Summer's arrived with a screeeech!

We've just had 3 hot days in a row to take us into June. The first two were over 30 and today just got up to 30 in the last couple of hours. The "feels like" index is up at 37, and was over 40 yesterday. It's humid here so the heat is worse than Canberra. Having said that, these days were about as hot as the hottest days Canberra throw at us. If this is as bad as it gets then we'll survive. I think we handle it better than most Canadians.

Also, it hasn't been cooling off overnight, so we've been using the air-conditioner unit in the bedroom. It's on now to give a little bit of relief. My office is in a converted primary school so it's not air-conditioned. We have a fan and that's it. It's a bit mean of the weather to suddenly start with hot weather just when I've started work.

Seriously, Monday's maximum was more than 10 above any max temperature we've had since we've been in Canada. We're told that last summer was a scorcher, with this sort of weather from the beginning of June through to mid August. Also, the winter was mild. It's not a great omen, so we live in hope that this is just an out-of-character early burst of summer.

My new job is good. I just had a long meeting with my boss this afternoon on my first work task. This is my third day and I'm already doing relevant work (using SPSS which I only opened for the first time ever on Monday), so that's pretty good. I thought I might have a bit of hard learning to do before I could be any use, not having formal qualifications as a statistician, but so far it's not that hard at all. I guess I know more than I thought I did!

A sunny smile to you all!

Indian Names

I was reading this comedy book by Paul Reiser which had a bit about names, as in choosing names for babies or pets or otherwise. He was making fun of the whole Native American mode of naming where you wait until someone is old enough for some defining event to happen and you name them after it, ie you name them by something that they did. The Kevin Costner movie "Dances With Wolves" taught us all about this. Reiser's book hypothesises how this would go in the Western world where the everyday things we do aren't anywhere near as romantic. "Oh, so do you remember that guy who was always yelling at the vegetables?" "Yeah I remember, Barks At Salad, I wonder how he's going?" And the kids end up getting called "Fell Off His Tricycle" or "Allergic To Nuts"

We were wondering what we'd get if we tried to think up Indian names for some of our friends. Some were easier than others. See if you can spot anyone you know (including maybe you)...

Small Kicking Cook
Collects Blue Things
Reads With Weights
Looks Like A Vegetarian
Runs Up Mountains
Dances With Machines
Belches From Cliffs
Reads Web Comics
Spins With Planets
Speaks In Tongues
Makes Wacky Music
Makes Cruisy Music
Fond Of Punnishment
Professional Naked Poet
Runs With Disc
Thinks About Fixing Stinky World
Plots World Domination

We're in there too, but it's hard to come up with Indian names for yourself, except for "I'm Me, Ain't I Great?" Maybe you can think of a better one for one or both of us - and get your sweet revenge all in one comment!
Bye

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This post was brought to you by Ben who likes word games of all sorts! :-)

Gee! Two!

I got my driver's licence! Yay! Took the test this morning. No hiccups. Lost like one mark for "incorrect steering" (read put my hand on the inside of the steering wheel when I backed out of the parking lot).

I went with a driving school this time. Boy it makes a difference when they can see you're with a driving instructor and using their car. The testers are so much nicer. (We went to a different test centre as well where the people are less frumpy.)

So this is a G2 licence which is like P plates in Australia. The main differences between the G2 licence and the G (full) licence are: I have to have exactly zero blood alcohol level on a G2; I pay higher insurance premiums; the test to get a G2 is easier, keeping to city streets and not highways.

Now we can see about getting a car. Just as well cos I start work on Monday. (Yes, later than what the other post said - they needed a police check which is due back Friday.)

In other news, we just said bon voyage to Jack Bauer and friends as the 5th season of 24 came to a close on Monday. We've got the end of the 2nd season of Lost on tonight, and then the final episode ever of Charmed on Friday. We also caught the final ever episode of the West Wing on Sunday a week ago so that was sad. So now there's bugger-all television on for the summer, just like back home when you get to December. I'm surprised I haven't seen ads for Judging Amy yet...

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This post proudly brought to you by

Bling Chickens (of the Ghetto)

Check out their new album "Bukkawk, yeah!" from BMG, and their July-August tour of the ghettos of the world.

The Settlers

It's been almost 5 months since we've been in Canada! In case you've forgotten what we look like, here's a photo of us now!



I really should shave. Forgi discourages me from shaving...

We were just playing Online Settlers of Catan. It's free! You can play against robots or real people. It uses a Javascript so you don't even have to download anything. Scott E sent us the link. We're hoping to set up a group game soon.

For those of you who don't know of the game, it's a German board game that emerged a few years back and a group of us used to play it ad nauseum. It has an interesting dynamic involving trading commodities between players, which allows you to form alliances and/or vendettas. The surest way to lose is to look like you're winning, because all the other players will do everything they can (which is quite a lot) to stop you. It's addictive! Play it! (Although if you're a newbie, you might need to look up the rules someplace else, because the Java site assumes you're familiar with the boardgame...)

Sayonara!

Conferences and Florida

As lumpy said I have been away for the week in Sarasota, Florida.

The weather HERE has been lovely. The weather there was hot and humid, although it did only piss down with rain once. The conference (VSS) is really an excuse to go to Florida beaches with some posters and talks thrown in. So most people stay on the keys and hire cars to get round. I only decided to go at the last minute (when Daphne told me the grant would pay...) so I ended up in a different hotel from everyone I knew and had to beg lifts (which many people generously gave me).

But I had a great time! I caught up with lots of great people and met some more. I had some great food and learned about some new results in several fields I'm interested in.

Highlights were hanging out with a whole bunch of Aussies and Kiwis on the afternoon off, having dinner with some great face reserachers, and doing daggy dancing at Club Vision (thanks to Emma, Linda, John and the boys from UCL for participating : ).

Lowlights were getting a massive blister on my foot the one day I tried to walk to the conference from my hotel, and forgetting to get the flight number of the people who gave me a lift from Tampa airport when I first arrived (which meant I spent a stressful hour or so wondering whether they had come to the other baggage claim and missed me).

Extrememly amusing were the old guy who asked me at breakfast whether I enjoyed being a woman (I stopped going to breakfast after that but one morning when I was waiting outside I turned around and he was standing there smoking and staring at me with his one eye that wasn't covered by an eye patch!!), and Paul mishearing me and thinking gumlings must be baby Koalas.

As a thank you for giving me lifts I have to find a picture of the Queen's legs for some of the McMaster people.

Only in Ancaster could I get a job!

Heyyy!



(This is me doing my Richard D James impersonation. His music is quite good albeit scary, especially when he writes under the name Aphex Twin.)

So, I've landed this job working for the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. I got the call on Monday that I'd be signing papers on Friday (now tomorrow) so that sounded pretty certain. Of course, until you see it in writing you can't be absolutely sure there won't be a hiccup of some sort. However, today I went into the office to meet some of my will-be co-workers, and they gave me "the key"! That means they're serious! (And I only have to wait a day for the contract anyway...) So, it's time to celebrate! Hooray!

I'll be working for a research division in the school board called the Evidence-Based Education and Services Team (E-BEST) as their resident statistician. After doing this job for a while, I'll be able to call myself a statistician in earnest (instead of a survey methodologist which sounds pretty impressive and is actually hard, but people don't know what it is ...). It's a year long contract with the possibility of renewal, and it pays better than my ABS job at home which is a very pleasant surprise.

The hardest part has been figuring out how to get there. Ancaster is like Dundas - a bunch of rich-person's suburbs loosely attached to Hamilton. Both Ancaster and Dundas were small towns in their own right up until the last decade when Hamilton's growth has extended to their border. This means of course that public transport goes from Hamilton to Dundas, and from Hamilton to Ancaster, but not from Dundas to Ancaster. So I've got to catch 4 connecting buses to get there. In spite of this, I've calculated this will take only just over an hour, and appears to be the best option available for next Monday.

My options are:
(a) drive;
(b) taxi;
(c) get lifts (from neighbour)?
(d) buses;
(e) cycle.

I've just ruled out (e) upon establishing that the office building doesn't have a shower facility. Cycling was already looking iffy because it's about 14km and up hill in the morning. Hamilton also gets really humid in summer, and I work up a sweat sometimes just eating a hot meal ;-) Attempting this in a suit would be impossible. (Although I have also established that casual wear is acceptable. Hmmm, too bad my wardrobe consists of suits and ragged t-shirt and not much in between - add clothes shopping to the list for tomorrow!)

(a) is out of reach for the time-being. I will be taking the driving test in a couple of weeks and then we can think about getting a car, but we still don't know how we'll actually get to the car yards, nor how we'll organise insurance for a potential purchase on the fly. I expect I'll be run off my feet for the first few weeks getting to know the job anyway.

(b) is the fallback position if nothing else is possible. I figure it's worth 2 taxi fares just to get established in the job in the first place. So long as I'm earning more than the cost of the fares, it's still more money than I'm getting now unemployed. In combination with some of the other options, this could be a good gap-filler. Of course, it's not really a long term option. (Or is it? When I know how much the fare is, I can do some sums and see if it actually works out to be less than owning and running a car. Given petrol and insurance prices, there's a chance this is competitive.)

(c) has come through nicely. My neighbour Helen drives through Ancaster on her way to work and has agreed to give me the odd lift for the first few weeks until I get set up, if she happens to be going in at the same time as me. This will probably work out to be 2 or 3 one-way lifts per week, and every little bit helps. May I just add here that Helen is a total legend ;-)

(d) looked bad at first. It's 3 connections: one from Dundas into Westdale near the University (part of Hamilton), then one to Meadowlands (a shopping district on the near side of Ancaster), then one across Ancaster to the office. The problem is that the third bus goes on a big loop "the wrong way" in the morning, and again "the wrong way" in the evening. It's designed for people who are trying to leave Ancaster in the morning and return home in the evening, whereas I'm trying to do the opposite. So I end up having to catch the bus and follow it to the end, wait 10 mins, and then follow it back about half way before it gets to my stop. And I don't gain anything by getting off on the first leg and walking because the nearest stop point is about 1.7km from my destination (maybe 20mins march). My original time estimate for this series of buses was 1.5 to 2 hours. However...

...today after Helen gave me a lift into the office to meet my co-workers, I tested out the bus system. It was still AM, so at least on this occasion there was a bus going the "short-way" to Meadowlands. I asked the driver his advice and he said my proposed route of going to the end of the line and coming back would be about 55 minutes (yuck!). Then he thought a bit and suggested that I actually change buses on the same route. There's a spot on the route where you can get off and catch the earlier bus going the other way, thus saving about half an hour. Now I haven't tried this yet, and if I miss the connection I lose the half-hour again, but according to the schedule it looks promising. So if I go up to 4 connections, I save half an hour!

The actual time it took for me to get home today was 95 minutes, but that included missing two connections I could have made, partly so I could duck into McMaster and pick up the bus schedules with maps (rather than relying on my hand-scrawlings from internet timetables). In theory, with the buses going the "right" way, I could have been home in 35 minutes. It will be longer than this in practice as the buses usually go the "wrong" way, but it's still much better than 2 hours.

Then I can shorten the trip further by not following the bus all the way to Meadowlands. Bus #2 and #3 share about 2km of road that goes to Meadowlands, and I'm lucky enough that if I get off at the top of the common route, I can catch a bus that's half an hour earlier than if I went all the way to Meadowlands. Once again, if I miss the connection I can add half an hour to my trip, but the times look good. Also, it's occasionally possible to ask the bus driver to radio to the other connection and ask them to wait. Don't know how this will go in peak period, but again the potential for a half-hour saving.

The connection between buses #1 and #2 is really really tight in the morning. The schedules say I get to the connecting stop at exactly the same minute as the transfer if it's before 8am, and a couple of minutes too late if it's after 8am. I have a choice here: I can get off the bus a couple of stops before the routes merge and basically run down the road to another stop and hope I get there in time, or I can take a slightly earlier bus. Fortunately at that hour I can get one that leaves 15mins earlier, but the pickup point is further from my house. At least this guarantees I'll make the connection. And on the way home, the timing is right on, and I can catch the right bus without hassle.

So summing up, it looks like 70 minutes in the morning, and about 60 minutes on the way home. That's not bad for 4 connections. The ride home is more like 90 minutes if I don't catch the 5.30pm bus, and the 6pm bus is effectively the last as one of the connections drops out, except on Thursdays and Fridays. I guess if I'm working late I'll be getting a taxi home.

Anyway, I think this calls for celebrations!



This is a random photo off my hard drive where I happen to be holding a glass of wine with my lovely sister Leonie (celebrating another recent special occasion ;-). Rachel is home tonight so I can take a now photo of us clinking glasses!

Once again, yay!

Short one

It's official. There are 491,000 people in Hamilton according to the highway signs when you enter Hamilton by car. That makes it the equivalent of Newcastle in Aus, both in terms of size and demographic (industrial).

There is a bird here who sings a song like the Austin Powers theme. It goes "ti-ti-tee-tee" repeatedly. It could be a black bird, we're not sure, but I call it the Austin Powers bird. I half expect to look outside the window and see a bunch of birds doing a formation dance.

They were filming a TV movie on Main St in Dundas the other weekend. It didn't have anyone particularly famous on this occasion, unless you count the girlfriend from the Ferris Bueller movie 20 years ago (I wouldn't have recognised her if the paper didn't point it out). On the other hand, we found out that they've done some quite high profile stuff here including a recent Robin Williams movie, and scenes for the West Wing with Jimmy Smits as a post-Bartlett presidential candidate. There is a 50's style diner on King St that closed 30 years ago and now exists solely for TV and movie filming.

The end.

Niagara at last!

Hi

So I promised some photos of Niagara, even though the postcards I sent have probably already arrived by now...

We went to visit Niagara Falls a few weeks ago. It's about 100km East of where we are, near the border with America (sorry USA). We hired a car for the weekend (as detailed in another post...) and spent the Sunday making our way out to the city of Niagara Falls. There are actually two such cities, one on the Canada side and one on the American side of the Niagara River. The Falls have two parts: American Falls which is totally on the American side (but we get the good views of it) and Horseshoe Falls which wraps around the top end of the valley and you get a good angle from either side.


Here's the approach shot. You can see the river water moving away from us and then it just stops. There's a cloud of spray where the major falls are.


The Canada side has half a dozen highrise hotels and seems to be a major tourist destination. The American side didn't seem to have this much development, presumably as the views aren't as good.


We're just passing the top of Horseshoe Falls here and you can see we get pretty close. The closest point is just a few metres from the water rushing over the edge. It's quite a sight. It's also relatively quiet because you don't have direct line of sight to the bottom so the sound is muffled.


Looking downstream through the spray, we can see the valley with American Falls on the right in the distance, and a bridge which connects the two countries. The sun was out today so there's a nice rainbow.


We're walking downriver all the time, and now we're looking back on Horseshoe Falls. The water falls a lot longer than is clear from this photo, and that's why there's such a big cloud of spray kicked up. You get a little wet as you walk through the area which is downwind of the spray. Once again, you can see that the railing goes right along the edge of the cliff and river.


On the American side, they've built a viewing platform that goes out beside American Falls.


Forgi and Horseshoe Falls.


A good shot of American Falls. It's the same distance from the top of the cliff to the bottom, but there's a lot of rubble piled up beneath these falls which breaks the fall of the water as it goes down, so there isn't quite the same amount of obscuring spray as with Horseshoe Falls.


Here's a perspective shot. The road here is just the access road to the carpark. The building in the distance is an old hydro power plant - not sure if it's still in use.


Just for fun, I caught a second-order rainbow on film. I used my polaroid sunglasses in front of the camera to improve the contrast a little. The first-order rainbow is clear enough but you might need to adjust your screen to see the second-order rainbow - it passes through the upper middle part of the photographer and ends near the squatting guy. You might notice that the colours are backwards: from left to right it goes red yellow green, which is the opposite of the first-order rainbow. Now as a physicist I should know why this is but I don't. There must be some reason I don't know about, unless it's just that my geometry is wrong. Can anyone shed any light on the matter? (pardon the pun ;-)

Okay, that's heaps.
Bye!