Saturday, October 15, 2005

Back from the Dead

Hello faithful oz-blog readers. Nearly a week has passed since our last post, so thanks for your patience and understanding. I've got to blame it on the introduction of a corporate environment into our collective karma; it will just suck the will to live right out of you. Then again, maybe I'm just lazy. Must.... fight... monotony...

So, what's happened you ask? Truthfully, not much. There's been a big hub-bub about the newly opened cross-city tunnel, which allows us to drive into the CBD (central business district) pretty conveniently, bypassing all the surrounding district traffic. A huge development project: months of delay, millions in overruns and nobody is using it. It serves them right, to some extent. With speed cameras placed all throughout these tunnels, if you go even 5/kmh over the limit... BAM! Ticket in the mail for you. Probably how they were planning to pay for it all. Not bitter about our speeding ticket. Not at all.

Another interesting caveat of Aussie society is that employee over-time has been done away with through a recent industrial relations reform. Seems a pretty vital aspect of work life to many in the retail and service industry, but it is now history. They've made it a non-mandatory term of hire, so that an employer can now choose whether or not to offer OT to their employees. It is hard to imagine many corporations wanting to opt-in to that scheme. Additionally, an employee can now waive their rights to receive benefits in exchange for slightly higher wages. Shades of the proposed American Social Security reform just pre-empted and enacted in Oz. What a wild, sweeping change done to a huge society with such haste.

Our relative tranquility of isolation has been broken, with Mungo being the first in the line of many house guests, spanning from now until May. My friend Thomas, whom many might remember from our wedding, is arriving from Germany tomorrow morning as well. He'll be here for two weeks, and we'll make some attempt to relive the times we spent together in Sydney about ten years ago. Then, Peggy's parents immediately after that... and on and on and on it goes. We'll have the hospitality routine down to a tee by the time we're done here. I've just got to remember to put the seat down.

posted by ncawthon at 11:08 AM