More Settling In

It’s confirmed – I’m moving to Sydney!

Today it’s raining, and I’m still having a good hair day!  I ♥ Sydney!

Technical difficulties

It’s a bit tricky to communicate between Sydney and the states without quickly incurring overseas rates equal to the GDP of some developing countries.  Besides the ever-cheap&easy email, it was surprising to me that in this day and age, worldwide calling wasn’t cheap on landlines, internet, and cell phones alike.  But nope.  It was a mind-numbing process trying to figure out what system would work best for each medium.

Internet/video calling was a no-brainer:  the Skype program is super easy to use and free.  Well, super easy if you’re at least a little bit facile on the computer.  After a few days my mother wrote me and said she was going to have my nephew install her program, but could she see my Skype photos in the meantime, did I do it via email, or what was the system?  We’d gone over it before, but I had to explain again that Skype involved actual moving pictures, something we referred to as “video.”  Hopefully resident tech services, 16 year old Alex, will get her up and running soon.  Maybe he’ll even teach her how to use her cell phone while he’s over there.

And speaking of cell phones, there were many options to choose from, which included suspending my service and buying a phone in the U.S. or over here and getting a new local plan, with a local SIM card.  But that seemed like a pain and that there was too much of a chance for hidden surprises in the bill (oh it’s cheap to make calls, but it you turn the phone ON it octuples the rates we quoted you in the store, etc etc.).  In the end I decided to keep my iPhone plan and add international service for an extra $6/month (and wouldn’t have to bother notifying people of a new phone number etc).  Not bad, except that the phone calls would then be $1.30/minute, which adds up quickly if you have sisters!  So after some research, I ended up also downloading Skype onto my iPhone, which allows you to call internationally for a few cents/minute, and you can join an American plan for about $7/month for unlimited.  But if friends and family don’t have this themselves, they will accrue international charges when they call me, so I either arrange to call them or they get on the Skype cell-phone program themselves.

The one big adjustment has been kicking my internet habit while out and about.  Getting emails and searching the internet internationally is very expensive – e.g., my husband had a $300 phone bill the first month he was here, and that was only for a couple of weeks.  I paid $25/month to have some minimal usage, but otherwise I shut off the data on my phone and only get on the internet on my computer in our apartment where we have Wi-Fi.  It’s funny how this mobile ability has only been around for such a short time, and yet it feels like such a painful necessity to let go.  I’m sure they’ve been having conversations like this for millennia after any new technological advancement…

-        Can you believe there was ever a time when we ate bread a different way?

-        Oh yes, hard to imagine just a couple of years ago we were just ripping it apart with our bare hands!

-        I know!!  And now we wouldn’t think of not slicing it with a knife!  Crazy.

And so I’m back to the bread-ripping stage, wandering around Sydney unconnected from my people and the World Wide Web.  Something tells me I’m going to be okay without it.

Swim time

One of the nicest things about our accommodations is that it comes with a pool.  It’s a sleek eternity pool with a wrap-around panoramic view of Sydney, with an adjacent hot tub and sauna; and the best part is, no one else seems to care about it.  We’ve never seen anyone else in it so far.  We tried it out today for the first time and sure enough had it all to ourselves.  I’d had to pick up a couple of cheap swimsuits for the kids at Target because I stupidly packed their suits in the shipped things.  Unfortunately it not being swim season it was clearance-rack pickings, and we had to get my son a trailer-trashy suit with legs so long they could qualify as capris, and it had “TRUCK SERVICE” and a picture of a wrench stamped on one leg.  But as the Australians say, “No worries,” it was just something to get wet in.

 

My daughter was deliriously happy splashing around.  She’d learned to swim last summer, but we were easing back into that memory with floaties to start.  My son is more like me, he’s not into coldish swimming pool water and hung out in the hot tub.  Luckily it wasn’t one of those boiling soup hot tubs where you’re hyperventilating and fainting after five minutes; it was just warm enough to be soothing and comfortable but cool enough for kids.  After we’d swam and paddled for a chunk of time, I left my husband to mind the kids in the hot tub while I stole off to the sauna by myself.  I stretched out on a hot high bench, closed my eyes, and pretended it was summer for a good long peaceful ten minutes, minus the UV rays.  Perfection.