Things to Do, Places to Go...

On Friday, one of the girls at our work, Tash, had her car broken into. Nigel was driving by the office and saw a guy standing by her car. He thought it was her boyfriend. As Nigel was walking to the office, the same guy (who ended up not being the boyfriend) was walking down the street looking into car windows. He walked by Tash's car and saw that the window was smashed in. He ran into the office, told her that her car was broken into, and then ran down the street after the guy. He didn't actually chase him down, but he followed him to his house and called the cops. He gave the cops the guy's id, but the cops couldn't do anything - Nigel didn't actually see him breaking into the car. Since Tash's i-pod was engraved, the cops did go back to the house to see if they could do anything...haven't heard anything yet.

Some of the girls in the office are so funny - they seem to be in awe. Nigel is currently the office hero. He was even told that he should become a PI. It's cute.

For my wedding anniversary present, Nigel gave me tickets to Christina Aguilera. When she first came out, I have to say I didn't like her too much. I thought her videos made her unattractive/dirrty ;) But, over the past few years, I've really started to like her. I've only been to a few concerts (half of which were country and are hard to compare to), but she was the best live concert I've ever been to. She has the most amazing voice. She sounded better in person then on cd. She had a lot of costume changes (most of her costumes were hot pants). She had some really cool stage set-ups and her dancers were amazing. Nigel even liked her (I'm thinking the hot pants helped). Close to the end of her concert, she strapped some footy player to a large target-painted circle and pretended to hit him with a whip. I expected the audience to be full of teenage girls, but I was surprised - there were so many families there for a family day out. It just confirmed to us that having a teenager would cost a lot of money. I'd think anybody would enjoy watching her concert.

But, that's about it. I'm a little sleepy tonight - spent last night speed networking (like speed dating, you just have 1 minute to talk to every new business client). It was interesting to see the type of people that would go. Hope everyone's enjoying the heat in Edmonton - I can't wait til it's 30 here again! Oh, and I added Nigel's and my Simponized pics - enjoy ;)

There's been nothing too exciting happening with me, so I thought I would make this blog about things/people around me. :) With all the rain and cooler weather, we've been hiding indoors. One of the storms the other night was so big, 7 houses were flooded by the tide. The wind was so strong (100 km) that 3 garbage cans flew out in front of our car, almost causing an accident. I spend most of time time at work, taekwondo, or cooking. I'm trying about a billion different recipes for two reasons - you can't cook too much in the summer here with the heat and I'm a little bored. If I don't find more people to do things with, I'll need two airplane seats for the flight back to Canada (with all the cakes I'm making).

I'm trying to meet people in two new ways. I 'volunteered' to be on the committee for the Asia Pacific Business Council for Women. Actually, I thought I was volunteering to be on their Gala Dinner committee (I in fact volunteered to be on the overall committee...looks like a couple committee members have resigned). It's a lot more work and time then I was ready for, but I think it'll be good. I'm also starting belly dancing in a couple weeks - gave up on pole dancing with all the bruises I got when I flung myself into the pole a billion times. We'll see how that goes.

I'm still at taekwondo. To see how vicious I am, go to the World Taekwondo website. Wouldn't you be scared of me? The pigtails, the wet hair from walking in the rain, the strong arm in my knife-hand strike, the lobsided grin...wow. I'd be scared of me too ;) Wahid (my dad-in-law and 'the Master') put this website up a few weeks ago and it's quite popular. It's such a big organisation and is great centre for Adelaide self-defense training. Just thought you guys might enjoy the pic of me ;)

In addition to the career changes, weddings and babies (seriously, how many other people could get pregnant?) other major things are happening for people I know in Edmonton. My friend Jen has qualified for the World Triathlon competition in Germany. Go Jen! My cousin Brent has opened his business Living Bliss in Edmonton (he was running things in Calgary for years and now moved to Ed to be with his honey). If you know anybody who needs physical or emotional training, check him out.

And, just for your information, I found out some crazy things about the Sydney Opera House today. Did you know that they pretty well made the architect resign? He was so mad, he left the country with his family and went back to Denmark (his home country). They did such a bad job finishing it (changed a lot of his original designs, especially for the insides) that the Opera House is in serious danger of becoming unusable (on an international scale). The bad design includes a super-small stage where they have to employ people to catch ballerinas when they come off stage so they don't slam in the wall (and if there aren't employees, they put up mattresses). The orchestra is below the stage in a very tiny space - it gets so loud that they have to give people days off to rest their ears so they don't go deaf and the people in the back can only see the conductor's feet. It's ridiculous. They have now recommissioned the original architect (who is now 89) and his son to draw up plans for a renovation...a $600 million renovation. Poor architect though - due to poor health, he will never see the Opera House in person.

We went camping this past weekend (long weekend because of the Queen's bday). We went to Flinders' Ranges (specifically Wilpena Pound). It's is usually quite dry there, but is prone to flash flooding. It is one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth. They are quite eroded now, so they are quite low, but you can definitely imagine how big they must have been!

There are definitely quite a few differences between shopping in Canada and Australia. First, it's popular to go camping in the middle of winter here - not summer. In the Rockies, we had to worry about snow, mosquitos, bears, and cougars. Here, there weren't any mosquitos. There were many kangaroos bouncing around and emus running across the hills. The emus really don't look like the brightest creatures. We scared a group of emus once and they ran in a few directions before ending up right back in front of us.

We ended up camping with two other couples, a five year old and a two year old. Camping with kids is very different...really good, but definitely different then our regular camping. I was able to see everything...and eneded up looking at things I probably would have missed if the kids weren't around.

Since kangaroos were all over the place, some of the people camping talked about how roo poo is supposed to be a great igniter for the camp fire. A couple of the guys collected a bag of it and tossed it in the back of our car. Nigel found it while he was unloading some wood and threw it over a tree, so it landed by the fire. It missed my head by about 3cm. After we got back from camping a girl in my office said that the last time she went camping a kangaroo jumped into her tent in the middle of the night, knocking it down. Crazy huh? We didn't have to worry about putting our food away so that a bear wouldn't come into our campsite, but there is nothing to do to stop a hopping kangaroo from knocking over the tent.

The one bad thing was that it did get really cold on Saturday night. It was -4 on Friday night and I certainly didn't have enough warm clothes to keep warm on Saturday - we left all of our 'cold clothes' in Canada to go skiing. I was, however, able to bring the best Canadian camping tradition here - s'mores! Can you believe that these people have missed out on s'mores? It's shocking. They don't have graham wafers here, though, so plain cookies (biscuits) had to be used. It's funny seeing all the differences with 'normal' activities like camping. I'm definitely upside-down. Alex (the 5 year old on the trip) even asked if I was from a different world or planet (we saw venus in the sky, tried explaining it to him and I was using a lot of different 'Canadian' words). Canada is just that different. :)

Winter has definitely arrived here. It's been raining almost every day for the past two weeks. I don't really mind it - like I said before, they are in a pretty bad drought right now and all the rain is quite nice. Watching people in this weather is quite funny, though. Everyone owns umbrellas and they're HUGE. When they walk down the street, two people can't pass each other without moving their umbrellas out to the side. I've hit a few people and poles with the one I borrowed from the office to go on meetings, so I just walk around getting wet now. Only if it is some type of downpour do I use it.

The city/weather stations keep putting out 'extreme weather condition warnings'. On days like this, the freeway's speed limit is lowered, roads are monitored, there are many accidents...it's crazy. The craziest part of it is that it (compared to Canada) really isn't 'extreme' weather. Think of a spring thunderstorm without the sheets of rain...sure, the roads are wet and it windy and some parts might even get hail (up in the hills, usually), but it's not too bad. The worst thing that happened to us was the mass of pine cones (or something that fell from the tree) that hit our car when we stopped at a light. It's also 15 degrees...not really extreme ;) Nigel, however, told me today (as I walked along the beach in my lulu pants and light sweater) that it is AS cold as it is in the middle of January in winter (in Canada). I think he's lost his mind.

I finished all my exams (and passed, thankfully) and handed in my assignment. I messed up a little thinking the assignment was 22 pages in total. 54 pages later, I felt like if I saw one more spread sheet, I'd lose it. I find out if I passed in the next few weeks. I will then be able to tell people what to do with their money. eep.

We ended up going to the Polish cultural centre for lunch the other weekend. I was looking forward to perogies and things like that. There was some good food..some I could have done without. We introduced some of our friends to Polish food - nobody (except a friend from Canada) had tasted perogies before. The perogies were great - the other food wasn't as good as my aunties' or my mom's cooking. Every single person in the place spoke polish fluently. It was like being in Poland. They sang 'happy birthday' (in Polish) to a couple of people - the signs, the information was all in Polish too...no English at all. One of the girls who came with us can't eat certain types of meat, so she asked the lady serving if it was beef, pork, or chicken. The lady said 'meat'. The girl asked again...the lady (more sternly) said 'meat, meat!' It was definitely an experience. :)

You know - when it gets cold outside and you breathe and you can see it? Well, I saw it. I moved to the land down under expecting more warmth. I'm not really complaining...it was only 6 degrees and I have been through -50 windchill degree weather, so there really is nothing to complain about, but I'm in Australia. The whole stereotype of this country has left me. I had a friend email me the other day asking if his dreams of blonde-haired, lean, toned, bronzed Australians is true or not. Growing up, I probably believed this too...isn't everyone here supposed to live at the beach? But, like so many other stereotypes, this one is also not true. They do get snow in this country (in a few parts), they have ski 'mountains' (more like hills, I think compared to the Rockies) and not everyone is blonde, tanned, and built. Sigh ;) haha. Not to offend any of my new Ozzie friends here...I like the country. I just think the whole idea of central heating needs to be developed further.

Seeing my breath this morning did make me think of Edmonton, and the fact that Nigel and I left the country one year ago today. Can you believe it? We've been gone a year. A lot has happened in a year. We've seen a lot of things, met a lot of people (including new-found family members). In some ways it seems so much longer then a year. In others, it feels shorter. Leaving Canada didn't really hit me until we got to Australia. Even then, I don't think it hit me until we moved into our own place. I'm just confused, I think. People say it takes 12 months to really feel like you're starting 'new'. I am definitely not in my 12th month. I think my 12 months probably started in January.

In other news, I passed my second last exam. I have one more left (the hard one, I think) and with all the days of work and lack of studying, I'm a little nervous about it. It's on Thursday...we'll see how it goes.

We're trying to think of a present for Nigel's mom. Ideas? I really want it to be good, but the whole thinking thing isn't happening. We'll hopefully come up with a fantastic idea tonight and shop tomorrow. Have a great Mother's Day weekend - especially to the new moms!

PS: there haven't been anymore spiders in the apartment. I can now go to sleep without checking under the covers for something the size of my hand.

It's been raining for four days. It's dreary outside and our place is really dark, so it's kind of gloomy, but the rain is fantastic for Adelaide. We were on level 3 water restrictions (goes up to 5) and that usually means that people can only water their gardens on certain days/times, not wash their car (unless it's on grass) and things like that. The news was threatening higher levels if we didn't get rain. One of the radio shows was talking about ways we could save water - not running water while brushing teeth, 'mellow when it's yellow' (y'know...the whole not flushing for #1), and things like that. One crazy woman phoned in to talk about how the 'immigrants' are the biggest problem - the 'immigrants' are using the water meant fo Australians. Funny thing is that since Australia is like Canada, it's full of immigrants ;) Sigh. Weird people. I guess I'm to blame for the lack of water in this country.

Anyway, the rain is good, but it also causes some of the bugs/spiders to find places to hide...like our apartment. I've included a picture of the 'Huntsman'. It's this MASSIVE spider that lives here in Australia and was crawling around the apartment the other day. The problem? It was SO disgusting. I HATE, HATE, HATE spiders...especially ones that are as big as my hand. They also jump, so if they feel threatened, they can jump on you and bite. They have big fangs and their bites hurt. The good thing? Their venom can't kill you.

Just thought that those of you who are planning on visiting might want to see this guy up close without actually being in our apartment.

With two exams done (and passed, yay!) and my first seminar out of the way, I'm starting to relax. The fact that both exams and seminar fell within two days made the other week quite long. I ran a seminar called 'Media Influence on Investor Behaviour' - I researched newspapers from major market/property crashes and analysed how newspapers tried to influence people. It was crazy. Australia newspapers are owned and run by two main companies - one which was started here and now runs out of New York. The guy in charge is Rupert Murdoch and he also has interests in FOX in the US and the FOX program here (among many other tv/radio stations). He owns the only paper here in Adelaide and there is SO much crap in in. The first 5 pages are full of celebrity gossip and all other news has a definite right wing slant. When John Howard (our *wonderful* prime minister) stated that if the Democrats won in the US, it would be another victory for Al Queda, it wasn't reported on the news here (at least to the point where nobody here ever heard about it). Rupert Murdoch has huge political and business influences that actually alter what's shown on the news. I was even trying to find current articles from a variety of newspapers across the country - the EXACT same newspaper article would show up in Melbourne and Perth newspapers with a few lines changed and a different journalist listed as the writer. Free speech, my a**.

So, I have two exams left, an assignment, and montly seminars to plan. Should be ok. Kind of want to do something else other than study, but since the days are getting shorter, it's making it easier.

Nigel may have a good contract out of Toronto. He has been hired by a consulting company who is doing a proposal to a large US-based company...they have the meeting on Thursday and if the company likes what the consultants plan to do, Nigel gets to do the IT bit with Shawn (their company is OpenRadical).

I've decided that I'm never going to be a pole dancer - I mean the aerobic type. After all the bruising, don't think I can go back. The group has a really good marketing plan, though...they text people at approximately 5:00 and say 'What are you doing at 7? How about body conditioning tonight?'. (They run many diff classes). It would work great if I used the mobile (cell phone) but Nigel uses it. I wasn't with him when he got the message and he didn't know who it was from. He responded - 'I'm planning on stuffing my face at 7. Who is this?' He didn't get a response. It was from my instructor. Sigh. Almost too embarrassed to go back to any class. The woman would think I just stuff my face every night ;)