I was fortunate to spend a few days in New York City for work last week. New York City in springtime has to be one of my favorite places: wow.
new york, new york
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Author Archives: Al
sri lanka
Things I loved about Sri Lanka
- Seeing elephants bath in the river whilst having lunch
- Delicious food
- Fantastic tea selection (to buy)
- Widespread wifi (albeit a bit unreliable)
- Red bananas
Things I didn’t like about Sri Lanka
- Tea served
- Roads and traffic (averaging 20 km/h)
- Being seen as nothing but money – pressured to buy gems/herbs/tea etc
r.i.p. dj ajax
I’ve always admired all of DJ Ajax’s stuff, especially his Bang Gang DJs stuff (like the Light Sound Dance Grey Disc). I was saddened to read this tonight:
“DJ Ajax was crossing a road in Parkville, an inner-Melbourne suburb, in the early hours of 28 February 2013 when he was hit by a truck and died at the scene.”
RIP dude.
the young ones
Often when I leave for work in the morning, Little Bear, now 15 months old, will cry for me not to leave.
It breaks my heart, but at the same time I love how close we have become in such a short time.
One thing I’ll never regret doing is taking a couple of months off when each of my kids were born to bond with them. I’ve not yet met another dad who has done this: either they think it’s pointless (‘they just sleep’) or have a large mortgage and can’t afford time off. But for me, it’s the best thing I have ever done.
Early infanthood and childhood is such an amazing time, but so critical in that you need to get it right otherwise it’ll have lifeline effects on your kids. That’s why I am continually amazed how modern society outsources raising of our babies to random strangers in childcare centers. I guess that’s what large household debt does to people.
Every day I am grateful that we have this amazing time with our two sons and no debt. We are also very excited to be expecting a third child in July.
a consise history of my life
2012: Organised a work related conference in Austin, Texas in March which resulted in a falling out with a friend of many years. Struggled with work most of the year but came out okay in the end. Dabbled in old school hifi to return to more modern compact JBL speakers. Current succulent and cacti collection stands at 100 pots.
2011: Moved into a bigger apartment in anticipation of large family size (same street, same suburb). Traveled to San Francisco for work with Kitty & Junior Pixels. Little bear was born late in the year, and shortly after his birth, whilst still on leave, I dislocated my patella (knee cap) resulting in knee surgery and the sudden realization I would die. Became a teetotaler.
2010: Took junior pixels for a holiday in Malaysia when he was six months old. Changed jobs after 3 years in previous position. Bought first Apple Mac in 6 years.
2009: Visited Austin, Texas for a conference (first visit to the USA) in January. In April, we spent 3 weeks in the USA visiting NYC, Vegas, SF and LA. My grandma died in September and soon after junior pixels entered the world and completely changed our life.
2008: Traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and KL with Kitty.
2007: Adjusted to living in Brisbane.Started my collection of succulents and cacti. Accepted my first permanent job in Brisbane.
2006: Moved to Brisbane from Canberra as sick of the cold and prefer to be closer to home. Started working as a contractor. Married Kitty after nearly 10 years of dating.
2005: Sold the Apple Mac due to reliability issues.
2004: Holidayed in Bangkok and Kho Samet.
2003: Moved to Canberra from the Gold Coast to start graduate jobs. Bought an Apple Mac before they were cool.
2002: Finished IT degree with excellent grades.
2001: Drank way too much alcohol, but got increasingly good grades. Got my first tattoo (an @ on my right hand wrist).
2000: Started IT degree at Griffith University on the Gold Coast much to the delight of my parents. Met a good group of study friends.
1999: Much to the dismay of parents, took a year off study to work in Cafes on the Gold Coast then spent three months in the UK and Thailand backpacking with Kitty.
1998: Finished high school on the Gold Coast
1997: Shot up in height, and started dating Kitty and eventually fell in love with her.
1994-1996: Struggled at a new private high school as the poor, fat kid with acne.
1992-1993: Family moved from Taree, NSW to the Gold Coast in Queensland due to traumatic shit, lack of options for us in Taree, and my Dad being offered a voluntary redundancy by the NSW Government. Skipped a grade when starting at a new public school, which I quite enjoyed.
1983-1992: Grew up in Taree, NSW with my family. Met my first ‘best friend’ when I was two (who I still speak to today). Went to a public primary school. Had some traumatic shit happen which took years to forget.
1982: Moved from Grafton to Taree, NSW for my Dad’s work.
1981: Born in Grafton, NSW, the city of Jacarandas. Lived in a housing commission house with my parents and three older brothers.
the paradox of choice
I remember reading a book a few years ago called ‘The Paradox of Choice’:
Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy.Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.—quoted from Ch.5, The Paradox of Choice, 2004
I’ve been struggling with this lately. I try to avoid situations where there are too many choices. Here’s two examples:
The iTunes movie of the week is a fantastic idea as each week they have a hand picked movie rental for 99c which is pretty much guaranteed to be a good movie. I love not having to make a choice about what movie to watch, I just watch whatever they’ve chosen for me, for less than a dollar. Today I watched ‘Two Hands‘ (for some reason I had never seen it before) and a few weeks ago I watched ‘The Company Men‘: both were excellent films and even better in that I didn’t need to choose them.We’re headed to Sri Lanka next April for a family holiday. Rather than try to organize the whole trip by ourselves, I found a local tour operator on TripAdvisor who has organized a 10 day private tour of Sri Lanka. He has organized everything: transport, hotels, sights, meals. We get picked up at the airport and then dropped off there at the end. And it’s amazing that we don’t need to make a single decision about anything.
Businesses need to keep this paradox in mind when marketing goods and services. Too many choices can be a bad thing, somethings things are easier when you don’t need to make a decision about everything.
I think building a house would be the absolutely worse thing I can think of in this regard. Having to make decisions about trivial things (taps, sinks, vanities) would drive me insane. No thanks, I’ll keep things simple and take what’s given to me.
put down your camera
I was recently looking at some of the amazing images of the Endeavour’s 19km road tip though Los Angeles, and like when anything amazing like this happens, it seems that people are often too busy taking photos of it to actually enjoy it.
I think that last picture is a perfect reflection of the life many of us lead. Always behind cameras/iPhones/iPads, giving up a current experience for a future reminiscence, not realizing how many professional photographers will take much better photos than you can and they will be freely available on the web for anyone to see at any time.
It isn’t an isolated occurrence, take the Queen’s visit to the races in England last year.
Seriously? Stop living behind a 3 inch screen. As a Jason Mraz concert goer recently wrote:
The Mrs. is a HUGE Jason Mraz fan (I’m like “meh”, but whatever). We got 3rd row center seats to his show last night. Throughout the whole show just about EVERYONE around us was holding up their cameras, ipads, whatever for the ENTIRE FUCKING show.
The funny thing is, he has a very large band spread out all over the stage (bass, drums, horn section, violinist, bongos), so all these idiots missed everything that was going on around the stage just to hold their stuff up in the air so they could show their friends how cool they were, not to mention potentially blocking the view of the people behind them. I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes…I wanted to yell, “PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE, YOU’RE MISSING A GREAT SHOW, DUMBASS!”
rules for travel
“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.”
I’ve been thinking about travel a lot lately. In the past I have made a big mistake of returning to places overseas I’ve already been to, and inevitably they were never as good as the first time. So, I’m proposing some new rules for travel:
- I will never return to an overseas destination that I’ve already been to before. It will never be the same so I should go somewhere else!
- I will never travel to an overseas destination to relax on a beach. We have some of the best, and cleanest, beaches in the world on the east coast of Australia and it feels kinda criminal to fly across the world when we can drive 50 minutes in the car to experience the same thing.
- I will never travel to an overseas destination to do ‘cheap’ shopping: that’s what the Internet is for.
- I will seek an experience overseas that I won’t forget and can’t replicate at home: I don’t really want to just surf the net or watch movies in a hotel room on the other side of the world.
- I will do it for the experience rather than the memories. I once read an article about how we’d all be better off it we treated a holiday as if our memory of it would be erased when it was over. That way we’d actually experience it, rather than just try to accumulate memories of it for later.
- I will turn off the work email on my phone: and not check twitter either.
- I will eat local: no food like you get at home, or fast food like McDonalds either.
- I will focus on enjoying the travel rather than taking photos of it.
“Didn’t have a camera by my side this time
Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes
Today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame
Maybe you should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
It brought me back to life”
~ John Mayer: ’3×5′
Update: 8 October 2012
I probably should clarify: traveling domestically to the same place, eg. Byron Bay, to relax is good, and preferable. Traveling overseas for adventures should be to different places and traveling overseas for relaxation is not on.
