Two Weeks and Counting

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Today marks two weeks since we’ve left the states.  It’s gone quickly but looking back we’ve done a lot.  We’re settling in nicely.  Not that we have a routine yet, but we have roof, a bank account, a phone number and are starting to feel at home.

Brisbane has been an easy city to like.  I said before it feels a lot like Denver; it’s big enough to have all the benefits of a city, but feels much like a small town.  We like that people are active here.  You see people jogging and biking everywhere.  I think we’ll have no problem adjusting for the long run.  Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, the sunshine state.  Queensland feels a lot like Florida. 

I find Queensland, and Australia as a whole, to be a bit of a nanny state.  Taxes on sin items like alcohol, cigarettes and soda are high.  A case of coke costs $13.50 here (that’s the sale price), cigs are $14 a pack, a six pack of beer $17. A government official today is trying to get legislation passed allowing hospitals to put the obese to the end of the line for health care.  There has also been talk of refusing health care to smokers. 

The place has tons of surveillance cameras all over the place.  People here don’t expect the same level of privacy that we expect.  The police have some broad reaching powers here too.  It’s not uncommon for drivers to be stopped at a random sobriety stop, and for the police to give everyone a breathalyzer test in order to get through.  From what we’ve heard they occur all over the place all the time.  It has the benefit of cutting down sharply on the numbers of drunk drivers.

Really it’s a lot like home but the little differences (Hey Vincent Vega) are what we are noticing now.  We went to the grocery store and couldn’t find any dill pickles.  Well they did have some that were sort of dill but they were super tiny, like miniature gherkins.  There’s not one Grape flavor in the jelly section.  NO GRAPE JELLY! If you look at the jelly aisle at home I’ll bet you find at least six brands of grape alone.  Here there are several types of black currant. (Which I like better than grape anyway but I did notice) We found out hamburger buns aren’t pre-sliced.  We went to get laundry soap and didn’t recognize a single brand. The same goes for the medicine aisle. You take for granted the items you see on a daily basis.  Here we have to read the fine print in order to make sure we know what we’re getting.  The writing is in English but it’s like a foreign language.

When you read the nutrition information on the side of food containers here, the energy is listed in kilojoules (kJ) instead of calories.  It’s been a long time since chemistry; I don’t even remember what a Joule is.  They also say serve instead of serving.  So “a single serve of this product has blah blah kJ of energy” just sounds strange to my American ears.

Tomorrow we have a busy day planned so I’ll sign off without any observations. This post was mostly just observations anyway.