Final thoughts on 2010...

As we sit here on December 31 and look back at the year we have just had, it is hard to think that we will ever have another opportunity for a year like this one.  We travelled in Europe for two months, got back to Calgary, accepted jobs in Australia, packed up all of our belongings, slapped a "For Sale" sign on the house and moved to the other side of the world to start jobs in a city where Jim had been in the late 1990s and Joanne had never set foot in! 

It is hard to pick out the absolute highlights of the year.  The biggest impact is the move to Australia and all of the changes that go with it: meeting new people, starting new jobs, living in a new city...everything that we do here is an adventure!  This has really opened our eyes to what it must have been like for our ancestors who immigrated to Canada in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  We speak the language, had our housing and jobs arranged before we got here and have a huge safety net and any help that we need through Santos.  We can't imagine what it would have been like to take a 6 week trip across the ocean in a cargo hold, then take a train for 10 days to get to a place in the middle of nowhere that we had never even heard of before, and getting there without being able to speak the language!

The best part of the year was the trip to Europe.  There are so many different aspects of the trip that are highlights, we could probably name something from everyday and still have things left over for the list.  However, since there is no point in talking about the highlights without naming one, the best part of the trip was the week that we spent on the small cruise ship touring the Greek islands.  We had no concerns about transportation or taking care of our luggage, we weren't yet thinking that we would be getting job offers from Santos, so we weren't distracted by thoughts of all the work we had ahead of us to get to Australia, we had all kinds of fantastic meals and we spent everyday on a different island.  It is the one part of our trip that we think we could recommend to anyone, regardless of how a person likes to travel. 

Here's to a great 2011, we're excited to see what the new year will bring!

First Christmas

This was our first Christmas in Australia and we have tried to keep things as Australian as possible, although neither of us was wlling to try surfing in a Santa suit, like our friend above.

We asked at work and everyone said that the big Christmas meal here was a seafood lunch, normally at the beach.  We went to our local fishmonger and asked what most people had for the Christmas meal, so we ordered the recommended prawns and oysters...1 kg of prawns and 1 dozen oysters for two people!  In our defence, we were also told that we should eat so many prawns that we make ourselves sick, so the 1 kg seemed like it should fit the bill.  We didn't get sick, but neither of us has a hankering for any more prawns at the moment.

A number of shops are open here on Christmas day, including the bakery and the grocery store.  We made about three trips to the shops today, since we wanted the people who were working to feel needed.  We are sure they now feel much better about working on the holiday.

The other thing that many people do is go out for the Christmas meal.  We might have been able to find a place to go, but it seemed like everywhere had been booked weeks in advance.  Typically the menu was a 3 - 5 course seafood tasting menu, with or without wine, for anywhere from $85 to $200 (including wine) per person.  For two people those prices are not too bad for a special meal, but we can't imagine a family of 8 going out for that kind of meal!

Tomorrow there are big Boxing Day sales, plus the Ashes start up again in Melbourne (a very big deal here and in England the motherland).  Lots of restaurants are closed from tomorrow until mid-January or Australia Day (Jan 26) so the holiday is really just beginning. 

Our office is closed until January 4, so we are looking forward to a break from work and a chance to take a trip or two to the coast.  Merry Christmas everyone!

'Twas the week before Christmas...

It is only one week until Christmas and we just can't wrap our heads around the whole "green Christmas" theme.  The Christmas decorations are out everywhere we go, Christmas carols are playing and the world's largest solar powered Christmas tree (above) is set up in King George Square.  One of the problems is that it is also rainy season and so the sky gets quite grey and threatening most afternoons.  After more than 40 years of grey skies in December meaning cold, it is hard to start thinking that they now mean hot and humid.  Someone who has been here for more than a decade told us that it took him more than 4 years to adjust.  Overall if getting used to 30C in December is the hardest adjustment that we need to make for our move, we are up for it.

The work culture is different from Calgary when it comes the Christmas celebrations.  Instead of getting all dressed up and taking your spouse/partner/date to a party with co-workers, we have afternoon parties with co-workers and are done by 5.  It is nice to have an afternoon off to sit in the shade and watch a bunch of mildly drunk men try to play cricket, or to have a Hawaiian theme party in a place that is already tropical.  We both had our parties this week and they were really fun!  No stress, no worries about transportation or seating arrangements, just a casual afternoon with the office mates.

This coming week we expect the office to be fairly quiet.  This coincides with school (summer) holidays, so many people start to take time off now.  All of the year-end reserves have already taken place, so it is a really relaxed environment.  We have the week off between Christmas and New Years and hope to make it to the beach a couple of times.  Other than day trips, we are saving our more serious travel for February and March, when the temperature cools.  Our hottest day so far was this week: 32C, 90% humidity followed by a massive thunder storm...at least we didn't need to to shovel the sidewalk afterwards!

First Quarterly Report

As of December 6, we have now been working in Brisbane for 3 months (we arrived two weeks before we started to work, so we have now been here for just over 3.5 months).  Overall it has been a very positive experience.  We love the weather and having a hot and humid Christmas (there's not a lot to miss about -25ºC!)  We really like the city and our neighbourhood, we love how easy it is to get around without a car and no one thinks it is odd that we don't own a vehicle.  We still get frustrated when we need to work hard to do something that would be so easy in Calgary, like finding a pharmacy that is open on Sunday, but those hiccups are few and far between, and very manageable.
We like our jobs but are still adjusting.  The work environment is very different from Calgary: the hours are as long, but no one would expect you to come in on a weekend...you would be made fun of and then ostracized for such behaviour; it is an "open office" environment, everyone from the VPs and managers to the admin staff sit in the same area, no walls, no privacy...hard to get used to for the first week and then it becomes very "team-ish" feeling, which is the whole point or having everyone on the same floor; no one ever blames the technical staff for the weather delaying operations, and, most importantly, there is a clear vision of where we are going and when we will get there (export 3 Bcf/day of LNG, starting in 2014).  However, even though we are so far away, there are still so many similarities in the office environment: rules for everything; there are meetings for each and every occurence, and sometimes the meeting is the occurence; and ALWAYS thinking about the budget!
We have found the people here to be incredibly friendly, whether we are looking for directions or just sitting in a pub trying to watch a new sport.  We have been positively spoiled with the quality and selection of fresh food and the Australian wine industry has exceeded their great reputation.  We have even driven here and not caused any damage.  We feel more welcome here than the time we drove to Nelson BC and had the hotel owner tell us how much she hates everyone from Calgary (of course she was more than willing to take our money!)

We are in a position where the Brisbanites are starting to apologize for the bad spring and early summer weather.  Australia is coming out of a 5 year drought and they are making up for it with massive amounts of rain.  Yesterday it rained 80mm!  But lets be candid, this isn't just a rainy day, it's a tropical monsoon.  Very warm and humid at +30ºC and raining like a bastard...most of the 80mm came down in less than an hour.  (The photos above are the street in front of our townhouse and the side yard, where they are busily upgrading our drainage pipes, hopefully not too late.)  There is a town north of here called Emerald, and they have been isolated by flood waters for more than 2 weeks.  No food gets in, no people get out...that is going to be one crazy-ass place when all of this is over!

Noosa!

We have just returned from our first Australian holiday.  We took a 4 day mini-break in Noosa, which is at the north end of the Sunshine Coast.  The area has long stretches of white sand beaches bordering a beautiful national park.  The main town is called "Noosaville" and it is where most of the hotels, shops and restaurants are located.  We stayed on Sunshine Beach, about a 45 minute walk from Noosaville, in a hotel looking out over the beach.  It was beautiful!
The first of December here is considered the first day of summer, which is also start of storm season.  This is the time of year when we start to get big thunderstorms, hail storms and lots of rain followed by lots of heat, giving high humidity and leading to more thunderstorms, hail storms and rain.  The picture above shows a cloudy sky, but the temperature was well into the mid 20s, with water temps in the low 20s.  We went on a 5km hike through the national park and we were so glad it was cloudy.  Everytime the clouds cleared a bit the temperature shot up by about 5 degrees and the humidity felt like it was about 10% higher.  It was a fantastic walk with lots of flowers and trees.  We saw different types of lizards and got scared out of our skin by a kookaburra that flew low over our heads and shrieked.  Those things are LOUD!  We were hoping for koalas, but weren't lucky enough to see any.  It is a good reason to go back.
We had such a good time on this trip that we can't wait to plan our next Australian vacation!

Christmas Down Under

As we near the end of November, here in Australia everyone's thoughts turn to school holidays, summer time fun and Christmas.  Even though this is not only a tropical country, but one with season's in the reverse of the Northern Hemisphere, the Christmas spirit here is entirely having to do with winter themes:  snow, skating, Frosty and the North Pole.  There is also a store with some of the creepiest Christmas displays that either of us have ever seen.  The window above is a depiction of a scene from "The Nutcracker", complete with the eye-patch and cape wearing Uncle Drosselmeyer, flapping his arms in a rather hypnotic way. 

There are Christmas trees in every office lobby, a gigantic Christmas tree in the square outside of the city hall (due for the big lighting ceremony on Dec 3) and, as part of the "Fun Land World" on the Gold Coast, there is a place called "White Christmas" (or something like that) that features skating and other delights of the cold weather.  If only they knew about -30C plus windchill!  Now THAT would be a fantasy park worth building!

This week we go on our first Australian holiday.  We are giving "White Christmas" a pass and are heading an hour north to the Sunshine Coast on Thursday morning for a 3 day mini-break. 

A week of firsts

Now that we have been here almost three months, things are starting to get routine.  We have found ways to walk in the morning and not be completely overwhelmed by the sun and the humidity (carry an umbrella like a parasol and wear shorts!), we automatically know which way to watch for traffic when crossing the street and we are not quite so freaked out by big spiders or lizards in the house...well maybe we haven't quite adjusted to the last two, but it will happen.

After three months in Queensland, new residents are supposed to get a Queensland driver's licence.   We filled out all of our paper work and had our 100 points of ID (we first thought this meant 100 pieces of ID, but it is a system based on having ID with a photo and a signature...a passport is about 70 points) and went to the ministry for what we expected to be a two hour process.  20 minutes later we had our new licences.  Now we are completely legal to drive here.  Lucky for us (unlucky for Australia) we didn't need to take a road test!

This was also Joanne's first birthday in Australia (although far from her first birthday ever) and we discovered yet another fantastic restaurant.  Australia is very much a food nation.  We have just finished watching a television series to determine Australia's best chef under the age of 13.  It was amazing! 

Coastal Villages

One of the many advantages to living in Brisbane is that we are so close to the ocean.  On Saturday we hopped on a train near our house and, 30 minutes later, we were in Sandgate, one of the many coastal villages to the east of Brisbane.  There are about 12 of these villages that were once separate towns but are now suburbs of Brisbane.  It is a very easy train commute into the city and a lot of people live in these villages to take advantage of being right on the ocean, but also being close enough to the CBD that the commute is not ridiculously long.  There are some people who live on the Gold or Sunshine Coasts and commute for more than an hour to get in to work...crazy!
There isn't a beach at Sandgate (so the "sand" part of the name is a little misleading) but it does have a really nice boardwalk that is about 5km long.  The sea is really shallow here and it is a popular place for both windsurfing and parasailing (above photo).  There is a really nice steady ocean breeze, so it is a great place to cool down and watch the parasailers. 

The parasailers have quite a bit of speed and they can get launched into the air.  There are also many people of different skill levels trying to parasail in the same small area, so everyone needs to excercise control.  While we were there a couple of dogs decided that it would be great sport to chase down one of the parasailers.  The dogs didn't really have a chance of catching the guy but it was really entertaining to watch.  Clearly the dogs' owner was not too bothered by the "dogs must be on a leash" rule.
It is pretty hard to fault the dogs for wanting to have a run in the sea.  The water was as warm as a bath!

Sunrise

One thing that has surprised us here is sunrise...not that there is one, but how early it is.  By 5:00 in the morning the sun is fully up.  By the time we leave for work, between 7:15 and 7:45, the sun is high enough and hot enough that we need to wear sunblock for the walk in.  We walk east to the CBD and have to deal with the bright sun in our faces and the glint of the sunlight off the river...it is positively blinding!  We expected this in January and February, but it has been this way since we got here. 
Like anywhere else that is near a large body of water, they often get rain on really hot days.  So far we have been lucky and yesterday we just missed a sudden downpour by about 3 minutes.  It doesn't matter whether the umbrella is up or not, this rain blows around and soaks one completely within minutes!  It is more like the spring weather in Calgary, with the clouds building up throughout the day until a massive thunder storm rolls through between 4 and 5 in the afternoon, but these happen in the morning.  Yesterday it rained, but it wasn't even cloudy.  Just one more mystery from the other side of the world.

Settling In

Call it Brisgary or Calbane, but we are now happily settling in with the arrival of our furniture.  As you can see from the photos above (top from Calgary, lower from Brisbane) we are not quite in the state of neatness that we should be, but that will come. 
We had more than 200 packages/items delivered on Thursday.  We have opened about 90% of the boxes, but have not unpacked everything.  We have a smaller place here than we had in Calgary, so we ended up with an extra couch and two extra chairs that we didn't have a home for.  Luckily a Canadian has arrived with no furniture and had intended to just buy things as he settled in.  He won't need too much by the time we are finished with him!  We did a good job of thinning out our belongings in Calgary, but we still have plenty of extras.
It was quite funny to go through the boxes.  It was almost inmpossible to tell what was going to be in each gigantic wad of paper packing material.  We actually spent two minutes unwrapping what turned out to be two mechanical pencils and an eraser, wrapped together as though they had to survive in King Tut's tomb!  It was also hard to guess the contents of each box, as almost everything, including our two cases of wine, were labeled "ornaments".  Of all the things that were sent, there were only two things broken: an old Rubbermaid container full of camping stuff and a frameless picture holder from Ikea.  Not too bad.
We know that there is still plenty to unpack and we need to get the owner's permission to hang pictures, but now it really is home sweet home!

Driving

For getting around the city, its been all trains, buses, ferries, and taxi's for us, but for the first time since we arrived, we drove!   We are getting our furniture from Calgary delivered on Thursday and so we needed to buy lamps and a few other things to replace the rental products that will be picked up before our furniture arrives.  And when you need lamps, a garbage can, a shelving unit and a bunch little things for the house, nothing beats IKEA.  Like all IKEAs, the one here is far away from the city centre.  The suburb it is in is about 25 minutes drive from where we live and we actually drove on the freeway!  In fact things went so well that we drove to another mall to buy a vacuum cleaner and we didn't get lost or cause any accidents.  What more can you ask for?
Jim did all of the driving and we aren't sure whether it is less stressful to drive on the opposite side of the road, or be the passenger.  Nothing looks right and there is no possibity of allowing your mind to wander for even a second.  You have to watch where you are in the lane, where the other drivers are and make sure that you don't get all "North American" and start driving on the right hand side of the road. 
Jim adapted really fast.  Going to IKEA was a little tricky, but it soon became second nature.  He turned when he should, how he should and remembered to shoulder check the right way.  Traffic roundabouts were initially odd to say the least, but they work so good...why hasn't North America embraced the roundabout?  Probably the hardest part is getting past the "muscle memory".  The signal is on the right hand side of the steering wheel and the windshield wipers are on the left.  When Joanne drove she washed the windows everytime she turned a corner.  The rental car was an automatic...you need a special license to rent a manual transmission.
This was a BIG step for us.  We won't be leasing a car (why pay to let a vehicle sit in the garage 25 days a month?) but we will definitely be renting a bit and have a vacation to the Sunshine Coast coming up.

Spider-blog!

Like everyone else in Australia, we dry most of our clothes on a clothesline.  We do have a dryer (negotiated it on our rental agreement) but it is very small and we really only use it for towels or things that will take a long time to dry.  We may, however, start using it just a little bit more. 
Our clothesline is in our backyard.  It is one of these collapsible dealies that folds down flat against the fence.  On Saturday morning we hung up some laundry and when we pulled out the frame of the clothesline, discovered an entire web-world created by one very industrious spider.  The spider seemed content to stay in it's own corner so, after great deal of toe and bum-clenching, we got the clothes hung up on the other end of the line and Jim called on his vast store of his spider-killing abilities.  These abilities worked very well in Canada.  The Aussie spider had a few moves that Jim had not seen before.  With Jim, heavily armed with a handful of paper towels, trying to lunge and grab spidey, Joanne stood on a chair in the house, with the glass doors closed, making squealing noises.  After about 5 minutes of war, a truce was declared and the spider abandoned his web, going off to live in a nearby tree.
After we got our heart rates back down near normal we went back out to hang up the rest of the laundry.  Some kind of movement caught our attention.  On a web above the backdoor of our neighbours' house was a spider with a body the size of an average adult's thumb...plus his legs!  He can easily be seen from 5 metres away, which was how far away the above photo was taken (with maximum zoom).
If we find one of these spiders on our clothesline, we'll just buy new clothes every week.  Neither of us is going near one of those things!

Cents

We have now been here for 8 weeks and are really feeling at home.  We walk on the left hand side of the street, we order drinks at the bar and carry them back to our table and we no longer wait to get a penny in our change.
Money in Australia is similar to Canada.  The bills are different colours (purple, blue, pink and yellow) and they have $1 and $2 coins (which we call loonies and toonies, because those names are awesome).  They have 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent and 50 cent coins, but no pennies!  There are lots of prices that end in 99 cents, but it is just for show.  The final amount is rounded up or down, usually in favour of the customer.  It is really nice not to have a change purse full of pennies.  There is no standing in line behind someone at the till in the grocery store, counting out 120 pennies to buy a pack of gum!
The Canadian Mint proposed a similiar measure a few years ago, but it didn't go anywhere.  If it ever comes up and goes to a vote, we can recommend dropping the penny.  It might mean finding a use for all of those mason jars full of pennies that are cluttering up the house, but just think of the freedom in a penny-free world!

Dining Out

The restaurants in Brisbane are really amazing.  There is every kind of cuisine imaginable and the restaurants are usually clustered together so that if you don't fancy the first restaurant you get to, there is another just a few metres away.  The photo above is from Park Road, the restaurant "village" that is about 3 minutes from where we live.  Oddly enough, the French restaurant is beneath a palm tree further along the street and there is an Italian restaurant beneath the Eiffel Tower.
There are lots of seafood restaurants here, but the biggest and best surprise for us have been the steak houses.  And not just a steak house, but a steak house that specializes in char-grilled steaks.  There is at least one in every cluster of restaurants and they always have a name that leaves nothing to the imagination: Cha-Cha-Char, Embers and, our favourite so far, Moo Moo.  And, like all good steak houses, they only sell meat dishes, no vegetarian dishes and especially no vegan dishes. 
We're sure they're out there, but we have yet to see a Mr Carrot Eatery or Veggies Galore Cafe.  Although even if we did see them, it's unlikely we'd go in.  Who wants a big juicy radish to close out the work week?

Gobble! Gobble!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!  As far as we can tell, there is no equivalent holiday here.  No-one butchers up a bush turkey and serves it for dinner...it's probably just as well, these look none too tasty!

What no-one here is thankful for is the rain!  It has rained almost 180mm in the last 24 hours...a tropical monsoon, and the wettest October on record.  In a country/region that is normally fighting annual droughts, the entire place is inundated right now.  There is enough water in the Brisbane reservoir right now to last for 5 years, even if they don't get another drop of rain!  The rains here come in from the ocean so, unlike in Calgary where it can rain in and around the city and just flow along the Bow out of town (excpet 2005!), the rain stays here and does the damage here.  There is some flooding, but it doesn't seem to devastating.  What is causing more damage is the erosion of the shoreline.  It seems bad now, but the surfers will be out in force as soon as the beaches reopen.  At least they have something to be thankful for.



The Rogaine Competition

There are always team-building competitions going on at work.  Jim's team recently went to a park and one of the employees from South America cooked arapas for everyone.  On Friday, Joanne's group had a Rogaine competition.  A Rogaine competition has nothing to do with growing hair (although she would be a clear winner on that front), it is a combination of orienteering and a scavenger hunt (the name comes from probably three drunk friends trying to have some fun, coming up with a game and naming it after themselves...Robert, Gairy (?) and Neil, maybe).

The department was divided up into teams of three.  They had 10 minutes to mark on a map the location of the items in 10 photos (some were easy, but it was hard to place the close-ups of sidewalks or a certain tile on a building), then they headed out and had one hour to complete a series of tasks.  Some of the tasks involved going to specific places (the library to note the exact title of a certain search number) and some of the tasks involved wandering the CBD and looking for opportunities.  The tasks had different points, from 5 to 15.  5 points were easy to get, 15 points involved more work.  One task was to buy a copy of "The Big Issue", which is a magazine sold by people who are on the fringes of the economy.  Another task was to ask someone to try on his/her vest.  In the above photo, Joanne has talked The Big Issue agent into letting her put on his vest for a photo.  There was discussion by the judges about awarding bonus points for efficiency in getting two tasks at once, but no luck.  Since Joanne had no idea where to go to get things done, she was stuck with the embarrassing tasks, like doing the moonwalk in the 7/11 store (a video exists of this) and singing on the Queen St Mall (see the photo below). 

The final results: out of four teams, Joanne's was tied for second.  Next time they will argue for the bonus points!

Daylight Savings Time

In case you are wondering why we have so many night-time photos, it is because a) Brisbane is not as far south as Calgary is north and so we do not have the big swing between light and dark that one gets as one nears the poles, so the nights are longer here and b) Queensland does not have Daylight Savings Time.  It gets light here at about 5 am...and not twilight, but LIGHT!  The birds start their screeching about 30 minutes before the sun comes up (the little buggers) and it is HOT when we walk in to work.  Joanne has had a 7:45 am sunburn and Jim now wears shorts to walk in.  It is hot and sunny.  The early daylight at this latitude also means that we get early nightfall.  When we first moved here it was totally dark by 6:15, but now it gets dark at around 6:30pm, and it is always twilight when we are walking home.  The nights here are warm, so it is quite nice to be out in the 23ºC weather, with 80% humidity.  We have yet to wear jackets on the way home, or anytime since we landed.

Daylight Savings Time is a hot-button topic here.  Queensland, the Northern Territories and Western Australia do not have Daylight Savings Time, but the ACT (Canberra), New South Wales, Southern Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales do.  This means that if one travels south (towards Sydney) along the Gold Coast, one goes from a Queensland resort town to a NSW resort town, sometimes only 100's of metres apart, and loses an hour.  There is now talk of creating a SE Queensland district that will have DST.  Whenever we are asked if all of Canada is on DST, we answer "Everywhere except Saskatchewan, and there they don't have it because of the farmers not wanting to upset the cow's schedule".  This is the same answer that they have here!  Since when have cows been running the world?  They don't even pay taxes!  We have been told that the DST issue goes to a referendum every year or so, and if it does, you know where our vote is going....vote Yes to DST!

Finals Weekend!

We have just been through the ultimate in sport weekends...if you actually understand all of the sports that are available here to watch.  First we had the Grand Final for the AFL, which was the second "Grand Final" after last weekend's tie between the Collingwood Magpies and the St Kilda Saints (the Magpies were the winners).  Then it was the Rugby League Grand Final...except that when we stopped in to watch it in a pub we actually ended up watching a different Grand Final in rugby, this time for gigantic under-20s (seriously, these players are massive, they have thighs the size of a panda's butt!)  The real "Grand Final" was played a few hours later.  Luckily our accents and clear lack of understanding lead a kindly bartender to explain the whole set-up to us.  In addition to all of this, they report heavily on the Ryder Cup and the Commonwealth Games.
So why did we spend a weekend watching sports?  It rained here all weekend, not a heavy tropical downpour, but a constant swirling mist causing the humidity to rise to infinity.  We both are getting big, curly heads of hair and are always looking quite refreshed.  Coming from the dry climate of Calgary, we really find this refreshing.  Some Australians hate it and that is too bad: they are predicting that we are going in to one of the wettest summers on record!

Rainy Day

The above photos show the Regatta Hotel, one of the oldest buildings in Brisbane.  It is on one of the main roads, about 30m from the Brisbane River.  In the top photo there are some small rectangles on the side of building.  These rectangles mark the high water level during the years of the big floods: 1974, 1887, 1983 and 1841, from the bottom to the top.  In other words, they get some crazy high waters here!  (For some prospective, this is a three story building).  Although I am sure there are now some modern protective measures in place to minimize the high waters.

Today we experienced our first heavy rain, and even the locals thought that it was bad.  The weather prediction was for "intermittent showers, up to 3mm".  Instead, we had what we think of as a monsoon!  The day started out cloudy and very hot, then at around 10am the sky turned completely black and the rain started.  This is not like a bad prairie storm, this is an absolute downpour!  It rained sideways and everything on the horizon just disappeared behind the clouds.  We couldn't see across the street from our office.  The clouds moved fast and it rained off and on all afternoon, with a total accumulation of 28mm, almost 10 times what was predicted.  Now we know why it floods!

 (Sorry for the bad photo quality, our temporary internet connection here is really pokey with uploads and we can't yet load everything into Flikr...soon, my pretties).

Historic Weekend

On Saturday afternoon the final match of the Australian Rules Football League took place.  This is a huge event, on par with the Superbowl, including some fantastic commercials.  Everyone at work was saying that we needed to see this match so, on Saturday, we left our house in Milton (see photo above!) and made our way to the Pig and Whistle Pub to watch the game. 

We got ourselves a table and a drink and it really must have been obvious to the table of Aussies next to us that we had no idea what was going on because, only about 20 minutes into the game, three of them sat at our table and answered all of our questions.  By the end of the game we had been adopted by a big group of "Footie Fans" and had a fantastic time.  We even made ourselves look good by singing the team song at the top of our voices ("When the Saints go marching in"...we already knew it!)

What made this match so historic was that it ended in a tie!  Unlike many sports, they don't play overtime or have a shoot out, they will actually play an entire match on Saturday of next week.  This has happened before, but it was at a time when the players were playing part-time and all of them had full-time jobs in other fields.  They couldn't play overtime because they all had to work the next day!  Now the players are big money athletes, fully devoted to playing ARL football.  Before the match, Julia Gillard, the prime minister who herself had just been through a tie-election, made a joke about how they had better make sure that there is a clear winner, as Australians had been through too much tension in the last couple of months.

So now on Saturday, after delaying festivals and moving concerts around to free up the stadium in Melbourne, the St Kilda Saints and the Collingwood Magpies will be back on the field and we will be watching along with the rest of Australia.  Go Saints!



The River

The Brisbane River is big in the news these days.  The photo above (taken with a Blackberry, so a little fuzzy) is from the Eagle St Pier.  This is an area at the edge of the CBD with lots of restaurants and plenty of places to sit outside and enjoy a drink with a view.  A couple of years ago, they spotted a dolphin swimming in this area.  Now, further towards the sea but still within Brisbane, they have had numerous shark sitings.  The one that really made the news was of a man in a kayak enjoying an early morning paddle when a bullshark surfaced beside him!  It was 3m long, easily bigger (and stronger) than his kayak.  Once this story came out the City Cat operators said that they weren't surprised, as they have seen numerous sharks not just surfacing, but LEAPING out of the water, early in the morning.  Apparently, they are feeding on the bats.

This is one crazy place!

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/m-shark-seen-in-brisbane-creek/story-e6freoof-1225927247657

Four!

We have now been Australia for four weeks, and today (September 21) is our fourth anniversary!  We were also woken up at four in the morning by a flock of birds that sounded like a pack of wild hyenas.  None of the birds here seem to just chirp or peep.  They shriek, howl, squawk and click, but no peeping.  We guess that they don't need to have a gentle call to attract a mate for a brief mating season.  If they miss one, there will be another mating season next week!

We are getting closer to having a recognized existance.  The city has given us rubbish bins and we are now on the pick-up schedule.  We are going to try, once again, to have phone/internet/cable hooked up on the weekend.  Once we have the internet hooked up properly, expect to be inundated by photos. 

It wouldn't make for much of a photo, but we have now had two days of constant rain.  It is a very light rain, so light that we can't hear it hitting our umbrellas, but it is constant.  Some people (locals, obviously) don't even bother with umbrellas!  We would rather stay dry than look cool.

Do we exist?

We are still adjusting to the differences between renting a house and owning a house.  For instance, there is a room in our house to which we do not have a key.  In the global rental agreement used in Brisbane, it states that tenants should have at least one key to every lock on the premises, unless there is some sort of special reason why they shouldn't.  The reason that we don't have a key to the special room in our house is that "all the electricity is in there".  The owner, who does not live in Australia, beleives that tenants may get up to all kinds of shenanigans if they can access the electricity.

The owner (or builder) also seems to have skipped a few vital steps in finishing the property: we cannot get a phone hook-up, internet or cable because of some illegal wiring, and we can't get garbage pick-up because our address does not exist, according to the City of Brisbane.  This duplex appears to be a slightly shady bit of subdividing that is not recognized by the City.  It is all getting sorted out, but everytime we phone a city service for some kind of information and tell they where we live, they say "That address does not seem to exist.  Are you sure you live there?"  We are very lucky to have a relocation specialist who has made it her personal mission to get everything sorted out within the next three days.  She has 6 kids and is used to getting the impossible done.  We are very confident in her!

On our walk into the CBD in the mornings we sometimes see critters like the one in the photo.  He seems pretty happy and no one questions his existance.  He is one lucky dude.

Wednesday Market

One thing that we are really spoiled with here is the amount of fresh food that is constantly available.  Every Wednesday, from 10am - 6pm, there is a MASSIVE farmer's market on the Queen Street Mall.  They have people selling meat, fish, veg, fruit, chocolates, crafts, pastas...the list goes on.  And the most amazing thing about it is that everything is completely fresh...and this is the end of winter!  It gets really crowded on a lunch hour, but it is well worth a walk through just to hear the selling pitches, "$6 for strawberries...not for one pack, but for two!  That's right, $6 for half a kilo of starwberries!  How am I in business!  I must be crazy!  Take advantage of me now before I go broke!" or "These avacodos will ripen over the next two weeks, in case you aren't smart enough to put them in the fridge right away!"
In other news, we have now both received our first pay cheques in months.  It's good to be working!

New Digs

We have moved into our new duplex in the Milton suburb of Brisbane. We have everything in the area that we need, especially since we don't have a car. We are less than a three minute walk from a mini-maill with an IGA, a bakery, a fruit and veg stand, a pharmacy, a dry-cleaner, a pizza place, a Mexican restaurant, a news stand, a fish monger and a liquor store! We are also about a 10 minute walk from a restaurant with the best lunch-time slow cooked pork sandwich that either of us have ever had. It was pretty high on the list of deciding factors in our neighbourhood search.

This place is brand new. The other half of the duplex is currently unoccupied, so we have the run of the joint, but are having to deal with initial services being put in, like the phone line to be hooked up and garbage cans to be delivered. We are also waiting for a modem, so no internet at home now. Once we are all wired in, we can upload some photos and show off our jazzy new place. We should have our furniture in by the end of November (or earlier, we hope!), and then it will really feel like home.

So far, after one week of work, we are both liking it but still adjusting to getting up in the morning and going to the office. At least it's a nice walk in!

Cruise Ship Terminal

We were very surprised on Sunday when we took the City Cat in the East direction and, after 20 minutes, arrived at the cruise ship terminal.  As you can see from the size of the ship in the photo above (taken on Blackberry, so not the clearest), this is really deep water.  No wonder there are sharks in the river!
We have now had three full days of work and are starting to get settled in.  There is nothing exotic about Canadians in the Santos Brisbane office.  Each of us have been sitting in meetings where sometimes 20% of the people in the room are from Canada.  As far as we know there is another group of 10 Canadians who were hired in Calgary at the June Oil and Gas convention.  They should be here by the end of 2010.  We can't get away from these people!

Back to reality!

Today was our first day at our new jobs at Santos.  It was also the most time that we have spent apart in the last 7 months!  The new jobs seem good and we are just the first in a small wave of Canadians that Santos has hired in the last couple of months.  Most will be arriving in October and November. 
We also had some good news about a rental place that we applied for at the end of last week.  The third time was the charm for us and we take possession of our new townhouse on Friday.  The rental process here can be a little sticky.  It isn't always clear what is going on or how it will proceed.  The first place we applied for (an apartment) already had an application in and approval was pending.  We didn't know this until after the fact, and we would not have applied for the apartment if we had known (although it was a beautiful ground-floor place with river views and a pool).  The second place we applied for was a fanastic house that had been converted from industrial use (a cheese factory).  It was a really interesting place, but it was actually for sale and the owners were just feeling out the rental market.  They decided to sell rather than rent, so the application was also denied (why the secrecy? just take the bloody place off the rental market!)  We applied for this townhouse on Friday and right away we were sure that we would get it.  The rental company communicated with us right away and we were told we would hear from them on Monday, and we did.  This place was our strong first choice until we saw the other places.  It fell to third, but we think that we will be happier here than we would have been at the other, jazzier places.  This one is in a neighbourhood that is more our style and the rent is half the price of the other places.  Sometimes things just work out right!

River Fire!

There is an arts and music festival in Brisbane at the beginning of September, "The Brisbane Festival".  The first night there is a MASSIVE fireworks show called "River Fire".  We have seen plenty of fireworks shows at the Stampede and around the world, but this one, maybe because it was completely new, was incredibly impressive.

The fireworks initiate from different points all along the Brisbane river.  People start getting seats, or standing spots, starting around 3 in the afternoon.  The fireworks start around 7pm.  First there is a flyover by an Australian F111, which does a "dump and burn", or an ignition of it's fuel/vapour cloud, which is wickedly impressive and you can almost feel the heat.  The fireworks are not fom one central point, but from the tops of buildings along the river, from the bridges and from special temporary pontoons that are anchored on the river.

The show took almost 30 minutes and we were both so impressed...absolutely stunning, we have never seen anything like it!  Over the last couple of days, when ever a local heard our Canadian (foreign) accents, he/she would tell us to make sure that we saw River Fire.  Now we know why!  As much as we don't like our temporary accomodation, we will miss this view next year.

The first day of Spring

Our realtor told us that September 1 is considered the first day of spring in Australia (rather than the 21st, the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere).  It was a balmy 26C and we took a ride on the "Brisbane Wheel", which is like the "London Eye", but half the size and, obviously, it is in Brisbane rather than London.
Even though there are sharks in the river, people still want to be able to go for a swim.  In the photo above, taken during our ride on the Wheel, there is a turquoise pool surrounded by palm trees in the lower third of the picture.  All along the river side in this area of Brisbane (South Bank) there are man-made beaches with beautiful white sand and lots of pools, some of them up to 2m deep.  They are mostly for kids, but the water is nice and warm and there were lots of people around and in the water.  Just offsetting the water there are tons of shops and restaurants, so South Bank is almost like a little resort town, right in the city.  This is also at the edge of the campus for Gritffith University, probably a much nicer setting than the middle of Calgary or Regina or just about anywhere that any of us went to school!

The crazy Brisbane rental market

Today we went apartment hunting with our realtor, who is provided by Santos.  This is not like apartment hunting in Calgary (at least neither of us remember it this way), because we had to make appointments at every place we saw and there was another realtor there to let us in.
We went to 6 places in 4 hours.  We saw apartments and condos, we saw magnificent views with perfect privacy and we also patio saw spa tubs that were looked over by 100 other apartments from high density housing, and we saw our target neigbourhoods from entirely new perspectives.  At the end of the day, once we had seen all of our choices and the realtors choices, we came down to two places.  Our initial first choice, based on internet searching, fell to the bottom of the pile as we found out that pictures do not really tell the whole story.  The very first place we looked at, that neither of us thought would be appealing, really captured both our imaginations.  While we were looking at it, the lessor realtor brought in another client, so we knew there was potential for competition.  The more we looked at other places, the more we realized that the first place felt like our place.   After spending more than an hour filling out applications, including multiple copies of ID, we found out that there is another bid!  We have never been through this for an apartment.  Now we have one or two sleepless nights until we hear whether we are successful or not.
Neither one of us has ever been in a rental market like this.  It is has really opened our eyes to what renters in Calgary were going through in 2007 - 2009.  The one thing we can say about the place that we applied for is that the current tenant is one of the most disgusting, piggy renters that either of us have ever seen.  There were clothes everywhere, toys everywhere, dishes everywhere and a general stink throughout.  Luckily, the tenant is responsible for a tip-to-toe steam cleaning.  If the owner makes the smart shoice and accepts us as tenants for the next year, we will definitely be taking better care than the current renter!

City Cat

Our first few days here have been spent doing some non-touristy things: we have explored several neighbourhoods where we could potentially rent a home and we spent at least an hour on four separate days getting our cell phones set up (that's right, four days: the Blackberry handsets that we brought with us had to be converted over to accept a SIM card from any provider; we had to provide copies of our passports and visas; we had to get copies of our "welcome" letters from the bank showing that we had a bank account, then we had to go back and get another letter with a temporary Australian address on it...the list goes on and, now that we finally have phone numbers, we still need to go back and get them to trouble shoot a few things!)

Today, Sunday, we decided to take the City Cat on a tour of the Brisbane river. The City Cat is part of the Brisbane public transportation system. It is a catamaran (actually, they are a number of catamarans) that go from the University in the South to Brett's Wharf in the North. We took a trip from outside of our condo to the University, then back to the Eagle St Pier. The entire trip took about an hour, and we had a great view of the city from the river. The City Cat is a fantastic way for people who live far outside of the CBD (Central Business District, the same thing as a downtown) to get to work. It was also quite well used by both tourists and locals (we fall into both camps now) on a mild Sunday at the end of winter. It is warm enough to sit out on the deck of the boat, but not nice enough to welcome the wind.

Many locals choose to recreate on the Brisbane River despite being in the middle of winter. Today there were many jet-ski's and even a wakeboarder and water skiier...so much for the bull sharks scaring them away!

Bull Sharks!

We had dinner last night with some of Jim's new workmates and we asked them if many people swam in the Brisbane River. They told us that no one does because there are bull sharks in the river! A big, beautiful river and it is FULL of sharks (although it has been years since anyone has been killed by one, it is not comforting to think of them just lurking below the surface, waiting for the white and juicy Canadians to get in the water.)

We have spent the last 2 days walking around the city and trying to figure out where we want to live. Everything looks so close on the map, but once we start walking we run into hills or floating pathways that take us to beautiful spots that are nowhere near where we had intended to be, or we just get distracted by something new, like the gigantic vulture/buzzard/turkey bird that we saw walking on someone's front lawn...everything is new, it's like we are babies!

New Beginnings

We have landed in Brisbane! It took about 24 hours with 18 hours of flight time, but we (and our luggage!), made it safely to Brisbane. We have spent our first day here getting familiar with the city and exploring neighbourhoods where we might want to live. We have also found a fantastic wine store, thanks to an Aussie working at one of our favourite wine stores, Bin 905, in Calgary.

We start our jobs September 6, so in the next 10 days we will be meeting with a realtor to continue our search for a "permanent" rental, and meeting with some folks from Santos to get us ready for our new jobs. Sadly, our days of leisure are about to come to an end, but at least we have the Aussie summer to look forward to.

The photos are the view from our balcony, looking over the Brisbane River.

The time has come...

We cannot believe that we are now on the last night of our trip, day number 55. Tomorrow we fly back to Canada and our European trip will end. The time has flown by!

Our last day in London has been wonderful. We went to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. Both museums were far beyond our expectations and our half day planned in the museums turned into a full day. We also had the fun of a London downpour, which starts as suddenly as it stops, but is an absolute drenching while it lasts. The best thing to do is to find shelter and wait it out. On a strange but true note, we saw a man walking next to us on the sidewalk slip on a banana peel...didn't think that happened in real life, but it did. He went ass over tea kettle.

We have so many great things to list from this trip that it will take us a few days of being back to really sort through the highlights. For now, a brief list (in no particular order): the Greek Island cruise, the hiking in Italy and France, the winding streets of old Lyon, the amazing architecture in London, the Roman sites of Provence, ancient Greek sites in the Peloponnese and, of course, the food that we have enjoyed over the last 8 weeks has been fantastic!

We will post a few more photos and a few more thoughts once we have had a couple of days at home. We have a few things up our sleeve(s) for the summer, and we will update everyone with our other plans as soon as they have been solidified.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read our blog!

The Eye

Our very clever friend Rodger booked tickets for the three of us on the London Eye, on-line, prior to leaving Calgary. Instead of being clogged up with 35 other patrons (or however many fit in one of the pods) we got to jump the queue and were reserved a pod with only one other person! We were able to walk around and gaze out in every direction, we could take photos where ever we wanted to and we didn't have to try to sneak a shot over someone else's shoulder. It's an expensive ride on a ferris wheel juiced up on steroids, but magnificent.

After the Eye we walked to the British Museum for lunch and a took a circuit through (what a museum!...the Egyptian collection is something we will never forget). Being in museum mode, we continued on to the British Library, where we saw old maps, old illuminated bibles, a copy of Magna Carta, and some lyrics written out by the Beatles! There was something for everyone.

Earlier in the day we walked the creepy streets where Jack the Ripper once lurked, as well as the original site of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not be tripping over history here.

London Blitz

We are continuing with our mad dash through London. We spent one day hitting St. Paul's Cathedral (including a round trip 1060 stairs to the top of the dome), the London Bunker and Churchill Museum and the Imperial War Museum. We spent today doing the most touristy thing imaginable: we took a double decker tour bus around the city. We enjoyed the first one so much that we ended up taking another tour of a different route.

No matter how cliche it is to climb up to the open deck of the bus and listen to commentary while clicking away at all photos ops as they whiz by (most of them ending up quite blurry), the tour was invaluable and we would recommend it to anyone. We saw many sites that we could have not got to on our own and we also got a sense of how London is laid out. The relative proximity of everything is very surprising, since taking the tube so much doesn't give us a sense of how close, or far, the older sites are. We never knew how far Buckingham Palace was from the Tower of London, or how large Hyde Park is or how much is concentrated in the area of the Parliament Buildings.

We have had surprises on the trip: on the first day the three of us had to run for our lives to get out of the way of a rogue pelican that was rushing through crowds trying to get back to his pond; we had dinner at a French restaurant that was run by the most militant group of French people on the planet: 45 minutes to eat, no choice for food ("take it or leave it" was the only choice) or wine ("house red")...but the meal was surprisingly good; and walking through Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park when all the crazies were out preaching their words. After 7 weeks of travel we thought we were pretty seasoned, but we had never before run into anything like it. We heard and saw everything from a man explaining the Big Bang theory, to a debate about democracy in the muslim world, to the people in the crowd who argue with the Speakers, to random yelling and, of course, the guy who was giving away free hugs. None of us took him up on the offer.

The best part was that someone took the time to tell us that Jesus loves us, so at least we've got that going for us!

London

We are now in London, the last stop on our 8 week trip. London is very different for us for a few reasons: we can speak English in hotels and restaurants, we have to look the other way before we cross the street and, the best thing, we have been joined here by our friend Rodger!
We have already seen Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London and the Tate Modern. We have been zipping around on the tube like pros (thanks to Rodger). Joanne has stepped in gum twice (once for each shoe) and managed to walk about three blocks with a cigarette butt stuck to the gum on her right shoe...classy!
London is such a beautiful and vibrant city. Like everywhere else we have been, there is so much history here that it gets overwhelming. It has extremely old buildings and uber modern buildings right beside each other, and somehow it seems to work. Everyone seems to be in a great hurry, but still take the time to say "excuse me", when they need to squeeze past on the sidewalk.
The food here has been very good. There are restaurants serving every kind of ethnic food, traditional pubs and, our favourite so far, a wine room lit only by candles, in an ancient cellar with a ceiling only 5 feet high.

Lille Photos

Lille

We are in Lille and our last stop in "Europe". Tomorrow we take the Eurostar to London and a week from now we are back in Calgary.Lille is part of the Flemish area in France and, architechturally, reminds us of Brugge. The language is French, but there is a different accent and there are many words on menus that we have never seen before. As a culturally rich border town with a major railway connection hub, Lille has great shopping and is teeming with outdoor cafes and Belgian brew.
This is a great city for a layover. It is easy to walk around and there is just enough to do to fill a day without it being too much activity, nor too little so that you're done by mid morning. There is a surprisingly wonderful museum called the Palais des Beaux Arts, containing the second largest collection in France after the Louvre, and without anywhere near the same crowds...nice!

* - Technical difficulties with photos, will post when possible!

Lyon at Night

Lyon is really beautiful at night. Every building, old or new, and every street is lit. It's not lit so blindingly that it feels like noon, but the lighting really captures the grandeur and detail. This is a fantastic place to take a walk after dark. Lyon is so well known for their outdoor lighting of monuments that they hold conferences on landscape lighting which are considered "elite", and are extremely well respected and attended.