57 Reasons to Move to Australia

I recently posted the above picture on Facebook depicting the temperature in Calgary and the temperature in Brisbane. I called it "Reason #57 to move to Australia", conveniently because of the 57 degree C temperature differential between Brisbane and Calgary.   Then I was challenged by a coworker to come up with 57 actual reasons to move to Australia.  So here they are, in no particular order:

1. 25,000 km of beautiful coastline
2. Tim Tams
3. Butcher on every corner
Friendly people
5. Koalas
6. No pennies, cents are rounded to the nearest 5 cents
7. Nightclubs serve hooch until 3 am and remain open until 5 am
8. Delightful Australian accent
9. Bakery on every corner
10. Plastic money is waterproof
11. Roundabouts
12. Kangaroos
13. 3 different types of rugby
14. Pub on every corner
15. Byron Bay
16. Competition - wherever there is a Woolworths, there is a Coles (grocery stores)
17. Being addressed as "mate" by everybody
18.  Cheap prepaid mobile phone plans
19.  Moreton Bay bugs
20. 6% interest savings accounts
21. Everything can be and is abbreviated to end in "-ie":  pokies (poker machines), bikies (bikers), Woolies (Woolworths), uni (university), etc
22. Utes
23. Sunrises over the ocean (on the east coast)
24. John Butler Trio
25. Line drying your laundry
26. No tipping required at restaurants (or anywhere else)
27. Wine
28. Surfing
29. Drive through bottle shops
30. Lamb
31. 60 km/hr default speed limit
32. Crazy rainstorms
33. Sausage sizzles
34. Great Barrier Reef
35. Prawns
36. Tea
37. Triple J
38. Wallabies
39. Proximity to New Zealand, Fiji, Cook Islands, Indonesia, etc for holidays
40.  Wait a minute, Gold Coast is a holiday destination
41. Coffee shops on every corner and even 1 Starbucks
42. Beer
43. Avocados
44. BYO restaurants
45. Sydney
46. Riding a bike or motorcycle year round
47. Dolphins
48. Hilltop Hoods
49. Geckos
50. Meat pies (wide selection)
51. Palm trees
52. Boardies and thongs...that's right, all year round!
53. Barbecuing
54. Snapper Rocks
55. Mangos
56. Gardening - I'm currently growing basil, mint, parsley, thyme, coriander, dill, chives, oregano, strawberries, Roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and chili peppers with relative ease
57. Brisbane is 57 degrees C warmer than Calgary (as of January 18, 2012)

Long Overdue Update

Sorry for the very long delay in posting anything new on our blog. I'm not sure how many people are still interested in following this blog but I will try to be better at posting updates. I recently discovered this cool social media network and have been spending more time on that than our blog. Now that we're all settled into our life here, I honestly don't have a lot of exciting stuff to post on our blog. And any remarkable things that happen to us are probably more easily shared as status updates on Facebook. But here's an update as to what's been going on with us.

Tara finished her exams on December 14 and had a party with her school mates that night. I had met a bunch of them already but had the chance to meet a bunch more. It seems like practically everyone in her class is from Canada! I'm sure there are a few Ausies and maybe some Europeans but there are tones of Canadians. Ever since then, Tara has been unwinding and enjoying her 1 month break between semesters. 1 down, 5 to go.

Christmas and new years was pretty low key. Tara and I didn't buy each other any presents, but chose to go clothes shopping for ourselves instead. For Christmas Eve supper we had planned on having some seafood: prawns, Moreton Bay bugs and sausage rolls. Not sure if I have previously explained what Moreton Bay bugs are, but they are basically a lobster tail with a head and not much else to speak of. Delicious! We ended up spoiling our appetite with snacks on Christmas Eve so we ate the seafood for lunch on Christmas day. Then we made an incredible turkey dinner with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots and turnips. We impressed ourselves with how good it turned out. On Boxing Day we went out and bought a TV and were surprised that all TV's on the market these days are 3D TV's so we bought a pretty nice TV and probably will not have the opportunity to actually watch any 3D content anytime soon anyway.

There was 9 foot swell on the Gold Coast during Christmas but unfortunately we didn't have the opportunity to go to the beach to check it out. I wouldn't have gone in the water anyway but it would have been amazing to see guys getting towed into barrels at my usual surf spot. I went surfing before work on December 28 thinking that the swell had died down a bit. It did, but it was still pretty huge. The waves were breaking way out the back about 100m from the shark nets and I had a pretty difficult paddle out on the longboard. When I finally got out, I didn't end up paddling into any waves until I had to leave for work.

I had a pretty slack 3 days of work after Christmas. On the first day back my boss threw a pool party in the afternoon so we split from work at about 1:30 and had a fun afternoon and evening around the pool. Tara came up from Gold Coast and joined us around 6 pm. I tossed a girl in the pool (the third time she had been tossed in) and unfortunately she had her iPhone on her at the time so it was ruined. I was going to buy her a new phone but somehow her friend managed to pull some strings at the Apple Store and she got a replacement for free. Thursday I put in a full day of work, and Friday morning I went surfing before work with my boss and a coworker.

For new years Tara and I went to a party at my coworker's house. It was actually his mom's condo (she was out of town). It was a really swanky condo overlooking the Brisbane river. Tara and I crashed there and drove back to the Gold Coast the next day. And I'm just coming back to work after taking a week of to spend with Tara around the Gold Coast. We picked a great week for it because up until last week, the weather has been less than ideal with lots of clouds and even some rain. But we got lots of sunshine over the week so we went to the beach a few days.

We went to Wet n' Wild watermark on Thursday but it was really busy due to the school holidays happening right now. Lines for the popular slides were anywhere from 45-60 mins. I waited about 1.5 hours to get on this slide called the AquaLoop. You get sealed into this nearly-vertical tube, standing on a platform. Then the floor drops out and you fall down, then go back uphill around a loop, and finally get spit out at the bottom. Some people don't make it all the way around the loop, and have to get out of a hatch halfway down and do the walk of shame back to the exit. I'm happy to report that I made it all the way around, although I was a bit nervous about it because quite a few people don't make it.

On Friday we went to Seaworld which was okay but way overpriced, we thought. We saw penguins, polar bears, sharks, stingrays, and dolphins. There was one dolphin in the nursery area who was playing with a volleyball. It would toss the ball over a dock and then swim under and toss it back over. Then it brought the ball over to the side where people were standing and it would toss the ball to people who would toss it back in the water. It was pretty cute. I have a few videos I'll try to post. Maybe via Facebook, so be sure to add me if we're not already friends.

This weekend we finally got around to putting up our art on the walls, and our place finally looks like a home. I'll take some photos this weekend after we have a chance to clean the place up a bit.