In the last few months we made too many pictures but we have not updated our photo gallery so often.  To solve this problem we had the idea: why not regularly post one of our pictures on the blog?

Today we were very sad: Attila`s bike was stolen last night from the staircase. He went to work but came back very soon with the lock -cut across- in his hand and said calmly: `at least we do not need to sell it anymore  (when we move)`…

So what to do? Write a message on the wall like `hello, do you know who has taken my bike?`, as that `Germany-fan` guy did from the house some months ago searching for his jacket? It was stolen from the car park where he left it and it was a very important jacket for him because he had sewn the German flag into it after some kind of German football victory in the past…

Or call the police to ask them making a research in every flat in this district? Hello, haven`t you seen anyone in the dark last night during the heavy rains with a stolen bicycle? It doesn’t make much sense.

I wrote a message on Twitter, but at this stage it did not help.

So I made a quick research on Internet and found this website of Bicycles Network Australia and its forum about stolen bikes which seems to be the only effective solution. We can register our bike there and see what happens. Maybe somebody will find it or at least if the thief wants to sell the bike maybe the buyer checks this website first. Who knows? But if you have a better idea how to find this bicycle, tell us, we would be very pleased!

When something is stolen from you - whether it is an important object or not - it is very frustrating and makes you nervous but also very empty for a while. It was yours!

Sydney is not a bad place to live and we are lucky because in this suburb we don`t feel the public safety or security to be as bad as it is said to be in some westerns suburbs. But being naive and leave the bicycle in the open staircase was not so smart.  After this we will not leave things in `unsecure places` ever. And maybe we will also tell this story to our friend who uses to leave his kayak sometimes on the street on his car, saying that `a lot of people use to have kayaks in Sydney, they won`t steel mine`…

But for now we upload this photo about the Ferris wheel from Luna Park in Sydney. It symbolizes some kind of nostalgic feeling. Ups and Downs…Generally I do not like fun-fairs.  And this park called Luna Park in Sydney also has not changed this feeling. It was almost empty every time we were walking by-maybe just because it was always raining as well…But the view must be scenic and nice from the cabins: the Luna Park is located on the harbour side in the north, just next to the tremendous Harbour Bridge, and you can see the Opera House on the left as well. Great place to visit!

We will also post a picture of the bike, in case you might see it somewhere, just let us know ….

So about the bicycle:

Type: Merida Dakar; Colour: black; mountain bike, 26 inch wheel, 21 inch frame.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I woke up this morning, urgently checked my mail as I am used to, and there was this message waiting for me: `Kevin Rudd is following you`. Yeah, that was funny to see. LOL.

I signed up to Twitter a few days ago, because I was interested what this social network is all about, that everyone is talking about these days, even  in the news. More and more celebrities are joining this network.

So I am tweeting as well, but to tell you the truth, I do not now for how long. I am not interested in doing this all the time. And you know what? I am not alone with this. According to a research around 60 percent of twewbies -new people to Twitter- do not use Twitter after the first month. I can understand this, because I also do not use social networks as much and as intensively as many others, but this time I was really interested  why it is different from other social networks, such as the Hungarian Iwiw, the Dutch Hyves or the most famous Facebook .

If you only look at the benefits or the positive side of this site, Twitter can be useful and funny. And why not see the positive side only? Yeah, public social networks can be dangerous, but this time I do not want to be more paranoid. So let`s talk about the good things.

You can make your profile on Twitter and you even can have ‘friends’. The big difference is that you can make connection with celebrities or companies much easier. Because you click on celebrities to follow them, does not mean you know them personally or you are friends. It means only that you are `following` them. Mutually, they can follow you as well, so they become your `followers`.  Why they want to follow you or be followed by you if they have absolutely no idea who you are?  The reason is very simple: it is a really good marketing tool for them to build closer relationship and/or sell you some products much easier…

Basically, what you are following is a short message consisting of a maximum of 140 characters, about what people are doing during their day. It is like: `I am going to the cinema tonight`.  People like reading what others are doing at the same time. What they are eating, what kind of situation they are in, what they are wearing, etc. I am not sure that this is true for everyone, I think there are more important things in the world, but on the other hand I can imagine it. You use to ask your family members or friends as well what they did or what they like, don`t you? And if you can not ask but would like to, it is easy to read it almost secretly, isn`t it?

So in this way, Twitter is a so called `microblog`, because you can send your short messages, like you do in sms or text-messages, but it is going to reach a broader public on Internet, not to mention, that it is free these days. It is a bit similar to MSN where people use to make a short notice next to their names -seen by their friends-, but I recon it is not changing so often.

For me the biggest advantage is that it is an easy way of getting news-updates. On a separate page, you can see all the messages of persons or companies you are following, ordered in time. I started following the Hungarian “Index” and the Sydney Morning Herald, as I noticed that they are continuously sending their latest news headlines. It was funny that the SMH immediately replied and started following me, but I am still waiting for Index, they need a wake-up call. If they only knew what they loose by not following me…

So I have four followers with Kevin Rudd: the Sydney Morning Herald, an SMH-blogger Joe Hildebrand, a figure that is changing his personality all the time, and now Kevin Rudd, the REAL ONE!!! Oh, if you have not heard from him, he is the prime minister of Australia!!!

I say the REAL ONE, because if I search for Kevin Rudd at this moment, the search engine gives 13 results. Among these KevinRuddPM is the real nickname, and it is not Kevin Rudd, just because the so called ‘squatters’ already hijacked his identity.

Not everyone is real however, it seems unlikely that the prime minister sits in front of his computer because of this. They employ someone for this purpose, the so called ‘ghost-twitter’. Hugh Jackman embarrassed himself recently, when his “ghost-twitter” was talking about the Opera Center instead of the Opera House. This looks quite bad for someone from Australia, so to save his image after these harmful 140 characters, he donated 100 thousand dollar to charity a few days later. From now on, I also will be very careful when writing something on Twitter…

Like on other sites, there are also some people here hiding behind the name of someone who is famous, and abuse it by writing nonsense. Today there was an article about this in the SMH. In general there is quite a lot of news about Twitter or Facebook, as a kind of advertisement, telling which celebrity reached a million followers or who the latest famous member is. There are also articles with a warning, how people can use these sites for wrong reasons. But there are also many success stories.

Recently I read, there was a smart company (SR7): that immediately adapted to these new developments they are doing research for other companies about the behaviour of their employees on social networks. Many companies are afraid (maybe with a good reason), that employees can damage the image of the company, if they are writing negative things on these sites. To prevent this, Telstra  came up with new regulations, about how their employees should deal with the social networks.

A well known recent case for example is Domino Pizza, when two employees uploaded a few pictures, about how they are ‘polluting’ the pizzas, before bringing them to the customers. This was all I needed! I hate it, if you are so vulnerable; you indeed never know what exactly you are eating…

It became clear, that many companies cannot really use this kind of damaging accidents and they sacked people because of their Facebook messages. Attila read somewhere yesterday, that a person got fired because she stayed home sick, saying that she cannot work, because she is not allowed to use a computer. But then she uncovered herself while writing on Facebook…

So be careful!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Some of you asked us why we do not continue our ZigZagAustralia blog. Hmmm, it is a bit difficult to answer, but to let you know, we were a bit out of energy while travelling around Europe to visit our families and friends in both our home countries. We had no time for writing posts, and after we came back to Sydney, in the middle of the heat wave, we almost forgot that we had a blog. Sometimes if you do not keep updating your blog, it is over before you realise. But we do not want the blog to die silently. So this is the right moment to continue! The sun is still shining, everything is fine, so why not go on and write some nice stories again?

Maybe you want to know, what happened to us in the past few months; we do not intend to make ZigZagAustralia.com a so self-centric blog. It will remain a personalised travel blog, but we can give you a short update.

We went home to celebrate Christmas with my family in Budapest, hopped from one meeting to the other to visit family and friends. We made some nice trips and visited a house party, all the good things J. Then we went to the Netherlands as well, to visit the other family and spend some time there. Another flight back to Australia, and then we had to force our bodies and spirits to work again, but of course first we had to survive a jetlag.

It was the end of January when we came back to Sydney, terrible 40-something Celsius degrees, which is even worse after minus 10-something degrees back in Europe. It was so terrible that we needed the ventilator all the time, poor little thing, it got sometimes a bit tired…I did not like this kind of machines first, until these devastating-hot days. It is so ugly with the big white propellers and cheap legs, but it is very useful if you can not make any cross-wind in your flat. After a few hot days even the walls are heating the air around you. Fortunately, Sydney has many beautiful beaches to escape to.

Then we had a guest for a few days: one of my friends from Budapest. One day we rented a car and drove to the north to Port Stephens` sand dunes. It was a lovely day, so we wanted to try our body-board at a beautiful, uncontrolled beach at the end of the day, where we found nice waves, okay, a bit muddy, but who cares? Sunset, beach, friends, nice waves, happy young people, in the beginning of February… Afterwards this is the situation that we probably would have avoided and that I can not recommend, unless you want to risk any shark attacks. Several attacks happened in the following days during dusk, in Sydney as well, terrible cases…You just have to realise the signs when it is not the right time for swimming…

A few weeks have passed. More and more pictures in Sydney, around Sydney and even above Sydney. Queen Mary 2 came to Sydney for a day; there was a fantastic big picnic in the Domain - a funny short film festival-; enormous and tragic bushfires in Victoria during floods and cyclones in Queensland; we got a flight with one of our friends above Sydney in a small four person airplane, Cessna-182 (wonderful, wonderful); parents came visiting for a month; a  trip to Hunter Valley and to Port Stephens & Newcastle again, etc. We kept ourselves busy:))

Meanwhile we know the place, where we will move to after Sydney at the end of this year but we keep that as a secret for this moment! But no worries, there is enough time to enjoy our life here in Sydney for a few months more, travel and see as much as we can, make photos and of course: to tell our stories in this blog. Thank you for visiting us again!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!