Update!

Whew, now that I have some time to think I can give you some updates on what is happening here.
Penny has accepted a 4 month job teaching in Macau. She'll be leaving in February sometime. She has a friend who is living here who will be taking over her house. Fortunately I'll still be able to live here.

I'm planning on leaving on my tour in February, and then a liveaboard dive boat for a couple days in the great barrier reef. After that, I'm not sure. I'm planning to travel until my money runs out and then come home, so it may be March or April when I return.

New Years Eve is a big party in Sydney and my mate has a flat in Kirribilli that I'm going to party at. Kirribilli is on the North side of the harbour just east of the birdge, so it will be a great place to watch the 12 minutes of fireworks.

I'm working on uploading a bunch of pictures so keep an eye out in the next week or two.

Thats all for now!

More Oz Facts

• On an Australian shopping cart, all wheels swivel 360 degrees, unlike only the front two in Canada. This makes it incredibly easy to maneuver in the store, but ridiculously difficult to unload if you've parked your car on even the gentlest of slopes. Also, not one of them has a broken wheel - unlike Canada where at least one broken wheel is mandatory.
  
• Aussies drive on the left, not the right. The gearshift however, has the same shift pattern as a Canadian car. This explains why I stalled the work van 13 times in a row without realizing I was in fifth gear and not first.
• Public transit sucks. If you think transit sucks in your city, live in Sydney for a week and you will realize just how lucky you really are. The last trains are at 11:30pm, and after that there is 1 bus per hour, which is so crowded a sardine has more space to move than you do.
• It's not Sprite, it's Lemonade
• According to Australia law, if the bartender gets someone drunk and he gets into a car accident it is partly the barman's fault. If something major happens (ie. Manslaughter etc.) the barman can actually go to jail for a percentage that the drunk is sentenced to, because it is partially his fault.
  
• Aussies are addicted to news. Between 5 and 8 you can watch nothing but news on 5 different channels. If three hours of news wasn't enough for you, every other commercial break has a news update. While writing this I've heard 2 updates and it's only been about 15 minutes.
• Tape is always, always called sticky tape. I haven't figured out what I would get if I just asked for tape because nobody seems to know what it is.
• If you ask for cream in your coffee you will get some of the weirdest looks from cafe workers. Nobody knows what it is or why it goes into coffee. There are, however, 9 different kinds of milk to choose from.

That's all for now, I'll try to keep thinking up some more.

The Ozzie-Canuck dictionary

Culture shock aside, you'd expect things to be different when you're on the other side of the planet. Here is a list of words that are used here, and their translations to Canadian. Took me a while to figure them out, and here's all I've learned so far.

Slab - Two-Four (beer)

Pram - Stroller

Grog - Alcohol

Goon Bag - Wine in a Box

Arvo - Afternoon

Cracker - Usually in sports, a good hit or a good goal

Pelican - Idiot

That's all I can think up at the moment. I'll try and figure out more and edit the post later.