Return to Australia!

[aggienaut]

Well with all these gosh darn refugees being let into the country I'm moving to Australia!



...to help refugees (: Which has nothing to do with any situation real or imagined here in the States. Did I get your goat for a second?


This upcoming Wednesday I will be returning to Australia, where I have been offered a job running a project to train refugees there in beekeeping skills. I'll be in the Melbourne area (near Geelong, specifically), which it turns out is on just about the southernmost part of Australia (further south than "South Australia"). It turns out I guess there's a lot of refugees (primarily Sudanese and Somalian) that have been settled in this area but they have trouble finding employment in Australia. Incidentally Australia also seems to have a shortage of beekeepers, as I've noticed with the large number of beekeeping jobs posted there. So training refugees in beekeeping should be win win. And I've always much preferred training over for-profit beekeeping so I'm very excited.

Visas are a pain but my employer is working on getting a long term "skilled migrant" "457 visa," which we're optimistic about.

Calendars
In mostly unrelated news, I mentioned I was trying to make a calendar to sell for fundraising for Bee Aid International. I had hoped to find a website that would take and ship orders directly (like CafePress does for anything except monthly calendars it seems), but could find no such site, so I need to get them all shipped to me and mail them out individually myself.. before I leave on Wednesday! Such sauce. Anyway, please contact me if you're interested in one! I'm selling them for $20, which goes to Bee Aid International.


Australia Pros and Cons!
Things I'm Looking Forward to
$10 rump steak specials
Sunday roast
"Iced coffee" that is actually coffee with vanilla icecream
Plentiful meat pies

Things I'm not looking forward to
UV Index always in the "extreme" category
Suicidal kamikaze kangaroos
People putting god damn eggs on my god damn burgers even when I tell them not to.
People saying "yous" as the second person plural (instead of the obviously correct "you guys")
The completee absence of brewed coffee. It's like Aussies don't realize there's coffee that doesn't require an espresso machine. Also the idea of simply putting coffee on ice on a hot day seemed baffling to locals last time.

Things I'll miss
In-N-Out
American style pizza (none of this thin crust crap, I don't care if it's how they do it in Italy, Italians don't know how to make pizza ;D )
Being able to log in to netflix and pandora without having to monkey around with some sort of dark magic called "VPN switching" or something which will make it look like I'm still in the States to the servers

Other Things that will happen:
People who say "no worries" in every sentence.

Comments

[nick-101.livejournal.com]

Have a great time in Australia.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

I see suicidal kamikaze kangaroos... but you forgot about "deadly spiders" "deadly snakes" "deadly koalas" "deadly lizards" "deadly dingos"...

Really, in Australia, the only non-deadly animals are likely to be imported... like the rabbits. And I'd be suspicious of those too.

And they have cute 'possums. But those are probably deadly as well, just cuter than their North American cousins.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol don't forget drop bears!!

[spaciireth.livejournal.com]

I would just like to point out that we don't all says "yous".

As for Netflix, etc, just download the Hola extension for Google Chrome, set it to America, and then you never have to do anything ever again.

[spaciireth.livejournal.com]

Also, order your pizza with classic crust and you'll be right. :)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Whoa there's an extension that will make it all work for me??? Sweet! Thanks for this hot tip!!

[spaciireth.livejournal.com]

Yep! We're all over that stuff, because the Australian Netflix catalogue is about a quarter of the size of the American one.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

ahahaha but it really works? That's fantastic. I had to do this "VPN switching" stuff last time which involved paying like $20 a year or something (unless it was a month??) and fiddling with some settings and stuff, and I'm not an IT geek so it was an uphill battle for me!

[spaciireth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have a friend who was paying $7/month or something for one before the Australian Netflix came in. I don't know if it was just people became more aware of this one then, or what. Other Half tells me there are apparently some security issues with it, but we both use it as do a lot of other people I know. But if that worries you, you might want to do some more research first (I am terribly blase about the Internet). But it can be set up for most region-blocking, so I use it for BBC iPlayer and stuff as well.

[twicet.livejournal.com]

I had to laugh at the 'no worries' We live in Canada and my son who has never been to Australia, has used this expression for years. I'd be more worried about snakes than kangaroos! I hate snakes.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I was pretty paranoid about snakes, esp since I work in the outdoors -- if I absolutely HAD to walk in long grass I'd make a heap of noise and drag my feet through the grass to scare the snakes away in front of me. But the roos they hide by the side of the road at night and leap in front of the car no joke!

[blue-eye.livejournal.com]

People saying "yous" as the second person plural (instead of the obviously correct "you guys")

Folks around these parts say "y'all."

You lead such an exciting life.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I actually use 'y'all" sometimes but its probably largely for the humor factor ahaha.

[mcmurphy79.livejournal.com]

'Yous' and 'y'all' would really get to me but I'm British!

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

when I was in Melbourne, they just told me to order a long black (to get proper coffee). Though an espresso machine may still have been involved. Melbourne's coffee culture is intense.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah everything's a long black or short black or long white or flat white or something, but those are all espresso based. The best oyu can get is what we'd call an "Americano" -- a shot or espresso diluted in water. I never understood why we called it that, since no one actually drinks their coffee like that here -- until I got to places like Aus that have no brewed coffee at all and htat's the closest one can approximate. I forget which ausism was code for Americano though.

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Americano works in Europe, but Aus definitely has its own language. Long black worked for me, but I had to mainline the stuff to recover from the time zone shift.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha (:

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

How exciting! Have a great time in Australia.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (:

[lab-jazz.livejournal.com]

hhhhmmmm

Suicidal kamikaze kangaroos

You do have to be careful when driving at dawn or dusk in case there are some on the road. They go on the road because when it rains there is a bit of water run off meaning that stuff that they eat sometimes grows in the shallow gully on the side of the road.

Big aggressive bucks can disembowel you with their back claws if you try and mess with them.

Apart from that kangaroos are harmless.

$10 rump steak specials

I'm a vegetarian so I'm not an expert on the cost of meat, but I would say that in your dreams you'll be able to get a rump steak special for $10.

People saying "yous" as the second person plural

Yep that's me. But hey in my defense I went to a little bush school where grammar wasn't high up on the agenda.

Have a good time over here in Australia. If you get the time and the opportunity try and see some of Western Australia and the Northern Territory; that's where the real outback is.

I'm looking forward to your Australia posts and pictures.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Noo the $10 rump steak legend is true! I was in Australia 2012/2013 and I know three places in Bundaberg and one in Brisbane that had $10 rump steak specials. It was totally a thing!!

[selucius.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. What a great opportunity! Can't to hear about the new adventure.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks (:

[sobota.livejournal.com]

Very incredibly jealous! But I can't wait to hear about all your adventures! x

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (:

[froganon.livejournal.com]

Wow! How exciting the move is coming up really soon. Uh, perhaps you've already left. Today is Tuesday. Or leaving tomorrow.

Wonderful stuff.

You can relocate to Australia as long as you keep coming here to the El Jay and writing, okay?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Nah leaving tomorrrrrow! :/ :/ :/ !

[froganon.livejournal.com]

re: calendar and photo:

http://froganon.livejournal.com/356628.html

Yes, I'd like a calendar. My contact info is at that entry there for ya along with photo. You must be madly packing and saying goodbye to folks and pizza! so I will hear from you on the other side of Down Under! Safe journeys!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yeah getting a bit anxious here! :/

[missfuzzybunny.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your new job! They are very lucky to have you.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (:

[sunnycrittenden.livejournal.com]

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY NEW JOB, NEW ADVENTURES!

Haven't read comments or anything & I dunno how proficient you are at dark VPN magics, but I use a program called Cyberghost & it's pretty great/user-friendly.