Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  We miss you here in Australia!  For a while, I forgot it was Christmas, what with all the warm weather and all.  But then, I visited our new apartment, and the festive decorations in the hallway reminded me.  Here they are!

 Wait, you don’t see them?  Let me help you a little bit there.

 Isn’t it beautiful?  It’s a festive little silver wreath.  Seriously though, the lack of Christmas decorations here is going to take a little bit of getting used to.  Every once in a while as I’m walking down a neighborhood, I’ll spot a small Christmas tree in someone’s living room, but that’s about it.  And then, of course, there are the occasional 6” diameter tiny silver wreaths.  Just enough to remind me Christmas is around the corner :)

We’re looking forward to a picnic at the beach today.  We haven’t been to the coast yet, so we’re pretty excited!  We're going with our other American friend, Dan, who is from Texas and started at the same time Bob did.  I’ve been cooking all morning, and made some really delicious food for our picnic.  To start, we’re having parmesan crisps with brie and pumpkin and basil spread, and pastry puffs with ricotta, ham and tomato.  Then, rare roast beef steaks with chili relish, and for sides, roasted vegetable and potato salad with caper dressing, and wild rice with pecans.  All homemade, btw.  Yum!  I sure hope it’s all good … I’ve been cooking since yesterday.

Well, you’ll all be very excited to know that we secured an apartment.  Yay!!!  It was really, really, REALLY hard to find one.  That’s why I haven’t had time to update since the 15^th.  This is the same one I told you about in my last blog.  We move in on the 3^rd of January, and we couldn’t be more excited!  It sure has been a lot of work to finally decide on this place.  Our new mailing address is

14/9 Sylvan Road
Toowong, QLD  4066
Australia

We really love the place we decided on, but man, the rental market here is terrible.  Not only have we had the hurdle of attempting to find these places in neighborhoods we don’t know while relying on public transport, but it seems to be a common theme that we find this beautiful, enormous, perfect place online, only to find they used a wide-angle camera lens to take the shot, and photo-shopped the heck out of it just to draw you there.  We typically arrive to find a smelly, dark, outdated closet that’s right next to a train line, or something of that sort.

Then when you add on top that it’s me doing the searching … well, you all know the mishaps I seem to be drawn towards.  We’re all friends here, right?  You all know what I’m talking about?  Bob’s favorite story about me was last year, when we received a Subway gift card from his parents.  I picked him up from the airport, and he showed me this gift card and said, “Sarah, I know you … DO NOT lose this!”  I said, “I won’t lose it, I’ll put it right here in my coin drawer in the dash of my car.”  Bob responded, “No, I know you’ll lose it.”  After I assured him that I keep all of my gift cards there, and that’s what reminds me to use them, I promptly inserted it into the coin drawer, closed it, and opened it right back up to see that it had dissolved into thin air right in front of both of our eyes in the space of 0.75 seconds.  Apparently it slipped through a tiny slot above the drawer and was absorbed into the bowels of my car.  This is the sort of thing that happens to me all the time, to a degree that is somewhat astonishing.

Well, those kinds of events have been obstructing my house hunting so much that I can only laugh about them at this point.  On Monday, I visited an atm at the 7-11 around the corner from my apartment and politely asked it for $100.  In return, it provided me with a receipt for a $100 charge on my card, and no money.  After I stared, mouth gaping, at the machine for a few seconds, and hit it at strategic points, I took my receipt to the 7-11 worker and asked her what I could do.  She denied all responsibility for the atm’s actions, and told me to call the service number on the machine.  After we inspected the machine and found no service number at all, she looked at my receipt to see if there was a service number on there, and there wasn’t … of course.  Because I still don’t have a phone with post-1989 abilities, I asked her to look up the service number online, and she wrote it on the back of a receipt and handed it back to me.  I turned it over, and was confused that it wasn’t my receipt - the one I'd just given her moments before.  When I asked her for my receipt back, she looked at me and said, “I don’t have your receipt.”  We went back and forth for about 5 minutes with me saying, “you have my receipt,” and her responding, “I don’t have your receipt,” and so on and so forth.  She even acknowledged that she’d inspected my receipt, but continued claiming she never had it.  At one point I even cleared out all my belongings from my purse to prove to her that I didn’t have it, yet obviously it at some point existed, since she’d seen it.  I seriously have never wanted to strangle somebody so much in my entire life.  Not only had I just been charged $100, she destroyed all proof that it had ever even occurred.  Finally, she looked to the side of the register, and found it.  Man, what it is about me that creates these kinds of situations?  I spent the next hour or so at my branch sorting out the situation.

On another day, I got so lost while house-hunting that I literally walked 9 miles in blazing heat and minimal shade to try and get from point A to point B.  Granted, I may have slightly more responsibility for that mishap than the 7-11 and Subway ones, but nonetheless, they certainly make my life interesting, if nothing else.

In between the craziness, we’ve had a lot of fun.  Lots of the things I do end up being at a nearby mall called the Queen Street Mall, and they seriously have some of the most entertaining street performers I’ve ever seen.  There’s an opera singer, some pretty girls playing various instruments like the cello or the violin, some great bands, and my favorite one so far was this little kid playing an accordion.

 I hope you all have a wonderful holiday.  Love you all :)

Incredible Tastiness

Okay, so I know I've already posted today, but I really have to let you know about the most amazing pastry idea.  They sell these in the grocery store, and I just had one.  It's a puff pastry with a gooier version of a Toblerone candy bar inside.  I can't believe they don't sell these in America.  Seriously delicious!

House-Hunting

Hello Everyone!  I hope you're all getting excited for Christmas.  I have to keep reminding myself that it's only 10 days away.  Our high today is 77 degrees with 82% humidity.

Before I get started, I want to let you all know, we've discovered that calling America is cheaper for us than making local calls.  Go figure.  Now that I've been waking up at 5 am, I can talk by phone with Salt Lake people from 1 pm until 9 pm your time any day, so give me a call, or let me know if you want me to call you.  Bob could probably only do that on a Friday or Saturday because of his work.  For Virginia or New York, we can talk between 3 pm and 9 pm your time, again Friday or Saturday being best for Bob.

You can call us internationally by dialing 011 61 421 929 442.  Our mailing address is

905/120 Mary Street
Brisbane, QLD  4000

The reason I've slacked a little on the blog is because I've been so occupied with house-hunting.  Rio Tinto has provided us with a "relocation specialist" who is really wonderful.  On Saturday, she drove us around Brisbane for hours, for the sole purpose of just showing us what the different neighborhoods are like.  We really fell in love with two neighborhoods called "New Farm" and "Bulimba."  The best thing I could analogize to is living on Main Street in Park City.  You could live on the main street and walk out to find a ton of great cafes and restaurants, but just a block or so away are some great houses and apartment buildings.  Of course, they also happen to be the most expensive places to live in Brisbane aside from downtown.  There is a home in Bulimba that I hope opens up.  It's cheap, huge, and in Bulimba.  It has everything!

The biggest hurdle we've encountered is the bedroom size.  People here just don't have a need for large bedrooms.  I feel a little silly now because before we moved here, we were interested in buying a king-sized bedroom set, and we kept complaining to each other about how none of the online stores in Brisbane had king-size beds available, and their idea of a "set" is just the bed and nightstands.  Well, now I understand why.  A standard set here is a queen bed and 2 nightstands, and the reason is, the bedrooms are an average of 9' x 10'6" or something along those lines.  Price does not make a difference by the way.  I looked at a couple places that are about $3,250 per month, and there's no difference in the bedroom sizes - people here don't place value on that.  An increase in price results in a larger living space, or just a nicer place overall - not a bigger bedroom.  And, now we have our brand-new, never-been-used, king-sized, chunky, solid wood sleigh bed with matching dresser and armoire to fit in there.  Ugh.

After several days of solid house-hunting, I stumbled across this place yesterday that might do the trick.  It has an ENORMOUS 11'9" x 12'6" bedroom that just might fit our bed, one nightstand, and a dresser.  And, if we squish the bed into the corner, so that there's no walking space on one side of it, we'll still be left with a roomy 3'1" for walking on the other.  After what I've seen, that sounds good to me!

On top of that, it's actually a really beautiful apartment.  It has a beautiful guest room that'll fit the queen set comfortably, with its own private bathroom and patio (hint hint, you guys better get your butts out here!).  It's about 1,000 sq. ft., and has a really large living area, and a 300 sq. ft. patio that's really beautiful.  It's in Toowong, and just across the street from the river, so we can take a public transportation boat to work if we want.  It's right by a huge shopping mall, a public transport hub, and tons of restaurants and things to do.  We're planning on submitting an application as soon as they open in a few minutes.

Besides the house-hunting, we've had a really great last few days exploring the areas outside of the CBD.  On Friday afternoon, we walked across the bridge to the other side of the river, to an area called South Bank.  Brisbane hosted the World Expo in 1988, and it looks like the center of it all was at South Bank.  It's really amazing over there.  They have a big ferris wheel we intend to ride sometime that towers over the whole city.  There's also what they call a "man-made beach", which is really a huge recreational pool about 50 feet from the river, and they've imported a ton of white sand from the coast so that the pool looks like a beach.  The whole area is landscaped really beautifully, with fountains, pools, and huge walkways with arching steel beams covered in purple flowering vines.  We passed a ton of restaurants I'd love to try sometime.  That's also where you can find the art museums and ballet and opera houses.

 Further down, it led to a remote walk down Kangaroo Point.  Brisbane is surprisingly hilly in some areas, and at Kangaroo Point, the Brisbane river has cut down through an elevated area, creating some huge cliffs on the south side of the river.  I saw my first spider down there.  It was a St. Andrew's Cross Spider, which is not only harmless to humans, but wikipedia describes its venom as having "potential as [a] therapeutic medicinal agent[]."  For a day, I thought I had nothing to fear.

Saturday is the morning our relocation specialist drove us throughout the city, so you've already heard all about that :)  Saturday evening, one of Bob's co-workers, Nick, invited us to his house.  He lives maybe five miles from the city, so we braved the public transport for the first time, and got along just fine!   We spent about two hours at his house getting to know him and his wife, Toni.  Nick is from Brisbane, whereas Toni is from South Africa.  They were really nice people.  Nick has moved around the world quite a bit himself, so he understands the difficulty of relocating, and is really going out of his way to show us around the city and include us into his group of friends.  They told us a truly horrifying story about how they were mowing their lawn last week and found a brown snake, which wikipedia says is "considered the second most venomous land snake," and varies between 5' and 6' in length.  They laughed and said their mower "did a pretty good job of it."  My fear of the Australian wildlife has resumed.

That evening, they brought us along to a Christmas party their friends were throwing.  We all arrived in our sundresses and tank tops to celebrate Christmas.  The highlight of the party for me was the local dessert they served - Pavlova, or "Pav" as they call it.  It's essentially just meringue, baked until the outside is crispy but the inside is soft, and topped with whipped cream and fruit (passionfruit being the favorite, but berries, kiwi and banana are also pretty common).  You should all try it this Christmas.  This recipe looks pretty incredible (icing sugar = powdered sugar).

Bob started work Monday, and I've begun my job search, but I think I'll save those stories for a different day.  Cheers, and Happy Holidays everyone!

Rainy Days and Meddlesome Maids

After drowning in rain for 4 days, Bob and I are looking forward to our first truly sunny day in beautiful Brisbane.  I've been told that everybody in Oz wakes at 5 am, since that's what time the sun rises.  Since my sleeping schedule is still completely skiwampus, I've decided to attempt to adjust to waking at 5 am.  Here's a picture I just snapped of the first blue sky we've had, and the sun rising over the buildings surrounding us.

Do you see the yellow building reflected in the glass building on the left side of the image?  Well, if this were CSI, they would zoom in, enhance the image, and you'd see me standing there on the 9th floor taking this picture.  That's my building :).

Bob and I have been adjusting nicely to the area surrounding our apartment.  In fact, we've got it down so well, that we'll probably attempt to venture out of the CBD today - there's just no more exploring left for us in the CBD.  If you click on our location below, or google maps 120 Mary Street in Brisbane, you'll see we're staying in a bend of the Brisbane River.  It's a tiny area that contains all of Brisbane's most important industries - all government buildings, and lots of skyscrapers with corporations, law firms and energy companies.  That's Brisbane's CBD - Central Business District.  But, you'll see, the entire lower one-third of the peninsula is green.  They've built an incredible garden there on 50 acres of the CBD that rivals Central Park.  Seeing as how I haven't spent any appreciable amount of time in Central Park, and none of you have ever been to Brisbane's Botanic Gardens, we'll just have to agree to disagree about that one.

I tried my hardest to find a spider the size of my leg that could kill me with a glance, but instead I found only very gentle and beautiful lizards, birds, and even a turtle swimming calmly in the pond.  The lizard even allowed Bob to poke it with his umbrella.  My threatening view of the wildlife in Australia may have been a bit exaggerated.

Well, I'm off to plot my revenge on the maids.  When we arrived Monday, I found two plush and comfortable towels folded in a beautiful wave pattern on the end of my bed - an entire twenty feet and a full room away from the bathroom.  After using them for my first shower, I hung them conveniently on the rack within arm's reach of the shower for easy grabbing.  However, at about 11 am on Tuesday, two maids arrived posing as sweet old grandmothers.  I was confused to find she had snatched my towels off the rack, and replaced them with two new ones in the bedroom.  After reviewing the applicable law contained in the sign in the bathroom, which clearly states "At Quest Serviced Apartments we care for the environment.  If you are happy to use your towel again please leave it on the rack.  If you require a fresh towel, please leave towels in the bath or shower," I again left the towels on the rack after my shower on Wednesday.  I was shocked later that day to discover her determination to undermine my wish to conserve water.  She left me the towels on the rack, but in a direct slap in the face, left two additional, completely superfluous, freshly laundered and painstakingly folded towels again in the bedroom.  I spoke with her and asked her how I could indicate to her when I don't require new towels.  She said, "just place the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on your front door."  So, after my shower on Thursday, I again hung my towels on the rack and left the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the front door.  After our day in the park, we returned to find that the meddlesome old fraud had not only removed the towels from the rack and the superfluous towels from the bedroom, but replaced them with new towels in the bedroom and STOLEN my 'Do Not Disturb' sign!  And it doesn't stop there.  Every day, if I've used even a drop of the lotion, soap or shampoo that is provided by the hotel, they replace it with a new one.  And they'll run the dishwasher even if there's only 1 fork in it.  What a waste!  Yesterday, as she was probably burning my 'Do Not Disturb' sign and dancing on its ashes, she placed a brand new set of soap, lotion and shampoo right next to my set from the previous day, even though I'd only used a drop of the lotion.  Not sure what my next move will be, seeing as how she's destroyed my trump card.  Touché for now, old lady, touché.

Arrival

Hey, Mates!  I'm sorry it's taken 3 days to get a message back home, but as you'll see below, we've been a bit handicapped on the technology and internet end of things.  Suffice it to say, we've been safe and happy, and we're having the time of our lives!

We had a safe flight to LA, followed by the most incredible first-class flight experience of my life.  I've flown first-class before after my studies abroad on my way home from Europe, and I had no idea it could be better.  My airplane experiences are forever ruined.  We flew a Boeing 747 with 2 levels, and when we boarded the plane, we were asked to go upstairs.  When looking out the window, the other airplanes and vehicles looked like miniature toys.  It was a lot of fun.  Each seat was encased in back with a plastic hood that made the whole thing incredibly private.  We each had our own television that we could independently control, and we were fed and fed for the entire 14 hours.  I ate my first sample of vegemite for breakfast on the plane, and my first thought was ... "how could anybody have ever invented this and thought, 'this is delicious, I bet you I can make a whole lot of money selling this to the entire population of Australia.' "  It was salty, bitter, and pungent.  Yuck.

On our first day, we first spent a few minutes settling in.  The apartment is gorgeous.  It's right downtown, and it has an incredible porch spanning the entire length of the apartment overlooking the beautiful downtown area.  It has all the amenities (including a washing machine! - I'm learning the more we research homes here how lucky we are). 

Then, I walked downstairs for coffee, and quickly discovered that even though we speak the same language, some of the words are jumbled up.  Here's how my first attempt at ordering coffee went:  (first, I looked at the wall, and it said "Regular Coffee - $2.50").  Me:  "Can I please have a regular coffee?"  Her:  "................"  Me:  "Like, regular drip coffee?"  Her:  "But what kind?"  Me:  "Just your house blend."  Her:  "House blend?"  Me:  "Well, what kinds do you have?"  Her:  "Um, like, espresso, cappuccino ... well, just, do you want milk in it?"  Me:  "No, just black drip coffee."  Then, my order arrived - it was straight espresso.  I still have yet to discover if drip coffee exists here.

Then we were directed to the Queen Street Mall for phones & bank accounts.  Okay, now let me tell you something.  It's very easy to forget how dependent we are on our phones, until you move to a different country and temporarily have no email, telephone, internet, or google maps abilities.  We got lost on a 3-block walk.  Literally.  We circled a block at least twice, and had to stop for directions a few times.  I felt really silly when we found it - it's so close!  Then, after wasting Bob's time at Chanel, Hermes, and Tiffany, we opened a bank account.  Everybody we have encountered so far is incredibly nice, and our account lady was no exception.  We still wanted to research "mobile" plans (they don't call them "cells"), so we forewent the phones then.

Next, lunch.  We were a little disconcerted at the prices for everything here (my Blistex was $6.80!!!), so we went to Subway.  We debated the entire way there whether the sandwich would be called a "one-third-meter" or a "26-centimeter," and were interested to find that it's still a "footlong" and "six-inch."  We also learned to ask for "salad" instead of lettuce.

I really can't remember what we did for the afternoon, except I do remember an episode of "MacGyver" in there somewhere, and we went and picked up an "Internet stick" - a dongle that gives us internet access.  However, at that point, my laptop's battery was so low we couldn't do anything substantial.

We tried our hardest to adjust to their sleeping schedule, but Bob failed miserably and fell asleep at 6 pm after an episode of Modern Family.  I lasted about an hour longer.

On Tuesday, we woke between 4-5 am, and watched "The Incredible Hulk" until our air shipment arrived at 7:30 am.  This contained our transformer, desktop computer, and many of our work clothes.  We were finally able to plug in our electronics.

At 9:30 we walked a block to Bob's new office and were given a tour of the building.  We met Bob's boss, a very nice man named Don.  Two women that have been helping us coordinate our travels also joined us, and they gave us a tour of the building.  I wish I could give you all a tour of this building (especially Laura!) - it's absolutely incredible.  They only moved into the building 3 weeks ago, and it's done in a very modern style.  They first took us to the 16th floor, which has areas for dining and relaxation.  They even have rooms where yoga classes are conducted!  When I asked if I could hang out there, they said yes, but I have a feeling they weren't being serious at all.  Then they took us to the 27th level, the top level, where they have a variety of meeting rooms that are acoustically designed so you can speak at a normal level, and be heard perfectly at 60 feet away.  We got a great view of the city from above.  Next, we went to Bob's floor - the 25th floor, and met a few coworkers - Daniel (just moved from Washington State last week), and Nick, who invited us to a barbeque this weekend.

Then, with the grand idea to get phones, we returned to Queen Street mall, and were told that in order to obtain a cell phone, we must first provide (no joke), (1) our passport (okay, np); (2) our visa (just have to go back to the apartment for that); (3) our ATM card (which will not arrive for 1 1/2 weeks), (4) a bank statement (which will not arrive until January), (5) an Australian driver's license (omg, this is getting ridiculous), and (6) our Medicare health insurance card (which we are not even eligible for, because we're not citizens).  I think the only thing missing from that list was a DNA sample.  We still don't know what we're going to do about the phones.

The only remaining interesting thing we did yesterday was go to the grocery store to buy Kangaroo meat and watch "Letters and Numbers."  I made penne pasta served with "minced" (not ground) Kangaroo meat and tomato sauce for dinner, and it tasted like gamey beef.  It was great!  "Letters and Numbers" is Bob's new favorite game show.  The players unscramble 9 random letters, and the person who can make the longest word out of the 9 letters wins.  They only get points if their word was the longest, and then they get an amount of points equal to the length of the word.  Then, before every commercial break, the beautiful girl chooses 6 random numbers, and the players have to combine those numbers in a mathematical operation to reach another random target number.   For example, the 6 random numbers may be ... 25, 75, 100, 10, 3, and 4.  And the target number might be 338.  The solution might be (3 x 100) + 25 + 10 + 3.  The best I can tell, the loser wins a dictionary, and the winner wins the opportunity to appear on the next episode.  I think I would intentionally lose if I were a contestant.  Bob, on the other hand, is in heaven.

It's now 6:15 am, and I have a scheduled meeting with Rio Tinto's recruitment lady at 9:30 am.  She's going to introduce me to her husband, who is a solicitor here in Brisbane.  He's going to give me some advice about the legal market here.  Bob is going to also go to Rio Tinto to have his ID card made.

Since we’re still phone-less, we can only communicate via email or skype, and we’ll have to be home to do it.  If you’d like to catch up, send us an email, and we’ll schedule a skype session.  Love you all, and miss you!