zerosleeps

Since 2010

You're having an OCL

A colleague sent me an item of work yesterday which contained the following sentence:

Each ORG will have an OCL for an ORC which has the ORG code as its ORC code.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out which tragic turn I have taken in life which lead me to recieve, understand, and be able to constructively respond to this statement.

One year ago

Well it was this time last year when the whole Sydney thing was really starting to kick off. On the 2nd January 2010, I was surrounded by snow in Inverness, waiting for the folks in Sydney to return to work and decide whether or not they wanted to employ me. It’s quite amazing what can happen in 12 short months.

Miller Street in the snow

Christmas 2010

What a weird day it’s been. It’s certainly been different from Christmas in Scotland! I can’t say the day has really been all that unusual for a Sydney Saturday: got up, had breakfast, went for a swim, played Wii, had dinner, then went out for a coffee.

And that’s where we’re at. I got the coffee from a coffee shop on George Street at about 7pm: there weren’t many places that were closed between here and there. Market City - a fairly large shopping centre - was open, every restaurant I passed was open, chemists, electrical stores, the lot. At 7pm on Christmas day.

Sunset on Macarthur Street

The Big Merino

Now here’s something you don’t see every day. It’s called the Big Merino, and it’s in a wee town called Goulburn, which is between Sydney and Canberra.

Apparently, he’s made from concrete, and is about 15 metres tall.

You want more? Okay, you can climb up inside his belly. It’s dark, but it’s possible. The nice lady in the attached gift shop informed me that you used to be able to climb higher than you can today, and peer out across New South Wales through his eyes.

Not enough I hear you say? Well here’s the stinker: they moved the Big Merino in 2007 because Goulburn was bypassed. He now sits closer to the Hume Highway than he used to so tourists can see him as they whizz past. They put the thing on a lorry, and moved it.

The Big Merino

Timekeeping in Parliament House

Interesting and geeky fact about the clocks in Australia’s Parliament House: they’re all at exactly the same time, and they all tick at exactly the same time.

There are over 2,500 analogue clocks in the building apparently, so it doesn’t matter where you stand you can almost always see a clock - usually two or three.

It sounds so corny, but it really does feel like the building has a heartbeat when you find a quiet spot, and all those clocks are loudly ticking together.

Clocks in Parliament House