Matt Down Under

Ruby developer, founder of choc media, bushwalker, MacGyver fan and hobby photographer, German citizen and Australian Permanent Resident.

In 2008 I moved from Germany to Australia, the best decision of my life. On this blog you can find stories and photos about hiking in Tasmania and on the mainland, travelling, and life in Australia — my journey from Working Holiday to Permanent Residency.

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    16 posts tagged Society

    Good old German quality

    Ever heard of Hollandia vacuum cleaners? Neither have I. I must have missed that during the last 27 years in Germany.

    But it makes me happy to see that Germany is still like a synonym for quality. I noticed that several times, companies like to use slogans like ‘German quality’ or ‘European design’ for their advertisements.

    Vietnamese furniture

    Last night it took me 4 hours to assemble my bed frame. Apparently the factory in Vietnam ran out of instruction manuals… My fault. Why would you expect an instruction manual for a bed frame with only 50 parts and 100 screws? I’m still to much used to IKEA where you get instruction manuals for every stupid lamp, even if it gets delievered in one piece.

    But who needs instruction manuals anyway? I’m a man, a Ger-man. That means I’m a natural-born engineer. We don’t need instruction manuals. Just give me a screwdriver and I build a house, hell yes!

    (not really)

    I feel good (even though…)

    …my soccer team played shit last weekend.

    Last week on Monday I officially moved into my apartment. My boss was kind enough to give me some temporary furniture and kitchen equipment until my own stuff arrives, so I didn’t need to extend at the backpackers hostel. I will get my own furniture hopefully this week, not everything was in stock. I’m desperately awaiting the delivery as I promised to several people to invite them for dinner as soon as I moved in  :-) . And all the kitchen equipment from my last apartment is still stored in Germany, it will take a while to have this all sent to me. It’s definitly cheaper to send it all to Tasmania instead of buying new one.

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    Social networking vs social pressure

    I still can’t believe it. I joined Facebook a few days ago. Especially after Microsoft acquired parts of Facebook I was sure I would never join. And in the past two months my work mates gave me friendly reminders every day by showing me how much time they’re wasting with it. Sometimes I think certain people communicate more on Facebook than in real life, not really something to be proud of. So I always thought ‘I can live without it, I can live without it, …’ and successfully resisted the sweet temptation to join a mass phenomenon, not really something fascinating. A few months ago I already joined MySpace after I met a person I wanted to stay in touch with. It’s nice to have it but don’t use it very often. At least my page there looks a lot better than most MySpace pages which are simply unusable.

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    Tired of backpackers

    Hm, after having stayed in backpacker’s hostels for nearly 9 months now I recently noticed an interesting change of my general mood. While it’s usually okay to stay in hostels while you’re traveling, it is becoming increasingly annoying as soon as you drop out of the world of backpackers and join the world of civilization, regular office work and above-average hygiene again.

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    Six interesting or funny or weird facts…

    …about Australia (from a german point of view).

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