Last Saturday did turn out to be a pretty rough day on the harbor -- lots of wind and a little bit of rain. It was still nice to be out on the water, though, and we had enough wind to practice with just the jib up. I released it, Stewart (my friend from work) pulled it in, and Eric winched it tight. No problem.

We must have passed the test because they asked us to come out again on Sunday when the other prospective crew memeber, Ralph, could make it. By virtue of being last to join the team, Ralph got the toughest job -- getting the spinnaker up. Despite a number of attempts, I wouldn't say we were ever really successful. Ralph is from Germany, and I'm not sure he's able to hear all of the commands clearly up at the bow of the boat.

I think we also really need one additional person, but obviously Terry and Julie, the couple who own the boat, were already scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with us. The next time we're together will be for the first race next Saturday. I anticipate either breaking something very expensive or coming in dead last, about 30 minutes behind the next-to-last boat. Maybe we'll just resort to pirate tactics and try to steal some extra crew from other boats.

Terry and Julie seem very nice and have been quite patient with us. However, I anticipate more heated conversations during the first race. I think they take it quite seriously. Terry is an anesthesiologist from England, and he and Julie have lived all over the world. He is now working at a hospital up in the beautiful Blue Mountains, where they live during the week. Each weekend, they drive the hour down to Sydney and stay on their boat in Sydney Harbor. We only have this weekend off because they are in Melbourne at the opera, their other passion beyond sailing.

I started yoga and "boot camp" this week. One morning a week, a trainer takes about 1/3 to 1/2 of the office to the park next to the Opera House and drills us. It's a bit like going to P.E. class with your co-workers. This week, we did a lot of boxing. Today, I can barely lift my arms over my head. Our building has showers on every other floor -- it's weird to be naked at work, though.

Last night, Eric and I both had work functions. His work bought all of the guys pizza and paid for them to go see Hellboy 2. The people from my office went to a Belgian beer cafe for beer and mussels. They were headed to a dance club when I left them...

Last Sunday, I came home to find a large lump of clay wrapped in wax paper in my mailbox. Our village, Erskineville, is creating a large art installation about the importance of horses to our local history. Each resident is being asked to make a horse and then leave it in their mailbox for firing. The horses will then be displayed in shop fronts around town. Today there is a workshop on how to make horses from clay for those of us lacking in sculpting ability or wanting to meet our neighbors. I'm headed there shortly.

We've learned that our shipment of nine boxes has been selected for a full customs audit. It looks like we'll be seeing our stuff around Sept 16 at the earliest. Sigh.

We continue to learn the subtleties of speaking Australian. Stuffed up means f*cked up, which I learned when I was commenting to one of my co-workers that they seemed unwell. Pissed, as you probably know, means drunk rather than angry, but I still seem to have trouble remembering that. Winging is complaining, and people say, "How are you going?" or "How did you go?" instead of "How are you doing?" or "How did it go?" People at Eric's work seem to say "Good on ya" a lot, but I haven't heard that at my work. One of my British co-workers did refer to someone as a bloke the other day, though. It cracks Eric up when people say the letter H, as in HIV or HR, with a heavy hhhhh at the beginning. It's hhhach r, rather than ach r with a long a. Even as we learn these linguistic differences, we still feel silly saying them ourselves.

When we moved in, we couldn't get the oven to light. We told the rental agency that we probably just didn't know how to light it. The handyman they sent to fix a couple of other things also couldn't figure out how to get the thing to light. This morning, we finally got an appliance repair man to come. In about 90 seconds he showed us how to light the stove. Dang it. Again we look like stupid Americans, but at least I can stop cooking everything in the grill (what they call the broiler)!

It's the coldest day of winter, and the day of our sailing interview. Wish us luck -- we may freeze!

Thai/Johnson Wedding Anniversary

It's hard to believe that Eric and I have only been married for two years. On August 19, 2006, we barely knew anyone in Minneapolis. Now we barely know anyone in Sydney! It feels a bit like all of the changes we've gone through together in the past two years were just training for what's coming up over the next year. At least I know I'm on a winning team. And if past performance really is the best predictor of future performance, we should be set -- we made so many great friends and had such a wonderful time living in Minneapolis (despite occassional rumblings about the cold).

We do have a sailing interview with a couple this weekend to crew on their boat for the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron Spring and Summer Series. Check out the RSYS on the web -- they're directly across from the Opera House. Tough view. That would keep our Saturdays busy from September until forever, and one of the really nice guys from work will likely also be crewing for them. Keep your fingers crossed that we don't blow it! We told them we're unskilled at anything but taking orders, so hopefully their expectations aren't too high.

Last night, Eric and I went to a nice Thai place up the street for our anniversary dinner. Most of the restaurants here are BYO, so we grabbed one of the bottles of wine from the kitchen cabinet. Turns out it was dessert wine -- the cap said "serve chilled." I can only hope the waiter didn't read English and/or didn't know anything about wine. All wine bottles here have twist off caps, so at least I didn't have to feel embarassed about that...

Australian Post vs USPS

When we were signing our lease, we asked the rental clerk if mail was received every day. He seemed a bit confused by the question and explained that we would only receive mail if someone sent us something. When we explained that in the US mail doesn’t come on Sunday, he assured us nothing like that was the case here.

Yesterday, we tried to return our Quickflix videos by leaving them in the mailbox. The postman must have been very confused as we have since learned that the postman only delivers mail here. As one of my confused co-workers asked, “How would he know if it was outgoing mail or if you just forgot to pick up your mail the afternoon before?” Eric and my co-workers’ were all heartily amused. Apparently we have to drop outgoing mail in a post box.

I did find out today, though, that mail is not delivered here on either Saturday OR Sunday. Score one for the stupid Americans over the rental clerk!

Death March

We've been trying some "American" foods this weekend. The verdicts:

1. Mac n' cheese: Not the cheesiest. Pretty wattery. Someone needs to introduce Australia to the mac n' cheese with the creamy cheese stuff you squeeze into it. Clearly the US leads the way in fatty processed foods. Hooray!

2. Pancakes: We actually bought pikelet mix, but it had a recipe for pancakes as well. As far as I can tell, a pikelet is a really sugary pancake. Anyway, Australians think pancakes are crepes. Next weekend, I'll try the mix again with half the suggested milk.

3. Pizza: They do deliver, and you're not even expected to tip! The menu is filled with the most bizarre options you could imagine -- perhaps squid and avocado do belong on the same pizza, but not on mine.

They still have us beat hands down on coffee, though. And access to Indian and Chinese take away.

Today we took the train to Cronulla, a little beach town at the end of the line. The desalination plant to whom Eric is being contracted out is in a town near there, and we thought we'd see if he could walk to work from the train station. Four little words the Aussies should learn are "map not to scale." We walked 9.2 km to the little town where the plant is, at which point we were pretty beat. Thank goodness there was a bus to take us back -- oh, wait, no bus on Sunday! I thought I was going to cry as I realised we had to walk another 9.2 km back. Eric still has to decide if he takes the car or the extra $10K/year, but I know in what direction we were both leaning this afternoon...

At about kilometer 18, we encountered the bar you see in the picture above. What you may not be able to read is the fine print that claims that Hog's Breath, in suspiciously familiar font, is "uniquely Australian." As if! This joint was established in 1989, long after 1976, when the doors opened in Destin. Perhaps they think it's okay since they called it a cafe instead of a saloon, but I'm not fooled by their semantic tricks. I challenge all of you who come to visit us from Florida to bring your Hog's Breath t-shirts, and we'll march (okay, train) down there and demand justice! What next, an Australian Lucky Joe's???

If you're wondering why I haven't been posting more pics on the blog recently, it's because we pay by the megabyte or gigabyte or something over here for internet access. Eric swears we're well within our limits, but I'm scared by those fancy computer memory words. I'm having enough trouble with the metric system. Anyway, once we get a feel for how much memory is what, I'll post more. For now, I just added some of our friends from Taronga Zoo. You knew there would be koalas, didn't you?

Overshare

Yesterday I was telling the girls at work that we had to go shopping for new pants for Eric, and they looked really confused. Then Kate, my co-worker from London, exclaimed, “Oh, you mean trousers!” I’ve just realised that their confusion was due to the fact that “pants” means “underwear” here. I’m blushing – what an obvious case of oversharing.

First and foremost, Eric got a job yesterday. Naturally the wonder kid was offered the first job for which he interviewed. It’s a small company with lots of young people, and he thinks he’ll be able to learn some new skills. They’re still working out the details, but he’ll probably start early next week. If he works on the desalination project south of Sydney, they’ll provide us with a car. While it’s been an adventure trying to do all of our errands by foot or by train, it would certainly be a lot easier to get groceries home in a car…If he works on a different project, though, no car, and we’ll certainly continue to be fine.

Anyone who knows me well knows my love of celebrity gossip, actual news, and random facts. Every evening as I walk into my train station, a nice little lady hands me a short newspaper filled with all of those wonderful things. I look out across the harbor at the bridge and the Opera House at sunset, then get on my train to read my trash. Ahh…

I got a haircut last night – finally. I chose the salon based on the name – Pelo Hair. As pelo means hair in Spanish, the name is really Hair Hair, which I thought was hilarious. There aren’t too many Spanish speakers in Sydney that I’ve noticed. The salon is the first for two young friends, who opened it last October.

I arrived a bit early last night and was offered a glass of wine. I declined, not because I don’t love wine, but because I wasn’t used to being offered free drinks with my haircut. After a few minutes, another lady came over and offered again, letting me know that they just felt weird if someone didn’t have a drink. How could I resist? I was also offered magazines, and then the girl clarified, “Trashy?” I thought I’d gone to salon heaven.

When discussing what I wanted done to my hair with Bridget, I mentioned that I’d been thinking of some kind of bangs. Fortunately she has a brother in NYC and thus knew that I meant fringe, which is a much more accurately descriptive term, similar to mobile versus cell phone. However, she thought the word was bands, which makes about as much sense as bangs anyway.

As I left, I had another embarrassing tipping situation. I keep trying to tip people, and they keep pointing out that I’ve given them the wrong amount of money. The choice then is to either explain that you’re trying to tip them, or pretend you’re just an idiot who can’t count and take the money back. I made Bridget keep my $5. The haircut was $70, just $5 more than I was used to paying in Minneapolis, but I was used to tipping $15.