Down Under

By -
8 February 2011

After fourteen Jean posts I finally made it to Australia. Whew! I'm sure the suspense was mounting as to whether I ever made it out of Shanghai.

I was looking at the map that I've since taken off our blog and realized:
1) The page loads a lot faster now
2) We've come a really long way since last April.

After eight months on the road moving east, Australia should just be hop, skip and a jump away right? But no, it was still over a thirteen hour flight to get to Sydney.  Here are some shots from my first week in country.
Reunited with my wife! As I found Sydney wonderfully warm I returned to my usual travel attire

Catching a ferry

On a ferry in Sydney Harbor

The yellow cab's aquatic cousin

Lots of activity in the Harbor

I escaped Chinese New Year in China only to come to Chinatown in Sydney
XO Project
 I have my sister's XO laptop on loan to tinker with. She got it as part of a program to distribute computers to children in developing countries called One Laptop per Child. It's a neat idea and there's loads of information about in on the internet if you're interested. Anyway, she bought two, one for her and one for a student somewhere in the world. The XO is a resilient little piece of machinery designed to be shockproof, dust proof and waterproof. It's low cost because it uses older technology (processor, RAM and what not). It's a great idea because for most applications you really don't need cutting edge technology. In fact, the XO is arguably the predecessor to the now popular netbook. The drawback of the XO (at least my sister's which is one of the first variants) is that the operating system is kind of clunky and not very intuitive for someone accustomed to the Windows environment. I spent a few days getting a linux operating system running on it with an interface very similar to Windows. 


I've really been missing board games. In Shanghai, I went on several quests looking for some. It seems that most board games are made in China so it seemed only natural that I could find Acquire or Settlers of Catan with a little looking. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I did come away a Jenga knockoff, Chinese chess and a couple of copies of Go. Hopefully, the Australia geek community will be more forthcoming.

Comments

sly said…
Welcome back, Aaron! Is it strange to be back among English speakers?
9 April 2011 at 08:43
TomY. said…
Happy 1st year on your life journey together.
10 April 2011 at 14:31
Jean said…
I would just like to clarify that I only made 6 posts on my first month in Sydney after Aaron made 11 posts about China!
12 April 2011 at 06:17
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