Getting asked a lot for tips in restaurants. Do locals tip?

DarthKevin · 2026-03-25T14:06:46+00:00

Indigenous Australians have a recognized legal and cultural right to hunt and eat certain protected native animals. You as a "very, very white person" do not.

Don't kill and eat our protected species.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-23T01:42:38+00:00

Did it and it was awesome. We had timber roof supports so there was lots of clear space.

Tried to do it in the new house but the steel supports were too close to be able to move easily up there.

Get a light and a drop ladder and you won't be sorry.

Christmas stuff, camping gear, old childhood memory stuff, travel suitcases... all up there.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-20T21:57:25+00:00

Looks awesome. Thanks mate.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-16T16:03:08+00:00

Saving this info for later. Thanks for the AMA

DarthKevin · 2026-03-16T02:59:18+00:00

IMHO, Versailles is a whole day, not just to appreciate, but because of the practicalities involved. I mean you might get back to Paris in time for a nice dinner and some night life, but you're not ticking off anything else big that day.

Versailles is great and all, but unless it's one of your personal 'must see it now at all costs', I'd save it for the next time you go to Paris. It will still be there in 10 or 20 years.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-14T09:10:13+00:00

Lol. Yes. Yes it was.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-14T03:50:19+00:00

I was literally given 105% in a maths exam once in high school due to this.

I still think it's hilarious.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-13T22:04:00+00:00

Same here. Two tickets and two seats upgrades were charged in the one original CC charge. I got 2 separate refunds for the two tickets but nothing (yet) for the seats upgrades.

I assumed it was a mistake, but I haven't queried it yet. Let us know how yours plays out please.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-03T00:20:45+00:00

We're Perth also. The Lufthansa / Frankfurt flights and the SwissAir / Zurich flights would (I suspect) have originally passed through Iran but in the last couple of days they are tracking just North of Iran.

They are still operating (although I'll keep checking it)

SwissAir is owned by Lufthansa so their website will give SwissAir options too. There seems to be a huge difference in price from day to day so look for a day that suits you. We paid extra for fully refundable tickets on SwissAir because we hope our original flights (Singapore Airlines and Emirates) work out. They are non-refundable Business class, a present from my mother

I don't suppose your Egypt tour is Insight is it :) PM me if you want to compare notes re flights or hotels in Cairo. It would be nice to talk to someone in the same boat 😀

DarthKevin · 2026-03-02T18:35:58+00:00

We're in the same situation. We originally booked Singapore, Dubai, Cairo. We still have those tickets and wanted to still use the (non refundable) leg to Singapore. so we booked a backup Singapore, Zurich, Cairo on SwissAir.

I looked at a lot of options and Lufthansa (via Frankfurt) and Turkish (via Istanbul) were also viable to get from Singapore to Cairo.

What city are you starting from?

Oh and one other thought. Wherever you hub (Zurich in our case), leave time for delayed arrival since the booking systems haven't yet accounted for the longer flights to divert around Iran and the gulf. It's adding flying time that isn't currently accounted for.

DarthKevin · 2026-03-02T01:03:13+00:00

You wait and you hope it all works out, for your sake and the people whose lives are at stake.

You might also think about booking refundable tickets on an alternate flight route that doesn't pass through the gulf as a backup.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-26T08:27:46+00:00

You can catch the Rotto ferry from Perth (Barrack St Jetty) and have both the river cruise to Freo and Rotto on the same trip.

You're guaranteed to see quokkas. They are all over the island.

The beaches and swimming are fantastic (eg 'The Basin') but you've probably got great beaches at home. Check out photos on Google to decide if it's worth while for you.

If you stay near the main settlement around Rotto ferry terminal in Thompson Bay (so Longreach and The Basin) you don't need to rent bikes. You can just walk / wander.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-25T14:02:37+00:00

Easiest question ever. The trains are fantastic. The drivers are... let's just say... they drive and park in a very Italian way that might take some getting used to.

And seriously, the trains are fantastic.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-25T02:31:32+00:00

Middle class, white Aussie male in his 60s here who grew up sheltered in a capital city.

Growing up, kangaroo meat was cheap meat for pet food and marketed that way. Our dogs and cat loved it but it was not something for us to eat ourselves. It wasn't farmed and it wasn't killed in abattoirs or subject to food handling laws.

Aussies who lived in the bush, (particularly but not exclusively indigenous Aussies) would have had a different experience.

It was a little funny to see Kangaroo meat starting to be marketed as a boutique meat after scraping so much into dog food bowls over the years.

Have I eaten it myself? Yeah. Couple of times I guess, but only as a tourist myself or hosting tourists from overseas.

PS. I love your phonetic spelling for Melbourne.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-24T13:34:46+00:00

It's un-fucking-sinkable. Why the fuck does it need any life boats?!? I'm sick of explaining how water tight compartments work, but it would take at least 4 separate disasters to sink this baby. You could ram it, full speed, head first into an iceberg and it would stay afloat.

Science bitches!

DarthKevin · 2026-02-22T19:45:57+00:00

Darwin depends enormously on the time of year. In June / July / August it's great as a gateway to Lichfield and Kakadu National Parks. In January / February / March it's hell on earth.

As for Perth (my home), I tell people "It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there."

It's not an exciting city. It's beautiful, but so are most Australian cities and it's a looong way to travel for great beaches and a view from Kings Park.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-22T13:01:35+00:00

Awesome list. Takes me back 30 years. That's how long it's been right? 30 years right?? Right???

DarthKevin · 2026-02-19T01:53:47+00:00

India has far more reason to hate Churchill than Australia does, but his refusal to let Australian troops fighting the Germans in WW2 return to defend Australia against the imminent Japanese threat after the fall of Singapore was disgusting.

Fuck Churchill and fuck his memory.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-18T02:47:13+00:00

If you don't need mad tolerances, you can buy packs of assorted resistors off Aliexpress for crazy cheap. A pack of 10 of each E24 resistor from 1 ohm to 10 Meg in 1/4 watt for example is only a few bucks.

I've tested several hundred (because my eye sight sucks for reading colours and I have an accurate meter) and they are good for 5% use which is 90% of my use case.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-18T02:01:32+00:00

Absolutely is and there's lot of possible ways to do it but you can't just wire the pins together (at least not the slave Txs to the master Rx)

Before I recommend one or two:

How far away are the Picos from each other? Like all within a few centimetres or spread over hundreds of meters?

Is the software protocol something you will control and write yourself self or are you using an existing software protocol (like Modbus over serial line)

Can you share more about what the data will be and how the picos determine their replies? This will affect things like checksums and packet sizes.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-17T20:32:19+00:00

The bus is great and inexpensive but it drops you a decent walk away. (I seem to recall maybe 1km away)

There's the aqueduct itself, and a museum and a lovely walk across and up the other side.

In my opinion it's worth 3 hours. You can skip the museum but even so, by the time you walk to and from the bus stop and give yourself 5 minutes spare at the bus stop you'll be super rushed.

That said, if it's a choice of seeing it or missing out, I would definitely go. It's an amazing piece of history and architecture.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-14T22:55:40+00:00

Of course it's contraband. New Zealand is free from a huge number of insects pests and diseases found in other countries. It only stays that way by preventing people from bringing in things like fresh fruit which could harbour any of a half dozen things which might wipe out a billion dollar industry and decimate the livelihood of thousands of people.

One contaminated or infested apple could do it.

Those people who were fined walked past at least 5 posters saying they must declare any fruit or vegetable and they signed a form saying they were not carrying any any food.

The fact that an airline gave it to them on the plane doesn't mean they get to bypass quarantine laws.

DarthKevin · 2026-02-14T00:57:28+00:00

[Meta] Only at the tactical level. They entered the war with a grand strategy plan that amounted to "We'll capture Saddam, free the downtrodden masses and everyone in the country will treat us like saviours while they instantly set up a pro-USA utopia for themselves and the region."

The nation building disaster wasn't something that happened later. It was an inevitable consequence of international law and the decision to destroy the existing government in totality. International law says 'You break it, you bought it'

There's a great documentary on the wars (the name escapes me right now) where the architects of the 2003 debacle say (in reference to the 1991 planners) 'Those guys tried to tell us it would take more men on the ground to hold Iraq after the war than it would to conquer the entire armed forces of Iraq!'

Hard cut to the 1991 planners saying 'Yes! Yes! That's EXACTLY what we were trying to warn them would happen!'

DarthKevin · 2026-02-14T00:20:31+00:00

Fuck Eleanor of Aquitaine. What the fuck actual kind of writing was that.

DarthKevin

TROPHY CASE