In 2015 I went to Australia to work as Senior Industrial Designer at BoldInc Brand Innovation. This is my Facebook posts of that period that were translated from Russian.
2 June
Three different people asked me about vodka today: do I drink vodka? do I want some vodka? shall we have some vodka? — the weather turned "chilly" (15°C and sunny), so obviously it's vodka time.
A colleague on the way to lunch squinted slyly and produced "kak ty zhivyosh?" I didn't have a quick answer to a question like that, but once I'd stopped laughing I got a beautiful story about his student roommate (a Bulgarian). The colleague is Australian and spent quite a few years in France. About 50% of the company is British. There's also a Brazilian, a Chilean and a Chinese guy.
My boss's neighbour (yes, for now I'm living with the boss, his wife, their two kids (2 and 4) and the dog — in my own room) moved out today, and as a result a mountain of assorted stuff appeared on the pavement next to the wheelie bins. In the morning the mountain grew, partly thanks to me, by one enormous fish tank and various other junk. I'd value that pile at about three thousand Australian dollars: besides the tank there's a TV, five armchairs, a couple of bar stools, a sofa, a table, two nightstands, crockery, a microwave, a petrol lawnmower, an electronic drum kit and other essential household shit. By evening not a single item had gone missing. The local binmen are probably the wealthiest caste in the country.
The local football club is playing Chelsea today. Sold out — the locals packed the stadium (80k seats) to come and gawp at Chelsea. Many travelled in from neighbouring towns: "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. We don't get to go to the UK, it's expensive."
By the way, John (the boss) pronounces Abramovich as abrAmovich. And he calls me alEksiy, like a patriarch. Yes, he's British. The actual Australians don't bother — straight to Al or Alex, and they couldn't care less about Abramovich either.
G'day mate! Some vodka?
4 June
One local feature you have to get used to: everyone constantly says hello to you. Nobody shakes hands here (only on first introduction, women included), but if someone spots you they'll ask how you're doing, or say hey, or something along those lines.
Picture it. You're in the kitchen making tea, a colleague walks in — hey, how's it going, cold one today, blah blah. And it goes on like that all day, from every direction. You buy a burger, walk back, pass three people, get three "heys." Your hand would fall off if you shook every time — no wonder they don't.
Small talk in all directions, basically.
But honestly, friends, I haven't been shoved this far out of my comfort zone since early childhood.
I need at least an hour every day just to pull myself together.
"First they locked me in (they didn't), then they wouldn't give me a balloon (they would), nothing's allowed (it is), and everyone's staring at me (that one's true)."
What I'm required to do at work isn't a tenth of what I'm capable of, but the stress means my output isn't rising above ten percent either.
New software, new place, new people, new language, new social norms, new country, ultimately. And you're supposed to be creative on top of that.
So trips like this are contraindicated for the emotionally unsteady.
5 June
I'll share a little-known fact and then go to bed, because I'm slurring my words and my brain has stopped bubbling — I'm on UTC +10 now.
Australia doesn't have visas. Or rather it does, but on a different plane of existence, one step closer to nirvana and escaping the wheel of rebirth.
It works like this: you don't hand your passport to an embassy, you don't collect your passport from an embassy, there's nothing in your passport, and to every startled transit officer you recite the magic mantra "I've got an Australian visa," at which point the gates swing open, the fairy-tale hut turns its front door toward you, and so on.
The Australians went over to electronic visas many years ago, well before our first trip in 2012. The only thing they still stamp into your passport out of habit is the arrival and departure marks. Attached is my current arrival stamp.
When you realise you've been "counted" at a much higher level than usual, you start to feel rather different about the whole thing.
In general, I don't understand how the rest of the world hasn't worked this out yet. Who cares what Schengen sticker you've got — what matters is that your data is in the database. And off you go.
I had a similar brain explosion the first time over Australian money. Yes, it's plastic; no, it doesn't tear; yes, you can wash it and swim with it; no, it can't be forged; yes, it lasts a very long time; yes, it's very beautiful; no, it barely burns; yes, it has a transparent window.
And I completely fail to understand why everyone isn't making theirs like this.
5 June
Have to keep up this "a post a day" thing, so here goes. Now for the important stuff.
The standard glass in a bar is 330ml. Same as the standard beer bottle. Beer is bought in six-packs — back home they tried to push Corona in that format. Essentially, for 30 bucks you get six 330ml bottles. Apparently they just enjoy opening them.
Since I mostly work with English guys, and they're used to a pint (500ml), the local glass size drives them all mad too. On the other hand, Will told me that once you've lived here a while and then go home for the holidays, an ordinary pint absolutely destroys you — the bastard just never ends.
Luca, a fiery Italian, and Martina, a lovely girl from Croatia, spent lunch today discussing — in the kind of flawless English I'd kill for — the finer points of getting hammered in different corners of the world. At one point Martina revealed a cunning scheme for reducing every girl in the vicinity to a puddle: grappa and honey! And I, she says, named this recipe "medoviza." "Medovukha," corrected the stern Russian lad alEksiy automatically, and carried on chewing his burger.
Martina then decided to show off her hangover knowledge, having got excited about a pickle sitting on a colleague's sandwich. In short, gentlemen, everyone drinks pickle brine in the morning — Croats, Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians and even Brazilians. The Aussies and Brits wrinkled their noses, trying to work out how that's even possible.
At some point five pairs of eyes swivelled onto alEksiy as the living representative of that culture. alEksiy nodded, still chewing his burger — yes, we drink the brine, no point denying it.
Three hours later, in the bar across from work, I finally tried the actual beer whose test brief got me this job. So: the beer is shit.
Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that the strong of spirit watch Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock or Snatch without dubbing or subtitles. You'll get a good idea of how Brits actually talk.
Blooda basta ate ma chips!
There's also the ubiquitous "good stuff." Go get some pizza, good stuff. We should send out our deck, it's a good stuff. Back in 2008 that's what I used to call hash — "bladi basta, fackin good stuff."
7 June
Today is the second day off, Sunday, and tomorrow will be the third — the Queen's Birthday, so the whole of Australia is on holiday.
Finally bought myself a case with a PSU and assembled the tractor I brought over. Bought the case off some Chinese guy for 50 bucks; turns out the PSU has no separate cable for a graphics card, so I'll have to buy one — for now I'm on the motherboard's onboard.
What time is it? It's freelance time!
For dessert, a few photos.
The entire 3D juice of Australia (Warwick excluded) in one photo. Dima arrived a couple of months ago, Danila about four years back. Incidentally, it's thanks to Danila that I'm here.
10 June
One small splinter that won't let me rest: how invested people who've emigrated remain in the news back "in the motherland." The strangest part is the regularity with which they emotionally shove themselves back toward discomfort.
There are people who are already citizens of another country and yet keep closely following the stream of garbage media back home, force-feeding themselves all that negativity and constant stress from first thing in the morning.
Their parents have even moved over too — the last hook left is the pittance pensions.
When you step back a couple of paces, surely it should stop bothering you? Isn't that exactly what everyone is trying to shut the door on as fast as possible? There's something faintly sado-masochistic about it, with a side order of showing off. "Look at the awful news in Russia, and I'm not there! But you lot — what a mess you're in! Oh, Putin, Putin, doom and gloom."
And the standard Russian-internet pattern survives intact: dragging commenters into the conversation, endless argument, establishing who's right.
I do understand, of course — after that calibre of bad news back home, everything local looks like baby talk. Recently in a park someone came at a girl with a knife, she hit him and ran off, and now they're searching the whole of Sydney for him.
10 June
Adventure time!
So, I landed on the 29th, a fair bit of time has passed, the clean clothes were running out, and the dirty ones were, conversely, accumulating daily.
Everyone has a limit on the internally acceptable scenarios for how things might go, and my boss (whose place I'm leaving on Friday, hopefully) has a lower limit than I do — he casually suggested I do my laundry: look, there's the machine, chuck your pants in, what's the problem.
At that scenario my inner gentleman howled and ordered me to immediately pack a full reeking backpack and go find a laundrette. It was the Queen's Birthday.
Worth noting that any public holiday here is a cheat day. It isn't a Saturday, it isn't a Sunday, it's specifically a public holiday, which means that apart from a small handful of shops, nothing is open.
I walked past ten (!) laundrettes, kissed ten padlocks, ate pho out of grief at a Vietnamese place that never closes, and set off in search of an underwear shop.
Twenty minutes later I walked into the first open shop with men's clothing in the window, under the curious name "For Men."
The selection of underwear couldn't be called small, but it did suggest that not everything in this shop was straightforward. I picked up a three-pack of ordinary, no-frills ones, went to the till and found rainbow rings on the counter. The sweetly smiling chap behind the till put my purchase in a nice little bag with handles, and I made a swift exit.
I walk on a few metres, and there's a sign: "Men's Bar For Men." El Bimbo starts playing in my head.
Another fifty metres and I come out onto a square where a certain well-known flag is helpfully flying. See attachment.
"Darlinghurst, Oxford Street, which is well-known around the world as the centre of Sydney's gay community." Cheers, Wikipedia.
A day later I did drop my clothes off with some Chinese people near work for 12 bucks. Picked them up today — excellent job.
Uber rules. Here's the story: I decided to take a taxi from John's to my rented apartment (John plays golf on Saturday mornings and couldn't drive me).
Three minutes after installing the app there was a smiling Indian guy and his Nissan outside the house. Helped me load, helped me unload, took no tip (an Indian!), and the fare came straight off the card.
Not cheap, but cheaper than most local taxis (they get their own post). They sent me a message in Russian from some Alex who runs Uber's operation in Sydney, and gave me a promo code for referring friends and riding free.
So if you haven't signed up yet, now's the time.
The apartment looks like this from outside.
13 June
Sitting on the balcony with my feet up on a quietly liberated side table (solid beech, I think — can't really tell in the dark), sipping wine, a possum next to me finishing off a banana, bats partying above the balcony, Sydney glittering in the distance.
The neighbours are brazenly smoking weed on their balcony and giggling stupidly. I'll go introduce myself tomorrow.
Spoons and forks bought, rugs laid down; all that's left is getting decent internet and then I can exhale.
I've been meaning to write this for a while but never got round to it: the sky here is absolutely spectacular.
Anyone who knows me knows I'm a bit obsessed with space stuff — my own wife even bought me a telescope. So here's the thing. Light pollution in Sydney is very weak compared with Moscow or St Petersburg. Two or three storeys of buildings across 90% of the city, plus perks like "we go to bed at ten." The result is glorious.
And all around you is a completely unfamiliar sky — it feels like you've landed in another world. The Southern Cross, which stalks me from the Australian and New Zealand flags, and Musca a step away from it. Then Centaurus begins, and its Alpha (good luck seeing that from Russian latitudes) — sky porn, all of it.
The nights are fairly cool right now while daytime climbs to 18, so driving out to an observatory is pointless — too much atmospheric turbulence. But wait a month or two and it'll be worth a trip.
I'm almost afraid to imagine what opens up 100km out, where the light pollution isn't merely weak, as in Moscow, but simply absent. I'm hoping to make out the nebula next to the Cross at minimum — the local Aboriginal people called it the "dark force" that the possum up the tree is trying to escape from, part of their Southern Cross lore.
14 June
You periodically come across metal boxes like this on the street where you can donate clothes.
That's on top of the fact that if you drove a van around the streets overnight here, you could assemble a full set of appliances, furniture and a couple of dozen mattresses.
Australia, the generous soul!
17 June
About prices and money generally.
My savings have finally run out (and I mean entirely), so it's the perfect time to talk about the essentials.
A small opening remark: people whistle here. They whistle along to music (the radio is always on at work), they whistle in the street, in shops, everywhere.
The whistling fits the environment nicely — parrots screech like they're being murdered and every single pedestrian crossing beeps (pleasantly, actually, after Moscow's — that surprised me).
But an untrained ear, raised from childhood on "whistling is bad luck," finds this infuriating. Look at them, whistling! There'll be no money left!
When I explained this russian pogovorka to Will, he chuckled and observed that "that's probably why I'm still poor."
But Will is not poor. Oh no.
The average Australian salary hovers around eight times the Russian average (250k roubles versus the official 32k). There's taxation, of course, not hugely different from ours — but here it actually gets paid.
For example, after all the tax and pension contributions my salary shrank by almost half, but I can clearly see where that money goes, and I can take the pension with me if I go home at the end of the contract.
Tellingly, it's the simple trades that get the biggest payoff here — presumably a result of the locals being all thumbs plus the American instinct to pay for service. So welders retire at thirty to build motorcycles in workshops, having worked ten years, owning a house (a million dollars) and enough money left over for the next few decades.
Go into a supermarket and you'll see Moscow prices multiplied by 1.2–1.5 depending on the product: a kilo of chicken fillet is around 350 roubles, while beef — the thing Australia is famous for — is around 500–600. Here I modestly remind you of the eightfold salary difference, and say nothing at all about the incomparable quality.
On the other hand, the local approach to services is: charge what you can, do it as badly as possible. Fortunately I inherited hands attached the right way round, so I can handle any household nonsense myself.
Frankly, you have to bow to the Russian service sector. I can configure a network myself (or run and crimp the cable from the attic), unblock a pipe (or swap out a tap), sort out the electrics (or wire a house) and all the other supposedly trivial household things Aussies pay insane money for.
A "handyman by the hour" service would make millions here and would be one of the most successful business models ever built on a napkin. Cleaners are slightly less lucrative, but then they don't need a brain at all.
So where does the money go, you ask?
Well, here's where. A shop trip for small odds and ends that would cost you a couple of thousand roubles back home can run to ten thousand here: household bits, small stuff, and God forbid any appliance. Add internet at 4k roubles a month minimum, a mobile plan with data (which is what I'm on right now) at another 4k, and rent that's four times a typical Moscow flat by the ring road — and there goes half your salary. Clothing isn't notable for quality but carries a triple markup, and the all-thumbs factor adds service fees for everything (internet "connection" runs $50 to $250).
They also love bulk pricing here — it's a real thing, capitalism triumphant. In Russia it goes: want a bottle of beer, pay 50 roubles. Want a case, pay 600 (12 bottles). Here you pay 240 for one, 600 for a three-pack, and 800 for a six-case. Bigger box, cheaper still — so nobody buys wine by the bottle, they haul it out by the case.
Or take the anti-smoking effort: here it's an actual campaign, not the hypocritical charade back home. A pack of cigarettes costs 20–25 times what it does in Russia, all packaging is stripped of branding — sickly green packs with photos and firm recommendations to quit (with helplines and the rest). Which is especially funny given that the main brand I've been grinding away on for the past month is a Chinese cigarette brand, 555. The Chinese smoke like chimneys and have a whole hierarchy of packaging: one for meetings, one for relaxing, one for showing off (like a watch). We work for the Chinese market, obviously — that trick wouldn't fly here, where nobody's going to notice a small "premium" line on an identical pack next to a photo of a rotting leg.
19 June
I promised something about entertainment.
For a Russian, whose week's entertainment is a trip to a big shop, a film and a meal out, it's genuinely hard to grasp that the locals here are "bored." Bored, apparently.
Parks everywhere; you can't just fell a tree, not even in your own garden, not even one you planted yourself. Dead ones are handled by a dedicated service. You need a permit to cut one down — in other words, Sydney is a garden city. On top of that, the real municipal parks contain at least a couple of football pitches: one for Aussie rules and one for the normal kind. Plus golf courses, and sprinkled over the top, spots for pensioners — the same greens but for pétanque, with blackjack and drinks.
The locals have a "weekend car." In the basement of our studio, for instance, there's an AC Cobra in the corporate colours; plenty of people spend Saturday and Sunday cruising in pickups, immaculately restored old machines and convertibles.
There are also masses of beaches, the waves are good for surfing and the water never drops below 18°C. Sometimes it's colder outside than in the ocean. Should I mention the extras on those beaches — communal gas barbecues and perfectly tensioned volleyball nets?
An hour from Sydney are the Blue Mountains, a eucalyptus reserve that's apparently spectacular. With a car you could go a couple of years without really leaving New South Wales; the parks, forests and everything else would fill every free day. And if you're into photography or skywatching, you're done for.
There are, I'd say, a thousand times more clubs, classes and activities here than in Russia. Worst case — rent yourself a garage and restore the old junk that gets thrown out onto the streets by the tonne every day. Danila is into spearfishing, for example. Winter temperatures don't drop below 10°C, and if you're really cold, drive 900km north to Brisbane or the Gold Coast where it's summer all year.
Then there's wine — three valleys to visit — an opera house, piles of museums, a zoo the size of three Moscow ones, someone performing somewhere every week, every district with its own character, all the world's food in one city, and if you fancy it, go take a course in something useful.
But no. Bored.
A day ago John came over intending to write my name down somewhere and asking when I was going to give him 10 bucks. I didn't follow at first — turns out it's the lottery. An actual lottery, shown on TV tomorrow: a drum full of balls, a proper racket, buy a ticket, you might win twenty million.
I twirled my finger at my temple as hard as I could — it's a con, come on. No, alEksiy, you don't understand. You'll come in on Monday and the office will be empty, everyone off drinking the winnings.
This Saturday there's apparently a big one, so I'll be sitting in front of the TV crossing off numbers and getting nervous — they bought me a ticket. Full-blown gaming problem.
22 June
The weekly programme "Australian Forager" with its permanent host, Aleksei Sifonovich Borodin.
Today's catch: two large wicker baskets, two saucepans with lids, a toaster and a vacuum cleaner (!).
Two steps from my place someone bought a house and threw out everything in it. Still lying there: two benches, a sofa, another vacuum cleaner, a printer, a shredder, a mixer and a pile of other bits.
Breville toaster ($50), Russell Hobbs vacuum ($100), baskets like these at $30 each, saucepans around $15 on average — but these are good ones, could be more.
23 June
"Tell me about Australia, I'm dying to know."
About serious shit.
No point hiding it: the bread here is completely different. Not worse, not better, just entirely different. There's no nareznoy, no darnitsky, no stolichny, no izmailovsky, no borodinsky. Of the ones known back home you occasionally spot a French baguette, and that's about it. Instead of Armenian lavash you get pitas for Mexican tacos.
On the other hand, there are loads of sandwich options, a whole section for toast bread with a dozen varieties, and there's even a local equivalent of borodinsky — banana bread, an absolutely mad mix of bread and banana. Like a cake but without the sugary dusting and raisins; a serious cake. You'd have to be insane to eat toast bread without toasting it: damp, limp, tasteless shit. In the toaster it transforms — that's rather the point of it.
Solid move: fire up a couple of those in the morning with butter, and then (surprise!) spread a very thin layer of some particularly serious shit on top — Vegemite.
If you haven't eaten Vegemite, you haven't been to Australia. On our first trip, at hostel breakfast, my wife and I risked consuming this serious shit. To say we did everything wrong is an understatement: first, we slathered it on thick (you need the faintest scrape), and second, we skipped the butter.
As happens, the first attempt was frustrating and the epithets "impossible" and "shit" stuck firmly to the stuff. Undeservedly.
The locals wolf it down, can't get enough, and decades later still recall their mother making them Vegemite and avocado sandwiches in the morning and how they were the best sandwiches of their lives. Open the communal cupboard: what's in there besides salt and pepper? Correct.
It tastes like concentrated kvass with salt and meat stock, minus the kvass sugar. And it presents itself in the guise of Nutella, which finishes off your brain entirely.
I can't say I've come round to it yet — like any serious shit it demands a thorough approach and a rewiring of your palate, but there's a definite payoff in it, and given how unassuming it is, it just needs time.
The payoff is that Vegemite is loaded with umami. For the uninitiated, that's the thing that makes you love red tomatoes and soy sauce. And anything liberally dosed with MSG. Asian cooking is unashamed about using that additive, which is, incidentally, entirely harmless — and into the same basket go parmesan, walnuts and that same pho.
As a lover of mouldy cheese I completely understand the Aussies' devotion to this serious shit, and I've approached the acquaintance seriously: two bucks for a 400g jar, and I'll be eating it for the next month.
Kitya's only positive review of Australia was, I think, about Vegemite — right at the end of the piece here.
Judging by his posts, incidentally, Kitya is deeply aggrieved at Ozland, and I can see why: if you're an introverted programmer who swapped linear Japan for chaotic Australia, one thing awaits you — disappointment and sadness at every turn.
Today, while reading the Wikipedia article on Vegemite, I asked Will in passing what he thought of it. He pulled a horrified face, but since Smithy (a native Australian) sits behind him, mouthed silently: "horrible shit." Will is English and has lived here a third of his life.
Well then. Challenge accepted, jar open.
25 June
Once again, it's "What's Up in Kangaroo-Land?"
On the question of how bad the internet is here, I have exactly one phrase: "very bad." As in, truly bad. A Russian on an unlimited plan cannot comprehend how bad.
Imagine you've landed in about 2005. ADSL everywhere, the phone-plus-internet bundle, Stream gaining popularity, Onlime not even a concept yet.
That's roughly the speed Australia operates at. Better in places, worse in others, but the average across the ward is so depressing you want to howl.
You get used to good things fast, gentlemen. To dirt-cheap connections at insane speeds and 20-gigabyte HD films — even faster.
For comparison: the average price for an average unlimited plan here is about $150, i.e. multiply by 42 and you get 6,300 roubles a month for a lousy, slow, capped (whatever they claim) connection.
As a bonus there's Netflix, which every third person switches on in the evening, at which point the network drops to its knees entirely. You had 10 megabits? Have 2.
No way to use fixed line? Well, mate, you're in trouble. Like me right now — sitting on your carrier's mobile internet, and they're generous like nobody else. The 4G network of the local Beeline equivalent (Optus) costs 10 dollars per gigabyte. Let me translate that so you understand: one gigabyte disappears in a single evening of listlessly scrolling social media and watching a couple of low-quality YouTube videos.
Want to connect the internet in a rented flat? Easy! First you file a request (by phone, with an Indian who speaks worse than you do and understands nothing), then you wait for a "specialist" to come and inspect your phone socket ($150), then you buy an ADSL modem ($150), then you wait for the connection date and pay the subscription ($100). So around 400 bucks up front, thanks.
Want to break the contract? That's another 300 bucks in penalties if you do it within three months.
The explanation is simple. Australia is in the absolute arse-end of the world; while you're having your shortest night, we're having our shortest day and the depths of winter. Yes, being closer to the equator means our winter is +17 on average and subtropical, but the cable still has to be laid across an ocean, and that's expensive.
The result is that just four cables connect Ozland to the world. One of the main hubs is in Europe — you can imagine how bad it gets.
Anyway, I'm a Moscow lad with reasonable expectations; I've never in my life paid more than a thousand roubles ($25) a month for a phone, even when I was glued to it. Here you pay $90 a month — admittedly for unlimited domestic calls and texts (ooh) — and you get an iPhone 6 thrown in.
And do please forgive me for the shortage of photos and video reports so far. My bytes are counted, and every morning starts with a text from the carrier: "we've topped up your internet for another 10 bucks!"
26 June
Well then. A mere 430 bucks and I have internet! 13 megabits down, under one up. But hey, a cap of only 200 gigs.
Let me recap what that circus involves, so we can close the subject of Australia's dreadful connectivity for good:
First you need an apartment (deposit: a full month, plus the first two weeks; agents here get nothing at all, yet still try very hard to make you like the place).
Then you have to confirm connection is possible — best done by calling the provider directly. Then thirty minutes of sweating and straining to understand an Indian call handler while dictating (!) your name, surname, date of birth and passport number.
You get approval from the provider and wait for a guy to come and give his approval — the network's never been tested, so someone has to check whether anything works in the sockets at all.
You sit, sweat, wait and fret. The guy shows up at the least convenient moment possible, e.g. one in the afternoon — rings your mobile (which you also had to dictate to the Indian in the previous step) and, in a horrifying accent, tries to establish what's where and where the hell you are, mate.
You bolt from work — luckily it's nearby — let the guy in, he fiddles with the socket for five (!) minutes, says "she's right," and disappears.
Then you wait another week for the line to actually be connected to the internet.
On connection day you receive a bill for 300 bucks (12,600 roubles) for connecting the line. Breathe evenly, contemplate the transience of existence. Attached is the cheerful note that you may now use the network.
After work you sprint to the local Ulmart equivalent — I'll have to photograph it, the sheer volume of handwritten signs out-does any 90s market stall — and for a mere 130 bucks buy a modem + wifi router kit and a ten-metre cable. Bonus: on learning you're connecting to Telstra, the shop assistant hands you a free landline handset.
You get home, wrestle with the setup for an hour (10+ years in IT, library network support and other relevant experience), realise you don't have enough information to connect the modem to the endpoint, and call tech support.
You have a lovely chat with Anton (Anthony) in tech support, telling him everything that's been building up. You also explain how an impoverished country near the M9 charges 10 bucks a month for unlimited 100-megabit internet. You get your login and password, leave Anthony quietly stunned, and finally have proper connectivity. Of a sort.
Quest complete, thanks all for your attention, photo attached.
Meanwhile, a couple of nights ago the possums woke me up in the small hours having a full-blown argument right on my balcony. So stop staring at that glowing screen, go outside, take a deep breath of Russian exhaust fumes and really savour the smell of free Russian internet.
29 June
I open the corporate email and what do I find? 🙂
This! >:D
30 June
About power sockets (AS 3112)
It was Industrial Designer's Day recently (the 29th), so — on theme.
Let me describe the seemingly simplest thing in the world: a socket. To begin with, it has three pins arranged more vertically than horizontally (Russia is the opposite: horizontal plane, two pins), so instead of the familiar little snout you get the face from Scream staring back at you.
As you'd guess, live and neutral are on the left and right, and the bottom hole is earth.
But that's just the start; here comes the good part. I won't keep you in suspense: practically every socket I've come across has a button to switch it on and off. And these little nubs with red dots (sometimes printed, sometimes illuminated) have been replicated to the point of absurdity.
Example: the lights in my flat are also operated by one of these nubs. A big plate on the wall with a tiiiny nub in the middle — photo attached.
Nubs are also present on every power strip. One per strip, or one per socket. Australians clearly love them.
Progress marches on, and you occasionally find sockets with two slots in the middle. Any guesses what those are for?
5 volts, of course — charging USB devices.
To round out the socket picture, a few links. You can see the nubs go back a long way.
And a short article on the history of copying America and why the pins are flat (because it's cheaper than round):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/NZS_3112
1 July
"...the same shit over there that we got here, but it's just… it's just, there it's a little different."
Why do you think there are bottles of Zippo lighter fluid scattered around the office? To refill Zippos?
Nothing of the sort. Out of a hundred people here you'd be lucky to find five smokers, everyone uses ordinary gas lighters, and I haven't seen a single Zippo since I arrived. Yet there's so much fluid you'd think every other person smoked.
The thing is, they use the fluid for cleaning office equipment — where we'd use alcohol wipes. Here it works like this: take a wipe (a normal one), pour a bit of lighter fluid onto it, and clean your mouse / keyboard / tablet.
Smells less than alcohol wipes, incidentally.
2 July
About spam
The post works well in Australia — not as well as in the US, obviously, but a thousand times better than in Russia.
One of the parasites on the body of postal communication is spam. Our spam, our spam, our tasty spam. The original — SPAM, tinned ham — is sold in every self-respecting supermarket.
And those supermarkets are not above sending fat wads of pulp straight into your letterbox at the front gate. The locals love sticking "no junk mail" and similar cute notices on those boxes, which the local posties studiously ignore.
Highlights from the letterbox in the photos.
First up, a Woolworths catalogue — one of the flagships, the pricier local option, good range, occasionally absurd prices, but on average a solid choice. Better there than at the little 7-Elevens or EzyMart.
I greatly appreciate the marketers' efforts and their eternal 2.89, but I'll round up.
30-can pack of Pepsi Max — $13 (multiply everything by 42 for roubles)
400g Barilla basil tomato sauce — $2
4 litres sunflower oil — $10
Nuggets — 3 × 400g packs — $10
Kilo of carrots — $1
Kilo of cherries — $14
Kilo of Australian prawns with the amusing name Green Banana — $17
8 tins of Whiskas for $10
Onward, cosmetics:
Rexona deodorant — $4
Nurofen — $11 for 72 tablets
Perfume from 20 to 60
400ml Garnier micellar water — $9
Onward: Coles, the cheap version of Woolworths, sometimes better on price, sometimes worse on range.
Kilo of steak — $25
Jar of Moccona coffee 200g — $14
Tin of tuna — $1.50
Fuji apples — $2.50 a kilo
Booze:
Average price for wine — $13–17
Litre of Cointreau — $64
Case of local beer — $37 (30 cans)
Note the Mishka vodka at 32 dollars, and moving on.
Separately, a letter from a local entrepreneur, Jenny, who's decided to rent her car out via car next door (www.carnextdoor.com.au) and offers it at $35 a day or $7 an hour. The letter is almost certainly auto-generated — the street name is in different handwriting and there are obvious Photoshop traces in places.
Also a letter for the previous tenant (a notice about a past payment) and a letter to me from my beloved provider, may he burn in hell.
3 July
Today I gave a short presentation to colleagues about what I can actually do — half an hour of talking through past work, what I've been through, showing pictures, stumbling over words, all that. It landed, apparently: within half an hour people had already invented several projects to point my skills at.
Daniel the Chilean has just come over — in heavily accented Russian, MGIMO mode on — with "let's see what you're made of!" and a litre bottle of New Zealand vodka, VDKA 6100, in hand. Epic name, obviously.
I turned "Polyushko Pole" up loud, we drank, danced with a bear on our hats, kissed, and went back to working for the good of communism.
When I told Daniel that for the first twenty years of my life in Moscow I lived on Salvador Allende Street (and even showed him on Google Maps), he was impressed. Multinational country, multinational company — very cool.
(upd) New Zealand vodka will give any Russian one a hundred points' head start; unbelievably smooth on the finish, a genuine weapon for getting wrecked. But we only had two tiny shots each.
4 July
What is an Australian winter, you ask?
I'll answer quickly, because in winter you learn to do everything quickly.
First, showering and drying off quickly. Second, turning the heater on quickly. Third, getting changed quickly and climbing under the duvet in fleece trousers.
An Australian winter in Sydney is exactly that Russian in-between season when the radiators have been switched off but it's still hellishly cold outside at night.
Worth noting there's no central heating in Australia, the electricity bills bite, and so it makes sense to start stockpiling juniper twigs.
Daytime temperatures range from 13 in the rain to 23 in the sun, but as always there's a small caveat, and it's called "night." At night the thermometer shows 5–8 above and refuses to climb higher. Combined with the local love of big windows and, as mentioned, the absence of central heating — very cold.
I'm writing these lines in trainers, warm socks, jeans, a T-shirt, a long-sleeved fleece and the eternal "just off the boat?" gilet. And I'm not one bit too warm.
Uggs, as many of you know, are originally Australian. Broadly, the locals use them as house slippers rather than as a glamour accessory. The point is the sheepskin inside, in which your feet neither freeze in winter nor overheat in summer. Warm in winter, fine for a surfer running across sand in summer.
Meanwhile, in the local Sochi (Brisbane) the temperature doesn't drop much below 18 in the day and 10 at night. So if you're prepared to tolerate a certain abundance of dubious wildlife, welcome to Queensland, famous for its fauna.
Speaking of fauna, I found a dead, terrifying-looking cicada in the vacuum cleaner — clearly left by the previous owners. Genuinely frightening, huge. And that's it. In a month of living in the local Jurassic Park I haven't encountered anything capable of killing me even slightly. I did squash a cockroach once — big bastard, quick too.
15 July
Stand on the left, walk on the right. And on the road it's also best to keep left.
17 July
People often ask "so what do you actually do out there?"
I work at a company called BoldInc, which does branding, and my role is industrial and product designer. It's a small outfit, but a comfortable and well-known one. The clients are pleasant and you can see the final packaging design on the shelves.
Among other things, "Pip & Seed" recently launched — a cider with wine added, from the well-known Australian winery Jacob's Creek (not a fan, but you can buy them in Russia) — and it's getting written up in the local press.
The company developed the packaging design, and when the product hit the shelves several cases were delivered straight to the studio bar, which everyone made active use of for a week.
18 July
Catch of the day, and indeed of the whole stay so far.
Picked up a chunk of hardware — Core2Duo, 4 gigs of RAM in two sticks, an Intel motherboard, a separate Gigabyte graphics card on top of the integrated one (DVI present), an optical drive, a case, a 380W PSU. XP Pro licence sticker on the side. The only thing removed before it was thrown out: the drives.
Put an SSD in it and it's a fully functional machine, if not a fast one by today's standards.
A month ago, while living at John's, I grabbed an ownerless monitor (19-inch Samsung — I used one just like it about five years ago).
Not sure what to add, really.
That's how it is.
19 July
Today's, and slightly postcard-ish.
20 July
Will's back on form (Will on the left) 😉
25 July
Sat the IELTS; results on the seventh. My head is full of ocean noise and emptiness.
Postscript:
I worked out my short-term work visa and flew back to Russia to apply for a full one. Gathering the paperwork didn't take long, but they spent about another six months reviewing it. I kept in touch and carried on working for the company remotely until January 2016, when I got a congratulatory message from the lawyer: the full work visa had come through. Unfortunately, by that point the company's main client, BAT, had pulled out of the Australian market, which caused funding problems — and despite my having the visa, the company inviting me to work could no longer afford my services. The boy from Russia turned out to be too expensive for them.
