Some of you might know that for more than two years we have had an office in Sydney, Australia. Last year, I had the pleasure to travel there to present at the AUSOUG conference and work from our office in Sydney. It’s been a huge pleasure, especially if you consider what was going on back in Ottawa at that time.

Long story short — I’m moving to Australia. My flight from Ottawa leaves in three hours and I’m all packed and ready to go. Today we had a kiss-goodbye lunch at here at the Pythian office in Ottawa, and I was presented my new role Down Under. Hmm . . .  to be honest, I expected it to be somewhat different:

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As you may or may not know, I have been spending time in the Pythian Office in Sydney, Australia. Before I came, family and friends did some research and found that Australia was suffering from several years of drought and desperately needed rain. So I packed nothing but sunny summer clothing. I am not sure if my first mistake was relying on the word of others or not having a contingency plan. This has been the wettest summer in years. It rained practically every day for nearly three weeks in a row when I first arrived. If it wasn’t raining, it was cloudy and threatening to rain.

In a way, I should have known better. As a DBA, I have learned to confirm information and have contingency plans. For instance, when doing a database upgrade, you ensure that you have a backup and can revert back if any issues come up. Of course, in a work environment, you normally make plans, get them checked by co-workers and do one or more “dry runs” whenever possible.

When the sun finally came out and stayed out, I found myself in paradise. The weather is warm and when the wind blows it feels like a tropical breeze. When I meet and speak with Australians, I jokingly refer to “the island” — Australia being the only country that is also a continent and an island. At times I sit by the water and just watch the boats floating in their moorings and feel sad about having to leave here in the near future. Although Sydney is a large city, it has a relaxed pace, a friendly atmosphere, and I have completely fallen in love with her. I will be sad to leave.

There is just so much to see and do in Australia. With limited time, I spent most weekends doing the local Sydney attractions. I did not manage to make it to everything this city has to offer, let alone make side-trips. I can tell you my time here has been magical.

I have had so many wonderful experiences that just make me feel like I am on top of the world! For the first time in my life I tried, and fell in love with, sailing. Tonight is my last night participating in the Twilight Races.

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Rain, rain, go away! It has been raining pretty well every day since I arrived in Sydney. It is putting a real damper (pun intended) on my sightseeing.

Going stir-crazy from sitting in with all the rain, I was looking for something to do. Paul (from the Pythian Group Australia office) suggested either shopping in Chatswood or going to Crows Nest. It cleared up a little and I managed to walk to Crows Nest from where I am staying. I wasn’t sure I would recognize it, but when I saw the Crows Nest Hotel right on the corner of Pacific Highway, I knew I was in the right place.

Crows Nest is a lovely area of town with lots and lots of shops and restaurants. They have a natural food store that serves organic coffee. Have I mentioned how big coffee is in Australia? You have to go to McDonald’s to get regular drip coffee like I am used to from Tim Horton’s. I have heard that Sydney has a very large Greek and Italian population and I suspect that contributes to the excellent coffee shops here. I am still learning how to order among terms such as “long”, “flat”, “short”, “cappuccino” (okay, that one I have seen before), and the list goes on.

A few other things I have noticed since arriving here:

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I have arrived in Sydney!!

I have been in Sydney for a few days now. I was staying at Robert Menzies College (right across the street from MacQuarrie University or “Uni”). During the summer, the college offers short-term accommodation for $60 / day. Not too bad, as long as you are willing to stay in student residences and share a bathroom with 15 other women. Actually, considering that the price includes your meals at the cafeteria, it is a pretty decent price ( especially if you manage to be there at mealtimes).

I was staying there because I needed to be at MacQuarrie yesterday morning for my LSAT exam. No matter how much you prepare for the LSAT, it is a tough exam. I had the worst time with the logic games. I can always solve them, but they take me 20 minutes and you have about 8.5 minutes per game. Hopefully I got some marks for all the questions I had to guess at !!

It was very interesting doing the LSAT. You show Photo ID at the door and they take a thumbprint image on the admittance form. We had to be there by 8:30 and by the time we completed all the administration it was 9:15. We had one ten minute break and were not done until at least 1:15pm. Grueling!!! We had about one minute between ending one session and then starting on the next section, six sections in total. I used the Kaplan material for preparing and they recommend that you read each section, critically, and then when you move to the next section, just forget it. To me, the LSAT is like that, just do it, then move on.

So after the LSAT, I spent the afternoon looking for accommodations. Very interesting experience getting around the city. It is always fun to travel by bus and train to areas of town, you know nothing about, to find a place to live

I was quite lucky. The first person. Gillian, met me at the Milsons Point train station and drove me around Kirribilli. It is a lovely area just south of North Sydney and reminds me of the Glebe or Westboro. Lots of lovely little shops and restaurants along the street. But it was also small. It felt like a little town within a city. Gillian had a friend who also had a place available, so after seeing Gillian’s place, Eoin picked me up. Eoin also gave me a little tour. Hearing that I was new to the area and had not yet been across the Sydney Bridge, Eoin took me across so I could experience the bridge. He was great, after seeing his place, Eoin, drove me to the third place and offered to swing by later to give me a ride back to MacQuarrie.

So my day consisted of writing a tough exam and then being escorted around town by two complete strangers. It reminds me of the famous quote (from the movie “A Streetcar Named Desire”, which I have never seen, but remember the quote) “. . . I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Well that certainly was my case yesterday!!

Quick sum up of my previous post – I’m in Sydney this week and getting ready for my AUSOUG “snoitatneserp” next week. (Note that I wrote it in Sydney last week and only now managed to get the photos sorted out — sorry for the delay).

Thursday evening I was honored with a visit to Noons’ house. We had done a very nice walk around his place through Warriewood Wetlands. It was one of the most amazing walks I had –- a walking path via jungle style swamp (heh… they call it wetlands).

I saw many bird species but couldn’t remember the names – sorry Nuno, I know you tried your best. Actually, I think I do remember at least one – Kukubara Kookaburra (thanks Nuno!). Birds were beautiful and some fellows you can see here courtesy of Noons. I also saw few iguanas “water dragons” lizards (thanks Sarah) on the way and they ran away quickly as soon as they realized that I’m watching them.

It’s amazing that such a magical place can be so close to Sydney –- it took us only 40 minutes by car to get there from Sydney CBD but we had to leave early to get ahead of the traffic and not everyone drives as aggressive as Portuguese do.
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I’m going to present couple sessions at the Australian Oracle User Group Conference in Melbourne next week. It’s the first time I’m presenting Down Under and I’m looking forward to it, although I’m still not sure if I should start from the last slide and proceed backward . . .

Since it’s more than a day of flying only one way, it wouldn’t be smart to go for only two days, so I’m taking the opportunity to spend this week with my Sydney colleagues — Paul Moen and Andrey Goryunov. I should mention that Australia is the first country I ever visited. I fell in love with this country seven years ago when I came from Russia in February. Culture shock and dramatic weather change set the tone for how I feel about Australia for the rest of my life. So hello Sydney — I’m back!

I was supposed to fly Ottawa-Vancouver-Honolulu-Sydney, my flight leaving from Ottawa at 8:00AM on Saturday. I was packing until very late and finished only by 3 AM. No surprise that, although I set my alarm clock to 6:00AM, I forgot to switch it on for the weekend days. The net result: Olga woke my up at 7:30. Anyway, Air Canada was very nice to re-route me through Toronto so that I still could make my connection in Vancouver . . . so $50 for an additional 1.5 hour sleep — not a bad trade at all!

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