Matt Down Under

Thailand - Day 2: ‘City tour’ and Grand Palace

I had a booking for a guided tour to the Grand Palace, but it was moved to the afternoon, so I decided to spend the morning checking out a nearby park. It was interesting to watch people there practising Tai-Chi or doing excercises - there were several public fitness devices placed in the park.

Thailand - Day 1: Lost in Chinatown

Over Christmas and New Years I spent about 2 weeks in Germany to visit family and friends after nearly two years in Australia. Flying from Australia to Germany takes about 20 hours in total (stop-over time not included - there are no direct connections) and I had some terrible memories from when I flew down to Australia in 2008, so I decided to add in a few days of holiday in Asia to make the long flights less painful. With a stop-over in China, Thailand, Japan or some other place you can ideally split the travel time into two flights with 10h each. With some holidays in between and a modern airplane where you have your own tv etc., that’s pretty much acceptable to me.

Pearl Jam in Melbourne

Three weeks ago I went to Melbourne for the weekend to see Pearl Jam at the Etihad Stadium. It was a fantastic show in front of 45.000 people (according to the newspapers), with support acts Liam Finn and Ben Harper.

Video of the whales I watched on Bruny Island. Filmed from the neck lookout.

4 days on Bruny Island

Two weeks ago on Thursday we had a public holiday in Hobart. I decided to take Friday off and have a long weekend to do a short camping trip to Bruny Island, something I had planned for a long time already. To make it more interesting, I turned it into a bicycle trip. Unfortunately I only have a mountain bike at the moment, and because of the disc brakes I can’t attach any luggage racks, so I had to carry all my gear in my big hiking backpack. I managed to fix my tent and tarp to the bike frame, but still the backpack was large and heavy.

New season - new equipment

It’s finally warm enough to spend more time outdoors in Hobart and therefore a few weeks ago I bought a bicycle so I can go mountain-biking in Wellington Park on weekends. I’m also looking forward to go hiking again soon, although this summer I will probably be short on time since I booked a trip to Germany over Christmas and New Years - with several days stop-over in Thailand and Singapore - which will eat up all my leave days. Fortunately my boss is pretty flexible with time and let’s me take leave days even when I don’t have leave days left - without getting paid then of course.

My new website

Some time ago I mentioned I was working on a portfolio website. As a developer it’s good to have a portfolio site where you can show what you’ve worked on and what you’re capable of. And I also wanted to have a place where I can blog about tech stuff, since as a developer you discover all sorts of interesting stuff every day, you use the latest technology and you develop solutions that others might find useful too. If I post that here you would be annoyed, cross-topic ‘this-is-my-opinion’ blogs suck.

So here it is. From now on this will serve as my place to introduce projects and publish all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with traveling or life in Australia. And there will be a lot of exciting stuff in the coming weeks.

The joy and pain of a tax declaration

Honestly, I was looking forward to do my tax declaration this year. Mostly because I can look forward to a nice tax return, but also because tax declarations are not very difficult in Australia - at least compared to Germany.

Climbing the Opera House

When I read through some news websites today I was surprised to find a heated discussion about the Uluru, or Ayers Rock. The reason is a draft management plan which was released for the Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park. In this management plan it is suggested to ban climbing Uluru, and this is what causes all the controversy.

The second winter in Tasmania

There’s not much activity here at the moment. It’s winter in Tasmania and I don’t feel like doing a lot of outdoor activities while it’s cold out there. I’m a summer guy and at the moment I’m simply focusing on working and see how things develop.