Urban Wakeboarding

Invitation from Kane:
Some sort of festival going on next to our apartments this weekend. As you can see in the picture they are setting up the urban wakeboarding pools in the parking lot right now (wakeboarders will jump from one pool to the next and hopefully not fall onto the asphalt). Let Angie or I know if you would like to come play.

We Have Internet

Perhaps the most momentus occurance since our arrival in this country, and perhaps since our departure from the internet-abled haven of our San Luis Obispo home - we have DSL internet!!
We are basking in the glory as it flows effortlessly through our home, searching the internet far and wide for useless knowledge and youtube videos. We feel liberated, invigorated, able again. Thank goodness for the best invention ever; welcome back into our lives, internet, we missed you.

Smrt

Mom emailed me yesterday to tell me of a letter she received. She thought it was junk mail, and the title line of "congratulations" probably didn't help to show that it wasn't. However, upon reading further, she found it to be a letter from the California Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Apparently I passed my engineering test, weee! I am now allowed to legally be called a Civil Engineer. And I'm in Australia so it doesn't really matter. It does mean that I don't have to take that wretched test again, which was basically the goal.

So, Kane took me out to a nice dinner last night to celebrate and then made me watch tennis the rest of the night. Just kidding, he didn't make me, it was the men's championship match for the Australia Open, so I didn't mind. And I just played mahjong through most of it anyway.

For those of you who aren't avid Simpson's watchers and quoters, the title line is Homer trying to spell "smart". I thought it probably paralleled my performance on the civil engineering test - done poorly but people still knew what it meant - and was hence chosen to title this post.

In other news, it is said by *the powers that be* that our internet subscription is pending and that we may have internet at our apartment by Thursday of this week. Based on previous attempts to initiate peaceful relations with utility companies in the country, I seriously doubt the legitimacy of these claims but will nevertheless remain hopeful of their fulfillment. Who knew it would be so hard to ask someone to hook something up for you which requires no maintainance at all in exchange for a ridiculously high monthly payment? It sounds like a relatively good deal for them, but they still make it difficult. Oh well, we're almost over the hump, say a prayer to the internet gods for us.

Meetup.com

We signed up for an American Expat group with Meetup.com and went to a meet-up last night at this beer garden in town. It was a really nice place, large outdoor area with an outdoor bar and plenty of space for all 35 of us to mingle and hang out. It was fun and it was damn nice to talk to some people - thank you for finding me the website Jon.

We were a bit wary of going - are these people weirdos? Are they all old people? Will no one show? When we got there, we assumed it would be easy to find the American group, but there were lots of people there and we couldn't tell who was there from our group. We tried listening for accents, but it's awkward to eavesdrop on strangers, so I eventually just walked up and asked a group if they were from meetup.com. They were, and we started chatting. More and more people showed up, many asking people awkwardly if they were from the group of Americans (I preferred to say from the meetup.com group) and it was very nice. Very "lively" as my mom would say.

Kane and I ended up in seperate circles of people, which was actually good because we got to meet even more people that way. And it probably isn't bad for us to spend one night talking to someone other than each other. I hung out with a couple from Ohio and a guy from Arkansas most of the night and Kane was mostly talking to a girl from Minnesota and her Kiwi boyfriend. We actually live two buildings over from the Ohio couple and just down the road from the other couple, so we all exchanged phone numbers and took the tram home together. Definitely a successful night.

The only weird thing was there was one strange guy who kept awkwardly trying to poke into groups of people. I felt sorry for him because he was obviously socially awkward and couldn't start conversation well, but I also got a strange vibe from him so decided not to talk to him. One of the girls, Alana, later told me that he shows up to all these events and tries to sell some sort of thing to do with social networking. She said he's weird and it was good I didn't talk to him, so that worked out. We didn't even talk to most of the people that were there; supposedly there were 35 people. I was just glad to latch on to a few people that we could probably hang out with again. Yeay for the internet!! If only we could get some at our house...

Laptops

Hurrah, we have laptops! Our laptops arrived yesterday from FedEx, and I just wanted to briefly review the hijinx that occured trying to get these laptops. They have been a fight since the beginning: trying to pick the right ones for our needs, shipping them to Thom to get them set up, Thom paying a ridiculous amount of money to ship them to us...ridiculous taxes that customs made us pay to let them into the country (which I am disputing currently), etc. They arrived on Saturday, at which point we could have picked them up before noon at the FedEx office but since we don't have a car and the FedEx office is a ways out of town, we opted to wait two more days and have them delivered on Monday.

Since we live in a secured building, the delivery people can't just leave packages for you and actually can't even get in the building unless you are there to buzz them in. Monday was also the day of our first and only appointment: we were meeting with Doug, a friend of a friend of Thom's who works at ARUP, an awesome worldwide engineering company with an office here (where I would love to work). We were hoping the FedEx guy wouldn't come during our meeting with Doug, as we could be home anytime except then. I suppose the only fortunate thing about this whole endeavor is that the FedEx guy didn't come while we were away. After we returned, we watched some TV and Kane took a nap while I read. The buzzer rang for the door downstairs. Kane shot up off the couch and stumbled into our room half awake mumbling about the FedEx guy. "Did you buzz him in?", I asked. He ran to the phone to buzz the guy in, having dashed for our room instead of the phone in his half-awaken-ness. Don't you love being awoken by a loud, ominous ringing?

So we buzz the guy in, tell him to wait in the lobby and that we'll be right down to meet him. We run into the hallway and push the button for the elevator. There are two elevators, one is flashing "out of service". The other is moving, but skips our floor. It won't come back to our floor and is obviously not working correctly. We investigate the emergency stairwell and it's as dark as a cave at midnight. I venture a poke at a nearby switch hoping it's not an emergency button or something, and lights flicker on. I tell Kane to man the phone in our apartment and keep trying the elevator while I run down the stairs to meet the FedEx guy. I dash down to the 10th floor and find the door back into the hallway ajar (we later found that the doors back into each floor from the emergency stairwell are locked). I try the elevator from the 10th floor and it miraculously stops for me and takes me to the lobby.

The package and FedEx guy are waiting, I sign for the package, blah blah, and have a seat on my package of computers. The elevator is not responding at all anymore. It won't budge from the ground floor. I think this fiasco occured only slightly before we arrived because people were starting to slowly bleed out of the emergency stairwell and bustle about complaining about the elevators. A guy went to get someone to fix it. I just waited. I didn't bring my cell phone, so couldn't call Kane. I didn't have any keys so I couldn't get back into the emergency stairwell or even get up to my floor if the elevators were working. Good move, me.

I called Kane from the buzzer at the front of the building and asked him to come down with the keys. He arrived and the elevator still wasn't working. We decided to get back to our apartment by climbing the 15 flights of stairs, Kane carrying our 31 pound box-o-computers. Another couple made the journey with us, but couldn't get into their floor because they didn't have the key and our key only works to get into the ground floor and our floor. I think our apartment is run by communists, or at least people who think communism is humerous to watch. We told the couple that we'd leave the door to our floor ajar in case they want to come up to see if the elevator is working or come use our phone or wait at our place. We didn't see them again, so I assume they figured it out. We heard the familiar *ding* of a working elevator not long after that.

So, we have computers. We don't have internet but are mooching off the public library for all they're worth in the internet category. The internet here is giving us guff about going to gmail.com to get our email though, so we still won't be terribly responsive yet. But in another week or so, I hope to have all emails responded to. Don't give up on me yet. At least blogger.com works.

On a side note, we have some tentative reservations for visitors: Rhonda says she wants to come for the end of July to mid-August, Carissa and EJ want to come in June, and Eric said August-ish (is that what you said, Eric?). So, like I said, space is limited so if you want the extra room and bed in our house and desire our undivided attention during your visit, let us know when you plan to visit asap. Keep in mind that your summer is our winter, though I think it's "mild" like in California (freezing to me and mom, pleasant to Rhonda and dad, tolerable to the rest of you). We don't know what our situation will be later in the year (with jobs, vacation time, living situation, etc.), but don't let that stop anyone from planning a trip; we want to see all you people!!

Raining

It's raining. The weather is surprisingly like California - not predictable at all. Seasons? Bah, why listen to seasons. Supposedly the weather here is known for constantly changing. No two days are the same practically. They do seem to have an affinity for bowling here, perhaps we'll bowl. A good indoor sport. Plus, something I can beat Kane at (thank you Holiday Bowl).

The first time we went to Holiday Bowl together (Kane and I), we bowled a few games. I beat him the first, then the second and then he said, "we're not leaving until I beat you". after the fourth of fifth game, he gave up and agreed I was better at bowling than he was. Which is funny because I'm not actually very good at all, I usually get around 110 or so. But Kane happens to be worse. I think it's the only thing that I'm better at than he is, so you don't have to feel sorry for him or anything.

Ok, we're going to mope around in the rain today. Sitting in our apartment watching Heroes Season 1 (excellent, by the way). Our laptops come Monday, so, should be able to steal some library internet next week and blog a little more. Until then, have a good weekend.

Comments on Australia

Well, so far I know I have commented mostly on all the crap we've been doing (or lack thereof). I haven't said much about our experience with the country itself, so here we go. Firstly, as I've mentioned before, it's a lot like America here. There are big buildings, the streets are relatively clean, there is graffiti on graffiti-prone surfaces, regular cars, busses, trams, people of all colors, and most stuff is overpriced. It feels very similar to home with a few quirks.

One of the things I like best about it here is they include tax with the price of things. AND the don't use pennies, which is excellent. If something costs $9.99, it's rounded to the closest 5 cents and that's what you pay. So, it would be $10 even in this case. If your sandwich costs $4.50, you pay $4.50. Tax included, no tipping, no pennies - it's great.

I can't seem to get used to the driving on the left side of the road thing. I hadn't realized how ingrained it is in me to expect traffic to be on the right. I approach an intersection and after a moment of arguing in my brain, I look to the left as though the cars would be coming on the right side of the road. Doh! I basically look both ways on every road and tram line always, never really knowing where the cars or trams are supposed to be going. I sat at a tram station on the right side of the road for about 10 minutes before I realized that the one I wanted was on the left side of the road because the trams travel on the left also. I'm surprised how difficult a time my brain is having. It would probably be different if we were driving, because then we'd have to figure it out. But just be-bopping around on the streets makes for slow learing.

I got a tuna sandwich the other day and the girl asked me if I wanted mar-jur-eene on my sandwich. What?, I said. She asked again - mar-jur-eene. I think I asked what one more time before I realized she was asking me if I wanted margerine on my tuna sandwich. No! In fact, get the margerine away from my sandwich! I think they use margerine like mayonaise on sandwiches - gross.

In the bathrooms, they use hand dryers rather than paper towels. In all bathrooms. There are no options for the paper towel, you must use the annoying hand dryer. It actually probably is better, as they don't have quite the abundance of trees that we have, so why waste a precious resource on hand drying. I'm getting used to it, I was just surprised by it.

I have a couple more bones to pick, mostly regarding Australian appliances and ridiculous Australian slang, but I will save that for another rant on another day. Oh and by the way, the conversion is about $1 Australian dollar is $.88 American cents or so, to give you a feel for prices. So, our $2200 AUD a month rent is about $1900 USD a month, still pretty steep!!

Sydney Opera House

Let's go back in time, shall we? We need to visit an important chapter in our Australia visit that I haven't had time to really discuss, but that needs to be told. Our first week in Australia, you might remember, we stayed in Sydney with our friends Kelvin and Yan-Shih. They were gracious hosts and we had a great time. The day before we headed down to Melbourne (Dec. 20) Kane, Yan-Shih and I took a trip to the Sydney Opera House.

This structure has awed me for many years. It is beautiful, creative, and interesting visually, architecturally, and structurally. It sits on the very tip of the city lands, reaching out into the harbor, surrounded by water on three sides. Approaching it looked just like the many pictures I have seen in the past: beautiful white sails projecting gracefully into the air, looming effortlessly over each other like a family gathered together near the bay. Once we got very close, I was striken by how dated the structure looked - it was finished in 1973. The tile work, woodwork on the interior and just the whole feel of the structure was very 1970's-ish, which was suprising. It is a very elegant place, well-kept and still very beautiful, but it does have a decidedly older feel, which I hadn't expected by the timeless exterior (at least from far away).

We took a tour of the place which claimed to be as exciting as the plays and shows that the Opera House holds, but wasn't. The tour was a typical boring tour with a guide that told you interesting factoids in an uninteresting manner. We walked around, children squirming, and sat in the different theater areas (there are 4 seperate theaters there). Some interesting facts (approximate "facts", as I remember them) were: the place took 16 years to build when it was supposed to take like 3 or something; the budget was supposed to be like $7 million, but ended up being over $100 million; the architect (Jorn Utzon) walked off the project before it was finished resulting in the interior spaces of the theaters not being built as he designed them. The architect has also never been to the completed opera house and has never returned to Australia at all since the falling out in 1966. His 90th birthday is this year and there are murmurs of trying to get old Jorn back in town to reunite with his masterpiece.

The only thing I was unhappy about was the cloudy day, which made for substandard pictures of the place. The exterior of the opera house is cloud-colored, so it sort of blended in with the sky - grrr! Anyway, I'm hoping we will return when some fortunate family member comes to visit and stops in Sydney. That day it will be sunny. Until then, my pics will have to do. I'll try to get some uploaded on Snapfish to share.

New Apartment

To summarize the last week: rented DVDs, keys to new apartment, too hot outside, public transport sucks, moving sucks with public transport, we have air conditioning now, new apartment is nice but has some quirks, still don't have internet or computers.

On Friday we got the keys to our new place. We brought the first load of our stuff over from our temp apartment when we came to meet the lady from the property management place, who is named Angela. We don't have a car, nor do we know anyone with a car, so we had to bring all our stuff over in backpacks on public transport. It doesn't sound that bad, but it ended up being a three-day marathon that exhausted us and convinced us that we need a car. So, Friday was the first load. Angela changed the time to meet from 1pm to 12pm at about 10:15am on Friday. We had to rush home, throw some crap in our bags, and get over there. It was proably in the 90's that day (temperature) as we toted our bags to the train station (15 min walk), took the train to the CBD (10 mins), walked about 4 blocks in the CBD from train to tram (15 mins), trammed to the Docklands (15 mins), and walked the last couple blocks to our place (5 mins). All in all, it took about an hour to get to our place that is probably about 10 miles away from where we started. We were rather hot and tired. We read the lease, signed, gave them all our money, and then sat in the aircon for a while.

The new place didn't have sheets for the beds and we didn't feel like trekking to Ikea that day to get them, so we decided to spend one last night at our temp place in St. Kilda. We emptied our packs and made the trip back to St. Kilda. The people who occupy our temp place were scheduled to come back Sunday, so we had to have the place clean and our stuff out by then. Also, we had to wash their sheets at a laundromat. So, Saturday we woke up early, packed our backpacks again, and made the trek to our new place. Fortunately, on the weekend the train runs a slightly different route that circumvented our need to walk a few blocks downtown, which was nice. It did increase the time to get to our place to about 1 hour 20 mins. We unpacked and headed to Ikea in about 100 degree heat by tram. $110 dollars later we had sheets and the basics to live at our place, which we had to carry back to our place (on the tram). At around 6pm we head back to St. Kilda to bake our generous house-loaners cookies, eat dinner, and pack one more load of stuff. We left to come back to the Docklands (new place) around 10 and got home around 11:30pm completely exhausted.

Sunday was a bit nicer though I didn't feel great the whole day, perhaps as a punishment from the day before. We made only one trip there and back to our old place to clean up, wash their sheets, watch a movie, and get the remainder of our crap. Did some bare-bones shopping on the way home and stayed home the rest of the night on Sunday to rest. Whew - we have a new place. We had 1/20th of the stuff that we normally have when we move, but we had 1/20th the carrying capacity, so it was still so much work. Renting a car would have cost around $80, maybe more, but would have alleviated the suffering. We opted for the cheapitude, as usual. Someday we'll grow up. Someday we'll also have jobs.

So, we're safely getting settled in our new home on the 14th floor of a large apartment building in the Docklands suburb of Melbourne. It's about a 10 minute walk from the west end of central Melbourne, and about a 1 minute walk to a tram that will take you into town in 2 minutes. We're paying $2173 (Australian) a month and they made us pay 3 months rent in advance since we don't have jobs. So, we have no rent payment until April. Our lease is until July. We do have a 2nd bedroom but it only has a single bed. But we also have a couch. So, the offer still stands for invitiations to friends and family - we'd be happy to have you. Book early as space is limited.

Email me if you would like our new address, our mobile phone numbers are in a post below, and our home phone is getting hooked up this week. We're almost normal people again. Just waiting for computers and internet.

Hottest New Year Ever

Happy New Year everyone, we beat you here, haha! Kane and I spent most of New Year's Eve day in our apartment trying to avoid the ridiculous heat. I think it was a record high for that day. It was about 107 in the day and our apartment wasn't much cooler. It's a dry heat (to answer your question dad) but it's still too hot to handle, even for me. Our apartment was an oven; the stagnant heat was choking. We watched movies, ate food, and tried to nap, sweating through everything. I know I hate to be cold, but being really hot is perhaps equally as awful. It seems the only way I can relieve either is to shower and that is only temporary relief.

Anyway, we stayed in until about 10:30pm when we ventured to the CBD to see the fireworks. The trains were all free which was nice, and the ride there wasn't even too packed. We had hoped that the heat would subside with the sun out of sight, but alas, no relief. It was easily over 90 up until we came home, maybe even up around 100. Not much of a breeze either. Enough complaining - the fireworks were nice and were different from the ones in the USA. At home, I recall a large fireworks display that is high in the air and everyone crowds around for miles to see. Here, they did probably half a dozen shows (or maybe more) all along the river, spaced maybe half mile apart each. Each show was smaller, closer to the ground, but anywhere you stood you could see shows all around you. The larger high rise buildings had fireworks on their roofs. It was quite a sight. I counted about 8 displays that could be seen from where we were standing. Also, personal fireworks are illegal and virtually do not exist in the hands of evil teen agers (or boys of all ages), so there were no unwelcome explosions on the street or near our house. Except for the ridiculous crowds, it was rather enjoyable. So, happy new year everyone, I hope you had a good time wherever you were.

On a less exciting note, I had an encounter with a bug last night that I found notable. We have been very fortunate so far, having seen so few bugs in this supposedly insect-ridden country. I think it's probably because we have been in the inner city most of the time. Our first night in Sydney at our friends' house a roach decided to make it up the drain pipe into the kitchen to announce his presence to me. I, of course, was the one who saw him and, after I freaked out, he was extinguished by a room mate. Last night after dinner we were sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch. I felt something on my shoulder and brushed at it. As I brushed I felt something. I looked back at the couch to see if it was a broken strand of couch dangling behind me, but there was nothing. In my constant paranoia, I stood up to relocate to the couch just in case there was a bug and I had knocked it to the floor near me. I laid on the couch with my back on a large pillow and immediately saw a giant beetle or roach-type bug beside my left arm. I freaked out, jumped up, and tried to release words that would signal Kane to get the bug. Eventually enough words came out in such a manner as to alert him to my anguish and he retrieved a jar and took the bug outside. I was not happy about it.

I don't know why I'm scared of big bugs, but I am. I guess most people are, but I certainly wish I could talk my brain into reason. It doesn't work; I am perpetually terrified and paranoid about the possible presence of an insect fumbling into my life, and more precisely, onto or near my person. I suppose I should view last night as a milestone - see, a bug actually touched me for a prolonged period of time and I'm fine! But I don't, I'm just more scared. On the brighter side, I doubt any large bugs can make it as far as the 14th floor, so, come Friday, perhaps we will hopefully be above this problem, literally.

House

Well, about 10 minutes after the last post, the guy from the apartment called me. We got the place! We negotiated a 6 month lease but have to pay a deposit and 2 months rent in advance, whew! So, we have to work on transferring money from our US accounts to our Aus bank accounts, which is a tedious task (take out the max amount from the ATM, deposit into bank, repeat each day as needed). We get to move in Friday the 4th, so I'll try to post pics as soon as possible after that (still may have to wait for our computers). And only 2 days overlap with our temporary house, can't get much better than that!

Anyway, this place is in a like 30 story apartment on the harbor. We're on the 14th floor in a 2 bedroom (small rooms) with one bathroom place with a car space in the lot downstairs, security entrance, etc. etc. And a dishwasher! The harbor area around it is a fancy promenade with restaurants and views of the harbor and yachts. It is really nice and only about a 30 second walk from the tram into town. I think it was a little pricey, as in they were asking too much for it, but we're just not going to worry about it. Yeay, we're good at the moving game!

Now to find a job...

Update

Yeah Dad, I think there is a button at the top of the page when you're on my blog that says "next blog" or something. Or if you go to blogger.com I think you can just go to a random blog page. I assume some people just "surf" other people's blogs. I suppose they need to get a life, but I also suppose there are worse things they could be doing. Anyway, I do not know good old Joshua, he probably won't return.

Rhonda - Kane has not bought a suit jacket. I don't know if he will, his upper body is a bit hard to fit into clothing, as you know. Finding shirts was quite an adventure. But he has 2 nice long sleeved collared shirts, dress pants, shoes, and two ties, so he should be good for at least meeting the people at an office. He may splurge for a jacket for an interview, we'll see.

We haven't heard back from the apartment that we looked at. The wife of the guy told us that he would probably call Saturday and he didn't. I am not sure if that is because he needs more time to check up on us or if he just went with someone else. We are assuming he went with someone else and are continuing the house hunt. That place was $500 (Australian Dollars) per week. They do rent weekly here, isn't that strange? And they don't write checks, they do all online bank transfers. Anyway, we're looking at other places in a similar price range because we want a nice place near the CBD here. Might as well live well while we're here, eh?

It was 102 degrees F Saturday, reasonable yesterday, but supposed to be 107 today. Yargh. Too hot for even me. I think I top out at about 90 or 95. We do need to make it downtown to go see some places today, as our temporary housing is running out. So, we have to brave the heat. Bring on the complaining.

Oh yeah, and for New Year's we're going to watch the fireworks that are over the river. They do a show at 9pm and one at midnight. I guess we'll watch both unless it's too hot or too crowded or something. We were going to do something actually fun, but we've been spending so much on clothes, etc., that we decided to take it easy on the wallets this year. Maybe next time. Happy New Year everyone, see you in 2008!

The Search

We've been here in Melbourne one week today. We have been staying at this nice place and feel relatively settled and comfortable here. We're getting the hang of things. The past few days have been nearly filled with shopping. There are all the after Christmas sales going on and we need "professional" clothes for our future jobs. It's like I grew up in the past 2 days - I'm an adult now. I have 3 suits (suits are not cheap, by the way, and I'm not happy about it), lots of collared shirts, sweaters, fancy pants, and I even found some nice shoes that fit my behemoth feet. The shoes are Aldo brand, and a size 10 actually fits, for those of you with equally large feet (no one).

I responded to ads for three sweet apartments in the CBD (central business district) area of town, and we visited one and filled out an application. I really hope we get this place, you will all be stoked to see it if we do. It's pretty nice. Small and expensive, but pretty dang nice. Keep your fingers crossed.

It was 33 degrees Celsius here yesterday (92 F), and I think it's even hotter today. Good old summertime. At least our apartment stays cool and all the buildings are air conditioned. We got library cards and are using our reserved internet time here to save some bucks at the internet cafe. Yeay tax dollars! Other than that, I don't think I have much to report from down under. We may try to rent a laptop while we wait for ours to arrive, since it will probably be 2-3 more weeks until we get them (sad face). Until then, no pics and scarce blogging - sorry. I'll be sure to send out a celebratory email when we return to normalcy with our own computers in hand.

In case I don't talk to you before, happy new year everyone! Stay safe and have fun. And someone invite my mom to do something, she's bored.

Merry Christmas

This is actually my first Christmas where I didn't wake up in my bed at my mom's house and have breakfast with my family. It's the first time I didn't see my extended family (mom's and dad's) and have dinner with them Christmas evening. It was interesting. We didn't do much today. Our friends walked around the deserted city while Kane and I scoured the internet for plush downtown housing. Kane and I went to the CBD (downtown) for a bit to see if anything was going on there, and it was basically a ghost town. Some shops were open (mainly Jewish or Israeli owned), but most were happily closed. So, we came back home to meet our friends and eventually went to the tourist beach area of town for dinner.

Dinner ended up being delicious, but started out crappy. As I have mentioned (complained) before, the restaurants here are really expensive. A normal cafe will cost about $20 a person as compared to $10 or $12 in the U.S. This keeps us frequenting crappier places that border on fast food or have only pre-made stock, which is unfortunate. We usually eat in. Tonight we went to a place for dinner where you order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. We browsed the menu for a few minutes then went up to order. As I ordered, the guy cut me off to tell me that they are only serving chicken and french fries (chips). No burgers, no salads, no nothing else on the menu. Awesome. Why didn't he tell us this as he stared at us while we were deciding from the menu? Jerk. I didn't really want french fries for my Christmas dinner (though I would have happily settled for a salad), so everyone else ate there and Kane and I went down to the Vegetarian Pizza place down the street. It was delicious, I was very happy. And the pizza man didn't even charge us full price for no apparent reason - score. So, Christmas was saved after all.

Christmas is big here, much like the United States. I hadn't realized that we had been missing the relentless and continual assault of holiday-itude while we were in Thailand, and I literally didn't miss it. They have the Christmas music in all stores here, decorations everywhere, children in little foam reindeer antlers, and even the Salvation Army donation collectors (although they didn't have the bell to ring...). It's relatively awful; I'm not a huge fan of the in-your-face mega-capitalist Christmas. I suppose it's nearly over now, so we can enjoy the sales and move on with our lives.

Tomorrow, the day after Christmas, is Boxing Day. This is celebrated throughout Commonwealth countries and has nothing to do with the sport of boxing. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_day. This isn't a holiday where people really do anything, but there are huge sales at all the stores, probably similar to the day after Thanksgiving. Kane and I need a bunch of clothes, so we're going to take a deep breath and release ourselves to be consumed by the masses tomorrow. It will probably be total madness; I'm a bit frightened. Kane and I both get pretty cranky pretty fast when we shop, so we'll see how we do.

This is also our last night with our visiting friends, which, among other things, means our last night of free internet. So, until our laptops get shipped over from SLO, we will be at the mercy of expensive internet cafes around town. We'll still be online frequently, but I probably won't blog with quite the fervor, so forgive me. Anyway, we both wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday. Hugs all around!

Mobiles

Post from Kane:

Angie and I got cellular phones, our numbers are 04 3376 1254 (Kane) and 04 3376 1264 (Angie) to call from outside Australia just replace the leading 0 with 61 (for example 61 4 3376 1254), but be careful it might be REALLY expensive for you to call Australia cellular phones.

Our phones are also Skype phones so you can contact us for free using Skype to Skype, to do this just sign onto Skype and call our Skype accounts (kaneehrler for Kane or angie.sommer for Angie) this is free to make the call and to receive the call.

Good luck to anyone trying to get in touch with us! Email if you need any help using Skype.

Getting it Together

Ok, it finally stopped raining in Melbourne. We arrived Friday (as previously noted) and it rained all night. We were soaked multiple times having to walk to our motel, to the flat (apartment) we're staying at, and to dinner. Saturday it rained off and on all day, and we only braved the weather to walk to the store twice - about a 15 minute walk each way. We woke up this morning - in our extremely comfortable bed - to sunshine. It's brisk and a bit windy, but no rain.

We're planning on heading downtown (into the CBD) today to do some shopping for work clothes, cell phones, and possible rentable laptops. Kelvin and Yan Shih (the people we stayed with in Sydney) are coming down today to visit Melbourne. We get to host them at our place, which is kind of funny. Anyway, they'll be down tonight and then I'll have a laptop again, thank god. Internet costs $4-$5 an hour at internet cafes here, so we're not frequent visitors.

Melbourne seems nice so far, just another big city. We're hoping to get a taste of downtown today to get a feel for the city. Hopefully we can get the laptop on the internet at our place tonight and I can blog up a storm for Christmas. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Rain in Melbourne

We arrived in Melbourne today by plane. It's raining like the dickens, which wasn't nice for our half mile or so walk from the train station to our stupid motel. We met the people whose house we're renting for the next 2 weeks - they're nice and so is their place. We move in tomorrow.

Internet is expensive here, so won't be on quite as much. Laptops are in the works, so hopefully we'll be happily settled with a laptop each in a few weeks (ahem, Thom). Just wanted to check in and let everyone know our progress.

Pics to come of the Sydney opera house, it was pretty cool.

Mooching

So, we've been mooching off of Kane's friends for the past 4 days now. We're staying at their house (in their room, no less), eating their food, and pretty much bothering them all their waking hours (at least when they're home). They are extremely gracious to have us here, and it's been really great. Fortunately for them, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as we have booked our next move.

Kane and I are both eager to get jobs and a place to live; vagrancy hasn't been as welcome in our lives as we might have imagined. We both seem to long for something to work for, which would in fact be just that - work. So, we're moseying on down to Melbourne where we anticipate that we will settle. We have booked a temporary apartment for the next two weeks, which we hope to use as a home base to find permanent housing and jobs. People are going on "holiday" for the holidays and are renting their places out to travelers like us. We were really lucky to find the place we did at the time we did and I hope it all works out ok. We fly down on Friday and move in Saturday.

We explored Sydney downtown a bit yesterday, it rained today. We went to Darling Harbor and walked around. It's relatively comparable to Pier 39 in San Francisco except less tacky, and I would actually readily compare Sydney in general to San Francisco. Except there are not the hordes of homeless people waiting to accost you. Plus, I don't know if they have the crappy areas that SF does; we were more in the area like the financial district - downtown Market Street. It was fun. The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow and we plan to hit up the other half of downtown with the opera house, etc.

One comment that Kane would like me to mention is the lunch we had while we were downtown, specifically, the lunch he had. We were wary of having lunch downtown; all restaurants appear to be very expensive here. So, it would be fitting that the tourist area on the harbor would be the most expensive. There were a plethora of nice restaurants, packed with savvy white collar folks who work downtown. Typical lunches were over $20 a person. We weren't into that, so we went a block away from the harbor are and found a nice cafe with cheaper sandwiches. I got a veggie burger and Kane got a chicken sandwich costing $9.50 combined. My veggie burger was very mediocre, but Kane's chicken sandwich was quite interesting. To his surprise, in addition to chicken, tomato, and lettuce, this sandwich also included beets, a fried egg, ham, and a slice of pineapple. It looked nasty to me but he seemed to like it, even commenting how he could go for another one today. Weird Australians...

Welcome to Sydney

It is our second day in Sydney, Australia and today we are far more conscious and far less zombie-like. Getting here wasn't really so bad, but we were awake for quite a while. We awoke at 8am on Friday morning to catch our 11:40am flight to Bangkok. Then we had to sit around the airport and consume overpriced things until our flight to Sydney at 5pm, which was delayed 1 hour till 6. The flight was only 8.5 hours which was not too bad but neither of us could sleep. The time difference added 4 hours, so we arrived at 7am. We're staying with Kane's friends (god bless them) and we went around with them yesterday to the mall, grocery store, and hung out around the house. We took a 2 hour nap at 2pm because we couldn't stay awake any longer. The nap was surprisingly helpful and we were able to stay up till midnight.

Today we feel refreshed, though the rain spoiled our plans to go to the beach and downtown Sydney. They don't call downtown "downtown" though, they call it the CBD, I think, for Central Business District or something. Apparently if you call it "downtown" they will laugh at you. Noted. So we went around the mall, which is surprisingly similar to an American mall near Christmas time (extremely crowded, Christmas music playing, Santa in the center of the mall, etc.) except that it has grocery stores in it, which is actually rather nice since we are staying right across the street.

This is a far more ethnically diverse city than I had thought it would be - it is almost exactly like the bay area. It basically feels like home here except for our notable lack of an actual home. Everyone speaks English (sort of), we can read the signs, traffic follows rules (although they drive on the wrong side), nice restaurants and McDonalds' abound, the works. We have noted that: 1. Restaurants are far more expensive - a typical Applebees style dinner for two would probably run you at least $30 or $40 here rather than the $20 in the US; 2) Selected items are ridiculously expensive - groceries are normal while clothing, some electronics, and books are outrageous; and 3) Cell phones don't have the regular monthly plans that provide a certain number of minutes for a certain price. Rather, you buy a cell phone and a sim card and charge up your card with money at the drug store. It's strange, but it may actually end up being cheaper, we'll see. Gotta get a cell phone first, and they are expensive. Also, one American dollar is worth only slightly more than an Australian dollar ($1 US = $1.16 AUS), so they are almost even - boo. This will be good for us when we start working though.

It's nice here (summertime, whoo-hoo!) and we're looking forward to exploring the city more and getting some pics.

Out With A Bangkok

We're officially out of Thailand and in Australia. It's hot and we're tired. I will be back later to comment further.