Nonsense

Above, you can see Adam managing his “secret account” online.  He won’t tell me what kind of secret account it is, but it’s probably something along the lines of a secret bank account.  Speaking of accounts, we opened a joint cheque-ing and savings account yesterday for our practice jobs so we don’t have to get paid under the table.  And we discovered that the interest rate is 5.5% holy cow.  The maximum balance is 5 million dollars, so if anyone wants a guaranteed 4% back on their liquid assets at the end of the year, we’ll hedge fund (“hedge fund”?) your money for you at a 1.5% commission rate.  Howz that sound??  Good??  You think I’m kidding but I’m not.  Why would I.  Anyway, the stark difference in bank account interest rates falls into the category of differences (USvsAU) in profits.  Henceforth, other differences we’ve noticed are differences (USvsAU) in profits for the environment.  For example, every single toilet around here has the half-flush option.  Also, all of the outlets have these switches called “power points”, the purpose of which is to eliminate phantom drain/”phantom drain”.  Additionally, all types of plastic (not just those with a neck) and cardboard are recycled here in Melbourne.  Furthermore, almost all of the chickens we’ve eaten so far have not only been affordable and delicious, they have also been free-range and antibiotic-free.  Not only all of these things, but also, there are tons more diesel fueled cars here, which means they burn way cleaner and get way better gas mileage.  Just ask Adam.  

More to come on “practice jobs” later.

Disclaimer:  This post does not have an anti-America tone to it.  We love America.  America has lots of things Australia doesn’t as well; just not power points and high bank account interest rates.

Roughing It in Melbourne

Since the big move, we’ve experienced quite a few lifestyle changes.  Living out of a suitcase in a different country aside, most of the changes have entailed some degree of downsizing.  For instance, rather than six shower products between the two of us (five for Justina and one for Adam), we share one.  Fashion Girl conditioning shampoo by Palmolive.  The best smelling and most economical per ml of the all-in-one shower product options at Coles.  And not to make our lives sound glamorous or anything, but we eat in, a diet that includes, and is mainly limited to, rice, beans, pasta, pasta sauce, potatoes, cheese, oatmeal, brown sugar, milk, coffee, and tea.  Gone are the days of superfluous movie rentals from Filmzilla.  Our new favorite hangout is the library, which includes luxuries such as free wi-fi, celebrity magazine and dvd rentals.  Not that any of these changes are unwelcome, because they’re not, and some of them have even produced practically genius inventions.  Take the Sidewalk Glider, for instance (see below).  That’s genius, right?  And who would have ever thought of that if they had a car?  Not Adam, anyway.  Also, Oatmeal Desert.  If we could afford ice cream sandwiches, would we ever have invented Oatmeal Desert?  No.  We wouldn’t have.  And let us know if you want the recipe.  It’s delicious.  All you need is oatmeal, milk, olive oil, vanilla, and brown sugar. 

Ps  If we sound like we’re complaining, we’re not.  The roughing-it is self-imposed and we don't mind it as long as we can go to the beach at the drop of a hat.

FASHION GIRL

Intellectual property

Oatmeal dessert.  Basically, extremely sweet granola.

Hola Pilgrims

Thanksgiving, south of the border style

Sharing is Caring 

Filling up on Hugs and Kisses "Sangria"

Joining the festivities 9,000 miles away

My Hot Wife

Elements of an Expat Thanksgiving:

* Didgeridoo Music / Spanish reggae / Disney sing along

* Uncle Bens Mexican style rice

* Nana Coles Pulled chicken and mixed bean Enchiladas

* Tortilla chips and salsa

* Sangria with loads of sugar to sweeten the deal (Tom and Fede)

* And a special meringue, ice cream and strawberry desert (Nicole and Hellen) 

More Bonus Features

BEWARE

Photoshop couldusesomeworkMAGIC

Victoria Market and Other Things

Pesto ribs or something/second course

Fourth course

Ingredients: sugar and butter, heavy on the butter/fourth course

Major landmark

The Weisman!

Fear and loathing in Melbourne/Christmas in the casino

Christmas in the casino aftermath.  Surprise water fountain!

South side across the Yarra

Bonus Features

We're russian models, you know what I mean

Photoshop MAGIC

More Melbourne, Bananas

Good ol' Ross Street

Long black, or something

The crib

Australia's fav cookie

Movember close-up/more chicken

Apocalypse-ish

Many people (like four or something) told us that Melbourne was very similar in many ways to Minneapolis before we left.   Which was great news because Minneapolis was the best city in the world to live in, that we (mainly I, Adam lived in Europe for a bit, so Minneapolis has some competition in his book) knew of, so far.  Indeed, Melbourne does have a Minneapolis/St. Paul feel to it.  If you’re interested in our initial assessment of similarities and differences, go ahead and keep reading.

Similarities:

Melbourne has this one building that looks EXACTLY like the Weisman

rent-a-bike stations (although Minneapolis had them first)

both have target centers, but Melbourne’s is spelled centre

lovely bridge views, especially at night

rivers running through them (Yarra and Mississippi, obviously)

friendly, smiley people

library rules are the same (you can’t enthusiastically skype home next to old men trying to catch z’s)

Differences:

Melbourne is seemingly more humongous

Melbourne is more expensive (not including the $2.50 wine at Aldi)

Melbourne has bigger bugs

Minneapolis lacks the possibility of shark attacks

Climate variations (blizzards versus no blizzards)

Coffee orders in Melbourne are confusing if you don’t ask questions (helpful tip: long black synonymous with Americano, and flat white kind of synonymous with latte)

More to come on that front.  In other news, Adam and I have been eating at least one whole chicken every day for the past three days.  I think it’s because we’ve replaced our daily eggs for breakfast habit with oatmeal and our bodies are craving cholesterol.  In other even more other news, our housemates are delightful.  More to come on that front as well.  Additionally, in yet even more other news, I got a job.  And Adam’s been beating them (employers) off with a stick, just waiting for the right one, so it won’t be long before he has one too. 

Jetta Tribute

Bye Bye TDI.  One of the hardest things we had to do before leaving for Australia was say good bye to the TDI.  It's not easy to give up your first Volkswagen, especially when it gets 50 miles per gallon.  Here are a few pictures in honor of our little torque monster.

Dinnertime in Melbourne

Blahblahblah "in Melbourne" makes pictures of preparing spaghetti worth writing home about, right?  We'll come up with more material, don't worry.

Slow Night in Melbourne

Can you find Sam?

Spring in Port Melbourne

CONCEITED THINGS ADAM SAYS PART 1:  Adam: "this is the first time I've been on the beach with a girl",  Justina: "I feel honored", Adam: "you should."

That's Melbourne there.  In the background.  

"Coffee" and a muffin.  

After a couple days in Melbourne, we decided we’d like to stay for a while.  Maybe even six months.  Though, our plan changes by the day, so don’t hold us to that.  It’s still early.  All of the traveling we’ve done in the city so far we’ve done by foot.  And we take it slow as long as Adam is still in recovery mode.  Of course, there’s fantastic public transportation, but we’re both extreme cheapskates at this point, so we walk.  Melbourne also has those rent-a-bike stations all over, just like Minneapolis, but neither of us dare get on a bike without a helmet and helmets aren’t in our cheapskate budget just yet.  Speaking of helmets and bike incidences, I’ve noticed we both tense up when cars approach too quickly, even when we’re on the sidewalk.  Partly because they come from the opposite side we expect, I suppose.  Those roundabouts are especially nerve-wracking.  It’s like cars coming from every direction to run you over.  But we’re still jumpy from the incident.  

Yesterday began the job hunt.  Today began more hoofing it down the beach, a partial penguin sighting, and kite boarding aspirations.  If you look real hard, in the middle photo, you can kind of see some kite boarders in the distance.  The guys at the surf shop assured us it's easy as pie, and even easier for girls than guys.  Which is encouraging since I'm working from a water sports experience deficit (compared to Adam, certainly).  Though, a kite boarding set up runs about $3500 PER PERSON, whereas something like paddle boarding (consists of paddling a large surf board around the bay and catching waves) is about a third of the cost, three times the workout, but maybe not quite as fun (hard to say since we've never done it).  So one or the other.  TBD.  TBD for Adam also contingent on what his body will let him do while he's getting better.  He's still pretty sore from the accident.  Alive, but sore.  Alive and partially brain injured, but sore.  Jk.  Not brain injured.  Very much.  Just sore. 

A Few Fab Whips

A few locals mistook this for my MG.  Must have been the mustache

Tuggy

There are some amazing vehicles here in OZ.  I spotted this MG and a VW micro bus on our walk around Melbourne yesterday.  I will try and keep posting pictures of the fine automobiles and bikes we encounter on our travels for all the car enthusiasts out there like myself.  Enjoy

The Melbourne X-perience!!

At this point, we’ve been here for three days and have finally gotten a chance to catch our breaths.  We made this preliminary list of objectives, and have tentatively accomplished items 1, 2 (one singular cell phone), 6 (we’re not out of the hot water yet), and 8 (wore sunscreen yesterday, spf 70, and still got burnt).  The others on the list have yet to be achieved. 

Objectives:

1.     Find place to sleep

2.     Get cell phones

3.     Get jobs

4.     Make friends

5.     Ride a kangaroo/emu

6.     Avoid sharks

7.     Get hot beach bods/learn to surf

8.     Wear sunscreen

9.     Party hard

With number one taken care of for the time being, we feel quite a bit more relaxed.  Personally, my greatest fear going into this trip was that we would have to shack up on a park bench.  So far, so good.  The first three nights we stayed in a hostel in downtown Melbourne, and besides having to pay out the ear for one-star hotel quality accommodations, it was kind of fun to revisit the college dorm experience.  Today, we say good-bye to the hostel and are heading to a house share near the beach that we found on gumtree (Oz equivalent of craigslist).  The couple we are staying with seem fairly nice and normal, so I have them pegged as potential friend candidates (see item 4).  We had a chance to check out nearest point of the ocean from where we’ll be staying, and to be honest, we immediately had some serious misgivings about staying in Melbourne.  It was not a fine white sand clear blue ocean crashing waves beach, but rather a kind of rocky, murky, not a lot of waves beach.  But then we remembered that it IS a bay and we haven’t yet been to the beach in St. Kilda, so we’d hold out before making any rash decisions (like up and moving straight to Brisbane or something).  Also, we kind of fell in love with the city when we were out and about last night, so we’ll see.  The idea is to take these three weeks and plan our next move.  As in, finding jobs here, or heading up the coast.  

The Beijing X-perience!!

After the 12-hour flight, we had a couple hours to kill in the Beijing airport before we could check in for our next 12-hour flight to Melbourne. We did so by engaging in a heated money-spending-principles-when-you’re-unemployed debate.  One of those marriage bonding/learning experiences to add to the list (other notables so far include: what hair rats are and that they are not funny, also, on the hair front, thinning hair is also not funny and shouldn’t be commented on jokingly).  Then, when it came time to check in, there was some confusion about our Australian visas, which were linked to our passports electronically.  We needed to provide the visa number to the folks at the counter, which meant we had to get on the internet (easy enough at the airport, right?) to access our emails to scrounge up those rascal visa numbers.  To make a long story short, we spent the next three hours attempting to get to those numbers; loading the extremely slow web pages onto our laptops, finding out that gmail may be blocked by the Chinese government, bumming cell phones off friendly strangers, making international phone calls, etc.  Eventually we were successful, though I think it was the crying girl stunt that finally pulled it off.  We barely made it and we were surprised/relieved when we did.  Consequently, that next 12-hour flight felt like a piece of cake.  No photos were taken during this time.  No way.

The San Fran X-perience!!

Shuttle waiting.

Nail clipping.

We had more hours than expected in San Francisco due to missing our Amtrak ride (not our fault, 100% Amtrak’s fault, believe us), and since neither of us had been to the city, we wanted to take full advantage of our time there.  So, we made our way to the hotel after our impromptu flight and took a nap (we hadn’t slept in 40 hours, or so, and we were not happy campers).   We won’t bore you with a full description of everything else we did to take full advantage of the city, so here’s a summary:  Chinese buffet, wedding thank-you’s, tv, more sleep.  Then, after a delicious continental breakfast the next morning (btw you should try peanut butter toast with cinnamon toast crunch on top), we moseyed back to the airport for our upcoming flight marathon.

Credits

Fancy brunch hotspot in Salt Lake.  4am-ish.

Special thanks to Nancy Palma for keeping us alert on the drive to Heber, as well as a special thanks to Evan Miller for almost single-handedly getting us from Heber to San Francisco.  Seriously.