Category: Musings

A friend of mine, Benno, is in Las Vegas at the CES conference this week. He works for Bluebox Devices and they’re launching their new media gizmo this week. After all the years of effort he’s put into it, it must be great to be there at CES showing and telling everyone about it.

Here’s a picture showing how excited they all are.

Well, maybe they are just tired. It’s from Graeme Thickins’ blog, where he covered several of the Australian contingent that’s over there at the moment.

Good luck guys, and hope you make lots of deals!

After much stress, we finally completed settlement on Friday for the new house. I can’t begin to tell you how outraged I was with the unprofessional conduct of certain parties on Friday, but we got the keys, and that’s the main thing.

On Saturday, Kate and I, together with Tim and Lynne, removed all the floor coverings in the front half of the house. The carpet in the front two bedrooms was easy, but the pink tiles in the hallway, living room, and dining room were more effort. It turns out that the tilers who put them in were very thorough; maybe a bit too thorough. The tiles were glued to a type of board, which was nailed to the floor. There were nails every 5cm or so. All up, a lot of nails.

We got a good technique going, and all the tiles were up by the end of the day. On Tuesday, new carpet will go down on the floorboards, and we move in on Thursday!

I recently heard a podcast about the Pittsburgh diaspora, and I realised that I was part of the Perth diaspora. According to TheFreeDictionary, a diaspora is “a dispersion of a people from their original homeland, or the community formed by such a people”. I know a fair number of people who hale from Perth, in Western Australia, and while they have lived away from there for many years, still retain a fondness, and a connection. Even while there doesn’t seem to be a conscious effort to construct an expatriate Perth community, they seem to form anyway.

I wonder if there are some distinct cultural traits that mark out people from Perth, such that we spot each other. There is a slight shift in accent across Australia, with people from W.A. having a more Pommie accent, and people from the eastern states having a more Kiwi accent. I’m not sure many Australians would recognise it though – certainly I don’t. Also, there’s a little local slang, such as “Freo” for “Fremantle” and “Rotto” for “Rottnest”, and the fact that we refer to bathing trunks as “bathers” (that one’s shared with a couple of other states, I believe). There’s a distinct driving behaviour on the road that is territorial and dismissive of pedestrians. Most people would lose that after driving elsewhere – or their insurance premiums would skyrocket.

The types of people I know that have left Perth have all had careers in fields like IT/Telecomms, Music, Academia, Finance or Law. All occupations that benefit from being close to a larger population centre. Maybe we find each other because we bump into each other at work?

So, if you catch your colleague moaning about the poor choice of beaches, spreading rumours about the dangers of quokkas, or complaining about the time they dated someone that turned out to be the sibling of a friend, then perhaps they’re part of the Perth diaspora.

There are plenty of house-buying strategies out there, but the one I used on the weekend is supported by some common sense theory, is not illegal, but most importantly can actually work: we are now house-owners! I figure I won’t be needing to use this one again soon, so I’m happy to share it with anyone else who is bidding at auction.

Firstly, there are two possible auction outcomes: either the property sells at auction, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then any bids you’ve made simply provide the vendor with a position to negotiate the price up from. So, it’s better if you haven’t made any bids in that case, and you can simply begin negotiations directly when the auction finishes.

In the case it’s going to sell, the property will go on the market at some point, and the auctioneer will indicate this by saying it’s “on the market”, it “will sell”, or something like that. After this has happened, you should begin to bid.

As auctions are a painful thing, pretty much anyone prepared to bid at one will have rationally thought out what their limit is, before they go. If your limit is below anyone else’s, you aren’t going to win. However, auctions aren’t a completely rational environment.

Auctioneers are very good at putting on a show, pressuring bidders, and otherwise channelling PT Barnum. Most people have an “emotional limit” that is higher than their “rational limit”. If they used their credit cards, sold some shares, restricted their lifestyle, borrowed a bit from a mate, or did something else that they don’t really want to do, then they could go beyond their rational limit. The auctioneer’s goal is to have people bid well above their rational limit, up to their emotional limit. Even if you have the highest rational limit, you will lose the auction if anyone’s emotional limit is higher than your rational limit.

The mechanics of auction are such that the winner is the one that’s prepared to pay the most, but they only need pay as much as the loser would pay. For example, if a person who is willing to pay up to $200,000 is bidding against another who is willing to pay up to $300,000, then the latter can win by paying $200,001. So, even if your rational limit is higher than everyone’s emotional limit and you win, you will pay a price equivalent to the loser’s emotional limit.

No legal auction strategy can lower people’s rational limit, but a good auction strategy can keep people’s emotional limit to close to their rational limit. This can save you money and may even win you the auction. Unfortunately, the auctioneer is trying to do the opposite, and push the emotional limits of the bidders.

So to beat the auctioneer, you need to join them. They power dress to impress, they stand at the front like a teacher at a class, and they whoop and shout to whip up the emotions. To counter this, you need to dress as a real-estate agent in a dark suit, stand at the front near the auctioneer, and every time the bid increased by someone else, calmly but immediately increase it yourself. You should look like someone with infinite patience and a infinite limit, and who is there to buy.

I felt a little silly, standing up there alone in my suit near the auctioneer. The auctioneer knew what I was up to and started to ignore me. When someone else bid me up, he wouldn’t come back to me straight away, so I had to shout out my bids in order to regain the lead. I think we would’ve won anyway, but this strategy probably saved us a few thousand dollars.

We went to the AFL Grand Final on Saturday, to see the West Coast Eagles win by just a point. It was a frustrating game, but it was very exciting towards the end as Sydney Swans came from hugely behind to close on the Eagles. (And let me say that if you’re going to have a mascot, one based on a bird is guaranteed to look like a chicken. Except if it’s an Eagle, of course).

Anyway, it was the second time I’d been to a Grand Final, but the first time I’d seen the game from the stands. Back in 1997, we were there as part of the talent. Not the sporting talent of course – we were in the pre-match entertainment.

It’s still run by Kerrie Hayes Productions. And they still teach the same dance moves. As the little people dressed in black waved their arms to Up There Kazaly, my arms twitched in synch.

It was much better to be in the stands. You could see everything and there wasn’t a costume. The only way to get a birds-eye view from down on the ground was to dress as a chicken.

I watch Top Gear. This clip may tell you why:

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I was sorry to hear Richard Hammond had an accident in filming the show today – you can see in this video snippet that he’s a bit of a crazy man. In fact, they’re all crazy. Hope he recovers fully…

Reading The Age Good Food Guide, a Melbournian might get the idea that everyone’s out there munching on foie gras, quaffing chateau du maison, and quoting French phrases. Most of the foodie websites follow this trend, and discuss high cuisine as if it’s almost an everyday experience for the authors. Maybe it is, but what about the rest of us?

For me, a good brunch out can be the weekend highlight. I recently came across a site that reviews good breakfast spots around Melbourne. It’s fantastic! The pictures get me drooling, and I’ve discovered several new places that I’ve simply got to try.

A little while back, I was pointed towards a site that reviews the best chicken parmagiana in town. These are people who take great pride in their mission, and their rating methodology is extraordinarily detailed. But it doesn’t explain why their ratings show North Melbourne as the centre of the parma universe.

Finally, there’s someone out there who is helping us to choose our morning brew. This site reviews cups of coffee (and the occasional hot chocolate). How useful is that? I haven’t really gone through their back catalogue of reviews yet, but there looked like a couple of places I really should check out. It goes well with the breakfast site.

So, more of it, I say. Not everyone has the ability to dine at two-hat restaurants, but a good coffee is realistically available to everyone, and a good breakfast can make your day. This is what the Internet was invented for!

So, there’s no snow in Victoria at the moment, but there is a fair bit over in New Zealand. We’ve just come back from a trip to Queenstown using Value Tours, and can recommend them.

We got to three different mountains: The Remarkables (reasonable snow but a bit small, so it didn’t take long to have skied everything of interest), Coronet Peak (lots of runs, comfy chairs on the lifts, good views, but very exposed, and all the snow was artificial), and Cardrona (a bit further away, but excellent snow, and good pizzas and noodles). There was a fourth, Treble Cone, that only Dan made it to, and it had more skiable area, catering more to the black-run types.

Now that we’re in Spring, the snow is getting a bit soft, and the cover is reducing. Good for boarding, apparently, but is a little too sticky for my taste. Speaking of taste.. the bananas were great. Can’t wait til we get them back in Victoria at a reasonable price.

What a poor ski-season it’s been this year in Victoria. Admittedly, we went to Lake Mountain and not Mount Hotham, but this picture still gives you an idea of the state of things. It’s mid-August, and there should be enough snow to go tobogganing!

Perhaps this photo overstates things. Even though there were patches of rocks, grass and dirt, it was possible to steer between them, following a winding path of snow to the bottom. In fact, the fact that you needed to steer probably made it a little more fun than it would’ve been normally.