Canberra training

Jun 272011
 

I was in Canberra last week, braving the cold weather (I think it got down to negatives at night with wind chill). It was all for 5 days of training, bonding and learning for my departure to Samoa.

I learnt a lot. Samoan culture is quite interesting and I am more excited than ever to go. Some fears were allayed, some other worries cropped up but overall I think I will manage. There are worse ways to spend a year than sunny Apia with its tropical charms and island life.

In between meeting my new assignment buddies, learning, going out, and writing a letter to myself to be opened in a year, there were some near evacuations.

Canberra fire

The hotel behind mine just caught on fire. There were camera men running down from various places trying to get footage, and prettier presenters walking slower down the to the scene to get themselves in front of the camera. It was actually quite exciting for a while there. Before I decided to take a nap. The Canberra weather has given me a cold.

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So the times they are a changing

May 232011
 

Over the coming few weeks, I’ll be migrating the Ultimate Sigh to a new host. Most likely Just Host. So during the migration there may be outages while I port all the files and setup over. Hopefully everything will transition nicely without too much messing around on my part.

Why am I moving the site off onto an external host? Well that’s because I will be moving to……………..
Samoa* for a year.

Sunny Samoa
*Well pending visa approval and pre-departure approval, but there’s an agreement in place now.

How come Samoa?

I hear people ask when I tell them about Samoa. Well it’s simple really. I figure this is pretty much the last chance in my life to do something a bit risky and adventurous. I still have time after I return to progress in my career, and I don’t really have any responsibilities or dependents right now. If I don’t do it now, I will probably just find a higher paying job and stay in Sydney, settle down, that type of thing. That’s not bad. Life is pretty cruisey here. But I know I will regret it if I don’t set off this one last time to experience something completely different and to go work and stay overseas for a while. So in short, if I don’t go overseas now for a career break type of thing, I never will.

Here’s to less sighs, and more awesomeness hence forth.

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South Korea

May 122011
 

So I am back from South (side) Korea.

I had a metric bucketload of fun. Highlights were:

  • Hanging out with my old buddy from Tsinghua days

    It was a pretty fun time drinking it up and just chilling with Chang again. Talked about old times, stupid antics that we got up to, you know basically reminiscing about the slacker days of being a international student in Beijing.

    Drinking culture in Sth Korea is pretty fun and cool when you are a student. All fancy free with a huge array of options for fun, entertainment and above all convenience. It probably gets a whole lot less fun after the student part of your life though, as I hear adult life for a male is pretty stressful.

  • Seeing the pretty scenery of South Korea in Spring

    We hiked quite a bit and Spring, whilst cold in South Korea, does provide some nice scenery. In particular, the cherry blossoms which are well, blooming during that time. We checked out the famous Seoraksan National Park along with some other nature preserves. There are many sites still not yet visited and definitely worthy of a return sometime, especially Jeju.

  • Gong to the DMZ

    Salsa will probably want to talk more about this, but the DMZ tour was definitely something that was hugely interesting. From seeing the ROK soldiers, to US marines, to glimpsing Nth Korean buildings and people, the whole setup is steeped in intrigue and lost opportunities. Which of course why Salsa is even more interested in Nth Korea, even buying up a few notes of their currency which is currently trading at 1 AUD to 146 Nth Korean Won (if you can somehow buy it).

  • Eating

    This one is pretty self explanatory. Food is a massive part of Korean day to day life. It seems from a casual observer’s point of view that they are always eating. Yet I did not see any fat people. Most of the dishes are communal, like BBQ and big plates of chicken in stew similar to the Chinese dish ???. All in all a lot of their dishes are very much geared towards being good with drinks and alcohol, like their version of Izakuya.

  • Jeju

    Jeju is a volcanic island in the south of Sth Korea. The whole island is basically a tourist attraction with loads of things to see and do. In the middle is Hallasan which is a massive volcano with a huge crater at the tip. But the area is also known as a honeymoon destination for Sth Koreans (and the Hawaii of Sth Korea). It is a massive place and we only scratched the surface (although Salsa erroneously thought we could cycle everywhere). It’s very pretty and definitely worth a repeat visit, this time more cycling and leasing a car to drive around to all the places we missed. We also had an ocean view room. 🙂

All in all, a good time and a great place to visit.

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Downtime – going to Vietnam

Oct 012010
 

From the 4th to 22nd of October, this blog will be down. Basically I need to go overseas, and I’ll be shutting down the PC that Ultimate Sigh sits on.

I know it’s a shame that all 2 of you won’t be able read more sighs till later. Stay strong. I’ll boot my pc up when I return.

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