Big City....Bright Lights

Haven't had much of an opportunity to add to the blog these last few days. It has been all work followed by utter exhaustion at night after work. I have completely conformed to the new time zone now as yesterday was the first time I stayed up past 8PM and thought nothing of it. Working with the people at the office has taught me more about the cuture of the people who live here. For some odd reason, most men here are extremely skinny. I don't mean some, I mean almost every one of them. I am convicned that if I see someone who looks a little heavy, he's not even from here. I don't know why this is but I can tell you there are odd things on the breakfast buffet here every morning at the hotel. How about a big bowl full of 10" long carrots that are 1" in diameter? Yeah, nothing like a big ole carrot with your Starbucks......wait a minute, there is no Starbucks. I am told the closest thing I can find to American coffe is a "long black". Even the coffee machines have "long black" buttons on them. So what the hell is a "long black?". Near as I can tell, this black gook comes out of the machine when making coffee and the black stuff keeps coming out for longer peiods compared to other coffees.

They have salads on the breakfast buffet too....I mean like dinner salads with onions.....not to mention smoked salmon. Salmon comes with everything....breakfast , noon, and night. I have been eating so much salmon, my skin is staring to feel a little scaley (not really)! The food is weird though, right next to every salmon plate at every meal is lean HAM. These people eat more HAM than anything else. Like in London....HAM is like their steak. Anyway, I have never seen so many skinny males in my life.....you must see it to believe it.

The language continues to catch my attention. The people here use very common English words but in combinations that are odd. I over heard a fellow worker today on the phone saying these exact words....."Fair enough, I will ring up my mate so we can have a bit of a chat...and I am sure he'll take care of it....straight away". The people don't call people on the phone....they "ring them up".

We had a video conference today which was interesting in that the people we were meeting with were from New Zeeland, Auckland, and Wellington. Last week, I couldn't tell you.... where these places are on a map, but now I know people who actually live there. On the Victoria license plates, it says "The Place to Be". Queensland (another state way up north) is considered "the sunshine state". Yesterday we met with IT support .... on the phone in Bangladore. I still am not sure where the hell that place is! What seems weird is that the people all around here are very engaged with other surrounding countries.

Anyway, life here is just like any big city. You have to get out in the bush I guess to see something that is unique to the region. It's weird for me that people here go UP NORTH for warm weather vacations in the winter time.....yes, UP NORTH is closer to the equator. I used the term "dear in the headlights" today and people sort of laughed..... because they don't have deer here....they have kangaroos..... and those things are hit by cars much like deer are back home.

Anyway, found a free moment this evening to jot down a few things as I took the photo attached outside my window. It looks like any other city but spend a day listening to all the people having conversations.... and you'll soon find that "Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore", we are in the land of "Ozzies".