You may have noticed that it took us a bit of time to get our vacation blog posts completed. We’ve been settling into Melbourne much more and actually, gasp!, had plans that kept us busy. Or maybe it’s just that we’re kind of slow about writing sometimes – as IT nerds, neither Jon nor I are particularly natural writers! But we try and here is my attempt at capturing some highlights from recent weeks…

John Oliver at the Palais Theater 
Just getting to see this show at all was a relief because just after I found out John Oliver was coming to Melbourne, I found out that the two scheduled shows were sold out. Luckily, he added a third show and we snapped up tickets. It felt odd when he made a few jokes that assumed everyone in the audience was an Aussie, which makes sense, but just felt odd since I’m not.

#86tramcrawl
We met some super fun people at a 4th of July event and they invited us to tag along on a bar crawl. They’d planned this interesting route to a bunch of bars along the 86 tram with a schedule of when they’d be where and everything. It was so great to get to enjoy the hard work of a well planned afternoon without doing any of the hard work myself! Jon and I just rocked up to the first bar, the Racoon Club, and moseyed our way along the tram route with an increasingly festive group of people. In general, I am a terrible day drinker since I feel like napping after a beer or two in the afternoon, but I gave myself a pep talk and was able to stay out until after dark (aka all hours!).

Classic Cinemas
Both Jon and I really enjoyed Aussie film classic The Castle and thought that the lead actor Michael Caton was great. When we saw he was starring in a new movie, “Last Cab to Darwin”, we knew we had to see it. I found out it was playing at a theater nearby and the theater ended up being fantastic. I am not generally a huge fan of seeing movies in the theater, especially if they are more than 2 hours long, but then I don’t think any movies need to be longer than 2 hours, but that’s a whole other rant. Anyway, Classic Cinemas is an older theater that has been refurbished (somewhat) and has numerous screens with small theaters that feel like you stepped into the theater room in a house on Cribs. It didn’t hurt that they have a decent beer selection.

St Kilda Bowls
We continue to consider joining the St Kilda Bowls club where some friends are members. For a festive Friday evening, we met up with our pals for dinner at shockingly good Mexican place, shocking because not only are we super far from Mexico, but most Mexican food here is not good. Then we all headed to the Bowls club afterward for drinks and footy watching.

Speaking of footy, in Melbourne, footy fever is in full swing. It’s the second to last week of the AFL playoffs or finals as they are actually called here. Jon’s team, North, is still in the mix after an underdog win over the Sydney Swans. Lucky for us, Victoria decided to make the day before the grand final a public holiday just this year so we get an unexpected day off next Friday. Woohoo.

I’m now approaching 5 months here down under, so I’ve started to notice some things where I prefer the Aussie implementation. Here they are!

Credit Cards: No signatures needed here.  It is all chip and pin. Additionally, they have paywave – which means for transactions under $100, you just have to tap your card on the reader.  I much prefer this to signing, though for some reason my 3 cards have different PINs and that can prove challenging at times.

Money: There are no pennies here.  That is wonderful.  Each bill is a different size and color, making it very easy to determine which bill is which.   The lowest bill is a $5, and there are coins for $1 and $2.

Public Transit: This may be more “Melbourne” specific than Australia specific, but the public transit here is quite robust. Even on nights and weekends, the train/tram/bus frequency is still good enough that I haven’t used a cab or Uber since I’ve been here.  Another *huge* bonus is there is a price cap (basically two rides) for the day.  So, the most I can spend for the day is $7.52 ($6 on weekends and holidays).

Bars / Pubs: There is a much larger prevalence of small local bars / pubs here than in DC.  Sara and I keep discovering little bars here and there, and they are never too crowded. We have no idea how they stay in business, but we are so happy they are plentiful and uncrowded.

New slang: I’m loving learning new slang that is different from what I know.  A basketball teammate told me someone else had “cracked the shits” and I had no idea what that meant.  The news tells us to “rug up” when it is cold.  Each week I tend to learn some new phrase to chuckle at.

Customer Service: Most of the customer service interactions I’ve had here have been quick and positive.  Short hold times and friendly folks have greeted me across many different industries when I’ve had to call about something.

MSAC: The Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Center is where I play basketball twice a week.  I am just quite happy this place exists and has 10 full size basketball courts that are easy on my old man legs.

Car rentals: We’ve rented cars here for a few weekend trips / errands, and I’m enjoying certain aspects of the process.  All rentals include some insurance – a loss damage waiver – that limits your liability to about $3000.  Also, they have a detailed description of what constitutes “damage” – so there is no question of what you need to report beforehand.

Parcel Lockers: Now, this is something that Amazon has partially implemented, but here the Australian Post Office is doing it.  You can sign up for a free locker in as many locations as you want, and you are provided a shipping address for that locker.  If you have something shipped to it – they’ll deliver it to the locker and send you a text message that it is there.  It works quite well for things you need to sign for.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot they are doing wrong here, but that’s for another post!