Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Sydney Ferry and Taronga Zoo

I'm thinking of starting a new travel guide:  "Sydney on only $500 a day".  Holy crap, we need the kids in school, and me at work, or we are going to go bankrupt!

We had a great day, however, and took the harbour ferry out to the Taronga Zoo.  The ferry was a beautiful way to experience the harbour, and the zoo was fun, despite my personal issue with zoos.  We managed to get out without any landfill gift shop toys, and made new friends on the ferry.


On the Ferry out to the zoo...





We are both hairy, smelly, vegetarian, and ridiculously cuddly


Toni and Xander on the sky tram

Stellar views...

 


 
A little lagoon on the harbour, right at the zoo.  The water is crystal clear here...

White Ibis.  The pidgeons of the zoo, pests trying to steel french fries ;)




At the end of a long day.  The orange goop is a sweet pumpkin spread that tasted like pumpkin pie...  awesome!  And a Fat Yak Ale to top the day....

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Clovelly Beach

Clovelly Beach

Just love this beach.  It's just a bit north from where we are in Coogee, but it has great snorkeling, so I'm told, and it's just beautiful. ( Absolutely do click on these photos to see them larger... )


It's a narrow little bay with a beach and a park beyond it.  The snorkeling is said to include views of blue ringed octopus ( venomous ), and large blue gropers, which, aside from being blue, are about as pretty as other big giant fish....


A number of the beaches here have these swimming pools fed by the ocean, they are very cool, and I can't wait for summer when it's warm enough to get in.  There are people swimming this time of year, but I'm assured that those people are deeply in need of psychological help.


And this handsome gentleman has been smiling largely the whole time, save when he and the destroyer are battling.  Every day I renew my "do not jump in the ocean with all your clothes on" instruction...  I find I have to remind myself as well, even knowing that the temperature would cause immediate relocation of organs that I find myself quite enamored of in their current position.





Keep Left and Finally! some tourist time

Keep Left -

Driving on the left side of the road is not a huge problem, although there are mini traffic circles nearly everywhere, and gauging the distance from the right hand side driver seat to the left side of the car has proven tricky, but I'm always just a friendly honk away from correcting ;)  I had previously driven in London, and don't recall that being a problem either ( aside from the massive traffic circles ).  My joke about "the trick is more in learning to drive upside down" has resulted in exclusively blank stares.  I don't think that they don't get it, I'm just starting to suspect that it's not actually all that funny ( turns out you just velcro the change into your pocket ).

More difficult than remembering to drive on the left, is walking on the left.  Much like we drive on the right, and walk in lanes in the right, and the standing lane on escalators is on the right, it all is just sort of flipped to the other side here.  In grocery stores and on sidewalks, and I admit that hadn't really occurred to me.  I can't recall if that was the case in London as well?  Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but when I drift to the right in the grocery store, escalator, or sidewalk, I just start bumping into people and creating congestion.  Nobody is rude about it, and I don't think anyone gives it much thought, but that's just the "wrong" side.   It will also apparently take awhile for me to remember to look the correct direction when crossing the streets, and in the meantime, my helicopter parenting style has me grasping the kids hands a little tightly while we get it sorted....

Also, the turn signal is on the right hand side of the steering wheel, which means that my windshield wiper is frequently called into duty to indicate that I am about to turn.  I think the other drivers are starting to catch on to my style, though, so no worries there.  I'm pretty sure the windshield-wiper-i'm-about-to-turn thing is going to go international....

Tourist day -

We finally settled in enough with time and house hunting duties to take a couple of tourist trips.  After I failed to select the appropriate lane for Manly Beach, and we found ourselves at the Opera House, my very flexible family and I parked the car in the car park, popped our gear out of the boot, and we were off to the Opera House tour!  Xander seemed genuinely intrigued, Milo was bored out of his skull, and kept trying to climb everything and linger behind the group to see what was breakable.  Thankfully, not much was, and aside from a few nervous glances from the tour guide, we were good to go ( which I found appalling from her punk rock hairdo; she should have been more appreciative of Milo's "I'm not a part of your system" attitude ).













Note Xander posing next to the "don't climb on this wall" sign.  I'd give him a hard time about it, but then, I took the picture, didn't I?

From the beer patio lunch venue near the Opera, we caught sight of Luna Park, a renovated historical coney-island style park.  A heavy sigh later, we trundled over, and absolutely froze our butts off ( we did not really have the right jackets for winter, which is cold like a San Francisco summer ), but the kids had a great time.  Once I found the pub with live music onsite, you could visibly note an improvement in my condition.






The House Hunt continues....

Looking for rental places in the eastern suburbs is tricky.  There's not much on the market, and what is there that is nice is expensive.  We did find a few great places, and the one that should have been out of our reach but was oddly affordable was snatched up by someone who makes, roughly, 3X per year what I do....  So, probably not a difficult eval by the owners.

SCHOOL!!

Today we are off to the "welcome new families" breakfast with the headmaster at Lycee Condorcet in Maroubra.  We're very excited to finally get the kids out of our hair some much needed socialization, and to start getting them settled into our new life here.  School starts for them on August 16th, as this is one of the few schools in Sydney that follows the northern hemisphere school year.  In Sydney, it's a January to December school year, but with lots of month long breaks scattered about.  It's actually a reasonable  approach, and the French School has tried to mirror a few of the big holidays, while keeping the longer school day and shorter school year.  The school itself feels very familiar to us, and would to our friends at Dallas International School as well.

Will check in later...  BUY YOUR PLANE TICKETS!!!




Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Where were we?


--------The view from the cafe overlooking Coogee beach.   Stunning....  Brekkies included congee, eggs and bacon, croissants, pancakes, and fruit/muesli for me.  Oh, and a shit ton of coffee....

Coffee -

The coffee here, in a word, is awesome.  Everyone takes it seriously.  Every little crumpet cafe, deli, coffee house, and muffin shop.  Serious, heavy tampers, great coffee, fresh roasted, espresso you could stand a spoon up in, awesome awesome awesome.  They have a drink called a flat white, which is something like a cappuccino / latte, but with micro foam, rather than a dry foam.  They're just not fooling around with the coffee, and we are even in a bit of a suburb.   The food is awesome, also, as it's definitely a foodie culture, but the coffee is exceptional, and the cafes are outstanding and everywhere.

The Beaches - 

Let's see, we are south of Sydney, in the "Eastern Suburbs", and the beaches are spectacular.  Maroubra, Coogee, Clovelly, Bondi...  all a bit different, all spectacular.  The water is crisp and clean and clear.  There are cliff walls at some, sandy beaches at others, some have large parks nearby, I'm almost tired of looking at beautiful scenery...

Accommodations - 

This is *not* a cheap place to live.  We put an app in on a place ( holy crap, please cross your fingers... if you have a thought of coming to visit us, and may your deity damn you to hell if you don't, this place would be ideal to hang out with us in  ), and when the realtor saw the details on our house in Dallas and how much it cost, she was immediately thinking we must own a garden shed in the middle of a desert.  And compared to the place we are looking at renting, I'm inclined to agree.

The French School - 

For our DIS friends, this place would feel *very* familiar.  It's called Lycee Condorcet, and it's a little bigger than DIS, but essentially with less thinning at the upper levels.  They also offer IB at the upper levels.  It's seems a reverse of the DIS ratio of French to Americans, with a larger group of French, but about 1/3 of them are bi-national.  Seems like a great place, and if we can get everything filled out on time, the kids should start there next week.

Reality - 

Not set in.  Toni pointed out quite accurately that if we wake up tomorrow, and discover that this has all been a dream, it would not be at all a surprise.  Will have to check with my peers in Verdelais if they are feeling the same?

Ugh -

We are still exhausted.  We are crashing out a bit later every night, but still getting up around 3am.  Luckily we don't have much of a social life and so the impact is largely on our poor neighbors who have to hear the boys rattling around a tad on the early side ;)

more later.  tired.  must fill out custom forms....  Air freight has landed, Sea freight not until later in September...

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

How ya going, mate?

How ya going, mate? yeah, no drama, she'll be right...




And so we are here.  Actually in Coogee, a suburb of Sydney where we are staying in a vacation rental while we sort out where to live, where to send the kids to school, and other small details.  This time I remembered to say to Xander "don't go run into the ocean with all your clothes on, because it's very damn cold in their right now", so all he managed was to soak his feet, socks, and shoes, and notice the nice numbing effect of winter water.  Yes, I do have to specifically give these types of instructions.  There have been...  incidents.

The flight via business class was very nice.  I don't know when we would ever be able to afford this on our own, so we tried to, as Hannibal Burress suggested "experience the shit out of it".






Re: How ya going?  Everyone says this.  All the time.  I'm practicing it in front of the mirror, but here's some examples and translations:

  1. At the airport, I'm blocking access to someone's luggage - "How ya going, mate?"  translation?  "Hey, you're blocking my luggage, moron"
  2. At the beergarden, my turn to order beer, "How ya going, mate?"  translation? "What sort of beer would you like?"
  3. At the cafe, in the morning, with the family, with a thickly chinese accented australian lilt, "How ya going, mate?"  translation?  "Are you ready to order?
  4. Sikh in full headgear leaving convenience store, "How ya going?"  - translation?  "whatup".
It goes on and on and on.  I point out to our real estate person that I'm trying to get it right, and she says "do we say that alot?  yeah, I guess we do, don't even notice it"  which I think is absolutely right.  She moves smoothly and imperceptibly between the names of things, and the slang equivalent without noticing.  "Paddington" becomes "Paddo" without explanation, and I'm reminded of the american comedian on the flight over who postulated that Australians make up words on the fly, at which point a secret communications system adds them into the lexicon instantly...

The people are *CHARMING*.  Everyone is super nice and super friendly.  We are enjoying the crap out of this!  The boys were a bit boisterous after being in the car today, so Toni took them over to evil hamburger chain, while I enjoyed the worst burrito I've ever had, along with a surprisingly good margarita.  Settling in, indeed.  


Saturday, August 4, 2012

...and away we go!!!

Nearly there...

Well, this has been an adventure just getting to today.  About 4 months ago, I told Toni that I basically had no shot at this, but just in case, be prepared, we might move to Australia.  Then a month ago, I sent her a text "All the approvals are in, we're moving to Sydney".  All I got back was a "yay".  By then, the ordeal of "are we going, are we not going" had just about worn us out.  Then a month of lining up all sorts of documents, paperwork, money shifting, and general craziness, staying up until 4am coordinating with Sydney and Singapore, then getting up to take care of things here in Dallas, then saying goodbye to friends and family, and back on a call at 2am with somebody else overseas; holy crap, we are EXHAUSTED.  


An absolutely HUGH thank you to all our friends in Dallas who did what I would have sworn was the impossible, you will make me miss Dallas ;)  

And I am so glad we found out in San Francisco, so that we could share the news with our friends there, we already miss you a ton.


As we repack the bags one last time, and my broken toe is nearly healed, and my badly strained back is feeling much better, thanks to an excellent acupuncturist ( thanks, Mark!!  that's twice you've bailed me out now... ), we are officially READY.  Ready for what, we have no idea.  We've never been there.  We don't even have a very clear picture of what's in store for us, but we are excited, the kids are excited, and the lightness in my step tells me that we are moving in the right direction.  We look forward to visits from our friends, and have deliberately PAID EXTRA for another bedroom.  Do not disappoint us by staycationing, or taking the same old trip.  


YOUR NEXT VACATION IS IN SYDNEY AUSTRALIA AT OUR HOUSE!!!!!