Category: Uncategorized

Wowsers, I think I just had the hugest weekend in a while – my first real weekend in the United States. I’m going to have to break it into several posts I think. I made it into work this morning, so that’s a good start I guess.

I thought Adelaide drivers were supposed to be bad! Things I’ve noticed:

1. The indicator is just a novelty item and rarely gets used.
2. If a person driving in an adjacent lane notices that their vehicle will fit in the gap between you and the car in front of you, then they’ll take that gap. Refer to (1).
3. There is no such thing as a safe distance between cars. If you can count “1001, 1002” you’re too far away from the car in front of you. Refer to (2).
4. Don’t expect anyone to safely let you in even if you have your indicator on. You’ll have to barge your way in. Refer to (2)
5. Stop signs are red and octagon shaped. That’s about all people notice about them though.
   

Then there are some other things I’ve noticed – like the number of crashes between my residence and work (a 5 minute drive). I’ve seen the result of three crashes so far, and the one this morning was a doozie. It looked like an SUV had rolled a couple of times and was lying on its side – and that was in a 45mph zone!

Also, the location of places is given as the intersection of streets, not actual street numbers. This is probably better than using street numbers as you rarely see street numbers anywhere.

I nearly made a fool of myself on my first day of driving because I was going to tell someone their brake lights weren’t working properly. Then I realised a lot of cars had the same problem. Then I realised the brake lights over here doubled as indicator lights in a lot of car models. But then again, I dont’ see this very often – refer to (1) above.

Especially if I want to spend a couple of days in Miami, I’ve been informed. Ok, so learning Spanish is probably not essential, but it would probably help to know a bit more than just “Yo quiero taco bell”.

I met a guy today who works here, Omar, who is in a band called “Santos Renuentes”. If you go to their website you’ll see pics of the whole band. I’ve listened to a couple of their tracks and it really can be best described as Spanish alternative rock. There are a couple of links to their tracks on their website, and it sounds like really cool stuff. Apart from being the bass player of the band, Omar does the mixing too. That then got us to discussing all things Reason, Cubase, Logic and VST plugins. He is also involved in a trip-hop band (think music that sounds like Morcheeba). Actually, I just had a quick look at the Morcheeba site – they actually mention the Adelaide show that got cancelled just over a year ago. This is what they had to say:

Morcheeba would like to apologise for having to cancel their show in Adelaide on the 12th April. All other shows are 100% confirmed. They look forward to seeing you all there.

“Much apologies to those in Adelaide for the cancelled show. We hope to be back as we LOVE it there.” Ross Godfrey

Well, that’s just weird. I’ve still got the four tickets that myself and a few other slightly disappointed fans had for the night.

Anyways, I’m going to see if I can make it to the Santos Renuentes performance at Tobacco Road in Miami next week. Here’s hoping 🙂

One thing I’m missing the most is my guitar. I really, really hope it arrives soon – I’ve got a funny feeling that it may have arrived today, hopefully with the rest of my luggage. That also reminds me that I have a list of things to buy whilst I’m over here:

Kawai ES-3 Digital Piano
Nikon D-70 Digital SLR camera
iPod 40GB rev 4

I think after purchasing all that I’ll be pretty satisfied.

It’s funny how some things just don’t happen sometimes. Even though there were lots of delays in getting to the US, there still isn’t a computer ready for me and I’ve had to use another computer whose owner is currently on holidays. Of course, this computer doesn’t have any of the tools I need to do my work, but oh well.

I had lunch today with some American guys plus a couple of Aussie blokes at pizza place. The waitress we had was pretty darn friendly, and the service was so good I could see why the American guys always went there (no, this wasn’t a topless pizza place in case you were wondering). Everyone was ordering pizzas with toppings I haven’t really seen before, for example, pizzas with sausages on top (and I mean full sausages just laying on the pizza base. WTF?) One of my Aussie workmates tried ordering a ham and pineapple pizza but they didn’t have any pineapple. I went for my normal Margarita – except the waitress didn’t know what a Margarita pizza was. I told her tomatoes with basil on top. The American guys sitting with us looked at me a bit weirdly, although I must say that one guy there knew what I was on about. I got back a pizza that had ham and basil instead. The waitress said “that’s not what you ordered, is it?” I shook my head and she got me another one, this time with the correct toppings. I ate both of them anyway, and it only ended up costing me a few bucks (I had 2 large cokes as well).

Next the American guys started talking about what was concerning them in the world. First there was the issue of many devices being “melded” into a single device. Consider the mobile phone for example – once only used as a communications device it can now be used as a PDA and pretty soon it will be your music device as well. What happens to the companies that used to produce the other products? I guess the most limiting factor with mobile phones is their small screen size. In the future there will probably be some technology that enables the “screen” to be beamed directly to the brain anyway, so you won’t actually need a screen at all. Hmmm…

The other thing the guys talked about was the rising superpower China, whose economy is absolutely skyrocketing. They were concerned that with Chinese people now starting to buy and use cars more that the world’s oil reserves would be even more punished. Add to that the technological capabilities that China may develop over the US in the future. I would expect the US Government would be seeking to make some treaties with China in the near future… this may have started already, I don’t really know. I haven’t done any research on it yet.

I really hope the rest of my stuff arrived today. This included my guitar and my computer which has all my music on it. I learned that my apartment has a cable internet connection. Booya!