Sights> Towards Sydney

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Here is the first mow-down in Australia. I meant to spend much longer exploring the north of the country, but the circumstances dictate (read: my shit bank, per below post) that I need to go to Sydney this week. Fine, let's make the most of it then. I've been on the beaches quite a lot (duh, having lived in a beach house), so there's a fair amount of inland travel in the route, and I feel I've been given good tips.

Oh, and here is the tool for the trade - my CBR1000F, as of today legally registered to me. I've put 200 km on it this far and it seems to have been a good buy, and luckily, my helmet, jacket and shoes work really well with the color scheme. :-) The photo takes you through to a small album of dogs, kids and friends.

The Trip: Oz, first week

It's been a good first week down here - trying to skateboard and surf (progress with both but still much practice needed), getting work done and important decisions made, and hanging out with good people. I'm actually a bit weary packing the bag again and heading on the road, I wouldn't mind staying in one place for a longer time... counting in Battlelore's European Tour, I've been on the road for 5 months now, and I'm feeling it. Yes, I'm dropping hints that I'm planning to stay here. I am, after all, dreaming of a lifestyle that would allow 6 months up north and 6 months down south in the long haul - here's a good place to try and figure out how to make it happen.


 

Stupidity> Citibank and me, a farce in infinite parts

Citibank UK has now screwed me over for the last time. Trying to use the ATM two days back, I found that my card had been blocked. Fair enough, I'd been pulling out large amounts in order to pay for a motorcycle, in cash. I called them from Australia, on a UK number, and after a long wait got connected to their call centre in Bombay. I described my problem to the business-process-outsourcing person on a cheap headset on the other end, gave them a total of 9 security checks, described my problem again, got put on hold and was finally informed that everything had been taken care of.

"That's it, Mr. Jarvenpaa. We have now cancelled your card and will send a replacement to your mailing address within 5 business days."

"You did WHAT?"

"I cancelled your card. You told me it was captured by the ATM, right?"

At this point I started alternately screaming at the poor BPO person on the other end, and laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I only needed them to remove the ATM block from the card, not cancel the damn thing, which she could no longer undo. And of course, I'm in Australia, sending it to my UK address which gets redirected to my dad in Finland would be of little use.

After more screaming and being on hold, I was informed that they could courier the card to the closest branch, which is in Sydney. That's over a 1,000 km from where I am now, thanks very much. The call cost me $65 US.

The idiots also cancelled my online banking access, since everything with the shit bank is tied together and can't be unravelled without disrupting the entire system of Excel sheets on someone's old Pentium where they try to keep a tally of everyone's account balances. I called about this and went through another security-check hell, twice, since the first person was only able to give me details about their fax number, and the second person was able to give me details about my account. In the end, the only thing they could do for me was tell me to send a fax with all the details I had just given them. This call inly cost me $51 US since I didn't scream to them as much. I need to stop using this horrible bank as soon as possible.

Uh... just when I was about to post this, another pattern emerged. I had previously received two voicemails prompting me to call the bank, and just got a call in the same vein. The messages were crackly, but I distinctly heard it was not my name the person mumbled out. Now that I got the call, it was clear that they were looking for someone called Malone, Ely or Ellie or something like that.

What the hell is going on with my account details? Why would they confuse the phone numbers and names? I have no way to check what's going on, given the blocks in place, and I'm on the other side of the world from the branch these idiots are courteously telling me to visit.


 

Log> Screwed over in international trade?

What should I think of this: after approving an initial set of product samples, a supplier in China tells me that there is a shortage of raw materials for this particular product, and that the price per item would need to be increased to 13 dollars (which happens to be very close to a nice, round 100 yuan). They offer to use a different method, which would produce unacceptable results (and would also cost them about 5% of what the original material would). The raw materials are mostly simple petrochemicals, so I can easily check whether they have in fact increased in price.

I think it's the first round in getting screwed over in international trade. Luckily, I've covered my bases and gotten quotes from multiple suppliers, but it's lost time and lost money anyway. This probably wasn't the right supplier to build a longer relationship with anyway. And, the product was definitely the highest-risk in terms of sheer oddity and was a bit questionable in terms of sustainability, so maybe this was all for the better.

Goodness. I was so pissed off when I started writing this, and now I'm all serene and zen and stuff. The therapeutic effects of blog writing in action.


 

Sights>Log>Blissfully in Brisbane from SE Asia

The Trip: Thai, Malaysia, Singapore

Yeah, down under finally! The guesthouse, hotel and backpacker circuit was getting a bit old for me by now, so getting to Oz and to friends is like a breath of fresh air. Quite literally - it smell like spring, yet the weather is consistently like the best summer's day in Finland would be. Above you'll find a few photos, mostly from the latter part of the trek.

Closing the books on SE Asia with Singapore was appropriate. Whereas I logged so bottom time and some jungle time, I was happy to hang out in a big city again, as I often am. Especially a new big city. People who prefer rural peace often say cities are all the same - for me, it's almost as though rural peace is all the same. Singapore was big, busting and trying to find its niche, which was cool to tap into.

Kuala Lumpur was probably the most multicultural city centre I've witnessed, maybe excluding New York. A tall order to compare to, sure, but Malaysia, being a predominantly muslim country, attracts visitors from all over the muslim world which contains a wealth of ethnicities a cultures. This influence mixes with the westernization of the country, the British influence (the country being only 50 years old) and the regional variety of peoples and cultures. It's a highly recommended experience in a very accessible city.

And it's worth doing the countries in a string. You get a better idea of the general regional commonalities and can contrast the local cultures to that as you go along. I'm happy I did the long ground leg. The buses and trains just killed my lower back though, and I'll seriously avoid them from now on. Given that the VFR800 was pretty good to my back despite the semi-crouched riding position, I think I'll go for a bike like that for the long, long ground legs in Australia.


 

Log> 7.9 richter on Sumatra

Just felt a pretty steady heave and shake in Singapore 20 minutes ago, and sure enough, there's been a 7.9 richter earthquake in Souther Sumatra. Better stay tuned to the news now, especially in the coastal areas in the region. There's loads of shakes in the area, but 8 richter is pretty big.



 

Log> Singapore hosts Goldie (and me!)

I'm really loving Singapore. Got here 48 hours ago and I've already romped through multiple galleries, hawker food centres and coffeeshops. As an added bonus, though my Drum&Bass afficionadoship was short-lived and almost a decade ago, catching Goldie in Singapore was really exciting. As a bonus to the bonus, the setting was perfect - the venue was Home Club which hold maybe max 200 people and is really homely and underground, like one of those places where you went to see your friends' punk band play in the mid-90s (though they sure didn't have as good a champagne selection). The photo clearly gives away my excitement as well, and for added coolness, a local girl had one of those old-fashioned folding Polaroid 600 cameras with her and I bribed her into taking the shot you see here. Polaroids are so cool. I just wish there was a Polaroid camera that would double as a digital camera so you could have your cake and eat it too. Huh.

I'll post more photos and a better write-up when I get around to it. Right now, I'm too busy soaking in the place. Next, local fringe theatre. Yes.


 

Log> The wait is over for Google Reader

Search! In Google Reader! Congratulations, but jesus, didn't that take for ever? I migrated to Vienna a long long time ago, but I'll see if the Google Reader client is worth coming back to now. Google Reader isn't Mac native though, and it shows, but maybe it'll get ironed out.

Read the announcement at Official Google Reader Blog: "We found it!".

Stupidity> Wanna cheap iPhone? Don't be so damn enthusiastic

Ok, fine, I'll blog about the iPhone. Jeez. My feed reader is aflame from yesterday's announcement of new iPods (fat Nanos! touch-screen iPods!), but the biggest issue aren't the new products - it's the price drop in iPhone. Launched, what, two months ago, at the price of $599, it's now been dropped to $399. For the exact same product. Humm. There have been some massive scale economics at play for the price to come down that much in just a couple of months. Now, feel free to finger-point and laugh at the people who queued to get theirs among the first.

Of course, I'll be getting an iPhone the second I'm close to one that works globally and has a reasonable global data plan. Although... if you trust Maddox as blindly as I do, there is an even better phone out there.


 

Words> The Bridge by Iain Banks

I read way too much into myself in this book. With its multiple levels and drifts of symbolism throughout, The Bridge hurled me into the deep.

Synopsis that fails to do any justice to the impact: a man is in a coma and lives in his internal world, a seemingly endless bridge. He reflects both his past and his current situation in this state, and the coherence of his coma is further disturbed by the dreams his coma-self has - alternatively, they are just other coma-induced delusions that his mind parses as dreams. Sometimes we even get overtures from the real self, as if he'd scratch the surface of consciousness from time to time. But with the line between realities fairly dim, it doesn't pay to analyze the source or the place of all these lives, delusional or not, the man lives through. They just are, and they influence each other.

While his adventures on the bridge and in a Scottish-slang, phonetically narrated fantasy world are gripping, it is his impending return that hit me. It's as if he has a choice to return from this symbolically charged, terrifyingly confusing and fleeting internal world into his real life where he has some months ago crashed an expensive car, drunk. He would be returning to a woman he loves but whom he has for years had to share with the rest of the world, including another man in Paris he has never met. He would be returning to a job in his company, an expanding bald patch, a habit of scotch and spliffs, dying family, friends getting older, no real progress anywhere, his attitudes and values unchanged since Uni, yet progress made in other areas that are less important.

He would be returning to life. Yet, while I think I cheered him on, I was torn with the decision of a return. How terribly frustrating that successful, well lived life sounds like when compressed into a handful of pages, but he decides to return to live his life further, to the end of the bridge.

Instead of observing his subconscious process all the material form his past (and there is enough to last a lifetime and more), like he observes himself on a hospital bed from a small screen in his room on the bridge, he chooses to participate in his life. Hell if that doesn't ring true to me.

A lot of traveling is observation by default. You go and see places. Sure, you also do things and meet people, to overextend the oversimplification, but these are short-lasting engagements. It all becomes a puzzle, sooner or later, and even the most ferocious appetite for new experiences takes a break as the latest inputs are digested. And some inputs take a long time to digest.

What the hell am I trying to say? Am I getting travel-weary 5 months into my trip? Maybe I am. I do know I want to participate more.

Anyway, Banks is a bloody genious.