Bumper stickers

We've seen "Sticker Family" stickers around on various cars here and in SA, and I thought it'd be cool to get one or two for our car.

We bought one during the week (the birdie on the left, facing right) and have already stuck it on the back window (on the black of the glass, so it's not visible from inside the car).  We bought 3 more today, and are going to stick them on the car later when it's cooler.

The stickers WE got are not a 'family' set of stickers though:

They're representative of our 'funnyfarm', or in the case of the 2nd bird and the mouse/rat, the pets we'll have one day.  The first bird and the fishbowl are in honour of Dude and my fish.

I'll take a pic of the car once the stickers are in place.

* Pics 'borrowed' from My Family

News from Dan Unda

Firstly, as promised, here are the pics of our cute car:

 

I went for my first ever Australian drive this morning, and felt like a complete n00b.  It's painfully obvious that I haven't driven for over 2 years, and I'm going to need quite a bit of practice.  At least, apparently, QLD driving rules aren't as anal about the tiny intricacies of driving as they are in SA, so you don't HAVE to pull up the handbrake every.time.you.ever.stop.the.car.even.if.it's.a.stop.street.  Although I probably will for now, because I'm not used to this car and have 'gone rusty' LOL.

In other NEWSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, we went to view 3 homes this week, and applied for two.  We were hoping to get one of them, because it looked PERFECT for us, so we held our thumbs to death the whole time afterwards but remained 'sensible' about it because we're new to the country and they might prefer a tenant with Aus references, etc etc etc.  But, the following day, we were called to say that we'd been approved, and would we like to accept and could we come and sign the lease etc the next day.  YES YES YES WE GOT THE HOUSE!!

This is a pic of the front of the house (view from the street).  It's very private, without being a fortress, like nearly every home in SA that was classed as 'private' was.

 In between all these exciting happenings, I got my hair cut (pic to come), and I bought some cute, smart shoes for work (or a more-formal-than-casual occasion).

 

And, as proof that I do in fact own a second laptop, here's a pic:

No, it doesn't have a name.  The other one didn't have a name either.  I don't name everything I own, thankyouverymuch!

Finding and getting the house couldn't have come at a better time.  We'll have stayed with G&E&E for 3 weeks, which is plenty long enough.  I just hope that they don't (and haven't) felt as if we've been leeching off them.  It has been awkward at times, when Little-E has a mini-meltdown over something, or does something naughty which E has to reprimand her about, because we are there, 'watching'.  We kinda feel like we're intruding, and I certainly wish that the earth would swallow me up, to use a hackneyed phrase.  Also, once we've moved into the house, we won't have to live out of our suitcases anymore, we can FINALLY unpack!!!!!!!!  It's been 2 MONTHS now, and it's starting to get OLD!

Another uberexciting thing we'll be able to do, FINALLY, is buy COUCHES!!  We're looking at Ikea and Fantastic Furniture, which seem to have affordable couches in a style we like.  It's a toss-up though, but I'm leaning towards Fantastic Furniture because there are a few other items there that we could buy and if we do, we could negotiate a better deal by virtue of buying a whole lot of things!

One thing I need to remark on is how quickly things happen here.  We applied for Medicare cards last week, and the lady said we'd get our cards within 3 weeks' time.  They arrived today.  TODAY.  That's 7 working days on, not 15!  AWESOME.

Ok, now to post this and have supper!  Indian tonight!

Update!

Time has passed so quickly, I can't believe that it's Sunday and tomorrow we'll have been here for 2 weeks already.

Last week was a bit of an unproductive week for us, what with having no car after giving the hirecar back.  We went by bus to walk around the '2nd hand car mile' near the city, but had no luck.  Afterwards, we (I :P ) surfed and hunted online, and found a few cars which I sent inquiries about.  We were called by dealers about 3 of the cars, and we intended to go see 2 of them.  To cut a long rambly story short, we only managed to go see one of them (on Friday) - we were taking public transport and the time just ran from us - but thankfully we liked the car and decided to buy it.  We played difficult with the dealer and said we'd phone on Saturday to confirm, because he made it seem as if we'd inconvenienced them a lot by making them get the car in only for us to take a test drive and not buy immediately (haha, like seriously?).  G phoned Saturday morning, the deposit is paid, and tomorrow we go fetch the car (and pay, etc, etc).  I will post a pic or 2 once we have it and I've taken photos!!  It's a manual silver 2008 Toyota Corolla (hatchback), which, when G gets mucho moola from his uber-successful company profits and buys a Porsche, will become my car!!!  I'm trying to think of a name for it already <3  too exciting.  So obviously I'm hoping his business venture races ahead and is super-successful very soon!!

Yesterday G&E&E, Other-G, G and I went for a longgggggggg drive to Bribie Island, to go spend the day on the beach.  It was a beautiful day, and I wished I'd brought my bathing costume because the water was incredibly warm.  I am glad I took my umbrella though, as I got too hot in the sun and sat under my umbrella for a long time.  Unfortunately I must have lost track of time before putting on sunscreen as I got rather sunburnt on my legs.  And, somehow, I managed to splotch on the sunscreen very unevenly because I missed patches and have handprint-like pale areas now.  Maybe from sand stuck to me, I'm not sure.  But it hurt a lot yesterday evening and this morning, but it seems to be getting better now.  Hopefully I won't peel very much!

Today I've been looking at houses to rent.  I just hope that finding a home is easy enough... Although we couldn't have wished for better 'housemates' (ie, G&E&E are the most lovely, generous people and I think we'll be indebted to them for ever for letting us stay here!), I just wish we had our own space.  Quiet, childless space.  Little E is 3.5 years old, and although she's very sweet, it gets a bit exhausting being in the same room (house) as a constant source of babble and interaction-demanding-being.  It's not generally directed at us, but the pitch of her voice (and all her toys!!) just goes straight into the concentration section of my brain and I can't think straight.  Even 'small talk' is impossible because of the constant chatter.  I am seriously grateful that I don't ever have to have a child of my own.  I understand how big a job it really is, and can't see myself managing.  Never mind managing, surviving is a better word!!

Cheers!! *clinks glasses together* here's to our own home!!

It has happened

We are now 'down under', in Brisbane.

Sunday was a bit of a mad rush, time just ran away with us and we ended up only getting to the airport checkin-desk at 10:15 - checkin opened at 10:00... thankfully there were quite a number of (Asian*) families there who couldn't quite decide whose bag the boxes of tea/herbs/etc should go, so we weren't late by any means.

*I mention Asian as, just with 'large famiily stereotypes', there are some things that families ALWAYS do, and this might be one of them that might be specific to Asian families? (I'm not sure).   Sorry if I'm incoherent... jetlag I think still has some control over my brain functions.

It was too much of a rush on Sunday morning to properly say bye to Dude.  Sis had already got to the airport at 08:15 (she overestimated the traffic/time it'd take to get there by a large margin) and ended up waiting ages for us.  We checked in, then went up to have coffee/tea/juice with G's parents and Sis.  Hurriedly afterwards we went to go for security-check etc and had to hug and wave bye there.  Weirdly, G had packed his (way over 100ml) bodywash into his handluggage and had to toss it across the barrier to his dad, but everything else was straightforward.

As we got to the desk to get our passports stamped by immi/emigration, there was an evidently non-English-speaking Asian girl being given a hard time by one of the women there.  Hard time as in, very annoyed attitude, grumpily asking questions and unashamedly dissing the woman by saying stuff like 'we don't want people like you in this country' and 'why do you come here if you can't speak English?'.  I just need to point out that the woman was a black woman.  I felt very sorry for the girl but as we were racing for our plane, I couldn't stop to have a word with the black woman (bitch).  When you're travelling you DON'T need shit like that from anybody, REGARDLESS of how much of the language you speak/don't speak.

We got onto the plane fine, and had a rather quiet flight out from Cape Town to Singapore.  We both got a bit emotional at times, I'm not exactly sure if it was for the same reasons but I obviously ended up suffering more as I had un-dead red eyes and bunged up nose for the rest of the trip.  I did watch Secretariat though, which I enjoyed a lot, and I got overly emotional during the race-winning scenes, which probably gives you an indication of how my emotions were jumbled during the flight.

In Singapore, we met up with May (who I met on the way home from Brisbane on my first trip to Aus), and we had a lekker chat and coffee/icy cold drink.  She gave us 2 oranges and 2 raisin-cakes to celebrate Chinese New Year.  We were going to eat them before we got off the plane in Brisbane, but ended up half-dead/asleep and only managed to eat 1 of each.  At one point during the flight, I had only just managed to drop off to sleep, when I was woken by the airhostess, "ma'am, your TEA!' - I'd asked for tea probably 5mins earlier... if only she knew how reluctantly I woke up!  But, even though we were so tired, the cake was YUMMY (we didn't actually eat the airline's breakfast LOL - there's only so much airline food you can handle in 24hrs) and the orange was refreshing after having water/tea/airline food for so many hours.

We left Singapore 1hr late, as there was something wrong with 1 of the runways (it was rainingy heavily at the time), and we were in a 15-plane queue waiting to get out of Singapore.  We arrived in Brisbane 1hr late too, and then had to collect our bags and go through immigration and customs/quarantine.

Our bags were 100% fine, much to our MAJOR relief as we hadn't taken travel insurance (emigration travel insurance DOESN'T cover bags and we thought it a waste just for medical cover), and we had flown from a South African airport after all.  But, obviously the people at Cape Town airport aren't scums-of-the-earth as the people at Johannesburg are, because our bags were intact.

We got through immigration without a problem, and then had to go through customs/quarantine. In the end, after being sub-sorted according to what we had declared, we got to a counter and had no problems whatsoever.  They scanned our bags and the eats that I'd packed in my handluggage were checked but found to be fine.  We had quite a nice conversation with the quarantine guy there though, as he was apparently from South Africa and welcomed us and wished us good luck for our new life in Aus.

We were met at the airport by (I'll have to call him his proper name because there are far too many G's on this blog already LOL) Gareth, G's ex-uni-classmate.  As we walked out the airport doors (probably 10pm), we were slammed in the face by HUMIDITY!  'WELCOME TO BRISBANE!!!' breathed the air steamily all over us.  It was quite a surprise.  Bear in mind I've only been to Brisbane in April/May, Nov and Aug so not full summer heat at any stage.  It hasn't really cooled down at all in the week that we've been here, but I think we're adapting:  I am going to go tomorrow for a haircut (short), and I am going to go out and buy MORE shorts, plus some strappy sandals (slipslops are a bit too casual in some situations).  Jeans and takkies with socks is just NOT ON.

Ok this is going to be a LONGGGGGGGGGGG blogpost, but it's long overdue so... bear with me :)

Tuesday we slept til about 11, and struggled our way through the day after collecting the hire car, and had supper with Gareth+his family.  Wednesday we visited the mall nearby and then Other-G came to visit us for supper.  G ordered a smartphone, which should arrive any day now.  Thursday, after researching further (I started on Wednesday), we headed out for a road-trip to find & buy MY NEW LAPTOP!!  It's a Toshiba Satellite A660, which is PRETTY NICE!!  I won't go into detail but it's got a Bluraydisk player, built-in webcam/microphone, oh, it's an i5, 4gb RAM, 640gb HDD, 16" widescreen monitor.  I can't think of other details but that's pretty much it.  Oh and it also has bluetooth (which some specs webpages mention and others don't).

For now, while we're waiting for our container/stuff, G's going to use my 'old' laptop.  I just need to take off all my bookmarks/files/etc etc etc, and then it's perfect! I get a new, spunky funky laptop and he gets an old but usable laptop - he doesn't need a new laptop as his desktop is spunky funky like my laptop.

On Friday we pretty much blobbed around, I'm not sure what all we did either (sorry, this is the jetlag typing) - I think on Friday we went to the mall again to explore, and had Hungry Jacks for lunch.  Saturday we headed out to the shops and bought picnic eats and eventually headed out to Mt Coot-tha for a picnic.  We were planning to go to the botanical gardens but missed the 'turnoff' into the garden and ended up stopping elsewhere for a picnic.

No sooner had we sat down at one of the picnic benches, then both a lace monitor and a masked plover made perpendicular beelines towards us.

It was quite alarming.  I froze mid-unwrap of my sub.  The lizard was bearing down on us, flicking its dark, forked tongue hungrily.

Then, without any visible cue, the bird became enraged, screamed and took off into the air.  It then proceeded to attack the monitor ferociously by swooping up high into the air and divebombing it, aiming directly at its head, and bashing it forcefully with its wings.  The monitor was initially unfazed, but then started to duck its head and dodge clumsily, and eventually redirected its course back the way it came.  The plover was almost immediately satisfied and promptly retired to its original position on the walkway, where we'd originally passed it to get to the picnic table.

In case you are wondering just what we were up against, these are the two characters:

Lace Monitor (pic from Flickriver)

Masked Plover (pic from Jamieson Bird Photos)

The adventure doesn't end there, though.  Not long after the lizard/bird action sequence had finished, we were 'adopted' by a "Common Eggfly".  Not a very appealing name but a very cute character:

(Pic from Butterfly Encounters)

For the next few (hours? we sat there for quite a while enjoying the peace and quiet and birdnoise), we were entertained and tickled by this little fellow.  Ok not quite so little, considering he has a 7-8.5cm wingspan.  He flew around us and landed on us and licked me ceaselessly.  I mean that literally: he would land on me and put out his little taste-tube thingiemajiggie and lick non-stop.  It was extremely ticklish, but I hadn't the heart to chase him away.  I can now state with certainty that I have had a butterfly licking my toes LOL.  Who else can say such a thing?

After the long, lazy afternoon at Mt Coot-tha, we headed out to Other-G's place for supper and a movie.  Butter chicken and 'Scott Pilgrim'.  A VERY FUN movie hehe.

Today we didn't do much, just went for a long, hot walk with Gareth + his 3.5-year-old daughter.  It was so hot and sticky and it caused me to decide that I'm going to have my hair cut TOMORROW.  And I'm not going to wear jeans until winter LOL.

Apart from all these events, we've been pretty frustrated by our SA bank f*cking around.  So G's only getting his savings probably at the end of the week.  Which means we have been UNABLE to make use of the fact that we have a hirecar and go test-drive cars or check out rental houses.  The hirecar goes back on Tuesday morning, and so we will have to take a BUS or something to go find a car.  Lovely.  THANK YOU FNB YOU PIECES OF POO.  Incompetent morons.  At least the woman on the helpline when G skyped was helpful.  BUT THERE SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!  WHAT'S SO IMPERMISSIBLE about TRANSFERRING MONEY?!  Ok rant over.  But still frustrated!  So it's been feeling like we're 'on hold' now for the whole week.

Here's hoping this week coming will be at least somewhat more satisfying.  Here's also hoping, beyond hope, that I can have a 'decent' conversation with my mother/sister in the coming weeks.  So far, it's been more of the usual: gripes/moaning/complaining about the other.

Anyway, time to press 'publish' on this tome!