A few weeks ago we got a little brochure called Epping Community News. Fortunately Attila had a look and showed it to me -otherwise it would have been thrown away almost immediately. There was one thing which was already interesting and made a little smile on our face. There was a box with some facts about the new railway line construction project in Sydney: what was promised and what is the reality…

This new line was built between Epping and Chatswood, and was opened not so long time ago, in February. We have made a few rides with it already as we are used to go to the Macquarie Shopping Centre sometimes, especially when we need something with good quality and not from the `hot dollar` shops nearby.

You can even smell the rock flour of polished surfaces, and the whole construction is so big, that it almost seems empty; however it is used by more and more people every week. Maybe this was the original reason to let people use this line free of charge for a while (till 8^th June), I mean, to attract more potential travellers.

One of the most interesting things about this line for me is the way they designed the space for elevators and escalators in the three middle-stops. It seems unusually big, high/deep, and wide, so really `airy`. The power of the air conditioning is tremendous. Any way, it is not designed for people, who are afraid of heights, I am pretty sure…

Check out this video, it gives a good impression about the stop at Macquarie University, which is similar to the other two stops:

Here you can see that the escalators are not in a so called channel, but in a huge hall. Next to the escalator there is only a transparent plexiglass wall, so you can see pretty nicely the deepness around you or the other escalator above you. I recall how my legs were shaking for the first time when we were `travelling` up to the surface: I was scared a bit, so I had to catch the handrails on both sides. Attila who was standing behind me was laughing on me, of course))) It was a kind of adrenalin rush, so we decided to go down immediately -just for fun and adventure -, but this time with the elevator. This has a glass wall as well. We can tell you, it is also a nice experience to stand in front of the glass very closely, and the way up to the surface is even better, because it is going relatively fast and you can feel the deepness again. So I think, it is a challenging construction. I am just wondering how others feel themselves for the first time arriving at these stations…

But these are only our personal feelings, so here are the facts about the project itself!

After a look in the brochure I felt I had to check out the information on other websites on Internet. So I made my short research, for example on Wikipedia and I read some parts of the Action for Transport 2010, and I put the information together. I think there was a little difference between them, but the main issue did not change.

About the railway line between Epping and Chatswood, I can tell you, that this is a `link` between two lines running from south to north, a few stops before they reach each other in Hornsby.

This kind of `link` was already designed by Bradfield in the 20s, but the project was postponed because of the Great Depression. Then, a few decades later, the plan got being discussed again in the 90s. It was announced in 1998 that a new railway line would be built between Chatswood and Parramatta, through Epping. This was planned to be ready in 2006, it would be 28 km long and cost 1.4 billion dollars.

This was the shiny start…But in 2003 it became clear, that they could only build half of the line, ending in Epping, which means a 12.5 km long railway. That is the same line we have now. It was planned for old Tangara trains as well, but in 2007 it was revealed that these types can not operate because of the `steepness of the tunnel`. That is why OSCARS (Outer Suburban Cars -you see, Aussies really like acronyms) trains are operating now.

Then, in 2008 -two years after the railway should have been opened - during the first tests they realized that the sound in the tunnel is so loud -” sound levels on the train were 90 decibels, as loud as a 737 plane coming into land” - that they had to relay the “mats, connected to the rail tracks and concrete slabs to reduce noise “.(Wikipedia) This doubled the costs up to 2.4 billion dollars.

So briefly about the project: half of the line was built three years after planned and from twice as much money…But I definitely like it)))

Source:

Epping to Chatswood railway line

Action for Transport 2010

Railway-technology.com

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It was funny to read this morning, that it was so rainy in Coogee on Saturday evening that cars were floating on the roads, while we were so lucky to see the stars on a completely clear sky in Parramatta for several hours…

Last week one of the friends/colleagues of Attila invited us to go to this program in the west of Sydney. Okay, why not? That’s a great idea, especially, because we are celebrating the Year of Astronomy this year.

This event was organised by Parramatta Park Trust: some dozen of professional and amateur astronomers gathered in a huge park with impressive telescopes, one better than the other, to show the stars and the sky for the broad public. There were a lot of people living nearby and even more school children, so the atmosphere was really good.

My husband and his two colleagues represented the CSIRO and its department for astronomy called ATNF (Australian Telescope National Facility) with two telescopes. This was the very moment, when being a so called `astronomer wife` was a very good thing)) I could stand there with these guys and I could touch the telescopes and see whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, at least before the people arrived. This was a really big experience to see the Moon with the bigger telescope for a quarter of an hour or more, and see all those little and big craters, as I had never seen it before. It was so amazing!!!

I took some photos with our camera, but if you want to see better photos, maybe this blog will contain some. It is written by one of our friends, and he is blogging about astronomy in Spanish. But since he has put the Google translation program on the blog, you can follow his astronomy-stories in English as well. Sometimes it is funny because of the translation made by computer, but the blog itself is really interesting.

Back to the evening…I do not know why, but it was organised in the period of half moon, so you can imagine there was a lot of light, but no worries, we could see some real beauties…. For example Saturn with its ring and moons. I was told it would be more attractive in a few years, when it is tilted a bit, so you would see the ring even better.

Then there was the wonderful Orion Nebula with its gas cloud, this was very popular on Saturday night. We also could see the so called Stellar Jewel Box in the Milky Way, except for me. It was a small accident… I was freezing so much after two or three hours in the middle of the park at 10 p.m.,  that I sat into the car for a couple of minutes. Then I just missed it, because the sky became cloudy… But to tell you about the Jewel Box: it is a cluster of stars, nearby and shining in different colours.

Further more, there was a really interesting thing about the `double star`, as we used this term often to invite people to our telescopes. Would you like to see double stars? Double stars? Yes, they like two shining diamonds. WOWW!!Do you see them? Yessss,amazing!!!!What`s the name? Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri….

I did not know, that one of the Pointers - the two stars under the Southern Cross-, actually consists of three stars. The lowest bright star has three stars in reality, but you can see only two of them with these telescopes (and only one with your eyes).

And then it was interesting to see so many telescopes in one big park. There were also some bigger ones than ours. One particular one was sooo big, that you had to use a 3 m high ladder to reach it. The owner told us that the lens inside was 25 inch wide… Yes, this is the size of an average bicycle wheel…This telescope was actually very popular among the public: you had to wait in a queue))) It was pointed toward Saturn, and we also wanted to look have a look. But to tell you the truth, it was not much better than our telescope, though it was really amazing.

One more thing…I was amazed how clever the little children were. They asked several intelligent questions, so they made the atmosphere even better)))

Summarizing, I was really happy to be there. I can recommend you to visit this kind of event if you have one in your neighborhood. Everyone was so amazed by the stars!! Plus the sky in the southern hemisphere is much clearer than in the north. Attila will write a post about this later, if I ask him kindly)))

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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!

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It is already a bit late, and I really would like see the French movie that is starting in a few minutes on television. But I promised myself this morning that, whatever may happen, I will write this post tonight.  Today was a very nice day, not only with respect to the weather, but much more interesting than we initially thought as well. Today is April 25: ANZAC Day, I will tell a bit more about this day.

ANZAC is an acronym for ‘Australian and New-Zealand Army Corps ‘. Both in Australia and New Zealand, they celebrate this event on April 25. Maybe it is one of the most important Australian days, with very long parades and many memorial services.

Initially this day was to pay tribute to those soldiers that died in World War One. In 1915 the Australian and New Zealand army entered the Turkish peninsula Gallipoli on this day, trying to force back the Turkish troops. The initial plan did not really succeed end ended up in an almost eight months during bloody war. At the end of the year the ANZAC-soldiers had to be rescued after enormous losses. (more than 8700 Australian and 2700 New-Zealand soldiers have died.)

The first ANZAC day was already held in 1916 to honor this war, and over the decades it became a important tradition to memorise those who died. Today ANZAC day is to honor all who have died in any war or conflict. All those who have sacrificed their blood and live for the nation and for peace.

I was surprised when I heard today, that only in the state of New South Wales, there are about 3000 ANZAC memorials.  There are many parades, services, prays, flags, drums and bagpipes, and lots of wreaths.

What was really interesting for me is that the memorials already started at quarter past four in the morning.  Not only here, but everywhere in Australia they start with the ‘Dawn Service ‘ before the first light. This has a very deep meaning. On the war-field it was very common (apparently it still is), that the enemy starts to attack at dawn. For this reason the defending soldiers had to be ready for war way before sunrise, quite and without moving. These are the moments that makes the bond between troops stronger, the moment that are still remembered, that soldiers were in the same situation with the same problems.  This is the so called ‘stand-to ‘ moment, which is repeated at sunset.

The precise program of all the memorials can be found in the link at the bottom of this post. I found a lot on interesting information on these pages. Maybe you would like to know what kind of symbols they use on this day. Apart from the many decorations that can be found on the countless uniforms, there are the paper poppies. These small flowers can also be seen on Remembrance day, which are used to make wreaths and are placed on all the war memorials. They are also used to pin next to the names of those who have died, on the so called Memorial’s Roll of Honour. The other one is the laurel, which is used to make laurel wreaths, we have seen many on Market Place.

Most common on ANZAC day, is that those who ‘remember’ pin a small twig of rosemary on their breast. We asked a friendly veteran, who allowed us to make a picture of his decorations while he was telling about them. Many were not his own, but from his father who was in the army all his live. The rosemary is  a very old symbol , and because of the smell that apparently improves your memory, it is the symbol of memorial.

We are not Australians, but we like special events, and for us one of the best associations with ANZAC day is the ANZAC-biscuit. This is a small coconut flavored tea biscuit, which originally used to be baked by the women and was sent to the front, ‘to keep morale high’.

It was interesting to see the many generations of soldiers: the young man in his early twenties, the grown up man surrounded by his family or the old veterans, sometimes in a wheelchair. The city was full of celebrating families; all the bars were occupied by marines with their friends and girlfriends. In front of us one marine man traded his cap with that of girl from the royal air force.  During a memorial service in Hyde Park, the boys holding the flags were starting to faint one by one, it was to warm, or teenagers here do not eat properly either The veterans were proudly showing their medals and decorations. On every corner we met men in skirts playing the bag pipe.

After all, I am really glad that we have seen the parade and one of the memorials in Hyde Park, as it was very interesting and impressive.

So this was our ANZAC-day very briefly. And while I have been writing all of this, I also managed to see the movie…)))

http://www.awm.gov.au

Wikipedia

cityofsydney

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