Melbourne Trip 2004

Friday - Day 1
Sara's train was cancelled in the morning so we were on time as opposed to being early arriving at the airport. That didn't stop Sara from worrying the whole way though. Only when we fully checked in with 30 minutes to spare did she start to relax. She's such a worrier :D We had Maccas for breakfast at the airport then boarded the plane. The plane trip was uneventful. Got to Melbourne airport and caught the sky-bus shuttle service straight to the city. We stayed at the Atlantis Hotel which was on the north western side of the CBD and only a short walk from the sky-bus terminal. We threw all our gear into the room and then, you guessed it, we went shopping.

Melbourne's CBD was much quieter than Sydney's CBD. Traffic was alot less and things seem a lot laid back and slower. Their roads were huge compared to Sydney, thus allowing them to run trams in the middle of the road, in both directions. On some roads there is even parking spots in the middle of the road, perpendicular to the traffic. It's kinda weird at first as you had to get used to looking out for both cars AND trams when crossing the road. The tram stops are at major red light intersections which meant as soon as you got off a tram, you'd be stuck right in the middle of the road. There's about a metre in width from the railing dividing the road and the tram itself. The price of a tram AND train ticket around the CBD and it's surrounding fringes was $5.80 for all day use. Plus the city circle tram, which goes around the city in a circle funny enough, was absolutely free! Compare that to City Rail haha. It's very touristy as on the inside of these city circle trams is a recorded announcer advertising the different sights of the CBD as you go past them.

Our first destination was the Queen Victoria Market. Nothing special here. Just like Paddys or Flemington markets here in Sydney. Though we still managed to buy various gourmet nuts and a bottle of pure watermelon juice. For lunch we went to a Malaysian restaurant near the markets. We then spent the rest of the day shopping and discovering the city.

Saturday - Day 2
The plan today was to see more of the city and more shopping. We noticed the hotel serves continental buffet style breakfasts for only $6.50 per person so we gave it a go. We got there, signed in, walked into the serving area and realised it was all just cereal, bread and fruits. Where was the eggs? The baccon? Sausages? I guess that's what a continental breakfasts was. So we told the lady we'd changed our mind and left. Instead we went and had yum cha in chinatown. Chinatown was basically one small section of a road. Nowhere as big as Sydney.

After breakfast we went to the Melbourne Museum. I had only one reason to visit that place. Phar Lap. They had the Phar Lap exhibition and he was stuffed in a glass container. Apparently his heart was in Canberra and his skeleton in New Zealand. It was spine tingling to see the legend Phar Lap in front of me. Sara was shocked at the size and how life-like the animal was when she first saw it hehehe. Needless to say we took lots of photos. Well, more like we took lots of photos of me and Phar Lap :P

For lunch we decided to try out the Pho in Melbourne. We went to a restaurant that claimed to be the "Original Vietnamese Rice Noodle Soup". We had to try it. The insides of it was decorated with enlarged photos of various celebrities that have visisted the joint. Mostly Hong Kong movie stars though. The Pho was ok. I'd say Pho Pasteur standard but nothing compared to Pho An. :)

In the afternoon we decided to visit the maritime museum and see the ship "Polly Woodside". But as soon as we saw that the entry fee was $11, we walked the other way. The place was dead quiet and there didn't seem to be anything to do apart from taking a walk on the ship.

Dinner that night was at a fancy seafood restaurant in the Melbourne Docklands. They didn't have a seafood platter for two so we had a seafood paella and a dozen oysters. It was a nice meal with great mood lighting :).

After dinner we headed off to the Crown casino. The streets we took there was sooo quiet. And this was on the saturday night of the AFL grand final day. Crown was pretty much similar to Star City. Even down to the membership and free gambling credits. Though it was only $5 compared to Star City's $10. Anyhow, we joined up and managed to gamble it off and win $8 in return hehe.

Sunday - Day 3
Today we had a day tour to see the Great Ocean Road and the 12 Apostles. It was a long day, leaving our hotel at 7am and getting back at 10pm. The weather was so erratic. It went from raining when we got to the start of the Great Ocean Road to sunny and hot by the time we got to the 12 Apostles. The scenery was really nice along the drive, even though I slept for most of it :). The highlights of the day included koala spotting just before lunch (koalas are so furry and cute), a nice walk through a temperate rainforest (I love the smell in a rainforest. So clean and natural) and of course, the 12 Apostles. The Apostles were basically sandstone columns that stood apart from the shoreline. It was all very pretty. Lots of photos taken today.

Monday - Day 4
We didn't do much today apart from some last minute shopping. Decided to sleep in and take it easy. I didn't buy much on this trip. Just a couple of business shirts as they were on sale, a Phar Lap mug and some sweets from Queen Victoria Market. Our flight was in the afternoon and so we left Melbourne at around 3pm.

Overall this has been a good trip. A nice little break from our hectic lives. Time always flies when you're having fun. God I love travelling. Just can't afford to do it all the time. Now that we've seen Melbourne, Sara wants to see the Northern Territory (ie. Darwin & Alice Springs). I'm more keen on going overseas. We'll see what happens...

A Purpose

It's been almost 2 weeks since I started here at Ventracor. Things are starting to settle down now. It seems I've joined the Software team at a really busy stage of the current project iteration. We're on the verge of a release and everyone is madly testing and verifying the new features that was implemented.

The work environment has been quite good. The R&D department has a very open plan architecture with no cubicles. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing which can be good or bad :)

The people here are younger than at ResMed. A fair few, like myself, have come from ResMed. Plus a few of my old UTS classmates like Sarah & Lee work in the Electrical Engineering team sitting next to us. My immediate software team team consists of myself and 5 others (3 including myself and the team leader are from ResMed). That's the entire software engineering team within the whole company. It's very different to what I was used to at ResMed where a team of 6 software engineers would work on ONE project alone, and there would be 5 or 6 projects running concurrently. The company as a whole is also quite young and on the verge of growing rapidly. There are about 120 employees in the Sydney office. I'd say Ventracor is where ResMed was about 5 years ago. If the clinical trials go well then this company will expand rapidly.

The first week has been both frustrating and promising for me. Frustrating in the sense that the quality system within the company is very immature. Not everyone here has been fully trained in using a structured and controlled development process and thus things get a little hectic at times. Thus the main reason why they have employed a few key QA personnel from ResMed in order to implement a quality system much like that of ResMed. Higher management has no doubt identified that quality will be a major issue for the company if it is to succeed in getting international market approval to sell their product. Especially when it's a product that has the potential to kill someone. To put things into perspective, ResMed's quality system is top notch, yet it's product's Level of Concern is below that of Ventracor. A consequence of a product failure for a CPAP machine would be a bad night's sleep for a patient. A consequence of the Ventrassist(tm) failing would be death. Thus the quality system within Ventracor needs to be better than ResMed. We have a long way to go yet.

I said earlier that the first 2 weeks has been promising because I feel that I can make a valuable contribution to the company in pushing the philosophy of "quality in everything we do". My 16 months at ResMed has opened my eyes to how quality software should be built. Things like traceability, document control and technical reviews are just a few areas that are starting to be addressed at Ventracor. At ResMed all these quality systems were already in place and it was only a matter of using it. At Ventracor, I feel I have the opportunity to help guide the software team in changing the way we develop software. It will be a challenge as people are reluctant to change but it is a worthwhile cause. I think personally, working in a job where you know your job too well can be boring after a while. It's challenges like this that makes a job interesting, even if it means frustration along the way :)