When 6 AM Becomes 5 AM

When I lived in Perth, I was astounded by the hostility related to daylight savings time.  I couldn't believe that people would object, let alone so vehemently, to an extra hour of sunshine in the evening, après work.  This morning, as I'm force feeding myself coffee, fighting bouts of exhaustion nausea, and trying to keep my eyes open, I finally get it.  Perth locals may not have been protesting the extra hour of daylight, they may have been rejecting losing the hour of sleep when the clocks changed over.  

Today's mantra will be short term pain for long term gain.  Or maybe I'll just pretend that I hopped on an airplane to someplace hot and lost an hour due to a geography related time change.  That's always easier to stomach.  Especially when March in the UK was colder than December, January and February for the first time since 1975.

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?

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.

Dirty PPE, Dirty Minds

Guys who spend the majority of their time around guys, or women who look like guys, really can’t get their minds out of the gutter.

I told Anonymous Friend that I got a new harness and that we really needed to go try it out one night.

His jaw dropped and his eyes lit up while his brand new girlfriend gave me a huge stink eye.

Seriously Anonymous Friend?  Do you not remember H, the guy twice your size with whom you spend a huge amount of your waking hours?  You know, the guy who I’m very happily married to?

Obviously next time I need to specify that my new harness is one of these:

for rock climbing.  You know, the activity that H and I do with Anonymous Friend on a weekly basis. 

Not one of these:

 

Maybe Anonymous Friend can try that kind of harness out with his new girlfriend.  But please leave me out of it.