Quite a few things have happened since last post - the most significant of which is we bought a camera! so we immediatly took photos of where we live:
It really is quite cool living above a pub.
Debbie has started studying a psychology degree at the University of Southern Queensland via distance education, and has had to learn a bit of study discipline, something she's not had to do before. University is not something that she can leave until the last minute and finish the assignments the day before they're due like she did in High-school. so after slacking off for a bit last year she proceded to give herself a migrane trying to catch up. oh well, we live and learn don't we.
Studying hard:
We finally got back our insurance claim money also - we had the best possible outcome, including payment for things that we didn't expect - such as the expensive purfume that debbie had but didn't have any proof of ownership etc. We havn't replaced everything yet, but as Debbie was going to start studying we bought a cheap laptop, which I'm typing this on due to debbie hogging the "big" computer.
Lacking foresight, I didn't buy Microsoft Word with this one, thinking that openoffice would be fine, but it turns out that there some very small compatibility issues between the two, and seeing as debbie must have her assignments produced in the exactly correct format she's had to use Word to be sure.
As you can see, We've also bought a camera - it's fairly cheap but it has ended up being better quality than our last one due to the continuous march forward of this type of technology. quite cool.
In my spare time I've been learning software Reverse Engineering, with a focus on malware analysis. This has been interesting - it's caused me to be seen as this hard-core technology guy, and I try to play it down in conversations, particularly if the person I'm talking to doesn't understand this sort of stuff.
Them: "so what do you do for a living?"
Me: "I'm a database programmer"
Them: "oh....."
me: "yeah - it's pretty cool"
Them: "got any hobbies"
Me: "yeah - I Reverse engineer software for fun. I really like taking apart viruses to see how they work and figuring out which vulnerabilities they exploit and seeing how to defend against them"
Them: "oh.....uhm.. look I really need to go - it was nice talking to you."
ok, so it's not quite as bad as that, but I'm almost certain that I would get the exact same looks from people if I said: "I'm a brain surgeon, specialising in neuro-psychosis-related injury-discombobulation" blank looks all around regardless... I actually do have a copy of the intel 64 and IA-32 architectures software development manuals volumes 1-3 and I read them! wooo!
Debbie definately goes to sleep quite a bit faster than usual since trying to explain the intricacies of buffer overflow vulnerabilities - she usually picks up the general concepts of most things I talk about, but not so much recently. :-( I need some IT geek friends to bounce ideas off.
Work's been good to both of us - I've joined my current job not expecting bonuses (in the current economic climate at least) and have recieved two quarterly profit related bonuses and was just informed that this month I'll get a yearly bonus and a pay rise..... this comes after they just fired about 6 people with no notice and have announced that they'll be cutting down on contract staff in the near future - I seriously don't understand these people - "we're in very hard financial times, we're going to have to lay people off - oh and by the way - everyone we've made enough profit for everyone to get a significant profit-related bonus in addition to the standard yearly bonus (only for those people remaining of course)" oh well I'm not complaining, got a glowing performance review just this week, and as a result of the bonuses, we're finally back to the financial situation prior to being broken into and tripping to france!
Christmas eve we went to the winter wonderland in hyde park and went ice-skating on the rink there. Christmas day we went to a friends party, had an absolutely delicious roast meal, played a game of scrabble that got a little bit too competetive and stayed up chatting with people until the wee hours of the morning. finally got home at 3am having broken our resolve of going to bed early this christmas/new years after making ourselves sick last year. Thankfully this time arround we got sick early in december so we were all good for the holiday season.
The party was easily three-quarters Aussies, with the rest being from singapore or malasia - it was great to have the "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!" chear answered by more than just a feable voice here and there. In fact, I don't think there was one english person at the party! it was just like home!
On boxing day evening we went to see the nutcracker suite ballet. This was our first ballet ever. Debbie seemed to like it but I had a hard time sitting through it. I appreciated the music, the tallent of the dancers and the ability of the director and actors to convey a story without any words, but the entire thing was fairly dull. the first half was alright because there was an actual story. however, the second half was just dancing for the sake of it..... I would much rather see a musical.
Anyway, seeing as we had a few spare days of holiday, we did our first touristy thing for about 6 months and went to windsor castle!
hooked up with some new friends from the Christmas party who'd just come to London a couple of months ago and with our new camera in hand, we took a train to Windsor. It was a very cold day, but hey - you can't beat Aussie Friendship to warm the soul - (this photo by our friend Jenni)
It really was a beautiful day perfect clear skies, very cool and very cold at the same time. a paradox that you rarely get in this country.
In the Visitors centre where we had to line up to get tickets, we were able to talk to one of the stewards. Apparently the queen usually spends Christmas in Scotland so we would be able to see the state appartments, which are usually closed when the queen is in residence. We asked if she had met the queen and she said yes "she's a lovely lady - about 5'3" and apparently would certainly wave to the crowds visiting the castle if she happened to be outside.
Unfortunately the "front" of the castle that you usually see in pictures is actually facing the private gardens so this is the best "front" shot that we could get:
have to appologise for this one - I really didn't feel like smiling for it - I was cold. I wasn't grumpy, just didn't feel like posing for a photo :-)
The Castle is set on quite a significant hill, that you can't notice until you're actually standing on the castle ramparts:
the walls look to be about 15 meters high off the ground and are on a fairly steep slope - it's a very good defensive position.
of course - I happened to catch a mission-impossible style heist in progress - first step: disable the CCTV cameras:
This area is called the Quadrangle - the state appartments are on the left.
our friend Jenni caught us posing for a photo.
After the state appartments, we went down to St George's cathedral, which is still within the castle wall (yes, it's a huge castle).
here's the same shot almost appearing in wikipedia, this painting was done in 1848:
This is the home-cathedral of the knights of the order of the garter - the most exclusive order of chivalry in the world. unfortunately there was no photography allowed within the cathedral, but it was so amazing. there has been a church service in the church every single day for the last 700 years without fail. behind the pulpit is the private area for members of the order of the Garter. The family crests of all the members were displayed on tabards that were hung over each seat. the woodwork was exquisite.
Here's a photo of a postcard of the order of the garter stalls:
Many many famous royals are buried here. The queen mum and her husband King George VI were burried in a little enclave under an engraved granite plaque.
overall it was brilliant - I havn't written much about the history etc - I think we're all a little bit castled and pallaced out so we just went through enjoying it rather than trying to learn the history. Windsor was special though, all the other castles etc are set out as they were back in the height of their use. but Windsor is still in use and so contains a combination of old relics and modern fittings. Everything is fresh and feels lived-in. it really is an amazing place.
It has been absolutely freezing over the past week - got to -12 degrees last wednesday night!!!! the fountains in trafalga square froze over completely! (below photos from london paper because, although we went to see it, we didn't bring our camera)
That's all for now folks! definately truly ruly more photos comming up next time we do something interesting!
