Happy Australia Day!

I've been reluctant to write anything in my blog this week, because my main topics of discussion involve more complaints about Australia. If you're tired of hearing me complain, just skip the blog this week and check back in next week, when I'm sure everything will have worked itself out.

If you're interested in hearing how my life sucked this past week, then read on.

Complaint #1: It was another effing hot week....which means open windows...which means mosquitoes in our apartment making a meal out of me every night. I'm not even kidding, I haven't slept through the night for more than a week. In an attempt to ward off the mosquitoes, I bought mosquito coils last week. I've been lighting them in our room right before going to bed, and the effect seems to last for a few hours and then they're back biting me at about 2am at which point I light another coil so that I can sleep till 6am, and then they're back again. This coming weekend will definitely be spent finding a better solution, as I'm sure the only thing I'm achieving with the mosquito coils is inducing some kind of early cancerous death for us both.

Complaint #2: Probably as a result of all the open screen-less windows, TWO huntsman spiders made their way into our apartment last week.

To top it off, the big-ish spider in our shower now has a friend. I was willing to overlook his taking up residence in our shower as long as he stuck to his little corner, but now he has a roommate! He's totally getting evicted.

First Huntsman found in our living room:


Second one found on my desk:


The one highlight of the week was a trip to Hunter Valley for Vic and I on Saturday, while my parents looked after Gus. Hunter Valley is the closest wine region about 2 hours north of Sydney, with wineries like Rosemount and others you'd probably recognize (but I can't think of off the top of my head). See the sheen on my face in the pic below? That's because it was 42-freakin degrees on Saturday!




Yesterday was Australia Day. Vic and Gus enjoyed the celebrations downtown while I stayed home and tried to get a bit of a headstart on the week. Gus came home with this 'Ticket of Leave' that dispensed him from 'government work after being tried in London for being bad and arriving in Australia on the ship Piper'. Australia Day sounds much more interesting than Canada Day!


O.K. I admit it, my complaining is partly that complaining-but-really-you're-bragging that people sometimes do (e.g., I can't find any clothes that fit cause I'm just too darn skinny). Although the shine is wearing off Sydney, I'm still loving this country. Come on, how can you beat living 5 minutes from the ocean, with weather forecasts that never include the word "windchill"?

Here's some Aussie music, Josh Pyke singing Make you happy, to help you celebrate Australia Day too.

Trying to unravel the secrets to success

This past week was a much better one for me. It seems my mood is directly related to my productivity on my thesis. The more productive I am, the better my mood. Being productive on a project that is completely self-guided and has a deadline of some time in 2011 is no easy feat, and it's something I'm constantly struggling with. Whenever I have good days or (even better) a good week, I review it carefully to try and figure out the ingredients for a successful week. So far, to-do lists that include even the most mundane tasks written out every morning, breaking things down into small chunks with deadlines, and cappuccinos during the afternoon slump all seem to help, but are no guarantees. Any tips for me? ...send them on!

Enough about my thesis.... Vic and I recently came to the realization that our free babysitters (i.e., my parents) are not going to be here forever, and that we had better go out and enjoy some kid-free time while we can. Saturday night, we went to see a movie under the stars at Centennial Park. It was great, we packed a picnic of Tasmanian double-cream brie, a baguette, olives and a bottle of wine, and we drank and ate while we waited for the movie to start. It may have been the effects of the wine, but we enjoyed our night out so much, we decided to go back to Centennial Park the very next day with Gus and my parents for a picnic in the park.

Sunday, we returned with family in tow, along with prawns, a salad, and more olives, cheese, bread and more wine. After demolishing the food and wine, my mom had to lay down on a picnic blanket to recover from the wine and my dad and I spent some time debating the whole Israel situation. Uncharacteristically, Vic was not interested in joining the debate, so he and Gus kicked the soccer ball around. This is what normal families do, right? We ended the picnic with a walk around the park.

The yummy prawns we ate:


Some of the wildlife we spotted along our walk.

More wildlife, I think maybe it's a parrot? I recently read someone else's blog, and one of their new year's resolutions was to try to worry less and to be as happy as a bird with a french fry. This parrot reminded me of that very lofty resolution.

Gus laughing.

Gus making faces.

Gus getting tired of me snapping pictures of him.

Negotiation Phase

When you move to a new country, there are different phases of adjustment that you go through. First, the honeymoon phase when everything is new and wonderful. Next the negotiation phase, where you start to get annoyed about the differences between your old country and your new country. "This phase is often marked by mood swings caused by minor issues or without apparent reason." This perfectly describes my mood last week.

It was hot, hot, hot. We had to open the windows at night to cool down the apartment. The problem is that there are NO SCREENS ON ANY OF THE WINDOWS!??! What is up with that? In a country with poisonous spiders and huge cockroaches, screens should be mandatory, a legal requirement. But strangely they are not. For two nights in a row, I was eaten alive by mosquitoes. Aargh, I was a huge itchy mess, got very little school or paid work done, and grumbled the whole week about the lack of screens.

To top it off, a big-ish spider has taken up residence in our shower.

When we first moved into this apartment, we found a huntsman spider in the shower. It was pretty threatening-looking to our untrained eyes, and Vic quickly killed it. When we told our Australian co-workers and classmates about how we killed the spider, we got horrified reactions: "What, you killed it?" "They're harmless." "You should let them live, they eat the cockroaches" were the responses we got. After that experience, we resolved to let the spiders be. But, I'm getting really tired of keeping one eye on the spider while I shower, and I'm pretty sure the spider is getting bigger every day. If not euthanized, he may need to be relocated soon...to somewhere outside of our apartment.

Here's some pictures of the wildlife we see every day. A lizard in our apartment building entrance.



A spider that hangs out outside our apartment.


And on a totally different subject, we went to Harry's Cafe de Wheels over the weekend, for meat pie with peas, mashed potatoes and gravy. Harry's is a Sydney institution and the pies are traditional Australian comfort food. It was tasty as far as comfort food goes, but kinda gross at the same time, leaving me with the same feeling I get after a big plate of poutine.

How I spent my summer holidays

December 20th marked the beginning of 2 weeks holidays for all of us. Vic's work and the University both shut down for 2 weeks, and Gus started his 5-week summer holiday.

The first part of our holiday was spent getting ready for Christmas (mostly eating and shopping). After Christmas, we went on a small road trip, driving about an hour south from Sydney to go to Jamberoo (a water park) and the Illawara Fly Tree Top Walk, and staying overnight in Wollongong. It was a beautiful drive back along the Grand Pacific Drive and through the Royal National Park.

For the rest of the holiday, we did a lot of sleeping in, hitting the beach and doing some prep work for the hot summer weather. All three of us are already darker than we usually are at the end of a typical Ottawa summer, and we're only a week into the Sydney summer. Even more disturbing is that I can see myself ageing before my very eyes. Gus was already pretty well protected with his rashie and long board shorts, but Vic and I needed some extra protection. So, I picked up a rashie for Vic, a variety of sunblocks for every purpose (waterproof, perspiration proof, a combo moisterizer/sunblock), and a stylin hat from the Cancer Council shop.

The other summer prep work we did over the holidays was roach-proofing the apartment. The cockroaches here are humongous! And they fly. And there's no screens on the windows. Since we moved in, we've noticed the odd one in the morning in our kitchen, which everyone assured us is normal and inevitable in this climate. But, lately we've noticed them with more regularity. So, we upped the number of roach disks (these black round things that contain roach poison and are ubiquitous in Sydney apartments and houses) in our kitchen, and invested in containers for cereal, rice, etc. Since our efforts last week, we haven't seen one yet. fingers are crossed.

Here are some highlights from the past two weeks:

Eating lotsa pancakes (with REAL maple syrup, of course).


Watching the start of the Sydney to Hobart race (the sailboat with the dark spinnaker is called 'Wild Oats' and won the race in one day and 20 hours).

A beautiful view on our road trip to Illawara.

One of the many, many, many sandcastles built by Vic and Gus over the past two weeks:

The fireworks over the Harbour Bridge, which Vic and I watched from a friend's place who has a good view of the bridge. I admit that these were the family fireworks they put on at 9:00pm. At around 10:30, we headed home and watched the midnight fireworks on TV. Oh yes, we are that old and lame!

One of the many coffees we drank over the holidays. Have I mentioned they have really, really good coffee and a ton of nice cafes in Sydney? There is no such thing as filtered coffee here, it's all espresso-based coffees and they are oh-so-tasty.

Here's the best discovery of the holiday, a coffee called 'affogato' (which my mother says means 'smothered' in italian). It is a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a shot of espresso...pure heaven.

After a mostly relaxing two weeks, we're all a little sad to be going back to school and work tomorrow (with the exception of Gus, who is continuing his holidays for another 3 weeks in a combination of vacation care, hanging out with his grandparents and with one of his school friends).

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! We miss you all.

Here's a quick rundown of our first Aussie Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we left tea, tim tams and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.


We woke up to pressies under our tree (actually a potted bush that Vic borrowed from work and Gus decorated using his crafty talents...the plant had been kept outside so when Vic brought it home a bunch of ants marched out of the pot, which we've been battling ever since. Later on, a lizard crawled out of the pot. Vic and Gus wanted to keep it as a pet so it could eat the ants, but I made them catch it and put it outside).


We had a yummy brekkie of pancakes and real maple syrup (mmmmmm) with nonna and grand-papa.



And after testing out all our toys, we headed down to the beach. It was a little on the cloudy side, but we couldn't resist a swim on Christmas day. Sure enough, in true aussie style, there were lots of other people at the beach having family bbqs, swimming and playing by the beach.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Countdown to Christmas: 7, 6, 5, 4...

Wow! I can't believe Christmas is less than a week away. I still haven't done a lick of shopping, decorating or planning. I think it's partly to do with the sunny, warm weather and partly because I'm having a hard time with the fact that we're going to spend Christmas so far from our friends and most of our family. Thank god my parents are here! They've already been a great help, by looking after Gus after school, often making us supper and scoping out the deals (as retirees, they have become masters at scoping out deals). And, it's so nice to be able to share the holidays with them.

This weekend, I dragged them out to Manly, which I've been wanting to check out for a while. Although it was disappointingly tourist-y, the ferry ride there was nice, and I'd like to go back soon with a picnic and spend the day at the ocean beach. While we were there this weekend, there was a band playing Christmas carols, but Gus was much more interested in the fountains.


Afterwards, we headed down to the beach on the Bay side of Manly, where Gus met some new friends and together they worked on 'waterfall city'.



OK, so Australia is defnitely making me fat. It could be a number of things...my daily intake of timtams with tea that has become a nightly ritual when Gus is in bed and the apartment is quiet, or the full-fat cappuccinos (no skinny caps for me) that I pick up from the cute boys working at the coffee cart at school, or maybe the mountains of pancakes we've been consuming since my parents got here with maple syrup. I think some New Year's resolutions are in order...which I'll sort out when Christmas is over.

I've also managed to convince myself that I need the perfect agenda to get me organized in the new year. I just ordered one like this from Etsy (I can't show you the exact one, because I picked up the LAST one - it was that good). I love the idea of supporting an artist rather than a huge manufacturer. And, I'm sure this agenda will be the key to my success in 2009!

Price of Admission

Hey all you Canadians back home, if you want to come visit, this is what you'll need to bring:

(oh yeah, and you'll also have to spend $2000 on a plane ticket and spend 20 hrs on various planes to get here).

Mmmmm, maple syrup. We've had a hard time finding it in Sydney, and when we have been able to spot a bottle, we've had to spend big bucks to buy it. But my parents have come to visit, and they brought with them seven cans of the sweet stuff (some of it bought by my sister-in-law - thank you!!!). We had pancakes yesterday with REAL maple syrup, they were amazing.

My mom is a big foodie, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to check out some of Sydney's markets. Saturday, we tried out the markets at Moore park. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but the lemons are gigantic, like grapefruit.


...and lots of beautiful flowers, which would look perfect going home in one of these bags, which I've decided I must buy as the perfect accessory for our Australian adventure. Good for the beach and market outings.

We found some delicious cheese, sausages and olive bread, and Gus managed to talk Vic into buying him one of these cupcakes.


Sunday, I played tour guide and we toured some of the more famous sights in Sydney. We started at Hyde Park, made our way through the Royal Botanic Gardens to check out the beautiful plants, trees and flying foxes (can you spot them below hanging from the trees?) and finished up at the Opera House..


Christmas is less than two weeks away, and yet we have no Christmas tree and haven't done a lick of shopping. It's so hard to believe that Christmas is coming when it's warm and sunny and no snow in sight. I'm still trying to figure out what we're going to eat (cause we won't be cooking a turkey in 30C heat!). But maybe we'll head down to the beach for a bbq, which a few sydney natives have told me is traditional on Christmas day. Gus, on the other hand, is fully prepared, he's decided we'll have pancakes for breakfast and tacos for supper.