The Price is Right

I promise all my posts won't be about my cats not that they're here, but this one will be. Our trivia friends (with whom we came in 3rd this week, by the way - we won a free bottle of wine) happened to be getting rid of a "cat palace" ASAP, so we graciously took it off their hands. Eve and Ninja seem to like it.

Carrying it down the street about three blocks at night was not great. It was better than carrying it during the day would have been, though. The only other people out for a walk at that time of night snickered to us, "I hope you're not stealing that". If we were stealing a cat tower we would be the lamest robbers ever. 

ANZAC Weekend Activities

Friday was ANZAC Day , so Michael and I both had a holiday from work. I got to bake ANZAC biscuits for the first time with the kids at work the day before. The biscuits looked like they turned out well, but I refuse to eat anything more than 10 children touch, so I guess I will never know.

Saturday we went for a bike ride in Centennial Park . Apparently part of the recent Great Gatsby movie was shot in that park. There is currently a film shooting there now; you can see part of the set over the fenced in construction area. They are being very hush-hush about what movie is filming, though. I am determined to do some sleuthing to find out what it is.

Another thing Centennial Park is known for is birds . Michael and I are novices when it comes to identifying bird species, but I like to think just by paying one visit to the pond, one automatically gets promoted to an intermediate birder because of the sheer diversity that can be seen in one place. There are 27 species listed on the park's website, but we definitely saw some that weren't on the list, like gigantic pelicans. Of course there are some that we didn't see, like the falcons, but maybe it's just a matter of time before we see them all. One of my favorites is the rainbow lorikeet , and my least favorite is sulphur-crested cockatoo because they shriek nonstop. Maybe Michael and I will have a big year , Australian style.

Michael and I also went to the Powerhouse Museum for the first time this weekend. The museum is mainly geared towards kids, but has exhibits adults would find interesting as well. We got to see the Game Masters exhibit, which was, in a word, overstimulating (but still fun). For people our age it is a nostalgic exhibit, while for kids it's actually an interactive exhibit about the history of classic games they have mostly only heard about. After reading Ready Player One , it was a good refresher about what some of the classic games actually look like. They also had some obscure independent and foreign video games too, like Blueberry Garden. In addition to getting to play games, you also learn a little bit about the makers, and art/design style. It seemed very fitting that we thought we had been in the exhibit for an hour, looked at the watch, and realized we had been there for almost three. The highlight for me was beating Michael at Sonic 2 , which wasn't a fair contest since he didn't spend hours playing it like I did when I was 10. He beat me at most of the other games we played though. 

All in all, it was a lowkey weekend, but we still managed to experience more of what Sydney has to offer. 

Soak Up The Sun

Easter Reunion

Easter weekend is a four-day weekend in Australia, and we made the most of our time off.

This morning Michael drove on the left side of the road in a GoGet (carshare) car for the first time, which was a success. We picked up the cats from the quarantine facility they are settling in nicely for the most part. 

We went to the movies and discovered that there's a bubble tea place a few doors down from the movie theater where if you buy a drink you can get a discount movie ticket. With the exception of Saturdays when you can't use the ticket, it never makes sense to go see a movie and not get a bubble tea/smoothie because essentially the drink is free and the movie ticket is also a buck cheaper. Win! We ended up going twice, seeing Lego Movie and Grand Budapest Hotel.

Also this weekend we went on a scavenger hunt organized by some friends in the Potts Point/Kings Cross/Darlinghurst area. Here are Michael and I at Harry's Cafe de Wheels, a really good, well-known meat pie stand. They put fresh, steamy, hot mashed potatoes or mashed peas on top of your pie and it is delicious.

Royal National Park was another recent destination. We took the train and biked there and rented a canoe.

We only saw a small section of the park. Apparently there are some great hikes, beaches, camping that we might have to go back and check out. 

The Royal Sydney Easter Show

Today, Michael and I went to check out the Royal Sydney Easter Show. It's basically a lot like the Montgomery County Fair, only even bigger. It goes for about a week at the Sydney Olympic Park. Tickets include the cost of public transportation, which I think is a good way to encourage people to take it. They also had express trains running to and from the Olympic Park, stopping only at three major stations, which worked very well with most people had room to to sit. It never felt claustrophobic like the DC metro when it's super crowded during a big event. 

Here is Michael with some crazy eyes right when we arrived. At 5pm they sell discount tickets so we walked in with a big horde of cheapskates like us.

These alpacas were being taken from point A to point B, and we intercepted them for petting. I just now noticed that, because of the angle, it looks like I have a tiny deformed left arm in this picture, and now that's all I can see when I look at it.

Probably the most popular building of animals was the Nursery; who doesn't love all the babies? Here are some baby chicks hatching...

and some ducklings following each other around like lemmings.

The main difference I noticed in the plant/produce competitions was that in addition to the normal stuff we are used to seeing like giant pumpkins, there was a bonsai competition (pretty cool; wish I had taken a picture), and there was also a carnivorous plans competition. Here is the venus fly trap 1st place winner:

Another first for us at the show was our first rodeo. New South Wales lost to Queensland, unfortunately. I did not find it particularly enjoyable to watch people mildly torment animals, but now I can say I've been to a rodeo. Who would have thought the first one I would go to would not be in the US?

There is also a large carnival with rides and games and the typical bright lights and junk food. There was a big top with circus acts, as well as some kind of woodchopping competition show, but neither of those were active while we were there. The popular souvenir to buy is a "showbag". There is a large building devoted just to the sale of showbags. Basically they are just large themed loot bags that cost $20-25 with random stuff in them. For example, you could get a Cadbury one with a lot of chocolate, a Hello Kitty backpack with a bunch of little Hello Kitty stuffed animals and pencils, a sports one with your favorite team's paraphernalia, or one from a popular magazine that has three magazines and sample products. There were some people there I saw walking away with as many as 10 bags, as though this is the main reason they come, which seems very strange to me. There's nothing particularly special or limited edition about any of the stuff you can get, and it's not that great of a deal. 

So, we survived our first Royal Sydney Easter Show. The End.

We are all made of stars

Our friends, Rachel and Steve, came for a visit for about a week. It was nice to see some familiar faces from home again. One of the things we did with them was go on the night tour of the Sydney Observatory, which was pretty cool. We got to look through some fancy telescope that was over 130 years old. The tour guide was saying it was pretty much the Mona Lisa of telescopes, but it just seemed like a regular telescope to me that was old and had to be set manually. We also got to look through a modern one, and we got to see Jupiter and moons, Saturn and a moon, Alpha Centauri, and some "baby stars" forming in the Greater Orion Nebula. It was fun and I would definitely go back. I think if we were to go back it would be a different experience every time because you look at different things based on what is in season, so to speak. 

I have had a cough for about a week, a bi-product of working with germy children. One thing that is different in Australia is that codeine is really easy to get over the counter in common painkillers and cough medicines. It's just strange to see something that's a controlled substance where you're from commonly used elsewhere. Nobody thinks anything of it other than it makes one drowsy. I suppose I've seen this kind of thing elsewhere in my travels since I've been to Amsterdam, but it is funny how the laws in the country we live in shape how bad or good we think something might be for us, and thus, our behavior. Sometimes it seems quite arbitrary what is accepted in one place and not in another.

This week was a four day work week. I will have a five day weekend (it's supposed to be four, but I took off an additional day to pickup our cats from quarantine) because of Easter. I will then have a two day work week followed by a three day weekend for ANZAC day. Right now, life ain't bad. At least I'll hopefully have enough time to finally recover from this cough. 

Cultural Adjusting

I thought this post by a friend was appropriate. I haven't cried in a cab, but I've had other similar moments where I've been frustrated about the differences when living abroad for sure. I think I'm pretty much to the point of acceptance now, though, which is good. I'm lucky to not have the added language barrier; although, at work I'm still integrating new vocabulary all the time. They're all words I've heard before that I just don't instinctually use: rubbish instead of trash, nappy instead of diaper, mozzie instead of mosquito, trolly instead of cart, pram instead of stroller, etc. And then there's the spelling: organise, harbour, colour, diarrhoea (I see this one on a billboard at the train station and it makes no sense to me), etc. 

Right now Michael is in Adelaide for Ultimate Frisbee Nationals. His team gets to play in both A and B Nationals for some reason. He has officially been to an Australian state that I have not yet, which is fine since I have two more on him he hasn't been to yet.

Q is for Quarantine, S is for Storage

Our cats are theoretically in the same country as us again. I say theoretically because they are in quarantine and we haven't been able to see them yet. After this whole ordeal, we do NOT recommend relocating your pets from the US to Australia. As much as we love our pets, it has been a very stressful and expensive pain. It has cost us about as much to relocate the cats as it has for us to relocate (including furnishing a new apartment and plane tickets). We may change our minds once they are actually in our home and we can say it was all worth it. We probably will. We miss them! In 10 days we will be reunited.

One positive thing about picking up and moving to another country is that you're really forced to downsize and get rid of anything unnecessary, and even some things you like. It's funny, in our old apartment at least once a week I would get really annoyed about how little storage space we had. We had to get creative and store our large plastic Christmas tree base under our papazan chair because they were both round and it could kind of blend in. Now that we're here in an even smaller apartment, I don't really have to do stuff like that because we simply have less stuff accumulated. That may change once we have the cats and have big cat carriers to store, but at least so far we've had enough space without any problem; the slight exception being our bikes parked in the stairwell, but so far that hasn't been a problem.

TGIF. 

Another Rainy Sunday

I suppose it's my fault for saying that it doesn't rain much here, and even when it does it's kind of wimpy rain. Lately it's been raining a lot more, which I suppose is good since Australia is historically and often plagued with drought. I think on average now half of the days it rains for at least a small portion of the day, and occasionally it will rain for most of the day, like today. Oh, weather. I'm not sure if this is just usually what happens in fall, or what just happens to be happening now.

This weekend has been pretty low-key. Yesterday, Michael and I went for a bike ride to Messina , our favorite local gelato chain. If you come to Sydney, you should try it. If you try it, it will also cause you a pang of sadness for all the flavors you will not get to try. It is our unofficial goal to try all their flavors, but it is hard when you have to pick between something you know is really good, and 20 other flavors that sound also amazing.

I've been mainly doing grocery shopping, chores, errands, getting in touch with friends and family back home, and cooking. Speaking of which, I invented chicken matzo sinagang, which is a fusion between Jewish and Philippino food, and is delicious. Michael has been working on a top secret project (I know what it is but don't want to say too much) that will hopefully at some point become the new hottest app that will make us a million dollars. And, all the while we've been re-watching Game of Thrones, as previously alluded to. 

Randomly when I was walking near Paddington Reservoir Gardens again today, I noticed the Sydney Library has put a few shelves of old books there for people to take one away for free if they like. I cheated and took two, but for a nobel cause. There we no kids' books, but there was one that was close enough about Chinese New Year that I grabbed to donate to my school. That probably sounds totally random to an outsider, but the kids actually do some crafts/activities related to Chinese New Year, especially since there are a lot of Chinese families at the centre. We have so few books for the kids as it is, so every little bit helps. I also grabbed the The Onion Book of Known Knowledge for us, because The Onion is awesome.

Michael is at ultimate frisbee practice right now, no doubt getting poured on. And that's the weekend in a nutshell, folks. I had more fun than I should have putting more links than I should have into this post. 

Why Thursdays?

Today is Thursday, which means it's the only day of the week many stores  are open after 5 or 6pm. It's the one day during week you can get some shopping done if you have a job. Large chain grocery stores are open late regularly, but that's about it. I don't understand how this is a retail system that works. One would think that businesses would be more profitable if they stayed open until at least 8pm so people could patronize them after they're done with work. The reason for this, at least to my understanding, is that the minimum wage is high (about $16 or $17). Since labor costs a lot, many businesses can't afford be pay staff and operating costs for more hours in the day. The fact that people earn a living wage makes you not feel guilty for not tipping, even though it's weird at first coming from a culture where tipping is very important. It also means that many workers here don't work as hard for their tips as they might somewhere else, since they know they'll get paid the same either way. 

The main reason I mentioned all this is because I have to sometimes do more planning than I would at home to run simple errands. Northern VA is the land of convenience, where I knew I could still go out any day of the week relatively late to get just about anything I really needed. We had probably hundreds businesses walking distance or within a bike ride or short drive at our disposal more than they were not. 

I suppose this is why Americans are perceived outside of the US as being pushy and maybe unreasonable expectations of service. We are used to all our conveniences and haven't experienced many times when they weren't available, at least not for more than a day or two. We are the country that invented fast food, and we don't like to wait when we want something. We are used to being served by people who care about making us happy because they want us to pay them well. 

Anyway, it has been an adjustment in mindset being here.

In other news, now that the recent Walking Dead season has ended (sadness), it's time to re-watch the previous seasons of Game of Thrones so we can have some remote sense/memory of where all the characters are in relation to each other and why. This should entertain me until my trip home in the winter/summer (June/July). Speaking of that, I'm still not used to the opposite seasons here, in how I talk about them. It still feels like summer to me but everybody calls this autumn. How can it be autumn if the temperature is almost exactly the same as it was in summer? The only thing different is the sun sets earlier. I think of Easter as a spring holiday and it's not. I think of Christmas as a winter holiday and it's not. So backwards, this place, I tell you.