Hello Kitty

Monday November 23, 2009

Yep, that’s right, I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to mention.  There’s actually a Hello Kitty store in the mall right by our house.  If you closed your eyes and stood on the street, you really might think you were in Japan.

Well today was a good day.  Leah headed over to UQ Sport and took a yoga class.  I stayed home and did laundry.  When she got back we went to a pay phone and I called about our phone connection.  The Connect Now people still didn’t have their shit together, so I cancelled our order and went straight to Telstra.  I should have done that first, but I didn’t know. 

At the Telstra store we signed up for a home phone line, internet access and a mobile phone.  We saved a nice amount by bundling all of them together.  It’s going to take about four days to get hooked up, but at least we know we’re dealing with the right people.  The plan came with a really nice phone for free, so I now have a new phone.  We only have 150 minutes a month and 150 Mb of data, but at least we’re reachable now.  I can also get emails on the phone so I’m much more accessible than I have been.  I can get all my normal e-mail boxes on the phone so feel free to shout out. 

Internet plans are really different here than they are at home.  I’ve mentioned it before, but now I’ll explain a little.  They measure the amount that you download including browsing web pages.  You pay for the speed you want, but you really pay for the amount of data you use.  You have to pick your plan based on how much data you’re likely to be using.  I’d consider myself a heavy internet user and I really have no concept of how much data I’ve been using in the past.  Australia forces you to be aware of how much you use of everything, water, electricity, food, and even data.  It’s been hard for us to acclimate to the data usage thing.  At home, you pay for the speed and not the data, unless you’re hosting web sites.

We chose a 12 gig plan at a decent speed; it will slow down when we reach our data limit, as opposed to charging us for overages like some other plans.  The bloke Mark, who had us over for dinner last week, told us that when he first got here, his first internet bill was $8000au. Eight Bloody THOUSAND dollars.  He was on an “Unlimited 10 gig plan” unlimited up to 10 gig and then apparently they rape you.  We didn’t want that to happen.   So just like the house, we’re paying more for less here, but that’s how it is.  They just don’t have the population of the states.  We take it for granted how cheap information is.

The home phone is another thing, we have to have one because the internet is going to be DSL, the house isn’t wired for cable.  You get the phone line for a price and then pay for individual calls, no free calls included.  You even have to pay for local calls.  Calls to mobile phones are more expensive.  I need to get a job quick y’all.

So with phones sorted out we headed home for a while.  It was a hot day so we hid out in the apartment with the air-con on.  Later we headed over to the coffee house to use the internet and drink an iced coffee.  The coffee was delicious, the internet was slow. 

I did manage to make some changes to the blog, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now.  The picture at the top was taken on our last night at the hotel when we got here.  The pool deck was on the second level and the view of the river was really great.  The bridge (I’m blanking the name right now) is recently opened and is only for pedestrians and bikes.  It goes from CBD (on the left) over to Southbank and the art museum.  The colors change every minute or so, it’s neat to watch.  I took a bunch of photos from up there.  That one took ten minutes to load to the blog.  Hope you like it.

Some observations for today:

-Aussies love to say “Heaps of” as in heaps of data for one low price.

-I can read cricket scores now and understand much of what I’ve read.

-You can’t escape stories about Shittany Spears by traveling half way around the world.  The celebrity goss (duh) is a regular spot on the news.

-Heaps of people walk around barefoot here, even though the sidewalks are as hot as the sun.

-Popsicles are called “Icy Poles”  the