What time is it?

OK, so many of you have recently "fallen back" and changed most of your clocks. What does that do to the tricky question of 'What time is it?' once again.

Here's a little visual aid.



It works on the other side of the day as well. When it is 11am here in Hobart, it is 7pm in New York.

Hobart is always ahead. New York is always behind.

It is Sunday night here. It is Sunday morning in New York.

We have to go to sleep in our night time not knowing what the special prosecutor says in a news conference while we're snoring earlier in NY's day. By the time we wake up, it's old news for the folks in NY already. Even though we are ahead in the time zone. No matter. It's still good news. What time is it? It is time for some truth.

Any questions?

Update: Tasmania 'sprang ahead' earlier than the rest of Australia, as you may remember from a previous post. This world time zones map is once again correct, now that the mainland has sync'd up with Tasmania.

New pictures in the bin

There's a new slide show on the .mac site. Pictures from the Royal Hobart Show. Let me know if you need the password.

And, its about time for more signs, don't ya s'pose?

From the pond at the botanical gardens.


There's some big cannons out in front of the Defense building.


Here's what the sign in front of the cannon says.


Well, yeah! Of course. It'd be a shame someone was hurt by a gun.


On the other side of the spectrum, a car rear window sticker.

Rainbows and gum trees

Here's a picture from our balcony on a rainy day. The usual view of Mt. Wellington is hidden behind the mist and clouds.



A gum tree stands out directly under the rainbow. It is an interesting tree. It keeps its leaves and sheds its bark. The trunk and branches give the mountainside an appearance of light colored sticks interspersed throughout the greenery. The one that we see from our balcony is fun to watch throughout the course of the day. As the light changes, or the clouds gather in different configurations, the tree takes on a different emphasis. At sunset, the light comes from behind the tree and it becomes a tall silhouette in front of the high mountain.

Here's a mountainside with gum trees. This view is from our hike to the lookout over Wineglass Bay, on the northeast coast of Tasmania.



When we first got here, Owen showed me an elongated, shiney, maroon colored leaf from the gum tree. I nodded with some interest. "Oh, how cool, you found a leaf." But, now that I understand more about gum trees, I understand that he was showing me a very special leaf, one that I had likely never seen before in my life. As are so many things that we see here.

For example, have you ever seen hens and chickens as large as your head?

Australian visa information

If you're thinking of coming for a visit, you'll need to apply for a visa. Never too soon to start wading through this info to begin to collect your thoughts and questions. Our visas are due to expire in early August 2006, FYI. We are going into summer time now. In March, or thereabouts, the rainy and cold winter time will begin.

The immigration people have lots of rules.

One example that threw us for a loop was our attempt to stop over in New Zealand. The airport hot-shot check-in lad needed proof that we had a flight out of New Zealand before he would let us fly in. He could tell that we had Australian visas and they are good for travel in New Zealand as well. But, this lad had to see the ticket to guarantee that we would leave New Zealand. Well, we had E-tickets and hadn't packed the right paper proof of that ticket. He lamely tried to verify the ticket with Qantas, who lamely came back with no proof. You should have seen us scramble to find an internet connection with a printer in order to print out the confirmation numbers. Liz ended up being escorted into the VIP lounge by a very helpful, Air New Zealand gentleman, not-a-lad, and was able to convince the lad just minutes before our flight took off from L.A.

So, there's an example of checking all the details and fine print ahead of time.

I must say that the online application process was fairly easy to use and we got our visas within 4 - 6 weeks. When I say 'got our visas', don't think that we got a piece of paper, or a sticker for our passports. We got online confirmation and a number that could be verified at entry points.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Although, I'm no expert. This website has lots of info.

Big grin

A few boxes still outstanding, but this is a real treat. Forget what I said about not missing my stuff. I'm so glad to see my colored pencils, Saratoga cap, quilt, toothpicks from Japan, belts, shoes, music books, rainbow beach towel, cold medicines, and the like. They were delivered to Watkins Avenue today.

High resolution grandkids and goings on

Had a request for more kids and bigger pictures. So, here's a link. Email me if you'd like the password. It's the same as it's ever been. I appreciate the feedback!



Update on stuff: We got one box. Warm clothes for Liz, a Melitta coffee drip, and filters. I bought a music stand. And, for those of you who are thinking that this is mundane information, it is. I know. But, it's a day in the life of the Tasmaniacs, so I want to share it.

:-)

We've been busy taking care of the Schmidtlets for the past couple of weeks. I'll take the camera tomorrow and see if I can get some more photos. I am enjoying of walking Owen to school and spending the day with Anna. Some days we borrow the car and run some errands. Driving is getting easier.

Thursday we are all going to the Royal Hobart Show, which is a big fair sponsored by an agricultural association. Their website is nothing special, so I won't post a link. But, the event is a big deal here. It runs all weekend, and it's a holiday for most people. The kids are off from school, and the adults get the day off, too. Food, rides, animal exhibits, prizes, wood chopping competitions, and show bags. We will find out what show bags are when we get there, Until then, I have no idea.

More signs, as promised

Caught this one way back in Auckland. A very special flatmate wanted, indeed.



Another from Auckland. This was on a bus during the elections. Notice the spelling of enrol. But, also the many ways of registering.



And, another from New Zealand. There are similar road signs here in Australia, though, too. Give way = yield. So, not only do I have to concentrate on driving on the left side of the road. I also have to figure out what the signs really mean. And, when we're walking, we still aren't sure if the cars need to give us way or if they just have to give way to other cars.



Here's the very long name of that hike that we took in Swansea, up the east coast in Tasmania.


This is a park near our apartment in Battery Point. There are grafitti artists here, too. Errol Flynn was from Tasmania. He went to school across the street from where we live. There's a lot of info about him in the internet cafe where I used to connect. One of my favorite quotes: "Anyone who dies with more than $1.15 is a jerk."



Actress Merle Oberon was also from Tasmania. And, you'll see in the current news that the Princess of Denmark who recently had a baby, was from Hobart, too. The papers here followed her in the news throughout the pregnancy.

Stuff

I've had an interesting relationship with stuff over the past year, as many of you know. Many people have asked me about it with questions like “what is is like having to decide what to keep and what to let go?” and “how did you decide?” I'd like to muse about that for awhile.

My thoughts and reactions are not what I would have expected. Much of my life has been focused on collecting things. Not necessarily expensive things. I guess more often than not, I'd lean toward things that were unique or out of the ordinary. I quite enjoyed scaling back and discarding things that hadn't really been used much. We had a lot of space and that space collected a lot of stuff that was kept just in case it would be needed. My auto mechanic told me that his rule of thumb was: if you haven't used it in 5 years, face it, it's more trouble than it's worth.

There's the natural desire to protect one's things. I'd curiously read accounts of disasters wondering how I would cope if one day I'd lose everything in a fire, for example. The recent accounts of hurricanes and floods remind us that our stuff could be gone in a moment. After much consideration, I still have to say that the inventorying and decision making felt good. The letting go and the giving away and the recycling routinely resulted in a feeling of lightness and relief. Surely, I understand that I had the power to hold on to what I wanted, so there was not a sense of losing things without my control or permission. I still have my fiddle. My backpack. My bluejeans. I have on my keychain nowadays: my eigth grade school ring, my highschool senior ring, my grandmother's wedding ring. Oh, and some nailclippers and a whistle.

Then, during the same time frame, I became responsible for dealing with my mother's stuff. She was in the position of involuntarily giving up a life's worth of possessions. I was in the position of trying to choose what most meaningful things could fit into one room for a memory impaired person. Her last words to me as I left for Australia were “what about my clothes that were in the closet?”

All of her clothes, by the way, were with her or packed away for her, except for things that didn't fit her. So, in a sense, she'd lost things that she actually still had. She just can't remember that she has them.

One of the things that is striking about downsizing possessions is their perceived worth, or monetary value. Much of our stuff was sold for a song. Much of our stuff was given away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, many people told me to sell things on Ebay. You might think I'd radiate toward that sort of solution, but I just couldn't deal with learning one more thing or organizing one more logistic like shipping my stuff to other people. I was trying to work out details of shipping my stuff to me on the other side of the world, and didn't want to muddy up that water with facts about how to ship stuff to Ebayers. At this late date, we still have my old desk at a consignment shop, now down to 160 some bucks and unsold.

Rather than drive my gas sucking SUV into the Hudson River, I had to let it go for $3500. And, I'm happy that it went for that. Forget Kelly Blue Book estimates on those things.

I asked for a high price for my mandolin, unconsciously hoping that it wouldn't sell and I'd have to figure out how to get it to Tasmania. That being the case, I had to cut my own custom sized box for it. Still waiting.

Still waiting for 8 boxes of clothes, toiletries, shoes, some pictures, recordings of festival jams, music books, extra glasses, silly knick-knacks, political buttons, jewelry, belts.

Still waiting for 1 big box that Liz shipped, and the post office accepted, before we discovered there was a size limit.

Still waiting for a box that I shipped from Vancouver, jettisoning stuff that I thought I might use on the trip over. Art supplies, mini-disc recorder, tour books, some clothes.

Still waiting for the custom size box with a mandolin, sneakers, pillow, some odd bits of clothing as padding. But even though we're still waiting, and I'm wishing for some of the stuff in the boxes, I am quite satisfied with my day-to-day life here. My lack of stuff is not causing any real hardship.

Not still waiting for the box with our phone and router that I'd shipped insured and quickly. You may have already read my whine about how the customs folks trashed the router. The update is that Vonage revealed their fine print, and the phone probably can't be used in Australia after all. Argh. Catching the irony here? The only box that we go so far is the box with stuff we can't use.

Not waiting for the small crate of stuff in storage that we wanted to keep for the future. Photos, kitchenware, cookbooks, some clothes, bedding, keepsakes, vacuum cleaner. As I sit here trying to remember what's in that crate, I'm coming up short. But, I know we'll have some fun opening it up and seeing what we thought we couldn't leave behind.

Some of our furnishings and household goods we gave to Ben. It was a very good feeling to see my houseplants thriving in the large windows of his apartment. And, to know that he likes the odd pillar made from wood. And, just to know that we could pass stuff along just at the time he'd moved into a bigger apartment.

I liked being able to give some stuff away. My cousin left our house one day with a few bags of CD's. What the heck, we gave her the CD rack for her birthday present. Ben and Nat have some of the collection. My fiddler friends have some. Janet, in particular, wants to just hold on to some old timey CD's so that other folks can borrow them. And, someday she hopes to give them back to me.

I broke down and got some more socks today. Tired of wearing my 3 pairs for the past 2 months. There's a good chance I'll hit some second hand stores this week, too, and see if there's some clothes that I can wear while I wait for my 'real' clothes to get here. This philosophical discussion about stuff should not ignore the fact that I don't have to go to work. So, there's a whole category of stuff that I don't need. I love not having a car and all the associated car expenses. I do have work clothes coming in one of those boxes, but only so that I'll have them next time I have to jump back into the work force.

People ask “Is there anything that you miss?” The answer is tempered with the fact that we're finding Tasmania to be well worth what we had to do to get here. I suppose if it was the pits, I'd be moaning more. But, there's very little stuff that I actually miss or feel like I can't do without. I miss my music stand. I'll have to find another here. I miss a shelf full of seasonings, but it's kind of fun to collect new ones and to punt in the kitchen. I have a collection of seedlings out of the balcony. I don't miss my greenhouse.

I probably miss you, unless you're some stranger that just tripped into this blog.

Well, enough about me. What about your stuff? Drop me a line, eh?

Music updates

Last time I posted about my search for fiddle music here, I'd discovered a mixed / Irish / singing session at the New Sydney Hotel. There was a few old timey tunes played, so I suspected there'd be some interest. Turns out there's a regular old timey session every Thursday. A couple of guys, who picked up on my enthusiasm, invited me and they seemed interested to hear more. It's an open group called the Hobart Old Time Stringband, acronymized as the HOT Stringband.

In the meantime, I'd been down to the Salamanca Market and chatted with Bruce, the windchime maker and fiddler. I made a few CD's for him culled from my collection of jam tunes. He hadn't brought his fiddle that day, but played mine and we traded back and forth. He said he was interested to try more cross tuning and we agreed to meet up again. Last Saturday was too rainy, so I haven't been back yet.

Liz and I did go and check out the Lark Distillery. It had a very warm tavern atmosphere. Packed to overflowing with the Friday after work crowd. The band was playing western music, though, something akin to Hot Club of Cowtown. At that point I was fearful that what folks percieved as Appalachian old time was actually bluegrass or country/western. But, then I went to the HOT Stringband session and all was well and good.

The people in the HOT Stringband are a friendly, welcoming group. Usually, they would go round robin and choose old timey tunes, either Appalachian or Australian. But, that night, they were rehearsing for the upcoming Buttongrass Ball, so the session was more structured. I am very impressed by the organization. They have a leader, Fred, and he passes out sheet music and play lists. He started the group and runs fiddle/banjo/mando workshops, in part to bring in a steady stream of newcomers. I gave him my tunelist and phone number 'straight-away', as they say here. He called a few days later to ask if we could get together and jam, and he's interested to have me do a cross tuning workshop. We know a good number of tunes in common and I'm looking forward to many more sessions with these folks.

I've learned that Tasmania has a rich culture of old time music. It's been collected and documented. I found a book in the library, The Tasmanian Heritage Apple Shed Tune Book. It has some tunes that were played at the HOT Stringband session. The description says "Traditional Schottisches, Mazurkas, Polkas, Waltzes, Reels, Jigs and Novelty Tunes as played in rural Tasmania 1840 - 1960".

Those of you who are interested, the Trad and Now website has a wide variety of information about the Australian traditional music and dance scene.

Well, here's the short version of the music update... I met Keri at the HOT Stringband session. She's a compendium of music events in the area and beyond. Also, Cathy, who invited us to the Danceholics Unanimous night, that was actually going to be a party for her partner David, the dance caller. At that party, I met the people who collected and authored the Apple Shed collection and got invited to their Tasmanian Heritage sessions, where I can learn more traditional old time Tasmanian tunes. It was great fun meeting the local earthy crunchy dancey crowd. They would fit right in at the Dance Flurry. Liz had fun dancing and I played for the dance with a subset of the HOTStringband. Truth be told, afterward Keri suggested that I get together with them and practice some of the tunes. At first I worried that meant that I didn't always play the same notes as the band. But, after getting to know them better, I understand that they were just being welcoming. More often than not, I'm invited to join in.

Still waiting on our stuff in the mail. I hope to get some recording done and get some sound samples up on the .Mac folders.

Gotta stop for now. It's Saturday and I want to catch up with Bruce.

For the record, it is anti-clockwise

I have a movie. It's giving me a wicked time, trying to upload it to my iDisk, so you'll just have to take my word for it. The water rotates counterclockwise as it goes down the drains here.

Which reminds me, I saw a tee shirt the other day with a cute description.
"Tasmania: Down under down under"

Which adapter should I use?

Well, I've learned a bit about voltage and current, adapters and transformers. Still have more to learn before I can sound informed, though. I might have fried one router. Or, it was busted by customs breaking into it to look for who knows what. This was the router that was supposed to make our Albany phone number work in Hobart. So, I asked the voice over IP company, Vonage, to suggest an alternative router that would work in Australia. They sent me a canned response suggesting the very same router that customs had trashed, with a power supply that would not work in Australia. To be continued. I replied that it would be nice if they did more research. We'll see what they actually know about international connections. I'd still like to have a way for state-side folks to call us without having to call internationally.

If you are planning to visit. Leave your electronics home, or do enough homework to understand what modifications might be needed. I thought I could just plug things into an adapter, but that's not always the case.

Here's a link with some introductory advice.

Walking to West Hobart

To get to the Schmidt's, we walk about 30 minutes. It's a city walk, with traffic and many kids walking to the 4 or so schools that we pass along the way. They are in different uniforms, depending on the school. This first shot is going past the Defense center, which I think might be like an army reserve center.



There's a little downhill.



Then, there is a 3 block stretch that is quite a hike uphill.





Near St. Mary's College, it levels out and we're almost there. This is not really what we'd call a college. It's a high school campus, bustling with girls in green plaid jumpers and blazers. Owen's neighbor friends go to school here.



Here's the beginning of Watkins Avenue.



On a typical day, we'll walk Owen to his school about 5 blocks away. Then, return to the house to be entertained for the rest of the day. This is in the back yard.

Local newspaper

The Mercury is the local paper here. Good for flavor, national news, some international news, garage sales, and a daily Sudoku puzzle. Have you ever seen those? Liz is addicted. Be careful.

More apartment views

Liz is chatting on the phone at the dining room table, which is actually in the living room.



A small, but cleverly laid out, kitchen.



The toaster sits on the fridge. There are windows on 3 sides of the kitchen.



You can see some bay from the kitchen window.



And, Mt. Wellington in the other direction.



Our sparsely furnished living room. The couch faces out toward the balcony that I showed earlier here.



A milkcrate desk in the guest room.



No more plumbing shots. Oh, Liz says the water goes clockwise. :-)

Daylight saving time in TAS

Tasmania changes their clocks ahead earlier than the rest of Australia.

Interestingly, this world clock will be wrong until the mainland time zone with Melbourne 'springs ahead'.

This clock is right.

Stay tuned, because we'll have another discussion when the US "falls back".

Cheap phone rates

Hey, if you're interested, here's a link to info about cheap calls to Australia.