A Big Day for Adulthood

I'm often at odds with how old my birth certificate says I am and how old I actually feel. I can't truly know what it's like for others, but I assume they have a little light or bell inside of them that goes off one day and goes DING! Welcome to adulthood, your life insurance paperwork awaits you in the veranda. And from then on they feel like an adult.

I have never felt any such ding. And I don't know what a veranda is.

Living a nomadic lifestyle (in search of fun and adventure, mind you, not pemmican) makes the postponing of adulthood magnificently easy. You can't very well buy a house or have a baby when there's new places to see and dingy hostels to lower your standards to. Nor should you very well do those things when you just don't wanna.

Which is where I stand, pushing dangerously close to 30.

However! Adulthood does creep up on those who actively try to avoid, which brings me to today. A few things of rather adulty significance happened today, regardless of how hard I tried to fight them off.

Numero Uno: I cooked a meal in my very own crock pot, which I own and is mine

I mentioned my love and loss of a crock pot a few months ago when I was living in Norway. Martin got me a crock pot for my birthday (a huge surprise, as they were brand spankin' new to Norway and I didn't yet know they existed there). Very shortly after that we learned we were moving to Australia (yay!) so I knew I had to take the crock pot back to the store to be loved by somebody else (boo).

But I knew I'd fill that void with an Australian crock pot, which would no doubt be a fraction of the cost of its Norwegian cousin. And I did! As the lord sayeth, "and it was good". Here is the recipe I used to inaugurate my crock pot with, in case you are a low carb disciple, like to prepare meals ahead of time and wish to revel with me in nostalgia.

Numero Dos: My grad school student loans came out of deferment

Which is code for, "pay up, bitches". I am not the first person on this planet to discover prolonging adolescence. My ancestors who came before me pretty much perfected it by attending grad school. However they had the good sense to go to an American university, where grad school takes two years (instead of one like I did) and where there's a decent chance of getting the school to fund some of their education. Not I, though. I prefer my schooling short, sweet and at an unfavorable exchange rate. Have you seen what the US dollar is compared to the pound? It basically means I get to pay double the sticker price.

So pay up I shall. Americans have the distinct privilege of paying for their higher education out the arse. Just because I jumped ship years ago doesn't mean the world of free universities (which is rapidly shrinking) is open to me. I am bound by the chains of the citizenship of my birth. Which brings me to the next step on the ladder to adulthood:

Numero Tres: I mailed my absentee ballot application

I voted! Well...I submitted the proper documentation so the County Auditor in the county where I last resided in the United States will send me an absentee ballot during the next general election.

Sadly, you don't get a sticker to wear on the day you do that.

Come the month or so prior to the U.S. presidential election I'll get a ballot in the mail so I can vote from abroad. Civic duty, future of the country and all that BS. I saw Obama - twice - when he was a freshman senator, did you know that? It remains one of my least dignified moments in the history of my life, to this day.

When you're pushing 30 with nothing "grown up" to show for it, you've accumulated an undignified moment or two in your day.

And, really, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I have some sleeping-until-noon to attend to.

A Place to Call Home

As I've mentioned, Martin's company put us up in a serviced apartment for 2 weeks while we found a place of our own. Alas, his expat contract isn't an expat contract at all, but rather a local contract with a few expat perks thrown in.

Because of our diligent apartment searching we moved in to our own permanent apartment 2 days before our 2-week freebie limit was up. We saved the company money! Where is my fruit basket?

The building we are in is actually still being built. The top floors (ahem, penthouses) are still being built but we on the ghetto 13th floor can't hear anything or really even notice. I won't give too many specifics on the building since I like to delude myself into thinking that this blog will one day be so popular that I will have "professional crazed fans" (a.k.a. stalkers). I will say this, though, it is the tallest building in Brisbane, which I find downright fancy.

This works out really, really well for me because I am quite possibly the worst navigator ever. Until I had my drivers license (age 14, holla!) I literally could not find my way anywhere outside of my hometown. Even today when I travel I rely entirely on others to get me around, which means I still know virtually nothing about the layout of Brisbane. Living in the tallest building in town, all I have to do is look up and head in that direction. WIN!

Here are the much anticipated photos that people have been asking for. The pictures are pretty crappy, I must warn you, but I hope the awesomeivity of the place shines through:

Living room (with a view of kitchen table at bottom right):

Bedroom:

Bathroom:

I don't know why Martin deemed it necessary to take a picture of the toilet and sink, rather than the sink and shower, but there you have it, a view of my crapper.

The kitchen:

I like this place a lot. It's quiet, it's shiny and new, and this is our view (albeit a little bit more obstructed than this):

However I do have one complaint. A "furnished apartment" to me means furnished with stuff I will actually use, not furnished with decorative bowls of plastic fruit - which is exactly what we got. This resulted in our recent epic journey to Ikea where obscene amounts of cash was dropped.

Instead of 10 decorative pillows on the bed, how about some actual bedding? Despite the appearance of the bed in the picture, it's bare and unusable underneath. Instead of not one but two decorative bowls of plastic fruit in the kitchen, how about a pot and pan? Furnished means move-in ready, yo. Not plastic fricking fruit.

I have a chip on my shoulder about that damn fruit. It's just so unnecessary.

Of course it ain't all bad, though, otherwise we wouldn't have locked ourselves into this place for a year. It does have a garbage chute which I am very much jazzed about. I've never seen one before! Exciting stuff for a small town girl! It's actually quite fun to use. The bed is the most awesome bed I have ever owned - not that I've ever owned a bed in the adult sense that you go to a store, buy a bed, bring it home and use it.

Now before you jump all over me, I've never claimed to be an adult. My name is Heidi, I'm almost 30 and I've never had a new mattress.

So this is our humble abode! It ain't cheap, but no places in Brisbane are. We pay by the week, which may sound like a system reserved for seedy motels but in reality it's just how things are done here. Every place we looked at listed the price per week. It has no parking space or balcony, which other places we looked at did. The location could not be better, right at the tip between the 3 districts of town we plan to spend the most time. It's all about priorities.

And our priority was frantically saying yes to the first suckers who would take us.

City Escape

After only 9 days in the bright lights of Brisvegas (seriously, people call it that), Martin was ready to get out and see some countryside. The real reason for his wanting to be a country bumpkin for a day - and he would never, ever admit this - is because he wanted to get behind the wheel of an awesome [rented] car. His dreams of immediately purchasing a sweet ride were recently crushed, as our permanent apartment doesn't offer a parking space, coupled with realizing the instability that our 1-income-ness brings.

A quick trip to Avis and Martin got to fulfill his motorhead fantasies and I got a trip to IKEA. Win win win win win.

Martin pretty much demanded I post a picture of the car, since my readers would be about as interested in the specifics of the car as I am (read: hovering a hair above zero):

Make: Holden

Model: Caprice

Year: 2011

Random letter I don't understand: V-series

[The] one [and only] thing I did find interesting about Holden cars is that in the US they were sold as GM's, including Pontiacs. I love Pontiacs and think it's a damn shame that they don't make them anymore.

Raise your hand if you didn't know they didn't make Pontiacs anymore. Sad times for the American people.

Our one and only destination for the day (besides the Swedish embassy) was Mount Tamborine, which I pronounce like the musical instrument "tambourine", which probably makes me sound like a jackhole.

We have no pictures of the mountain. None. And that is so not our fault! It's the mountains fault because there is absolutely zero places to stop and take pictures. I thought this was Catering to Tourists 101. Had we pulled over to get a view we would 1) be unsafely parked on narrow, windy roads and 2) not get to see much of anything, anyway because the forest is thick so there aren't good views off the mountain. Damn environmental integrity over my flippant touristic desires.

The scenery was really pretty, though. Martin commented that it looked like Deliverance - not what I was expecting Australia to look like. It looked like California or England, you know, normal not-that-foreign places. I was expecting all Outback, all the time. I did not expect to see greenery! But there was oodles of it.

We went up to the top of the mountain and drove around a development of swanky houses. From there we actually did have an unobstructed view off the mountain and you could see this (photo courtesy of stolen-off-the-interwebz):

What is that settlement there in the distance? we wondered. Surfer's Paradise was my guess. But there was no time to debate. It was closing in on 10 a.m. and I had been up since 6:30 without a bite to eat. Things were getting critical. We had to get off that mountain, and fast. I was starvin' Marvin.

Martin had planned ahead of time where we would lunch, and we had to get there stat. This meant we had to go down the side of the mountain we came up, which I think did us a disservice when it came to getting the whole Mount Tamborine experience. It turns out there's stuff down that other side, like a winery, a forest canopy walk and other things taught in Catering to Tourists 102 and above. I'm not too sad about what we missed since I know we'll back, particularly when Martin's car ownership fantasy is realized.

The place we ate was a kitschy little restaurant/souvenir shop that was so little and so kitschy that it doesn't even have a website. It did sell baby onesies that said "I heart boobies", though. So you know it's legit.

While eating our gigantic delish burgers we did some research in to what we had seen from the top of the mountain and it was, in fact, the city of Surfer's Paradise, and it was only a half hour away. It was 10 a.m. and we'd pretty much done what we'd set out to do for the day so, really, we had no choice but to make the journey.

And I'm glad we did! Because I got to do this:

The water was gorgeous, green and clear. Here's another gratuitous beach shot in honor of the recent blizzards in the Upper Midwest, just so I can rub it in real nice and good:

Some people, such as the 10 people who commented on Facebook "OMG I can't believe Heidi went out in the sun", might accuse me of disliking the sun. And those people are by and large correct. I am not a sun worshiper at all but something about the sun, sand and water was infectious. We hung out for a long time watching the various happenings of the beach, which included several very old, very fat people wearing Speedos and bikinis.

I actually enjoyed myself. No doubt will get melanoma and die from it one day, but it was fun while it lasted.

I couldn't help but bring up Renwick Dam, which is the first and virtually only beach experience I had growing up. I absolutely loved that place, still do, and given the choice between Renwick Dam in Pembina County, North Dakota or Surfer's Paradise in Queelsland, Australia I'd probably have to pick Renwick. As Martin says all too frequently, "You can take the girl out of North Dakota..."

After giving our SPF 30+ sufficient mileage at the ocean (it is the Pacific in case you're wondering, I, too, had to ask) it was time to head back in the general vicinity of the city and stop at Ikea along the way. Usually I am 100% game for this shopping trip because Ikea means one thing to me = MEATBALLS!

Well it means 2 things to me, the other being brat-ass children with parents who wouldn't dream of keeping them in line, and unfortunately on this trip I got way more of #2 than #1. Boo. I was too full from our early lunch to indulge in the meatballs and lingon berry (not cranberry) jam, which is nothing short of a tragedy. Plus we had actual shopping to do, which always blows hard.

Our furnished apartment (more on that later, with pics!) is conveniently not furnished with any kitchen equipment. That blows even harder. We have to start from scratch and equip everything. "Oh, but Ikea's cheap" you might say. Yeah, well, we dropped over $400 and I wouldn't consider what we got a huge assortment. So now I'm poor and don't get meatballs. And that fricken kid is screaming at the top of his lungs while his mother just leisurely strolls along. Awesome. Life is grand.

**slips rope over head**

Time to GTFO of Ikea and get back to the city. We had 2 hours before the rental agency closed and what is quite possibly the most craptacular GPS in the history of satellite navigation. In this time we had 50 pounds worth of bulky kitchen equipment to drop off at our temporary apartment, find a gas station (really surprisingly difficult to do), fuel up the car (no pay-at-the-pump, hello 1992 nice to see you again) and navigate back to the car rental agency, all with a GPS that is a fraction above inoperable.

All that still sucked less than listening to that damn kid scream.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

The only word I can use to accurately convey our transition to life Down Under is easy. The whole she-bang has been downright simple. In 8 days flat we've got everything - every little thing - sorted. Allow me to explain (using our previous countries of residence as contrast where appropriate):

First thing is the visa. Being the unmarried harlot that I am, this usually means endless "proof of relationship" documentation to prove that we haven't just been dicking around for funsies these past 6.5 years. Australia only asks for 4 or 5 pieces of documentation like joint bank accounts, leases and the like. I went overboard and provided 6 pieces of documentation, and we only had to prove that we've been living together for 6 months! Everywhere else in the world it's 2 years. And everywhere else in the world they pretty much demand to see homemade pornography of the two of you just because you don't have that magical piece of paper. Not Australia. A few documents showing our names and the same address sufficed. The time between lodging the application and acceptance was also astonishingly short, 3 weeks + 1 business day.

For reference, I am still waiting for a simple renewal on my Norwegian visa which was lodged on Halloween 2011. The wait time is predicted to be 6 months, which in Norwegian means "you will hit menopause before we get to this application". So....we left. In the interest of full disclose the Norwegian visa was not really "simple" (it had been expired for, oh, about 6 months) and Martin's company handled our visa application to Australia. But they only submitted the application! They had no say in its processing time or outcome. Australian immigration is like brushing your teeth, Norwegian immigration is like getting a filling without Novocaine. That ain't even hyperbole. That's the truth.

Next stop, mobile telephone. One of my favorite things about everywhere-but-USA is the ability to buy a SIM card, pop it in your phone, and voilà, you've got a fully operational, local telephone number. I haven't lived in the U.S. in many moons and don't claim to know the ways of my people, but I'm pretty sure the closest thing they've got to this is pre-paid cell phones, which are only used by grandparents and drug dealers. It took $22 and 15 minutes of set-up to get me a cell phone. I've used this same phone in Scotland, Norway and now Australia. Sorry, American Exceptionalism, if that really is your real name, but everybody else but you does this better. Those cellular companies have you by the cojones, charge you insane sums of money per month and you don't even realize it. No bueno.

If you hadn't noticed I speak Spanish now to convey my varying levels of displeasure.

Then there's internet. I had heard of (and used, quite unsuccessfully I might add, in the UK) an internet dongle before. To avoid paying exorbitant sums of money on wifi at our temporary accommodation I thought that's the route we'd have to take. But nope, technology has caught up to my impossibly high expectations and created the pocket wifi. I did not know this existed, but I am pleased with it. It's a little thingamajig that is actually a router and gives you internet where ever and whenever you need it.

Martin uses this thing literally and carries it around in his pocket so he has internet on his phone (he won't know his phone sitch until he starts work on Monday so for now he's just slumming it, walking around with a bulge in his pants pocket). 10 minutes and $99 later on our first day here we acquired 6 GB of internet usage. I will note here that hooking up internet at our flat in Scotland took 6 weeks. 6 mo-fo'ing weeks. We moved in 1 September and got internet just before Halloween. This of course meant we had to pay for 12 months of service, well after we moved out again on 1 September.

I could write a goddamn book on things the UK does that is annoyingly antiquated, illogical and unnecessary. They do give out free birth control, though, which I appreciate. Prooooobably a good idea.

And getting our bank account set up. Oh em ghee, the banking! If I had a weak heart I'd have to stop writing right now. I cannot even explain how quick and easy it was. I created the account online before we even got here. That took well under 10 minutes. Then, once we arrived in Oz we had to meet with a personal banker to verify our identities (show our passports). This appointment was scheduled while we were still in Norway. She set us up with internet banking and gave us our debit cards. She was real purdy, too, in stark contrast to the swamp donkeys manning the tills at Royal Bank of Scotland - Nicholson Street branch.

Eff my life, Scotland, the banking! I don't know if my heart can take this trip down memory lane. It took months for us to set up our bank account there. Months! Ok, maybe it was weeks (whatevs), but we had to do a disproportionate amount of running around town to get that set up. And the service was awful. You'd swear it was the first year in the history of time that students descended upon the city of Edinburgh and needed to set up a bank account. It was incompetence incarnate. To add feces frosting on the shit cake that is Royal Bank of Scotland using that card in Australia results in an enormous fee. Double what Norway charges. Hell, double what the US charges and their banks are about as friendly as the ebola virus. And yet, they are billions of dollars in the hole.

Like I said, incompetence incarnate.

In my last post I talked about our search for an apartment and as of Wednesday, 29 February I can say we have signed a lease and have a place to move in to come Friday! We were terrified that that process was going to be painful and difficult but really, meh. Wasn't bad at all.

So all the major chores are taken care of, most in under 1 week. It's now time to kick back, make some friends and throw some proverbial shrimps on barbies (I'm just kidding, I hope to do that very literally).

I wouldn't say that the welcoming locals, ease of getting around or smooth transitioning has been my favorite part about living in Australia so far. No, my favorite part so far is realizing that I am not the fattest person here. I totally thought I would be but hey, they have KFC, McDonald's and "Hungry Jack's" (BK by another name), too.

I consider this a great personal success.

Home and Away*

First off, apologies for the crazy, random font changes in the previous post. I wrote the whole thing in Blogger and didn't fiddle with anything, so there's no excuse this time. i guess BLOGGER JUST THINKS it's COOL to do whatever IT WANTS withOUT my CONSENT. Got it.

We have now been on Australian soil for a week now and man does time fly. Mainly it flies because of exhaustion and jet lag and running around town like a chicken with your head cut off.

It's weird how jet lag affects people differently. For Martin it means he sleeps pretty much constantly, like an infant. I look over at him and he's randomly fallen asleep again, sitting in his high chair with his bib still on. For me, 4 hours a night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. is more than sufficient. Which is so uncharacteristic, I have been known to nap three times in one day! Crossing the equator must alter your DNA, Jurassic Park-style. Bottom line is: jet lag is a biotch.

On Day 1 we immediately began our apartment hunt, which is the aforementioned running around like chickens with our head cut off. We picked the worst time of year to arrive, as the school year is just beginning and students are descending upon the city in search of the same type of accommodation as us (awesome location, reasonably priced, fully furnished). You have to view an apartment first, apply for it and show a ton of ID/documentation, then be accepted by the property management company before you can declare a place officially yours. So it's a good thing we have one thing that most students don't:

Cash money. Gobs and gobs of it. Obscene amounts, really.

Well, not really. But we kicked up our budget a little bit and it seemed like all the competition just melted away. It actually all came out in the wash because most buildings have a gym and a pool (A POOL, in your face northern dwelling suckers!) so we could shift some of our gym membership budget to rent. Believe it or not, despite our rotund appearances we do enjoy having access to a gym.

We spent Wednesday & Thursday frantically searching apartment ads, making appointments for viewings, attending viewings and submitting applications. So busy. I had a notebook chock full of addresses, phone numbers and appointment times that looked like Carrie's wall of batshit insanity on Homeland. It made sense to no one but me. But it paid off! We found a place!

On Thursday at 2 p.m. we viewed/applied for this place and at 11 a.m. Friday we got the call that we'd been approved! They were the first one to get back to us (out of 4 applications already submitted, and a few more waiting to be submitted). This place can only be described as "the pimpest place ever" so we decided to go for it! Cue the hugest sigh of relief I have breathed since Frankfurt.

We really had no choice but to take the first place offered to us. What if all the others rejected us? We are only on one income right now, so that might make us unattractive candidates (despite the fact that a fabulously paid job is no doubt just around the corner for me). Martin's company is putting us up in a "serviced apartment" for the first 2 weeks but after that our free ride is over. Once we move in to our own place sadly there will be nobody to change our towels and make our bed and do our dishes for us. I'm not entirely sure if we're supposed to do that last one ourselves, and I feel like a Grade A bourgeois asshole letting somebody else do them for me, but make no mistake I continue to let the maid do them.

I would like to bragmention one last thing: Not once have I lifted up the toilet seat to check for spiders before sitting down. Not once! But I do think about it each and every time I go and then I rush rush rush to get off of it because OMG what if there is a spider under there and it wants to touch me? That is a delicate area. I think I might start checking from now on so I can properly empty my bladder.

*bonus points to anybody who caught the clever Australia related title of this post.

Do You See What I See?

Alright, enough already with the daily play-by-plays. If I continue down that path it will quickly devolve in to the detailed findings of my scouring the internet for crockpot recipes and rants about the hipsters I see. Not a pretty sight. So I will take a step back to offer you all a broader view of my daily goings on. Musings, one might call it, if one were a ridiculously dressed hipster douche who really should lay off the ink because some day one might actually wish to hold down a job.

So! First impressions of Australia: Humid; urban; expensive. Though I can't extrapolate my findings to the wider Australian population, this is how I have found Brisbane to be thus far (except for the expensive part, this is an island after all so we're reaching Norway-level prices).

Here is a short list of things we have seen over the past 3.5 days of being here:

- A deceased, red cockroach lying on its back

I did not know they came in different colors

- An open home pregnancy test box in a mall bathroom

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the actual pee stick so I am now forced to live in suspense forever, which is really upsetting. Was it positive or negative?! Why was it taken in a mall?! Should we really trust women to have control over their own reproductive systems?! So many questions left unanswered. They will weigh on my mind for eternity.

- Kangaroo meat in a grocery store

Yay, it is easily accessible! I was worried that eating-kangaroo-is-totally-normal was an urban legend, like "the call is coming from inside the house" or Rick Santorum's heterosexuality.

- Parrots in the wild

Holy crap! I've only ever seen them as pets and in cages so I was surprised to see that they are actual wild animals. I don't know where the hell I expected them to come from, like parrots were created in a lab for the sole purpose of human companionship. I realize this makes me a sheltered idiot but I really get a kick out of seeing them in the wild, living a normal bird life. Well, not a normal bird life but rather a dignified bird life. I have yet to see a parrot trolling the gutter for french fries like the rest of their species.

- The absolute most shockingly huge produce in the world

GARGANTUAN is the only word I can use to explain the fruits and vegetables here. Avocados the size of a newborns head. Celery the length of my elbow to fingertips. Peaches the size of a Magic 8 Ball (the fortune telling kind, not the narcotic kind). A few examples, using my face for comparison purposes. A huge-ass lettuce:

And a huge-ass sweet potato:

Isn't Australia great for my look? I'm sweaty, sunburned and posing with an edible phallus. I have never been more glamorous. Somebody alert Robin Leach (provided he is still alive).

I wonder if you still need to eat "5 a day" when the produce is so big? If you do you might be the first person in history to get fat from eating a zero calorie food. It's taking quite some time for me to get over just how big it is.

- The healthiest, happiest most satisfied looking pigeons (and bums) I have ever seen

Literally, the pigeons glisten. They are actually attractive. They don't look like they have mange. I don't know what it is they are eating but, like the parrots, the pigeons must be living a dignified bird life because they don't look like disgusting rats with wings like they do everywhere else in the world.

The same goes for the bums on the street (of which they are very few). They seem cheerful and smiling, and usually have a great pair of tan, muscular legs. They don't look too different from surfer dudes, the only difference being bums are missing a tiny logo on the breast pocket of their flannel shirt to indicate the price point of the garment. Otherwise, they're virtually identical.

And finally:

-The genuinely most friendly, laid back people I have ever encountered

When talking with a rental agency on the phone a woman actually said "shit yeah" in response to a question I had. On a business phone call at her job. I suspect this woman had boundary issues (and/or diarrhea of the mouth) but on the whole people don't seem to be so uptight and formal about things. I'm not saying they're unprofessional or incompetent, they just get the job done without a stick up their ass.

Initially I thought that people really liked us because of how well we were treated. But then it struck me that they probably don't give a fat turd about us personally, they're just really, really friendly to everyone they encounter.

Hey, I'll take that. I think this is going to be an awesome two years.

The Greatest Airport Ever

I need to make one thing clear right off the bat. Singapore's Changi airport is not to be confused with the rapper Chingy (warning: MySpace link, probably not safe for work or human dignity), whose 2003 musical number "Right Thurr" will inevitably lead him to a future stint on a VH1 "celebrity" "reality" "TV show".

So as to avoid confusion and stay true to my word, the airport will simply be referred to as The Greatest Airport Ever. TGAE, for short, trademark me, 2012.

Upon arriving at TGAE we headed straight to take a shower, which you can totally do! I'm sure this is a standard service at all international airports but this is the first time I've long hauled it long enough to actually utilize such a service. For $8 Singapore dollars you get all the hot water and athlete's foot you can handle. Eeeew, I forgot to pack flip flops in my carry-on. I wasn't about to shower in knee high boots so I'm just waiting to pay dearly for that mistake. It felt awesome.

After a quick 6 a.m. meal of spicy Thai green curry it was time for a stroll through the butterfly garden, yaaaaaay! I don't know what sorcery is afoot in that place but damn, putting a butterfly garden in an airport makes travelers a lot less grumpy and introverted than usual. Maybe it was only me squeeling like a stuck pig saying "Look at that butterfly!" every 4 seconds but I really felt a lot better about my existence on this planet by being surrounded by butterflies in an unlikely place.

One landed on Martin's arm but it flew away before he got a picture of it. One touched my head, but I didn't see it. The highlight for me were the rings of pineapple laying around, where butterflies would land and rub their unidentifiable butterfly parts in the sweet juicy fruit. Yeah...this story is turning out to be not as interesting as I imagined. But make no mistake, it kicked ass. I highly recommend you make a trip through it if you ever find yourself at TGAE.

By this point jet lag, exhaustion and lack of ownership over the movement of my own body was starting to make me loopy. Remember that funny YouTube video of the kid drugged up from the dentist asking "Is this real life?" Well I was wondering the same thing myself. I imagine it being the same feeling as having a newborn. Except when traveling for countless hours, it's not someone else I need to worry about having a disastrous incident involving bodily functions.

This was 2 days ago and I literally don't remember most of the flight from Singapore to Brisbane. I was out. of. it and slept a lot. I remember there was a baby on board and I only heard it cry a little bit during take off and landing. I should keep little Parents of the Year trophies in my carry-on for just such occasions. I made it through 2/3 of Tina Fey's Bossypants, for the second time, which, I'm going to call it right now, is my favorite (non-fiction) book ever. I could never cheat on my dead, elderly lover Kurt Vonnegut and declare it the number one #1 but man, it is SO GOOD!

I want Tina Fey to consume me but not kill me so I can live within her and be surrounded by her amazingness. I say that as un-creepily as possible. I love that book. I demand you all purchase and read it immediately, if you are to remain worthy of reading this dog and pony show blog I've got going here.

We got to Australia (early, even - Singapore Airlines is an absolutely awesome airline). The immigration agent did not ask us one single question about why we were entering, despite there being no sticker in our passports to indicate our legality. Our luggage got on the carousel immediately and the sniffer dog detected no illegal contraband in our luggage (whew!). We were out in the Australian 78-and-humid night within 25 minutes of leaving the plane. Gold star for Bisbane Airport. It is no TGAE but they get you in and out with minimal fuss.

We had pre-booked a van to take us to our temporary apartment and we zipped right on in to town and got checked in to our apartment by the friendliest Aussie stoner one could ever hope to meet. He gave us 24 hours of internet for free, a $20 value (extortion!) and has since let me copy and scan stuff for free. To quote a fine poet I cannot exactly remember:

"I like the way you do that right thurr (right thurr)"

For as long as we have this apartment (max 2 weeks) my only wish is to party with Patrick the reception guy. So help me god I'm going to make it happen.