We had a stalled arrival with the delayed landing of our United flight due to poor weather. Honestly though, the weather there is pretty damn nice during the day. At night it does get bitterly cold, so we need to go buy thermals… or HTFU.

Public transport here is pretty good. If you are on the bus – Muni – then it can totally suck in peak hour as there will be a squillion people trying to get on and no room. I can’t keep track of the number of times I have had to ask folks to “move down please, thank you” on the Muni. They are oblivious to others or just don’t care. Which strikes me as odd, yet there are so many poor dishevelled vagrants that people mostly keep to themselves on public transport.

Liz had us on a frenetic schedule to find a place. She knew I wouldn’t be a happy camper until we were settled, smart woman! Gosh I’m a lucky fella. At any rate, we spent the first two weeks running around viewing places and finally found ‘the one’ only to discover that we didn’t have enough money in the US yet to pay the deposit. It was good in the end as a better place came up – top floor in a three story block in The Mission (think Redfern), big kitchen and close to shops/bars/restaurants/etc this place is ‘the bomb’ (as the locals would say). I’ve even managed to buy a bloody huge stereo to keep the place warm at night (yeah, it is pretty big, sucks a lot of power I’m guessing).

We are still doing our laundry at the place around the corner. I reckon we’ll be getting a washer and dryer soon though. A task for next weekend.

Getting a bank account is important. For things like getting paid, and paying taxes (don’t want to miss out on that opportunity!). So, we opened a Wells Fargo account. Super. Turns out the company still couldn’t pay me until I got my Social Security Number – damn. Finally got the SSN so now I can get paid… by ‘check’, or cheque for you Australians. Weird over here, the banking system is so antiquated and everyone writes cheques for everything – our rent for instance, getting paid, etc. There is, of course, credit cards. We are yet to obtain one as we need proof of credit history and none of the Australian credit history counts (bred from thieves and whatnot in Australia, right?). Whatever, we now have money and we now have stuff. And a horse.

Coupons are a big deal here. Liz has saved a small fortune by cutting and using them at the grocery store. Wonderful, and yet strange at the same time.

We watched the Superbowl. Folks here were indifferent though as their team wasn’t in it. Ended up hanging out with a other Aussies who live just around from the bar – we were going for… ahh I forget now, such is the life of a sports star, only you can remember if you won the Superbowl last year or not.

I got to the BeerFest with a crew from work one Friday night. It was epic. Forget the Sydney beer festival, this is the real deal. A huge hall full of brewers, and most are micro breweries. That means they only do a few hundred thousand litres of beer each year and mostly supply the local scene.

Liz’s prior housemate Nat flew (grammar on that right?) in last Saturday. It was a six hour layover so we headed down towards Embarcadero for dinner. On our way back up to North Beach for desert we got caught up in the Chinese New Year celebrations. Massive win, it was brilliant! No desert though, and bloody cold too – couldn’t they turn up the heat for NYE?!

This was a photo shoot at work. A little naff, yet that’s what you’ve got to do sometimes I guess. Bloody big space at work, we had the whole SF office on those steps for the all hands meeting on Friday. Super, loving it!

Speaking of work, I have done a tonne of it lately as we gear up for some major releases. I have also been fortunate enough to visit some amazing companies in the few weeks I have been here. I feel like I am at the center of the tech universe, it is AWESOME.

Yesterday we had ice cream, made on the spot using liquid nitrogen. Food here is different, it is unique. Every place has its own ‘thing’, their own signature cocktail or dish.

San Francisco…

UPDATE: We’re sold out. Flights to San Francisco on Monday. New contact details to follow.

If you got this far then take a gander at the new Atlassian office in SF, looks swell. Spot my new desk!

1) Ingredients

• Four Rashers of Bacon
• Four Eggs
• One Red Onion
• Two Sheets of Puff Pastry
• One Potato
• Cheddar Cheese

Very Interesting article.

My take away – over regulation and interference by governments can sometimes create more problems instead of solving them.

His suggestion is to repeal – the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act & the Regulation FASB 142. I am sure that the intentions of the legislation were honourable and well meaning but the consequences were not well considered.

We have the same problems in Australia. For example:-

The recent Labor Government introduced new corporate legislation the “two strikes rule”
Which means that if 25% or more of shareholders at a Annual General Meeting vote against the annual remuneration report for directors and senior executives of the company two years in a row – then the whole Board of Directors must step down and a new Board is elected.
How a publicly listed company operates without a Board of Directors while this process is in train is yet to worked thru.
Government Regulation introduced in haste with unknown consequences.

The question you might ask is:- why shareholders (25% not even 50%) would reject the independent remuneration report?

The issue is:- under existing Australian govt regulation all Annual Reports must itemise the remuneration packages of all Directors and the top management executives. The report must disclose by executive, by name, base salary, bounuses and conditions, expenses, allowances, share options and share bonus, all performance criteria and all that makes up the executives remuneration package.
Great for shareholder transparancy but not good for the business community at large,

This means that any executive and company director has a readily available database of competitive remuneration packages of executives in like industries and like companies. The nett effect is the continuing ratcheting up of remuneration packages to stay equal to or above their peers.

Corporate advisory and salary packaging firms have developed businesses doing just this, comparing executive A to executive B and recommending new and better payment packages. The two strikes regulation was introduced to limit this escalation of remuneration packages.

So a new piece of Government Regulation is created to compensate for deficiencies in an earlier piece of regulation.
And so it goes, regulation-on-regulation, binding up the resources of executive management in satisfying the government regulatory controls,
instead of getting on with the purpose of the business.

A very good and apt article. I hope the Australian Government takes time to read it.
Thanks
Peter

Thanks Peter, let’s hope the Australian Government does take note.

All too much to consider?! Well keep this in mind, prostate cancer is bad. Lots of Aussie blokes (and fellas all around the world) have to deal with it. Cancer is bad. If you are keen to prevent this form of cancer (in the future, as our funding is going to research) then donate. For my part I will be chopping off the beard and growing a Mo. You boys and girls are going to get a laugh out of this, @OrganicSydney (sorry dear!) is going to hate it.

October 31 @ 1103am:

November 1 @ 1201am (first time I have shaved with a razor in about 10 years, so show me the money!):

November 7 @ 1027am (nasty mo, here I come):

November 14 @ 0824am (shocking how good it looks!):

November 28 @ 0905am (looking good Muldoon):

Liz and I have just returned from a week in Hong Kong. We had an amazing time touring around the place. The highlight was the wedding of our friends Simon and Hester this past Sunday. They looked bloody stunning and it was a fantastic wedding ceremony and reception.

As this was the first Chinese wedding I had attended – and as a groomsman no less – I was introduced to a whole new world of activities. You see, the groom and groomsmen need to undertake challenges prior to having the tea ceremony with the brides parents. In our case we danced, bartered for cash payment, ate wasabi, did the limbo and a whole lot more. Thank goodness we managed to impress the bridesmaids and they let Simon greet Hester!

Congrats to the newlyweds!

A few more selected photos are on Flickr.

@atlassian cited in New Internationalist article discussing pros/cons of introducing a maximum wage: