Wrapped up good

Gidday.

Your blog today is accompanied by music by a new Auzzie band I have discovered, called "The McClymonts". Not only are they good looking,they actually do some excellent music too. I can now manage to listen to music again as I have managed to purchase a semi listenable set of speakers to plug into my laptop... as you can tell we are slowly making life more comfortable.

35 Degrees outside today, you start to just accept the heat, and it's not noticeable anywhere like it was when we first arrived. Stepping out of the airport at Brisbane was the biggest shock to the system I must say. I now understand why Uncle Grant freezes so much when he comes back to NZ.

Fairly cruisy day so far today, which is good for a Saturday. Ryan's on call so we have to remain more or less in Gladstone area in case he gets called out.
Finally managed to finalise some Internet!!! Ended up going with Telstra, despite everyone telling us to avoid them, because at the end of the day they were the only ones which could provide the level of service we were after at a reasonable (?) cost. I use the word reasonable with caution, as it's still daylight robbery, but it's the best option given the circumstances. We shall be getting 25 GB of data for AU$100.90 a month, which works out about $50.45 each. An expense I know, but it is difficult to live without Internet these days.

That price includes a landline telephone also, but the call rates are not cheap, about 20 cents per 30 seconds for local calls. (For some reason all phone costs are charged per 30 seconds over here). I was desperately looking for naked ADSL, but the only people who can provide it as a service don't have gear in Gladstone. You can't win.

More examples of my confounded luck... Our pin numbers arrived in the mail for our visa debit cards the other day (mine a day late as usual) and we finally got around to changing the default pins today. Well, I should say "attempted to change". Ryan's worked piece of cake... by the time I got to the ATM the pin I thought they had given me and the pin they actually had given me appeared to be two different things.
Turns out I had miss-memorised it luckily, but now I'm locked out of the ATM for 24 hours so I'll have to try again tomorrow.

Oh yes... yet again got stung by the stupid "no free calls off prepaid telephone" rule over here. Grrr. Rang telstra to jack up the Internet and again halfway though the call I get disconnected... blew $20 on the call this time. Beware, "freephone" numbers are not free if you have a prepaid phone. Yet another example of the money grabbing mongrel tactics the telcos use here. Having said that, the gentleman I was dealing with on the phone was kind enough to offer to discuss cellphone plan options with me. I nearly told him what he could do with his flaming cellphone plans.

Another thing, the auzzies don't have cellphones. They have "Mobile phones". And they don't know what a crescent is. Over here it's a "Shifting spanner". You can forget pozi drive. And square head screws are about as rare as emu teeth. And RT's are "2 ways" or "2 way radios". If you do anything wrong you better be prepared for "a pineapple up your arse". Boy if I had a cent for every time I've heard that expression. And that's dead set fair dinkum.
Did I mention these auzzies are crazy.

I'm slowly getting used to the crazy money over here too... one thing the NZ goverment *did* do good was decide to shrink our NZ coins.
Over here your trousers just about fall off because of the weight of the coins in your wallet... and most auzzies don't seem to understand us calling coins "shrapnel" either. I should write a letter to the government saying they should follow NZ's lead and lose some blasted weight.

And while they are at it they should make $1 coins smaller than $2 coins... The amount of times I have attempted to pay $2 for a $1 item and vice versa...
I mean come on, how often do you physically check the number on the coin? It's not my fault they have their coins backwards.
And they have their hundred dollar notes green. Just like our $20s. You should have seen the look on the cashiers face at "Hungry Jacks" (BK) when I attempted to pay for a $12 meal with a $100 note. I just completely thought it was a 20. Wasn't the first time either. Ah well, I haven't got that sort of cash lying around now so that solved that problem.

Almost pay day :D I have a box of some bits and pieces that I'll sometime get around to sending back to NZ, so if there are any reasonable requests now is your chance. No promises mind.

I'm pretty much living in Auzzie dollars now, I used to mentally transfer everything back to NZ bucks, but it's easier to just to deal in the new values now.
That way I'll get a better surprise shipping money home too :D

Righto, I better go and do something productive. FYI, don't try and go shopping on a Saturday... due to no Sunday trading Saturdays are stupidly busy.

Ciao.