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!