the tooheys brewery at lidcombe (mentioned in that article) is about 2 mins drive from my house

while im in here i might as well ask a question you'd probably be able to answer Josem

heading down with a few mates in the first week of november for spring carnival - no doubt we will be hitting up crown quite frequently, any idea what sort of poker action they have down there and what limits etc?

im guessing it wouldnt differ much from what star city has to offer, but thought id ask

djakofhearts,

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Number=10380293


more info at http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid...woplustwo%2ecom


edit: corrected link. helping someone else with a similar answer solving methodology

the first link you provided - did you mean to link that :O?

From another thread, to avoid a hijack of it:

Correct.

However, if you are tertiary educated in another sector, you may fulfill the points process on another criterion.

Incidentally, depending upon the size and nature of your poker bankroll, you may be able to qualify on the basis of investment and/or business streams which are also detailed at www.immi.gov.au

'cause it's the Australian Government's policy that since Australia is obviously a high demand destination for immigrants, Australia may as well choose the "cream of the crop" as it were when it comes to determining who comes here.

To look at it another way, there's very little extra cost to Australia being selective about who it chooses to allow migrate, when the benefits are quite significant.

I suspect that ensuring that migrants are highly skilled and have good English skills also helps migrants participate in Australian society more fully, and also helps to maintain community support for a very large (by per capita world standards) migration programme.

I have previously heard that there is something in the order of 6million enquiries about migration to Australia per year. 140,000 or so are successful. It makes sense to choose those successful people in some sort of methodical way, which is currently on the basis of three main categories - skills, family reunion and humanitarian migration.

It seems like an obvious policy for a Government to follow - if you're going to have 3% (or whatever percentage) of prospective migrants successfully come to your country, you may as well have the 3% "most desirable" folks come along.

Thanks Josem. I figured it wouldn't be easy for poker players. It seems our best option would be to get a Visa by being hired through a firm (in an unrelated industry) then apply for permanent residency once we've worked there a while. Unfortunately I had that opportunity in the past but passed on it because I was finishing my degree at the time.

That second comment was a tongue-in-cheek dig at current state of our immigration policy here in the U.S. I wish our elected officials would use your logic and common sense but our current president is moving this country's immigration laws in the exact opposite direction.

I appreciate all the help you've provided in this thread.

i suspect that there may be a small opportunity for an enterprising lad to investigate this further.

i wonder what the definition required by the immigration department is for a potential "employer." presumably (and I have no expert knowledge of this, this is not legal/migration advice, etc.) it is possibly for someone to come here on a commission based employment arrangement.

it would seem logical, therefore, that there may be a vehicle to essentially "import" poker players to play as part of a "collective" (for lack of a better word - not to imply colluding in the normal sense, but conceptually working together to share strategy and resources. i also don't mean collective in the sense of a group where everything is shared like in a communist collective)

If you are still entertaining questions, I have one. What part of Australia would you advise for a first time solo traveler in November/early December? My interests are the outdoors -- dayhiking, camping, wildlife viewing, photography, possibly backpacking. I assume it's pretty easy to meet up with wildlife viewing tours over there? As far as snorkeling, I'm pretty bad at it, but am willing to give it a try once in a while. Will have a decent budget.

there's stuff all over the country.

central australia is an obvious option.

so are the kimberley's/kakadu up in the north.

then the third option in my head would be the australian alps down between melbourne and canberr, or a visit to Tasmania.

then, add in some queensland stuff in the north east, and you'd have a nice little circuit.


be aware that the later into december (and then january) you go, the hotter it will be in australia, with the risk of bushfires in south eastern australia from about december onwards.

Thanks, friend. Don't worry, I have every intention of avoiding fire season and hurricanes/cyclones. I've "enjoyed" enough of both in the U.S. to last a lifetime. It is a bit difficult for me to get a grip on a country the size of Australia, but I'll look into these suggestions -- Tasmania was already short-listed. I do have a microbiologist friend who worked in Australia for a few years some time back in the days of the dinosaurs, but whenever I ask him questions, he gets off onto stories of poisonous spiders and snakes and never quite gets back on track. So I gave up on asking him anything.

hey- my wife is aussie. we are visiting dec-jan. can she vote in the upcoming elections? if so, how does she go about it? register? oh, and when exactly will they be held?

Every Australian citizen is required to vote in the upcoming Federal election.

If she is overseas, she should visit her nearest Australian embassy/consultate/high commission.

More info is available online at http://www.aec.gov.au

Yes - a form is available from that website or from the nearest Australian mission.

No date has been set yet, but looking at the political realities of the situation, the polling day will be sometime from October to early December this year.

ok, this part just cracks me up. the stats I saw for the 96 elections showed about 48% turnout. Do they lock up the other half?

Is voting compulsory?
Yes, voting is compulsory for every Australian citizen aged 18 years or older. If you do not vote and do not have a valid and sufficient reason for failing to vote, a penalty is imposed. For further information see Compulsory Voting.

Return to top

What happens if I do not vote?
Initially the Australian Electoral Commission will write to all apparent non-voters requesting that they either provide a reason for their failure to vote or pay a $20 penalty.

If, within 21 days, the apparent non-voter fails to reply, cannot provide a valid and sufficient reason or declines to pay the penalty, then prosecution proceedings may be instigated. If the matter is dealt with in court and the person is found guilty, he or she may be fined up to $50 plus court costs.



Hilarious really. Do they go about fining people? Anyway, my lovely has been living in America for a very long time and might have accumulated quite a bit of fines were it not for the break they seem to have for overseas voters. Whew.

wtf? http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/fede...t_pref/hor.htm shows a 95.77% turnout for the 1996 election of enrolled citizens.

It lists a figure of 11 740 568 being enrolled at that time. This publication by the Australian Bureau of Statistics lists Australia's 18+ population in 1996 as being 13,633,892.

That figure of 13.6million includes permanent residents and other non-citizen residents of Australia.

Dunno where your 48% turnout figure comes from. By any analysis, it's not even close to accurate.

Many people who don't vote will get infringement letters, but the effort of voting is so small that very few people don't do it.

At the same time, there are a number of excuses/reasons for not voting, so anyone who makes a genuine effort to vote, but can't, won't get fined.


There certainly are some people who do get fined, and some people who still refuse to vote on principle. They are, to put it mildly, well outside the mainstream.

Josem, Thanks for the thread.

I see you started it a long time ago so I don't know if you've traveled to other places since you started it.

I visited Darwin for a month some time ago. Have you been there? If not I'd like to pass on how much I loved that place. I can't compare it to Sydney or anywhere else since Darwin is the only place I've visited. But for me it had everything. A casino, friendly people, horse track, and some nice ponds.

I am curious about all the snakes in Australia. Are they all poisonous and friggin everywhere?

No probs... hopefully it is of some value to people.

Not significantly... although I now live in a country town in north-eastern Victoria.

Sounds good to me... I'll look forward to visiting up there one day.

Some are poisonous. I assume some are not.

I now live in a country town, and, with work, spend a fair amount of time in some rather rural areas. I certainly haven't seen a snake since moving down here six months ago, and can't ever recall seeing a snake in the wild in my entire life.

In Newcastle, on some rocks I saw some tiny, non-poisonous lizards, but that's abotu the extent of it.


Of course, if you spend time out of the cities bushwalking and stuff, I'm certain you'll come across them, but I assume it'll be no more or less frequent than if you did similar stuff in the continental US. In addition, I assume they're more common the further north you go.

I just checked online, it's colder here in Berlin (16 degrees) in the middle of our Summer than it is there in Melbourne (17 degrees) in the middle of your Winter.

[censored].

assuming that you checked that just when you posted, i just wanted to point out that it was 12.48am in Melbourne when you looked at that.

Is there still a lot of popular support for the war? That struck me as odd when I was there last year. Not interested in getting into a political discussion, especially with you.

Depends exactly how you phrase the question, and what you're asking. Withdrawal vs supporting the war vs other options can drastically switch the answers.


I suspect that most Australians would broadly have a very soft* prefererence for withdrawing/downscaling/etc from Iraq. I don't think this has moved significantly since your visit. Of course, there are a smaller group of people on either side who are strongly in favour of continuing a Coalition presence (such as me) and those who are strongly in favour of withdrawal.

I also suspect that the more you talk about the detail of Australian involvement the more supportive Australians would be of "staying the course."

The vast majority of Australians serving in the region are on ships as part of the UN interdiction force, or as part of the embassy security detail, and in other relatively "popular" activities.

The troops on the ground, contrary to how they're popularly perceived, are doing things like providing security to people building schools and hospitals. That's not an overly contentious activity

The current Australian Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd (who is currently enjoying a huge lead in publicly published polls) is publicly advocating for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq - but when you nut down to the detail, most Australian service personnel would stay; and those that did leave won't leave for some time in some sort of amorphous "negotiated and delayed" withdrawal.

It was raised in Federal Parliament this week, where the Opposition Defence spokesman seemed to suggest that Australia should have a proportionate drawdown relative to the forthcoming US reduction - a clearly rediculous proposition when you consider the context of the Australian forces, their make up (there's an obvious "critical mass" required - 70% of a force does not give you 70% of the capability) and the fact that Australian forces did not increase in number during the current "surge."

It's also worth noting that as yet, there haven't been any Australian combat fatalities in Iraq. Public opinion may change if that situation changes.

*Soft in the sense that they don't feel strongly either way, and that their views are movable. While there's a fair amount of discussion of the topic in the media, I don't feel that it is moving large chunks of votes



edit: edited paragraph 5 to clarify my meaning

The committee has approved your dissertation. Congratulations Dr Josem.

We call that 'tomato paste'. Like the ingredients you add to make pasta sauce.

This begs the question -- what then do you call tomato paste?

There are two different items for sale: tomato sauce and ketchup.


tomato sauce is similar to ketchup, except it has less "spice"

tomato sauce is also massively more popular in australia than ketchup (although you can typically find a couple of lines of ketchup available at a supermarket)