A day a the races

I have had a fabulous week in Brisbane. I am really starting to settle in, I have different groups of friends and there are always things to do now. It is starting to feel more like home…not sure if this is where I want to be but it is good for the time being. Two weeks until I head up the coast. I have several different Christmas invites but I think I will just spend the day with Maria and Dean up the coast on a beach.

This week I had a couple of girls’ nights, went to see Australia, became completely addicted to sushi, had a decent week of work and went to the races. It was another fabulous Australian experience, I have never really watched horse races and I thought that they only really dress up for Melbourne cup, but apparently they do every race day. I went with my flat mate Jo and her friends. It is essentially a day of dresses, hats, betting and debauchery. I would highly recommend it for a fun day out.

Next week work is having a fancy dress party, which means a uniform costume party. I am not sure what I will be yet but it should be entertaining. As well, the event will involve more karaoke… bound to be a fun.

As the holiday season gets near I am really starting to miss everyone from home. At least I get to see my Mom and Aunt Sherry in a little over a month in New Zealand.

Tropical paradise…maybe not…

Everyone keeps telling me that I should be used to the extensive amount of rain since I am from Newfoundland and the only other place I have lived is Scotland… I am not. I didn’t move to Australia to deal with downpours all the time. On Sunday Brisbane experienced the worst storm in twenty years. A guy died in my suburb, there are over 4000 homes damaged, and they are still expecting more storms.

They told me when I arrived in Brisbane that there were 300 nice days a year. This is a lie. I haven’t made it through one week without it raining at least once. As I am typing I can hear the torrential rain hitting the tin roof of the house… While on occasion I have a fond love for thunder and lighting (despite my grandmother once getting hit by lighting) it loses its glamour after weekly bouts.

I still haven't left Brisbane... it seems the stop that never ends. On a good note the reason that I am hanging around is to save some funds before heading up the coast and onto New Zealand (Mom and Sherry are coming). I have a job doing in person sales getting people to sign up for Amnesty International, so it is a pretty fun job. Looks like the end of December onto the beginning of February will be pure travel. Still no idea what I will be doing after... but that isn't important.

A couple of weeks ago Maria and I headed back to Byron Bay, the home of the best gluten free food!! It is really sad how much food is one of my favorite things in life. There is a reason that no matter how much exercise I do I will never be a skinny person. I had the best steak sandwich...oh the simple things in life. We also went to Nimbin the hippiest place that I have ever been in life. Everything is painted with murals, the locals are all pot heads and the museum is the most eclectic amount of random things ever. It was a really fun weekend and just nice to get out of Brisbane.

Nothing too exciting is planned for the next while, settling in and saving money is the only real plan. End of November I am going to head to the horse races with the girls. I am pretty excited; dresses and fancy hats...should be fun.

Takin’ it all in

The longer I am here the more interesting this place gets. Every country has its own unique things, a couple of fun, random or weird things about the land down under:

Currency – they don’t deal with pennies, they have been entirely cut out. If something cost $4.44 you pay $4.45. I am sure this significantly reduces the weight of wallets… I wouldn’t be oppose to this being introduces in Canada.

Toilets – I have yet to see one flush in the opposite direction, they don’t spin so I don’t think I will witness this. As well, they have a half or full flush option, which I am guessing is quite handy for water conservation.

The most popular hairstyle of Australia… is the mullet (pictures to come in a later post.) Another trend I don’t get is wearing a black bra under a white shirt to work… classy. Other trends I’m not loving jean shorts on men, man purses, and people wearing no shoes in malls.

Everything is shortened names, speech and resumes (one page max).

Guys… are particularly childish and rude (however they are taller). Most of the time I feel like a piece of meat, people older then 25 lean out of their cars to yell at you, way too many people old and young wink, and on a whole I have had the worst conversations with males in my life in this country. I am sure this doesn’t relate to the entire population, only the guys that have approached me.

Sun block – the highest that you can purchase is 30+ or zinc (which is really attractive – see pink streaks on my cheeks form nationals). Apparently 30+ is the equivalent of our 75… but I don’t understand why they just don’t label it like that.

No Halloween – only the foreigners celebrate Halloween, there will be no trick-or-treaters this year sadly. While downtown scares me slightly during Halloween I do appreciate house parties, going to miss that this year.

No Thanksgiving - which isn’t that surprising, I am just sad that I missed out on turkey and will again for Christmas. At home mom makes turkey for everything, like 5 times a year when my brothers come home or leave, or say they might leave, or just get cranky, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Remembrance day (well not every one but pretty frequently) … way more turkey then one family probably needs but I really miss it.

Weekend of running

After three days of running around a field I am pretty much exhausted. The tournament was really fun and it was a great chance to meet piles of people and play some fun games. Our team didn’t place very well but on a whole did well for a team that didn’t get to practice much together, every game the team got better. We managed to get five points on the team that eventually went on to win nationals (it counts even if it was the first game and they went a little easy on us).

We got to play three of the teams from Brisbane that I have been practicing with so that was really fun to play against people that I knew. Even though I have only been in Brisbane for a month I am really going to miss that group of people.

Overall I thought I would learn a lot from this tournament but didn’t really see anything amazing (I think Mutiny would have held their own in the tournament.) There were some spectacular individual plays and players but on a whole there weren’t any new or interesting strategies. The most popular zone, which we don’t use much at home, is a puppy/fence zone. It seems to be the most effective zone with no wind. I get the overall impression that Australia is quite a bit behind North America when it comes to the popularity of Ultimate. As well, it seems like the men’s and women’s nationals that are held in April are the really competitive competitions. I would like to seem them have a competition where there is only one team from each state (right now there are several from most states), there are some amazing players here. On an interesting note, most of the players on the winning team were 30+.

I had a fabulous weekend and was super luck to get to play. The Tassie team was great to play with and get to know. Now I just need to figure out what state I will be in so I can try out for a women’s national team.

BrisVegas was also good fun, sadly this is the most Vegas like outfit I had with me.

I am super excited about Mixed Nationals tomorrow. Our first game is at 8:45 and we are playing the top ranked team in the tournament. I probably shouldn’t be too happy about this, the team isn’t, but I figure it is a great chance to see what the best is and to learn strategies and what all around makes them the best team. The tournament is over three days with three or four games on Saturday and Sunday, your placement decides how many you have on Monday. Tasmania is going in with a ranking of 16th out of 24 teams.

Today I had a fabulous day which will hopefully be the start of an amazing weekend. I got to start my day with a web/video chat with Mom, Sherry, Maggie, and Shelley and later in the day Jenn arrived from Tasmania. I also got to meet the team I am playing with for the weekend and they all seem really great. I am really looking forward to the weekend and hope to learn all kinds of stuff… cause I am pretty geeky. It has already been really helpful playing with the Brisbane teams, I even got to play with a couple of people that played worlds.

BrisVegas party on Sunday…hopefully I have time to track down something sparkly. For some strange reason people call Brisbane BrisVegas.

Suffering withdrawal

I am a little unsure on a whole what to do with my time. I have settled in Brisbane to play Frisbee Nats and other then pickup games and the gym I have an extreme amount of free time. Anyone that knows me fairly well knows that I don’t deal well with spare time, unless there is an objective for the time like watching a movie, coffee with someone, baking, or exercise…

Half of the reason I decided to travel half way across with world without a real plan was to break myself of my workaholic tendencies. It is finally catching up with me. I miss work horribly and all I can think about is what job I want to try for in February… when I first really settle in for any length of time. I will have to get some work in November/December to help pay for New Zealand (looks like I am heading there in January) but unfortunately it isn’t going to be something in my field, because no one is going to hire me for two months in marketing/event planning. On the bright side of horribly missing my job at least I know that I picked the right field to work in…

And like my brother said I still have 30+ years to work. However, I don’t think this is just work withdrawal maybe it is more productivity withdrawal… clearly the answer is to go on another ‘vacation,’ looks like I will be heading up the coast soon.