This continues to bug me - the whole 'choice' thing in relation to supermarkets and shops in general. It comes up time and again on the expat forums - people banging on about how much more choice there is in Tescos rather than the Australian equivalent - Coles. And I just don't get it. On any level.

Leaving aside the larger supermarkets down the Bolong road in Nowra, my nearest decent mini-mart is the IGA in Berry. Now, I haven't actually stood there and counted all the different varieties of bread they have on offer, but there's many metres of them in a wide variety of formats designed to cater to all tastes. There's faddish granary loaves in retro brown paper, there's raisin toast, crumpet toast (surely the food of the gods), white loaves, wholemeal, low glutin, organic rye, pumpkin seed, caraway, Lebanese and Turkish. There's Country Life, Helgas, Mighty Soft, Noble Rise, Sunblest and Wonderwhite. And that's just the loaves - I haven't even mentioned the pita bread, tortillas, baps, rolls, bagels, crumpets and muffins they also stock. And let me reiterate that this is in a small town mini-mart - not one of the large supermarkets.

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Well, it’s mid-mid-mid-winter here right now and if you’re a surfer that means one thing - big fucking waves. We have some superb surfing beaches round here that can produce stunning waves with the right swell. Coastalwatch had some amazing pictures up on their site of a swell hitting the coast about 10km from my backdoor.

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Two years is seen by many immigrants as a tipping point. For many people who are uncertain if they intend to stay in Oz, it marks the point at which they consider themselves to have given the country a fair go and consequently book return flights back to Blighty. For others it marks the point at which they stop feeling the bad pangs of homesickness and start feeling more at home in Oz. In Catherine’s case it marks the point at which she can apply for Australian citizenship (Josh qualified from day one). I have asked the great one if she intends to get her citizenship, but she’s keeping me guessing. Being on a spouse visa meant she had PR from day one, so beyond the obvious ‘benefit’ of being able to vote - she’s in no rush to spend her afternoon with the mayor to get her flag and pot plant.

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So. Thread running here in which I asked some perfectly reasonable questions. Paul's solution - acuse me of "having a tantrum" and then close the thread.

Man it must be great to be an admin of a site like this. If someone says something you don't like, you can just close the thread - the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and chanting, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you."

This is the problem. Herr Oberlieutenant Paul thinks that I am spamming my new blog site. And where am I spamming my new blog site? In my signature? Nope. On the forums in threads and posts? Nope. In emails or karma messages to people? Nope. No - I have been accused of spamming my blog, from within my blog. Genius.

I mean, let's think about this for a second. The only people reading my blog full of my words about my experiences and using my pictures - will be people with a passing interest in what I have to say about me and my family. So quite how I'm spamming, by letting people know that my blog has moved elsewhere, is beyond me. It's not like I'm leading the users of this site, like some digital Pied Piper, to a big competitor to British Expats. Nope - I'm letting the 30-or-so people who regularly read my blog know that it's moved. Wow - what a wanker I am.

The powers that be on this site seem to be obsessed with external links. It's as if (MY GOD!!!!) there are websites other than British Expats that we might all visit. And by stopping anyone mentioning those other unclean websites, they might perhaps go away and British Expats can continue to reign supreme amongst niche web forums devoted to people of British origin now living abroad.

The whole place was going to shit long before it was sold to a large media aggregating company. I will watch the coming months and the stunning site updates (oooh look, vendor forums - how very fucking useful) with real interest.

Blog updated ... here.

Blog updated ... here.

Blog updated ... here.

Blog updated .... here.

Blog updated ... here.

Blog updated here.

Okay - the new blog's up and running and since I can't be arsed to individually notify everyone that PM'd I'll just put the address on here. If you only read my blog when you see it's updated here and would like to go on reading it, then fear not - I plan to place a new entry on here every time I update my new blog.

http://www.thatstheplan.com