Apologies for the long delay between posts. Don’t worry though, we’ve got lots of exciting things coming up – a long weekend in Sydney, my Aussie version of Golf Trip, and a holiday to Tasmania. So, there should be lots of posts in the next month for our loyal readers. We plan on rubbing in the warm Southern Hemisphere summer to our Northern Hemisphere friends, enduring the chill of winter. After two winters in a row, we feel we’ve earned that right.
A while back I did a post on things Oz was doing well, so I think it is only fair to add our gripes . Here we go, an airing of grievances.
Buildings: You might expect some things by default in this modern age in a first world country. Australia will challenge that expectation from time to time. There is a single building code for a country spanning numerous climates all of which foster annoying flies. Our apartment has slat windows with no screens and minimal (if any?) insulation. Thus when it’s windy (90% of the time) we can feel a breeze in our apartment with no windows opened. If we do open the windows we welcome in new fly friends. Thankfully, we have heat and AC (shockingly, some places considered habitable have neither), but it isn’t central in a building built just a few years ago.
Shopping Carts: Well, first of all they call them trolleys here, which is problem #1. Should you forget to bring a $1 or $2 coin with you to the grocery store, you most likely can’t get one as they use that as ransom to get you to put the trolley back when you are done. For some reason all four wheels are free to roam, making grocery shopping an unwelcome core workout.
Credit Cards: There is very little competition here in the banking sector which leads to credit cards with high annual fees if you want any sort of rewards. You are forced to do the math on whether you make more in rewards than the annual fee. The worst part is that many merchants add fees of 1% – 3% for the generous service of even accepting credit cards. This applies to things that not only does no one pay cash for, there is no real way to pay cash for them – Qantas charges you like $30 for booking *airfare* with a credit card.
TV: Many people rely on “over the air” TV here, as the one cable provider, Foxtel, is fairly expensive and the over the air TV is fairly robust. To keep you on your toes – they start shows at strange times like 8:37 – even though the guide says 8:30. It has something to do with keeping you from being able to PVR (that’s what it is called here) the shows and skip the ads.
Speed Limits / Cameras: Now that we have a car, we have to start paying attention to speed limits, as most of the enforcement is done here by camera. From what we’ve heard, it is quite strict – for instance in a 40KPH zone, you’ll get a ticket for going 43. That’s like getting a ticket for 27MPH in a 25 zone. It is shocking to us that the speed limit on a divided freeway is 80 (50 mph). It is hard to drive that slow on a freeway, though our Yaris helps.
Alcohol Prices: Beer is expensive.
Lack of Amazon / Walmart like service: There’s no real place that might have “everything” and because of this we’re not always sure if something isn’t sold in Australia or if we just aren’t looking in the right place.
Sports Jerseys w/ Ads: This isn’t limited to Australia, but as someone new that would like to support a team – I find it annoying that a lot of the North Melbourne Kangaroos gear is plastered with Mazda ads. Though the more I think about it, the more I am amazed that Dan Snyder hasn’t turned the NFL uniform NASCAR-like yet.
Gambling: I occasionally dabble in blackjack, craps or roulette, but I’ve never really gotten into sports betting. There are about 4 major sports betting companies here and they all advertise *during* the footy. During the morning news before the Melbourne Cup (horse race) – the anchors actually discuss who they are betting on. I guess this isn’t really something Oz is doing wrong, but it does seem weird. I should really open an account, because I can bet legally on all the US sports and should have some sort of advantage over the locals.
Trading Hours: I was trying to buy a fan for our apartment and figured I’d visit the Good Guys (basically a smaller electronics-lite version of Best Buy) after work. Unfortunately, they were only open 9am – 5:30pm on weekdays. I find myself having to look up hours of places I’d just assumed would be open.
These are all only mildly annoying and are being noted so that when we create Handeltopia, we can be sure to do everything right as a country. Sara will be a benevolent dictator.
