Day 4- 25 December 2011
Once again it’s a multi-parent Christmas Day for me. We started the day with breakfast at Dad and Stepmum’s place then jumped in the car and made for Wangaratta where a very much needed fuel stop gave us enough to continue the trip to Edi where we spent the afternoon with Mum, her partner and his extended family drinking, talking, eating and playing backyard cricket. Gifts were exchanged at both houses and I wound up with quite a good haul including Skyrim which will probably consume more parts of me than I’d like to admit when we return from holidays.

Day 5- 26 December 2011
Departed Albury and made for the mountains. The route we took led us past the Hume Dam and over Bell Bridge at Bethanga. The original plan was to stop by Thredbo and ride the chairlift, however when we arrived and had just opened the car door this massive thunderclap rang through the air. Despite some pretty big pouts we decided that rainy, foggy conditions on the chairlift would not be fun and decided to try again tomorrow. Stayed at the Lake Jindabyne Hotel who once again delivered on being a great value spot with spectacular lake views from every room and tasty food in the bistro. I stayed at the same motel when I stayed in Jindabyne a few years ago after a thoroughly enjoyable day driving through the Snowy Mountains.

Day 6- 27 December 2011
The day was bright, clear and sunny… perfect for a chairlift ride and hike. We headed back to Thredbo where we collected our lift passes and headed up the mountain. At the top, all plans to not hike were discarded as we set off along the wonderful raised mesh walkway to Mount Kosciuszko. Made it almost 3km before heading back and having morning tea at Eagles Nest which is 1937m about sea level with some pretty amazing views. Afterward we drove to Canberra and finished off the day sharing a few pints with Mick who was down from Sydney.

Day 7- 28 December 2011
Up bright and early to meet Madeline for breakfast. The original location was closed so we wound up at Gus’ which is something of a Canberra love/hate location. Following a very filling breakfast we headed off to the Australian War Memorial and once again I was highly mistaken about the size of this place. Found some of Adrian’s relatives on the roll of honour and looked through all the exhibitions. Could easily have spent far longer than we did here. For lunch I couldn’t resist a visit to Koko Black while in town, and I didn’t think Adrian would have any objection After lunch we headed to Parliament House and had a look around, just quietly I think I like Old Parliament House better. Dinner was some pretty damn tasty Malasian at Rasa Sayang with Lana, Dermott and T.

That concludes week 1, I know we’re almost into week 3 of the actual trip. Aiming to get round-ups of week 2 posted before we get back, probably sometime in the next couple of days.. depending on what else is going on. You know what it’s like, this being on holidays business.

For all the photos from the trip have a look at the Ali’s Family Magical Mystery Tour set on Flickr.

Thus here is the round-up of our first week on the road:

Day 1- 22 December 2011
Drove from Brisbane to Dubbo, this took almost 14hours. So long to travel ~850km was because we stopped at a couple of driver revivers for tea, made at least 2 fuel stops and had lunch in Narribri with Nicole. In Dubbo we stayed at the very dodgy Formule 1 which was a comedy of fail including dead bug collections, views of Hungry Jacks and toilet horrors.

Day 2 – 23 December 2011
Drove from Dubbo to Albury which was thankfully a much shorter trip. Stopped briefly in Cootamundra to drive slowly by Donald Bradman‘s birthplace then laughed at lot at some not very private public toilet doors. Grabbed lunch in Young after I posed like a fool in front of the town sign and made our way to my Dad and Stepmum’s place in Chiltern to stay overnight after a stopover in Albury to see Mum and have dinner.

Day 3 – 24 December 2011
Quite a busy day! Up early to get back to Albury by 9.30am where I assisted Mum and wrapped presents for 3hrs collecting donations for the Make a Wish Foundation. My favourite moment of the morning was a man asking if he could get me a coffee or orange juice as we were working so hard. I politely declined and was very glad when 12.30pm rolled around as my back was killing me from leaning over a short table. Then Adrian and I had lunch with Mum and her partner and took a drive out to the Hume Dam on the way back to Chiltern. Once back we were in the car again with Dad and my Stepmum and heading up to Beechworth for afternoon tea. Admired some stunning creations at Potters Gallery and had a quick look through the lolly shop mere minutes before they closed. Later in the evening I followed ‘xmas eve in Chiltern’ tradition and went to church with Dad and Stepmum, the priest loved my blue hair and after the service there was shortbread and sherry. Back at home we gave Stepmum her birthday presents as her birthday is the same day as xmas day.

This post got a tad lengthy so I might do bi-weekly blog posts. Hopefully I’ll have the next one up before too long!

For all the photos from the trip have a look at the Ali’s Family Magical Mystery Tour set on Flickr.

Note: because my page design is narrow, click on the image for the non-skewed version.

The total distance of the drive between places we’re staying is 5,892km. According to Google it’ll take 3 days and 3hrs to drive it, or (because I love stats) approximately 48 days to walk it.

I haven’t done a really big roadtrip in quite a few years and I’m really looking forward to it but getting a little scared about how many photos I’ll take along the way. Presently I’m exploring options about which laptop to take (17inch Toshiba or HP netbook) and how to give both Adrian and I internet in the places that have internet included in our room price. For other places I’ll be tethering my phone so photos being posted while we’re away may be sporadic at best… unless I find somewhere with a fat internet pipe or get to LCA 2012.

In late 2009 I visited Albury to see family for Christmas and noted a few things that differed quite a lot between catching a flight between large state capitals and catching a flight to a regional town. Having caught many flights of both types I wanted to share some of the people watching observations from this particular trip.

• As people sat down they’d say hello to the person sitting next to them, most were strangers.
• I joined in on an exchange taking place behind me where one middle-aged lady had a seat next to a young, attractive, man. Her friend commented that she must have been a good person this year to get assigned such good company. I wished them both a Merry Christmas and noticed that the guy looked somewhat amused about the exchange between the ladies.
• An unaccompanied minor was bought to the back of the plane to be seated. A kindly older lady passenger spoke with her for a while before take-off. The steward didn’t interfere with the conversation.
• Stewards explained matter-of-factly why we’d be a little slower getting off the ground than usual. Being on the first flight of the day meant that additional checks once we hit the start of the runway were needed.
• The woman sitting next to me in the exit row noticed an empty window seat on the other side of the aisle and asked the steward if she could take it. He permitted the change. After the passenger counts were done I said to her that she should go nab her window seat now; just before she got up and moved she said it wasn’t due to the company on this side.
• After the meals were served I started up my phone and began watching some TED talks with headphones in. This was fairly introverted behaviour compared to many other passengers who were conversing with each other. Across the aisle the lady who’d moved seats had turned around to join the young guy and older lady who were in deep discussion. Around the cabin people quietly spoke to each other or read newspapers. Nobody appeared to get irritable about finding themselves in a conversation they’d rather avoid.
• The meal I received consisted of dried apricots, juice, a scone and coffee. Not a bad breakfast compared to the meal Qantas called lunch; consisting of a savoury danish and a warm softdrink.

The company I flew with has fast become one of my favourites for regional travel and I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad experience when flying Rex.

More details slowly came to light and I learnt that the roadtrip we were taking was part of a bigger event with other teams involved too doing different drives and it was all about launching some spectacular drives between Sydney and Melbourne.

Tomorrow we’re off on the 4 day adventure. A roadtrip of which the aim is to tweet, photograph, make videos and generally have a blast while completing activities we’ve been assigned and complete some mission objectives. Not wanting to give too much way until it happens but there’s going to be motorbike riding and a very, very early morning one day that I’ve been assured it will be well worth it.

If you want more details of what we’re up to, when and where then there’s no shortage of methods to track us such as: join/like the StalkFacebook page; check out the Tumblr that will hopefully filter everything together so it’s a good single point of contact and collation of tweets, photos and videos. Browse the photos we’re posting to the Flickr group- you will need to ask to join but anybody can look. Following the twitter hashtags #S2MT and #teamMal. Some things will have both but others might not. I’m also considering raising my 12seconds account from the almost dead for short’n'sweet clips from the road. There’s always a chance that further updates and longer posts may appear on the site here

I would like to thank Mal for the offer to join the team, and everybody involved with organising the Sydney – Melbourne Touring trip. It’s going to be some serious fun.

There are any number of calendar applications which suit various peoples needs and lifestyles. My calendar of choice is Google Calendar for reasons of flexibility, expansion and accessibility. Please feel free to comment with the calendars you use and why you love them. The things I love about Gcal may or may not be able to be done on something else better, who knows. This isn’t a Gcal push post, it’s a calendar love post.

So what calendars do you have?

I have a few calendars which I have feeding into my central calendar repository. I have my personal, health, rent and work calendars that I update. I also have subscriptions to my Facebook events, Sydney Linux User Group and selected friends calendars. Sharing of calendars among friends can be very useful if you all have very busy schedules but like to catch up often. When being a social organiser as I often find myself doing it’s wonderful to know at a glance who is free on what days.

There are quite a number of calendars I have for good reason, all are important and useful t me but I don’t need to see all of them all of the time. The thing I love is the ability to select which calendars I have in the current view. I only need to see the rent calendar once a week for approximately 30seconds to know who, if anybody, I need to be chasing for rent that week and who’s paid up for the next few weeks.

Wait, did you say health?

This was only a recent idea of mine to create a health calendar for myself. You know those ideas that as soon as you have them and then start to create and use it you wonder why you didn’t do it years ago? This is one of those.

In my years of moving around Brisbane and then to Sydney and in the age of doctors that are increasingly apathetic I’ve had some difficulty finding one that I like. Hence why it’s been quite rare for me to return to the same doctor or even practice. My medical history records kept on the other end are spread far and wide. It made more sense to me to keep a record of my medical history on my end which I can give to a doctor quickly and easily if needed.

The sorts of ways this can be useful is amazingly broad. Been struck down by the flu this year, how about keeping track of the number of days. Even better, you can remind yourself t get a flu shot next year. It’s not unusual for me to suffer from 2-3 throat infection during winter at various stages. This is a useful way to keep track of when I got them and how long they stuck around for. I can detail the doctors I have seen and for what. How about all those times you’ve been on a course of antibiotics an forgotten to take them on time. Using a calendar you can set yourself reminders. GCal can even send your reminders as sms so no matter where you are, provided you have your phone you’ll get the message. As a woman there are some evil but necessary things it’s useful to keep a track of and set reminders for. Similar sort of things apply to you men as well. No more excuses.

The more I use it the more I can see the value of a health calendar. It’s totally private and most likely more secure than any medical records kept anywhere else. The more I think about it the more it makes sense.

I don’t think it’s unusual for people to have a number of calendars. I daresay most would be in a similar position to myself. Maybe not all the same but there are no shortage of ideas for things that you want a separate calendar for.

Why I love Google Calendar

So I may have changed my mind and am going to pimp GCal a bit here. I love a few things about it which may inspire you to use a calendar, whether GCal or not, find tha suits your needs. The big things I love about it are:

• ease of use, stupidly easy to create new calendars and only a little more difficult to subscribe to calendars. Drag and type to add events and there’s an additional screen to add more details, reminders and invite others.
• Reminders. I love the reminders so much I should have listed them first. I can set notification, email or sms reminders from anywhere to 5mins to weeks. The best part of the sms reminders is that GCal was written for the US to use where over there they pay to receive sms messages. Here in Australia we don’t pay but GCal still sends them to us. So many Aussies don’t realise we can use the sms reminder service. We can, so do! I often set an sms reminder between 1-2hrs before an event and it has saved me a number of times. Especially if you put address or phone number details in the field that’s sent. Perfect example is the Girl Geek Dinner I’m attending tonight. I had it in my mind that it was at number 70 but in fact it’s 51. There’s a potentially big dilemma avoided.
• Sharing and subscribing. I found this wonderful little application named FBCal that lets me share my facebook events with my GCal, more often than not I wind up putting those events in my personal calendar but it saves so much time avoiding having to flick backwards and forwards through tabs to copy details. It’s also simple for me to share my calendar with frinds who depending on my settings default settings and also for each event can see either the details of my events and appointments or only that I’m unavailable or free at a certain date and time.
• Flexibility. I can access my GCal from either of my laptops, I can view appointments from my phone and I can receive reminders to anywhere. The only caveat to this incredible flexibility is that I need an internet or data connection in order to access the calendars however if this isn’t possible then the sms reminders pick up any slack for me.

I like being organised, often I have to budget my time as carefully as I budget my finances, I also don’t like to disappoint people and try to make sure that I have adequate time for myself, work and socialising. I’m very fortunate in that at present my work hours are very flexible so that if needed I can work during the night, on weekends and from anywhere I have an internet connection. This leaves my time very open to events and also travel which can happen on very short notice or be planned months in advance.

My life is great fun and I’d like it to stay that way for a while yet. Planning and scheduling is often I do well naturally but sometimes it’s good to have calendars to pick up where I may forget things. Don’t forget the other basic things that everybody uses calendars for, remembering birthdays, anniversaries, holidays.

Have fun with your calendars and find the one, or selection of many, that works best for you.

Just south of Trundle is another town called Bogan Gate. Australian readers may be amused by a town named after a somewhat derogatory named social class. To my great surprise and delight Mum told me there was actually a gate which the town was named after. She elaborated that it was in the middle of a field nowhere significant. None the less I insisted that I had to get a photo on the Bogan Gate else nobody would believe it. So here it is:

Saturday evening, we’d had dinner at 6pm and by 7.15p I was yawning and musing about going to bed. Feeling very isolated I had to repeatedly tell myself that checking my phone was a pointless endeavour and to stop thinking about what conversations may be happening on Twitter, Plurk, IRC and IM. It was odd once everybody had gone to bed and I was sitting up alone at 10pm drinking tea and reading a book I’d been meaning to start for a number of weeks.

It’s very dark and quiet out there. A stark contrast to the ‘not quite night’ darkness and noise that is part of living in Newtown. The air is cold outside but the house was centrally heated, so despite bemused friends commenting about how I’d freeze on my trip west, it wasn’t the case at all.

On a Sunday daytrip I did have signal for a couple of hours and checked my email, Twitter replies and managed to catch up with a few people who were around at the time. It amazed me quite a bit how much I depend on the feeling of connectedness with people who are located both locally and all over the world. I don’t need to be talking to these people all the time, but I do feel most at ease knowing that I can. Instead I found other ways of passing the time, listening to my Mum talk to her Mum about the people who grew up and currently reside around the area. It seems that people out here are getting married and having children but doing little else. Perhaps its the rural setting, with little else to do. But it isn’t a technological black hole. The exchange in Trundle ADSL2 capable, people out there probably have a better internet connection than I do. There is no reason why somebody out there couldn’t be as active online as anybody in a capital city.

Admittedly there isn’t the same opportunity to network face to face but that shouldn’t stop you. My friend Fiona is based in Cairns and is a very active member of a number of online communities. She’s travelled to cities and met with several other people. While I’ve never actually met Fi face to face, we regularly communicate through social networks, have text conversations, call each other on mobile or Skype and send each other sms’. In other words, we’re not different to any other people who are friends and living 1600km apart.

I’ve taken some photos around Trundle, I think fondly of this place after spending a great deal of my childhood visiting here. There are a couple of heritage listed locations and Trundle also boasts the widest street in the west. The reason its so wide is that ‘back in the old days’ there needed to be sufficient room to turn the bullock-drawn wool wagons. It’s a saying here that you can tell the difference between locals and visitors by who walks and who drives from one side of the street to the other. You can see some of the larger photos from around here on my Flickr account starting from here.