Australia: The land where everything costs more

Darwin:  The land where everything costs ALOT more.  It's been well over a year now and I am confident I will never get over how much everything costs here.  Food is obvs ridiculous, I paid almost $4 for a small bunch of radishes the other day.  Fucking radishes! $5 for a loaf of bread.  BREAD!  Then there are the taxes.  Alcohol is taxed to the ridiculous extreme that Australian wines are generally a lot cheaper in the US than here.  Wine is not as bad as beer and liquor though.  Expect to pay $50 for a bottle of Absolut or Jack Daniels (uhh regular size bottle).  Forget something like Grey Goose, totally out of budget.  Beer is INSANE though.  The other day I saw a case of pale ale at the store up the street for $110!!! Others were hovering around $90.  And lucky I dont smoke because cigarettes are around $22 a pack.

Living in Darwin, you get especially screwed over because they up the price of everything because "it's a remote area and they have to truck everything in from down south" yadda yadda.  Basically, I think it's store owers saying, "You dont want to pay this price?  Try and find it somewhere else, bitches! Suck it!"  Another perk of living in Darwin is you get to pay a whole shit load more for electricity too! This is really fucked.  It's hot here, really hot.  So hot the heat makes you sick.  You have to use an air conditioner or it's just too hot to sleep.  Our electricity comes from the Power Water Corporation.  It took me about 6 months of living here to understand that Power Water is a government institution.  I was thinking it was like National Grid, but it's not, it's a department of the Northern Territory government.  Anyway, you've heard me bitch that there was an election here last year and a new party took office.  They allegedly uncovered all this eradict spending the previous govt had been covering up and made all kinds of cuts (like my job!).  Additionally, they decided it was absolutely crucial to raise power bills to help balance the budget.  Now, I couldn't imagine power bills being any higher than they already were.  We are billed quarterly and the bills are normally around $600-900!  Yes, $900 for 3 months of electricity when no one is home all day.  I obvs have been bitching to them  for a year now but their only response is to accuse me of "overusing" my air conditioning. 

The price increase is really out of hand.  We just paid our last bill which covered over the Christmas holiday season.  $650 for a 3 month bill of which no one was home for 7 weeks!  The only thing that was running was the fridge! Obvs we bitch again.  This time we tell them we suspect there is something faulty with our meter causing power to be running even when everything has been turned off.  The customer service agent says, "That may be the case.  If you'd like us to look into it, it will be $120 to send a technician."  !!!!!!!!!!!!  $^$%#$&!!!  You have to be kidding.  Then what?  The technician says it's fine and we just keep paying?!  So today is the day.  We fight the man.  Not taking no for an answer.  Calling Power Water today and getting to the bottom of this, without paying $120!  All fired up!

Party all the time

Ack!  Cant believe I forgot to talk about this because it had me all seized up last weekend.  Remember when I said the Michie Ct had become a little quiter this year?  Well all the military peeps are back (it's not just army living here, there's navy, airforce, etc) and the pool parties have resumed.  FMFL.  Seriously.  Saturday was Australia day and obvs I was predicting it was going to be bad news. Most people have BBQs and since I have no friends I was holding my own 2 person BBQ here, complete with beer pong :)  Before the BBQ, we decided to go to the driving range to practice our swings (oh yeah, Darwin golf is back!).   Come home and there are a million douches in the pool, complete with blow up doll and other things douches like.  They are jumping off ledges (with the blow up doll), smoking in the pool, throwing around glass bottles, etc.  In the meantime, I am hungry and want to start my BBQ, but the ledge they are jumping off is so close to my balcony it's almost attached.  So I said fuck this, calling police.  I call police, tell them what's going on, say I have kids here etc and police say they dont take noise complaints until after MIDNIGHT!  Omg! It was 4pm!  We knew there was a manager (or body corporate, as it's called here), living somewhere in the complex because they leave us notes if we leave our shoes outside (lol).  So Jason decides he will just ring every doorbell until he finds them, which actually works.  Now here is the real kicker!  They are ALLOWED to have parties in there.  She said she would go out there and tell them they couldnt smoke or have glass, but those are the only rules!  That and it had to end by 1030pm.  Wtf?!  How can it be allowed to have huge parties in a shared swimming pool? Grrrrrr.

In golf news, before Christmas we drove 1 hour to get to the only mini golf course we hadnt been to around here.  This one was a real classic.  It was part of a hotel out in the remote area.  We roll and in and immediately start arguing about who is going to go into the hotel and ask about the golf.  Obvs it ends up being me.  Theres no one there so I had to ring a bell - I say, hi I would like to play the mini golf and woman looks at me like "seriously?"  hahaha.  At this point I had no yet seen the course.  So I say yes, 2 please.  She tells me where to go and we are off down this path a little ways past the hotel.  Talk about extreme mini golf!  First off, the course is made from concrete.  There was no turf AT ALL.  Trying to putt on concrete was hilarious as obvs the ball just rolls.  Second, there were 4 holes that were "unplayable" because the entire thing was underwater.  Third, we may have been the first peeps to play on this course in quite some time because there were fallen branches and sticks everywhere, adding extra obstacles to the holes!  Finally, there were green ants (vicious biting ants), mosquitoes, migees, etc EVERYWHERE, so as you were tying to putt, you were getting fucked up by these insects!  At the same time, I was laughing so hard I was crying! Classic Darwin.  Here are some pics:

 

An aerial view of the course

 

An example of the extra obstacles.  Makes it quite challenging.

 

Enjoying all the fun!

 

Fish Lizard!



Ok, who knows about this because I def didnt!  2 nights ago Jason and I are walking around Bayview as we do every night.  We both noticed something on a rock near the water (same spot where we get the crabs, action hot spot).  I think wtf is that.  It looks like a fish, but it has legs!  And it's breathing air! It's a fish lizard!  Jason goes to get a closer look, and all of a sudden there are like 5 of these fish lizards!  Omfg!  They see us and run/swim away - cant tell which they are really doing because they look like they are running on the water, not putting their heads in! Obvs I was freaked out and immediately went home and googled this mysterious fish lizard.  Well, it's called a mudskipper - which I had heard people talking about here before but never bothered to ask what it was.  It's technically a fish, and those "legs" are technically fins that have evolved into leg looking things.  They breathe air 75% of the time, but can also breathe water!  Holy shit!  Will all fish soon walk on land?!  lololol. Seriously though, this fish lizard is apparently common in tropical muddy waters - just another reason why living in the tropics is freaky. 

Full swing back in Darwin these days.  My legs are covered in bites from bugs I never see.  I am constantly itchy and when I try to shave, my legs bleed.  It's real sex appeal.  Air conditioner is broken still until further notice, so def no making those cake pops!  Looks like we will be moving in July so I have decided to just work for the temp agency for the time being while trying to save money.  If I get a full time job in Darwin, I am going to have to stay here for another year and the thought of it pains me.  I just want out.  So temping it is.  I start monday (I hope).  Either that or I am trying to get hired as a tutor at the university.  It's a pretty crappy university, so I am hoping they take me hahaha. Ants are in full force too.  I have been spraying their trails so now they have dispersed to other locations in the apartment looking for new trail locations.  I think this is even worse, instead of confining them to one trail, now these explorer ants are all over the place -- one ant here and one ant there. 6 MORE MONTHS!



My new obsession

One of my last days in the US, I broke down and bought a Starbucks salted caramel cake pop ("broke down," as if I had been watching my diet at all!  lol).  I am telling you, there are few things on this earth as delicious as this tasty treat.  It is gooey chocolate cake on the inside, a chocolate outer layer, topped with a half coating of white chocolate, drizzled with caramel and further topped with sea salt omfgffffff!  There might even have been caramel INSIDE the cake pop as well, I was too shocked at its deliciousness to acutally process what was going on. 

So my problem:  OBVS there is not a Starbucks in Darwin.  And obvs Darwin is like 10 years behind everywhere else - I dont even think the cupcake craze has hit here yet, so def no cake pops anywhere.  So to taste this tasty treat again, I must make my own.  Pos this weekend I will attempt this seemingly impossible adventure of recreating the world's most delicious treat!  Only I know they are not going to come out as good and I will be disappointed.  Then again, it's not like I have anything else to do :-P

Job searching

So with my new visa I can finally get a real job now!  Filling out job apps for gov jobs here is a major hassle.  Instead of writing the traditional cover letter and tweaking it for different jobs, you to 'respond to the essential selection criteria.'  Meaning they provide a list of qualities you must have to get this job, and you then respond with the experience you have that matches the criteria.  And it's not some generic list -- each job is very specific.  It takes me hours to apply for one position.  The other day I spent all day working on one particularly specific app, only to start filling in the rest of the questionnaire and discover only Australian citizens are eligible to apply. FML. 

As you can imagine, I am procrastinating big time today.  When I woke up, I convinced myself I needed to eat a large breakfast because I couldnt be expected to on concentrate on an empty stomach.  I whipped up my signature smoothie (yogurt, half a banana, bunch of blueberries, almond milk, almond butter, and a tsp of vanilla extract -- yum, try it).  Then I thought, well I still have this half banana, I will make a banana sandwich to go along with it.  Now obvs I am too full to concentrate, so I am lying on my bed.  Have also decided I feel a slight headache coming on, so I should probably take a nap before that happens. 

This weekend is Australia day -- kinda the same as the 4th of July, I guess but without the winning independence part.  Michie Court ought to be going off this weekend.  It's usually one day, but since it's on a Saturday it's turned into a long weekend.  Ugh

I want to stop MOVING!!

I move more than anyone I know.  And I'm tired of it.  And I dont just move across town.  I move across the country and back and across the world and back and back again over and over.  At some point it was exciting and now it's just become annoying!  Well, I will be moving again this year. Jason is discharging from the army sooner than we had originally planned, so I will be leaving Darwin at some point relatively soon.  I am not complaining about leaving Darwin, I am just not ready for it!  In between all moves, I usually go home to mom's for a bit -- ok I end up there all the time haha.  But this move doesnt have that option as will be moving to southern Aus -- probs Melbourne.  Which means looking for a job AGAIN!  That is the absolute worst part about moving.  I live somewhere just long enough to make some connections and then I'm out!  Back to the job search.  At least I feel like my interview skills have improved :)

The heat is miserable here right now.  CONSTANT sweating, cold showers twice a day, always thirsty, always smelly, on and on.  In Darwin news, it seems a pack of wild dogs are terrorizing local farms and eating goats left and right.  These dogs are all over the news! Michie Ct is significantly quiter so far this year -- not convinced it will stay this way but there are a lot more kids running around here lately.  Which means kids in the pool all damn day as it's still summer vaca here. Douches in the pool to kids in the pool -- who pees more?

Big News!

First and foremost, just when I was going to write an entry bitching about Darwin, I logged into immigration website and saw that my visa app has been approved!!  I am so happy that it didnt end up dragging on and on and my immigration worries are over!  I never even heard a peep after submitting it, wasnt expecting much logging in, and then almost couldnt comprehend what I was reading when I saw visa status.  I guess after the 300 page app, they were satisfied I had covered everything, lol.  So woo hoo!  I can get a permanent job, come and go in and out of the country as I please, and get health insurance :-) 

My trip was good and despite being 6 weeks long, felt so short!  I dont think I will do another trip home over holidays again.  It was just wayyyy too busy and def didnt get to spend enough time with friends and family.  I did manage to gain 12 pounds though, LOL.  That is 2 lbs a week to do the math.  Lil Chunkaaa in da house!  Mowing down and replacing running with sitting by the fire drinking wine took its toll.  Anyway, I've been back a week and lost about 3 just eating like a normal person and not devouring every meal like it's my last.  Will keep updated on diet progress.  Today I am going to attempt a run.  Jason ran for the first time today in the Darwin heat and puked, lol.  I outta do really well...

So back in Darwin things suck as per uge.  It took 2 days of constant flying to get here from CA, over 40 hours...  so that was awesome and I felt great when we arrived, NOT!   Get home and a bottle of hot sauce has shattered in my bag, all over clothes.  Oh the washing machine wont turn on!  Then my computer wont turn on, bring that in, it's fucked so no laptop.  Now air conditioner unit in living room has shit the bed, so sitting here sweating in Darwin wetseason.  FML and welcome back!