mike carey

Inflated FF balances are a thing these days with all the credit card points mounting up and no flying for 18 months, and I'm no different on that count. They're mainly on Qantas and it has been hit and miss looking for rewards for trips I'm considering, although promising on US domestic sectors. Flights SYD-LAX are available in Y for 42K each way, but premium cabins, and with connections to SYD and from LAX less so. It often seems that point to point domestic flights here are the most cost-effective use of points. I also have Amex membership rewards points that I could transfer, but not to a US carrier from my Australian Amex account. I'm looking at signing up to SQ's Kris Flyer (which I can transfer them to) as an account to use for Star Alliance flights. Some of the best J-class paid fares from here to the US are on Asiana, and the SQ flight to JFK via Frankfurt is often competitive. Also, I've added the SIN-EWR non-stop to my bucket list Qantas had its biggest points redemption day on record last week when it announced it was ramping up international flights from Sydney and Melbourne, half a billion or a billion points, I think they said.

The song is indeed iconic, and celebrating as it does, a sheep thief who throws himself into a waterhole and drowns rather than surrender to the troopers who were enforcing the rights of the squatter (the wealthy pastoralist), it represents our self-image of rural anti-authoritanarianism. In recent years, a Seekers song has increasingly competed with it as an unofficial national anthem. This was the song that activists chose to sing from the gallery in the House of Representatives when the equal marriage bill was passed. The verses of the song chart the successive waves of people that have come to these lands now called Australia, although most often the refrain is used on its own. In the early days of Covid,, the ABC aired a zoom version of it, which has become a series including this one in Auslan.

Well, I'm averaging 4.81 posts per day, so I only have another 18,388 days to go at that rate! Can't wait!! (That's only about 50 years.)

For the image to strike a chord it's enough to know that 'moving the Overton window' is a thing, not necessarily to know what it means although that helps. Not everyone does. 'The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse.' 'Moving the Overton window' refers to something done in political [or cultural] discourse that changes the range of acceptable subjects. An example could be the change of the mainstream attitude towards same sex marriage over the last 20 years.

Haha! Yes, I lifted the photo from Ian Dunt's twitter!

I'm guessing this window is going to move shortly.

More baby steps today. The new NSW premier (who was always a more 'open it up' guy than his predecessor) has announced that NSW will not require hotel or home quarantine for fully vaccinated travellers arriving from overseas from 1 November, and that there will be no cap on such arrivals. They will have to return a negative PCR test before travelling. There will be a cap applied to unvaccinated travellers, including those vaccinated with a vaccine not recognised by the TGA (such as Sputnik). While he said it would apply to arrivals irrespective of citizenship he acknowledged that the federal government still decides who is eligible to travel here. The PM subsequently said that they would not yet open the country to essential workers, students or tourists (and the plan remains to phase in those arrivals). The only relaxation of arrival rules will be to extend the 'immediate family of Australian citizens and permanent residents' to include their parents as well as partners and children.

We are already in the throes of 'a ... pandemic with the same virus originating from a different location' and have been through others, so it hasn't been the Wuhan virus for some time. The Delta variant, previously known as the Indian variant, is still SARS-CoV-2.

They are not common, although some people do make them, but not in relation to any holiday or time of the year. Pumpkins are overwhelmingly used as a vegetable (roasted, boiled, or boiled and mashed) or made into soup. They are a summer crop so were historically most readily available in autumn, although many varieties store well, so autumn home garden bounty can last into the following year. Also, like many summer crops, they are grown in winter in the north. Melbourne Cup day is the first Tuesday in November, so most years on US election day. (Not that any Melbourne Cup revellers are thinking about those elections. Anyone who is interested in them would wait until about lunch time on Wednesday when the results are coming in and the hangovers have cleared up.)

What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter? Pumpkin pi.

I applaud this initiative. I'm not entirely convinced that two years is the right gap but that's a detail. Most topics that are general or not linked to a specific event or time will probably generate more comments within the time limit. For the most part, I don't find revivals too much of a problem but more often than not there is no continuity in the discussion between the old and new parts, so nothing is lost by starting a new thread. What irks me is those comments that revive a ten or more year old thread as if the previous comment was made the day before. If the history in an old thread is important to the new comment someone wants to post they can always start their new thread with a link to the old one. I started a thread on Australian elections about five years ago and there is usually something that happens that will prompt me to return to it every year or so (I try to limit my new comments to things that are likely to be of interest to others here, or which point to a difference in political systems and attitudes between Australia and the US). As virtually no one comments on it except shortly after I have posted, I'll just make sure I keep it alive until it ceases to serve a purpose. As there's a federal election between now and next May it probably has two and a half years of life left in it.

Thank you for noticing that. My mind did the reading trick of looking at the first and last letter and seeing the word I thought would be there not the one that was.

I was doing my best impression of 'deadpan while making smartarse comment' as I typed it!

Yugoslav dinars.

Or perhaps sometimes Her answer is 'No'.

I WUV Australian consumer law! Here, the price on the menu has to be the amount on the bill (and the total has to be the sum of those items, not with some 'surcharge' added). And like all retail outlets, GST has to be included in the list price, not added on, as sales tax is in the US. The law even applies to Sunday or holiday surcharges. They can't put a note at the bottom of the menu saying they have such a surcharge, they have to have separate menus with the higher prices. Being accustomed to Australian tip levels, I'm nervous about getting it right in the US, but not obsessively so because most likely I'll never be back to the same restaurant. I'm a hard 'No' on tipping for takeaway purchases, although when cash was king I would sometimes throw the coins into a tip jar if they had one.

Haven't done that flight although I think it's still on the (dormant) timetable as a daylight flight. I've flown AKL-SCL on LAN (as it was) but it was overnight for the relevant part of the flights both ways. My only SYD-JNB flight was with SAA/SAL with stops in Perth and Mauritius so no icebergs! Ed: Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is talking about adding SYD-CPT as one of its ultra-long haul flights. That would go further south mid-flight (ETOPS diversions permitting). (Counter-intuitively, CPT is actually a 21 miles shorter flight from Sydney than JNB.)

And here is today's Qantas release about the flight. It includes a link to a photo gallery. https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-repatriation-flight-lands-in-history-books/

I think the Australian meaning of the word 'root' would be applicable in this case.

OMAAT article about it. https://onemileatatime.com/news/qantas-flight-over-antarctica/

This afternoon a Qantas B787 repatriation flight landed in Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory after flying non-stop from Buenos Aires. It was the longest commercial flight the airline had operated. The flight overflew the Antarctic continent en route. The route is not as long as Singapore Airlines' Singapore-Newark service, and it's not the longest flight that Qantas has ever operated with their B787s. Before Covid they had done trial non stop flights from New York and London to Sydney, and a few months ago they operated a charter flight taking the Australian cricket team from Brisbane to Saint Lucia in the West Indies. Today's flight was commercial, with tickets sold to Australians in South America who wanted to return to Australia.

Another international comparison for milk here, where two-litre bottles are the most common size. The two big supermarkets have a *store name* brand, typically A$2.30, a 'fake brand' where they each have a 'brand' that only they sell, about $3.30, and real national (or state) brands, usually about $4.50. (So about US$3.15, $4.50 and $6.15 per US gallon.) The price per litre is only slightly different for one- and three-litre bottles. There are also specialist and modified milk varieties that are more expensive. In Canberra we used to have socialist milk (by that I mean the government set up contracts to buy, process and deliver milk in the city and set the prices) and now Canberra Milk ($4.60 when last I looked) has more shelf space than any other brands, and is the most likely to run out first. They are also the main sponsor of the Canberra rugby league team in the national competition. Prices haven't spiked over recent months. People tend to buy the mid- or higher priced milk if they can afford it. Three or four years ago the supermarkets introduced $1 a litre milk with great fanfare, but when it became clear that dairy processors were stiffing farmers to supply it at that price there was a backlash, and a lot of people stopped buying it for that reason.

Bank transfer is certainly an Australian thing, and I'm not surprised it's a UK thing as well, although in our case it's domestic. I'd be surprised if there were a simple international bank transfer process, so unless you have a UK bank account ... I've had two recent hires who preferred that and as I had my laptop with me in one case, that's what I did (I don't have a bank app on my phone otherwise I could have used that instead). Privacy is still an issue if you have a partner who you don't want to see the transaction, but at least here and in the UK there isn't the legality aspect to worry about. Here, only a bank branch identifier and account number are needed, and the guy read those from his phone for me to type in. Australian banks also have 'PayID' which enables you to make an instant transfer using just the payee's phone number from your bank's app or internet banking.

Yep, I posted about this last night (Australia closed until late 2022 in the Travelling Members forum), but said there that I wasn't ready to book any travel until it was clear how it would work in practice. I'm suspicious that there will be hidden obstacles. But I'm hopeful, and I might move sooner rather than later because I know INNdulge is booking fast and, as I mentioned elsewhere a few weeks back, I've seen a good JAL J class fare on Amex travel.