on the river...

Prior to our move to Oz Julie was faced with the unenviable task of finding us a place to live knowing that she was married to a very particular man (yep, that's, me). She was already faced with the pressures of a new, stressful job, all the while dealing with jet lag. She looked at several places and finally found our place in Balmain East. She did a great job. We signed a lease that runs through the end of January -- our thinking was/is that we can look around and find a different place together with the luxury of some local collaborative time. Yesterday we continued our exploration with a visit to Parramatta.

Now...I never really thought that Parramatta was an option. It's 1:08 on the ferry or 30 minutes on the train and that doesn't include local commuting time in town and then in CBD. It would have to be spectacular to justify a 1 1/2 hour commute. It was alright for sure, but certainly not spectacular. However, it was worth checking because where else can you get a 1 hour boat ride for $7.00? So now, the journey.

The Parramatta river flows into Sydney Harbour pretty near where we live. Closer to Sydney it feels more like a lake than a river. There are a lot of beautiful homes, a bit more modern than the areas on the harbour we've visited, and tons and tons of sail boats. It's lovely to be sure. About half way to Parramatta the scenery goes from homes to mangroves or even light industrial. The last 20 minutes is slow, no wake, narrow and pretty uninspiring. Along the way and before the narrow boring part, is the Olympic Village. It's an area we will still visit with living in mind. It's probably only 35 - 40 minutes by ferry to CBD and is reportedly wonderful. It's cool to see the impact of the Olympics on this city -- it really elevated it to another level with amazing parks and transportation infrastructure.

The town itself has a really nice wharf area with a park that seemingly runs forever around a canal that becomes the river... at least that's how it appears. Once you get away from the park the town could be anywhere in the world. There is a nice area with tons of restaurants on a street aptly named "Eat Street". We had wonderful Italian food, the gnocchi was especially delicious. We wandered about after lunch and headed to the train station to see what that method of commuting would resemble. It was a nice, smooth, comfortable train ride through some of the most boring scenery imaginable. (Central Washington comes to mind - definitely nothing near as boring as SF to LA)

We got back to CBD Central Station after a half and hour ride happy for the trip, and happy to cross it off the list of possible neighbourhoods. A quick word about Central Station, not the station itself, but a feature. Where we wait to transfer to the light rail from the train itself is a balcony overlooking a park. On the sidewalk near the park there is an incredible woman who sings opera out into the park. She's obviously been classically trained -- certainly was once a performer somewhere. It's amazing to stand amidst the grit and grime of a train station overlooking a park flooded with pigeons while beautiful music swirls all around you -- truly special.

We left Central Station still full from lunch and headed to the Star Casino. The Star is not just a casino, it's a meeting place with a lot of stuff going on in the building -- shops, restaurants, sports bars, a playhouse, etc. We spent many hours at the Star and gambled a bit... we didn't lose or win... just spun in place. The later it got, the louder the place became, as people packed in to visit the dance clubs. For everyone whose ever seen a store that sells party dresses and wonders (like me), "who would wear a dress like that and where could they possibly wear it?" The answer is the Star casino. With a legal drinking age of 18 the Star floods with people between 18 and 21. At the risk of sounding like a creepy old man... um... these young girls in their micro mini party gear are... um... I don't know what to say. I'll simply say, Connor and Brandon, there are better ways to spend your time than playing XBOX 360. :-) The trade-off is there are way too many boisterous teenage boys running about whooping it up... they irritated me.

I'll close with a photo of the prettiest girl I photographed all day. She's hot! Along the way to Parramatta there's a ferry stop called Kissing Point...we found it to be inspirational! ;-) Peace out blog stalkers.

Friday!!!

Photos: There’s a pic of Julie and I at Darling Harbour Friday night. There’s also a pic of a sailing ship off our balcony. Everyone in the US is familiar with the television commercials where the Aussie dude says something like, “now that’s a knife” — Fosters Beer commercial or Mick Dundee maybe? Anyway, picture above might be captioned… “now that’s a pontoon boat”. Finally pictured is a cruise ship cruising past our building on Friday morning, We love watching the comings and goings on the harbour from our apartment balcony.

Friday, Julie and I headed out after work for no place in particular. We thought we found a good place to go but when we got there it was pretty lame so we regrouped and headed to Darling Harbour — always a safe bet. It’s off season in Oz so the harbour isn’t jammed with people. In other words, you can get a table with relative ease at the restaurant of your choice. Before we get into that, we were able to knock out a Saturday task en route.

In the US we call it the DMV — here it is called Maritime Services. We were walking right past the place, and they were open until 7, so we popped in to get our Australian drivers licenses. We talked to the manager upon entry and learned that we could not get a license until we had been in the country for 6 months. We can simply use our US licenses for driving until that time and then after 6 months, we stop in and they swap out our US licenses for an Aussie license. However, that doesn’t solve the issue of having something (other than our passports) to prove our identity. It’s particularly important because you need a license or an ID to get a Tax ID Number so you can get paid at your actual tax rate instead of the onerous highest level rate. That meant we’d have to get a simple photo ID and wait until the 6 months has elapsed for our license. Here’s the good part — we filled out a quick form and were out the door in about 5 minutes! Yes, 5 minutes! WOW!

We wandered down to Darling Harbour (about 4 blocks) and emerged onto the Harbour right where we catch our ferry home — bonus. We checked out a few places and settled on a Tapas restaurant. I think the owners confused the meaning of the word “Tapas” to mean “Deep fried Spanish” because it was not at all what we expected. Some of the food we shared was tasty enough (the shrimp and scallop ceviche) but the larger plate we got was mostly deep fried stuff that sat heavy and lacked punch. The notable exception being the chorizo sausage. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was bad, but it won’t be on our list of place to re-visit. Still, we enjoyed the time together and the proximity of our ferry meant we were on the ferry and home in about 15 minutes. Commuting by ferry with a free harbour cruise both ways is really fun for us — we love it.

Earlier, while I was waiting for Julie to get off from work I visited a place called Paddy’s Market. Paddy’s is essentially a gigantic flea market with hundreds of booths jammed together selling touristy stuff. I was shocked by the number of places selling wigs? I bought a couple of cool bracelets (for me) and walked the aisles checking out the rest of the stuff. There was booth after booth of wigs, iPhone cases, t-shirts, footwear (Ugg boots [ made in China ] ), and jewellery (check out how that word is spelled). I enjoyed the experience even though I am not much for flea markets.

Upstairs was a regular mall where I happened across a store named “Connor” — took a pic of that and put it on Facebook for my youngest to enjoy. I know it really isn’t a paragraph with just one sentence so I added this sentence to keep from irritating my blog stalking grammarians (Lesley?)

Today is Saturday. We’ll hang around the house today in the morning and depending on the weather either go for a ferry cruise (to Manly Beach or Coogee Beach) or we’ll head out for some clothes shopping. One thing is for sure about Sydney — there are a ton of store selling clothing. Loving it in Sydney! As they say... "Weather is here — wish you were beautiful."

observationally speaking

We've settled in to a regular routine at this point, and frankly, our lives are pretty boring so these blog entries will either get more spread out, or more boring, or both. I do have a few things to share today nonetheless.

Things you don't see in Oz

• Hats. People just don't wear hats, especially baseball hats, in Sydney. That means you see a lot of bad hair, sure, and it also means I have to shower and "do" my hair before striking out early in the day.
• Beards. Coming from Portland (Hipster heaven) nearly everyone you meet has facial hair. You really don't see a lot of beards on people — not even the cool half-shaved look that I've worn for two decades now. Note: I don't do it because I like the coolness, I do it because I hate shaving. I started shaving everyday.
• Hatred of Americans. Prior to arriving I'd read that a good number of posts online that Australians didn't like Americans In particular, the American swagger and "We're Number 1" attitude of didn't sit well. I haven't experienced anything like that. Now, I don't walk around espousing the greatness of my country so maybe I'm exempt from the loathing, but the general attitude I've received has been welcoming and sometimes envious. I should note that anywhere in the world anyone goes with an attitude of "I am great, and you are not” will not be welcomed.
• Fast food franchises everywhere. There are definitely American companies in Australia but they are not on every street corner. It could just be a function of where I live but the scene here is much more European than American. In fact, I saw more fast food places in Europe than Australia.
• Good television programming. Just yesterday we got our cable installed (Sports package so we can watch NCAA football when we’re lucky [ GO DUCKS ]) and I expected a better collection of options. What we really got was more channels with an equally antiquated line-up. Typical line-up is Mash; I Dream of Jeannie; Bewitched; Get Smart. DAD! I'm thinking about your living the dream in Oz. All that is missing for you is Hogans Heroes and Barney Miller.
• Service. I'm not saying that the service is bad, just different. In most restaurants (except the tourist places) you have to seek out an employee to order, or re-order. You can sit and wait but you'd go either hungry, or thirsty or both. Again, not a criticism, just a difference.

Things that I do see that surprised me

• People thank the bus drivers and ferry workers when they get off the ride. Nearly everyone does that.
• Cool birds. They are all different, all colourful and really fun to be around. I doubt my neighbours would agree.
• Short business hours. Americans have insisted on businesses that stay open late so we can do our daily business after work. Here, banks close at 4, as do many retailers. Thursday nights is the one night each week you might find stuff open later than normal and even then, it's usually 7 or 8.

I've enjoyed having my VoiceOverIP for the past few days. OOMA allows me to make and receive calls to the US for free. It's been good keeping tabs on my kids and my parents/sibs. Except for the time difference, it's as though I live in Portland.

Today is date night for Julie and I. Not sure yet what we'll do — my knee has been acting up so too much hilly travel doesn't agree with me. If I'm having a good day by late afternoon I'll ferry into CBD and head to a swish place for dinner with my sweetheart. If I'm having a bad day she'll ferry home for some take away food and a night snuggling on the couch. WIN-WIN. I'm a lucky man and having Julie home with me every night is priceless.

Have a great day blog stalkers!

lazy day around town

Sunday was a day around home. We did strike out for a walk downtown before all the businesses opened to peek in stores and restaurant windows without impeding customers. We were both very pleased with the large selection of clothing stores (men and women) and cute small restaurants. I think it’s safe to say that Balmain East is an area in transition — in a positive direction. Julie checked out several women’s clothing boutiques and found quite a number of things that were good quality and in keeping with her style. She didn’t buy anything but she did look pretty extensively. We also found a few package stores with super nice owners and a nice selection of items ranging from yogurts and produce in the one store, to wines and beer in another. Again, we didn’t purchase anything but it was good to have a look and meet new people. Once again a store owner learned we were from Oregon and asked why we moved to Australia… no surprise to us… Oregon has always been the undiscovered gem in the US.

Most of the stores opened close to noon and we decided to lunch at one of the local restaurants. We had an absolutely delicious charcuterie plate and cheese plate. The place was very Parisian in style (and menu) and we quite enjoyed sitting there for over an hour. (You can see the place in the photo above.) We had cooked breakfast at home and knew we would be cooking dinner there too so a quick lunch on a lazy Sunday seemed a good idea.

We were home by early afternoon and set about knocking off some tasks. I mostly rested my aching knees and Julie did some “home” stuff on her computer. She also tidied about the house while I lazed… thanks sweetheart. Dinner was nothing grand but still tasty. We enjoyed pork, apple and cranberry sausages with a nice salad and some fresh sweet corn. Homemade banana bread for dessert rounded things off nicely.

Today (Monday) has already been a big day. First, the US tied with Portugal in the World Cup even though we played better the whole game. Still, the US has been a strong contender in the Cup which certainly surprises some folks. Bigger than that, WE FINALLY GOT OUR MODEM INSTALLED AT HOME SO WE NOW HAVE INTERNET ACCESS. We’d been forced to use my iPhone to tether to the Web which worked OK but we were always worried about 4G charges for going over our data load. Now, we have smoking fast internet and wi-fi! It also means our VoiceOverIP is working so we can make and receive calls to the US for free. I called my parents first and then each of the kids in turn. All seems well enough on that front -- how nice to hear their voices.

Tomorrow we have our television service installed so we can have twice as many odd and peculiar Australian channels. Australia, like the UK, is not the greatest place to watch the television, but then, that’s not really why we moved here! Take care one and all.

Kirribilli Saturday

It’s hard to believe yesterday was just our 6th day in Australia. It seems much longer but that’s probably just because we’ve done so many things in that time. Yesterday was our first Saturday in Australia and the beginning of our first weekend.

The weather was glorious as it has been since we arrived. It’s the middle of winter here (think December 22 equivalent in the states) and it’s been sunny and 70F every day. The sun makes it feel even warmer — you couldn’t ask for better weather. The close proximity to the ocean coupled with an expansive open harbour means the air is constantly churning through so pollution is minimal at worst, non-existent at best. That’s not to say Sydney is a clean city — far from it. There is plenty of litter about and the whole city looks as though it could use a good power-washing. The residential buildings are mostly made of brick or Australian sandstone typical of an oceanside town where other materials couldn’t tolerate the conditions. There are parts that remind me of Tokyo and parts that remind me of Europe. There is nothing about the city that reminds me of America unless you count McDonalds or Starbucks or something similar. Even with that, there is very little to be found — in fact, I’ve never even seen a McDonalds.

Exploring the area is fun, exciting and different. It’s also a big workout — especially if your knees are not up to snuff (see me). Sydney is a town built on the edges of the worlds largest harbour. Because of that, and especially if you are travelling by ferry, striking out in any suburb/neighbourhood/community means you are walking up hill as soon as your step off the boat. (I’ll be interested to see how my FitBit registers all these incline steps once it arrives with my freighter shipment.) It’s good exercise and not boring - novel concept.

Our morning was spent locally at the Saturday market where we stocked up on some fruit, vegetables and a bit of meat. Typical market though quite large — maybe 100 tents, all selling food or flowers. It’s well attended and a pretty good bargain compared with grocery stores. We enjoyed some really good noodles cooked up by “Jackie M” — yum! Bus there, bus back, all good. Side note: Australians don’t “sleep in” on the weekends — they are up and about in force early on the weekends.

Our real Saturday journey took us to the lovely area known as Kirribilli. Our lease expires where we are now at the end of January so we are exploring our options and Kirribilli is definitely one of the alternatives. It is located directly across the harbour from the Opera House and adjacent to North Sydney and Milsons Point. Compared to where we live now, Kirribilli is moderately more modern with taller buildings and slightly wider streets. We walked for over an hour and while we enjoyed the peace and quiet (and stunning views) we were concerned there were no businesses to be found. Life without a car might be a challenge and the steep streets were a real test.

We took the ferry from Balmain East (where we live) across the harbour to Milsons Point and then continued on foot along the edge of the harbour to Kirribilli. Milsons Point is where the iconic amusement part is located waterfront — in fact, you get off the ferry next to that creepy giant face that is the entrance to the park. While walking I snapped a few shots of the Opera House including one of Julie along the harbour railing. Once in Kirribilli we walked along the stunning harbour front and then eventually headed inland up Up UP the hills. Thank god for google maps or we might end up trudging up the hills to find ourselves dead-ended somewhere. We came upon a small ensemble theatre where Julie had watched a play with a couple of her peeps during her initial five-week stint before I joined her. Quaint is the best word to describe the venue. From there we were ready for a break and we took ourselves upward until we came upon a street immediately adjacent to the train station that takes people across the harbour bridge to CBD.

We settled in and enjoyed a beverage while watching Australian Rules Football. I could write a whole blog on Footie —- very different than what our beloved Ducks play. Still, it’s entertaining and we watched with interest all the while reading the WIKI on how the game is played, etc. (Aussie sports losers). After a while, we caught the train into CBD travelling for the first time (for me) across the harbour bridge. The train let us out right by Julie’s office and to her credit she didn’t go in to knock out some tasks ( work nerd). The central station is enormous, seriously, really big. It’s underground and feels like it takes up 10 or more city blocks of space. We caught the light rail from there and headed to The Star casino 6 stops away in Pyrmont.

The Star is the only casino in Sydney and it’s enormous and beautiful. In fact, I think I like it better than any casino in Vegas. We’re light-weight slot machine players and the selection of games is nothing like Vegas, however, it’s smoke-free, clean, and full of people who dress for the casino. It’s a stark contrast to watching some lady from Kansas, named Gretel, chain-smoking cigarettes in a velour track suit with a cup full of nickels in her lap. Here, the casino is a destination where people go to gather and party…it’s quite refreshing by comparison. Party dresses for the girls and nice slacks and shirts for the men… We gambled for a few hours, donated less than $200 and caught the ferry home for bed. It was a good day — I am really enjoying spending time with my best friend.

Enjoy your day friends. Miss you all.

stocking up...

Yesterday, Thursday, was more of setting up house. One of the things that I was most sad about when moving from Portland was having to sacrifice all of my spices and pantry items. I’m a pretty avid home cook and have amassed quite a collection of herbs and spices so saying goodbye to them was a bit sad. Let’s just say that Connor scored at a major level when he inherited that box for his new apartment in Bend. On the other hand, I was seriously looking forward to visiting Herbie’s Spice Store to resupply with fresh replacements. I was not disappointed. The woman that worked there was extremely helpful, friendly and knowledgeable and within 20 minutes I had my 15 main herbs and spices in my bag. Interestingly, when she asked where I was from and I replied Oregon she was quick to offer that she would give anything to live in Oregon. The grass is always greener and even after less than a week in Oz I can tell you that I will be moving back to Oregon at the end of this adventure.

My next stop (after a 1 1/2 massage and some merry-go-round sushi) was a bin store. The kids and Julie all laughed at me the first time I went to Whole Foods and saw their bins of dried fruits, grains, legumes, and nuts. I love that stuff and actually created a mini version of the same “bin city” in all of my homes. It makes me as happy as Julie shopping for office supplies (geek) or my sister Kathy at a camera store (nerd). So…at this stop I loaded up on dried fruits and nuts, odd stuff like bulgur, and other assorted bin items. Both stops were reasonably priced which was good. Of course, having spent all that cash on cooking items I really didn’t have the ability/ingredients to cook a proper meal. Saturday morning our grocery list is being delivered between 7am and 9am from the local grocer.

Our cooking obstacles are not insurmountable though they are a pain in the butt. My knives, pots, pans and gadgets are on a freighter somewhere off the coast of Australia. The range hood is not operational and my Realtor is suddenly unavailable to return my calls, emails and office visits. The freighter is on schedule for a mid-July delivery and the Realtor is now also on schedule for a bit of an ass chewing. Cie La Vie — all part of the adventure, right?

It’s not like we needed an excuse to dine out but we justified it with kitchen angst and went out for a dinner in Darling Harbour. Darling Harbour is an amazing place. It’s located all along the harbour on the CBD side of things and is restaurant after restaurant after restaurant. Being mid-winter the people count is low so these enormous restaurants all look pretty empty. Come summer this area will bustle with hundreds of thousands of partiers, diners and revellers every night of the week. It’s quite the scene I remember from my last visit here. Julie and I chose a fish place where I ordered Barramundi and she had the fish and chips special. Mine was $36 and hers was $13. Hers was 10X better than mine and in a town where you have to pay a mugger $20 to steal your wallet, $13 is a deal! I might have ordered off the special too but I always wanted to try Barramundi after seeing it as a main ingredient on Iron Chef. It’s bland and slightly oily — kind of like day old Cod?

On the good side, it was great having dinner with my honey along the harbour downtown Syd. We also think it’s so much fun to take a boat to our destinations. Apart from the cool factor and romantic charms — they are always on time, there is never any traffic and you get a free harbour cruise for under $5!

We were home by 9, in bed by 9:01, and asleep by 9:02. Might be some residual jet lag but I really just think we were both tired. Life is good!

On the boring informational front: Learned overnight that our internet service will not be connected until 30 JUN which is major hassle. That means no phone or internet for two more weeks. Hang in there if you are one of the people waiting for a phone call from us. That’s it for now — take care blog stalkers.

Took the photo of sunrise behind the harbour bridge while waiting with Julie for her ferry. What a way to start Friday!

Exploration and such

The last two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) were work for Julie and exploration for me. Since Julie’s piece is boring to most let me just say that they were glad to see she made it back. I remember from my days in the consulting realm that people from overseas that worked for me would frequently disappear without warning for long periods of time. I never liked it. I especially never enjoyed the surprise reunion months later when they suddenly reappeared expecting to pick up on the work they’d abandoned. So…they were relieved to see that Julie had returned, on-time, and ready to work. One person asked if she collected her husband while she was away and then asked how long I was staying… ummm… married and in love… thank you very much.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I struck out mid-morning with two missions. Finding a place with wi-fi since we still have a week to go before our internet is connected, and, exploring the town of Balmain East. I completely failed on the first mission though I did try for several hours. Apple’s “Map” program was a total fail as it kept ping-ponging me around town without any real clue on where I was or where the public library happened to be! On the bus ride home I did finally find the library at least 6 blocks from where maps told me it would be. Of course, I was on a moving bus so I filed the location away for another day. The second part of my mission was more eventful.

I walked along Darling Street (the main drag in Balmain East) for at least 10K (5 out and 5 back) and discovered several really nifty cafes and restaurants to try with Julie. There were at least 10 coffee shops, 4 patisseries, a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker… you get it. One of the cooler aspects of Australia is the number of shops where the designer her/himself markets the clothes they make with alterations available on the spot. There are many of those shops too. In reality, there is just about everything a soul could desire within a 5 minute bus ride. There are also two groceries which leave a bit to be desired.

On the subject of food — the grocery scene here is vastly different than back in the states. I readily admit that I am clueless on how people do their shopping and cooking so I will reserve judgement but many of the things I used regularly back in Oregon are simply not available. Can you say chicken broth? The other odd thing is the two main stores, Coles and Woolworths, are clothing/department stores in the states whereas they are grocery stores here. There is also an IGA but I hated it at home and I hate it here. Seems apparent that the way to go is to get your meat at the butcher, your seafood at the fish monger, and your vegetables at the farmers market. There is also “fisherman’s wharf” where you can collect your proteins right off the boat. That’s on the plan for Saturday.

Julie got off the ferry at 547pm right on schedule and we scored a pizza (two for one) at the local pizza place. Pizza was unremarkable but then I am a pizza snob. I managed to stay awake until 805 and Julie was out by 730. Jet lag.

Until I am working our morning ritual is simple. We make something healthy for brekky and then I walk Julie the 6 minutes to the ferry. Today, I worked on website stuff at home after seeing Julie off before striking out on the bus around 11:30. We noticed that they will be closing our ferry stop late in the year so I wanted to catch the bus for CBD (Central Business District) to see how bad her overland commute would be. The good news is — not bad at all. The bad news is — I got off the bus in territory I am not familiar with. I wandered about downtown near where Julie is working for two full hours and then caught the ferry back home from Pyrmont. Along the way I visited with a senior citizen lady from Austria on a 4 month Oz vacation and took countless picture for tourists so they could all be in the photo. I bet I interacted with people from 5 different countries in the process which is one of the things we looked forward to the most about this journey.

Darling Harbour is a hot-spot in Sydney and it’s easy to see why. So many waterfront shops and restaurants, countless places to sit along the water…it’s a special place. The photos of the harbour above are all from Darling Harbour. It’s BEAUTIFUL.

The other photos are about BIRDS. Now, many of you good people reading my boring dissertation do not know that wherever I go I collect wild birds as pets. It seems Oz is no exception. Meet my new BIRD friends that visited me as I sat outside typing this from our balcony. My reliable iPhone totally failed on the quick shots so I had to heavily manipulate them in photoshop just to make them viewable. (Make a note: Keep my camera handy at all times) I’ll have to name them once I learn how to tell male and female apart. I didn’t really anticipate that the birds species here would be so different than back home. I figured there would be an abundance of pigeons (NOT) and seagulls (NOT) but instead we are confronted with all sorts of odd looking things that make crAzY noises. It’s kind of cool.

That’s it for today. Tonight is date night for Julie so I am cooking a simple meal of salad, pork cutlets with gravy and whole grain rice. I miss my cookbooks but they are on a freighter right now heading to Sydney from New Zealand (at last check). I hope they are still useful given the scarcity of common ingredients I have used all my cooking life. I wish too I had brought along my vegetarian and vegan cookbooks. With the price of meat - we might seriously consider eating more vegetables than meat proteins.

Have a nice day one and all.

and so it begins

Our first day in Sydney was (of course) unusual. To begin with, it took us 16 hours to get here on the plane in coach! Certainly not without it’s fair share of pain. Julie slept for the entire flight except for a few hours at the end, and maybe an hour at the beginning. It wasn’t a restful sleep, but she did sleep nonetheless. I managed to get 10 minutes here and there but it couldn’t have totalled 2 hours.

The Sydney airport was busy. We were 30 minutes late and our arrival apparently coincided with other flights from other places. Immigration was completely jammed and took us nearly an hour to get through. In fact, once we were stamped into Oz we collected our bags and headed for customs. They told us line 4 which was jammed again, though line 5 looked pretty bare so we jumped into line 5 and realised that line 5 was a straight shot out of the airport — no customs, no nothing. We discretely tossed our customs form into the trash bin outdoors and headed for the taxi line. Whether we are in the country legally, or illegally remains to be seen. :-) My reply to any inquiries will be something like, “I’m old, I was confused…”

The taxi to us directly to our new apartment. Julie has seen the place when she made arrangements to rent it, but she has never spent any time here. The property manager met us at 8:45, we did some paperwork, and were all of a sudden living in Australia.

About the place: It’s small though not tiny. The layout is a bit odd and there must be issues with ants and other bugs because the kitchen has enough pest control products to make even my brother happy! That said, we see no bugs so the stuff must work! the living room is cozy enough and the dining room is also really good. There are two bathrooms, the guest bathroom being the best. There is also a WC separate for guest use. Plenty of storage in the place and the master bed is comfortable! No matter the ins and outs of the place, it really comes down to the view and it is magnificent. It overlooks the harbour and you can see the central business district to the right, North Sydney to the left and the harbour in the middle including the harbour bridge. The NY fireworks from here will be spectacular.

Once we were semi-unpacked and bathed we had stuff to do. We started with a quick check of the immediate neighbourhood here in Balmain East. The ferry is 1 1/2 block away. There is a mini-grocery near the ferry stop, several restaurants, two coffee shops, a pub, a salon, a spa and other stuff. The restaurants look cool - one in particular looks pretty swish.

Next we hit the ferry and took a 12 minute ride to Pyrmont. From Pyrmont we took the light rail four stops to where Julie works. It was a trial run of sorts for her commute on Tuesday — her first day back at work in CBD (Central Business District). The first order of business was banking. I needed to be present to be on our bank account so we handled that. We also applied for Australian credit cards at the bank which was not a guarantee as our US credit is not relevant here. That’s right, we have to start over here in Oz. We’ll see if they give us a credit card? (We feel your pain Connor).

After the banking Julie showed me around her work neighbourhood and we headed to Telstra to get my cell phone and set up wireless internet connectivity in our apartment and upgrade our television package. (We have to have a sports package to see any ESPN featured college football.) It seemed like this stop took forever though it was here that we first started to hit the “Man, are we tired” moments of the day. I got my iphone 5S which is different than the US phone but mostly similar. The thumbprint recognition part was cool to set up for sure. The worst part of this stop was learning that Telstra has to set up our internet/wifi and television package which will take 8 days.

Next up was the electronic store to replace my US Apple computer. Sadly, the cost of shipping my US machine was nearly $1000 so we decided last minute to just get a different computer in Oz. This stop was really fast and I walked out of the electronics store with a MacBook Pro and a wireless mouse. New computers are always fun but I was a little to “foggy” to really enjoy all my new tech!

Nearing the end of the day we got some Chinese in the concourse of the Ernst and Young building and then hit the grocery store for brekky items and stuff like shampoo. Today will be a shopping day for our initial resupply - yesterday not so much. Finally we headed to the apartment where Julie resided during her first 5 week stint and collected her three gigantic articles of luggage. They barely fit in the cab but we managed to get all the tech, the groceries and Julie’s luggage home.

Once home we unpacked a bit and then tried to come up with ways to stay awake until 8pm. We made it to 745pm and were both soundly asleep by 746. That was our first day here - fun and exciting — purposeful and action-packed — and most of all wonderful and spectacular. At least after day one, this place is more than we’d hoped for… we are lucky.

One quick note for my US friends and family: my new computer is an Australian configured machine. Many words are spelled differently here so when you see words like harbour and realised just know it’s correct if you’re here…