October 9, 2007
I keep wondering what I am writing my blog in English for when there are only two English speaking people who actually read it, Anil and Susy bless you both. For some reason however I keep doing it. If for nothing else, then I am at least practicing my written English skills. Upon popular demand I will write a little more frequently about everyday stuff since as it happens you guys would like to know more about what is going on down here.
This weekend was pretty excellent. Saturday Suze went to her nieces 4th birthday party and had a good time. Meanwhile I went to the beach to longingly watch the boats go out for a Saturday race. Conditions for sailing down here are marvelous. The bay is sheltered so the waves never become too big and when the wind is up it is usually never too strong. I have already been in contact with some sailors and clubs down here but as yet have not found my place in the sailing world here. Alone and with a desire for sailing in my eyes I got back on the bike and visited my runner up option, the local Croquet Club!
The Croquet Club was in full action mode when I arrived and the members all greeted me very warmly. After stating that I had been playing Association Rules back home in Iceland I was immediately offered to play a game, which I gladly accepted. The Elwood Croquet Club boosts three things that we did not have back in Iceland; proper Croquet equipment, even lawns and a clubhouse … basically all that you need to play Croquet! Our old garden Croquet set and park quality lawn made the game quite different when we played it. The first task was therefore to instruct me on how to use proper equipment. Once I got the hang of it we played. The first game was quite social less serious so I managed to keep up and even come ’second’. The next game however was a little more competitive and I got completely thrashed!
The game was really fun though and I decided to apply for club membership! I am now a proud member of the Elwood Croquet Club.
For some new photos check out our latest gallery, New In Melbourne.
September 19, 2007
Sem ég skrifa þetta þá er það víst svo að það er ekkert Íslendingafélag í Melbourne. Með því hinsvegar að skrifa þetta þá er ég að vonast til að Google taki upp fyrirsögnina og beini öðrum sem eru að leita að sama hlut til mín og við getum þá komið einu slíku af stað. Vanalega þegar ég ferðast eða bý erlendis þá er ég ekki mikið fyrir að umgangast íslendinga. Ég kýs heldur að kynnast heimafólki og taka upp samband við mitt heimafólk þegar ég kem aftur heim. Nú er því hinsvegar svo farið að ég veit ekki hvenær ég kemst heim aftur til að búa þar. Konan mín er Áströlsk og eftir að hafa búið með mér á Íslandi í 3 ár fannst henni nóg komið og vildi koma hingað aftur. Hvað gat maður sagt annað en: “OK” … eða “OK bubba” eins og það var víst í fullri lengd. Þessi óvissa um heimahagana gerir það að verkum að nú dauðlangar mig að hitta aðra Íslendinga hérna í útlandinu og halda smá sambandi við skerið. Sérstaklega langar mig að hóa saman fólki og halda þorrablót og skötuveislur og ískenskt fyllerí og syngja “ríðum ríðum” og allt það sem íslendingar gera bara þegar þeir eru langt í burtu og sakna heimahaganna. Ef þú ert að hugsa eitthvað svipað, vertu þá endilega í bandi með því að skrifa í comment, ég fæ póst þegar eitthvað nýtt kemur svo það skiptir ekki þó pósturinn sé gamall, eða farðu á about síðuna og þar eru ítarlegar upplýsingar. Ísland er land þitt!! hehe
September 18, 2007
Its not a bad place to be, really. The city is vibrant and varied, the people are friendly and interesting and there is always plenty to do. Most importantly life is not that hectic, like in most cities this size. People know how to enjoy life without being lazy. There is a keen focus on sports, arts and culture here which all suit me very well. The roads have dedicated cycling lanes, the beaches are beautiful and the weather is varied enough to make an Icelander feel at home. It is visible that this society is not as socially focused as the Nordic countries but it is not as individualistic as Britain or America either. Melbourne actually feels like a central European city, with the occasional streaks of rural “Bouganness”. I actually quite like it here and rate Melbourne amongst my favorite cities in the world.
September 5, 2007
After a painstaking 2 day journey from Iceland I have arrived at my final destination: Melbourne, Australia! Security check after security check, queue after queue, transiting after transiting and hours upon hours of sitting in my seat trying to sleep or watch a video I finally got here. There is no way that I could describe this experience as fun or enjoyable, without grossly exagerating the truth. And now, after all that, I am just realising as my laptop runs out of battery that the power points in Australia do not match those at home, so now I will need to make a short break on this entry while I figure out how to plug this thing in. [an hour later] Right, next stop will be the electronics shop but for now I’ll be using Suzes laptop. Back to the story. I started my journey at 5:30am on monday morning and go here at 9:00am wedensday morning. A few hours later I was in bed and slept for 18 hours straight. As I got up this morning I finally felt like a human beeing again. The flights them seleves were only about 24 hours in total. There was however no way to get connections good enough to make the overall travel time shorter. The best part of the journey was without a doubt Changi airport in Shanghai. They have a massage parlor and a rooftop swimmingpool, both of which I made sure I took full advantage of. I sincerely hope that it will be long before I have to make this journey again.
August 5, 2007
Although not all our stull will travel half way around the world with us to Australia, certain things had to be shipped over. We packed only small items like books, computers, clothes, kitchen ware and such but it still amounted to over 300kg. Shipping it over set us back 42.000 Isk or 840 Aud. That is not cheap but quite honestly I was expectiong upto about 50% more than that. As most of our valuables have more sentimental value than monitary value we can only hope there will be no trouble along the way. A sum of money will not compensate for such items. Anyway, here are pictures of the final move to the docs, after which the boxes were loaded on board MS Helgafell to be discharged in Rotterdam before boarding a vessel enrute to Australia. Its a bit of a bugger that my things will sail half way around the world before I ever will.
July 22, 2007
As my avid readers now know, Suze went back to Australia almost a month ago. She has a new job and now she has also found us a new place to stay. Our new address is: 3/198A Tennyson Street, 3184 Elwood, Melbourne, Australia. We plan to live here until we are ready to buy a place in Melbourne (and start building that boat!).
July 11, 2007
The intnetnet has become the primary place to find anything these days. First it was the flight and now a place to stay. The human touch of finding a suitable match has largely been replaced by internet based self service. Personaly I like it this way. In stead of calling up agents all day to get information that is often poorly presented and confusing I can surf the internet and view more options. The only downside of this when options are too many and the information is poorly presented, that makes it hard to narrow down the choices. Since we are constantly looking for a place to live now I have put a simplified searchbox here on the website. Using this box saves us a lot of clicks as we sift through the properties available. The mothersite has a long and winded path to get to the search fields that we use so this simplified version should save us some time. Feel free to have a look for your selves, and once you find something you can come down and join us in Melbourne 
July 5, 2007
As I have worked for several Internet Travel Agecies in the past people often ask me where to look for the best fares and flights on the internet. Now that I am going through the process yet again my self I will share my insights with those who may be interested.
Considerations
First let me say that there is no single place where you can get all the information you are after. There are several layers of things you need to consider; airlines, season, departure locale, specialist agents and special offers. Usually people are hunting for the best price. Now, there are only four major flights reservation systems in the world: SABRE, Amadeus, Galileo and Worldspan. All internet travel agents search for flights and availability on some of, or all of these engines, except for some low cost airlines who only search their own database. Some Airlines even host their own booking websites on the reservation systems website, such as IcelandAir who use Amadeus. Most internet booking websites will therefore be quoting you the same fares but with small variations in price due to varying fees taken by the booking agent. However, an agent may have access to fares that have been sold out elsewhere so sometimes you can find that excellent fare you missed on blabla.com on blabla2.com. This is where price comparison websites come in handy. Those sites often search other websites for you and put the results in a simple format for you to compare. Here are a few such sites:
- TNT Magazine, http://www.tntmagazine.com/travelzone/ – Excellent for long-haul
- Momondo, http://www.momondo.com/en/ – Great european engine
Another breed of flights websites will show you all possible flights (that they know of) between A and B. These are very usefull to find if there are any flights at a certain time and what airlines fly a certain route:
- Dohop, http://www.dohop.com – Excellent on european flights
Yet another type of internet flights engines will give you an overview of specials on offer. This will also give you an idea of the dates when seasons change from low to high:
- Cheap Flights, http://www.cheapflights.co.uk/ – Almost like a classifieds section for flights
Having said all this, how do you find the best fare to where you want to go?
- Know your market. Who is flying there? What websites have a special focus on this route?
- Look for specials. The airlines often have special fares outside the most busy season.
- Try unconventional fare types, such as a “Round the world” ticket for long haul flights.
- Use the comparison engines to find the lowest fares.
- Visit the website of major airlines and all low cost airlines that fly this route and do a search there.
A few good engines
The list of booking engines on the internet is constantly growing and trying to search them all will drive you mad. Try these simple steps and see if you can improve your results. Lastly here is a list of a few good booking engines:
- Travelmood – Excellent specialists on long-haul flights such as Australia or China
- Expedia – Specialists in North American flights but also do European flights
- SkyLow – European Low-cost airlines search engine
In addition feel free to browse my personal flights bookmarks on Delicious: http://del.icio.us/valberg/flights
The tribulations
The greatest problem with internet bookings is reliability. You may have your booking or reference number but once you get to the airport or hotel there is no guarantee that your reservation or booking has actually gone through to the right place. I can tell you a million stories of this happening. Usually the service provider will be helpfull and sort out the situation but when bookings are tight you will ultimately bear the grunt of the problem. Here are a few tips for you to avoid this situation:
- Make sure your credit card really got charged. Most booking engines will confirm your booking pending that your payment came through. Even if you have the money in your account the travel agent will still fail to retrieve the money and consequently cancel your booking. Worst case scenario your money will be forzen untill the bank releases it due to non-withdrawal by the agent. I recently had this happen with ebookers.com and had really bad service to sort it out.
- Check the website of the airline you are flying with, look up your booking just before you go to make sure it is still valid. Usually you can key in the 6 letter reference number (PNR) and they will bring up your booking.
- Make sure you check the mailbox of the email you gave. Any failure is usually reported to the email address you gave.
- In the case of a Hotel booking it may be worth it to call up the hotel before you go to make sure you reservation came through to them. Even ask for a reference number from the hotel it self. Hotel booking channels are more complicated and less standardized than flights bookings so the chance of failure is greater. Your booking number may be from a completely different system than the one the hotel clerk is looking at. Getting stranded in Hong Kong without accomodation on the Chineese new year due to system discrepencies can be no joke, yet this once happened to me.
When you choose a booking engine give some consideration to the customer service they provide. If they have no phone number to call then you should question wether they are really worth it and always give preference to a provider with a real agent rather than a Call center in India or something. ebookers.com only have a callcenter but Travelmood have an agent. A real agent can help you sort out your problems where as callcenters are more for providing information.
July 3, 2007
This morning, very early in the morning, my Suzy caught a jet plane back home to Australia. She left home at 04:40 and will arive at her sisters place in Melbourne at 23:00 tomorrow, Icelandic time. That makes for 44 hours and 20 minutes of total traveling time. There of 3 hours with Iceland Express and 25 hours with Singapore Airlines. I guess thats not too bad for 19.000km of traveling! That makes on average 7km a minute or 429km per hour. This is a bit of an improvement from flying to Australia with Qantas in 1939. Qantas Airways operated Clipper flying boats built by The Boeing Co. on flights from London to Sydney. The journey took 10 days and required 32 stops. Sailing there in the days of colonization would have taken even longer than that though. The fastest time from England to Melbourne under sail was (and still is) 63 days set by the Clipper Thermopylae. A generally reasonable sailing time would be a little over 100 days making the average speed of travel a little over 7km per hour, considerably slower than I bicycle to work. Now Boeing are building a new long range airplane that will fly direct from london to Sydney. This plane is called Boeing 777 and will take 19 hours to get from London to Australia. That will theoretically bring the door to door time down by 4 hours. In theory it should be possible with the current flights system to shorten Suzes current travel time by 12 hours by making all flights connect very tightly and leave your home at the last minute. That however still makes the total travel time 36 hours or 32 hours with the new 777. That would make the average speed about 600km/hr, a little faster than I do on my bicycle.
June 29, 2007
Today is Suze’s last day working for Landmælingar Íslands. On tuesday she will board a plane and fly back home to Australia. She has been waiting for this moment for a long time but now that it is finally here she is saying she would like to stay a little longer, women aye! The fantastic summer weather we have had the last few days might have something to do with that. It is winter in Australia at the moment and raining very heavily. The temperature is lower than it is here and the days are short. While we dont get a dark moment over the whole day Melbourne now gets dark at 5:40pm. I think it will be a bit of a shock for my Suze, going from 24hour daylight to only 10hours. Last week we had the longest day of the year while Australia had its shortest. I will be following Suze at the end of summer. The past winter was very, very long and I am very much looking forward to having two consecutive summers with no hint of a winter untill april next year! In twon months time or so I will be boarding that plane, but untill then I am just going to enjoy the summer. Suze allready has a job lined up back home wich she will begin on monday after she arrives. It is with the department of primary industry and has to do with GIS for mining and petroleum. Hopefully this will be a job she will be happy with as the location is perfect, right in the middle of the center of town. This weekend will be Suze’s last weekend in Iceland for a very long time so we are going to enjoy it by going around the city visiting friends and family to say goodbye. Goodbye.
