And finally, Steffi proudly presents: our all new and shiny landline!
Since this afternoon our landline telephone is finally working and I’d be very excited indeed if I would intend to actually use it.
However, we only want it to get an internet connection and this is of course not working yet. It’s another step and one day the little green light on our router will work….
If someone is interested in our number, please leave a comment or write me an email!
Relax? I nearly forgot what this is but than we finally went for our first weekend away in Australia to a remote place called Thalee with a nice little village of basic bungalows. We had electricity, water and a TV but never switched it on. Since I officially had nothing to do I didn’t feel like changing this fact and just did nothing for the whole weekend. Well, to be honest I did go to the beach, went swimming, watched the wallabies, read a book, slept and listened to the birds. Fantastic!
Yes, I know, we could/should have known it and to be honest there is even a warning sign: Anyway, apparently in Australia (or at least in Newcastle) you’re not allowed to put any kitchen waste into the green bin. Because salad and apples are nicely compostable we just threw them in and didn’t think about it. Unfortunately they check all the bins and obviously didn’t take ours but left a big orange warning sticker on it instead. Great! When the contents literally started to move we finally had to borrow a shovel and put everything into normal garbage bags to go into the standard bin. It was so gross — but we will surely never mix this up again!
Finally a technician called us and said he’d come this Saturday to connect our land line. (After that we could finally get an internet connection as well.) It seems we got excited a bit too early (Warning: Pun ahead!) because he didn’t come between 8 and 12 (like announced) but at 4pm. Anyway, he was finally there! And he connected our land line! Well he claimed it because something must have gone wrong. Instead of silence like before we now can hear nice 50Hz noise when picking up the phone. So he has to come again. Great.…
(Sorry, no picture of the noise!)
To be allowed to drive our new car we now had to register and insure it. That wasn’t to straight forward because the government agency wanted a proof of address like our tenancy agreement or a bank statement with my name on it. So Florian went to the bank while I was filling out the forms but the bank wouldn’t give him a bank statement with both names despite it being a joint account. So I had to go as well and got a print out with my name and address. Everything was fine until the lady discovered that it said „Internal use only! Not to be handed to the customer!“. After a short discussion she finally accepted it. But wait, what is „geb. Klinge“?! A maiden name? Well, everybody could say so! Her manager believed us and so she had to, too. That was nice of him, wasn’t it?
At the insurance things were a bit easier and so now it’s time to drive!
PS: Finally we can lend our car to others rather than borrowing friends cars all the time!
Having brazilian colleagues is great — for example because they know how to make a decent brazilian BBQ. For example this weekend in a park in Newcastle with the sea in mind.
(That reminds me that I haven’t told you about the public BBQs here! In many parks there are public and free BBQs for everybody to use. They work a bit different to the ones we’re used to in Europe. A gas flame that you switch on by pressing a button heads a big metal plate were you can grill your meat without seeing the flame at all. You are supposed to clean up afterwards but some people prefer to clean when they arrive and leave it dirty. But anyway, isn’t that brilliant?! You can have a nice BBQ without taking everything with you and there is even one in our housing estate!)
Anyway, for a brazilian BBQ you don’t need it because the meat is grilled above a flame so my friend just brought his self made BBQ.
It was soooo good.…!
This could become a classic! We had a visitor again!
This time a little frog hopped in underneath the front door. He wasn’t only pretty small but also well camouflaged on our grey carpet. If he wouldn’t have jumped around I wouldn’t have seen him and he could have had a nice warm night under our shoe rack!
A bit after that we had a small saurian (ca 10cm long) running through our living room. How did he get in?!
Both were escorted out in a plastic box and both were completely harmless. In the end I do prefer them a lot over insects like cockroaches anyway…
After looking for and at used cars very evening of this week, we decided on one this morning and I bought my first car: Holden (Opel) Astra from 2008.
Yeah! That means we have everything sorted out (but the internet connection of course)!
It did take a bit but finally here he is: my new work machine! I was allowed to get a mac again and so porting my data over from my old machine was extremely easy. Just click on import everything (applications, data, settings) and let it work for 45 minutes and your done!
Unfortunately the security regulations are extremely tight here and you just cannot connect to the internet in the university unless someone from the computer centre comes here to set it all up again and of course overwriting all your data when doing it! So that I can start all over again.
It looks like Apple invested all that money to find the best and most convenient way so far to copy system settings and data from one machine to the other and they really thought of everything — but the guys from the University of Newcastle…
And here you see … nothing >
To get an internet connection seems to be the hardest thing in Australia. It looks like in that they are (at least in Newcastle) quite behind. Our house for example has these nice looking boxes in the wall but there are not connected by wires to the telephone network or the internet. So we have to get someone here to connect us physically in the first place. There are plenty of companies on the market you claim to do that and every time you get in contact with them they tell you they’d be deleted to provide you with a connection but than a couple of days later they tell you that they can’t offer you their service in that area were you live at all. Shouldn’t they know in the first place?! It always takes them time to get back and say no and than the whole story starts again with another company. At the moment there is one company which actually gave us a date when they want to make the connection (3.3.) but I’ll only believe it, when it is done. That’s for telephone only anyway, we’ll still have to sort out the internet connection afterwards…
