Hello Again, Everybody

Happy 4th, everybody.

I’ve been back for a few weeks now and I’m finally getting my life back in order a bit; at least enough to do a little blogging again.

Where have I been? Only the most awesome place on earth: Manly Beach, Australia. I sold a piece of software I had been working on for quite a while and it was actually the second time this company bought the rights to something I had written, so I knew what I was in for.

If you have never done so, flying to Australia is about the closest thing to stepping through a teleporter as you can get – a slow-motion teleporter. The company once again booked me on what I believe is the only non-stop flight from the states to Sidney. It’s a nearly 15-hour flight out of SFO and I have to laugh because when you get on the plane, everybody is all excited and kids are jumping up and down in the seats, “we’re going to Australia!”.

6 movies later, the stewardesses eyes are blazing red and they are whipping peanuts at people’s heads while mothers threaten their children with all kinds of sadistic things. I’m a smoker so I was trying to eat the seat next to me and trying to figure out ways to cause some kind of emergency landing. The problem is, it’s all water so I probably couldn’t have kept my cigarette lit anyway.

I have tell you, with the exception of a 10% tax off the top, doing business in Australia is a pleasure. The first thing the company did was introduce me to my lawyer that I never asked for nor had to pay for. He was at my disposal for any questions but the first day there they performed due diligence on my source code to make sure I wasn’t selling them something that didn’t belong to me. On the second day they insisted I call my bank to verify the money was deposited. That’s how they worked. The rest of the time was spent bolting on my software to their existing system – time that was generously compensated for along with ocean-front accommodations at a Radisson hotel.

I’ve already received a post card from the Radisson signed by a bunch of the employees who treated me so great during my stay.

I felt a little bad not contributing here but you all know how much time blogging can take up, and I wanted to take care of business first.

The first time I did business in Australia, I experienced a 100%-positive attitude toward Americans. It was just before the 2000 Olympics and I kept praying that Americans would catch on real quick about the way Australians do things. For instance, when you go into a place for a bite to eat, you are not pressured into ordering anything, and in fact you should catch the attention of someone when you want to order something. People in a hurry or who expect their hand to held at every step might think the service lousy when in fact they are just giving you the time and space to relax. You set the pace.

The Australians seemed to survive the 2000 Olympics just fine, but this trip was still different; right away, about half the taxi drivers were much cooler toward us “yanks” and much quicker to steer a conversation to where they might slip in some critical comments about American policy. They were very satisfied when I would actually amplify their criticism and call it what it really was. I don’t mean to say I when there to dump on America but let’s face it: this country is being run by a bunch of lunatics and supported by an even bigger bunch of idiots known as the MSM. That’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth.

Anyway, hello all. I hope everybody is enjoying their summer. In my last essay I had promised a part 2 and I did get to writing it. One of the dangers of writing in isolation with no real time crunch is verbosity. Part 2 now stands at about 20,000 words, so maybe a part 3 and 4 are in order too. I haven’t even begun to proof it yet.