Important Living in Australia Milestone Reached

Today in conversation a man used (with no prompting) the phrase "Fair Dinkum".

Da Too Wong Wong Wong Da Too Wong Wong

Hello Hello

I am officially rubbish at blogging this month, and I’m sorry about that. I am going to do a quick bullet pointed summary of recent developments…

1. I hate work
I know, I have always hated work, as I am a totally lazy arse. However I now hate not only work, but the company I work for. Let’s just say they have shown their true colours about some things lately – including the fact that they don’t pay maternity leave (don’t get excited – this is not an issue for me, but I feel that for a company that bangs on about its family culture all the time this is pretty hypocritical). Also – the CEO has notified everyone that he expects everyone to take annual leave from 21^st Dec to 14^th Jan, as he doesn’t think there is enough work and people might not be flat out as he would like them to be. This is 13 days annual leave out of an allowance of 20 for the year. Personally – I find this unacceptable. I am in Australia to holiday, not work.

2. I hate Australian workforce legislation
See point one, and refer to the legislation that allows this to happen.

3. I am old
On my birthday we went out to my favourite pub in Brisbane and had a lovely afternoon session (although the weather was distinctly more British Autumnal than Queensland Spring). Unfortunately I took it one step too far as usual, and poor Stu had to take me home and put me to bed at 10pm. I am obviously now too old to hack it, and will be giving up drink forthwith*. Thank you to everyone who came out though – it was very lovely to see you all and I had a great time.
* This is unlikely to actually happen.

4. I am moving house
Yes that’s right – we are shaking off the shackles of inner city living, and heading for the hills. Well – the foothills of Mount Coot-tha anyway, to a suburb called Toowong (Australia – brought to you by the letter ‘O’). We managed to find the only house in the whole of Brisbane that actually meant it when it says ‘pets allowed’ (I can’t tell you how many times we thought we had found ‘the one’ only to have our hopes dashed on the point of application). I can’t wait to move and have a bit more space, and be able to make a bit of a home. It’s a brand new house, built and owned by Michael Voss (which is very exciting I am informed). We move a week on Saturday (I am excited about this although I am SO SICK of moving). Which brings me to point 5:

5. I HAVE A CAT
Well strictly speaking I do not as yet have him in my possession. When we were out on Saturday I was talking about these 2 cats (one called Charlie – my favourite, and one called Jerry – my second favourite) who were at the RSPCA and had been there for weeks. I was saying that I hoped they hung around til we moved so I could have them, as they (especially Charlie) had stolen my heart. Some friends of ours piped up and offered to take them for 2 weeks, to stop anyone else adopting them and they could be MINE ALL MINE. Imagine how pleased I was when I went to the RSPCA the next day to get them to discover that Charlie had been adopted by someone else. Just couldn’t hold on for another few hours could he – NO – had to go and turn on the charm for STRANGERS. Never mind that I’ve cleaned up his poo and fed him every Saturday morning for the last month or so. Honestly – I sometimes wonder why I love kitties so much. But it’s OK – because we still rescued Jerry. For the last however long all I’ve seen of him is a little nose poking out of a cat carrier because he hates the cattery so much, but now his Aunty Kaz and Uncle Andy are doing a wonderful job settling him in, and he is a chilled out and happy cat. I am so pleased – but slightly nervous that when we go to pick him up we will find their house boarded up with a big for sale sign outside, as they have fallen a teensy bit in love with him… uh oh…

One step closer to crazy cat lady

For some time now I have been very carefully keeping on this side of the crazy cat lady line, but this weekend I'm afraid I inched that bit closer to crossing it. I have now started working in the cattery at the RSPCA. My first job on Saturday morning was to spend some time playing with 3 14 week old kittens because they had only just come in and needed settling down and some sort of personality analysis to be done. Sucks to be me! I'm getting trained up to do the cat adoptions as well, but I'm a little nervous that I will not think that anyone is good enough to have them. I now check the RSPCA website many times each day to make sure I am on top of who is available for adoption and their wee back stories. I am SO sad. Hopefully by say....Christmas though we will have a house totally overflowing with cats and kittens. I do miss the wildlife section a little bit too though - the GORGEOUS little cockatiel from last week was on the news last night, as he whistles loads of classical music so they did an appeal for him because they reckon his owners might recognise his little whistles. Even Stu fell a little bit in love. Fortunately the evil corella was adopted by some mad person, so we don't have to see his ugly mug again!

Saturday night was the riverfire festival here in sunny Brisbane. Once a year they have a big festival celebrating the river, which culminates in an amazing firework display all down the river, loads of red devil style aeroplanes and F11 fighters doing crazy fuel burning antics right over the city. Stu's work threw a bit of a riverfire party, as their office is on the 18th floor of one of the buildings right on the river, with a great view of the Story Bridge, which is one of the fireworks spots. The fireworks were pretty amazing, but it kind of lost something for being indoors and not being able to hear and smell all the gunpowder treason and plot etc. I think all us poms got a bit nostalgic for bonfire night too. All in all I think next year we will go down to ground level to watch with the masses, as I think that would have a bit more atmosphere. Or maybe hire a boat to go out on the river to watch - it was boat soup down there I tell you.