Blogwonky

The staff at Firefly are ‘at work’ this week, which means they all look like this…

In the evening I went to ‘maths class’. This was a new type of NSAS Meeting in which we learn about mathematics which relates to astronomy…

The Teacher

In this lesson we did some practical work with pencil, paper and compasses – learning various ways to draw ellipses. It was just like being back at school…

One of my Elipses

It was my last day of employment, and although most of my duties were now being handled by others, I was nevertheless given one final debugging task which I completed just as we were about to go for lunch.

We had a team lunch at a nearby bar where I ate pizza and drank a huge glass of beer (the latter funded by my team leader)…

Drinking

Co-workers eating

I also received a card on which people wrote what they thought of me (better not show that part)…

One of my colleagues volunteered to keep an eye on Noswonky’s Free Money which will continue to operate until either the money is gone or the enterprise is taken over by another (possibly hostile) entity…

Free Money

As I left the building for the last time, I took this picture, which reveals the company name…

I am now free to concentrate on other ‘work’ which may or may not be profitable.

Today I handed over my work responsibilities to some random dude…

The actual moment of handover

Because my sleep was cut short yesterday by the Sushi-driving job, I decided to sleep a bit longer this morning and drive to the city a bit later than normal. It was good to get the extra sleep, but the problem with going late is the parking.

If I arrive after about 8am, the parking switches to ‘tandem’ mode. The attendant tells you where to park, and you may then be parked in, or you may have to park someone in. Indeed, when I returned to my car in the evening it was a scene of carpark gridlock! The attendant had to move three other cars before i could get mine out..

Carpark Gridlock

After work, I ate this cookie…

Cookie

We got up at 5.30am this morning for another sushi job. It was dark and raining…

Just like last Friday we picked up Keiko and her two assistants and drove them to the venue. This time the destination was Greystanes High School in Sydney’s west. We had to get there by 7.30am for an 8.30am start.

Keiko and her assistants

Like last time, I didn’t stay for the class. I headed back, but it was morning peak hour and the M4 was in gridlock. I therefore decided to delay my return by stopping off at Westfield Parramatta where I had coffee and read the paper while I waited for the traffic to subside.

Meanwhile, Yuko took these pictures…

Keiko demonstrates to the students

Students display their sushi

Carrying stuff back to the car

I returned to the school at about midday to pick them up.

Celebrating after another successful class

Having five days off work each week is not all leisure and beer-drinking. Today I actually had work to do – as a ‘Sushi Driver’.

Our friend Keiko of Studio Keiko has employed both of us to assist with her remote sushi classes – Yuko as a photographer and me as a driver.

We went to pick up Keiko and her two assistants at 8.30 am…

Our destination was Knox Grammar School, a dandy private boys’ school on Sydney’s leafy North Shore…

I dropped the four Japanese women and left them in a big empty room.

There were two double-period sessions scheduled for the day, so I went home and left them to it. I therefore didn’t get to see the sushi-making in progress, but below are Yuko’s photos of the event…

Keiko demonstrates sushi-making to students

Students making sushi

Table 4 display the results of their work

I returned to pick them up at 3.45pm and they reported that the day had been a success!

So I’m sitting in my new ‘office’ trying to get some work done, and I keep getting ‘support calls’ from a Japanese woman who asks me to help with her IT problems. She even brings her Mac into the office and hassles me in person…

She also offers me bribes in the form of tea and chocolate bilbies…

Note Bilby and Tea at right

Another day of work – that’s two whole days this week!

It was a difficult day, with a persistent bug in my generic area which remained there most of the day. It was very frustrating indeed…

Persistent Big in "Generic"

It was the day of our team lunch for April. We went to the Sake Restaurant and Bar which is very close to the office…

Although none of the staff appeared to be Japanese, the food was very Japanesy and was quite good…

You can’t beat a free lunch!

Back in February, our roof started leaking due to some broken tiles. The tiles were fixed some time ago, but it was only today that the dude came to fix the water damage to the ceiling.

Unfortunately he decided to do the job on the day I have to go to work. As Yuko was too lazy to wake up early, I stayed home until 8.15 while the dude started working and Yuko slept.

Normally I would leave home around 7.15, and the traffic is pretty good. But today, leaving an hour later, the traffic was close to the worst I’ve ever experienced driving to the city! It took more than an hour to get from Lane Cove to the city!

As I reached North Sydney, I could see that the city was covered in – well I thought it must be smoke because fog doesn’t usually hang around that late (9am) in the warm sunlight. But it turned out to be fog…

City Buildings Immersed in Fog

It was also one of the thickest fogs I’ve seen on the Bridge!

Fog on the SHB

Today we returned Tomoko to her rightful place atop the pond. It was hard work lifting Tomoko into place, and it required the use of a plank!

Tomoko and Yuko

My office is now operational! However, as my desk and chair have not been delivered yet, I am only operating in a temporary configuration (using an old dining table). Despite this, it was very exciting indeed!

Temporary Office Setup

And here is the Moon…

Today I continued working on turning the Japanese room into my office. It’s a slow process, but Yuko was impressed with my progress. I think I’ll be able to start using it in a couple of days.

Yuko inspects my work

I have joined Galaxy Zoo project.

This is a project set up by some astronomer dudes because they can’t afford to hire enough people to classify all the galaxies that need classifying. So they ask ordinary dudes like me to do their work for them.

They show you a galaxy and ask you some questions about it…

I classifies 12 galaxies and then they sent me an email saying they had reached their target of 60 million galaxies classified! It seems things really got moving as soon as I came on board…