I'm back ONLINE! Did you miss me?

Since our free wireless has stopped working, we finally decided to pick up some of our own. Luckily, we'll be able to expense most of it. =)

So, what have we been doing while we've been offline??? On Monday, Nicole and I decided to try to walk to North Head which is the farthest east on our peninsula. We started from Manly Wharf and soon had to start walking up some hills. It appears that most of Sydney is built on hills. As we left the developed area and entered some park areas, we saw some interesting signs. What is a bandicoot?!


We actually took a very long detour due to poor signage and some accidental ignoring on my part. When we finally reached the top, there were some amazing views of the city and the ocean.


It was quite windy up there and along our whole walk, there were lots of flies attacking us. It didn't help that it was very hot because it seems as if more flies come out the hotter it is.


Some photos of the ocean breaking into the cliffs.


Some of the cliffs that were unreachable.


On Tuesday, we went exploring to Bondi Junction specifically to go to KMart. While we were there, we found a couple of company rip offs.


There are actually a couple differences between this sign and the US sign. The font is different as well as the color and they added in an angled period at the end. Inside the store, it's very similar.


Even Kmart is different here, but it's still called Kmart. Unclear what the international copyright infringements are, but this seems wrong.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Taxicabs. Besides the driving on the other side, as a lone passenger, you are expected to sit in the front seat of a taxi cab. Also, since Sydney is pretty big, there is a chance that your taxi driver might ask you to check the map to find your exact address when you get into your town. Also, all taxis take credit cards, which is pretty nice. Finally, you don't need to tip on top of the amount that the taxi cab is charging you, but that is consistent with the fact that you aren't expected to tip anywhere.

Internet Down

Sorry for no post earlier today. My free internet has been failing me and with David traveling, I haven't been able to be connected to the world since last night!

I'm looking into getting some real wireless that we pay for, so I'll update you with photos of what I've been up to once that is all settled!

Australia's strange fact of the day: Crossing the street. As all of you know, I'm from Boston where EVERYONE jaywalks. You cross whenever you can and just avoid the cars. In Australia, you can tell the difference between a tourist and a native. Natives will WAIT until the little green man appears indicating that you can walk. Even if no cars are at the intersection, they will still wait for the green man. And the little green man won't appear unless you actually push the button! It's amazingly weird, but I think it's part of the culture here. I'll give you more details on parts of their culture in a later time.

Traveling

Today, I had the opportunity to travel to Adelaide to spend a few days at the client. I had a 7:10am flight, but I wasn't sure exactly how long it took to get to the airport, or how early I needed to be there. So, I got up early (5:00) and had a taxi pick me up at 5:30. I got to the airport at 6:00 and was literally at the gate at 6:05. It's amazing how little security there is for domestic flights here. I never once even had to show my ID! Here's what I went through when I got to the airport:

Walk to check in machine (10 seconds)
Stick credit card in slot (2 seconds)
Confirm flight, choose seat, and print boarding pass (1 minute)
Walk to security area (20 seconds)
Take laptop out of bag, change out of pockets, bags on conveyor belt, and walk through metal detector (40 seconds)
Put laptop back in bag and pick up bags (20 seconds)
Walk to gate (1 minute)

At this point in the states I wouldn't even have made it past the check in machine. Next time I come I'm bringing the full bottle of shampoo, all 16 ounces...because I CAN.

Luckily, I was able to kill the next hour before my flight in the Qantas Lounge (one of the benefits of working at Bain Australia is they buy you access to the Qantas Lounge) where they served breakfast and coffee and had a nice waiting area to sit.

Adelaide is a funny city. It's known as the "20 minute city" because you can literally walk from one end to the other in 20 minutes. Also, it's very squat. The tallest building has like 10 floors. It's good for us short people. I feel quite tall. Possibly the weirdest thing about this city is that there is a time difference from Sydney...of 30 minutes. The jet lag really sucks. Seriously though, 30 minutes? Why even bother? Personally I think it gets light out too early here - it really should be more like 15 minutes behind Sydney.

I know that Adelaide is a third-tier city because of my hotel room. For $200 a night, I am living in the most baller hotel room I've ever seen. It's a 2 bedroom apartment - literally, it has a full kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms, and 2 baths, a bar, washer dryer, and 30 foot ceilings. Next time I come I will bring a camera to take pictures - it's amazing. And, there's a van parked across the street that sells meat pies late into the night.

Ok, enough posting - between Denise's entry and mine, you can thank us for at least 10 minutes of good time killing at work.

Oh, and way to go Sox!

Beach Day at Manly!

After Bondi's beach excursion last week, we decided to invite the gang up to Manly to come hang out on our beach. The gang ended up on the same ferry and we met up briefly in the apartment before heading down to the beach. In the morning, the sun was out and it was gorgeous, but by the afternoon some clouds had rolled in and the sun decided to hide for the rest of the afternoon.

Alex took some pictures of the group on her camera, but here are the few pictures that I took. Mine were mostly focused on the Surf Rescue team. Here they are going out in their little boat. It was very hard for them to get past the waves.


After the boat finally got out into the ocean, it was looking around for someone/something and a helicopter joined in the search.


No one ended up getting saved, but it's unclear whether or not someone was actually in the water. David and Nicole played catch for awhile before coming back to just chill. It was still fun despite the fact that there was no sun. Finally, my wimpy self decided that it was too cold and I was going to head back to the apartment. Everyone else decided to join me!


At home, we had a feast of food and drink. We had made chicken curry for the group, but we also feasted on celery/chips and hummus, salad, toast with pesto tapenade and chocolate chip cookies. It was a good afternoon of food and drink.

Now to answer some questions that were brought up in the awesome comments!

1. Which was does the toilet flush? I still have not found a toilet that actually flushes like the ones in the US. It's always a rush of water that doesn't ever swirl in the toilet.

2. What does Kangaroo taste like? I have only seen one place that has mentioned serving kangaroo, but I wasn't eating at the place at the time. It was for a kangaroo pizza.

3. Is Fosters really Australian for beer? Fosters is NOT an Aussie beer. It's actually very hard to find Fosters around here and people don't like the fact that it's called the Australian beer.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Price of Beer. For some reason, the terrible beer they serve around here is extremely expensive. Usually $13-14 for a 6 pack! It's insane how expensive the beer is here.

Manly Scenic Walkway

Yesterday, David and I decided to try the Manly Scenic Walkway. It allows us to walk from Manly Wharf to the Spit Bridge. Here's a map of what we were following. We started where the white dotted line meets the land. (Manly Wharf) and then headed along the coast until we found the Yellow line on the far left side, which is the Spit Bridge.


Overall, the route was supposed to be 9.5 KM and the original plan was to go there, eat lunch and then come back. But that plan soon changed about halfway into the "walk". The walk ended up being more like a hike where some parts we were climbing stairs made out of rocks or sometimes even built wooden stairs. The good thing about the hike was that there were some amazing views along the way.




The white building in this picture was a location that we were considering at one point.





Along the way, there were lots of lizards on the trail. Of course, I almost screamed everytime we saw one. I guess it didn't help that we had just gone to the dangerous australian reptiles exhibit a couple of days ago. I kept thinking a poisonous snake was going to come slithering out.


Besides the great lookout points, we were often walking in the middle of a forest.


Here was some of the "moderate" terrain that we had to go through. We forgot to take a picture of the "hard" terrain, but it was pretty much the same but steeper.


And we finally found our destination! The Spit Bridge!


We decided to bus it back to Manly since we were pretty exhausted and the whole journey took about 3 hours. Afterwards, we were beat for the day and didn't do much except relax and eat. =)

We just had Daylight Savings in Australia, but we sprung forward, so we're an extra hour ahead of everyone in the states. When you guys have your Daylight Savings, we'll be another hour ahead. That means for EST, we'll end up being 16 hours ahead and for PST, we'll be 19 hours ahead.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Elections! Within the last month, they recently decided to hold an election for Prime Minister. It's not like the US, where the elections happen every 4 years. They just suddenly decide to hold elections and the elections are usually 2 months after they declare the time for elections. Also, there's no limit on how long someone can be prime minister, so the current PM has won the last 3 elections.

I can't stop..

Even though my cry for more comments only got one from David and another from Stacey, I'm still going to keep posting. What can I say? I'm addicted!

I didn't take any photos yesterday, but I can let you know what we did. While David was at work, I did my morning run and then headed out to Ikea. I had a couple of things I wanted to return and a couple of things I wanted to get. I met up with Nicole and we made it over there. The funniest part of the trip was that Nicole ended up buying the same rug that she had returned on our earlier trip.

After Ikea, we headed home and this crazy storm swept over New South Wales. There was a thunderstorm in Sydney, but I was on the ferry home at that time and fell asleep. In other parts of New South Wales, there were hail storms and even a twister!

After work, Casey and Nicole came over and we had wontons for dinner. We taught them how to play dominos and played a few games before they had to run to catch the ferry. We'll have to continue playing next time they come over!

Lucky for you, we're going on a scenic walk today, which means lots of pictures for tomorrow's post.

Australia's strange fact of the day: The weather forecasts. In the US, the different status is usually sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, fair, rain, etc. Over here, the general status is usually between "Fine" and "Mostly Fine". I haven't quite figured out what exactly fine is, but I think it's the equivalent to our sunny. At least, that's what I can tell from the weather outside and their description. Almost all days are "Fine" here except for the occasional thunderstorm.

No Comments?!

If no one is going to comment on my blog when I ask specific questions, then I'll guess I'll have to assume that no one is reading.... That means no more new posts and no pictures.

SO, if you want me to continue blogging, I'd love for you to comment and give us suggestions on movies to rent.

Love and miss you all!

David "working" from home

Yesterday, David spent the day at home with me! That meant that we were able to go explore. Unfortunately, the weather was not the greatest. We decided to go to OceanWorld, which is an aquarium in Manly. On our way to OceanWorld, we found a funny sign. It's hard to see here, but Manly was commemorating the landing of the first white man.

OceanWorld looks kind of small from afar, and I was definitely hesitant about going.


But it ended up having some amazing kinds of fish. First, there were lots of shark teeth displays.


The first floor had many tanks with different fish in each one. Here was a huge starfish on the wall. It reminded me of the one in Finding Nemo who was always on the wall.

Some cuttlefish hung out in this tank. They were very interesting looking creatures since they didn't have any real fins like the other fish.


This was the most beautiful fish that we had ever seen. It's called a lion fish.



We found Nemo! He was hiding in the anemone as always.



They had a touching tank, where you could reach your hands in and touch things. There was no one monitering it and I was waiting for a little kid to touch the sea urchins and scream.


On the bottom level, there was a tank that had a tunnel going through it so you could watch the fish swim above you from one side to the other. Lots of sharks in the tank.


Along the sides, there were descriptions of what was in the tank. Here was a funny type of fish.


In this tank, there is an actual fish in it....


It's called the stone fish. He is made to look like the rocks in the area and he barely moves.


On the top level, there is a reptile exhibit.


We stayed for a dangerous exhibit show and was able to see some poisonous snakes and spiders. We were even able to touch a small salt walter crocodile!




After OceanWorld, Nicole ended up joining us in Manly. After lounging around doing nothing for a couple of hours, we took a walk to see where the next northern beach was. After a hike, we found it, but I forgot my camera. In other news, we're definitely going to have a non-relative visitors. Steph has bought her tickets to come in March and Robin will also be coming during the time of her visit!

Movies in Australia

Since I didn't leave Manly yesterday, it means that I didn't take any photos for you all. The weather has turned a bit worse for the next couple of days so there won't be too much traveling. I did my morning run as usual and this time tried to actually run on the beach. Yes, I wore my sneakers and ran on the harder sand. But it was MUCH harder than running on the grass/cement. I couldn't run as far as normal, but I think it was good to switch it up.

As for things for us to do, we've been talking a lot about the movies. As most of you know, David and I have an impressive movie collection, but we obviously didn't bring it with us. Without a tivo, we are stuck here without a lot of our staple shows. So we looked into actual going to the movies or renting them.

Going to the movie theatre is pretty expensive. Matinees are $10 and after 5 pm, shows are $14. On Tuesdays, they have a "bargain" of $9 all day long. It doesn't look like we'll be going to a movie unless we are really bored, but we did find a cool movie theatre in the city. It does dinner and a movie for around $25, but the movie theatre are all lounge seats. It's a vegetarian buffet and then you get to go to one of 2 movies that they are playing that night. It looks like I'll definitely be falling asleep whenever we go!


As for movie rentals, prices are staggered at the video store near us.

$7.60 - New Release Overnight Rental
$6.50 - New Release 3 Night Rental
$5.50 - New Release 7 Night Rental
$3.50 - Weekly movies
The "Deal" - $7.90 - 4 Weekly Movies

Last night, we decided to check it out and try to get 4 weekly movies. What we discovered was that Wednesday was actually an even better deal of rent up to 10 "weekly" movies for $1 each! Looks like we'll be renting all of our movies on Wednesdays. If you have any recommendations of your favorite older movies, please let us know!

Australia's strange fact of the day: Eggs in the supermarket are stored on a regular shelf with the baking goods. Yes, they are NOT in a refrigerated section. It was definitely weird the first time we bought them. They are farm fresh eggs and the yolks are much brighter than in the States, so I assume they are fresher. I haven't noticed a quality taste difference, but maybe it's because I like to smother my eggs in ketchup. =)

Thinking of Home

Yesterday morning, we woke up to the news of the fires in California. By then, it was already afternoon time and a lot had already happened. Luckily, our family is safe and sound after being evacuated from their home. My other friends in the area are also safe. We're thinking of all of you in this awful time. We hope that the fires end soon and everyone has a home to go back to.

Unfortunately, I don't have much else to report on what I did yesterday. I cleaned our apartment, did laundry and cooked my meals. Besides that, I was constantly sorting/relabeling digital photos on my computer. I hadn't done it since 2005 so there were a lot of good times that I was revisiting.

Here are some of my favorites from 2005.

At Bingo Night with Aunt Maddy and Uncle Sheldon. One of our many stops on our month cross country road trip. Summer 2005



Tailgating at Patriots Games! Fall 2005


My first attempt at surfing without lessons. With the crazy waves, this was a big failure... Fall 2005

At Dave's house with my girlfriends and Dave isn't even with us! Fall 2005


Hanging out with Annie and Jack. Holidays 2005.


Family and Friends in San Diego, our thoughts are with you. We are glad to hear you are safe!

Chinatown/Darling Harbour

After my run, I showered and got ready to head into the city. Nicole and I were going to meet up to walk around Chinatown and also explore this art project that was in Darling Harbour. I decided to sit at the back of our ferry and take some pictures of our Wharf.




It was a gorgeous day outside, where it was nice and hot in the sun, but in the shade you were definitely still warm. We approached Chinatown through the gates.


This lion was definitely squishing some other kind of baby animal.


We went to one of the food courts and every single stall had pictures of each dish that you could order. It was actually quite overwhelming. After lunch, we wandered over towards Darling Harbour to view an art project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Here's his website. http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com/ There were 2 rows of photos that he had taken with a fountain in between.


In the parks, we kept seeing these very long beaked birds, but we don't think those are the birds that make the awful crying-like sound.


After looking at all the photos, we took a walk down Darling Harbour and found some interesting architecture and sculptures.







Afterwards, we headed back to Chinatown to get some Pearl Milk Tea. Nicole had never tried it, so I let her sample some of mine. Finally, we hit up a grocery store in Chinatown, where I stockd up on some Asian stuff and Nicole was finally able to find some black beans. By the time, I got home it was 4:30 and I had to run out again to pick up some more food to make dinner. We had french loaf pizzas, which were delicious and we watched the results show of Australian Idol. Australian Idol has the same theme music as American Idol and just as much judge drama.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Light Beer. Light beer means that there is less alcohol content in the beer, but it has the same amount of calories. It's almost as bad as the non-alcoholic beer. Who would want to drink beer with less alcohol content and lots of calories?