24/25 March 2010
We have arrived in Sydney to hot, sunny weather and the friendliest, most accommodating hostess ever, our new BFF Cynthia. Today was 30 degrees Celsius. Having not paid enough attention to those metric conversion tables in high school, and having no regular access to the internet right now, means that we have no idea what that converts to in Fahrenheit. Instead, we simply called it hot (at least for those of us accustomed to the ever-temperature Seattle climate). But we aren’t complaining. The sky was a brilliant blue, the wind off Sydney Harbour delightfully refreshing, and the opportunity to sport shorts in March – priceless.
We arrived last night af
ter a 10 hour flight across the open and empty expanse of the Pacific that seemed to go on forever beneath us. We made the bold and slightly pricey (but worth every penny) decision at the Honolulu ticket counter to upgrade to Business Class. With that we definitely went over our relocation budget, but when flying with Gina for anything longer than about 20 minutes, that extra leg room and exceptional meal service makes more difference than one can imagine. For starters, there are no feet in your lap and no complaints about how they ran out of chicken three rows up. This might not sound like much of anything, but when repeated for 10 hours straight, believe me, you start thinking that holding down a second job to pay for airline upgrades might not be such a bad gig after all.
We weren’t the only last minute upgraders. The Australian across the aisle from us clearly was not a regular in the forward cabin either. We could tell by the way he was as baffled as we were about the seat controls. After he had run his hand across the entire outside panel of his seat, he admitted to us that he had been Americanized, for he was reaching for the nonexistent Laz-E Boy lever to recline his seat.
Touchdown at the Sydney airport was an interesting affair as well. Not because the miracle of flight had transported us, in total, at least 8 million miles across an empty ocean, but instead because we were sprayed down with pesticide. Yes, pesticide. But no need to fear, this pesticide is recommended by the World Health Organization. Sounded like an oxymoron to me, I thought, as we were sealed back into the plane after the Pesticide Police boarded and the baggage compartments above our heads were aerosolized, the fine mist drifting down onto our hair, bare skin, and open mouths, agape at what was transpiring. Australia, with good reason, is pretty darn picky about what is allowed into their country. Living bugs I would have guessed in advance were bad, but who knew that freshly pesticide-laden tourists would be so welcome?!
After all 11 of our bags were accounted for, we rolled through Customs and found our ride – our aforementioned fabulous hostess, Cynthia, the HR rep from the University. Not only friendly and funny, Cynthia has proven to be a wealth of assistance and information, from delivering us to our accommodations (which she also arranged), to teaching us how to order non-fat lattes this morning (skim or whole, there’s nothing in between). As an added bonus for those of us missing My Man Stan – Cynthia has a 15 week old puppy named Tilly. Tilly is a “cavoodle” – a cross between a King Charles spaniel and a poodle. Tilly is also perpetual motion, but of the cutest variety. Just watch those open toed sandals – Tilly has a foot fetish and razor sharp puppy teeth, so it’s not just the funnel web spiders that are dangerous around here.
Before arriving in Sydney, we’d read and heard much about how friendly the Aussies are, and we’ve experienced nothing less than that since our arrival. The grocery store clerk made sure we received our Franklin’s No Frills discount despite not yet having a membership. The ticket seller at the train station, upon learning that we had just moved to Sydney and it was our first day in country, came out from behind the glass partition to explain the various train passes to us, all with a smile and a wink. Who winks in America? Then there was the guy at the burrito stand (Tammy and Shelly – we found Mexican on Day 1 – can you believe it? Although we later learned we were in the red light district, so maybe that’s the secret to sleuthing out tortillas and pico de gallo?) who came out from behind the counter to explain every menu item to us as if we (a) didn’t read English and (b) had never had a burrito before. And when studying a train map to find our way back to Erskineville last night, another train worker scared the bejesus out of us when she appeared out of nowhere to ask if we needed help. This is one seriously friendly country. I imagine our jumpy genes will relax a bit over time.
26 March 2010
Another blistering hot day here in Sydney. We think we may have put too many sweaters on the slow boat. Maybe by the time they arrive we’ll think differently, but at the current mercury level, they feel more like a bit of a shipping blunder. We’ll check back in on that in a few months.
Today was spent banking and sweating, attempting to understand Australian internet/broadband plans and sweating some more, and making a new Spider Man friend in our condo complex, who did the sweating for us.
Before the sun rose too high in the sky, we were on the 6-minute train to Central Station, where we disembarked to make our way toward Chinatown and Gina’s international bank, HSBC. Word to the wise, or perhaps not-so-wise who wait, like we did, until the last minute to deal with their upcoming international banking needs – HSBC is a bank that done Gina right. Global in nature, they are the perfect financial institution for those of us who like and try whenever possible to wander far from home. Gina could have even opened an account in Hong Kong today – try that, Bank of America.
Lunch in Chinatown was a fishy affair. They do not serve American Chinese here in Sydney, or at least not where we were wandering in search of food. They serve authentic Asian … no bright pink sweet’n’sour here. In our food tally so far, we have eaten Thai, Mexican, and Chinese – a very international city indeed.
After sweating it out on the train back to Erskineville, we spent the remaining part of the afternoon trying to determine which 20th century cell phone/internet package makes the most sense purchase. So far, there are no clear winners. It’s hard to explain and for those of us from the States, even harder to understand, but suffice it to say that one pays for every second of talk time and every kilobyte of data downloaded over the internet. Being accustomed to our “unlimited” everything – from cell phone minutes to web browsing downloads to free Coke refills at Taco del Mar – we are learning through the haze of options here that Australians clearly must spend more time outdoors and talking in person than inside surfing the net or conversing on one’s phone – otherwise, they would all be broke. We have temporarily opted for the circa 1987 Sweet Child O’ Mine setup (key lyrics “where do we go from here”), with a pre-paid mobile from one company and a broadband wireless stick from another. These will give us about 37 minutes of phone time and one and a half blog uploads. Seriously. We are excited, however, for when we have a permanent address and can re-entertain all of it, with the word “bundle” thrown in.
Besides the confusion over how to get connected, we were also plagued with a tiny little housing issue … when we left the condo to get our schooling in Australian connectivity, we grabbed the pool key and not the house key. Now really, when was the last time you locked yourself out of the house? Day 2 in Sydney and we were already bumbling around.
Now if we’d had a phone, we could have called Cynthia to explain to her our predicament. But the pre-paid phone I just spoke of wasn’t yet in our possession, so we were stuck. We tried to the let’s-patiently-wait-here-until-she-gets-home trick, which lasted for about an hour. But then the sun set and the “mozzies” (translation: mosquitos) were biting, so we opted for the let’s-walk-around-frustrated-and-hot-and-itchy option, not exactly knowing what we were going to do. The walking was our saviour – along came Spider Man neighbor Des, who was willing to climb the steel trellis and pop through our open window to come around and let us in. I was going to volunteer Gina for the duty, but being such a friendly culture, he was more than happy to do the climbing himself. Plus he thought our rhyming names were cute.
27 March 2010
Just a quick update today as bandwidth is low and we have worn ourselves out running around town. Cynthia played tour leader today, taking us to the local Farmer’s Market, shopping for a hair dryer that wouldn’t blow every fuse in the condo complex, helping us with the ding dang phone/internet info, and touring us near my place of employment and the “Uni” (University) campus. She has been infinitely patient with our many questions and has ensured that we have enjoyed some great coffee and Thai food, for which we are quite grateful. Tomorrow we plan to tour a suburb or two – heading north or east – more in tourist mode than anything else.