Home sweet home

Posted on February 28, 2009

Arrived back in Sydney this afternoon after the quick Melbourne visit, and was pleasantly surprised that my Qantas flight was actually on time. I think that’s the first time in a dozen trips. Was also the first time I didn’t get to the airport nursing a hangover either!

Melbourne International Motor Show

Posted on February 27, 2009

Since we use the same venue for our Auto Salon Melbourne events, there was a pretty strong sense of de ja vu as we went to this year’s Melbourne International Motor Show. The turnout was interesting - no Ferarri or Mercedes-Benz - while it was good to see a lot of the manufacturers have realised the importance of the youth market. There was also a strong focus on eco-friendliness of course.

Here’s our RAV4 which is sitting on Toyota’s stand. We only had a few weeks to build it, so I think everyone involved has done a stellar job. There’s still plenty more modifications that will be done to it over the next couple of months!

Not a morning person

Posted on February 27, 2009

Really struggled with waking up at 6:30AM today as I most definitely am not a morning person. If I could wake up at noon every day I’d be incredibly happy.

Certainly felt better after some breakfast, which I picked up at The Lot at Crown Casino. Sure a steak sandwich isn’t a conventional start to the day, but I didn’t feel like bacon and eggs this morning.

Down South

Posted on February 26, 2009

Arrived in Melbourne at noon. The flight was pretty rough; with the pilot being caught out by a sudden 200km/h head wind that knocked everyone around. The lady next to me had a nice warm lap courtesy of the cup of tea she was holding. Also flew over the tragic areas affected by the bushfires. It was still smouldering, blanketing the area in thick, white smoke. Weather-wise its a lot hotter than Sydney, and tomorrow’s forecast of high-30s is going to be a bit painful considering I have to do the whole suit and tie thing!

Staying at the Grand Hotel on Spencer St, just a hundred metres or so from the venue. Although the room is split-level and the size of an apartment, there’s nothing grand about this place. ’60s fiery red carpet, the world’s slowest elevator, bad TV reception and a view overlooking railway lines.

After spending the day at the Melbourne International Motor Show to make sure our cars weren’t damaged while being moved into position, William and I headed to dinner with Vincent from Motorware. This has to go down as the biggest curry puff I’ve ever seen in my life.

Spotted this familiar S2000 (a former ASM feature car) lurking out in the ‘burbs.

Off to Melbourne

Posted on February 25, 2009

Flying out tomorrow morning for the Melbourne International Motor Show, which starts on Friday. As we have two cars on display, there’s been plenty of frantic rushing behind the scenes. And to ensure that they won’t be delayed, I have to carry a few thousand pamphlets in my bag. The f*cker weighs over 30kg! Hopefully I can close it…

Embracing the inner geek

Posted on February 25, 2009

Typing, for a living, has its pros and cons. After a year or two, you’ll find that you can type faster than you can speak. But you’ll also discover that as soon as you pick up a pen, it feels totally foreign and your once neat writing style has turned into an illegible scrawl.

After eight years of punching out copy, I’ve gone through three or four keyboards, all of them eventually failing with dead keys or a see-sawing space bar. And although I’ve always wanted to upgrade to an uber-geeky old school IBM Model M keyboard (remember those huge behemoths used at public library terminals? They’re the ones I’m talking about), I’ve always just dug out a replacement from our office storage and continued typing. Well, not anymore. I finally splashed out on a Das Keyboard Professional: a keyboard that goes against today’s norm of being cost-effectively built, instead offering key technology similar to the old buckling-spring mechanisms. It cost a f*cking fortune, but considering I’m typing for ten or eleven hours a day, in my mind it’s pretty well justified.

Although the piano-black finish is a bit tacky, the gold-plated mechanical key switches make a staggering difference in terms of typing speed. The tactile response is impressive, and the difference is around 10WPM (now typing 90+ with full accuracy) compared to my old, conventional ‘board. I’m still getting used to the slightly different key spacing, but I’m already really digging it. It also has n-key rollover, a jargon term for being able to hit keys simultaneously without it ‘jamming’ or mis-reading what you’ve quickly typed. One downside though, is the noise it makes. Already the guys at work are complaining about the machine-gun pecking sound coming from my desk. And while I do agree that it sounds like a vintage typewriter, I don’t care. I’m embracing my inner geek!

Meat and three veg

Posted on February 23, 2009

Recently I did some work for Papz’s father’s website (he’s a butcher), and in return the Papandreas were nice enough to give me a freezer full of prime meat. So tonight I made home brew again, this time over the BBQ rather than in the kitchen. Here’s my dinner: a scotch fillet steak, grilled eggplant, seasoned fries, sweet potatoes and picholine olives.

Booq bag

Posted on February 23, 2009

Heading down to Melbourne (again) on Thursday for a few days as the International Motor Show is on. For short trips like this, I’ve been using an OGIO bag (which was a cool freebie I received a while ago) for my laptop and carry-on crap. Sadly it’s starting to fall apart, so I’ve been on the lookout for a replacement. That’s when I stumbled across a quirky brand called Booq.

Booq is a brand from So Cal, and they produce some pretty nifty bags designed for frequent travellers. The shoulder bag I chose opens accordion-style, revealing a host of compartments and pockets. There’s also plenty of padding to protect your laptop, which was perfect for me as I tend to bash my things around a bit. Downsides? It’s quite heavy (about one and a half kilograms) and combined with the lack of padding on the strap, it might be a bit of pain when weighed down.

Here’s an interesting touch: all of their bags come with a Terralinq tag, which means that you can register it and, in the off chance that you lose it and some good-hearted person finds it, they can get into contact with you. Of course, all that hinges on someone honest finding it.

Cooking again

Posted on February 22, 2009

With deadline and all, I’ve been eating out a lot for the past week. So today I forced myself back into the kitchen, and decided to try my hand at making a thai curry from scratch.

Turmeric, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and coriander. Their smell alone will make you hungry.

After an hour or so, it’s done!

ABC

Posted on February 21, 2009

Absinthe + Barcardi 151 + Chartreuse. If you ever encounter this, run. Fast.

The Book

Posted on February 20, 2009

Ever since Ugly Betty and The Devil Wears Prada (good book, sucky movie) were released, readers have often asked how accurate they are to what really goes on. And while I work in a field that couldn’t be further away from the women’s fashion industry, I’m sure that no magazine in Australia could draw parallels with the glamourised silver screen rendition.

After seeing ‘Prada, people always ask me about ‘The Book’, which the Miranda Priestly character is always screaming for. Well, here is ours. Technically this is the second version we produce - the first is a rougher draft - and unlike in the movie, these aren’t created until the dying moments of a production cycle.

Although in the movie ‘The Book’ is portrayed as the pivotal component, its actually the pagination (a schematic of the content that will be in a magazine) that we work off. While in an ideal world it would be fantastic to have a mock-up, in all its 16-page sections glory, to mull over for weeks on end, that simply doesn’t happen. Instead changes, revisions and alterations are all done on-screen; the final mock-up is purely to check flow, colour clashes (such as a white ad running next to a predominantly white editorial page) and any file corruptions. After that it is shipped off to the printers as a reference guide. And yes, that’s Kumakubo’s new EVO X.

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