England regain the Ashes!

Busy old weekend last weekend...

On Friday - miracle of miracles our stuff finally arrived from England! It only took a brief 5.5 months for them to get their fingers out of their arses and sort it out. Also we didn't get any customs or quarantine charges or anything, which I was a little surprised about, but pretty pleased. Maybe this is because some senior people from customs were at our conference and I pestered them to just wave it through or I would stand next to them scratching my lurgy til they were sick.

Saturday morning I volunteered, and Stu went to look at a house. I had a great morning volunteering - a rainbow lorikeet was brought in, and decided that I was his best buddy. He wouldn't budge off my shoulder all day and ran away from anyone else who tried to handle him. As I was chopping all the fruit for everyone else he kept climbing down my arm to pinch it. It was very sweet and I am a little bit in love with him. Unfortunately no-one warned me about their amazing liquid projectile poo. Also I got chatting to one of the cat ladies, and she said that there are some vacancies coming up there soon, so I might get to indulge my love of the kitty soon, and help find them all new loving homes. Yay!

Stu went to look at this house, which is in Paddington, a very nice burb of Brisbane and next to my work which is nice. We have put in an application, but are having some trouble with getting a reference from our current apartment. The staff here are about as much use as tits on a bull, and keep on losing the reference requests. If we lose out on the house because of their crippling incompetence you will probably be able to hear me shouting from the UK.

On Sunday we went over to a park in Kangaroo Point for the inaugural SMS ashes. Stu's company have hired a shitload of poms lately, and in the interests of fostering cordial international relations they arranged a poms v strines cricket match. Which bright spark thought it was a good idea to organise a competitive event in order to bring peace, harmony and understanding between these 2 nations I don't know. The important thing is - we won. In your FACE Australia. Stuart Robinson (despite having an interesting running style) managed to take out 2 wickets. I was all proud.

The SMS Ashes

Today is a public holiday here, which is nice. Then we have Thursday and Friday off, and on Friday we go on a wee road trip up the coast to go whale watching. I am quite excited, and may have to invest in some Tena Lady to avoid embarrassment. I am also quite interested to see how our driving is after 6 months off. You can expect an extremely over excited blog next weekend sometime.

In other news, we are now fully set up on Skype. If any of you have the equipment and want to talk to us (and see us!) for free, our username is teamrobinson. I have to say it is ace and I am quite the convert to internet calling.

Happy Hammers, Horrible Hangovers, Holiday Homes, Hollywood Hotties, and um... Hemployment Hopportunities

Well well well - where to begin? Feels like bloody ages since I've been on here, although it's only 2 weeks.

SO - first things first. We have moved into our new little pad. We are officially camping out in our own flat - sitting on bean bags and sleeping on an air bed. I cannot wait til we can afford to buy some furniture - getting up and down off the floor all the time and having no back support at all is an ergonomic nightmare I tells ya. At least our relationship has survived enforced conversation and spending time together. The flat is grand though - nice and central, very pretty, good facilities etc. There's a gym onsite and I have been going very regularly - me! I'll do a proper blog about it another time when I've uploaded some pics and stuff.

We're on a bit of a poverty trip at the minute as I am STILL not working, and Stu doesn't get paid til Weds, so a strict diet of 2 minute noodles is called for just now. We've managed a few trips out in the last fortnight though.

The weekend we moved in here we went to a meeting of the Brisbane British Club which is an expat group who meets on the last Sunday of every month in the Pig & Whistle (Stu's favourite pub as we know). It was very nice, and we met some nice folk. Of course we got completely totally and utterly shit faced, and neither of us remember getting home. One of the folk we met emailed us the next day to say that he'd had to throw a sickie that day as he had practically puked up a lung when he got home. Another bloke who neither of us remember at all emailed Stu to ask whether he could pass on the details of Naylor recruitment as discussed. Neither of us have ever heard of Naylor recruitment. Hopefully we weren't having some sort of fantasy conversation and making up a load of nonsense to this bloke. I'm just hoping we're allowed back next time. I don't know how Stu made it to work on the Monday as I just wanted to die all day.

Last weekend we went to the Bathing Buddha Festival over on the South Bank which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite parts of Brisbane. It was a really lovely day, loads of great food stalls, all very educational. It was only slightly marred by the fact that on our way in someone gave us a leaflet which I assumed was information on the event - but no. It was in fact helpfully pointing out that all Buddhists are going to go to hell because they worship an idol. I will let you know how the author responds when I email him to ask him how he would feel if a load of Buddhists picketed his Christmas or Easter celebrations - but then it wouldn't happen as they seem to generally be nice open minded people!

Afterwards we went to the Jade Buddha for a few scoops as it seemed appropriate under the circumstances. (It turns out that Pat Rafter owns Jade Buddha, so I fully intend to stake it out at every available opportunity from now on). Anyway, there we were minding our own business when a bunch of too cool for school folk traipse in with some kind of minder bloke in big shades and a bluetooth headset. They all settle down to a table, and one of them gets out a camera and starts filming one of them doing such riveting things as ordering and eating food, etc. Being a naturally inquisitive person I gawped at them, til I figured out that it was Jared Leto with his band. So check me right out, rubbing shoulders with Hollywood A listers. Barnes verdict: Very very very pretty, but a bit of a knob.

As I said above, I'm still not working but things are kind of looking up on that front. I'm in what I hope are the last stages of an application with an HR consultancy firm. I originally applied for a job as a business analyst, which they turned me down for. I emailed them and said please keep me in mind etc etc, then they invited me to apply for an HR admin role. Better than nowt I thought, so I trotted along and got invited back for a second interview. Half way through this interview it turns out that they were interviewing me for an analyst post - the one they originally turned me down for. Very confusing. I have to do a case study thing this weekend, then hopefully I'll get a decision. So fingers crossed and positive vibes down under please, as I really want the job!

I think that's it for the minute. I've got a load of emails to catch up on this weekend, so hope to be in touch soon!

Oh yeah - and have a look at where I'll be spending Christmas.