And on to other bugs

From cockroaches to moths! This little guy is perched on the doorjam going into the kitchen and has been there all day. We think he's rather pretty so are leaving him alone.




We have a new favorite Australian food: Weis's Fruit Bars! They come in peach, raspberry, mango and mango/macadamia. It's a "frozen confection" of a strip of frozen fruit and a thin strip of vanilla ice cream right next to it. (For those of you who knew Fruitful's fruit bars, they're just as good...if not better!!)

The weather has finally been cooling off here--we actually had to go buy a blanket last weekend!! It's supposed to be really cool on Sunday, so we're going to head back to Manly in hopes that the beaches will be fairly empty. We promise to take our cameras along this time so we can provide a true report.

Just to totally mess with your minds...So, it's that time of year to change your clocks, right? And now that you've all finally figured out what time we are here, we're going to confuse you! While it's spring in the US, you're springing forward...but here it's FALL and so we're FALLING back. How nuts is that?! Officially we'll be getting closer together in time but it actually will just make it more difficult to reach people. Hm...

Fall break is coming up soon--we get the week after Easter off. Mike has found us a lovely B&B in the middle of the Blue Mountains so we're going to escape the city for a few days. Apparently we'll be close to "Blackheath's Grand Canyon" (whatever that means? We'll find out!!) and the Three Sisters, which is one of Australia's famous rock formations. The B&B also promises that we can feed the wild birds every morning. I know what Mike will be doing! Chirp!

~Ruth Ann

P.S. Kacky: "Con" is short for "Conservatorium." Australians like to shorten whatever they possibly can, and articles are unnecessary in gramatical contexts. For example, "attending a university" is more affectionately known as "going to uni." :-)

COCKROACHES!!!!!!

Well, one of them anyway. We had our first running with a cockroach in our apartment last night. He kind of showed up out of nowhere and ran under our desk. I managed to coax him out with a few puffs from our air pump. He didn't really like it too much and made a dash to the coach. Ruth Ann valiantly trapped him with the broom and I then smeared him across the floor. The good news is that this was a flawless team effort in the demise of the bug. The bad news is that it's a cockroach and where there is one, there are usually more. We haven't seen any evidence of them in our apartment before so we're hoping he's an rouge but at least we have a bunch of roach motels.

Speaking of irritating bugs, in orchestra today we found out that they tune to A 441. After getting A 440 hammered into your head for a number of years, playing a bit higher is irking-sort of like a mosquito buzzing in your ear: not enough to push you over the edge but really annoying. (Side note from Ruth Ann: Note to self! When traveling to another country, always be smart enough to figure out the tuning frequency! I noticed in sectionals that I was distressingly flat and didn't find out the real reason until tuning a tricky section with the clarinet after rehearsal. Boy, do I feel dumb.......) (But it's also characteristic of everything Australian--half way between the US and Europe!!!)

We went to the beach last night. We took a ferry to Manly up northeast of the city. Unlike the dinky beaches we've been to thus far, Manly beach is right on the ocean(as opposed to being in the harbour). The tide was coming in so we had a spectacular display of waves coming in. We got there when it was still light and had a picnic on the beach. The seagulls were a bit cuter than those at Circular Quay so we threw some grapes and crackers at them. They didn't seem to like the carrot pieces I tossed to them. After that we took our shoes off and strolled through the wet sand. A wave washed up and we thought we'd get our feet wet. It kept coming and coming until we were soaked up to our thighs. We stayed until after dusk watching the waves and being amused by the surfers being thrown off their boards.

~Mike

Pictures again

Okay, I tried this last night but the pictures wouldn't load. Trying again...

Hello again to all of our faithful readers out there! Life in Australia has actually been relatively calm since our last posting. The "orchestra strike" on Thursday turned into a weird situation with people from the main campus trying to rile everyone up and start a major protest that administration doesn't care about the students. Condoleezza Rice was hardly mentioned at all, although a lot of the students who are being changed demanded to know why the Dean wasn't trying to help them out. I've got my own theories there...Things did get a bit tense for a few minutes and Dean Walker did have to threaten to call security again if they didn't calm down. But somehow everybody shut up after half an hour and we had an orchestra rehearsal after all. !!!

Here are several more pictures:

Two views of the Con; the first being Verbruggen Hall where the orchestra concerts are held, and the other being the main building with classroom and practice rooms.






Here's a picture of the famous opal. Our digital cameras don't have a high enough resolution to get a clearer picture than this, so you'll just have to see it in person!!




And THIS lovely little guy came and begged for lunch crumbs in the Botanical Gardens on Friday. He hopped and scampered and we thought he was much more worthy than all the pigeons!




I leave you tonight with one last photo. It has no explanation!!!




~Ruth Ann

Another full day

Well, we're wrapping up another full day here at in Sydney. We just got back from a welcoming reception for International students studying in Sydney hosted by the Lord Mayor of Sydney. It was held in the Town Hall building-basically a huge open hall with a MASSIVE pipe organ. The event started off with a bang and the food and drink were flowing. Perhaps a little too much! When the Lord Mayor and all the Vice Chancellors from the three universities in Sydney and the Grand Poo Bah got up to speak, barely anyone was paying attention. There was a small crowd in the front trying to listen but a much bigger crowd in the back talking very loud. It increased to the point that when the speakers were done and a choir from somewhere started performing, nothing could be heard. We left shortly after claiming sore feet and ears.

One highlight of the evening was a stone carving in the wall urging us to "Remember Nellie Melba!" We couldn't because we didn't know who she was but she was depicted as a naked woman with a goat on one side and a strange man on the other. On further research, Nellie Melba was a professional soprano in the early 1900's and is on the $100 bill. Why we should remember her and why she was naked with a man and a goat, we will never know!

~Mike

I had a very exciting and varied day! Since we had this important shindig where we had to be all gussied-up, Mike went ahead and gave me my birthday present. I am now the ecstatic owner of an Australian opal necklace!!!!!! It's light blue, in a white gold setting of a teardrop and also has a small diamond at the bottom. Mike also said some very romantic things but I'm saving those for myself ;-)

Life pre-opal was not very good today, though. I worked today and it was SO SLOW. I'm officially only trained to check in items, so if people don't return things, I've got nothing to do. The computer system is the exact same thing that we used in Bloomington, so I really am capable of doing a lot more but they don't seem to be able to understand this. To give me something else to do, one of the librarians showed me how to load a cart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As if I haven't been working in libraries for how long? I also encountered a very irritating situation of sexual discrimination? Harassment? (not sure which, but either way it's not recognized here so I couldn't complain if I wanted to). The interlibrary loans came around 1 and so, having nothing to do, I said "So I just take this box from you and give you our sitting behind the counter?" The librarian who taught me how to load a cart said "No, you're not qualified to do that yet." That through me for a second, just long enough for one of the maintenance workers to come from around the corner, move the box and hand the delivery guy our outgoing stuff. "What would you have done if there were three of them?" the maintenance worker asked me. "Moved them," was my suave reply. He looked at the other two men and said "She's got it all figured out!" and they all laughed.

ARGH!!!!!!!! Each box contained three or four books and a handful of CDs. The boxes at MCPL were three times as large and 5 times as heavy. I could've screamed. Punching the guy also seemed like a nice option...

On a more cheerful note, this morning at Circular Quay we encountered a new group of street performers. Three retired men, sitting on plastic milk crates, playing Dixieland! The tuba player had big puffy cheeks and sandals with really dirty feet; the banjo player wore a tweed cap and sunglasses and just plunked along; and the trumpet player had a row of mutes in front of him and wore tap shoes so he could set the beat. We're so disappointed we didn't have our cameras! They were actually really good, too, especially the trumpet player. He still had amazing control and really knew his stuff! We listened to them for longer than we should have :o)

Thanks to those of you who commented...Keep it up!! We're off to the park to eat shortbread cookies and watch the stars come out.
~Ruth Ann

And the protests continue...

Here we are again, back by popular demand! Apparently our blog is hugely successful and read by many. Your comments are eagerly awaited by your two authors, so please, don't be shy about responding to anything we post. We love comments :o)


Today in orchestra, Mike found the following placed on his stand (and I quote):
------------------------
STUDENTS ARRESTED FOR PEACEFULLY PROTESTING A WAR CRIMINAL SPEAKING AT THE CONSERVATORIUM.
~Classes cancelled for private function as Condoleezza Rice speaks at Conservatorium last Thursday.
~Snipers, mounted police, police dogs, federal police, ground police and (we understand) CIA agents kick con students off our own campus.
~The Dean and Vice-Chancellor continue to show that students are their lowest priority.
~Support your fellow students who were unfairly arrested and beaten up by police. Meet at Verbrugghen Hall 1.45 pm on Thursday, orchestra strike and demand the Dean apologises for cancelling classes, putting ALL our lives in danger and alllowing (sic) students to be arrested on our own campus.
-------------------------

~More classes were cancelled because con students acted like idiots and had the Con put on lockdown. By the way, at IU, we were always THRILLED when classes were cancelled. Why not here, too? An orchestra strike is essentially the same thing...
~As if CIA conspiracy theorists don't run rampant enough in the US!!! We had to spread that abroad?!
~The Con is actually owned by the government; the Dean had no choice but to allow Rice to speak here.
~Yeah, as *forcing* the Dean to apologize does anything to help the war effort. Orchestra strike, smorchestra strike! If I have to play Rach 2 by myself, then I will. And by the way--anywhere you act like and idiot, you can be arrested.

There's my two cents! We'll report back on Thursday

We are the proud owners of a very odd 4.5 kg washing machine. It sounds pained that it has to wash and very distressed that it has to spin. It is also designed to use our kitchen sink as a back-up tank, which created a few frightening minutes the first few times we used it. But as long as we don't leave anything in the sink, we're golden. I don't care really care what does--almost anything is better than doing loads of hand laundry in the sink!!

I had a lovely, lazy day today and had nothing scheduled. I am proud to report that a I created a lovely dinner: butter chicken with butternut squash, onions, tomatoes and spinach. Very happy! And now my goal is to be in bed by 9...Ta!

~Ruth Ann

Today a lot seems to be happening around the water. Early this morning, the ferry workers decided to strike so we had to take the trains to school. While this wasn't a trying time for us, apparently it caused HUGE traffic jams on the North Shore of the harbour because a lot of people had to drive instead. The workers were ordered back to work this afternoon by the government because they hadn't given enough warning(they declared the strike at 5am) but when I went to the wharf to go home, they were canceling ferry after ferry. Needless to say, taking trains during rush hour with a ferry strike was mighty crowded.

Also, another big cruise ship came in. It's impossible to imagine how big these things are unless you've seen them. If you take a 40 or 50 story building, put it on it's side in the water, you're close. Circular Quay, where all the ferries dock, is a very popular destination to park the ships for up to a week.(personally, I think the ferry pilots struck because they didn't want to have to steer around the cruise ship). All of them have names that conjure up images of tropical splendor and elegance: the Diamond Princess, the Crystal Serenity...all except the Maxim Gorky. We found out later that this awkwardly named ship from Russia has the distinction of almost sinking in the arctic ocean when the pilot got too close to the ice. Whenever the ships come in, Circular Quay gets inundated by tourists and thus the street performers are out in full force. I've toyed with the idea of taking my bassoon out and practicing to make a little extra cash, but bassoons can't compete with didjeridoos played to a techno-beat. The donkey continues to show up and stand there!! I love it!

~Mike

A slice of the US

Today, Condoleezza Rice came to the University of Sydney to speak a bit about US foreign relations and answer questions from students. This all happened at the conservatory in the hall. I was invited to attend due to the whole Fulbright thing along with 300 students(mainly political science majors) from universities in New South Wales. The Conservatory was blocked off from the public all afternoon. Security people were scurrying everywhere and apparently had ringed the building. There was a huge group of protesters outside and some even got arrested. The Con, music schools generally being very liberal, was full of debate and anti-american sentiment (we felt a tad uncomfortable). The biggest to-do though was during Rice's speech.

A few minutes into her talk, two students in the back started yelling "Condoleezza Rice! You have Iraqi blood on you hands that won't come off! You are a murderer!" over and over. The secret service wasted no time in hauling them out of the room. A few minutes later another student started yelling about what freedoms did the Iraqi people supposedly have now. He was promptly escorted out. There were at least a dozen secret service guards there that we could see. All of them were the stereotypical SS guys-huge and Marine like, all wearing dark suits with the coiled earpiece, constantly looking around at everybody.

Neither of these incidents phased Rice one bit-I'm sure she's had to deal with this a lot with the unpopularity of Bush around the world. She was a very intelligent, well spoken woman who knew what she was talking about. Her knowledge of history on the spot was impressive. It's a nice feeling to know that, as stupid as Bush may be, at least he has some intelligent people(at least one!) around.

Other than that, our day was pretty uneventful. We started training at the music library and practiced. How exciting!

~Mike

We continue to be picture happy

We've finally started carrying our cameras with us everywhere we go. You'd think we'd have learned this a long time ago!

Carrying a quill and whistling Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is none other than Mozart! (Mike protests "He's tryin' to steal my girl!!") One of the best street performers we've seen yet!



Mike tries on Viking armor and decides to take up pillaging!



This boar is seated outside the Sydney Hospital. Rubbing his nose leads to good luck, so we thought we'd try :o)



Queen Elizabeth was here in Sydney today, opening a new section of the Opera House and meeting with the Governor-General. (Right down the street!!) She mostly caused a lot of traffic problems and got a lot of police officers overtime...Sections of the harbor were blocked off for her yacht and the trains were extra crowded. We got a picture of Queen Liz (when we met her for afternoon tea, of course). However, she requested that we not post her picture--she doesn't want everyone clamoring for free photo shoots!! :o)

~Ruth Ann

Now that I can have solid food again, I'm feeling pretty good. When I can PLAY with my food, I'm even better. These happy face frozen french fries are just asking to be played with. The first is obviously a happy face of happy faces:




These two characters were made during dinner. I made Jacques-Pierre(note the BBQ sause beret) while Ruth Ann created Nanett(notice the carrot hat). Don't ask me why they turned out to be french. The muse sang to us as such-we merely expressed their 'frenchness'.




The next pictures are of our apartment. Ruth Ann is showing off the master suite and the next two are of the living space.







~Mike

Ruthlessly, Ruth Ann has just killed a bug.

(In my defense, Mike wounded him first!!)

Next is the kitchen...




Here is 75 Kirribilli Avenue. Doesn't it look like a nice place to live?? (We're the ground floor with the blinds closed.)



This is our lifesaver--the 15 centimeter fan that we have named Hoppy. We had hoped to find him brothers named Skippy and Jumpy but they were adopted by other desperate folks before we got there. He is quite a trooper!!!




Still life with toaster. Our toaster is long and thin, and paper towel rolls are very short here!



The harboUr bridge from our park at night



And we leave you tonight with another view of the Sydney skyline. Good night!!




~Ruth Ann

Yay! I'm not sick anymore!!

It case the title didn't tip you off, I'M NOT SICK ANYMORE!
I just got over my first case of food poisoning(and hopefully my last). I had no idea the amount of strange noises one's intestines could make! Anyway, after several days of not being able to eat anything, I sweated the last toxins out in a fever last night. I've already graduated to non-bland foods this evening with no ill effects!

What this little episode taught me was that Health Care is important. Luckily with the Fulbright I'm covered under Australian Medicare. While this doesn't cover everything it should be adequate-I have to pay for Rx's but not the doctors visit, none of the fancy things more expensive plans cover, etc. Every Australian is covered by this national health care plan but apparently a lot of those who can afford it get a private coverage plan.

Ruth Ann is not covered by Medicare(she wouldn't be even if we were married). She has to use the USyd plan for international students. Today she had to run around the main campus(far far away from the Con) trying to get her Health Care card. Courtesy of the wonderful International Department, she was directed to Multiple buildings by multiple people. Eventually she did get it.

From almost everyone we have talked to who has dealt with them, we've heard the International Office is incompetent-profs and students included. Our own experience has shown this as well: multiple lost transcripts, lack of communication, lack of response, the left hand not knowing or caring what the right hand is doing etc...Once we have our work visas processed, we'll be done with them for now.....

This is a picture of my baby niece, Juliana. I felt like I needed to put a picture of her because she's just too cute! My folks are sitting in the La Paz Airport right now waiting to go see her(and Eric and Claudia) and I'M SO JEALOUS!!



~Mike

The missing penny

The nighttime view from our favorite park!

Well, school has officially started. So far things are going well, but maybe that's just because we haven't had to do anything yet! :o) I'm very pleased with how my orchestra audition went, and I placed co-principal of the Symphony Orchestra. Which, considering how long it's been since I've taken an audition, made me very happy indeed! The faculty gave me good comments from the audition and there weren't any surprises--all the mistakes they heard I heard, too. A good sign :o)

We'll be playing in a chamber trio with a very nice pianist with a great sense of humor, so I hope that will all go well, too. I had a planning session with Alexa (my flute prof) last week and my first lesson today. It has me all fired up and I'm actually EXCITED to practice again! Right away she's fixing my piccolo playing--everyone who has heard my piccolo playing knows that this is a good thing.......

Tuesday was our one year anniversary. I can't believe how much has happened in one year! Get engaged, move to the other side of the world...that's just a cakewalk! Mike took me back to the Harbour Kitchen and Bar, our new favorite restaurant. He's supposed to be writing a food entry at some point but currently has the stomach flu, so I think you'll have to wait for food reviews.

Australian financial matters have kept us entertained these past few weeks. Our first round of bills had to be paid, and our options were to 1.) send a check or money order, 2.) pay the bills with a credit card online, 3.) pay the bills online with a debit card, or 4.) pay them in person with any of the above methods at our local post office. (Great, isn't it??) We knew that #1 was out. Australian banks have a lot of fees, and personal checks cost a lot, so no one uses them. They are so out of use that a regular bank account here is a SAVINGS account, not checking. No checks can be written, but you can use your debit card from this account. (This through us for a loop when we'd hand over our debit card and the salesperson would ask "checking or savings?" We'd say checking, only to have our transactions declined. Scary moments!!)

So checks were out. I moved on to trying to pay our bills online. Some of the utility companies have a setup where you can just have an automatic withdrawal from your bank account, and others will send you an email with your bill enclosed and you can handle it from there. "No worries!" I thought. Online bill pay sounded fabulous. I logged on, created an online account for the gas company and then pulled out my nifty debit card. In the US, our debit cards can be used anywhere that credit cards can be, and since these were MasterCard registered, I thought the same thing applied.

No go! Here, debit cards don't have your name on them so they CAN"T double as credit cards. Your PIN is your everything and your signature can't substitute. Which means we can't use them to order anything online...booo!!! And if you want to use a debit card to pay your bills, you have to register your debit card online. Which invoves creating another account on another website and waiting a day or so until you're approved by your bank.

The next day, I got an email that my request to pay my bills online from the gas company was declined, citing that the name I had used on the online account didn't match the name on the bill statement. Somehow they only included Mike's name on the gas bill and Ruth Ann Ritchie didn't make any sense to them, joint bank account or no.

I've given up all dreams of online banking and now pay my bills at the local post office! It's such a useful place!

The other monetary amusement we've had is the Case of the Missing Penny. Pennies don't exist here and haven't for some time. The smallest coin is the nickel. Also, sales tax is 10% and calculated into the price shown--so if they say your muffin costs $3.50, it really only costs you $3.50. Which is great! I enjoy the what-you-see-is-what-you-get factor.

However, in some stores, mostly grocery stores, I've noticed, things will amazingly be priced for $.67 or $3.99. ?????? The Australians have created this hysterical thing known as the "coin adjustment." If it says $.67, they will actually charge you 70 cents, only because, having no pennies, they can't give you change! Although sometimes it does work in your favor--I was once charged $4.00 for something which rang up at $4.01.

~Ruth Ann

Picture happy

Here are a bunch of random photos that don't really go together but deserve to be put on the blog!




At Big Basin Redwood Forest with Laura and Stuart, the day before we came to Sydney. Here, Laura THOUGHT she was being sneaky...









This is where Laura and I both got stuck about halfway up Slippery Rock. We're pretending to admire the scenery but are actually wondering how to climb the rest of the way up!








At the zoo, they have a "birds eye view" where your eyes could be at pond water-level. We got quite friendly with all the pelicans!








Ruthie after a long day at the Con.










The Governor-General's house...in Kirribilli!!











This is the view from our park at the end of the street. :o) (More often than not it's sunny here; somehow we had our camera on the one misty day.)








Mike is all ready for the first day of school!












Ruthie is running behind on the first day of school!

What's he looking at?

storage

If anyone has any storage and/or space saving devices for this apartment, I'm all ears. We're trying not to buy too much furniture, as it probably won't be worth it and the apartment is rather small, anyway. The problem is mostly in the bedroom. Our bed takes up pretty much literally the whole room--if we had gone with queen sized we wouldn't have even had room to edge around it. So there's no room for a dresser of any kind; only two collapsible laundry hampers in the corner (thanks, Connie!!) The closet kind of has enough room for clothes, except that apparently Australians never wear floor length dresses, or if they do, they're only short Australians. Also, I guess Australians don't wear socks or underwear, because there is clearly no room in the closet for those. Mine have been relegated to my suitcases which are under the bed. Our 4 suitcases laid out together=the size of our bed. The large suitcases fit under the bed grudgingly and we can only get them out again if we lift the bed up. So we can't put our socks in the little suitcases and then the little suitcase in the big one and have room for our shoes under the bed!

We only have one other closet and then a desk with some filing room. But moving to another country creates so much PAPER that we can't give up a drawer for essential things like PAPER CLIPS.

We thought we came here with no stuff. What happened?

Surprisingly, though, we do have a lot of cabinet space in the kitchen. Maybe our spare clothing will have to end up there. "Can you hand me an onion? No, dear, that's a pair of socks......"
~Ruth Ann