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

Monday, October 10, 2005

Slaying the Dragon

A wild weekend in Aussie sports activity, as Peggy and I were both in action with our respected competitions. Peggy made her international cricketing debut on Saturday, playing for the University Womens Cricket Club’s opening round and scoring two, count ‘em two runs and being what they call, ‘not out’. As in, the game ended while she was still at-bat. She reports that she was given a standing ovation (everyone was standing up already, but the thought was there) for scoring her first run. Unfortunately, her side lost 229-74, but hooray for Peggy! We’re going to try to go and watch the ‘Super Series’ here in Sydney, which pits the 11 best players in the world against Australia’s national team in a one-day match.

Meanwhile Australia’s oldest baseball team, the Waverly Waves notched their first win with an 18-13 shootout against the dreaded St. George. This was the first time that I’ve ever seen someone warming up for a baseball game both shirtless and with a cigarette in their mouth. He just exhumed ‘athlete’ with every puff. I didn’t do to poorly, knocking a double and scoring a run. Still no pitching, but I feel as if I’m getting close to being thrust upon the mound. Given the high score of our game, it only lasted three innings, so there were not many opportunities to get some work in.

We both find that it is as much of an amusement to travel to these nameless suburbs (usually down south) and see what different slices of Sydneysiders are out there. Each weekend presents a different myriad of directions, highways leading to streets leading to suburbs, all which we have never heard of but would otherwise never know existed.

posted by ncawthon at 9:19 AM