Happy March 27th

Please excuse me while I go put on this

and these

to go out in the multiple inches of snow that fell overnight.

This week in Doha, it's forecast to be a high of 95° and a low of 68°.  In Perth, it's forecast to be a high of 88° and low of 59°.   In both places, the forecast is showing unrestricted sunshine.

And here?  We're showing a high of 45° and a low of 30° with snow showers/rain all week.

While I don't regret moving here for a second, today I really wish that I could be relaxing on the beach in Australia, or even compound poolside in Qatar, instead of trudging through the snow.  One day I am going to get myself a pair of snowshoes to get around town here; in the meantime, I'll be browsing for a hot vacation destination ASAP.

First Ready Meals, Now Ready Wine

Just when I thought that there was no way that Australia could ever be outclassed, with their utes,

inappropriate outings without shoes (i.e. pumping gas, walking through malls, using airplane lavatories),

and love of high visibility work wear as 'going out clothes,'

the UK pulled in for a photo finish with pre-filled plastic wine glasses with peel off lids:

Thank you Sainsbury's Local for enlightening me.  If I'm ever in need of a single serving of wine in a hurry, I now know just where to go.

Salaam, or Should I Say Shukran

This afternoon I went over to a solicitor to get copies of my passport and H's passport notarized for some Australian paperwork that we're finishing.  I called the solicitor in advance to make sure that he would notarize H's passport copy without H being there.  The solicitor said that he could since he was certifying it as a true copy, but said that he would prefer that I bring a second photo identification with me for H.

Unfortunately, H had already driven to work with his UK driver's license.  I quickly thought about what other photo identifications would be in the house.

"Umm, would you accept a Qatari driver's license as the second proof of photo identification?"

"Sure, no problem," responded my new best friend Mr. Solicitor.

So off I went to the lawyer's office with our passports and my favorite driver's license to-date, courtesy of the Emir on his stallion:

The solicitor was rather excited when I arrived because he had "never seen a U.S. passport before."  He immediately began paging through one and reading aloud the first quote by Abe Lincoln.  The Qatari driver's license didn't even register on his 'cool' scale; I wonder if he's seen one of those before.  The last time I pulled one out outside of the Middle East was to rent a car at Newark Airport.  And the Hertz woman didn't even blink. 

There's Something Wrong with This Picture

It's currently 'summer' in the United Kingdom and winter in Australia.  It's also currently the middle of the afternoon in the United Kingdom and the late evening on the west coast of Australia.  But the weather looks like this:




There's definitely something wrong with this picture.  Currently missing the sunshine but loving the green everywhere.  I just can't win, can I?

Bringing the Mountain to Mohammed

Why yes, that is a rice cooker bubbling away in my living room.

Why no, I don't live in a studio apartment.  

Which begs the question, why is there a rice cooker bubbling away next to the television in the living room?  Well that would be because that's currently where the only unpacked power strip is plugged in, a power strip that allows Australian and U.S. plug ends and is plugged into a power adapter for our British outlet.  This is what happens when we have appliances / electrical goods from three continents with four different plug ends.

In a few months H will likely get around to replacing the plug ends on compatible appliances so they can plug directly into our British outlets.  With each location, the wires on our electrical goods get shorter and shorter; when they get too short to change the plug ends, does that mean it's time to retire?

New Birthday Wish List

Dear H,

Since moving from Perth, I've added a few alternative options to my birthday wish list.  While I appreciate the caring motivation behind the desire to get me rec specs, I would much prefer something else.  For years, I've wanted a puppy, but now that we live in the United Kingdom, I would also take a hairy coo:

More specifically, I would love a baby hairy coo:

I still have an outstanding desire for a mercenary, but given our current location, I would happily accept a butler.  One that has good connections to get us into castles and distilleries in the winter season and who is an expert at pouring tea would be preferred.  I know just the person if you can persuade him to come work for us.  I would also greatly appreciate it if the butler was able to make the meager heating systems here warm our house.  For some reason British people think that heating a piece of metal in the corner of a room will warm a whole house, trust me it doesn't.

While they may fail on the radiator front, Brits definitely get an A+ for their seemingly widespread use of heated towel racks.  This falls into the future birthday category (don't worry, I'll still be turning 26), but I would really love to have heated towel racks in all future homes. 

Don't worry H, I haven't forgotten about you.  For your birthday I'm getting you the top item on your list, a pair of dictator sunglasses.  Putin has them, Gaddafi had them, now you can have them.  Might I suggest that you consider adding a white Toyota Hilux to your birthday wish list to compliment them?

Love,
Anonymous Expat

Leaving on a [Many] Jet Plane[s]

H and I are saying hooroo to Australia and moving on to our next home overseas.  This means that I'll have to catch-up on my severe backlog of Australia postings from someplace other than Australia.  It also means that I get to play excited bathroom game in the Dubai Airport.  Excited bathroom game involves guessing what's behind each stall door: toilet or squat hole.

Full points are given for a correct blind guess and 75% of points are awarded for a correct guess based on observing who is exiting the stalls.  Half points are awarded based on observing who is entering the stalls as a lot of times Westerners will reveal the squat locations by gasping and shaking their heads when they push open the stall door, resuming their place in the queue to wait for the next available stall, or simply saying, "this is gross."

Another fun area of play for excited bathroom game is seeing just how many women will emerge from a single squat stall at one time.  I'm not quite sure what they all do in their together.  Maybe assist with holding up one another's voluminous burkas?

Thank goodness we have an eleven hour layover.  I couldn't bear to have a limited timeframe to play in.

So toodaloo kangaroos, I'll check-in once I arrive on the other side of the globe...literally.

Perth Shopping- Gag Me

I need a new pair of shoes for work, really badly.  I’ve been wearing my current pair for the past four years, including every work day of the past two years.  I’ve worn them barefoot, in +40˚C weather, and through deserts and occasional flooding.  The sole of one is peeling off, the heel of the other is ripped, and they smell really bad.  So bad that I’ve taken to washing my feet every evening when I get home (Which shockingly enough makes me miss the two bidets in the last house.  Yes, I do know what bidets should actually be used for.  And yes, I have only ever used them to wash my feet).

It’s not for want of other shoes that I’ve taken to wearing this pair everyday.  While my closet in Perth has many fewer pairs than my closet(s) in the U.S., I do have other options.  But none are as stylish or as comfortable.  I really just want to buy a new pair of the same shoe.  Of course, Tory Burch shoes are not sold in Australia, at least Western Australian; if they were, they would probably cost three times the price.  So I have taken to scouring the handful of ‘nice’ stores in Perth for a substitute pair of work flats.

In the months, almost year, that I’ve attempted to shop in Perth, I’ve grown to appreciate the shopping that we once had at our fingertips living in the Middle East.  While it was just like home, except with no tax and slightly higher prices / less frequent sales, apparently the shopping at home is pretty spectacular.  I noticed that the inventory at David Jones has basically not turned over since we got here and found two ok pairs of shoes for about twice as much as I would consider paying for them.  Perhaps the stores have not yet realized that the Australian dollar is actually around parity with the U.S. dollar and adjusted their prices accordingly.  The salespeople have been at best absent and at worst condescending, ignorant and unhelpful.  Shockingly enough, I am still wearing my stinky, yet stylish, shoes.

Smelly feet are one thing but the unchanging, bad inventory is making me depressed.  H and I just did yet another walkabout in David Jones, the ‘nice’ department store in Perth, and were underwhelmed by the merchandise, let alone the pricing.  Never have I seen so much polyester in what is deemed to be an upscale department store.  Out of date styles by years, not just seasons, cheap fabric and bad cuts abounded.  And I’m talking about what was for sale, not just what the salespeople were wearing.

Fingers crossed that the shopping will be better in our next location.  Although the men there are known to wear 'skirts.'

Why Australia Isn’t Really a First World Country

Today I enjoyed a lunch time trek to my ‘local’ post office to pick up a package that the Australia Post was unable to deliver to my home.  In fairness, it was too large to go through my mail slot.  The package however was not too large to be left with my building’s 24 hour reception.  Apparently I have lots of free time to do the mailman’s job and go to the post office that is open from 9-5, Monday through Friday and is located nowhere near my house or my office.

Alas, half an hour after leaving my office, I had package in hand and asked to file an official complaint against the mailman / Australia Post.  For the umpteenth time in two years, I received no first notice that I had a missed delivery / package waiting for pick-up, only the final notice.  And the final notice was pre-dated a day when it arrived in my mailbox.  The woman at the post office told me that final notices are actually mailed through the post, and not delivered by the mailman in lieu of the package if they fail to find you at home a second time.  Which means that yes, Australia Post does not try to deliver your package more than once.  Postage here should really be called a ‘storage / DIY pick-up fee.’

Apparently I was supposed to be grateful that unlike my last package, this one wasn’t immediately returned to sender without any attempt or notice at delivery (a separate complaint was filed multiple times for that, to absolutely no avail).  I was also supposed to be grateful that the final notice was delivered to my mailbox instead of to one of my neighbour’s mailboxes (yes, that has happened multiple times) or the floor of the apartment building foyer (yes, that has also happened multiple times).

Since the Australia Post can’t seem to manage to do their job, I think I’ll stop doing the job that inadvertently fell to me when H & I moved into our Perth home two years ago…returning all of the mail of prior tenants to sender.  Because in Australia, it costs money to forward mail or change your address and in the fair go spirit, none of the dozen or so former tenants of our apartment felt the need to do this.

Australia Post should be ashamed of itself.  In Qatar we literally didn’t have an address, just a landmark that we lived near, yet somehow all of our mail got delivered there.

Security Shout Out

The security guard at my office may slightly abuse his access to the e-mail address that distributes e-mail office wide.  His latest notice was the below:

"G'day all,

Would the owner of a lime green ute, rego xxxx xx, kindly remove their vehicle from the SMALL CAR ONLY parking bay.  Small car in English means SMALL CAR ONLY, not medium or large.

Ta."

Excuse me Mr. Security Guard, can you please tell me what SMALL CAR ONLY means in Australian?


Ta,
Anonymous Expat

Border Patrol

Sometimes I can’t believe where I work.  Border Patrol is discussed as animatedly in the kitchen as the latest cricket match.  Speaking of Border Patrol, when H and I got back from our vacation last month, there were signs up in customs warning that Border Patrol was filming and we could be on camera.  Very sadly we passed through customs only to find that no cameras were filming.

If they were, they would have found us with our bag of potential contraband.  We had to declare our wooden board game, made in Norway (serious high risk of pests), a chocolate bar, and two granola bars that we had purchased in Australia.  There must be a million other things that would be a better use of the Perth customs agents’ time.

The agent inspecting our items asked us if we’d been to Australia before.  What did he think, that we normally keep a bag of wood and food at the ready for customs checks?  He also could have read our customs form where we checked the box that reads, "resident returning to Australia."

Back to the '80s

Sometimes I forgot where I am when I wake up.  But I've never had cause to question what year it is until today.  At this morning's safety meeting, my manager shared how she made a non-alcoholic party punch for her New Year's Eve party that really helped her guests cut back on how much alcohol they consumed.  She said she used her recipe from the 1980s and it was a huge hit.

Following the meeting, I walked back to my office and passed a woman wearing these in black:

Since when do they make shoes with Koosh balls on them???

Taxi, Taxi

Cabbies in Perth don’t like night fares in Perth because they fear getting glassed or not paid.  Women in Perth don’t like late night taxis in Perth because they fear getting sexually assaulted.  My friend doesn’t like cabbies in Perth because after politely turning down a date with her 60+ year old driver, he said to her spitefully, “That’s fine then, go home to your pussy.  I mean your cat, your pussy cat.”  Next time she might refuse those last few drinks which make her talkative enough to share her life with the cab driver, including pictures of the true love of her life, her very spoiled, overly well fed kitten.

Looks Can be Deceiving

My boss is a wonderful person; she works hard but understands and promotes a work/life balance.  She likes to have fun but not too much fun.  When we got out for drinks after work, she closes down the tab after one (or two very quick) drinks.  She dyes her hair blonde but it's a shade that's more gray than sun kissed.  She's young and thin but wears conservative slacks and orthopedic shoes.  I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that she's nice but conservative.  Which is why the turn the conversation took at drinks on Friday was all the more surprising.

One of my anonymous colleagues is getting married next month in his home country, India.  Halfway through her drink, my boss asked, "Are you having an arranged marriage?"  Anonymous Colleague responded, "Yes, it is, but I really like my fiancee and we spend hours talking to each other on the phone every week."  My boss then asked if his phone calls need to be chaperoned to which Anonymous Colleague gave her a kind of weird look and responded that, "no, they do not."  And then my very conservative looking boss blurted out,

"So phone sex is ok then?"

My jaw dropped, Anonymous Colleague's jaw dropped and everybody else in the group just stopped and looked at her.  Someone gave a nervous chuckle and turned the conversation to the next test match being played at the local cricket stadium, WACA.

The surprises didn't stop there though.  I went to refresh my drink at the bar and one of my other colleagues came over.  "That was awkward," I said to her.  To which she responded, "Yes, but I'm not as surprised as I once might have been.  Before I went to Budapest, Anonymous Boss lent me a book that she said I had to read before I went because it takes place there.  I started reading it and it was like soft core pornography."  I really hope she doesn't get me in our office Secret Santa; the gift might be x-rated.

Thanksgiving Countdown

I have a friend who once told me that she liked Perth because it was like being in the U.S.  I can see her point with that most days but today I beg to differ.  I just called the butcher to confirm that my turkey would be ready for pick-up on Saturday and that it will be frozen.  He didn’t even need to ask my name, he just said yes, that they would be getting it in on Friday mid-day.  I guess I’m the only one in the area who ordered a turkey for Thanksgiving? 

I know it’s a little early to pick-up a turkey the Saturday before Thanksgiving but the butcher is only open from 9-5 Monday through Saturday and it takes me forty minutes to get there from my office.

Additional things that remind me that I’m not in the U.S. this Thanksgiving:

• Our $10 a can pumpkin puree from David Jones’ food hall.  The pumpkin pie and bread will be worth every cent.
• 26 - 30° Celsius weather and the fact that I’m sharing the weather in Celsius.
• Thursday, November 24^th being a normal work day.  It looks like H and I will be eating our Thanksgiving feast very, very late at night.

Happy (early) Thanksgiving from down under!   As late as H and I may eat on Thursday, our dinner will still be finished before any turkeys hit the oven in the U.S.

Anonymous Colleague Fails Again

Anonymous Colleague showed up at work today wearing white sports socks + black plastic dress shoes...

I was so distracted that I barely even gagged at the usual lack of an undershirt under his buttondown shirt.  Perhaps he's dressed for dinner out at The Sizzler.  All I can say is that if I draw him in my group's Secret Santa, I am definitely giving him this: