The dollar continues to slide. 

My friends in the northern hemisphere may not have heard the news yet, but last week the Canadian Dollar (aka the Loony) reached parity with the venerable US Dollar for the first time in memory (perhaps the first time in recorded history).

The Australian Dollar isn't too far behind. Unless something radical happens, I figure we'll be at parity before Christmas.

A few years ago, my (then) U.S. dollars would get me roughly $2 Australian. When I arrived here in April, it was about $1.25. The last few days it's been creeping down to $1.10.  On the bright side, U.S. goods will only get cheaper - and by extension, Chinese goods, since they're artificially tied to the USD. (Won't be long before the Chinese wise up to how much money they're losing by doing this). 

On the downside, my 401K is still sitting overseas - losing value every day; and there's not much I can do about it. There's a stiff penalty for early withdrawal, and I don't believe they recognize the Australian superannuation (aka 'super') system as a valid rollover choice. By the time I can touch it without penalty in about ten years, it will probably be worth a few cents. 

The evening commute turned into chaos. Total meltdown. Everybody at a standstill.

What could've caused this catastrophe? Major smashup? Police action? Toxic spill on the road? No.

Four baby ducks. 

As an American import, the first time I actually saw a kangaroo in the wild was novel and interesting. Even the second time. Then they started showing up as roadkill. Now the novelty has begun to wear off. Just another roo. No big deal. Just like the wombats before that.

But there's a lot of novelty and interesting stuff left in this land. The weather is warming up. Time for the snakes to come out...  

Imagine my surprise when I took a little walk amongst the bramble off the beaten path and found myself surrounded by a five-pointed leafy plant that is illegal to possess. They're growing everywhere - totally uncultivated and wild. I had always heard that such places existed, but had never actually encountered one before.

In California forests, if you encounter said plants, you're advised to quickly depart and not make any noise. People have been killed for stumbling onto somebody's private plantation. In this case, they're just weeds - growing on the side of the road.

My daily drive to work takes me down (and back up) the MacQuarie Pass. That's pronounced 'McQuarry', not 'Mackerie'.

This takes you down the edge of the Illawarra Escarpment, through the rain forest, and finally opens into pasture land at the bottom - about 15km further. You're literally driving down the side of a cliff. At the top it's about 1.5 lanes wide with only an occasional metal post between you and a plunge straight over the edge - full of blind curves and hairpin loopbacks like the one shown above.  It's a wild roller coaster ride, and always full of surprises. This morning there was a tree in the middle of the road. Not a branch, a tree. Last night on the way home, there was a kangaroo in the middle of the road. Couple weeks back there was an 18-wheeler truck straddling the dirt spot where the red car is in the above picture. Stuck. Last week it was fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. I was about where the truck is on the left of the picture going uphill, and there was some maniac going downhill about where the white car is on the left. Doing about 80km/h (~50MPH) in a 15km (~9MPH) zone. Passing another car. Next to a cliff. On a blind curve, next to a hairpin loop. In zero visibility fog. There's barely enough room to pass oncoming traffic here without scraping each other's mirrors.

It starts to be entertaining to try and predict what will be thrown at me on the next time up/down the road. But that's the fun of the MacQuarie. It's always unpredictable.

Just another day.

The neighbor backed into my car yesterday. Smashed up both doors on the driver side a bit. (That would be the right side). It's still drivable. Took out her tail light. 

It was just outside the front window, which I was sitting in front of, but I didn't hear a thing. My ears were occupied. Finally got the bulk of the studio wiring in place and I was busy adjusting the digital delay units for the virtual drummer - and otherwise going through system tests to make sure all the gear was cooperating after being relocated on the other side of the earth.

This setup had been delayed by a lack of suitable speakers. Speakers here cost a fortune, as does everything else. Professional recording gear has always been one of those maximum gouge industries and it's no different here. The difference is that it's a captive market. To buy this stuff overseas you'll end up with the wrong power supply - or in the case of speakers, a hefty bill for shipping. A pair of Yamaha monitors that I can get on eBay for $100 costs about $800 on this side of the pond.

So I did a lot of comparison shopping and found a pair of Chinese 12" wedge monitors for about $125 each. That's quite affordable so I ordered a pair. The speakers themselves are crap, but it's the boxes I was after. Someday I'll find a used pair of JBL or Eminence drivers I can drop in and bring them up to my standards, but they'll work for now. I can smooth out any shortcomings with the equalizer. It will be a lot cheaper in freight costs to import a couple of better transducers than it is to import a couple of quite hefty wooden boxes. I've been down this road many times before. I know what it takes to get just the equipment I require within a reasonable budget. You can't hang out waiting for the best, or you'll spend your life waiting and not doing. During the dot-com boom I could buy the best (and did). Now my planning is once again like my starving student days, except that I've still got a bit of good gear to work with. 

Anyway, the speakers finally arrived this week and I picked them up yesterday morning (the weekend). The other thing I've been waiting on for the studio setup is furniture. We sold all of it - remember? So off to Bunnings (that's the local equivalent of Orchard Supply Hardware) and I came home with three folding utility tables.  The ones that cost about $30 at Home Depot. I paid about $55 each.

But it was the last piece of the puzzle that I needed to get everything setup and working. So now I can finally get that jumble of cables off the floor of the living room and make Amanda happy (and myself, since I'll be using them for their intended purpose). Glad I didn't leave any of those behind. Each cable runs between $20 and $50 here. And I need a few hundred before all is said and done. 64 RCA cables for patch buses, 16 MIDI cables, 24 XLR's, and 24 1/4 inch cables, 7 or 8 mini (PC sound card) to twin RCA for starters; you do the math. It starts adding up real fast. $40 for a MIDI cable. And that's for a single one meter cable. Ouch. Luckily I've got enough of all this stuff that I don't need to do the math.

I find it amazing that Australian musicians can ever get to the world stage. They would need a lot of capital. 

Oh yeah, Happy Father's Day! (They observe it in September here). Also yesterday was the first day of spring. I don't completely understand, since it has nothing to do with the equinox, but then I never understood how it worked in the states either (for instance they call the equinox the 'first' day of summer, winter, whatever). But the equinox isn't the beginning or end of a weather trend. It's smack dab in the middle. Oh well. I've argued the point 'til I'm blue in the face already. The declaration of seasonal endpoints as occurring during the equinox is logically incorrect but it isn't going to change anything. Just like it doesn't change the fact that Australia celebrates the coming of spring on September 1, which has nothing to do with anything. Happy spring anyway and a toast to the end of an extremely long winter.