Will the last Englishman out of the country turn the lights out please ?

Friends and a rant !

It's been a pretty significant week all in all. First week in the new house, all seems well there. K has met some of the neighbours, and they seem real nice.

More importantly, things are all starting to fall into place over here. The downside if there is one is also that reality is also beginning to set in. This weekend, I played football in the sun, 20 degrees in the middle of winter. BBQ after, a better life you could not wish for. Then, Sunday we spent the afternoon looking out over Mosman's marina, on the beach, having a bbq with some friends. I remember arriving here, visiting Bobbin Head, seeing all the people at bbq's and thinking, will we ever have friends, how long will it take ? Well, I guess 8 months is the answer. It was really nice, we had a great time, and although it wasn't as warm as Saturday, it only reached 15, but still not bad for winter.

The negative bit is that we are now starting to uncover the delights of Australian beaurucracy. For instance, our rental real estate agent. Slightly podgy, bad hair, bad dress sense. Should we ever go to war, put this woman in charge of the prison camps, she rules with an iron fist. Our first attempt at cleaning the place, which we might add we cleaned when we moved in, resulted in a 2 page email of faults to be addressed. 3 round of cleaning later, we are down to 9 items ! I am laughing about it now it's so ridiculous. Then there are licenses. You need a license to fart here. Want a pool put in ? Planning required ofcourse, no issue there. But you need a land survey of levels for heavens sake. Not to see if there are issues for you like rock, etc, just so they can guage the impact on the surrounding area. It's my bloody garden mate ! Not over here it seems. $1200.00 for a land survey, but it keeps someone in employment I guess.

I guess overall it's a good thing. It just takes some getting used to. We just need to know how to work the system. When we gave our keys back in the UK on the rental, 10 mins, done. Here, we should have taken the time to fill out the condition report when we moved in, but we did not know that. As we said when we moved here, it keeps people in jobs, and the little extra we have to pay is worth it for the quality of life. We still need to re-align our thinking, things dont happen fast here !

Read a great article in the paper the other day. They have this rant section in the evening freeby. K and I have seen loads of women, Gucci/Prada/Chanel sunglasses on, sitting on the train in a lit carriage if you can believe it, thinking they are the mutts nuts. You can spot them a mile off, nose in the air types. Anyway, you know those tags you get on the arms of suits, and coats, the label of who makes them ? They leave them on there ! Ha ! They are so stupid they think it's a statement of how exclusive the coat is or something ! Frickin idiots, typical hicksville. Anyway, the article pointed this out to these women, the author also having spotted a number of the trogladytes with the stitch still in the bottom of the split in their skirts ! I've seen them too buddy ! Just goes to show, you can't immitate style, guess that's why our rental real estate agent isn't bothering !