David's trip to USA

I have just returned to Australia from a three week trip to the United States. I arrived in LA the day before Thanksgiving and stayed with my uncle Tim Reiman and his family. I had a great time staying up late and talking with family that I had not previously had a chance to get to know well. I found I had a lot in common with my Californian cousins and felt very welcome in their home. I would have liked to stayed longer, but my travel plans only allowed two days, so Tim dropped me off at the airport to continue on to Minnesota. Kristin picked me up and we had a lot of catching up to do, especially since she just recently got engaged. For the next week and a half I helped my parents however I was needed. My projects included fitting a new kitchen sink, building new steps for the 4020 and 4520 tractors, hanging new lights on the star atop the 80 foot silo and of course doing maintenance on the milking parlor. I also had a chance to finish a project, building an automatic cow brush out of used parts, that I had started before we moved. In the middle of my visit I attended the Reiman family Christmas at my old school in Pease. I surprised a lot of people with my presence. Almost everyone knew that Jenny and I had moved to Australia. The get together offered a much needed chance to get caught up with relatives. Throughout my stay I received packages that I had ordered. Several packages were tools I bought online for a quarter of their cost if purchased in Australia. One package was my first order of parts for Mueller milk tanks to sell in Australia. I also grabbed a few things that I could not find in Australia such a dryer sheets. At the end of my trip was the main reason for my visit, to be a groomsman in Tony Dahlman's wedding. Tony and I are really good friends from our time in FarmHouse Fraternity at the University of Minnesota. The wedding was in Northeastern Iowa so I took care of some business in Rochester before heading to the wedding rehearsal. Of course the next day was Saturday December 11th, the day of the severe blizzard that coated the roads in ice and buried us in slush and snow. The wedding was the most welcoming and friendly I have ever been to, partly because everyone who made it knew they were not going anywhere else. It was sad to see so many empty tables in the reception hall but with a smaller group people mingled more than you would normally see. The only easy part of Sunday was getting my car out of the snow. Overnight the wind had blown all the the snow away from the car; all I had to do was scrape off the ice and drive away. It took me all day to make a trip back to Princeton. Under normal weather conditions it would have taken only 4 hours. I did slide into the ditch but only once. I was proud to have had the chance to prove I could still fight a blizzard and take stories of the weather back to Australia where no-one can comprehend what I had just survived.

Adventures in and around Perth

View of Perth skyline from Kings Park

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Australasian Society for Immunology annual meeting in Perth last week. The society is made up of Immunologists from Australia and New Zealand. There were about 600 people it attendance. Perth is the capitol of Western Australia and was a five and a half hour plan ride (probably similar from flying from Seattle to New York) as the countries are similar in size. I have heard people say that Perth is similar to Los Angeles (maybe because of weather and west coast location). Upon arrival in Perth I noted some similarities to LA including palm tree lined streets. Also it has been quite dry for the past three months so that lawns are brown and it lacks the humidity found on the east coast of Australia where I live.Perth is known for its laid back lifestyle and is one of the most remote large cities in the world.  It is not a large city, about 1.6 million, but it is definitely feeling the effects of the mining boom of natural resources in Western Australia. There are cranes everywhere in the central business district or CBD as they refer to the central commercial area. In addition to attending the conference and learning about the great science and big names in immunology here in Australia I had the chance to visit Rottnest Island (18km, ~11miles) off the coast in the Indian Ocean.

One of the bays on Rottnest Island

Rottnest Island was nearly a two hour ferry ride from Perth. First we traveled from Perth which is inland on the Swan River and then from Freemantle on the coast out into the Indian Ocean to the island. It is a car free island, just a bus service and numerous tourists mostly on bicycle. It is a small island 11km long by 5km at its widest spot (~7 x 3 miles). It is actually quite hilly as I was soon to learn biking around the island and was a good work out.

Quokka

The unique animal for which the island is named are Quokkas. They are very small marsupials only a foot tall and were at first mistaken as being rats by Dutch explorers who named the island "rat nest" and that is why it is called Rottnest Island. We were fortunate to see a few Quokkas, first under a tree and then a couple near a picnic area overlooking the ocean. The second ones were not afraid of people and appeared used to being fed and were even petted by some of my travel companions. It was my first experience up close with marsupials in the wild though the ones we were very close to did not seem all that wild.

A smaller quokka

Biking around the island are beautiful turquoise waters, white sands, and remnants of shipwrecks on the coral reefs. Swimming is available at any of the beaches, just hop into the water, and snorkeling can be done on many of them as well. I went for a brief swim and it was quite refreshing.








The water wasn't as warm as my previous visit to the Indian Ocean in South Africa but was nice and the white sand was quite coarse made up of crushed sea shells.

Beach where I went swimming

London Court (pedestrian mall)

The city of Perth itself was nice and clean. It had a good mix of old buildings including churches and government buildings with character and new buildings. The pedestrian malls were busy and it was easy to get around by foot. The malls were decorated for Christmas.

It was at least a twenty minute walk from our hotel to the conference at the convention center each day. I could walk along the Swan River or pass by the parks near the Government House. The green spaces were quite nice.

Government House grounds

Small Business Owner

I just completed the first couple of days of work, so I feel i can tell people about what I have spent the past several weeks doing. After talking to two different milking equipment dealers in the area I have found neither one of them has the resources to hire me as a full time employee. But there is plenty of work if I can split up my time and work as an independent contractor. After studying small business models, Australian tax code and consulting with accountants, lawyers, an Australian tax office representative and a small business mentor I have decided to begin my own business. Being an independent contractor is fairly common in Australia and the tax rules make it pretty simple. So far I have WestfaliaSurge dealer about an hour away that wants me to work with him Installing, upgrading and repairing milking equipment in an area from 45min to 1 1/2 hours way from Gold Coast. I would work from home with my own Ute (pickup) and tools but he would stock the parts I need. A second Dealer about 3 hours drive away wants me to come down and work on installing a couple parlors, I would stay for a week and return home on weekends. Third, WestfaliaSurge Australian headquarters based in Melbourne wants hire some of my time as well, I would work at home probably doing over the phone tech support. I will learn more about this option next week when I meet with one of the managers. Hopefully between the three I will be busy and get to see a lot of different milking setups. All I got to do now is save up some money to buy a Ute.

David's Birthday

To celebrate David's birthday we cooked a nice meal at home. We ended up making a cake with no bowls larger than a cereal bowl; it was quite the challenge. We ended up mixing the cake in the aluminum cake pan with forks (no mixer either) that we baked it in. It actually turned out pretty well considering our improvising. We also had some excellent cider.

Hiking in the rainforest... in the rain

In spite of less than desirable weather (more rain) we decided to head out the rainforest. We drove to Lamington National Park located in the Hinterlands, about an hour drive inland from where we live. We visited the Binna Burra section and hiked a couple kilometers of trails to see the caves. The trail was quite wet, muddy, and slippery and it rained the entire time. We decided to walk the road back to the parking lot instead of another 3 kilometers through a wet and muddy trail. We didn't see any wildlife of note other than a wild turkey on our drive into the park. We plan on returning and doing much more hiking when the weather is nicer.

 

 

5th Wedding Anniversary!

Anniversary dinner

In celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary on the 8th of October we went out to dinner at a nice seafood restaurant (Omeros Brothers) on the marina. The food was excellent. David had calamari for his main entree and I had barramundi a local fish found in freshwater and mangrove estuaries. For dessert we both had chocolate terrines which were delicious.

 

October 1st- First day of new job

Outside my work building

My desk

Today was my first official day of work. I had been into work a few times to take care of some paperwork and meetings. The day was quite uneventful as my boss was on vacation for the entire week for school holiday and I did not see the lab manager, he was likely in Brisbane where he works 50% of the time. I did get my desk area setup and organized after assembling the shelves. (Andrea, please note the giant Malaria parasite resting on my computer). I was able to get my work email up and running, catch up on emails, attend a student seminar, as well as read and perform literature searches regarding my new research area of malaria immunology. The office area has an open plan design and probably can hold a hundred plus postdocs and graduate students.

View from behind my desk into office area

To walk home it takes about 15 minutes and the university has its own bridge that crosses over the Smith Street Motorway. Like most days of the past two weeks it began to lightly rain on my walk home but luckily I had an umbrella.

University bridge

The Gold Coast is know for its 280 plus days of sunshine but we have had maybe one day without rain since arriving just over two weeks ago. It is spring here and supposedly the wettest on record since the 1950s. Everything is quite green which is nice but it has been raining and wet so we haven't done much exploring.