Happy Easter

Hey guys, it is time for another update of our ongoing Australian Adventure which closely resembles a normal life. The longer we stay here the less it feels like we are visiting. The weather is still fantastic as are the new people we have met. We have still been able to get out somewhere new each weekend which is great. So why don't I give you a rundown of what we have been up to...

A couple of weeks ago one of our friends competed in a mini-triathlon and we used our refined encouragement skills (not participation skills). It was a lot of fun and didn't take nearly as long as it does to cheer Scott on for one of his races. We got a photo of everyone at the end of the race.



We made the shirts the day before. We were the only ones dressed up so we stuck out a little bit but it was a lot of fun. I am hoping to corral that emotional high of watching lots of people cross the finish line to motivate me into running a 10km next month. I have said this before though so we will see.

This weekend we went to check out Mount Coot-tha lookout point (http://www.ourbrisbane.com/living/suburbs/mt_coot-tha/history/). The views were awesome and it made me realize that Brisbane is actually flat. I don't know why I thought otherwise but I just assumed that there were some hills. Even Mt. Coot-tha wasn't really a mountain. It was more like Hill Coot-tha. Lisa mentioned that it was a lot like Mount Royal in Montreal. I had to take her word for it. As usual, a couple of photos....





After the lookout we went over to the "Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary" (http://www.koala.net/index.htm) which ranks right up there with a trip to the aquarium. Those little fur balls are pretty cute. This place will definitely be added to the "Rick and Lisa - Tour of Brisbane" for all visitors. We will be purchasing a season pass to that place.





As proof that Koalas are irresistible to say no to, here is a picture of Marylin Manson (aka Brian Warner) holding a Koala....



They also had kangaroos and a few other animals there.





Overall....great trip, won't be the last.

Saturday included a massive dinner at a German restaurant that tested each of ours digestive capacity. I don't think I have ever seen a serving that big, it was huge and delicious.





Anyways, I am running out of things to write. Time to jet I guess. Write us with an update when you get a chance.

PS: Did you notice the joey in the kangaroo pouch (2nd kangaroo photo)?

I am a terrible blogger...sorry

Hey all,

First I am sorry that I have been a lame blogger. I realize I owe you all some info and some pictures, so here we go :)

OK, so here is a pic of the fake beach behind my house, it stretches further down and goes just beyond the corner. Its a bit of a cloudy day when I took the pic and no, I am not in the picture. I took it as I was walking home with my camera phone. Eventually when we go down to the beach, and when one of us does not go into the water, I will get a picture of one of us in the water.



Moving on, like Rick said before, we have finally got all of our furniture and have some art on the wall. A couple of things went wrong, of course, and so we are going to have our entertainment table replaced in a bit (they installed a shelf wrong and all the hardware is showing) and they didnt follow the specific specs of the couch so instead of getting a new couch, we are getting a second side table...which by the way, they were supposed to call me to organize delivery, and they have not....crap! I need to make a call.......

Ok, I am back, called the place and they thought I already had it! This sort of thing, by the way, has been the story of our lives! Arg! Anywho....I was promised a call back today with the delivery date and time, we will see if more heads have to roll, hehehehe.

We had a great time at surfers paradise! We ended up making our day trip into a overnighter and got to go to SeaWorld, the surfers paradise beach (where we got yelled at by lifeguards for swimming in the wrong place :) ), eat some good food, and look at the ridiculously expensive art (we thought we would get something for our place but when a place wants $250,000 for a sculpture, its time to leave). We got some sun (in a good way, while wearing 30plus sunscreen, Brisbane has scary skin cancer commercials). Here are some pics we took at Surfers and then some pics at SeaWorld.


This is me, right past the Surfers Paradise sign, standing in the essence of Surfers Paradise. It was a Monday, so it was quiet and really beautiful.









The famous Surfers sign, and if you look close that is me on the left, we had to take this picture from across the street. It would have been difficult to find someone that would not have taken off with our camera to take a picture of us both :)











At SeaWorld they have all these huge pools in the middle of the park were they have trainers working with Dolphins at different stages and randomly, they decided to put a giant boat in this one that does not really do anything :) And yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am wearing a sack dress and flip flops! HOWEVER, I believe in having a waist hence, the belt.







SHARK! hehehehe. They have a HUGE shark exhibit and this giant one decided to come after me (through the glass) so I took a picture :)




Ricks homage to Pete...
Pete, just for you! (and maybe a little for Mitz, Ron and Jennifer :))














This is Ricks first time driving on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the street, he did a great job! Everyone was safe and sound. By the way, everyone should get a GPS when renting a car in a city you dont know, no maps...just follow the arrow...lovely!

We have been invited to go to Fraser Island on Mar 29&30 but we are still deciding if we are going to go. Fraser Island is just off the eastern coast, about 3 hours north of Brisbane. It is known for this amazing lake called Lake Mckenzie. It has super fine white sand and clear blue water without all the downfalls of the ocean, for example, no deadly jelly fish, rips, sand EVERYWHERE b/c of the waves, and of course no sharks. We of course will keep you in the loop and let you know.

Oh, a random story for you all. So a week or so ago I am down in the parking garage taking out the trash and I see, leaning against a pillar, a laptop bag and a tote bag. There is no one around and it is just leaning there like someone put it down and then forgot to take it with them. I assumed it belonged to someone in the building as it was right by a parking spot. I went up and told Rick and got my cell phone so when I went back down I could open the bag and see if there was any contact info so I could return it or at least call the person it belongs to. So I opened the laptop bag and all that was in there was one business card for a real estate agent and...porn. Yup one business card and porn DVD's. So as fast as humanly possible I dropped the bag, got upstairs and washed my hands for like 5 minutes. I am guessing that the business card was not the owners as if he was the owner I would assume as a real estate agent he would carry more than one business card, so I am happy in the knowledge that I will never know which one of my neighbors it belongs to. :)

Anywho, more job hunting for me. I am hoping that I should be hearing something this week as most the jobs I have been applying for have closed yesterday. Wish me luck.

AND by the way... if you want regular blogs and interesting pictures I expect the same from you! :)...2 way street people! :)

Later!

Lisa

I am back to Auz and Malaria Free Hopefully......

Wow, typing that title just reminded me that I haven't taken my malaria pill today......whoops. I have to take them for seven days after I leave PNG so I will have to remember that.

I see that my lovely wife has been so busy that she hasn't had any time to blog.....bad wife. Which by the way the Canadian government finally recognizes us as married. Turns out our marriage license that Ian sent to the government got lost in the mail. Yes, apparently that actually can happen. Just before I left we finally got the rest of our furniture. There were a few small problems, nothing major but we did end up getting an extra side table out of the deal (thank you Lisa!). So here are some photos of the place.









Now we have gotten a few comments/complaints that although we are posting photos Lisa and I aren't in any of them. Well your point has been taken so here is a picture of Lisa.



The mask is a Papua New Guinea head mask from the Fly River region which is where the mine is located. I actually bought it in Cairns but I didn't really have a chance to do much shopping during my trip.

More photos of us are on the way. We are taking a little spontaneous vacation to the Gold Coast. We are renting a car in the city (gotta start driving some time) and heading out to Sea World (yes, my idea) and then spending the night at a hotel with an "ocean view" room and then heading to the beach on Monday. We are pretty excited about the trip and we will make sure to take some photos of us.

Well gotta a big day tomorrow. Cheers!

Rick

LP:We are not going to Sea world, we are going to Surfers Paradise, while yes, we will visit sea world (was there any doubt) we are going to be staying and visiting surfers paradise....just wanted to clear that up :)

Off to the Jungle!

Hello everyone....

Just thought I would let you all know that I am heading into the jungle of Papua New Guinea for week. I am going to the same site that I visited last year.

Everything is still going great down here and we finally got all of our furniture (yah!) although that didn't come without problems. I am sure Lisa will tell you all about it when she posts some photos.

Hope everyone is doing well and will talk to you soon.

Cheers,

Rick

P.S. Always go prepared to the jungle where you really don't want to get bit by mosquitoes.....

We Have Chairs and Much More

Hello, again to all of our faithful readers (otherwise known as family and close friends).

It has been another big week for us and things are really starting to come together. As you can tell by the title our kitchen chairs finally arrived and it turns out they were sitting in the store the whole time with our name on them but somehow managed to ellude the highly trained staff of Super AMart (sarcasm intended). Once the chairs arrived that wasn't the end of it, turns out chairs are actually more of a pain in the butt to put together then one would imagine. Lets just say that over all I am elated to have that process over with. Here is a photo of the dining and computer area now fully put together (minus any wall art).


(LISA: Jenny, Ash, Sarah do these chairs look familiar?)

It is nice to have another area of the unit furnished however the is still the issue of the slightly under furnished living room........



This will hopefully be remedied later this week when the couch and other items are scheduled to arrive (fingers crossed).

As I have made abundantly clear in my emails and blog posts, I am sick of shopping. I am so tired of picking out towels, kitchen utensils, bedroom furniture, placemats, garbage cans, and on and on and on. However, this weekend we got to go shopping for two things that any man could get excited about: a T.V. and a BBQ! I had been looking forward to this since we got here and boy did it deliver. We got everything we needed, we got it for a really good price, everything is getting delivered in the next couple days and most importantly we got it all done in a couple of hours. I don't see how it could have gone any better. We decided on a 42-inch Samsung Plasma T.V. with a DVD Player that upgrades regular DVDs to near HD quality. Here is the best part and the most important role that Lisa played in the process, prices are negotiable! Lisa yet again proved her unmatched bartering skills by getting the T.V. (sticker price $1799), DVD Player (sticker price $159), HDMI cable (sticker price $80) with a Total Retail Value of.....$2,038....all for the low low price of $1630, ($170 less than the cost of the T.V.)! I don't know how she does it, she wasn't even wearing a low cut top. She beat the salesman down until he was a wimpering shell of himself, I was amazed and yet in a sad way I could relate to the poor guy a little (just kidding!!).

The BBQ shopping was a little less interesting. We walked into a Bunnings (the Aussie Home Depot equivalent) and said "I would like your third cheapest barbeque, please" which ended up being a nice 3-burner unit that will be delivered today (Sunday). I didn't want the cheapest one they had and I thought asking for the Second cheapest was too obvious so I settled on the Third cheapest which I think worked out well. Unfortunately electronics and home furnishings seems to be the only items with negotiable price tags.

To far less entertaining aspects of life, I am settling in nice at work. The people are easy going and it is a much more laid back atmosphere which will do me good I think. The work is interesting but I am struggling a bit in adjusting to how slow things happen in Papua New Guinea and this is only after a couple of weeks. It looks like I will be making my first trip to site next week, tentatively set for Feb.18. I am heading back to the same mine in Papua New Guinea I visited last year and should be there for about a week, give our take. Although I never believe anything until I am on the plane so we will see.

Lisa is heading out to go have brunch with some friends and will post a blog later.

Cheers,

Rick

We have a house, but no chairs

Hey everyone,

Well we are all moved in but of course there have been some issues :) Our kitchen table was delivered however, they had no chairs for us. When we bought it they told us everything was in stock, but then on the day we get a phone call and... no chairs. So right now, picture this if you will (i dont have a picture right now, you will have to use your imagination.) We have a single white recliner sitting in the middle of the living room and a kitchen table with no chairs......thats it. We sit on the floor when we eat. It looks like we are squatters :)

I was on the phone with the insurance company, to get contents insurance (funny, I know, we clearly have no contents, but anyway)...and I was telling her our living situation and she said even if we were robbed the robbers would think that we had already been robbed and try next door anyway! HEHEHE I thought that was a funny point especially coming from the insurance lady.

So anyway, our next job is to get a TV, BBQ and a DVD player. Ya cant be in Oz (that is what everyone calls it) without putting some SHRIMP ON THE BARBIE! (I am so happy I got to type that line).

I have also learned that the summer time here is also the rainy season. And it aint any kind of rain like we have in Van. Well first of all it is still freaking hot and second it pours like a monsoon for 15 min to 2hrs then stops and there is the sun....then it does it again like 2 hours later. Rick has been caught in a couple of these rain storms. I wish I had a picture to show you all but no, imaginations will have to be used again. Rick leaves the house in shorts and a T shirt and a couple hours later comes home looking like a drowned rat....soaked to the bone even his shoes are slopping, at first I had no idea what happened to him (my first thought was man!, you are sweaty!!) then I got the picture because of course by the time he got home it was bright sun shiny outside again. hehehehe I thought it was pretty funny. Here are some pictures of the rain....





So without the internet at home, no job hunting for me yet. If we get the internet like we are supposed to on Tues, then I should be able to start then. I will keep you all posted on how it goes on the job front.

Now, over to Rick.....

Some of the good points about the move is that the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen (cooking area anyway) is totally setup. Lisa and I were able to finally unpack our suitcases. We had been living out of them since Dec. 23. One of the biggest perks for me is that I actually now have space to put my clothes because the bedroom has two closets. Of course, Lisa got the bigger one but between the closet and the new dresser I have enough places to organize my clothes a bit as opposed to our previous arrangement where I got two drawers (socks, underwear, undershirts in one; pants shorts, shirts in the other) and a quarter of the closet(everything else).

Last night we cooked our first dinner in the place, actually I should correctly say Lisa cooked our first dinner in the new place. It was a wonderful pasta bake and salad (I was going to make the salad but clumsily sliced my finger while cutting a tomato thus leaving the duty for Lisa to complete) that I enjoyed so much so that Lisa has set a pretty high bar for all dinners that follow. Here is a picture of our magnificent feast....



Once the internet is setup (hopefully Tues. as Lisa mentioned) we will try to start reaching people on MSN Messenger or Skype so if you are setup with either of those send us your contact details so that we can add to our contacts. Later in the evening (Vancouver time) is the best time to reach us with the time difference.

Here are a couple more photos from around our place.

Walking path that runs from behind our building along river.


Street walk outside our door.


Hope everyone is doing well and we are always interested in hearing what you are up to.

Rick and Lisa

...and we are up and running

Hello all

Well we are here and we like it. We found a place, got ourselves some mobile phones (not cell phones, mobiles....I feel like that friends episode were that blond woman who is an ex friend of Monica and Phoebe comes back from the UK) "ring me on my mobile" :) hehehe.

Our place is super nice and it is in a really great area. If you were to make a comparison, it is the Yaletown of Vancouver. About 10 seconds away is the fake beach with the awesome river/pool swimming. I guess an hour was too far for the beach so Brisbane brought the beach to them :) Below are some pics of the place :).

I very much like the bathroom, 2 sinks people!

This is a view from our balcony. In the complex all one bedrooms face the street (we are not worthy of a view) and the 2 and 3 Bedrooms face the park. I will send a pic of the beach/park soon.

Our Kitchen, it leads into the living room so it is an open floor plan.

Now while I dont have a picture of this, the bedroom has......2 closets......wooohoo.

Now, as you may be surprised to learn, Starbucks does not rule the coffee world in Australia. That honour belongs to the below:

Gloria Jean's....not as fancy pants a Starbucks but still the leader :) I just put this fact because i had a picture. Just a FYI.

So, now on to the details. We are moving on Jan 30 (Wed) into our new place. Only 2 more days in the hotel! (remember Jenny, I am speaking to you from the future). Outside our hotel there is this giant tree with giant bats! Like batman bats. They are huge fruit bats and me and Rick just stand there, like mesmerized immigrants, staring at these bats and I swear the whole time I am looking at them, the batman theme song plays in my head! On the subject of creatures, I am learning more and more of the horrors of Australia animals. For example the deadly box jellyfish that even if you are rescued, and get put on Morphine for the pain AND are unconscious you will still scream! WTH!!! And along with that the giant spiders!!! That here, will kill you, or at least leave you lying unconscious on your kitchen floor for three days (as I am told). So I have learned that y0u do not leave big spiders alone, you kill them before they kill you, literally. AND you don't got after them with a kleenex, you get a brick!....anyway, moving on.

Rick starts work on Tuesday and then I will be a lean mean job finding machine (to answer you question, no job yet, haven't even had time to look). We wont have Internet connected right away in our new place but it should be soon and then I will stay in contact better.

If you want to call me and Rick the best (and cheapest) idea is to get a calling card and call our cell phones from your home lines. In Australia you do not pay for incoming calls on your mobile.

It is stinking hot here and Rick has already had one awesome sunburn (RF: it wasn't that bad) :) But is has gone now. And we are lean mean sunscreen machines. So no real tan for me, but I am sure over time I won't look like the great white hope :)

We have done a little sightseeing, not much. It has mostly included trips to Ikea and couch stores...fun times! But we did go to Byron Bay (google it) super great beach, surfing and some awesome waves! and the sight of Ricks burn (RF: That wasn't that bad). Went with some people from here. I have put their pics below and a little run down.

This is Ryan and Emma. (not together). Ryan is a self proclaimed 'Bogan' now, as I have learned a bogan is what we would call trailer trash (his words not mine). And here he models the traditional bogan clothing....notice the bare feet and very short shorts.

Emma works with Rick and she is coming to Vancouver for 2 months, so if you see her on the street, be nice !


This is Toni, super fun, outgoing and Irish but now has to spend a month on her couch because she had to have knee surgery (ACL) so we went over and cooked her dinner and did her bidding. :) She was super good to us when we had to do all of our running around. (RF: She is captain of what has been coined as "Team Immigrant" in the Klohn office.)

I think Rick wants to put in his two cents at least :) This will be the end, for now...I am out....Email lots and call if you can!

RF: Not much to add other that "Thank God the Shopping Is OVER!" It is a good thing I love Lisa because otherwise we wouldn't have made it.

Cheers,