I’ve now lived in Australia for a year. On a day to day basis, things are mostly the same, we live close to a city, we don’t drive much, etc. One main thing that is annoying is that everyone always knows you aren’t from here immediately. So now, in addition to “how tall are you?” I also get “where are you from?”

I’m generally a sports watching bloke, and I’m trying to get into their sports and enjoy watching cricket and footy. But I miss watching baseball, football and hockey. We catch a few games here and there live, but with a 14-16 hour time difference, our best hope is for Friday or Saturday night games in the US, which air at 10am or so the following morning here. For example, the Super Bowl started at 10am on a Monday morning. Not really feasible for Super-bowl like activities. Though on my way to work I saw a group of people in Drew Brees jerseys exiting a limo and heading to a bar. That is a definite thing here, just wear *any* NFL jersey to go watch a game. We met one of our Australian friends due to him wearing a Ben Roethlisberger jersey at a 4th of July party. Sara had to mock his choice and we became friends!

As far as playing sports goes, I really miss softball.  Boy do I enjoying socking dingers.  On the plus side, I’ve played a lot of basketball. I am flabbergasted that they support leagues every weeknight on 10 courts, whereas in DC, it was a struggle to even find a league.  It may shock you to know that I’ve been doing hot yoga two times a week for the last year as well.  I think it is what enables me to play basketball two times a week!

We are way behind on our US TV shows, we don’t have cable or a DVR (called a PVR here) – though most shows are available over free-to-air.  But, episodes sometimes don’t get here for a while and they are on at really odd times.  We have been able to finally watch a few series we never watched using Netflix – Parks and Rec and 30 Rock.

I continue to *love* that prices include tax and that there is (usually) no expectation of tips. It really simplifies life in so many ways. Though it does seem to lead to people (like bartenders) not really trying as hard. Also, we enjoy the Aussie way of ordering at a counter and then sitting down and having the food delivered. With prepaying like that (and no tipping) – once you are done, you just leave – no waiting around for a the check.

The “cafe culture” here continues to grow on me – there is a lot of variety in the all of the independent restaurants and many fewer chains. Makes for very interesting meals and leads to trying some new things.

I still haven’t gotten over beer pricing.

Since our holiday in Tassie, it has been mostly work and some play while we hoard annual leave for our next trip!  Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Cricket: After watching so much T20 cricket on our holiday, we decided we should go watch a game live.  We went down to Etihad Stadium to watch the Melbourne Renegades battle the Perth Scorchers.  Continuing our streak of picking excellent teams, we witnessed “history” as the Scorchers managed to chase down the Renegades run total of 170 in 18.4 overs without losing a wicket. Strangely enough, that last sentence now makes sense to me.  They even had x-games style entertainment during “half-time” – motorcycles doing jumps.  Not bad for the $20 price of admission.

New Years Eve: Friends of ours recently bought a house, so they decided to host a New Years Eve celebration and luckily invited us.  It was a great experience to have a BBQ and sit outside on the deck while it was light until 9pm on NYE.  Unfortunately, I was roped into the Australian version of the drinking game “Kings” – what strange rules they have here.  I ended up having to drink 3 warm glasses of champagne.  That hurt in 2016.

Tennis: We are both fans of sport, so we figured it’d be good to check out the Aussie Open.  We got a “grounds pass” for the first Saturday of the tourney.  The pass allows you to see any of the outdoor courts and one of the indoor courts.   Much like going to a horse race, this seemed to be more of an excuse to drink outdoors than see actual tennis.  Sara and I managed to stop by a few courts and watch some juniors play.  They were quite good.  But mostly the people watching was fantastic.

Moving House: For some reason “moving” here is called “moving house”.  Anyhoo, our lease is up in mid-March and we were looking to move.  Renting here is quite strange – things are priced weekly, but paid monthly – I still haven’t figured out what the point is, other than make people multiply by 4 and still not have the rent right (people: multiply by 52 and divide by 12).  Also, when a place is for rent, they have “inspections” scheduled – basically an inconvenient 15 minute window where you can go look at the property and decide if you want to rent it.   Most rental agents won’t rent to you if you haven’t inspected the property.  The first place we went to look at had been rented already, but they failed to notify us – so we showed up and couldn’t even look.  The second place we looked at had about 40 people looking at it and it was terrible.  This had us worried about the market here.  We kind of liked the 3rd place we looked at – enough to put in an application at less than they were asking for and a date a few weeks after it was available.  They tried to negotiate and we didn’t budge so they didn’t accept.  This made us a bit more worried, but the next weekend we looked at another place and loved it.  We put in an application for list price starting on the day it was available and we were accepted. Woo!  Now we have to deal with furniture.  But we are excited to have much more space – making having visitors (MASSIVE HINT) much easier and more comfortable.

Mardi Gras:  We went to a Mardi Gras party – though half the people there called it a “New Orleans” party.  It was fun and it made Sara mad that she didn’t throw her sweet bead collection in her suitcase when we moved.  We got dressed up.

Soccer: Some of Sara’s co-workers wanted to see the Melbourne Victory play Melbourne City.  For some reason they call it a derby (pronounced: darby) here when two teams from the same city play each other.  For $48 we got some 3rd row seats.  Not too shabby.  Also, 4 goals were scored, but only 1 at our end.

ROC Race: I’ve always loved watching “Wipeout” and wondered how I’d do.  We saw that the “Ridiculous Obstacle Challenge” was coming to Melbourne, so we decided we’d partake.  I think I determined I’d make an ass of myself on wipeout.  It was a 5K run with 9 various inflatable obstacles set up.

It was a lot of fun, and fortunately, it allowed me to wear a ridiculous outfit.