Imagine

Walking back home from Narai Thai, noticing the tangle of overhead power cables, suddenly brought back a vivid memory from my early childhood, when I would pretend the telephone wires were giant spiderwebs and equally giant spiders were hiding just out of sight ready to pounce if you strayed too near.  A seemingly obscure memory, but it just brought home to me how much my imagination has declined with age.  Has an entire adulthood of strictly following policies, guidelines and evidenced based practice sapped any ability for original thought from my brain.  But it's not just my imagination that is suffering with age, my memory is also far from what it used to be.  Back in my school days I could sit in class barely paying attention and I would absorb all the necessary information like a sponge, revision was completely unnecessary for me.  I would learn all my lines for a play in one night while sitting in the bath, lines I can still recite to this day:

"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And 'ere a man hath power to say "Behold!"

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion."

So why is it that now I struggle to remember the simplest things? I am thinking it must be a combination of both these factors that has left me in my current state of poor performance in job interviews.

Another of our fish died this weekend, poor Lili succumbed to a fungal infection, we had just started treatment when we noticed the furry white mould appear under her left gill on Saturday morning, but by Saturday night she was belly up.  Lilo and Lila are still doing fine.

Desperate Housewives

I am beginning to think we should rename our street Wisteria Lane, while I have been at work Barnadi has been busy getting to know the neighbourhood.  So after a busy morning gardening, getting the vegetable patch ready for spring, he joins our next door neighbour Barry for a cup of tea and a gossip.  Now Barry and his wife first moved into his house back in the 1970's  so he has seen a lot of people come and go, including his own wife, who passed away 13 years ago.  Todays little snippet of gossip however focused on a couple who used to live in the house next to us, now occupied by a Chinese family.  The wife who had been having an affair left and the husband, distraught, ended it all with a bullet to the head.

We have been looking after Sam's dog Lucky again, it brings a nice routine to my evenings, coming home from work, stopping for a coffee at Narai Thai to see Barnadi and then take Lucky for a walk around the park behind the house.  As far as getting our own pets go, we have a cat lined up ready to adopt soon, but we are still searching for the right dog.  Barnadi is quite specific in his requirements for a puppy, he specifically wants a brown and white border collie, with as irregular markings as possible.  Meanwhile our existing pets have decreased down to 3 fish, as Stitch the little yellow catfish died quite unexpectedly last weekend.

And then there were four.

One of the stranger concepts to get your head around while working for an Australian public hospital is that of the ADO (Accrued Day Off).  I am currently contracted to work 40 hours a week, comprising of five 8 hour days, so these are the hours I work.  But rather than do the simple thing of paying me for the 40 hours a weeks' worth of work that I have done, the hospital instead only pays me for 38.  Scandalous.  So what happens to these 2 hours the hospital owes me?  It is accrued.  Every 4 weeks, each member of staff is entitled to an extra day off.  This all sounds fair enough, but what really baffles me is that it is a struggle to get time off for annual leave as it is, so why develop a system which gives everyone even more time off, that then needs to be covered.  Surely paying everyone for the hours they work upfront would save this massive administrative headache of trying to cover all the gaps caused by excessive amounts of staff having to take an extra day of leave each month.  Needless to say, I was very grateful for the ADO I had last week.

As I work all day and Barnadi doesn't start work until the evening, it leaves Barnadi a lot of time to do stuff for the house by himself, such as working on the garden, decorating the rooms and shopping.  With the excessive amount of extra work I have been putting in recently, I have been feeling quite left out when it comes to getting things organised the way we want it.  Making the house feel more like one of Barnadi's projects than something we both have an equal hand in.  This I felt quite intently when I came home one day to find Barnadi had increased the occupancy of our fish bowl to four.  We now have an orange goldfish called Lila and a small yellow catfish called Stich.  Buying pets, even fish, should always be something that we do together.  So on my ADO it was good that we got to do some things together.

Lilo and Lila

We started the day bright and early, although still two hours later than I would normally have to get up for work.  After breakfast Barnadi made me join him in his morning kettle bell exercise regimen.  We then took a very short drive to Greensborough, partly to explore as we had not been there before and it is one of our closest neighbouring suburbs, and partly because Barnadi had heard that Target was selling a sewing machine at 60% off the RRP.  We parked at the plaza in the centre of Greensborough before going for a walk through a nearby park that ran along the edge of the Plenty river, while offsetting all this expenditure of energy by feasting on an almond tart.  The weather was unseasonably warm reaching a high of 22 degrees, and so it was actually nice to get back inside the air conditioned plaza and get down to the business of the day, shopping.  With Barnadi it is impossible to simply go shopping and come home with the one thing we planned to get.  In addition to the sewing machine we got 4 mugs featuring birds of Australia, a Tuscan plate, a 20" by 24" photo frame and maybe a present or two for my newest nephew who we will be visiting in August.

We got back home and Barnadi prepared lunch while I worked out how to thread the sewing machine.  The day was so nice we decided it was impossible to put off mowing the lawn any longer, so a trip to Bunnings in Mill Park was in order to finally acquire a lawn mower.  No sooner had we got to Bunnings than the heavens opened up and a massive thunderstorm hit the northern suburbs of Melbourne.  A boat would have got us home much more safely than a car.  We put off leaving Bunnings as long as we could, purchasing more than just a lawn mower along the way, before resigning ourselves to the fact, the storm wasn't going anywhere. 

The rain still hasn't stopped two days later, although the initial force of the downpour has eased somewhat.  The new lawnmower is trapped inside its' box, waiting to be assembled, while the lawn grows more and more unruly, mocking us and our lack of ability to do anything about it.

Work-a-holic

Due to a series of poorly planned swaps and my over generous nature today is the first day off work I've had since the weekend we moved into our new house.  This is where holding down two jobs (even if one is only two shifts a month) is becoming a real strain on my quality of life.  Yet I cannot risk giving up my work in Epping all while I continue to lack any job security at the Alfred.  This may be about to change as another permanent position has recently been advertised and so once again I applied, the interview for which I had on Thursday.  Like last time however, I did not find out I even had an interview until the morning of the day it was to be held, only this time it turned out to be a couple of case studies rather than a full blown interview.  Plenty of other people have applied, and it is only one position, so I am not getting my hopes up, but this is the third interview I have had since I started working at the Alfred, so if I don't get it this time I need to seriously start to reconsider my future there.

Anyway, for now I am still at the Alfred and one of my biggest problems is to sort out my new longer commute.  Barnadi has taken it upon himself to drive me, originally to Northcote station but more recently all the way to work in the mornings, but I still have to make my own way back.  The options are:

1. Tram then Train (+/- Bus)
2. Tram then Tram
3. Bus then Tram

The first option worked quite well at first, with an express train to Watsonia that arrived just in time to connect with a bus to take me the last little bit of the Journey home.  After the first couple of days I found I missed the express train and so missed the connecting bus, rather than wait for the bus the only option is to walk the remaining distance.
Option two takes a lot longer as the tram is frequently held up by traffic and has more stops than the train.  The tram does come a lot closer to our house and stops just outside Narai Thai so I can pop in to see Barnadi on my way home, and for that reason I am preferring this option for now.
The third option is one I haven't tried yet, but the public transport Victoria journey planner website does indicate it is the quickest.  The downside is that buses are very infrequent and so although the journey itself may be the most direct it will actually take longer with the amount of time I will waste waiting for the bus.

Still work and getting to and from it were the last things on my mind today, today was all about enjoying the new home.  Barnadi has been very busy these past couple of weeks getting everything set up to his own unique tastes.  He is quite keen to get some new furniture to replace some of the IKEA items we purchased when we first arrived in Australia, so today we invested in a new dinning table and chairs as well as some new shelves for the 'Library'.  As well as inside the house we also have lots to get for the outside, with a big front and back garden to look after so a trip to Masters later and we now have a spade, a rake, a saw, shears, secateurs, a step ladder and a hose pipe.  What we still don't have but quite desperately need is a lawn mower.

Our most exciting purchase for the day was Lili and Lilo our two new goldfish.  We haven't dared get any fish for a while after the tragic short lives of Bronzefin and Coppertail, but it seemed right to get some new fish now we are settled in the new house, lets hope they have a longer and fuller life than their predecessors.

Animal Instincts

One thing that Gemma and Dan left us with before heading back to the UK was a pair of tickets to King Kong, a musical production of the classic tale of a giant ape running amok in New York city.  The show has been advertised by the Regent theatre since we arrived in Australia over a year ago, but the show did not open until a week before our settlement and it was the day before settlement that we got to go.  We arrived early as our tickets came with a free cocktail, which I have to confess I broke my abstinence for, it was only a couple of sips so it wouldn't have done any harm, but I do feel a little disappointed that I couldn't manage the whole 9 months completely alcohol free.  I didn't really know what to expect from the show before we went in, although I knew the story of King Kong, I had tried to avoid reading any reviews to reduce the risk of forming any preconceived expectations.  King Kong does not have the best story and the music was good in parts, but it was certainly not the most amazing musical score.  Despite all this I was still suitably impressed the King Kong "puppet", controlled by a massive team of puppeteers moved with a surprising amount of realism, and the animatronic face gave a real sense of emotion.  The thing which really brought the show to life was not the puppet, but the lighting.   The sets themselves were quite basic and very abstract, but by using a unique series of lighting affects the mood and atmosphere was made tangible.

Lucky

We have been in our new house now for 2 weeks and everything is pretty much set up, all our boxes have been unpacked, the majority of the pictures are on the walls and it already looks like we have been living here for years.  So now we can seriously start considering our options for pets, and to help us get used to the idea, we spent the last two nights looking after Sam and Tsaf's dog Lucky while they spent the time down the Mornington Peninsula.  Even though it was only two days it was so nice to have him waiting for me when I got home from work, taking him for  walks and curling up with him on the sofa.  I am now looking forward to getting our own pets even more than ever.

Moving Day

Once again the civil war that is raging inside of Australia's labour party has come to a head as Kevin Rudd makes another challenge for the leadership from Julia Gillard.  Although the leadership challenge is all they can talk about on the news, I have far more important news in my life to consider.  After 3 months of waiting, the settlement on our house has finally arrived and we are now home owners, living in Bundoora. 

Our House

I was unable to get any time off from work and so the move was a gradual process, Barnadi doing several runs during the day with me taking over at night.  With a little help from our friends we had almost everything moved by the end of Saturday so that on Sunday we hired a van (with two men) to shift all the larger pieces of furniture that we couldn't manage on our own.  It didn't take Barnadi long to make the house more homely with the living room quickly being decorated in his usual style.  It has been strange opening up boxes that had been in our garage since we first got to Australia, and seeing possessions we hadn't seen since we left Bath over a year and a half ago, a lot of pictures we couldn't hang while renting amongst many other things.  Still it seems we are nearly at an end to our unpacking with just a few boxes left to go currently stored out of sight in the spare bed rooms. 

There are so many differences with living in Bundoora over Northcote, but perhaps the most obvious change is how much colder it is in Bundoora, one of our first purchases being a portable heater for our bedroom.  As we no longer have a garage we have even had to de-ice our car in the mornings, a job I haven't had to do since leaving England.  Other differences include the length of time it takes me to get to work (much longer) and for Barnadi to get to work (much shorter), the noise (we are no longer on a busy main road), having a garden (not just a small balcony), no stairs (single storey house Vs 3 storey townhouse) and a truly suburban lifestyle (there are no trendy bars or cafes in Bundoora).

So the ballot is back and Kevin Rudd has won the leadership of the labour party and with it he has returned as Prime Minister of Australia.  Julia Gillard, if true to her word, will now resign from politics.  So with an election just around the corner, will this be enough to save the Labour party and prevent Tony Abbot getting into power, or will this continuing farce that has burdened the government have caused irreparable damage, that even Kevin Rudd can not fix.

The Light in Winter

In celebration of the winter solstice Federation square holds an annual series of events during the month of June.  The centrepiece this year is the Helix tree, a twister pillar of lights that respond directly to sound.  Every evening at around 5:30pm a local choir turn up and sing to the tree which starts to glow blue to the gentle sounds of their voices.  As the choir reaches a crescendo the lights change colour from blue to green through a pale pink to a vibrant yellow and red combination.  Once the choir has finished, the floor is opened up to the public to make as much noise as possible as to illicit a response from the tree.  Back in the northern hemisphere, midwinter is celebrated with Christmas and the streets come alive with lights and decorations, but here in the southern hemisphere we have nothing to break the monotony of the long dark nights.  The Light in Winter at least provides us with something to enjoy.

The Helix Tree

My Mother has started phoning me, regular as clockwork every Sunday night.  It started just after we got back from the UK in March and she hasn't missed a week.  I think it may be linked to the little dig we had at her about getting a computer so that we could skype.  Now my Mother is such a technophobe, there is no chance she will ever invest in a computer, so her regular phone calls act as an attempt to meet us halfway.  To be fair to her this is a big deal, as my Mother's technophobia is not limited to computers, she rarely calls anyone for fear of disturbing them and never answers the phone since she acquired an answering machine to screen all her calls.  I can understand the need for call screening, (we got a land line when we signed up to our Internet deal with Telstra and despite receiving a minimum of 3 calls a day on it, every single one of them is a salesman), but it makes it frustrating when trying to contact her.

It is really not long until we move now, and a letter from our lawyers confirming the settlement is booked and giving us our final invoice. In an attempt to explore the area more as well as work out the most practical commuter route, I did a timed walk from the house to Watsonia train station. It turns out google maps is correct and it took approximately 20 minutes. This means that the tram is still the better option, even though it is slower, it is much closer and cheaper (only need a zone 1 ticket, not a zone 1,2 ticket).  Watsonia itself is not a large suburb, but it has a certain charm, it's main shopping street, Watsonia road, runs opposite the train station with a library on the corner and views of the Yarra ranges in the distance. 

Tomorrow is the Queens official birthday and so once again we are getting a public holiday to celebrate that fact, no wonder no-one wanted to become a republic at the last referendum.  But rather than enjoying a nice relaxed three day weekend I have ended up working 2 extra weekend shifts (one in Epping and one at the Alfred) leaving me with a single day weekend instead.  Luckily work was not to busy, but still I had one frightening moment when answering the phone to another expat pharmacist whose response was...."wow, your really starting to sound Australian now..."