Winter in Melbourne

Although that I don't really follow the famous Korean soup titled, "Winter Sonata", at the very least, I was aware of it. I was aired to the local television in Malaysia, a few years back. Now, in July, it is winter in Melbourne. Not to my delight, there is no snow here (except on the nearby mountains). At least, that is what I thought before riding the flight, last week.

The coldness was felt immediately after I board off the plane. It feels like that I suddenly entered a room with a very powerful air-conditioner, with temperature of about 10 centigrade. Is it cool enough? Well, it is really cool, for someone in his life whom never set his foot outside tropical land. I felt a weird headache in my head, perhaps, due to the heavy breeze blowing through me (and my cap less head).

After I arrived the apartment of where I would be staying, I went to nearest convenient store. When I said "near", it may means 5 to 10 minutes walk. Normally, in "always-summer" country like Malaysia, for such distance, I would pampered myself by driving my car. however, for the lack of "convenience" transport, a walk to the nearest convenience store is really a convenient walk.

It was really cold. Although I already put on my winter coat, it was cold, still. At the time (night), there are not so many pedestrian nearby. However, I find that most of them just put on a sweater that has a cover on their head or a cap (that also cover their ears). I was shaking, and my hands were about to turn blue, until I finally protected my hands into the coat's hand pockets.

In the next morning, I wake up quite early than normal. It is very tough for me to even started entering the bathroom. I don't know what is the exact temperature at the time, but I guess, it was below 10 centigrade. In order to heat up myself, I turned on the wall heater in the living area and started by "exercising" (jumping and running in a place) a little bit. Well, who said that we only needs warming up before a game... we need for taking a bath too....

Most of the time, we always imagine that winter happened during end/early of the year for countries which have four seasons. Well, that is the countries with certain latitude in north hemisphere. Australia is situated the south of the hemisphere, hence, the season is opposite. Currently, is is summer in UK and US, but winter in Australia.

I remembered, when I was still a little kid, I wrote to my sister who studied in US. I asked her to bring back snow as a souvenir to me when she would be coming back to Malaysia. Well, of course she did not bring any. Well, somehow, I do have the feeling that it may be an exciting experience to actually watching the snow falling down from the sky. However, it does not really big deal now, because, now I really understand, why people said that that those from seasonal countries love summer and why they coined Malaysia as the country who always has the "summer" season. It is simply because, it is cold when it is not summer.

I'm in Melbourne

It’s been a long time since my last post. For the last few months, I was catching up with date line for the project I was involved in.Luckily, the project had gone to the UAT by now. I was not really involved till the end (UAT), the last of my official participation in the project is the debugging of a migration tools developed by other co-worker. Since the end of last month (last Monday, actually), I got new assignment – to join a team that undergoes an active project for a reputable customer (a company).

Common sense in software development, adding more people to the team will not speed up the delivery. However, in my case, my participation (with one other senior co-worker) is more than that. We are assigned to be actively participates in the project to its completion, and also to absorb as muck skill as necessary possible. The project involves developers from a third party vendor, developers from the customer, and developers from our company (of which I work for) sister’s company in Melbourne, both of us.

Guess what… I am neither in Brisbane nor Sydney… I am in Melbourne now. ;-) I am here for about a week already (my flight to Melbourne from KLIA was on 29^th of June 2008)

Well, I don’t think that “wow” is really an appropriate response from anyone that I told about my departure to Melbourne. I am here for business/work, not for sight-seeing. I am pretty sure that some of my beautiful and handsome friends will not expect me to buy souvenirs, as I am not here as a mere tourist. However, I guess, perhaps, I will bring some… but, no promise, my dear(s).

In the mean time, wish me luck, my dear(s). I will be here for about two months. If there is a need, my stay here in Melbourne will be extended to three months. However, I hope, it will be right as if its original plan, in spite of I don’t mind if it gets extended eventually.

Being in a foreign place really open my sight and I hope, I will be able to write about some of them here, in the future.

One more thing, in case of you are asking, there are two most common questions to be answered:

1. Q:What is the time zone in Melbourne? A: GMT +1000. Just add two hours to the timein Malaysia (GMT +0800).
2. Q: What is the currency rate for Australian Dollar (AU$). Well, to be exact, please refer to your nearest money exchange outlet. However, now, it should be about RM3.15 to AU$1, more or less.