Pardon...

Happy Memorial Day everyone.  Not much of a celebration here, but the Queen's Birthday in a few weeks should be a blast (or at least a chance to finally get away and start to explore outside of Sydney).

After being here for two months, I've started to understand (not necessarily pick up) some of the local slang.  Here's a handful of that slang:

flick - send an email
ta - thank you
How are you going? - How are you doing?
arvo - afternoon
tingle - to call, as in I'll tingle you this arvo.  Yep, people actually say that.
I feel like there were more, but I'm drawing a blank here.  I'll try to post them as I come across a few more.

Fridge finally gets delivered tomorrow.  I'm in the mindset right now of I'll believe it when I see it.  I'm still working on transferring utilities to my name which has been quite the hassle.  But I am learning that it's the building that's causing the majority of the problems.  Had I found someplace else, it might not have been so difficult. 

The neighborhood is definitely more city than I'm used to.  The buses on E 8th Street are nothing compared to what flies down this street.  It would probably be similar to living right on the corner of Milwaukee and Damen.  Always people, always cars, at all hours of the day.  In fact, there were people leaving a bar/club at 7:30 AM on Monday morning as I was walking to work.  The upside is that there are plenty of cafes, restaurants and normal hour bars within a few blocks as well.  A big thing here are places trying to recreate the dive bar feel from places in the US.  The ones I've been too haven't really been close, but it is pretty interesting

I do have a long weekend next week for the Queen's birthday.  Funny thing is, I don't think that's even a public holiday in the UK.  Now that I'm settled, I'm trying to figure out where to go.  All the books I got were about living and working here, but not travelling.  In my searching, it is pretty interesting that I can hop on a plane and be in New Zealand in 2 hours, or head off to Fiji after a 3 hour flight.  Don't know if I'll be able to swing that next weekend, but I definitely want to head north up the coast to get some sort of summer before winter hits.  Where ever I end up, I'll make sure to bring my camera to finally get some pictures of the area.