Favourite mailbox

I didn’t think I’d ever have a favourite mailbox. Turns out I do, and it’s this one :)

Photo of a wooden residential mailbox installed atop a small mound of dirt in the front garden of a house. The entire mound of dirt is covered with pink coloured flowers.

Born in a barn

This house in our neighbourhood has no other Christmas decorations, just this nativity scene. Which I think is pretty cool, given the whole understated, born-in-a-barn origin story they’re representing.

Photo of a small Christmas nativity scene created using ceramic figurines that’s been set up in a residential garden.

Not. Happy. Jan.

Maggie is not happy that summer holidays have started in Melbourne. She relies on the kids from the nearby primary school to provide her with dropped snacks on her daily walk!

Photo of a red/brown dog sniffing intently at a spot in the grass on a nature strip by the side of a residential street. The dog is wearing a walking harness that’s attached to a red leash.

Waiting for a train

Waiting for a train at Yarraville Station in Melbourne, Australia.

Photo of an empty outdoor train platform, taken with the camera placed very close to the ground. The platform extends into the distance, and the bit of pavement the camera has been placed on shows cracks from years of use in the hot Australian summer. Across the train tracks you can see an out-of-focus train station build on the other platform.

Top-down photo of the edge of a railway platform, with the top half of the photo showing one of the train tracks and the bottom half showing the thick white line that marks the edge of the platform. The photographer’s white sneakers and the cuffs of his jeans are visible at the very bottom of the photo, with the front part of his sneakers on top of the white line. The edge of the platform and white paint on it is cracked and peeled from years of use under the hot Australian sun.

Hood art!

This is probably the coolest car hood that I have ever seen in my entire life!

Photo of the hood of an older Volvo car parked just off the street on a sunny day. The hood of the silver car has been hand painted to show an artistic depiction of a scene from the film ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The scene shows the yellow brick road making its way through some greenery. On the road are Alice, her dog Toto, and the Tin Man. The Tin Man is shown in the foreground, and he is holding a small hatchet. Toto is in the background and next to him we can see only Alice’s feet and lower legs under her blue, patterned skirt.

Ready to go

For the first couple of hours of the day Maggie hangs out with Nadia because Nadia gives her breakfast.

Then for the next couple of hours she hangs out with me because I take her for her daily walk.

This is Maggie making sure I know that she is ready to go the instant I step away from my home office desk this morning :)

Photo of a red/brown dog lying on a carpeted floor with her face right next to the caster of an office chair. The photographer has taken the photo while sitting on that office chair, looking straight down onto the dog.

Maggie is conflicted

We’re about to go for a walk — which Maggie is super excited about — but then she heard Nadia opening the cheese drawer in the fridge :)

Photo of a red/brown dog standing in a residential hallway. The dog is wearing a walking harness attached to a red leash that’s been stretched tight in front of the photographer because the dog is pulling towards the back of the house.

2022 NBN update: 3% faster

Every time we move house my first blog post is always an update on what the NBN internet speeds are at our new place. This time is no exception.

What is different this time is that, instead of renting, we’ve now bought a house in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. (Yay!)

Compared to our last place, the upload and download speeds at our new house are around 3% faster – which is cool.

A graphic titled ‘2022 NBN update: speeds up 3%’. The graphic shows two sets of bar charts, one with a heading of ‘average download speeds’ and the other with a heading of ‘average upload speeds’ — both showing download/upload speeds in megabits per second, or Mbps.

There are six bars in each chart, one each for the years 2009, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. Both download and upload bars increase dramatically in size from 2009 (when the internet connection types was ADSL) to 2015 (when the internet connection type was FTTB).

The bars were highest in 2018, with 105.2 Mbps download speeds and 37.2 Mbps upload speeds in Kingsville. The connection type in this location was FTTP. In 2022 the bars show 94.7 Mbps download speeds and 18.9 Mbps upload speeds in Melbourne’s north. The connection type in this location is FTTC.

Our NBN connection type is still FTTC though. But that’s okay, the speeds we’re currently getting are sufficient for our needs.

There’s just two of us here, so Nadia and I can stream multiple 4K videos simultaneously without a hitch. And both of us can seamlessly participate in 1080p video conferences at the same time as well.

Of course, the second NBN Co give us the opportunity to upgrade our connection to FTTP, we’ll jump on that straight away :)

For now, though, I’m super happy with what we’ve got.

Medibank data breach

Finally got the email [1] from Medibank saying that my old membership data with them was stolen by cyber criminals.

Screenshot of an email with the heading ‘An important update from Medibank’.

The email reads: “Dear Ameel, We’re deeply sorry to inform you that some data relating to your former membership has been stolen in the recent cybercrime event. This email details what specific membership data was stolen, outlines actions you can take to safeguard your online identity, and the services available through our Cyber Response Support Program”.

The email then goes on to list what categories of data have and have not been stolen. The data stolen is name, gender, date of birth, email, address, phone number, policy number, and passport number. The data not stolen is credit card and banking details, and health claims data.

I left Medibank in 2009 so, with the exception of my name, gender, and date of birth [2], all the other data they have one me is now outdated and irrelevant.

And while it’s not great that various cybercriminals now have this data, in the broader scheme of things ‘tis but a flesh wound. After all, there’s not much that cybercriminals can do with a single old residential address, an old pre-paid phone number, and an expired Pakistani passport number :)

(Why Medibank kept all my customer data thirteen years after I closed my account with them is a whole other issue, of course. *sigh*)

[1] I got the email from them on 15 November 2022.

[2] You can find all this about me using open-source intelligence gathering anyway — like by looking through my social media feeds and seeing when my friends have wished me ‘happy birthday’, for example.

Gaps in the rain radar

I’m very pleased with my ability to find the gaps in the rain in which to walk the dog.

The arrow on the rain radar map below shows the direction the clouds are moving in. The gap marked out is when I walked Maggie.

And this is what happened exactly two minutes after we got home!

Animated GIF showing of a wild and windy downpour in a residential back garden.

Not a fan of Halloween decorations

Maggie (our heeler/kelpie mix), the first time we walk by this Halloween decoration: does a double take, but keeps walking.

Second time: takes a hard look (still without breaking her stride) but then determines it’s some stupid human thing.

Third time: ignores it completely.

Photo of a fake dog skeleton placed on a flagstone among other Halloween decorations in a residential garden.

Lessons from dog

The best way to deal with the clammy, rainy, miserable afternoon we’re having in Melbourne today…

Photo of a red/brown dog sprawled out in front of a gas heater, with her front paws stretched out towards the fire. The dog is lying half off of the mat that’s been placed on the floor for it. The dog has her chin pressed up against the tiled area that’s in front of the heater.

Walking in the rain

I’ve gotten very good at interpreting the Bureau of Meteorology rain radar to find 15–30-minute gaps in the downpour during which I can walk Maggie.

This photo is from our successful zip around the block yesterday.

Selfie of a bearded, bespectacled man in a yellow raincoat who is walking a red/brown dog that’s wearing a black raincoat. The pair are walking along a residential street.

You can’t 100% rely on the rain radar, of course, so Maggie and I are always dressed for the worst.

This Ruff n Rugged oilskin coat from PETstock works remarkably well, and Maggie is comfortable wearing it.

Photo of a red/brown dog in a black, oilskin raincoat sniffing at something on a nature strip along a residential road.

Today, however, we’ve had short showers followed by periods of bright, warm sunshine — the latter of which Maggie is making the most of.

Photo of a red/brown dog sitting in a residential back garden on a sunny day. The dog is sitting comfortably and has its eyes partly closed because of the bright sunlight.

Fortunately, we don’t live near a river so we’ve avoided all the flooding on the Maribyrnong. The flood retarding basins in Melbourne are certainly earning their keep this week!

Music discovery and listening

How do you keep up with the latest music releases? More generally, how do you discover new music to listen to? (At least music that’s new to you.)

Are you beholden to whatever Spotify and commercial FM radio stations are paid to promote to you? Do you get recommendations from people whose taste matches your own? Or maybe whose taste doesn’t quite match your own? Do you let your streaming music provider’s algorithm decide?

Or do you just not listen to new music?

Here’s how I do it: every few weeks I switch between music discovery mode and music listening mode.

Screenshot from YouTube Music’s music discovery playlists. There are songs and albums listed under two headings: ‘New releases’ and ‘Mixed for you’.

Music discovery mode

In music discovery mode I listen to lots of songs I haven’t heard before, regardless of whether they’re old or new releases.

I do that by actively seeking out music from a range of sources, like:

  • YouTube Music’s various discovery, new-release, ‘mixed for you’, and auto-play playlists,

  • commercial FM radio stations in Melbourne (only when I’m in the car),

  • David Byrne Radio,

  • recommendations from podcasts (like the Women of Rock Oral History Project),

  • music from the movies and television shows I’m watching, and

  • full album listens based on whatever random song I’ve heard or music-related thought I’ve recently had.

That last one is possibly the most fun, by the way. I love listening to full albums and this lets me listen to both old and new albums, from both current and past artists.

Like recently ‘I’m Not Over’ by Carolina Liar popped into my head, so I went and listened to their whole ‘Coming To Terms’ album. And most recently I listened to Michelle Branch’s new album, ‘The Trouble with Fever’, which I really liked.

Anyway, if I like any of the songs I hear – or I at least want to give them a second listen – I’ll add those songs to my ‘current’ playlist.

Screenshot from the website of musician David Byrne, showing his radio station page – where he compiles and publishes playlists on different topics, mood, and type of music.

Music listening mode

After a period of discovery I’ll move into music listening mode. That’s basically me listening to my ‘current’ playlist, usually on shuffle :)

Eventually, when/if I get tired of a song, I’ll remove it from my playlist. And, if I really liked it, I’ll add it to my YouTube Music ‘library’.

So that’s what works for me.

What system do you use? Did you put much thought into it? How have you tweaked it over the years? And how is all that working for you? I’d love to know.

South Asian Round Table at AMWF 2022

I attended the South Asian Round Table at the Australian Muslim Writers Festival 2022 which featured Nadia Niaz, Adalya Nash Hussein, Tasnim Hossain, and Tasneem Chopra (as the moderator).

The Coburg Library, where this event was held, is the very first library from which Nadia I got library cards when we moved to Australia in 2006 :)

Photo of a library event space with three green armchairs and a couple of coffee tables arranged in front of a wall. On the wall behind the armchairs is a TV screen with ‘The South Asian Round Table’ displayed in large letters on it.

The discussion was great!

The upshot was that we’re all excited about more (probably second and third generation) South Asians getting into the arts – both in front and behind the scenes. And though there’s been some representation in recent years, there’s still a long way to go and a lot more to do.

Photo of four women of colour sitting on armchairs, taking part in a panel discussion

Here Adalya is talking as a journal editor about making space at the table for South Asian writers.

Photo of two women of colour on a panel discussion. One of the women is gesturing with her hands as she makes her point.

Here is Nadia talking about how she built her own platform to showcase multilingual writers in Australia because nobody else was doing it.

Photo of two women of colour on a panel discussion. One of the women is gesturing with her hands as she makes her point.

And here’s Tasnim talking about creating safe spaces for minoritised groups in her role as theatre director.

Photo of two women of colour on a panel discussion. One of the women is gesturing with her hands as she makes her point. The other woman, who is the moderator, is listening attentively to what’s being said.

Finally, a big shout-out to Özge Sevindik Alkan from The Right Pen Collective for running the whole festival. (This particular panel discussion was organised in conjunction with the SAARI Collective, fyi.)

Özge is the festival director. And, as you know, a festival director’s job is never done!

Photo of a woman wearing a bright blue hijab. The woman is sitting on a chair with a laptop on her lap, while at the same time typing on a smartphone that she’s holding above the laptop.

It would’ve been nice to attend more events from this festival this year, but hopefully I’ll get to do that next year.

Album cover feels

I took a photo that looked like an album cover, so…I made one.

High contrast, sepia photo of people wearing dark, warm clothes walking in a diagonal line through a walkway under a train line. The photo has been cropped and made to look like an album cover with the band name ‘below ground’ printed in large, all-caps text along the bottom. In the top left corner, in slightly opaque bright yellow text, is the album title ‘Volume IV’.

“But what about the three previous albums”, you ask?

Well, this is where it all started…

Photo of a harshly lit underpass, tweaked till the photo is very high contrast black and orange. The photo has been made to look like an album cover for a band named ‘Below Ground’ – which is written in large, all capital letters along the bottom of the image. The album is titled ‘Volume 1’.

Then there was the difficult sophomore album…

Photo of a tunnel with (apparently) colourful panels placed across its curved ceiling. The photo has been desaturated to a pale blue tint and had been made to look like an album cover. Along the bottom of the image, in all capital letters, is the band’s name: ‘Below Ground’. In the top left corner is the album title: ‘2’.

Followed by a critically acclaimed and welcome change in direction by the third album…

Photo of train tracks entering a train station through a tunnel with a large pedestrian crossing on top of it. The photo has been made to look like an album cover, with the band’s name ‘Below Ground’ printed in all-caps at the bottom of the image. In the top left corner is the lowercase letter i repeated three times, which are the Roman numerals for the number three deliberately written incorrectly. That is the title of this album.

Also, these look better when you put them together in a grid :)