The Polymath's Playground

Where Curiosity Runs Free and Mastery Never Sleeps.

Author: Aeron Sage

  • My Bank Choices: Immigrating to Australia

    My Bank Choices: Immigrating to Australia

    In the post titled ” Moving from South Africa to Australia: Your Cheatsheet, ” I highlighted a few things about the banks in Australia and said I would explain why I chose the banks I did. First, I didn’t find anything inherently wrong with the other banks, but I chose the three that I will cover in this post. If you haven’t read the post mentioned above, the three banks I went with are NAB (My primary bank), Macquarie (my grocery account), and Revolut (my day-to-day account).

    Firstly, they are all free. If you are moving from South Africa and reading this because of your immigration plans, let me first call out that in Australia, no one cares what colour your credit card is. No one will see your cards since you load them all on your phone with Apple or Google Pay. In South Africa, status always seemed to be a big deal; for most people, having gold, platinum, black, or private banking was a big deal. So, do you need to get a platinum package here? No, you don’t. A regular checking account is perfect and won’t cost you a cent. Because they are free, I’ll also detail how to structure your finances using multiple free savings accounts in another post.

    Why have three accounts?

    Separation of expenses. That’s the short version of it. Here is the longer version:

    NAB

    I have about 14 accounts with NAB, each account with a different purpose, I have an account for electricity and water, I have one for medical expenses etc. We use the NAB accounts as our primary banking for all budgeting and big expenses. We also have two cards each from NAB; I have a black card and a pink card (the only colours they offer at the time of print). My black card is linked to my checking account, and my pink card is linked to my medical expenses account. So if I go to the pharmacy, I will pay with the pink card. If I’m shopping at JBHifi, the black card is used, so I pay with my personal account. Just out of interest, my wife’s cards are the opposite in colour; her pink card is her primary card, and her black one is for medical expenses.

    NAB was also the only bank (at the time) that would allow me to open bank accounts while we were still in South Africa. They opened our accounts online in a few minutes, and we could start moving our money from South Africa to Australia. The account was frozen, and we didn’t have a bank card for the account yet, but once we arrived in Australia, we went into the closest branch and had everything unfrozen and cards posted to us. No other bank at the time allowed this, so it was a total no brainer for us.

    Macquarie

    We then have a joint account with Macquarie for our groceries. My wife and I add money to that account every month, and it is exclusively used for groceries, nothing else, ever. Because it’s a separate bank, it comes with a separate bank card, which makes it easy to spot in the app on your phone or as a physical card in your wallet or purse. So when shopping, it’s easy to grab the right card and pay. We chose Macquarie because they have a marketplace on the app where you can buy digital gift cards for stores like Woolworths (to mention one), and if you buy the gift card through their app, you get a discount of a few per cent. Now your shopping costs you less. You’re welcome 🙂

    Revolut

    This is my “me” account, which I use for my day-to-day stuff, like Maccas and Amazon shopping. This is for things that are not budgeted and fall under the nice-to-have items. There are a few other reasons I went with Revolut.

    1. It’s free like the others unless you choose to buy their upgraded accounts.
    2. It allows you to buy Stocks
    3. You can buy Cryptocurrencies
    4. You can set up a roundup feature, which rounds up every purchase you make and puts that extra amount into a savings account. This helps with Christmas shopping at the end of the year. Every time you buy a coffee, it rounds up by 50c or a dollar, which adds up pretty quickly by the end of the year. You won’t feel it during the year, but you will be glad you have that extra cash around Christmas time for gifts.
    5. Your kids can get a free account, which you can manage through the same app.
    6. Their security is amazing; enabling and disabling cards for swipe, tap, online usage, etc, is just a click away. My cards don’t work online unless I’m about to buy something then I activate the card, buy the items and turn off the card again. No more online scams
    7. You can create virtual cards instantly, which you can use for websites you might not trust as much as something like Amazon. The virtual card only works once, so if their site gets compromised, your card details can’t be used a second time.
    8. It’s a global account; you can hold multiple currencies and pay in local currencies when travelling worldwide—no more bank fees for paying in local currency and then converting it to your home currency. You control the exchange rate and move your money between currencies.

    Of course, the choice is entirely yours. Go with whatever bank gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, but at least you know why I chose the ones I did. Let me know if I missed anything or if you need any additional opinions. I’m not an accountant, so it’s not financial advice, just my opinions from my experiences 🙂

  • Moving from South Africa to Australia: Your Cheatsheet

    Moving from South Africa to Australia: Your Cheatsheet

    Introduction

    Moving to a new country is not for sissies, but you are reading this because you are at some stage of your journey from moving from South Africa to Australia. I’ve made the move and experienced the joy, pain, and all the emotions in between. I researched my guts out before we made the move, perhaps a little too much, and I was perhaps a little bit too prepared for the move as it went without a hitch. This post is to provide you with a cheatsheet on all the things you need to know before you move, the first few days you arrive, and things to help you move forward in your new life down under. Please feel free to ask any questions or share your story in the comments below.

    Things you need to do before you leave South Africa

    1. Bank accounts – the big 4 banks in Australia are NAB, ANZ, Commonwealth, and Westpac. You can’t really go wrong with any of these. I personally bank with NAB, Macquary, and Revolut. I’ll go into more detail about why 3 in this post, but important for now is that some of these banks will allow you to open an account while you are still in South Africa. It will be frozen, but you can transfer money from South Africa. When you arrive in Australia, you must go to your branch to show proof of ID, and the account will be unfrozen.
    2. Start looking for cars – Assuming you will be buying a car, that is. The easiest place to start looking for cars and getting a feel for what they cost and what options are available is to use the site carsales.com.au
    3. Rent a car – This one is pretty much unavoidable; unless you have a family member who will lend you a spare car, you will need to get around when you first get here, and a rental car is the best way. There are major rental companies like anywhere else in the world, and it doesn’t matter which company you use from my experience. We used Alpha Car Hire when we landed and had no issues. We even returned our car early, as I managed to buy a car 4 days after we landed, thanks to the research I had done before we landed. I had already chosen 5 cars to look at before we had even left Johannesburg. By the way, if you have kids, make sure to check local rules regarding car seats and jumper seats. Each state is a little different, so I can’t offer conclusive advice here; I can tell you that South African car seats are not Australian-approved, so leave those behind and buy new ones here. Facebook Marketplace is a good place to find cheap ones.
    4. Find a place to stay – this one is hard to answer. Ultimately, you will probably stay at an Airbnb or similar when you land unless you stay with friends or family. Finding a rental property in Australia is incredibly different from city to city. We got super lucky when we arrived; we had booked an Airbnb for 10 days. I had also done the research before we left by looking on domain.com.au, so I had more than a dozen houses lined up to view in the first few days we arrived. I had also spoken to a few agents via email beforehand.
    5. Moving your money—I keep seeing so many different opinions on moving your money from South Africa to Australia on the Facebook groups. I ended up just transferring everything via the Standard Bank app directly into our account here. The rate they charged was very similar to all the other places that quoted me, and there was a flat fee for the transfer. Overall, I could get instant quotes via the standard bank app and watch for days when the rate was better, and a lot of the time it was cheaper than using any of the other companies.
    6. Scripts for medication—If you need to bring any prescription medication with you, ensure you get scripts from the doctor before to avoid having them taken away if you get stopped at customs. Also, check with government websites to confirm that the medication you are bringing is legal in Australia; a few things that are not legal are very common in America, for example. Myprodol needs a script to bring, as codeine is not something you can get easily in Australia.

    Things to do on day 1 and day 2.

    1. Sim card – you will need a local number, so you might as well get this first chance. Which one? Well, that’s a longer story for another post, which I will link here when written. The short answer is that I went with Telstra after doing a ton of research. (Time to complete: a few minutes)
    2. Bank account activation (or bank account creation) – If you opened accounts online before you left, head into your closest branch and get these accounts unfrozen. If you didn’t open accounts, head into the bank early in the morning and ask to open an account. It’s usually easier in person than online when you are fresh off the plane. Don’t forget to bring a passport, Visa, current bank card, your new cell phone number (they need the number and can help you set up Internet banking), and an address where they can send your cards. This can usually be a friend’s or family’s address. (Time to complete: 30 minutes for the whole family)
    3. Medicare – Assuming you are on a permanent residence visa, skip this step. Google the closest place to enrol for Medicare, and budget approximately 1-2 hours to complete it. You can also apply online. For more details, see the government services website https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/enrolling-medicare?context=60092
    4. Driver’s License—This is a dream compared to what it was like in South Africa. We arrived, did everything needed, and returned to the car in 17 minutes. Take the same documents you needed for the bank and your current driver’s license. If you have a boat license, take that with you, as it gets printed on the back of your driver’s license.
    5. Bus cards—This depends on which state you are moving to. The cards and systems all have different names, but they are available from most newsagents and at most train and bus stations.
    6. Food – Oh, the fun you will have trying to figure out what the heck to buy. There are all new brands and things to try, and you will have a mental breakdown because you will convert all prices back to rands. Coles and Woolworths are known as the duopoly in Australia, and the two of them basically control the market. There are, of course, other food shops like Drakes, ALDI’s and the IGA. Coles and Woolworths do home deliveries, so if you didn’t take my advice and didn’t rent a car, then getting your food delivered in the first few days might be the easiest thing to do. By the way, Woolworths is NOTHING like Woolworths back in South Africa, sadly there is nothing like SA Woolworths in Australia.

    Day 3 and beyond

    1. Medical Aid—Even though the healthcare system in Australia is amazing—seriously, just read that again. Of course, people with first-world problems are going to complain about how bad it is, but in our experience, it has beaten private care in South Africa threefold. That said, yes, you probably still need to get private healthcare for things like dentistry and optometry, just to mention two things NOT covered under Medicare. The easiest thing to do is jump onto comparethemarket.com.au and get one of their people to review some questions with you. They will check what medical issues you have, whether you have kids, whether you are planning on having more kids, whether you have back problems, etc. Once they have reviewed all the details, they will then get your quotes and suggest which healthcare company is the best option. We ended up going with Bupa and have had no issues with them. For comparison, we were with Discovery Health on classic comp, and the benefits here kick Discovery’s ass six ways from sunday.
    2. Grocery Shopping—here is the short version. For food, it’s Coles, Woolworth, ALDI’s, Drakes, and IGA. ALDI’s is usually the cheapest, but their variety is not as great as the others. Go there first, then buy what you are missing at one of the others. Here are the 2 biggest tips I can give you.
      • Watch for sales – Australia loves sales; everything is always on sale, somewhere. Don’t buy things at full price, especially things like coldrinks. Coke, for example, will cost somewhere in the $40 region for a slab of 36 cans. It’s on special every week somewhere for somewhere in the $20’s
      • STOP CONVERTING TO RANDS! – I know this is a hard one, and even though I did it for a while, you will drive yourself crazy if you do. Sure, initially, it’s interesting to see that some things are WAY cheaper here than SA, and some are horribly expensive in comparison. I’m not saying don’t be thrifty with your money; just don’t get caught up in converting all the time. On average, a trolley load is about 20% more expensive than in South Africa. This has been confirmed by family and friends who have visited in the many years we have been here
    3. Electronic goods: Harvey Norman, The Good Guys, and JB Hifi. They all price match, so check online for pricing and get them to match or beat each other. For the record, I have NEVER paid the ticket price for anything at The Good Guys; they are always happy to give a discount.
    4. Home goods (like Mr. Price): Target, Kmart, and BigW are your new stores for these items.
    5. Online shopping – this is, by far, more advanced than it is in South Africa. As mentioned already Coles and Woolworth offer online shopping for groceries, but I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about Amazon.com.au and Kogan.com.au. I pretty much buy everything I need on Amazon, and it’s usually delivered the next day or the day after. It’s a no-brainer to join Amazon Prime to get free shipping, and it will also include Prime Video, so you can stream a bunch of movies and TV shows.
    6. Hardware store – Bunnings, there is not much else to say about that really. Make sure to get your sausage sizzle on your way out on weekends.

    Apps everyone should have on their phone

    1. Flybuys—download the app and enroll in the program; it’s free. Many stores give you Flybuys points for shopping with them. We collect them throughout the year and usually cash them out at Christmas time. It’s usually around $300 worth of credit we earn during the year.
    2. Amazon—you’ll be shopping there often, so you might as well have the app.
    3. Dan Murphy’s—Everything alcoholic; if you’re a member, you pay less. Become a member; it’s free. Dan Murphy’s is the biggest liquor store around, and they usually have the best prices and widest range.
    4. MyTranslink – this is for public transport in Queensland. Check other states if you are moving to one of them before you decide Queensland is a better place 🙂
    5. MyMacca’s: Earn points when buying food at McDonald’s, which is not called McDonald’s here by anyone; it’s Maccas.
    6. 7Eleven—The main reason to buy this app is to lock in the fuel price for 7 days at all 7Eleven servos (service stations/petrol stations), which are Mobile fuel stations.
    7. Anaconda—Member pricing for members; again, this is another free membership. Anaconda is an outdoor living shop, offering camping, 4×4, Fishing, etc.
    8. BCF – The competition to Anaconda. BCF stands for Boating, Camping, and Fishing.
    9. Woolworths—to get their everyday rewards program. Coles, by the way, uses flybys, which is why their app is not on my list.
    10. Seek Jobs – the go-to app for looking for a job.
    11. Carsales – Looking to buy or sell a car, this is the first stop
    12. Fuel Spy – Since petrol is not regulated in Australia, the price can be 50 cents a litre, which differs from servos. This app shows you the current price for all servos around you.
    13. Domain – For looking for property to rent or buy.
    14. Realestate – The other property app.

    Now, it will be a nightmare trying to maintain all these membership cards, right? Wrong. The last app on my list is Stocard. It is a single app that stores all your cards in one place. So when you go into a store, and they ask you for your membership card, you just open that one app, and they are all there, in one place.

  • Can AI Write Better Than Me? Let’s Find Out

    Can AI Write Better Than Me? Let’s Find Out

    If you have not noticed the huge disruption and waves that AI (Artificial Intelligence) has created in the last few years, you may have been in a coma or living in a cave. It’s the biggest buzzword in the world at the moment, and every vendor of any electronic product throws the word around more than Santa Claus dishing out presents on Christmas.

    In the content creation business, there are more and more expectations to use AI to increase performance and reduce time to market when creating new material. Unfortunately, this is also backed by everyone wanting to ensure that you didn’t use AI to blindly write everything, enter stage left, the AI checkers. These are, for the most part, the root of a huge amount of pain for me. I have been flagged by customers claiming I used AI when I know I wrote every word, but the opposite is true. Take the first paragraph of this post as a perfect example. It is a post titled “Productivity Hacks for Polymaths: How to Thrive with Many Interests,” and it was 100% written by AI, but AI detectors show it as 98% created by humans. I’ll go into more detail in another post on that, as the point of this particular post is to explain who wrote that article.

    Introducing Nova Wilder: My Virtual Co-Author Experiment

    As part of my experimentation with AI and the creation of this blog, I had a few things I am curious about.

    1. Does AI actually do a better job when writing content when it has no restrictions on it?
    2. How does Google treat the content created by AI? In other words, does Google check the content to see if it was created by AI? In addition, does Google rank the material better or worse? I’ll only know this when looking at the analytics further in the future.
    3. What does the audience prefer reading? This, again, will only be somewhat testable once analytics for the site start coming in. I’m not expecting any useful results for possibly 6+ months from now, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

    So, who exactly is Nova Wilder? Nova WIlder is the pseudonym that ChatGPT chose for itself for creating posts on this blog. Here is the conversation I had with ChatGP:

    Out of the names ChatGPT suggested, I liked Nova Wilder the most. Although ChatGPT had mentioned in some of its feedback that I could leave Nova Wilder anonymous and readers of this blog would never know that it was actually AI, I decided to just be upfront about it. Since I’m not just trying to add tons of content for no reason, and there is actually a reason for me using AI on this blog, I’m being transparent and sharing the journey of creation. ChatGPT also created the feature image for this post:

    As time goes by and I start getting some stats from Google on how different articles are viewed and discovered, I’ll share that information on this blog. What I will guarantee is that posts written by Aeron Sage will be written entirely by me, a human, and all posts written by Nova Wilder will be left intact and copied and pasted directly from ChatGPT. I’m not even going to tell ChatGPT what to write about. It has already scrapped this site; it knows the categories, and I’ll ask it to write posts of its own choice. This should be interesting.

    What are your thoughts? Do you think AI will outperform my posts? Do you think its posts will rank better in Google searches and be more popular? Who’s going to win in the Man vs. Machine blog post battle?

  • Unleashing Curiosity: The Beginning of the Polymath’s Playground

    Unleashing Curiosity: The Beginning of the Polymath’s Playground

    Why did I start this blog?

    Why did I start this blog? That is a very good question indeed, as I ask myself while sitting here typing the first post. Why the hell am I starting this blog?

    Let’s start with this: I have a restless mind that cannot rest regardless of how much information or stimulation I feed it. I’m neurodivergent, of course, with a blend of ADHD wrapped in some anxiety, possibly some PTSD for good measure, backed with a high IQ. Put those items into a blender, and you will find someone with a dark sense of humour who starts new hobbies about as often as one would change their toothpaste.

    So, why did I start this blog? Well, you guessed it, it’s another hobby that, quite frankly, will probably only last a couple of months before I see something else that is shiny and move on to that. The plan is to share these hobbies and interests on this blog.

    What to expect on this blog

    Pretty much anything that gets my attention for over a few minutes. I’m writing this blog to put thoughts and ideas down, learn, and possibly teach some things. I love learning new things and learning new ideas from other people. Perhaps one day, more than two people will read this blog and start sharing their thoughts through comments. Until then, I’m writing whatever I feel like since it’s probably only me that will ever read it. So, it will be a means to force me actually to start documenting some of the things I’ve done.

    About me

    I have a diverse background. I have lived in 3 countries and travelled to over 50 (that reminds me, I should create a page to keep track of what countries I’ve been to). Perhaps bullet points would be better suited for this discussion:

    Age:40’s and gaining speed
    Current Country:Australia
    Hobbies:Archery
    Target shooting
    3D printing
    Gaming
    Beekeeping
    HAM Radio
    Programming
    Collecting stuff
    Sleeping
    Watching Movies
    Physics
    Space
    Astronomy
    Travelling
    Flying small planes and paragliding
    A.I

    I think you get the point; the list is long, and it’s ever-changing
    CareerBackground in IT. I have taught over 5,000 people around the world in many subjects in the IT field. I have written white papers and textbooks and created content for many of the Fortune 100 companies in Silicon Valley.
    Achievements:Got married
    Had kids
    Published 4 books
    Memberships:Mensa

    So, as you can see, the posts on this blog will be varied and cover a smattering of different topics.

    Why Polymath’s Playground, and who is Aeron Sage?

    Because I couldn’t find a good name for the blog, I asked my good ‘ol friend ChatGPT. I fed in some details about myself, much like I did in this post, but a shorter version, and told ChatGPT I wanted to start a blog but needed some name suggestions. Polymath’s Playground was the first suggestion it gave me, so I checked if the domain was free and registered it with Cloudflare, which I use for all my domains.

    As for who Aeron Sage is, well, that’s a pseudonym that ChatGPT came up with. Here is the quote direct from ChatGPT

    “Aeron means “battle” in Welsh, hinting at your competitive, mastery-driven nature. Sage reflects wisdom and knowledge across diverse fields.”

    So, that pretty much wraps up the first post. I have zero doubt this won’t be read by anyone anytime soon, but that’s just as well, as the blog currently looks horrible. I have discovered over the years that it’s very hard to design a good-looking website or blog without first having the content. Menus don’t work unless there are things to put in a menu; related articles don’t exist until you have more than one article. So, the first 20 or so posts will be hosted on a dull, ever-changing blog. Hopefully, I will settle on a look and feel at some point. I doubt it, but there it is.