It’s currently 8:25am on Tuesday here in Australia, and I’ve just enjoyed a fantastic traditional Aussie brekkie. As they say here, “it was yuge!”

From oz 08

It was also mighty delicious. I could get used to roasted tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans with my breakfast.

D just headed off to the train station to head to work, leaving me here at the cafe to take advantage of the free wifi to update y’all and to upload some photos. As promised, I’ve taken some photos of the greatest energy drink ever made:

From oz 08

From oz 08

It was really tasty, but I can’t report any kind of psychedelic effects. Bummer :)

Before heading to breakfast this morning, I watched the local news broadcasts on telly, sort of round-robining through the 3 different news stations each time they got to the sport report. The big stories this morning are that the 30th ATM in Sydney was exploded during the night (they didn’t get any cash this time, however), a famous Aussie bloke with the nickname “Chopper” was attacked by a nutter with a tomahawk, and that after months of talking up the 20-20-20 plan (reduce carbon footprint by 20% by the year 2020) was just reduced to 5%. There is apparently much protesting. Oh, also, there was great coverage of the Iraqi journalist who threw both his shoes at George W. Bush during a press conference.

I got a little bit sunburned whilst walking around yesterday, and one of my eyes is completely bloodshot after the plane flight. Now I understand why they call late night plane flights the “red-eye.” International travel tip: it is counter-intuitive, but it’s actually better to sit in the middle part of your plane’s row as opposed to the aisle. At this point I feel pretty fantastic, not at all jetlagged at all. (Other than waking up at 5am local time and unable to continue to sleep.)

No phone connection yet, but at this point I’m seriously considering just not bothering. I’m clearly rather addicted to always being connected, and it will probably do me some good to have to go out of my way to check in. Anyway, catch you later. I’ll check in later with some more things I’ve found interesting.

Dear America,
I’ve had just about enough of you and your War on Christmas, so I’ve decided to take some time away from you. We shall be spending our Christmahanukwanza ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET. Australia here we come.

Hopefully I’ll be blogging and taking photos and whatnot as connectivity allows. Stay tuned.

While reading a story about elevators I was reminded of something subtly amusing from the Australia trip that I had forgotten to share with you.

1)  In the United States, a company called Otis controls the elevator/escalator market.  If you’ve ridden an elevator in the United States in the last decade, it is almost certainly one of Otis’s.  Next time you’re in one, look around.  I’ll bet you a dollar you’ll see the placard equivalent of an “Otis’s Elevator” sign.

2)  In Australia, much like most other parts of the world, what Americans refer to as “elevators” are known as “lifts.” 

3)  Since learning about Otis’s monopoly on elevators, I’ve always kept a lookout whilst riding in them for one made by someone else.  I’ve never seen another elevator manufacturer in the 10 years I’ve been looking.  Until visiting Australia, that is.  There, a company called Schindler has the market cornered.  I rode in five or six lifts in Australia, all of which were made by Schindler.

I’ll leave the ’1 + 2 + 3 = comedy <strike>gold</strike> oil’ math as an exercise for the reader, but suffice to say that it cracked me up way more than it ought-to’ve.

We’ve been home from Australia for over a week now.  Haven’t felt much like writing or much of anything else, for that matter.  In an email to Marcus, I likened the feeling to that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer after she got killed and then magicked back to life again, finding that she liked it a whole lot better in Heaven, and that she’s rather perturbed at being back with all those burdens and responsibilities again.  Australia is my Heaven, apparently.

Been pretty jetlagged after flying home.  Getting over netlag as well; it’s good to be connected once again. Seriously, the netlag was harder on me than the jetlag was.  I think I have a problem.

It’s been hard to sleep in this new timezone; midnight comes and goes without the slightest tiredness, and I’ve been consistently sleeping very late as a consequence.  Going to Australia wasn’t much of a problem in the jetlag department, but coming home was significantly worse.  I guess late-night sleeplessness leaves me more time to spend with Jessica Fletcher.  (It’s not cheating if she’s fictional, old, and just solving mysteries with me, right?)

I’ve been tinkering around with website stuff here and there.  For several days after my return, whenever iPhone would check its “gps” position, it would occasionally return a latitude and longitude of 0.  This had the effect of centering the map up at the top of nyquil.org near to the Louvre in France.  I may have just traveled from the other side of the world, but I assure you, France was not on the trip.  In any case, if ever you need to know the coordinates required to blow up the Louvre with ICBMs, just put zero in for each; that’ll be close enough for horseshoes and ICBMs.  I’ve not got my map-moving script ignoring any position updates of lat/lon 0/0.  This may come back to haunt me if I ever decide to visit the Louvre, but I’m not planning any such trip any time soon.

Since returning home after spending scads of dollars — both American and Australian — over the last few weeks, we’ve been tightening our belts with some budgeting.  This involves much less eating out, and significantly more cooking at home.  This is something we’ve needed to do anyway, it’s just so gosh-darned hard to get motivated.  Being broke is great motivation.  I’ve been trying all sorts of interesting things with relative success, so I may have to resurrect Cooking With Kooks.

Dear Australia:  I miss you.

We did indeed go to the Torranga Zoo the other day, seeing all manner of unique Australian animals and regular old run-of-the-mill zoo animals as well. Curiously, among all the crazy animals I’d never seen before was a neat network of waterways which allowed these giant koi to swim unfettered throughout the whole park. At every exhibit there was some crazy marsupial to gaze upon, but there I’d be, snapping pics of the koi and generally being enamored with them. I guess I like koi.

In addition to waterways, one other feature pervaded most of the park: trees and shrubbery. In Australia, trees and shrubs mean spiders; all it would take is a casual glance around and one would see gigantic webs, pretty much everywhere. Most of said webs were both slightly above head-height AND filled with the kind of spiders about which American spiders have nightmares.

(In fact, I’ve decided to rename “nightmares” to “night’nids.” I just seems more appropriate; I don’t care how scary some horse is — it’s just a freakin’ horse. We’re talking about spiders who routinely eat BIRDS. Show me a horse that eats birds and I’ll gladly change it back to “nightmares.” If you could make a note of this and begin changing your usage, I’d be much obliged.)

The few webs NOT containing spiders were somewhat comforting, of-times causing one to exhale with relief. Until, that is, you realize that a spider-less web means that you HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THE SPIDER IS. Throughout the park, pretty much the only place that DIDN’T have trees and shrubs was in the giraffe habitat. At first I thought this was because the giraffes eat all the plants, but then I realized that it was because giraffes are bloody expensive and the zoo-keepers don’t want to have to replace them every time a spider goes and eats one.

Alas, the uploading of images didn’t go as well as I was hoping, but one half-way decent shot of a spider made it up before the wifi and my OLPC gave out. The rest may have to wait ‘til I get home. Without further ado, here’s payment for sitting through my blather:

This guy is big enough to wrap his legs around a kiwi-fruit. See? “Night’nids,” right?

Erik tells me that these spiders kill many motorists a year — not by biting them, mind you, but instead by simply hiding behind vehicle sun-visors, waiting for the driver to casually flip it down. At this point, the motorist can’t help but see the spider, whose simple presence terrifies them into driving off the road. This is a story I believe, because the first one I saw about made me go off the path I was on and into the crocodile pit just to avoid walking under it. Better the crocs than those spiders, I say.

Check your visors. And your underwear.