Back from NZ!

So we arrived back from NZ this evening, and it has been quite exhausting! Early mornings every day, long days of bus travel, but overall it was good and I have lots of pretty pictures which I will be putting up not tonight because of the whole exhausted thing, and possibly not until after my parents are on their way back to Bermuda because we still have busy days of mountains and wine country, but hopefully by this weekend!

My overall impression of NZ can be summed up like so: much like another country I know (not Bermuda, of course!) – East coast rules, West coast drools ;-P

Ooh, and we felt an earthquake yesterday evening as we were sitting down for pre-dinner drinks! A 4.9, I’ve been told, and my first ever. It wasn’t a huge thing – the whole table was moving, but not enough to spill our drinks or anything. There was also one our first night we arrived, but I slept right through it!

A weekend of journeying!

So today my dad and I climbed the pylon on the Harbour bridge, so I have new-angle photos of the bridge, including some bridge-walkers...

And off to New Zealand tomorrow!!

Once Were Wild was once number one but then…

So today was Melbourne Cup day! Surprisingly quite exciting, considering it’s a horse race and I don’t generally find horse races very interesting. But it’s a huge thing here and everyone gets very excited and regular old pubs charge for entry and people get all dressed up and the office throws a little mid-afternoon fest with chips and hummus and wine and stuff. I was determined to get into the spirit, so I bet a whole five dollars on a horse! And for the first three quarters of the race, my horse, named Once Were Wild, was leading by a mile! But obviously that was a bad strategy because she used up all her energy and then all the other horses came up and took all her glory. Didn’t even place. *sigh* I swear, there were a handful of signs telling me my horse was fate, but fate let me down.

Anyway, my parents have also been here since Saturday! And we got a lot accomplished that day! So eager to see everything, we walked pretty much the entire city of Sydney till there was nothing left to see, my mom volunteered to participate in a contortionist’s street show, and then when we still had hours left in the day we decided to head down to Melbourne and made it back on the last flight by about 3 am! …. No, not really. I just said that because my mom has said a) she will be reading this and b) she was so jetlagged on Saturday that she doesn’t remember any of it, so I figured I could make anything up and she might just believe it. We did see a contortionist show, though! The girl squeezed herself into a box. However, I saw the same girl doing the same show with all the same jokes a few weeks ago at the Crow’s Nest festival, so I was less impressed.

We actually took a stroll around the neighborhood a bit, across the bridge, through the market at The Rocks where we also stopped for lunch, walked over to the Opera house (and bought tickets for a show tomorrow night!), a little bit more through the city and then headed back by train. Sunday involved a bit of shopping and a walk over to Darling Harbour, which I had actually not seen yet apart from a brief glimpse after dark last week Friday. It was very nice, very impressive. Got tapas for a late lunch, and my dad peer pressured me and mom into ordering a whole litre of sangria even though we each only wanted a glass…

In the last couple days they’ve been enjoying the city on their own while I go to work – today they went to the zoo and saw lots of horrible creatures but also koalas and kangaroos and stuff, which I haven’t seen yet – I have a feeling by the time they go, they’ll have seen a lot I haven’t.

You may also recall my last post of about a week and a half ago mentioned me getting caught in a crazy downpour – I think that was the cause of me waking up a few days later with a pretty bad cold, which I’ve been suffering through since. Yesterday I got sent home from work early because I “sounded like crap”. But I think I’m on the mend now, thankfully. I’ve been running out of tissues!

Summer's here! Oh wait, no, not so much

So today started out bright and sunshiney and super warm - got to go out in a tank top, skirt and flip flops, and I was so excited at the change. Met up with a couple of new girl friends for lunch, got a table outside, it was really nice. But then the clouds started rolling in. And then when we were done with lunch, it started POURING. And I suddenly became very grateful that I was still uber-prepared and had a sweater and umbrella in my bag. But I still got quite soaked. And then the trains were held up because the lightning had knocked out the power in one of the stations, and when I finally made it home, I was shivering/coughing/sneezing/generally miserable and damp. Oh well. The coughing/sneezing stopped after an hour or so, so I don't think the experience did me any lasting damage.

Then once I'd changed into warm, dry clothes and had a cup of tea to recover, I headed back out - to the city to try to find a Halloween costume. Didn't find one, but I did find a shop that had non-costume, regular clothes on mega-sale and ended up getting two dresses and two shirts for about 30 Aussie dollars! That's even less in USD/BMD! Sweet as!

Developing a fear of kettles is not convenient for someone who likes tea as much as I do...

So I've already mentioned this to a few of you by email, but: last week I burnt myself from the steam from the spout of my tea kettle when I carelessly was reaching across the counter and let my arm get too close, and while the burn wasn't too bad, it wasn't great, and it's actually feeling more sensitive now that most of the wound has cleared up and it's just fresh scar tissue, so I'm finding myself a little jumpy around kettles. And since I'm a tea addict, I'm making myself jumpy several times a day. Developing thrills for danger!

And on a completely different subject: regional slang. You know whenever you go to a new place, there are all sorts of different idioms and slang you can pick up. Now, I will never pick up this "How're you going?" business in place of "How're you doing" or "How's it going?" but one thing I am determined to pick up is the addition of "as" to adjectives, which is apparently more of an NZ thing but some Australians use it too. Apparently it comes from adding "as" to an adjective as an incomplete comparison. For example, as an exclamation of delight, instead of "Sweet!" you go "Sweet as!" like you were maybe gonna say "Sweet as candy!" but got lazy and figured people know what you meant (I figure people know what I mean when I just say "Sweet!", but I'm trying to pick up some crazy slang here). "Sweet as" is apparently the most commonly used one, but you could also go "I'm hungry as!" or "My feet are tired as!" or "That kettle steam's hot as!" or "That dog's rabid as!" You get the picture.

So when I come home Christmas-time all "I'm starving as! Where's my turkey?" - shut it with your "starving as what?" reactions - I'm getting culture here!

Rock-step, push-and-step!

So this evening, in an effort to get out and do different things, I attended a swing dance class! For beginners, about a ten minute walk from my place (you know - jus' don de road and rond de corner!)

When I walked in, the instructors were doing stuff that looked crazy complicated, and I was thinking "never!" but I think by the end we were doing stuff that might look crazy complicated to someone who had just walked in. I think if you put me on a dance floor with swing music and a partner who knew the EXACT routine we did tonight, no surprises, I could impress some people. :-D

I may go back next week, but it's at a time that makes it kind of difficult for me to eat dinner at a normal time, and dinner is a pretty high priority for me!

Progress! And nostalgia.

Funny how fast these things can turn around if you just ask. I have to learn to be more assertive, obviously. Anyway, I now have faster internet in my apartment and HR will cancel my previous service and reimburse me. Which meant I had to sign up for a local bank account in order to receive reimbursements, which was kind of a hassle, but oh well. No more trips downtown for show downloads! Although downloading here will not be as fast as it was there, it will be much more tolerable.

And I can try Skype chats again and possibly sound like I'm speaking English!

I asked my coworkers for advice about what bank to choose, but in the end I decided it didn't really matter much since I won't be using it too much and ended up just doing HSBC since I'm already HSBC, although everything is separate and new anyway, so I might as well have just done the bank closer to me. And HSBC Australia has this weird little device you have to put on your keychain so you can press a button and generate a new code everytime you want to log into online banking. What's wrong with a memorable music artist?? All this high-tech mumbo jumbo.

I have been thinking of the list of things I miss about Bermuda right now, and besides of course all you wonderful people, I have:
1) Red pepper hummus. Or, you know, any hummus flavor other than hummus.
2) Special K with red berries.
3) My lil blue car and my lil blue bike.
4) Driving my lil blue car or bike
5) My kitties from both homes! - this should come above transportation, actually. Maybe above Special K, even.
6) Acceptable speeds of internet at home - oh, hey!
7) I think my bed, although my bed here is pretty good. My bed at home is softer.

I have to think of actual small little things we can get there but not here so I can ask my parents to bring me some in a few weeks! I guess I'm doing OK if I can't think of any.