Not Sleeping, Waking

The move itself at the beginning of August was fairly stressful, even with the help of removalists. J was straight off to work while I pottered around the house with a flu pretending to unpack the multitudinous boxes.

My first impressions of Canberra as a place to live when we got here were, in no particular order: cold, quiet, well planned, thank you to whomever invented central heating, and hooray for dishwashers. Those last two probably have something to do with the very liveable place we found to rent in the midst of a very tight rental market.

I had visited Canberra several times while I lived in Sydney (hi Michael and Emma!) and, as a young twenty-something with a taste for clubbing, found it less than appealing. Needless to say, the idea of moving here then was not something I wasted much thought on.

Funny the difference half a dozen years makes. The more time I spend here the more I come to like it. Everything is about 10-20 minutes away. There are decent bars, restaurants and theatres around town. I can get almost everywhere on a bike - well, at least to the city and to and from work. And on top of the bike riding, the nearby bushland, trees, mountains and lakemake the place feel inherently healthy.

Proximity to Frozen Water

One big advantage Canberra has over Sydney is that it’s a good couple of hours closer to the snow. Something we took advantage of very quickly, booking a last minute weekend staying on-snow at the Stables in Perisher.

The season was much, much better than the last couple of years with all my favourite runs open and very ride-able: Zali’s, Excellerator, Towers, and Rollercoaster.

Between the central heating and snowboarding, I think winters here are not going to be a problem.

Remembrance Drive

For all my raving about Canberra I must admit to having headed back to Sydney several times already in the last few months. Not without reason though. Aside from all the great friends and neighbours we left behind we had several events that drew us back, including: Ant’s birthday, Jesse’s naming day, and my graduation:

J has been back a few more times than me. I’d try to argue she is more of a Sydney-sider than me but one of her trips back was to hand in her own monster of a research project entitled “The National Audience”. I can even report that it’s pretty damn good as I proof-read large chunks of it along with our sometime housemate Mel who is also a Canberra newcomer and fellow ANU-er.

The Jobs

So, to the reason we’re here. As I mentioned In a previous installment, we up and left Sydney because I fortunate to score what looked like a great research position and J got a job in the halls of power. I’m happy to be able to report that, two months in, they are still looking like a great jobs - although with the election just called J’s job just got a lot more “interesting”.

After a bit of time settling in to a new school and a whole lot of new theory my work is also starting to get busy as a roadmap of papers to write starts to become clear. It’s quite a change from research in industry. I enjoy both but I’m really liking the chance I have at the moment to work on some more theoretical stuff. I’m sure I’ll get an itch to do some more code-cutting in due course though.

More Time and Space

One of the most satisfying side effects of the move would have to be the extra time I seem to have now. Memories of an hour or more in the car everyday in Sydney traffic are almost forgotten when I zoom along by the lake on my 15 minute ride to work.

Not only is the incidental exercise a good thing but I’ve managed to read a lot more and catch up on some films. That is, when Facebook is not sucking my time away.

Of course free time, like hard-drive space, is there to be filled and, glutton that I am, I’m already finding ways to spread myself thin (concocting metaphoric cocktails, for instance). Not content with neglecting one website, I’ve set up an academic one as well as a research blog so the three or four regular readers this one has won’t be put of if I start posting incessantly about machine learning.

To top it off, some mail arrived today which might mean I’ll actually nail one of my new years’ resolutions. Although I haven’t put much effort into practising lately that will have to change as I’m all signed up to sit the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December.

Wish me がんばって!