Categories
Eco-philo-pol

Transferring money internationally

I had a sum of money held in an account at the Bank of America. My problem was how to get this money back to Australia quickly and cost-effectively. Due to the said bank instituting some very strict regulations (or maybe it just hasn’t moved into the 21st century) and a very modest weekly withdrawal limit, my options were limited. I thought simply closing the account might be the easiest way if they’d wire the balance of my account to my nominated bank. But alas, I cannot close the account remotely (via phone, letter or fax) unless the balance of the account is zero. I have a cheque book which is exempt from the withdrawal limit, but it takes nearly a month for an international cheque to clear these days and my local Australian bank suggested I find an alternative means of getting my money home. The Bank of America’s online banking system allows transfers only to accounts held with other US banks, and even then only to accounts that are held in your name. I could have used my cheque (or check, if you want to use the American spelling) card, but the withdrawal limit meant I’d have to transfer my cash in installments, with each transaction incurring foreign exchange charges as well as any other charges the banks wanted to tack on. So, I started investigating alternative methods.

One option was to use PayPal. This solution is quite attractive, because the fees are quite competitive, and I can hook up both my US and Australian bank accounts to a single PayPal account. By setting up my PayPal account to directly debit the funds from my US account, and then to credit my Australian account, I could get my cash home fairly cheaply. Direct debits, like cheques, seem to be exempt from the withdrawal limit. The costs in using PayPal are incurred in the conversion from US dollars to Australian dollars. There are no fees, per se, for withdrawing money from your PayPal account, as long as you withdraw above a certain threshold amount. Furthermore, there are no withdrawal limits once you’ve verified your identity.

I looked into using traditional telegraphic transfer companies such as Western Union, but that was a no go since there was no way to transfer my funds from the Bank of America to the wire service.

Moneybookers was another potential option, but again, I could not get my funds from the Bank of America to Moneybookers, because Moneybookers’ Bank Account is held in Frankfurt. Besides which, due to the restriction that I must own any account I’m transferring money to via SWIFT or whatever, Moneybookers turned out not to be a viable alternative.

I also came upon OzForex, who are an online foreign exchange service. You open an account with them, and you can buy and sell almost any currency through them. I needed to sell US dollars and buy Aussie. I told them I needed a US account into which I could deposit my money, and it turned out they had one (at this point I wasn’t aware of the Bank of America transfer restrictions; in fact, I’d called up Bank of America to confirm that I could transfer money to someone else’s account held at another US bank and they said it wouldn’t be a problem!). Of course, it turned out I couldn’t transfer money to their US account because I didn’t own that account. But, I thought, what if I could transfer money to their account via PayPal, thereby taking advantage of OzForex’s excellent rates and low fees, and avoiding any PayPal fees? Unfortunately, anti-money laundering regulations prevent OzForex from accepting deposits from a PayPal account, since PayPal is essentially acting as a third party. Nevertheless, I found OzForex’s customer support to be absolutely fantastic. They were on top of everything, and tried to ensure that everything was progressing smoothly. When you trade currency through OzForex, you’re more or less exposed to spot market rates, meaning OzForex’s rates are more volatile than the rates you get at banks, who generally leave their rates unchanged for hours at a time. This means it’s possible that at any given moment, you might be better off converting your money through a bank. But the thing is, with OzForex you can credit your account, and then have the conversion take place at a time of your choosing. You can even make a limit order, which means you instruct OzForex to buy or sell one currency for another at a target rate that is better than the current spot rate. This allows you to beat the banks on most occasions. Their testimonials page makes for interesting reading. If ever I have a need to transfer money internationally in the future, I’ll be sure to remember OzForex.

In the end, the pure PayPal solution won out. A bit more expensive than if I’d been able to use OzForex, but cheaper and much faster than transferring the money via cheque or ATM withdrawal.

Categories
Random observations

CSIRO Job

Peter Corke at the CSIRO ICT centre in Pullenvale has asked me to spread the word about a position his group is looking to fill as soon as possible. In fact, he says ideally he’d like to start the successful candidate tomorrow if he could. Here are the details.

The job is within the sensor nets research program, and covers the following areas:

  • Sensor net applications
  • Routing in sensor nets
  • Data muling (i.e., collecting data from sensors and transporting that data via mobile nodes back to a base location)
  • Web backends
  • Data service integration

The position is a 12 month contract and attracts a mid-$60k salary. Please contact Peter directly if you’re interested. Otherwise, please tell your friends about this job.

Categories
Random observations

Former Secretary of State in Gilmore Girls

The former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, will appear in an episode of Gilmore Girls. What I’d really like to know is, as one of the few shows that I used to watch on a regular basis, when is it coming back to Australian television? I know I’m not the only one who’d like an answer to that question. Please, Channel 9, bring it back.

Categories
Eco-philo-pol

Struggling farmers should leave the land

A while ago I wrote that struggling farmers should be enticed off the land for environmental and economic reasons. Now a new CSIRO report suggests that drought aid simply prolongs farmers’ agony and delays the inevitable, and that the billions of dollars of aid given to farmers would be better used to help farmers leave the land. These aren’t new revelations, of course; it’s all been suggested before. But this time it’s in a formal report from the federal science organisation, and it comes at a time in this country’s history when water shortages are foremost in the minds of many people. Maybe somebody in a high place will listen this time.

Categories
Random observations

Nobody entertains like The Beatles

News.com.au reports that The Beatles have been voted the most influential entertainers of the past one hundred years in a survey conducted by Variety. As if you’d need to conduct a survey to tell you that! ;-)

Categories
Random observations

Jobs

There are a few jobs on offer that I know of, and I’ve been asked to spread the word about them. First of all, there’s a software engineering job or two at global-roam Pty Ltd, who are currently based in Toowong. global-roam develops applications that relate to the National Electricity Market (NEM). NEM-Watch is the flagship product, and it allows users to watch the NEM in real-time. Most, if not all, companies that have a direct or indirect interest in the NEM use NEM-Watch and/or one of global-roam’s other products. These include organisations like Origin Energy, Energex, departments within state and federal governments, as well as newspapers (like the Smage) and companies like Toshiba who provide generator components.

I’ll give a brief overview of the kind of candidate global-roam is looking for. The candidate global-roam seeks will be able to point to some previous applications they have developed, and have a basic understanding of the NEM (there’s plenty of information online about the operation of the NEM if you’d like to do some research). The candidate will be able to develop applications that handle large quantities of data that are sourced in real-time from various locations. Ideally, the candidate will be an ace at designing and implementing intuitive, good-looking graphical user interfaces, and have some experience with .NET and C# in particular. This job is advertised in various places other than the global-roam web site. Free trial versions of all global-roam products are available for download (after obtaining an ID).

When I was in Melbourne, I met Andrew Smith from the Key Centre for Human Factors based at UQ. He asked me if I knew anybody interested in working as a full-time programmer on the Leximancer Project. I couldn’t think of anybody off the top of my head, because most ex-DSTC software engineering person seem to have found employment already, and the Ph.D. students I know are not quite at a point where they can take up a full-time job. I believe the job consists of programming in Perl and Java, although prior experience with Perl is not a prerequisite since apparently the Perl component could be picked up by any competent programmer. The Leximancer Project builds conceptual maps from collections of documents by automagically extracting the important information from the documents. Please contact Andrew if you are interested in the position.

Categories
Eco-philo-pol

Biofuels becoming big business

Not last weekend but the weekend before, I caught up with Ben, Anna and Matthew over a cup of coffee. During the course of the conversation I happened to ask Ben, who’s my authority when it comes to cars, about Ethanol and why some people and lobby groups claim that too much ethanol in your fuel mix can damage your engine. His response was that he thought it can corrode some materials used in the engine. More interestingly, he introduced me to the concept of biodiesel: diesel produced from vegetable oils and animal fats. It can be used as a straight replacement for standard diesel which you buy from the bowser. Hobbyists have been making their own biodiesel for years from new or used vegetable oil. Our conversation piqued my interest, and I’ve since been doing some investigating and keeping a lookout for any news stories to do with biodiesel. Well, this morning there was a story in the finance section of news.com.au. It turns out that it’s not just hobbyists who are interested in biodiesel. It’s on its way to becoming big business, driven by high world oil prices and the push for more environmentally friendly fuels. The EU has passed legislation to ensure that biodiesel constitutes no less than 5.75% of all fuel consumption by 2010 in an effort to meet its Kyoto requirements. This has seen the European market for biodiesel grow to $A5 billion per year. There are some Australian companies already getting in on the act. See the news story for more information.

Karen’s 1985 Corolla, which runs on unleaded and an additive (because the engine was designed for Super), is performing admirably for the moment, but we’re resigned to the fact that we’ll need a replacement within the next few years. I’ve been considering the purchase of a diesel car for some time now. They are generally more efficient than petrol engines, which means you need to fill up less frequently. They’re popular in Europe and they seem set to make an impact in Australia beyond 4WDs and heavy vehicles. I’ve got my eye on the Peugeot 307 XSR HDi. :-)

Until you can buy biodiesel from the pump, you’ll have to make it yourself. I’m not sure that having a biodiesel lab in the backyard will go down too well. But making your own fuel certainly has cool factor.

Categories
Eco-philo-pol

Ashes leave sore spot

It’s a bit late in the day for this, but since I especially kept the newspaper snippet, I thought I’d put it up anyway.

The majority consensus is that the Ashes series just past was one of the best there’s ever been. The Poms deserved to win, and they were entitled to celebrate the way they did – parades through London and all the rest of it. It just showed how much that little urn means to them, and how dearly they’ve wanted to us. It’s a pity that some so-called Aussies are having a much harder time taking our defeat sportingly than the Australian cricket team themselves.

When I was in Melbourne a few weeks ago, I bought a copy of The Age and came across the following bit of nonsense in the Letters section (click to enlarge).


Ashes leaves sore spot

I don’t imagine Simpson’s donkey followed the cricket, and I think Simpson himself would have taken this defeat on the chin and given each of his opponents a big pat on the back and said “Bloody well done, mate”. And I reckon that he’d say this in a very English accent, given that he was born in England and spent little more than four years in Australia. He also had a donkey which he named Queen Elizabeth. I’d also like to point out that the legend of the man and his donkey comes out of our military defeat at Gallipoli. Think about this: one of our most revered national holidays remembers not a victory, but a defeat and all those who died in that defeat. Yet "bitterness" is not a word any Australian associates with ANZAC day. Why then, would we be bitter about the Ashes loss? Both teams gave it their all, thereby producing some of the most riveting test cricket you’ll ever see, and in this instance, England won.

On the issue of arrogance, well, let’s just say that Mr Crozier-Durham of Melbourne obviously has a different definition of the word to what I do. I’m not sure why he calls the Kiwis arrogant for complaining about the infamous underarm bowling incident. He also seems to have a thing against the legendary Barmy Army. I think Shane Warne probably loves playing in front of those guys. Any so called cheap shots directed at Shane Warne were made in good humour. Unfortunately Mr Crozier-Durham doesn’t seem to have a sense of humour. As to the snipe about some Aussies being weak-minded because we can take defeat graciously, pooh to you Mr Crozier-Durham. We’ll give the Poms a good hiding next time, but it won’t be because of people like you.