Conferenceing!!

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to a conference. This conference happened to be THE conference for people in my field to go to and it also happened to be in Perth. (For those of you that are geographically challenged in Australia, Perth is on the west coast toward the south.) Just getting to this conference was a challenge in itself. I found out about it at the end of Oct, about a month before it was suppose to happen. Immediately after finding out I mentioned it to my boss and he said it should be fine but needed to check with the higher ups. Then he was out of the office for a couple weeks and when I finally managed to catch up with him I found out I needed to fill out this form and send it to Person A. So I did this and by this point it's a little more than a week before I would need to leave for the conference... I didn't hear anything and by the end of week I was getting a bit anxious. After several phone calls and emails on Fri and Mon, I finally got approval at 5pm on Mon to go to this conference at the end of that week. On Tues I booked plane tickets to leave on Wed and a place to stay. Cutting it just a bit close... They really should work on the policy and procedures to get approval to go to a conference.

I had almost 2 days in Perth to wander around and explore. It was a lot of fun and a very pretty city, but rather hot. I would have liked a bit more time there though and especially to have someone to hang out with.

The conference itself was really good. I went there only knowing 2 people and even them I had only met once. There were about 50 people total there and only a couple of those were women and I wouldn't be surprised if I was the youngest there (the average age was probably about 55). I made a lot of contacts though and learned a lot! The tiny conference was a very difference experience to the massive conferences I had been to before. The biggest difference was that all my food was included!! Breakfast, morning and afternoon tea, lunch and dinner. All very very yummy :) I can't wait for the conference next year!! It's going to be near Adelaide.

Let them eat cake!

We threw a surprise birthday party this weekend and I said I would make the cake for it. Feeling particularly inspired by the slight obsession with Madagascar 2 multiple people have here, I decided I would do a fancy cake! Luckily a friend had a book of cake designs for kids parties that I could look through for further inspiration. Originally the cake was going to be a penguin cake, but due to lack of being able to easily find black food coloring and lack of a large enough pan to do it properly I decided to do a lion instead. Much simpler since all I needed were my round cake pans :)

After Alvina convinced me that making the cake part of the cake a red velvet cake might be a slightly bad idea, I managed to find a yellow cake recipe that looked like it would suit for my purposes. It almost did until I only had about half the required amount of sugar, so I used some brown sugar as well and added a bit of extra vanilla (well actually I kinda doubled the amount of vanilla called for).

Yay!!! My 2 layers!!

The next big task was definitely the frosting. It would have been much simpler to buy a couple tubs of frosting and color appropriately, but said tubs run about $4.50 (these are the Betty Crocker ones that are about $1 at home). I'll make my own frosting thank you very much!! So first stop was some yellow frosting to cover the whole thing.

I think this only looks slightly disturbing :P

So frosted up the whole thing and then made up a few different shades of brown by adding cocoa powder to the rest of the yellow (I meant to take a pic here but forgot). Using a piping bag and tips borrowed from the same friend I got the cake book from, I piped on the lions mane.

It's starting to look like a lion!! :)

Next challenge was to decorate his face appropriately. I had picked up some black writing icing (also way overpriced but I didn't want to try to make this) so I used that for the mouth, left over brown frosting for the nose, and marshmallow fluff and chocolate chips for the eyes.

So so so cute!!!!!!!!!

I had a lot of fun and everyone really liked it :) I think I might have to do more decorating of cakes in the future :)

gotta love shopping!

So I'm not quite sure who came up with the idea for the Aussie shopping center but I'm pretty sure they were almost a genius. I would say shopping centers (or centres) here are completely unlike anything I've ever seen in the states. They are very similar to the typical American mall in the sense that they are enclosed and have the normal range of shops that typical American malls have (electronics, book stores, jewelry, hair, food court) but there are a few differences. Most of the ones I've seen have at least some undercover parking, either in the form of parking garages or sailshades (which are essentially giant canvas tarps). Anchor stores tend to be places like Kmart, Target, Big W (the Aussie Walmart), and grocery stores. (The mall in Ithaca was kinda similar since it had non-typical dept stores for anchor stores but not quite the same.) There also tend to be more anchor stores than what you would find at a mall of similar size in the states. This is great because it is one-stop shopping but you have options on where you buy things! At the shopping center near where I live there is a Kmart, Target, and 2 grocery stores. The entrances to the grocery stores are about 50 steps from each other. If one doesn't have what you're looking for try the other or you know something you want is on sale that week but everything else is cheaper at the other store not a problem. You don't have to worry about wasting gas driving around to get the best deals. Another difference is more of the shopping centers tend to be multiple levels and have inclined moving sidewalks to get from level to level instead of escalators. You can take your buggy on these and magnets keep it from sliding all around. The buggies are also different, instead of having 2 rotating wheels and 2 fixed wheels, all 4 wheels rotate!! That can make them a bit difficult to control sometimes :P Other differences mostly revolve around the prices of things :P

you're it!!!

So Alvina tagged me on this whole 8 questions thing and to make her happy I figured I'd do it :P besides it is kinda interesting :)

1) If you could spend 6 weeks learning about something (basketweaving, audio mixing, the guitar, cooking, photography, chemistry, painting, etc.), what would it be and why?
oooh definitely pastry and chocolate making!! it'd be awesome to learn that type of thing from a professional. and so much yummyness :) painting would actually be a close tie for second... though i'm not sure i'd like to learn about it as much as just spend time doing it... maybe i could do each for 3 weeks! :)
2) What would you order for your last meal on earth?
jim bobs chicken fingers, bbq ribs, mashed potatoes, banana pudding and brownies :)
3) If you are handed two plane tickets and 7 nights hotel, where would you go and who would you take?
i thought the where would be easy cuz my first thought was the big island of hawaii so i could see lava. but been there done that so if i can go anywhere maybe i should go somewhere else... so i think that somewhere else would be... at the moment i think costa rica... there's a volcano there too!! though who am i kidding i really want to go back to see the lava in hawaii :) the who will depend on when i get these plane tickets :P
4) Name 5 things on your bucket list.
1. skydiving
2. visit every continent
3. spend several weeks traveling across europe
4. hike the entire appalachian trail (or a similar long backpacking trip)
5. own an island

5) What are the last things you do before you fall asleep?
brush teeth, say a prayer and read a bit til i feel like i can sleep :)

6) What are your favorite pizza toppings?
cheese!! sausage and pepperoni if i'm going for classic pizza toppings, chicken and pesto if i want to spice things up a bit

7) What's your cell phone wall paper?
somerset dam with all the gates open releasing water!

8) What are 3 things you always take with you out the door everyday (minus the keys)?
cellphone, wallet, and a purse to put it all in

Since I don't really having many blogging friends (and probably even fewer friends that actually read this), everyone who reads this is tagged :P and you can either leave your answers to my questions in the comments or post on your blog and leave me a link! The questions I have for you are as follows:

1. What are 5 things (food or something else) you would have shipped to you if you were living in an area that you couldn't find those things in the store?
2. Assuming it was possible to live on a different planet, which planet would you choose to live on and why?
3. What record would you try to set to get into the Guinness Book of World records? Why?
4. If you could only have one kind of birthday cake for the rest of your life what would it be?
5. 90F weather or 40F weather?
6. What was your favorite grade in school and why?
7. How many email addresses have you had (past and present)?
8. What are 3 spices/herbs/seasonings you couldn't live without?

rice krispy treats!

So marshmallows you find in the grocery store here are different. They come in small bags, look kinda crusty, feel less fluffy, and are pink and white! Supposedly the different colors taste the same but I'm skeptical... (quick side note: I saw the word skeptical in the paper today and it was spelled "sceptical", that was weird...) Well, I had read on a forum that you could find American marshmallows in Target (yes, we have Target here but it's a little different from Target in the states). So I decided I need to make a special trip to Target to find these American marshmallows because I had a craving for rice krispy treats :) (ok, maybe it wasn't really that special of a trip... I just went on my way home from work :P) and I found them!! There was much rejoicing :P
I made rice krispy treats tonight and they are yummy :)

money money money!

One of the big things that's different here is money and the way most people pay for things. In the states, I rarely carried cash, maybe $20 if I knew I was going to need it. If I needed to buy something I would just use my credit/debit card. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've actually had a US$50 bill in my possession and I've only seen a US$100 bill a few times as well.

The biggest initial challenge was figuring out the different bills and coins. All the bills are different colors and sizes here! The smallest bill is a AU$5. There are $2 and $1 gold coins and then the silver coins are .50, .20, .10, and .05. Australia doesn't have a penny and everything is rounded to the nearest .05. (I really like that system and I think the US should do the same.) I see $50 bills all the time here, I even saw a $100 at the street party. Whenever I get money from the ATM, if it is at least $50, I get at least one $50 bill. I find I carry cash much more often here (and a lot more of it) because there are lots of places that don't accept credit/debit cards (mostly food places in the shopping centers). For the first month or so I was here I paid in cash for pretty much everything under ~$50. I don't use cash quite as often now but still much more often than at home... Perhaps it's better for my budget this way :P

it's been almost 3 months!

Since I moved here... not since I last wrote something :P

I feel like I've settled in fairly well, though it still feels like I'm on holiday sometime. Certain things still shock me... like the cost of eating out! Occasionally there will be a culture difference these days that will catch me off-guard but most of the time it's random phrases that come out of people's mouths.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks... at the end of July the church I'm going to here had a street party! About 9000-10000 ppl showed up and there was lots of food, fun, monster trucks and fireworks. A long day but a good day. :)

Work is going well... I'm slowly getting around to seeing all the seismic sites we own right now. Still trying to figure out exactly what I'm doing though... However, we did have a few earthquakes over the past couple weeks!! One was about a M3!! Of course I had no clue what to do with all that information but it was still exciting! We have also finally gotten things going for a proper workstation and internal network set up. Hopefully by Christmas things will be completely set up.

In other news, my parents will be here in just over 3 weeks!!!! yippeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!