Hi all this is an blanket email to all of our friends across the world (all 3 of you).
I hopefully have BCC you all so you don't get a wack load of other peoples email addresses.
Well it's week 2.1 here in Oz it's Wed so we've been here officially 2 weeks. We have been looking for cars and apartments. As far as cars the tsunami in Japan has severely hampered any chance of getting a Japanese car so it's down to just Kia and Huyndai, and they are really the same car company so the car we are looking at is small, cause gas is 1.51 a litre here. But it must be white and automatic.
Apartment shopping is interesting most places come with on or the other applicance missing. Usually fridge and washing machine. Some have outside laundry, like in the outside. And others have communial laundry. I wonder if you have to fold other peoples underwear ?
The weather here is nice every day and should be like that until Oct. They say we may not get rain until then which explains why the google street view of Darwin looked pretty dry.
We are in a unit which is not bad and our car is a boat, it's huge and takes $75 to fill it.
If you didn't hear food is expensive here except McD's ice cream cone which is 50c taxes included. So $30 of fruit and veg is on small bag here. Banana's 12.95kg. But we're over that now. The internet is expensive and so is phones. Although to call canada is only 4c a min on a phone chip/plan/whatever it is. So that's reasonable.
I was complaining about the price of coke but I broke down and bought a case $14 for 24. I don't know what pop companies have against Darwin but coke is $3 in McD's. Thank god milk is cheap if you buy the store brand $3 for 3 litres.
It was my birthday the other day and I have put up a video of me getting a birthday cake (doughnut). It's on http://youtube.com/muddcliff
Doughnuts, a Canadian can't survive here. They are $3 each. Now they are fancy and all but 3 bucks folks. We got a deal the other day 6 for $1, which was 1/2 price at the Coles. Oh the 2 places here are Coles and Woolworths. They are the grocery store, they also between them own Kmart, Big W, gas stations and the government. Someone said 30c from every dollar goes to Coles I think it was.
Someone upstairs keeps playing this song "Miss Jones and me", don't know who it's by.
Luna is at her 3rd day at work. I'll try to describe it as it was told to me.
1st day got a desk, it's a big workspace she says, got a log in for her computer. Logged in, logged out, couldn't log in againk, had to get IT to fix it. Sounds like Luna with her computer luck. She isn't sitting with her team just yet they are shuffling desks around. Guess no point just yet they need to see if she'll stay. One lady we were emailing went back after 2 months we don't know why.
2nd day went in for training, she says she can do things here without the clients permission, call welfare, call family. I'm sure I'm missing things but that's idea. The indegnous can have their payments forced onto a card 70-80%. This is then like a bank card that they can only buy non alcohol stuff with. But it doesn't have their picture on it so any one of the same sex here can use it. They seem to get good welfare payments here Luna has a client with 3 kids gets free housing and (not sure if I can say amount) but it's damn good. Her first client seems to be an easy one, in my opinion at least and they want her to get it off the books quickly 12 weeks she says.
One thing is she cannot bring anything home no case notes nothing. They supply a car and a phone and they have to both be returned at the end of the day. She wants a GPS so we'll need to get that. But we were told she'd have to drive a 4x4. That isn't true they have Corolla's and Yaris's. The 4 door types we have in Canada.
I'm sure when we come back to Canada to visit she'll have lots of stories to tell and maybe she can come in to Peel CAS and do a powerpoint presentation. Ok I'll do the powerpoint and she can talk. But she has described some large differences in the system here.
It seems to buy alcohol you have to present id which they scan. If you had any alcohol or violence issues no booze purchases for you. Although that doesn't stop you from buying for friends it seems. My dad would say it was like that when he came to Canada you had to get a license to purchase alcohol although they didn't have scanners in those days.
Luna says their computers are the old fashioned ones, what I think she means is that they are not laptops. No working from home, although she's been late 2 days already and she's only been at work 2 days. I guess social workers curse.
I see I have 3.45 gig left of my 5 gig that I bought. so I have to use it up before 90 days which I can't see that as being much of a problem. I can't watch youtube videos as much or upload them. I had grand plans for YouTube but that's on hold. Maybe when we get home interent it'll be different. But for now we're pretty much information limited. There is free interent at McD's but dial up was faster. I have not checked out the downtown area they say that it's free there. One of the libraries also has it but the one we go to only offers 1 hour computer use and YouTube is blocked (curses).
For people at Emergis (Jeff, Vu) and Peel CAS (Vi, Monique) I only have a few people there on my list. If you can think of people that may want to read this email please forward it on. If you received this email forwarded it to you please email us and we'll add you to this list so we can keep in touch.
You can email Luna at lunas.perils @ hotmail.com
And me at pauls.perils @ hotmail.com
To be safe just email me at pauls.perils @ hotmail.com that way it'll get looked at and if it's for Luna I'll tell her about it.
Take care all we miss and love you all, but mostly I miss the 60gig internet allowance (and to think I hated Rogers).
Paul & Luna (although she's at work)
http://paulandluna.com
