Category: Places

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Within comments that arose in the last Blog Party (see previous posting) a little cultural edification:

Tim Tams are a sweet that the Australians seem to universally love, at least from my understanding. I found an excellent write up that says “They’re a sexy mass-market product, available at supermarkets, service stations, convenience stores and corner shops nationwide.”

I’ve not had the privilege of having a Tim Tam — yet — but I have had the next item, Vegemite. What is vegemite? Well, I don’t know. Not sure I want to know, but I do know it’s healthy.

Vegemite is an acquired taste. You can acquire this taste quickly by laying some out on bread with butter, licking your finger, inserting said finger into electrical outlet, and eating the vegemite smeared bread while enjoying the tickling charge of the electrical current. There’s a fun looking site devoted to the stuff.

I jokingly mentioned Foster’s in the comment list, but EVERYONE knows that Australians never drink Foster’s, they leave it for the tourists. I think one of the more colorful descriptions was “piss water”? Is that it? I’ve had Foster’s. I’ve tried muddy water, too, when I was child. The water had more flavor … and more roughage, too. Foster’s web site.

Now, any readers from Oz (Jonathon, Allan, and Garth) you be sure to correct me if I’m mistaken with any of this.

And that leads us to a new song in BurningBird’s repository — the Vegemite song!

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Speaking of affordable living, did you know that the American dollar is worth 1.92 Australian dollars at today’s exchange rate? So, if you have an income from the US and lived in Australia, you could indulge in mighty high living.

What do you think, Australia — would you like more yanks in your neighborhood?

Of course, there’s a few hitches along the way. First, Australia has one of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. If you read the Sydney Morning Herald, it frequently has stories about the refuge problem in Australia, including this one about refuge children in today’s edition.

For some reason, technology people are particularly interested in moving to Australia. I know I was seriously considering it – until I found out how difficult it is for people to move there, especially in these troubled financial times. If you’re interested, I’ll point you to web sites with information on the topic.

I wonder if techies want to go to Australia because we have this impression that the country is the last frontier, the land of the truly free, where any Joey or Jenny can carve their own niche without government intervention. Wake up, Babees! As you’ll read at Jonathon’s weblog as well as this opinion piece about South Australia’s censorship bill and the impact on P2P technologies I did for O’Reilly Network, Australian has some of the most restrictive laws on acceptable Internet content.

Still, there are all those people with them sexy Australian accents…. growrrrrr!

Update: Thanks to Zem for clarification and additional information on censorship, and to Jonathon on the issue of immigration not being the same as a difficult boat people situation.

Ev has posted a lovely picture of San Francisco.

The pier is about a 10 minute walk from my place.

Yeah, I like San Francisco, too. I love the Bay.