattern due to work. The job I took might not be doing the kind of work I thought I was going to be doing. So last weekend I was in a huge funk. That's over in the depression thread.

Things are still great here otherwise. The people are great, the food is great. We are only two weeks in and I am still recovering from surgery, so my ability to do much adventuring is still limited, but we're still exploring the city and getting to know it. I'm starting to look at meetups and what I might like to do to make friends here. I think that might be tough. Aussies are really nice so far, but when you are starting with zero friends and aren't inherently social that's daunting.

I wear my backpack to work daily, so that hasn't been a problem. I'm dressing nicer, but outside of the heat I kind of like that, actually.

Otherwise we're waiting until I sort out whether or not I'm staying at this job to start planning trips to see more of the country or to parts of SE Asia.

One random thing. We went to an outdoor movie at the Royal Botanical Gardens on Sunday. It looks out on the harbour. It's really quite cool. There were things flying over or in front of the screen here and there and eventually I figured out they were flying foxes. That was pretty cool. Otherwise I haven't seen any Australian critters outside of preserves and zoos.

Flying foxes? That's a thing? sh*t, maybe drop bears are real too!

On a serious note, maybe try a board game meetup? Having something to do means not having to be directly social, if that makes sense.

Is music in the workplace a thing in Australia? We have a speaker here hooked up to Spotify, but near as I can tell it's just the personal tastes of one co-worker who also sings out loud. Is this something I just need to get used to or is this abnormal?

Depends on the workplace really. I work as a field service tech and usually if there is music on in an office it's just the radio or people listening through their own headphones while they work.

That sounds a little odd. I doubt anyone in my office would really want to be subjected to my music, nor would I really feel the need to inflict it (or my singing!) on them!

Goo wrote:

Depends on the workplace really. I work as a field service tech and usually if there is music on in an office it's just the radio or people listening through their own headphones while they work.

That sounds a little odd. I doubt anyone in my office would really want to be subjected to my music, nor would I really feel the need to inflict it (or my singing!) on them!

Okay. I just heard Queen's "Bicycle" about a dozen times. I wanted to make sure that wasn't something I should expect on the regular or that I couldn't ask if the person might not consider listening to that song with headphones.

haha.. no I don't think that's a normal situation at all.

Yeah.... Not something I've come across before. You're in development, yeah? You should be able to shut that sh*t down without too much worry if it is really getting to you, otherwise I've never worked anywhere that doesn't allow headphones as an informal 'do not disturb' sign. Check with your line manager what the office policy is of course, but if speakers are allowed I'd say anything goes :p

I've worked in a few places where there was no avoiding having the radio on, but none of those were offices, and it was standard (s****y godawful commercial) radio stations, not someone's weirdo playlist with the same song five times.

DSGamer wrote:
Goo wrote:

Depends on the workplace really. I work as a field service tech and usually if there is music on in an office it's just the radio or people listening through their own headphones while they work.

That sounds a little odd. I doubt anyone in my office would really want to be subjected to my music, nor would I really feel the need to inflict it (or my singing!) on them!

Okay. I just heard Queen's "Bicycle" about a dozen times. I wanted to make sure that wasn't something I should expect on the regular or that I couldn't ask if the person might not consider listening to that song with headphones.

You could look up Games Workshop stores? The WH40K guys will probably be into board games. There's also a City store downtown that sells a lot of board games (near cnr of Liverpool and Castlereagh St) and opposite that is a comic book store, Kings Comics. Might find similar people there?

That sounds hella weird. How many people are sharing the space?

Mr GT Chris wrote:

That sounds hella weird. How many people are sharing the space?

It depends. I've learned since starting that functionally the company is often like a consulting firm where frequently people spend time on customer premises. So that number can vary from 4 people in the office to 15 on a given day. More people work "out of" the office than in the office, though. It's probably just a company culture thing. Or maybe this individual and everyone is too polite to say they don't like it? I just wanted to make sure it wasn't stepping on some kind of typical office culture for me to say something at some point.

The bigger issue overall is that the work itself may not be what I thought it was going to be. I'm going to have that talk this morning before I'm at this job for much longer. If it's not software development I possibly need to move on.

What kind of work do you think they'll have you do? In consultancy work, basically what I was doing before I came here, you do have to sometimes be flexible based on the client site and needs. So, most of the time I was doing dev, but there was some admin, testing, support and preparing for contract bids in there as well. Of course, I eventually got fed up and quit so... But there were some good experiences along the way.

I thought it was API development. So far it looks like it might be lots of BSA type work at a client, lots of doco writing and planning, architecture, etc. followed by configuring API appliances. Maybe some DevOps. That's why I'm worried. Talking about this shortly and hoping I get straight answers. I want to make sure I stay doing proper software development, even if there's some consulting-like activities mixed in day to day.

Consultancies in Australia tend to be very fuzzy about role. If you joined and have a generic title like 'Consultant' or even 'API Consultant', its quite likely you'll be thrown on a bunch of different projects under different capacities until you settle in to a longer engagement. It's weird, since it doesn't seem to matter an awful lot what you entered as... I know quite a few people across a number of outfits and most of the devs end up doing a lot of A) architecture & design B) functional & performance test automation or increasingly, C) devops work. It's a constant source of frustration since the muscles they really want to exercise slowly start atrophying but they don't get enough consecutive exposure to become true masters of any other domain either. The flip side is that the money can be pretty damn good, so I see a lot of people stay in it to build a nest egg, then go solo once they've built up a sufficient network of contacts.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

I've worked in a few places where there was no avoiding having the radio on, but none of those were offices, and it was standard (s****y godawful commercial) radio stations, not someone's weirdo playlist with the same song five times.

This may mean little to a Mexican but when I worked at Compaq there was a standoff between the people who wanted to listen to 2DayFM and the people who wanted to listen to JJJ. This of course meant we had to listen to bloody MMM all day.

Sydneysiders know what I'm talking about.

Sounds like Hell to me. Pretty much all radio here drives me nuts.

Bfgp wrote:

You could look up Games Workshop stores? The WH40K guys will probably be into board games. There's also a City store downtown that sells a lot of board games (near cnr of Liverpool and Castlereagh St) and opposite that is a comic book store, Kings Comics. Might find similar people there?

That was one of my thoughts. Definitely. I didn't have that time to think about that with putting the house together, purchasing cool / nicer clothes, etc. Now I have time to think about that stuff. I'm going to a tech meetup tonight. I'll probably try and find a place to find board gamers, etc. next week. Thanks for the specifics.

Maq wrote:
Mermaidpirate wrote:

I've worked in a few places where there was no avoiding having the radio on, but none of those were offices, and it was standard (s****y godawful commercial) radio stations, not someone's weirdo playlist with the same song five times.

This may mean little to a Mexican but when I worked at Compaq there was a standoff between the people who wanted to listen to 2DayFM and the people who wanted to listen to JJJ. This of course meant we had to listen to bloody MMM all day.

Sydneysiders know what I'm talking about.

Thankfully it turns out it's not an everyday thing. It's the whim of one person and somehow everyone else just puts up with it. Odd. She's not been in the office the past 3 days and it's been quiet here. I'm still not sure if the job is for me, day to day, but we'll see.

DC Malleus wrote:

Consultancies in Australia tend to be very fuzzy about role. If you joined and have a generic title like 'Consultant' or even 'API Consultant', its quite likely you'll be thrown on a bunch of different projects under different capacities until you settle in to a longer engagement. It's weird, since it doesn't seem to matter an awful lot what you entered as... I know quite a few people across a number of outfits and most of the devs end up doing a lot of A) architecture & design B) functional & performance test automation or increasingly, C) devops work. It's a constant source of frustration since the muscles they really want to exercise slowly start atrophying but they don't get enough consecutive exposure to become true masters of any other domain either. The flip side is that the money can be pretty damn good, so I see a lot of people stay in it to build a nest egg, then go solo once they've built up a sufficient network of contacts.

That's kind of where I sit. Sydney is an interesting tech market. There isn't as much "product" development that I'm seeing. Or maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. But there's a lot of infrastructure and "glue" jobs like DevOps, etc. I want to still do proper development and I'm not certain that's in the cards for me where I'm at. It's not in the cards for me right off. We talked about it yesterday and it might be a month or two out before that work begins in earnest. I'm not sure what to do with that information. I want to be productive right now, knocking out problems, fixing stuff, etc.