Category: Chinese, Miscellanea, Personal, Web Apps
My wife and I are moving to Australia! We’ve hooked up with the mighty Daemon, and are going to be doing our part to make the FarCry 5.0 Application Framework a household name. Well, at least a back-room-server, IT-hold name anyway.
We’ve been trying to learn strine, and I’ve been trying find some time to learn about footy (if you have any good references, please share). I’ve also been practicing driving on the other side of the road - the police don’t seem to like that much. I think we might hold off on getting a car.
As you might imagine we’ve been busy taking care of all the crazy things one has to do when moving to another country (on top of finishing out or current gigs). If we’ve been a little slow on getting back to you / doing releases / writing letters, that’s why.
Geoff Bowers, Daemon’s Captain, has been an amazingly cool cat. I am humbled that he would go through so much paperwork to hire a couple yanks. Just so it’s on record, we owe him a yardie - or three. On top of Daemon, Geoff also does WebDU, so hopefully I’ll get to go to that next year. WebDU is awesome.
This will be the first time either of us have worked outside of the United States, and we are very excited to give it a go. My wife and I know there will be culture shock, but from what we’ve read, Oz should be a nice fit for us. Hopefully we’ll blend right in.
FarCry is written in ColdFusion, so I’ll be dusting off my cfskills. I’ve been checking out the FarCry codebase on and off in the evening for the past few weeks, and I am excited to be digging into it soon (it’s open source so you can too). I haven’t been able to get my hands dirty yet because of all the goings on, but I have been lurching on the FarCry Google groups list (developer version), and the FarCry community seem like a nice bunch.
Sydney also has a decent sized Chinese population, and a China town so I’ll hopefully get a lot of practice with my Chinese study. We might even be able to take a vacation to China someday since it’s only a 5 hour flight. Wicked.
We are totally rapt.
Congrats Rob, welcome to down under :)
Don’t forget to try vegemite. Just like smoking…nobody likes it at first but before you know it you’re hooked!
Looking forward to your contributions to the Daemon/FarCry team
Congrats Rob, it’s good to see you working with ColdFusion again. Can’t wait to see what you and the rest of the Daemon crew have in store.
Cool, that’s great news :) I’d say welcome to Oz too, but I’ve just moved to Europe for a year (or more, hehe). Geoff’s a smart guy importing CF talent, I hope things work out well!
Rob,
Sounds very cool, to say the least! It will be interesting hearing how you find the transition to be…
Hoist one for us who can’t go, yet..
DW
Congratulations, and welcome to Australia!
Ignore Michael about the vegemite… it really IS foul and liking it is not a requirement of residency :)
Strine is a very particular and peculiar dialect… but once you get your head around the difference between “yeah nah” and “nah yeah” as a response to a question, you’ll be fine. Just promise me you’ll never say “throw another shrimp on the barbie”. Even as a joke. We don’t say that, srsly!
@Michael - I’ve been wondering about vegemite. I was going to try it at webdu 06 but I chickened out. I will for sure give it a go when I get down there though :-D
@Rob - should be fun :)
@Justin - thanks mate
@Dan - the transition will be interesting. All the books I’ve been reading say it sneaks up on you. Like going into a restaurant and sitting at a table, then figuring out you have to go to the counter to get food, “the lot” including a beet, everyday things like that. I’ll likely blog about all my putting-my-foot-in-my-mouth situations.
@Kay - I promise. I just double checked, and that’s not in my book - “throw a tanty”, “throw a wobbly”, “throw-down”, “tickets”. Though almost everyone who we tell about our move says that at least once, we shall refrain :)
hip hip horray! thank you for helping me get boxes and things - happy anniversary, robrohan.com!
Congratulations, Rob! What an opportunity… maybe all that work on the CF mode in AFAE may be of value yet…
Good news… have fun, learn lots!
(And easier timezone changes too. :)
Congrats, Rob and welcome to downunder!
I, for some reasons, have been wanting to meet you since I encountered CFEclipse and Spike’s code at somewhere in Brisbane ;-)
Hope you enjoy your new life down here.
Cheers.
Terry
Oh, beetroot on a hamburger is compulsory. You will love it (and damn I’m missing it!!!) :)
Last time I checked we were a bit further from China than 5 hours… unless you’re living right up the top near Darwin of course. Then it might be 5 to Hong Kong ;-)
Here’s a few sayings to help get you familiar with the Australian vernacular:
- G’day (yup, that’s pretty much all you need overseas to be instantly recognised as an Aussie)
- you little bloody ripper (or you little bloody beaudy… actually pretty much anything starting with “you little bloody…” is pretty handy)
- strewth (crikey is interchangeable here)
There’s a bunch more Australianism’s all of which I’m sure you’ll come across in time.
Good luck with the move.
My favourite saying from when I was living in Australia is “Yeah, nah, it’s good, but”. I’ll leave it to the Aussies to translate that one. They’ll probably all tell you something different :-)
Spike
oh, congratulations by the way, glad it all came together in the end.
Gives me another reason to head out to WebDU again :-)
Just stumbled across this thread. My wife is a bona fide “Kiwiroo”, having lived equal portions of her pre-USA life in both NZ and Aussie, so I’ve had a fair bit of exposure to some down under expressions. ;-)
And by another coincidence, I’m working with my employer to relo to Aussie (Brisbane area). It’s taken a while to get to this point, and it finally seems to be getting some traction. No dates yet, and there are still some things to consider. For one thing, I’m Canadian, not American; I suspect getting my work papers might be more straightforward (I’m guessing) due to the whole Commonwealth Nation thing, and probably moreso because of the whole wife thing.
I’m rather looking forward to it. If anything, there should be some aspects of the culture which I’m already familiar with, such as Parliament, saying ‘eh’, the public healthcare system (trying to learn the US health insurance system has been rather confounding).
I’m not really a sports buff, but I’ll leave that to my wife; I’ll live vicariously through her. ;-) She dearly misses watching Rugby League (or Rugby Union in a pinch), and would probably get back into playing it if the opportunity were to arise.
I was also going to express surprise at the “5 hours to get to China” comment. I’d done some research, and while it was some months ago, I could have sworn that getting to The Philippines or Thailand from Sydney was 9 hours. Would also enjoy going to Hong Kong or Japan, although whatever Mandarin I still remember would be useless in HK (I think?). Maybe I’d need to take a course in Cantonese first.
Yeah, so… big move. Disruptive to say the least. Way cool after the dust settles. :-)
Ok, I blame my public education :)
From SFish to NYish is about 4,500 km and is about a 5 hour flight. From Sydney-ish to Beijing-ish is about 9,000 km. It’s probably more like 10 hours or so I would guess.
Mr. Rohan,
What great news! Australia eh? That’s super cool. As you know I am a fan of the rest of the world and like to drop in on it when I can or when I have good cause. Can’t wait to come visit :) Do try and keep in touch old mate!
Shawn