Got officially homesick for the first time the other night. We went to see Narnia (which I thought was very good, by the way, and no I never saw the BBC version) and we actually had to wait in a queue to get tickets. There was only one auto movie ticket box thing, and you could only get tickets from it if you’d ordered them in advance! I haven’t waited in a line for movie tickets for I don’t know how many years. That takes me back to going out to movies with boys when I was 14.

Worse yet, once we finally got the tickets, there was a queue to get into the theatre at all! It was completely reminiscent of the, hmm, two queues I’ve ever been in before for really big name new release movies? And as we waited in the queue to get into the theatres (for a good half an hour) it struck me that I am now in a country that is technologically behind. They haven’t even got the automatic buy your ticket box things that all normal movie theatres do! And then I realized just how very very far away home is, and my stomach dropped for one wee second of old fashioned homesickness, like I remember from being 12 and at summer camp.

And that (plus a very frustrating conversation I had with the telephone banking lady today) have prompted me to make a list: What I am unhappy about in Australia.

1. The queue (both for the ticket and to get in theatre) at movie theatre. Where are the instant gratification ticket boxes?? Where is sitting in an empty theatre with your feet up?
2. They do not make baked beans with molasses. They use ketchup instead.
3. Everything closes too early. Once or twice a week, if you’re lucky, a store (probably not the one you wanted to go to) will stay open till… 8PM.
4. The horrible weird goth/punk scrawny tight-pants mohawk people that were obliterated after 1990 are alive here in great proportion.
5. There is no such thing as half and half
6. Fast food/food court food is horribly, shockingly, abominably expensive. And comes in small portions.
7. Movie candy is expensive. We complain about $2.75??? Try $5.80.
8. Your banking card doesn’t double as a credit card. It only does debit and you only get a few debit transactions free per month. (Hello, 1995???)
9. Even though they drive on the left, people walk on the right, which makes for a difficult and clumsy experience when navigating crowded places.
10. Books are horribly, shockingly, abominably expensive.
11. Sand Flies…

And most, most, most of all I loathe the Indooroopilly Mall.

However, all of those things are frail and feeble next to the many good things, not the least of which are

1. ourbrisbane.com. Best web site ever!
2. Mailmen here drive bright orange mopeds
3. The city taxis are bright orange too
4. You can buy rolls of relatively cheap meat & veggie & grain dog food in supermarkets. They look like pilsbury cookie rolls, but are huge, and the cat versions are made of… kangaroo!
5. Milk is not homogenized necessarily
6. They sell honey malt chocolate milk!
7. Corn syrup does not exist
8. The library system is brilliant, convenient, and technologically way cool. Where were they when the movie theatre folks were doing their thing?
9. There is a city (state? country?) requirement that you must have so many acres of green space for so many people. Therefore, there are huge numbers of parks, and better yet, no one is ever in them. Nothing I like better than a beautiful, green, grassy, shady, clean, empty park to sit in.
10. Food court food tends to actually be extremely good
11. They put beets on all the hamburgers
12. Everbody has a giant trampoline

Ah well, tomorrow off to Sydney to pick up the PETS!!!! Their imprisonment draws to a close…

Tomorrow we leave for the broiling wet north. Everyone thinks we’re damn nuts to do it. They are probably right. I hear the drive can be quite dull. Jellyfish and unintelligent kangaroos and huge trucks.

I think it unlikely we will make it all the way up to Cairns which is 1700km away; we’ll probably find something cool along the way and hang out there instead. Maybe we’ll go to Fraser Island and go offroading in the sand and stay there!

Maybe we should go south and hang out in Byron Bay like my older sister recommends. Maybe we should take a short trip north so we can make our trip down to Sydney longer and hang out in Byron Bay like Christy says. Who knows?!

Today the guy came to replace Clyde’s windshield and Zaubi signed him up for car insurance. Yesterday we bought a cooler, a special rope to tug the car out of the muck if it gets stuck, heavy duty floor mats, and a little device to check the pressure and let air out of tires. We searched high and low for one of mrtee’s manual 4WD recovery winch things, but couldn’t find one, only the electric kind. Oh well.

Made an appointment today for our phone line installation and thus preparation for broadband. We can get ADSL2 here, whoopee! Evereything else about telecom is dubious though: all calls countrywide/providerwide have a hefty call connection fee (ick!), Telstra = Captain Communism, and there is no such thing as Unlimited.

Called a pet transporter to arrange for Elma to be shipped up here after her quarantine is through (on Jan. 1 we will drive down to pick up the dogs, who don’t mind car trips).

Got a time when we can come in previous to our leave-for-Sydney-to-get-dogs date and pay the bond on our new pad. Got the guy who kindly gave his name for import to write the quarantine station authorizing release of all the pets to us or the transporter.

Tomorrow we must call the quarantine station to make a payment for the month of the pets’ stay.

I’m tired.

I thought I’d be finished making lists of things done once we got here, but no…

Today was the first rainy day in Brisbane. It poursed all morning and afternoon and now in early evening the sky is blue again, which is perfect as some people are coming over for a barbecue.

We’ve been here in Brisbane for a week and a day and have obtained both a car and a house (albeit a rental).

Not too shabby, eh? Now the fun begins…

Our new car! Isn’t he cute? Isn’t he green??!

Our house-to-be backyard and back of house (the yellow house)

Our house-to-be frontyard and front of house

We have found a PLACE!

And it is our first choice place too, we are so thankful that we managed to get it. We were competing against two other sets of poeple that were Australian and had no pets, so we thought there was no way we’d be accepted, but I think the fact that we bribed the owner by offering to pay $10/week more than it was advertised at did the trick.

So, on January 3rd, we will be happily moving into a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2 car garage, fully fenced front and back yard, house (that happens to be on stilts for some strange reason) with the menagerie.

And it has AC, too, and a washing machine (although no dishwasher and no dryer: these environment-concious Australian folks never bother with those and just hang clothes out to dry in the yard). Some nice hardwood floors, *perfect* location halfway between Zaubi’s job and University of Queensland so we can both bike, on a road that ends on the river, near a couple nice parks, two major highways, a big shopping center, and good bus routes.

And all this for the equivalent of $900-$1000 USD per month! In this one arena (though not others), Brisbane most *definitely* has a lower cost of living.

It’s in the west Brisbane suburb of Indooroopilly (you can’t pronounce that, can you now?)

So I think we have got the car thing settled. I’m not going to say anything more, though, until we have it in the free and clear which should be end of week (fingers crossed). Don’t want to jinx myself. We discovered that we can’t actually get any financing as we are neither working yet nor have our visa yet so we have to pay the whole thing in cash, but the benefit of paying in cash is that they took $1000 off and are throwing in a new windshield to boot.

Now there just leaves this apartment business to be settled! We looked online and have narrowed it down to 5 apartments if they are all right and if they will accept us. The pickings are mighty slim, this time of year. We’d have to apply and see about the pet thing (I hope the lack of visa doesn’t end up a problem here too but I suspect it may!) Anyway, we hope to check them out today. We have an appointment for our favored one at 3PM.

I feel like we’ve done mostly administrative things since we got here. Looking for cars… apartments… visiting Zaubi’s workplace… filling out paperwork and reimbursment forms… It all takes up a strangely large amount of time and I really welcome the time it will be DONE and we can escape away for an adventure or two! It’s tiring to drive around all day in the hot sun assessing cars and things.

This car salesman guy was very nice and spent at least an hour giving us advice about where is a good place to buy houses, where to go, and so forth. I am just itching to get away and go snorkling or drive up the beach…

It also occurs to me that, even though it doesn’t look like it, Christmas is getting very near and I should find interesting things to send to my family! I have already found something very entertaining for viacimo…

There are parrots flying about here. They have green backs and purplish-blue heads and bright red chests and yellow elsewhere.

I found another giant bug yesterday, even bigger than the first. This one had horns, too.