All things nice and easy (for us)

We've been here for almost 2 weeks now and it feels like much longer.  Today is mattress, appliances and phone guy day. We'll make a quick stop at the reject shop for some essentials like sticky hooks, a thingy to put our knives in, cleaning products and some baskets or other storage thing to put socks and underwear in. (TMI?! You wanted details, so here you go!). Most of our clothing is here and as soon as Gil gets his hands on the vacuum ( a Miele, because it's European AND German, which makes it indestructibly cool by Oz standards) we'll see some real cleaning magic. There's about 39,000 dead bugs in the house, which the 50 spiders seem to have missed. Our two greatest fly catchers will not arrive for a few more weeks, so we'll buy one of those giant swatters this week.

The pics of the house can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1j72ENi. As we get more furniture, we'll update the album or makes some new

We checked again and yes, we are indeed in an Internet blackout zone. The scary sensation of looking for a wifi connection and finding none, not even locked out. We'll be blacked out and on our mobiles for a day or two before the connection is made with the right Internet partner. Until that time we'll just Dongle along apparently. Phone guy has come and gone and now we have telephone line, yeeeeeh, oh wait, we didn't want one to begin with, but it's the only way to get Internet up and running. Helloooooo 2003!

Radio is great. We listen to Mix 106, which is sort of poppy and has some rock classics. And a lot of Midnight oil, Fine Young Cannibals, Savage Garden and INXS. For some reason there's also a lot of Eurythmics in there, not sure why though. All great bands, but it must be like listening to Frans Bauer and Jan Smit for the Aussies. Should be alright, nice and easy as they say here. They have the greatest radio and tv commercials, quite a few beyond the levels of acceptable akwardness but really really funny. We do hate the ' that's amore' Micky D. commercial. Gil especially hates it when people providing a service all of a sudden burst out in song and dance. When do we ever see that happening in real life huh?! Right! So stop it, now!

The Olympics from an Aussie perspective are great as well. 3 medals and they celebrate like they lead the list and every man and his dog and their sister's neighbour are interviewed about what they think  mr(s) X's chances are of winning another medal, lovely TV.  TV in general is very much like what we had back in Poortugaal, cooking shows, people building stuff, dieting competitions, lots of drama and fishing, lots of fishing......

Food wise we're doing a pretty decent job if we do say so ourselves. We've cooked every single day and although it is not the height of Haute cuisine, it's not pizza either. In our quest to control the budget we've been cooking pasta, curry, rice and sauce, noodles, burgers (veggie). No worries, mums, we eat veggies with every single meal. We've found that bread is best eaten toasted and that it doesn't matter if you buy a loaf of 7 dollars or just under 2, toasted, it all tastes the same. Cheese is a bit of a challenge, but it is available and digestible, just not that tasty, despite the name (Tasty cheese, the boys in Marketing must have had a field day with that one) Gil is giving cottage cheese a try, but good Lord, why did they ever make this to begin with? Must have been some sort of mistake. Gives great structure to cheap pasta sauce though. Yogurt is another thing. Low fat must be referring to the person that was operating the machine, because in NL, low fat means about 30kcal/100ml, here it's 115 kcal/100ml, and stop calling it Greek Yogurt. Gil's been around Greece and they would be sad and disappointed over this yogurt, possibly some would cry. Gil's now found some 60kcal/100gr that will have to do, it's still Greek though (produced in Oz, haha).

We've browsed so many shops and warehouses in the last two weeks that we feel that we could apply for a position in any of them an get hired on the spot. Big W, K-mart, Woolworths, Coles, Supabarn, Magnet Mart, Bunnings, about 30 furniture stores, 15 BBQ shops, 20 garden centres and 7 shopping malls. The size of the shopping malls is nothing short of spectacular, especially the one in Canb city centre. That's like Rotterdam centre, but with a roof over it. Each has it's own food court and about 1,000 shops (well, at least 300). All airco'd, because hey, Australians laugh at global warming (I mean 44 or 46 degrees, who cares).

Coming Weekend is the Canberra Show  (http://canberrashow.org.au/), including farm animals, so we'll go real early on Friday and see if we can spot some racing pigs and other assorted weirdness. All in all we're having a great time and see things slowing down a bit by the end of the week. We haven't wiped the windscreen wipers for 3 days if we wanted to use the blinkers and are getting a handle on the left handed driving. Rotunda's still freak us out though, but so far so good.

 

It's a small step for man, but a very slow step for our kind

The first few days have passed by in a rush of heat (35-40 degrees), lots of trips to the (air conditioned) supermarket and many adjustment adventures. The B&B is great, the car is great, we're doing great trying to adapt, all is good with the world. Of course there a some things that go different than planned, but that's why we have plan B (and C and D). Life really moves at a slower pace here and we're finding it rather agreeable, be it somewhat inconvenient if you want to set up your new life. Then again, we've been here three full days now, lets give it a month ;-)

Take for example the bank. We were there, but the appointment had been wrongfully scheduled, so that took until today, but now we've got bankcards, three    accounts, visa cards coming and a lot of useful info on all things banking. Finally the pin machines make sense now, because apparently you have your everyday account, your bills account and your long term savings account and you get to choose which one you want to use. Not all that different from NL, but different enough to be somewhat alien. We now have glossy black passes with lots of silver shiny on them. Good stuff.

In the meanwhile we could probably start working as second hand car sales guys, as we've read so much about it now that we know every trick in the book on how to buy a good car. And it would be great if we would have a permanent address, so we could actually buy one. So rental car it is for another 2 weeks at least. We're probably going to downsize a little form our Holden Commodore SR6 19,000HP engine to a more suitable mid class boring car that is a tiny bit more eco friendly than the 16,5l/100km we're currently getting.

As far as housing is concerned, we're having a good time of visiting all sorts of open homes. Last Saturday we visited 8, one could not be shown because the key was missing and everyone seemed okay with that, so we just nodded along and drove off to the next in line. Monday (Today) there's 2, Tuesday another 3 and Wednesday and Thursday we've got some more scheduled. we're guessing that with no income and 2 furry weapons of mass deconstruction on the way, we're the ideal tenants, so we're taking potshots at the market and hope than someone will give us a break.

We're slowly gathering some intel on the job market and things are looking pretty good, but we're not actively seeking yet, which would be a big hassle with all the things we still need to arrange. We'll probably start inquiring somewhere halfway through March, so if there's news, we'll be sure to share it. Which is the Aussie way of saying: "get of my back mate". :-). We've visited the International Festival last Sunday and that was good fun, everyone celebrating that 25% percent of Canberra's population is not from Oz originally. Don't see that happening in NL...Yuum got some info on volunteer stuff involving animals (no not BBQ-ing them, but something preservational of sorts) and Gil spotted a Kung Fu sifu that he had not yet found but he will definitely check out his school

Thanks for all the support and positivity so far, we'll keep you posted if we haven't already skyped, emailed, whatsapped or phoned you, through this blog  and on Facebook.

A day in Singapore

We're 6 hours into the second part of the flight and seen to the fact that we must have the two loudest snoring people in the southern hemisphere sitting right behind us, we might as well spent time unwillingly awake in a more productive way and write a post. We hope they have really sore throats, as we have very sore eyes and ears and Gil's Asperger is kicking up like a %!$#!^%.

Singapore was quite the experience. In a "hey lets get food poisoning in a really bad way at the first place we eat and then break the world record of most public toilets visited in the space of 8 hours sort of way" But of course only Gil suffered from that, because Yumi "bowels of steel" Stamet could probably eat enriched plutonium 238, boiled in polonium enriched cooling water and still be allright. But enough anbout Gil's bowel movements...there was a whole city to see.

We started the day by catching some shuteye at the airside hotel and managed to get almost 5 hours of sleep, getting up at the local time of 12:00 (NL 05:00). We were up and out on the town with our public transport passes like real commoners at 14:00 and scoped out some lunch (all was still good then) and then went off to see Chinatown. We walked some more in a not so comfortable 895 degrees, but fortunately there was a cooling breeze of about 742 degrees, so no need to complain.

The city looks a lot like HK and KL, but a little more designed, planned and newer. It is indeed very clean and the signage telling you to not litter, smoke, eat, drink, park, run or act suspicious (no joke) in public was a big source of entertainment (pics will follow). By the time it was three and Gil was seriously considering going back to airport to die with some dignity, Yuum drugged him back from the light at the end of the tunnel with real Coca Cola (oh man that tastes awful!!) and aspirin and he started feeling somewhat less miserable. We trugged ahead, saw some temples, a lot of German cars and a Chinese Dancing dragon sponsored by Knorr (which makes complete sense)

Around 17:00 Gil was out for the count and making nice with another new public toilet. (tip from Gil, keep an eye on the cleaning schedule and remember that toilet paper gets dispensed when you come in and is not in the stall and no, he did not get caught with his pants down....) when the foodpoisoning seemed to have run its course and we entered the Singapore Flyer for a very spectacular view of the city from 168 meters up.

Afterwards we completed a nice walk along the riverfront, saw the Raffles hotel and snapped a pic of Orchard road for Gil's mom (check, it's still there) but as it was getting dark and Gil found himself looking for new a new restroom to befriend, we decided to call it a day and head back to the airport for our hand luggage, a meal for Yuum, the last souvenir and a well needed shower. Before we knew it we were boarding and on our way in this big-ass A380 on the upper deck.

While this is written, we're flying very close to Canberra and with only 60 minutes of flight time we're getting ready to start a new day. It's 10:30 where we are and our plan is to get the luggage, get the rental, get the airfreight and be on our way. We'll let you know how that went somewhere later today or maybe tomorrow.

The end of it all

The last few days have been somewhat more eventful then the previous four weeks.
Right now we're flying over Thailand, 3 hrs out of Signapore, well fed and hydrated.
The last night from Thursday to Friday in Poortugaal we spent sleeping in the living room, surrounded by our last earthly possessions. The Friday went of without a hitch. Day start was at 06.00 for the last shower, last vacuum, last fridge clean and such. At 09.00 we dropped the last of our stuff of at Gil's sister's friend and after a last waste drop off stop at 10.00 a quick stop at Gil's parents and dropping off the rental van, we were officially done with Poortugaal and headed to Huissen at 13.00. But first we got some great sandwiches from Sol food in Rhoon, because hey, we gots to eat right?!

Huissen was the oasis of tranquility it always is, except for the now four (!) cats occassionally attempting a sneak assissination attempt on each other. We made a few walks, spent  a lot of time eating or talking about food as is the Stamet tradition, had our last family dinner at da Claudio's and had a really good time. After all that goodness it was extremely tough to leave Huissen and say goodbye to Yuum's mum and dad. They are just the sweetest people you can imagine and they tried so hard to put on a brave face, but in the end everybody just cried. And that's okay.

Before we arrived at Gil's parents' house, we (Yuum) had to go on an epic journey to secure two suitcase security straps. Yeah...that's just what you need at the last moment! We could not find them because clearly it's not the season for those things....Fortunately Gil's parents had them and they are now in the cargohold making sure that our suitcases are safe, secure, strapped and probably some other s'es as well.

The last night at Gil's parents was blissfully uneventful. We checked out some cars we might buy, found out that some of the houses we picked are already gone (que sera sera) and before we knew it, it was 05.00 and time to start the day, say goodbye to Gil's mom at 06.15, drive to S'hol with Hester, Gil's sister and dad to meet Just and go through security at 07.30. There was a slight hickup with the visa being granted on the old passport, but a quick phonecall by ubersturmhauptfrau Immergeregelt made that all go away. Saying goodbye to the last of these lovely people that got up really early to send us off, was really hard, but we kept it together throughout most of it and eased our way through waiting by eating and walking. Sometimes at the same time, we're crazy that way, don't try it at home, only for trained pro's.

So far everything is right according to plan, eventhough the flight attendant has just informed Gil they are out of Diet Coke and he's just stopped breathing into a  paper bag.We'll be landing in Singapore in just under 2.5 hours, sleep some, see some sights (incl. the Singapore flyer) and report back when we are on red  soil.