Emu Bob

Transportation

The US Embassy was fun today. I arrived at 8am for my 8.30am appointment and the queue seemed reasonable. I was number 4 out of 9.

Except that the DHS had only one person to work their way through the queue and they didn't even arrive for another 2.5 hours. At about 11am he finally started seeing people and I was out by 1:30pm. G'ah - I think I reread every article in the paper 3 times.

But, in case the DHS reads this, thank you so much for letting me back into the country. Or at least for considering to let me back into the country... apparently I have another round of stuff to go through when I land :)

London Tube Map

The famous, traditional London Tube map has only a tenuous link to actual geography. For example, Paddington, Bayswater and Notting Hill Gate are shown running down the map as if they went from north to south. They in fact go from east to west along the top of Hyde Park.

For anyone trying to decipher this sort of thing I have found this nifty Tube Journey Planner that overlays the tube stations on Google Maps.

UK Adventure

My May has turned out to be quite interesting. So far this month I have spent exactly 0 days at home. My extended stay in London comes courtesy of the unfortunate luck of having my passport and green card stolen from a car park of offices we were looking to rent. Needless to say we will not be renting these offices.

This all happened in less than 10 minutes. I parked in the secure car park at the offices, went inside to view the offices and was out again to find my hire car's back window smashed in. My backpack was stolen from the boot with passport, green card and laptop inside. Bloody hell. 

I have my passport back now but the US takes a lot longer to organise a "Transportation Letter". It seems somewhat stupid to me that I can go to most countries in the world with my Australian passport but cannot go home. Come to think of it, a Transportation Letter sounds remarkably similar to what I am sure convicts got before they were sent to Australia and all they had to do was steal a loaf of bread. Why it is such a challenge for the US to let me come home I will never know! (and don't get me started about the US embassy charging £1.20 per minute to talk to them !@#%)

For what it is worth, the offices we are shortlisting are in Slough Trading Estates and the nearby Windsor. Windsor is a lovely location but apparently the traffic can be bad and the parking isn't onsite. We'll make a decision in the next few days.

Aside from this minor set back Ephox has been doing well of late. Congratulations to the team for the release of EditLive! 6.4 with some great improvements in our CSS support and for such a great sales performance last quarter.

New York City

I ended up in New York City over the weekend for my 30th birthday surprise. It was my first trip to New York and we enjoyed seeing all the sights - Rockefeller Center, Empire State, Wall Street, Ground Zero, harbor cruise, Statue of Liberty and more. Can't wait to go back sometime soon!