The Job and the Birthday

Hey Ya’ll, Erin here,

I know that it has been some time since I have posted… I’ve been BUSY! It’s been fun here the last week with everyone runin around goin to their interviews. I think Brian said that he wrote it but, Yes, I did find a job… two actually. So the first one is this really sweet gig where I get to just go hangout with kids ages 0-12 all day as a teaching assistant. It pays really well and the people that run the program are really nice, but it is only casual work and therefore quite unreliable. Right now they have some work but they said around the holidays it gets really s l o w and they could only really guarantee me one shift a week. Yeah, I didn’t feel comfortable with just that… So I found another job. I am now a happy waitress at the Sahnia Bar and Restaurant right on Bondi Beach. We leave all these big window doors propped all the way open and you can stare at the beautiful beach (which is only about 300 meters away from the bar) all day. When it’s slow it is fun to watch the surfers riding the waves… except that it was really rough and messy out there today and I saw a bunch of the surfers crash into one another. Scary, but they all popped back up so I guess they were ok. Most of the staff at Sahnia are really nice. The girl that trained me is spectacular and did a great job. It was super duper busy today so my shift few by. I hope tomorrow is the same. The food there is fairly normal… burgers and salads etc. There are some things that are different and might take some getting used to, like how they order their coffee and certain things on the menu. There was this Australian customer who was cracking jokes left and right who asked for an order of “the thing that hops up and down”, kangaroo. I thought that was a joke too and just laughed and smiled, but no... it really is on our menu : ) I can't wait to try it.

*ok, just so you guys know I wrote the above section a few days ago and am now picking it back up... so more things have happened. I’ll just continue.

Want to start with saying how happy I am that Brian is now part of the staff as well. I hope we get to work with each other some of the time. Work is still going suitably. The really busy days are not quite as fun but good tips result so I can’t complain too much. I think I have worked somewhere around seven shifts and now feel quite comfortable with the whole waitressing thing, precisely taking orders in the neat-o little palm pilot they give us, skillfully recommending tasty dishes.
Recently I have chosen to walk the 30 to 40 minutes to Bondi which can seem unreasonably long when you feet hurt but is a nice little stint through a very pretty area. The problem arises when I work late shifts and don’t get off until a little before midnight. At that hour I just don’t feel comfortable walking home so I have to make the hour long tip via bus and train and bus again. So a bike will solve this and I’m eager for it to be so. I am going to look at a bike tomorrow after work and if that works out I think I will be set.

BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!

Tuesday marked the 23rd year of my existence. I was kind of sad that I wouldn’t be home with my family and friends for my birthday (and wouldn’t get to have any of my moms awesome birthday cake) but I ended up have a wonderful, lovely, excellent day. When I got home Monday night after my shift it was just turning 12 (officially my B-Day) and Jesse surprised me with an uber delicious vanilla cake with green icing (apparently the icing was to be white but the sprinkles contaminated it, but it was scrumptious none the less). Brian was nice enough to buy some ice-cream to accompany the cake and it made for the perfect start to my day. AND as if that wasn’t enough, we all sat down as a family to watch the newest Office, so really… it doesn’t get any better then that. Except that it does, because the next day Jesse gave me a fantastic purse that I had been eyeing up and had been in dire need of AND Taylor bought me some beautiful flowers in one of my favorite colors, pink. I think they really brighten up our apartment (and match all our phones of course)
Also on my birthday there was a cool wine tasting at work. We just implemented a new menu and they wanted to give us some knowledge of what to recommend with what, how things taste and such. I had never been to a wine tasting before so I was thoroughly excited. It was really fun. We joked around a lot, learned at least a little, and I was fairly tipsy by the end, but it WAS my birthday so I guess that’s ok ; ) The more I work the more I like the people I work with. Before I left they brought me a slice of our raspberry cheesecake which I had been dying to try since day one. That night Jesse took me out to eat at this really neat gourmet pizza place called Crust. It was excellent and I plan on returning. So yeah, that summed up the turning. It was wonderful and I feel very blessed to be with three such amazing guys.

I think that’s it for me right now… Oh no wait. Jesse and I went to the Australian Museum today. I won’t write a ton about it but I will say that it kicked The Powerhouse’s butt and renewed my faith and confidence in Australian museums. We saw a bunch of sweet dinosaurs and some weird mammalish creatures that are now extinct, thank goodness. They had some other really cool exhibits like one all about skeletons, and some not so cool ones, like minerals that I got physically pushed through by a discontent Jesse mumbling “boring” the entire way. My favorite exhibit was one called Surviving Australia and it was all to do with the strange creatures that can harm/maim/kill you. Really neat stuff, and handy too. Now we know that if one of us gets stung by an octopus that has blue rings on it, and then we appear to be dead we most likely are not, just paralyzed, and the other needs to administer CPR till the venom clears out of the system. Ok that sounds super bad, and before you all start to worry, this barely ever happens and we are going to be more than careful… and now I’ll be even more careful then before : ) Also we learned that 120 thousand people die in Australia a year and less then 5 of those are due to crocodiles, sharks, or snakes. So that is good to know, I thought.

So I think I’ll call it kaputs for today. I hope all is well back in the states. As always I would love to hear how you all are doing so shoot me a line whenever you get the chance. Miss you and keep the comments coming PLEASE we love them.

-Erin out

Rugby

Here is a pic of Jesse with the rest of us sneaking in on the side. In this photo I was so focused on trying to aim the camera correctly I forgot to smile until I had halfway pressed the takepicture button on the camera. I swear my normal picture smile is better than that. Unfortunately smiling and taking a picture is apparently too complicated for me.

Hi again to everyone worldwide. This is Brian trying to keep up the momentum of posting regularly. I say worldwide because we are gaining readers from not only all corners of the US, but also South America (hi Brett!) and of course Australia because we of course read our own posts. Right now I am boycotting the waste of time that is team handball. As you may have heard, a week ago I was forced to play the pivot position at our first practice while Jesse and Taylor got to go frolic around on the wings. Then last Thursday after we spent an hour taking trains and buses down to the University for our second practice, we were the only ones who bothered to show up. Fortunately for Jesse and Taylor, they had scampered past the guy at the door of the gym without paying and by the time the guy trailed them into the gym it was apparent we weren't going to play so we left. I on the other hand, trying to be an honorable guy, just paid the $10 fee up front when we got there like they asked. That meant I had to go back to the guy at the front and ask for my money back. The guy started making up some story about how the paperwork had already gone through making it impossible for him to refund me my $10. I was none too pleased, and I let him know it. After about a minute of shouting between me and the guy at the front of the gym, I got my money back and we left the gym for the second time with me in a bad mood. Consequently, I was far from excited earlier this evening to waste an hour of my time trekking off to the other side of Sydney to pay $10 to maybe or maybe not play some handball and then waste another hour of my time stumbling back all sweaty and gross. Instead after Taylor and Jesse left, I read for twenty minutes and then went on a run for an hour at twilight and did an ab workout. After a shower and some lazing around I expect to be able to finish this blog post, have a snack of yogurt, putz around on the internet for awhile (did I tell you we have internet at our apartment finally!), watch some tv, and maybe write a novel before they get back. Like I said, I am not thrilled about team handball right now. But on to more exciting things.

RUGBY

I am going to just sprinkle in some pictures of the event in no particular order here for your enjoyment.

The four of us went out to the Olympic Park to see Australia take on New Zealand in some sort of World Cup prelim matchup. I am not too sure about all the details of the match so I have a link here that has most of that info. What I do know is the roos and kiwis are supposed to be the two best teams around so we were dazzled by some high quality rugby. Though Australia is also supposed to be kilometres better than anyone else in the world so we weren't expecting the match to be very close.

The game wasn't very close but we still had a lot of fun. From the start it was amazing to be in a huge stadium with all these crazy people getting psyched for a crazy sport we knew little about. What I know about rugby comes primarily from my visits to the rugby field at Stanford to watch Hofius and Preston and company compete. The version of rugby we saw last night seemed different in a number of ways. The most obvious to me was that last night there were virtually no scrums. The teams occasionally would get into a position as if they might scrum and then immediately every time the ball gets kicked out and regular play resumes. Also what seemed so crazy to me back at Stanford was when players would lift their teammates into the air to catch inbounding passes. I didn't see any of that yesterday. So the game was a little different but it was still a ton of fun. Hard hits and crazy fans were everywhere. A group of fans next to us decided they wanted to start the wave (mentioned in the article) and worked at it for 5 solid minutes before they got it to catch on. But when it did catch on, it was something to behold. I've seen my fair share of waves before, mostly at Dodger Stadium where fans are known for their tendency to lose interest in the ballgame quite quickly and begin doing the wave to stave off boredom. But let me tell you, this wave was incredible. Such quality. Such coordination. Such huge amounts of trash were being thrown into the air by the 3^rd or 4^th lap around the stadium.

I tried to take pictures of this gorgeous act of fandom but snapshots just couldn't capture the beauty. And in the end, the group of fans just to our right could not have been happier with themselves for starting that thing. I have no idea which team they were rooting for, but they went home happy. They also started chanting USA at some point during the game too which I did not understand at all.

All in all, it was a great night. There was a booth outside the stadium offering free facepainting which we intend to take full advantage of next time if we get there early enough next time. Then we just need to procure some aussie green and gold clothing to be true roo fans.

A few other side notes before I sign off: we now officially have internet at our apartment like I mentioned earlier. I picked up a modem which seems to get decent service at decent prices so I think we will probably stay with it. If we don't like it though we can return it at no charge in the next 7 days. It will be weird to watch what we do online so as to not use more than the allotted 10gb per month, but it was getting to the point where we needed internet at home since we can't be spending our days at the helping people anymore now that we have jobs.

Speaking of jobs, I am officially working part time at both Sahnia's Restaurant on Bondi Beach as well as Elvis Pizza. I will have about 6 shifts a week between the two places and the flexibility to keep or drop either/both as I decide how much I enjoy the positions. I just hope I have time this week to properly celebrate Erin's bday and Halloween. Between those too holidays and job training, things are going to get pretty busy around here. Alright Jesse and Taylor are back and I didn't have time to write my novel. Stupid laundry always comes out of nowhere and demands to be a priority and messes up my plans. Hope everyone is doing well.

Trial Run at Work by B

First off I want to bring to everyone's attention my last post which I posted for a moment about 4 days ago. Somehow that post was perused by EMay and then when she posted a piece of her own, she managed, I believe, to post over what i wrote. I have no idea how that is possible. She is becoming some sort of blogging wizard apparently. Anyways if you didn't get a chance to look at that post before, know that it is available now (I hope).

A couple days ago I had a little tryout at the restaurant in Bondi where Erin works. I was pretty nervous learning the ropes of being a waiter but everyone there was really nice in teaching me what to do. I even got to work with Erin for about an hour which was awesome. The system seemed pretty simple once you got used to it. All the orders go back to the kitchen wirelessly via the waiters' palm pilots. You just select the order from the pop up list there and then go pick up the food from the kitchen when it is ready. My Mom has been getting trouble from people because she still uses a palm pilot which is soooo 20th century, but now I need to figure out the shorthands for writing in one of those things again so I can be a super awesome waiter. So after a little 3hr mini-shift and then an anxious day of waiting for them to call me back, I officially have a job as a waiter in Bondi! So I am very pleased to be working about 3 shifts a week down there. Now if the pizza people will call me back I can hopefully pick up 3 shifts or so there and have a pretty full week between the two.

So things are finally coming together for me here in Oz so I will have some time to think about all the things I am missing back at home. Like the Dodgers who fell apart with me not around to keep them in their winning ways. And like the Lakers who are favored to win it all this year with the monster that is Bynum coming back from injury teaming up with Gasol and Odom to make the hugest lineup ever. Plus the Steelers (my favorite football team since there isn't one in LA) are playing well right now from what I hear. I have been downloading daily podcasts from espn.com and uploading them onto my ipod to listen to during the hour or so I spend every day on the buses and trains and ferries. That is turning into a great system for keeping me occupied while traveling and keeping me up to date on the sports at home. And with everyone doing a great job of leaving comments and sending me emails letting me know what they are up to back in the states, I don't feel too out of touch as a Sydneysider.

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

I just finished reading a little popular science nonfiction book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, and decided I would write up a little review of the book here for anyone who cares. I have been trying to get into the habit of writing up a little something after every book I read because I think I get a lot more out of books if I force myself to spend a little time at the end to explore my reactions to the book. In the past I would just write something in a Word document and then delete it pretty much when I finished. But now I have a blog and maybe a couple people who care about what I am reading so I figured I would write something up here.

Anyways, onto the book. I picked up this book after I listened to the book on tape version of In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (a little travel guide for Australia which was really really good and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Australia) and was not as impressed with Bill's effort this time around. The book walks through a billion different subjects in Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, and Geology and pretty much summarizes all the big events in the history of those subjects that have led us to what we know today about the world and universe. Most of the info in the book I had already learned at sometime or another in college or high school going through the human biology major and the premed courses. It was definitely fun to review some of the stuff and hear interesting back stories on how certain scientific discoveries came about, but overall I did not get too much out of the book. Bryson was not nearly as comical as he was with A Sunburned Country which I guess is expected because a lot of the subjects in this book can be pretty dry (like plate techtonics). But if anyone wants a brief overview of a wide range of scientific subjects and doesn't want to fight through a thick textbook, this breezy popsci account of what we know is definitely the thing for you.

Our Rose Bay Apartment

I snapped a couple photos of our place in Rose Bay so everyone could get a better image of where the magic happens. We have the living room and the kitchen here.
Both are very homey. The kitchen might be a little small especially when there are four of us in there making dinner. The living room is nice though with a little game table and a dining table. So if you are wondering what the scene actually looks like when I am dominating at dice or when Taylor is cooking up some of his world famous chili, now you know. Alright I think that's it for now. We went to a rugby game last night for some more Australia culture. We will have a little synopsis of that up soon. Mmiss you all!

Jambaramba (jesse)

**Please note... this was blog was written on Wednesday night of this past week and therefore a lot has happened since then - I didn't have time to post it but I figured better late then never... I'll be updating you within a day or so on the current status here**

Well ladies and gentlemen… another eventful couple of days. We’ve still been having fun and learning new things all the time. Off of the top of my head right now – the bats here are crazy. Not that they come and attack us or anything along those lines, but they are massive. They are the size of baby bears. Well honestly, we thought they were ravens or crows or vultures or something like that until we looked more closely as tens and hundreds of them flew over our head. Taylor mentioned he’d like to have a closer look at those beasts… I said no thanks, unless my point of view is looking at Taylor getting attacked by one.

Enough about bats – how about balls? Like handballs!!! On Monday we played and it was great fun. There were 23 total people there (including lindy, T, and yours truly), 7 of whom were females (not including eMay… she was holding down the fort). Started with warmups, which were fantasticly entertaining. We bounced, shimmied, shammied, galloped, sprinted, through-the-legged, backpedaled, and all other sorts of stuff. Then we stretched… boooorrrrrring. Then came drills to warm up the goalies and those were a joke, but ended up being hilarious because nobody was doing the right thing and the goalies kept getting nailed by the balls and having to stop the drill. We had no idea what we were doing for basically the whole practice, but it was still fun. The scrimmage at the end of the practice was the highlight for sure, Brian hated it, however, because he got stuck in the pivot position where you do near-nothing if you are spectacular at the position and absolutely nothing if you are a rookie. Taylor and I got position at the wings opposite each other and went after it. Fun was had by all. We tried to go again tonight (Thursday), but only 3 people were there because the coach was at nationals and so nobody else showed up… bummer.

On another news front – Erin and I both have jobs now – wohooo! Lindberg is pretty much well on his way. Taylor, well he got here after us so he’s got some leeway. Alright, so description of jobs and job searching. Taylor wants to work for this sweet tap company called tap dogs so he’s putting together videos and pictures and whatnot to get it going. Linder is probably going to work for a pizza place starting this weekend where they give you a free pizza at the end of every shift you work… how great! Erin is working for a sweet café in Bondi Beach that plays great music and is apparently usually pretty busy. The people are nice and she just got back from her first real work shift. It went well. I start work tomorrow for a marketing firm and the campaign I’m working for is Fitness First, a multi-national fitness gym. My position title is lead generation for at least a month. As sort-of impressive as those titles kind of sound, it’s pretty much all crap. All I really do is walk around this town called Newtown where they are opening a Fitness First in 4 months, and get people to sign up by writing down their names/numbers/emails/etc. Then I give those names and numbers to fitness first and they call them up eventually and if we (the marketing firm) do a good job, then we keep getting paid cash money. It’s a job and good experience, whatever.

I’m trying to think of other things to write about, but I’ve got nothing right now. Thanks for reading – we’ll update with more interesting stuff soon. Queso en el banco.

Jesse “workin man” Meredith

Jobbing It Again?

I am Blindy, son of Flindy. We are the four who want to try a kangaroo burger. This is our story.

Sorry we haven't posted anything in a while. Not a whole lot has happened so far this week to write about. We have been spending most of our time perusing the interwebs for fun jobs and then running off for a few job interviews here and there. Taylor has been talking back and forth with some tap dancing studio about a job and is now trying to put together some mean footage from when he was the best tapper in Montana. I really want him to get it and then start teaching tap classes so I can take the class and become a tapping fiend like him. Jesse and Erin did a lot of marketing interviews that seemed borderline lame. A lot of the time the interviews sounded more like scavenger hunts and info sessions rather than real interviews. Thats what I don't like about sales/marketing, there is hardly ever any specifics in the job listing so you have no idea what to expect. But then Erin went down to Bondi beach yesterday to interview at a restaurant and nailed it. She worked the rest of the day and is working right now being the first of the four of us to be employed.

I have been emailing resumes around for some waiter positions as well as some payclerk/financial stuff which somehow I have become qualified for (without meaning to) in the last year while I was working for a marketing firm (consequently I have a lot of reservations with marketing firms but thats another story and far too dull for this blog). Not that I am qualified for a waiter position either, but how much training does it take to write down orders and bring people food all the while being smiley and charming? Anyways I got a few calls back from restaurants and this morning I went into the Elvis Pizza restaurant, where Elvis impersonators perform on Friday and Saturday night, for an “interview”. By “interview” I mean I came in and talked just enough for him to realize I was fluent in English and then he did most of the talking. I didn't give him a resume or anything. But the job sounds like a lot of fun and they are looking for someone to work 3 nights a week which works well for me. They are supposed to call me back sometime tomorrow to let me know if I got the job so I'm hoping that works out. Also the guy I talked to who owns the place doesn't really work there except for to perform as Elvis on the weekends which is awesome. At the end of the interview I said “thank you very much I'll talk to you soon” and he responded “you mean thank you very much” in his Elvis voice. So pretty much I don't care if this job pays nothing except for a pizza at the end of the night, I'm really excited to work there. It would also be fun to have the only real American accent in the place

Alright this just in, Jesse just got a job with a marketing company and he is working on a campaign for FitnessFirst. I don't really know the details so I will let Jesse write about it. Besides that we have been sitting around playing a lot of cards in our downtime. Jesse taught us Rummy which most of us had played before but forgot and I taught them Polish Poker and every once in a while we bet pushups on the games. I won a couple games of polish poker in a row this afternoon and then Jesse and I bet 50 pushups on a game of highcard. I drew a four and he got a ten. It seems that I always buckle under the pressure when pushups are on the line. We are going to start playing actual poker with pushups rather than money once we can find chips or something to represent pushups.

A couple other random side notes: the trip to the Powerhouse museum was a lot more fun than Erin made it out to be. We learned a lot about space and magnets and fireworks and rugby and the 50's and steam engines and green houses. They had a little room with the circular walls decorated like you were in a space shuttle and then the walls would rotate around you with the lights moving too in order to produce the illusion that you were floating without gravity. And there were a lot of other hands on displays that we enjoyed, except for when we got yelled at for trying to play with displays meant for children. But my favorite exhibit was at the very beginning of our wanderings. Turns out that towel shorts and towel clothing used to be a thing in Australia back in the day. I didn't get too much of a chance to read everything but take a look at this picture of full on towel clothing! I hope my towel shorts don't seem old fashioned out here.

Alright I think that's it for now. Thanks so much to everyone back home who has been emailing us and leaving comments on the blog. We love you guys so much and it makes our day when we sign in and find like 5 comments on our last entry (thank you preston). Finally we watched the Baby Shower episode of The Office a couple days ago and so here are my thoughts.

Baby Shower

Just a few thoughts on the show. Once again the cold open was pretty much my favorite part of the show. The butter on the watermelon bit worked so well. We have been watching a lot of Season 2 of the Office here on dvd and going from season 2 to season 5 you quickly notice how the show has gotten so much more plot driven with time. I was talking about that a little bit with Erin and she preferred the more plot driven episodes while I am a fan of the random string of episodes and events that used to happen in the older seasons. I understand that a show can't continue forever with random episodes and still retain its quality but I still like the randomness more which is why I generally enjoy the cold opens so much. Anyways back to the episode. I think all four of us here are pretty tired of Jan and want to see her go away so we loved Michael and Holly's moment at the end. I really didn't like the Dwight testing the stroller story at all. We saw him go off on his own and do similar things in the Cocktails episode where he inspects the CFO's house. That was funny then but I would have much rather seen Dwight in the office with the rest of the characters during this episode. Also Astird was my favorite.

eMay posting (bout time):

Hey hey everyone! This is me finally posting on the rescuers blog. I have had my accounts of our travels written and typed for over a week now, since the beginning, but the boys kept the whole blog thing a secret from me and just informed me of its existence. So if you were waiting for my “two cents” then you can blame them. Ok, Fine you got me… that’s not true. For those of you who know me well, computers and I have a love hate…we don’t really get… I have never really come to… I HATE computers. So there it is. Just like Jesse’s Aunt Sandy I don’t really know what bloging is but due to an insurmountable amount of family and mostly peer pressure, I am doing it : ) Ok departing from negative town, I really do want to keep you all updated on how it’s going down under because I love you all and want you to know I am safe, sound, and having a great time. Also because I love you all I hope this will give us a chance to keep in contact… So when you read this please say hi in whatever form of communication you can whenever you get the chance because I miss everyone already and am dying to know how life is moving along back home.

Down to the happenings. As you probably know already our opportunities to use the internet are slightly limited so I haven’t even read most of our blog. I have no idea what the boys have written so in an attempt to keep you from falling into a boredom induced coma I will begin on our second Friday in Sydney.

It was a b-e-a-utiful morning, I really would know this time because I actually had to wake up before 10 or11:00. I was up and at-em’ by 7 so I could go to an interview. (The interview went well. It was a sort of marketing place but it was more like fundraising for charities. Ok-ish. I am still awaiting their call so more on that if I work there.) So after that was all done we decided enough was enough… it was time to sight see. Brian was the first to find a really neat place to go in one of our “make your trip in Australia the very best trip it can be” type books. We were off to THE POWERHOUSE a huge interactive museum all about the history of invention. It turns out we are all a bunch of nerds and were super psyched to go. Well we got there and…. It was SO lame. It was not large and if you call pressing a little button and listening to someone talk at you interactive… then it was definitely that. At one point there was an “interactive” video thingy that taught you things about chocolate and then dropped some from a tube for you to eat. After listening to five minutes of stuff I have already forgotten it gave me ONE teeny tiny mini sized chocolate chip. Nice. Anyway, there are always positives. We did get to see some really sweet highlight clips from the history of rugby (Dad you woulda loved it, you and your highlights). Also I learned:

-The cool shell shaped roofing from the Sydney Opera House was all designed from one dome. So if you took all the pieces down they would fit together like a puzzle to make a dome. It’s sweet.

-86% of the world’s resources are used by only 20% of the world’s population. I am contributing far too much to that large number. I take shorter showers now.

- Rugby players have horrendous penmanship.

… and that’s about it. At least they had comfy carpeting. So as you can tell it was not quite as educational as we had anticipated but we got out there and saw something new, so for that I am proud.

Saturday was nice. All four of us had a pleasant stroll to Bondi Beach and spent a good part of the day laying in the sun and playing in the waves. It really is awesome to live so close to so many amazing beaches. Location, location location.

It is now Sunday afternoon and we are all kinda lounging around relaxing before a week full of interviews.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading, I hope it was semi interesting, and I’ll hopeful be posting again soon. Please let me know how things are going at home and do tell everyone you think might be interested about the blog... I haven't told too many people about it yet, shocking I know... but really please do : )

Miss you and hope you guys are all doing swimmingly.

-Erin

Another day another blogger

First off – this is Jesse – so those of you out there who don’t like to scroll to the bottom before reading don’t have to. I imagine in a couple of weeks our dedicated followers will be able to tell just from the tone of voice who is writing. And if not, shake it off… there’s always next week.

To start things off I’d just like to say not having unlimited internet in my place of residence is really something I am having a lot of trouble getting used to. I can’t believe places exist without unlimited internet. The thing about us getting internet is… even if we decide to go the expensive route and get pre-paid broadband (about the only option we have since we’ll only be in Sydney for at most 6 months), we still have a limit to how much stuff we can look at on the internet. I mean come on, what century is this? I know, I know, I’m just a spoiled kid and I should be happy I don’t have to walk up a hill both ways to and from school in 6 feet of snow… but I can wish.

Anyway – that’s about the only thing I think I have to complain about right now. Things have been pretty great here. Linder and I woke up early the other day and threw around a Frisbee at a nearby park and that was fun. It is right over by the ferry stop and lots of businessey looking people end up walking right through the grass where we were playing because it is the fastest way on the ferry. I was so tempted so many times just to either bonk then with the Frisbee on their hurried rush across the field or try and tempt them to drop their suitcase in a mad-dash for a long toss. Instead I fulfilled my Frisbee desires by giving Brian impossibly long leads on his runs and watching sprint helplessly after the whizzing disc. We were both plum tuckered by the end and headed back to the flat for some much needed ab work. It is now Sunday night and I am STILL sore. That tells you two things… first – we didn’t mess around when doing our ab workout, and second – I am ridiculously out of shape. Getting back in shape should be fun, however, as everyone in the house seems generally excited about the prospect of working out. While we may not always act on that notion, in theory we are all very active people. I just installed the doorway pull-up bar in the bathroom door jam so we’ll get that going here shortly. And also one of the first nights here we didn’t want to bet money or anything else so we decided to bet pushups on a game. Taylor won so he didn’t have to do any pushups… I got 2nd so I had to do 250 over the next 24 hours and BLindy came in last, so he had to do 500 in 24 hours. Erin didn’t participate as she was “working on her resume”.

All of this training isn’t just for looks people – it serves a very important purpose. We’ve got to work hard to we can solidify our positions on one of the club handball teams around the area here. Tomorrow (Monday) night we will be going to an open gym of sorts for team handball. I am so excited. I’d say I’m going to dream about it, but honestly I don’t even know enough about the game to dream about it. The extent of my knowledge on the sport comes from watching various youtube videos on team handball and a little bit of the Olympic highlights. Taylor emailed the club director and even though it’s technically the offseason, he’s psyched to have some athletes come by and mess around. I’m psyched.

In other news… Yes Dad, I do have an interview tomorrow. I failed to mention that last time because as I was uploading my previous entry, the lady was calling me to get me in there for an interview. Anyway, it’s with this place called Zest Marketing, sounds kind of lame and although the work might end up being corny, it’d still probably be a great thing for my resume in the long-term and who knows? Maybe I’d like it. Also it pays pretty well. BUT – I do have to get the job first so I’m waking up early in the morning to take a shower and maybe even wash my hair, throw on some nice clothes, whiten those teeth and get ready to flash my “you need me working for you” smile. That reminds me, I gotta shave tomorrow morning. It’s getting pretty ridiculous. Anyone that knows me well would probably be proud of how often I have to shave these days. I think I shave more than twice a week now. I wouldn’t believe me either if I were you… but it’s true.

Erin and I were planning on going to church today but failed to check the internet on Friday about how to get to there (location, busses/trains to take, time, etc.) and since we can’t get internet unless go into the city, we couldn’t check after Friday. It’s a priority for next week, however, and I will be checking times, dates, and all other pertinent information as soon as my interview is over tomorrow. I taught everyone how to play rummy tonight and Erin won. We were going to play poker, but we don’t have poker chips or enough change and we thought it might get messy playing with peanuts – maybe next time. On the ‘to do list’ is for us to buy or locate a book of card games so we can all learn to play a ton of games.

I think that’s all I’ve got right about now so I’ll cut it off here before I babble on too long and lose everyone’s interest. I’ll try to start taking more pictures and maybe some videos so that everyone can see and experience what we do on a daily basis. That’s it for now. Peace from the EAST (Eastern Australia Standard Time – I just made that up). Love you guys!

- Jesse “the handballin’ machine” Meredith

Jesse's two cents

Well here we go for another round of Bloggy McBloggertons… Things here have been going swimmingly. We went to the beach right near our flat the other day and had a nice little swim. Maybe more of a wading-session because it’s only a couple feet deep but it was still a great time. Lindberg brought a little ball to play catch with and we had a grand ole time skipping it across the water and chasing it down. There was nobody on the beach except for the occasional person walking their dog and although there are no waves (it is the bay), it still rules. I love being able to walk to the beach.



Today we ran to the beach, well the other beach, the one that isn’t 200 feet from our flat. After a long day of job-searching and e-mailing, Erin, Brian and I all decided to see how a run to Bondi Beach would work out. Taylor was still downtown somewhere doing something – not exactly sure what because he’s always disappearing to go on the internet for a decade or so – so it was just the three of us. It’s about 1 ½ - 2 miles from our house to Bondi Beach so we thought a round-trip run should do it. Nice little run on some back streets to the beach and then at the beach we did a little sprint workout in the sand. There were some dudes playing volleyball a little ways down so we walked on over to get the scoop. The scoop is that normally they play on the next beach down but there are all sorts of sand sculptures and other artsy fartsy things happening, so they’re playing on this beach for the next couple weeks. We’re gunna check it out probably on sat/sun because that’s when they usually play. They were pretty decent players so it’s probably legit. Also maybe we’ll make friends, because none of us really have any friends yet… which is why we need to start working.



That is seriously one of the only reasons I want to start working is so it’s easier to make friends. That and it’d be nice to make some money, but mostly the friends part. We’re growing into a nice little family here, however – we always end up eating at the same time and sitting around the dinner table watching ‘the office’ or something, it’s really quite cute. Oh and we’re definitely going to go out to a sweet place tomorrow night and try to make some friends there. Taylor’s buddy hooked him up with another friend’s e-mail who sent us a list of a dozen places to go on all different nights of the week, so hopefully we can meet somebody there.

Erin’s got an interview with some sort of marketing or sales place tomorrow morning at 9, so that’s an exciting step in the right direction for all of us. She doesn’t really want to work there but she’s still spent hours and hours worrying about what she’s going to wear because she’s supposed to look business casual and she didn’t bring the right clothes. I bet she nails it.

Food is grrrRRRR-eat here. A short bus ride away from us in edgecliff (we live at 597 new south head road in rose bay, NSW, 2029 for those of you google map savvy individuals who want to check it out on the satellite – I wasn’t kidding before, we live on the bay) is a kind of mini-mall type place with several supermarkets and fruit/veggie markets. Our landlord told us to go to this one place there in two weeks when mangoes are in season because “they have the best F***ing mangoes in the whole, entire world.” I don’t think any of us even know if we like mangoes, but if we don’t like these, I guess we won’t like any. Anyway – food for the most part is pretty reasonably priced here. There are things here that are much more expensive than at home [peanut butter here you get a tiny little 200ml jar for the price of a Costco sized barrel at home, crappy cereal for $6 a box, or the cheapest case of beer here is like $20 or more] and things that are much cheaper here [amazingly delicious avocados for $1.50 AUD, 1 kilo of vanilla yogurt for $3.50 AUD, spam… but that’s probably cheap everywhere]. And condiments are insanity here… they don’t use ketchup but instead ‘tomato sauce’, which is sort of like runny pasta sauce, or the mayo here is also extra runny, and apparently nobody uses mustard, and on your big mac at McDonalds you can get spiced avocado. But the good thing is this one supermarket has all the American condiments so we bought Heinz mustard and ketchup and it was pretty reasonably priced too.

We took the ferry into the city today and it was not only fun, but also gorgeous and entertaining at the same time. We live 5-7 mins (walking) from the ferry and it only takes 10 mins to get downtown if you get on the right one. If you get on the wrong one it can take up to 25 mins because it makes all sorts of stops at random harbors and/or bays, but I’m sure if you weren’t in a hurry that’d be a nice. Anyway we saw the opera house for the first time from up close and it is neat-o. Check the pics. Really great… really, really great.



I guess that’s about all I’m going to write about now, because this ended up being pretty ridiculously long. I’d bet only my relatives have made it to the end because they love me, and maybe skinner – what else have you got to do besides read our blogs anyway?

I love you all and miss you and will keep you updated as much as possible.

- Jesse “grilled cheese and avocado with tomato soup is his new favorite lunch” Meredith

TGIF

This is BLindy-
It's finally Friday and us four are really excited for a fun weekend. Not that we have been working at jobs all week, but running around with errands trying to find jobs and internet and everything else has been a lot of work. Erin went on a couple interviews today and Jesse has an interview on Monday. I am going to stop worrying about a job til Monday I think and concern myself with having fun this weekend. It is 1130am on Friday the 17th and after a couple hour session on the lifegiver (the internet, we have been slowly dying without the internet at our apartment) we are headed over to the Powerhouse Museam at Darling Point. Apparently its one of the largest science museums in the Southern Hemisphere so we should have a good time. If it gets boring there is an imax right next door though that is a little more expensive. Then this evening we will hopefully find somewhere fun to go out. And for Saturday a friend of a friend's friend is having a bday party that we were told to go to so that sounds thoroughly random that we might have to check it out.

And here are some more pics!


Here is Taylor at the helping people. Right this moment I am sitting where T was sitting in this pic and T is sitting in the seat from which i snapped this masterpiece. Pretty crazy huh?


Here are our super cool pink phones. Each of us owns one of these monsters of the telecommunications universe.


Here is one of my favorite pictures not because of its outright beauty but because this is the view from the front step of our apartment. People have been asking how close we are to the bay in Rose Bay. Taylor and I estimate that from our front door we could probably be in the water in 15seconds (if we don't get hit by a car trying to run across the street and are ok with jumping into the 2ft (half a meter) of water from the sidewalk which is 10ft (10kg, we are still trying to adjust to metric out here so it helps to convert numbers whenever we can as a mental exercise) higher than the water. So we are pretty close to the water.


And here is the opera house from the ferry we take into town from Rose Bay.

Alright I think thats it for now. Everyone send emails to let me know how things are back home. Also happy bday to Chris and Amanda! My little brother and sister are 19 on the 17th of October which is right now!

RSS Feed and a Picture

Hello everyone this is Brian (cuz some people are too lazy to look to the bottom of the post to see who wrote it),
Thank you to everyone who is now a follower of the blog or left a comment or even checked out our site so far. We are sooooo excited that you all are soooo excited about what we are doing out here. We will continue to do our best to have as many adventures as possible for your reading pleasure.

The four of us are hanging out at the Travelers Contact Point (the helping people is what we call this place). The Helping People and the library are the two places we have found where we get reliable wireless for free so we end up finding our way here or to the library just about everyday. Right now we are doing on our computers just about everything the interwebs are capable of. I am blogging and downloading OpenOffice so I can use my excel spreadsheets again. I have really been lost without my vlookups. Taylor is learning to scubadive and creating a resume, Jesse is booking dinner and a show for the four of us (two course meal and a Queen tribute band is something we can't pass up), Erin is sending off a request for an absentee ballot (even though everyone has been telling us not to vote). And we are all looking for jobs as well.

I added a link at the side of the page to subscribe to an RSS feed. For those of you less familiar with the internets, an RSS feed will send you notifications of your choice (email or otherwise) whenever anything is posted to this site. If anyone has any questions on how to get this to work or how any other parts of this blog (or any blog) works, let us know and we will try and help as best we can.

A number of you have been clamouring (Sydney is teaching us to put U's in the middle of everyuthing) for some pictures on the site. Erin is working super hard to get some great pictures of everyhting you want to see but until she finishes her masterpiece post I will put up a couple pics.

First I took a picture from the window of our hostel room near Kings Cross. It was a pretty good location for exploring.

And here is Erin and Jesse.

Random old building.

So enjoy the pics and let me know if you have any questions about how to read this blog. I gotta go find a job and do my part to help the dodgers come back against the phillies from a billion miles away.

Daily Musings

Monday 13/10/08

Monday was by far the most relaxed day of the trip so far. We slept in, though we all got up more or less on our own by 9. Between the 4 of us and the places we have been in the last couple weeks, I think we have about 7 different timezones fighting one another for control. By 10:30 we were out on our way into the city to stop by the Helping People and run a few errands.

Living in the suburbs of LA most all my life, a functioning bus and train system is still very incredible to me. Unfortunately, service to Rose Bay has not been phenomenal. According to the schedules, buses stop in front of our house every 15 minutes or less. Since moving into our apartment yesterday, I would approximate our average wait time at the bus stop at 18 minutes or so. Somehow we barely miss a bus when we get out there because it is possibly running early, and then we sit and wait for the next one which is always running late. Every Time. Tomorrow we are experimenting with the ferry and expect better results.

I don't want to give the impression that this frustration was a theme for our day. There have been times when it has been tough acclimating to city life, but overall Monday was a lot of fun. After errands and a quick lunch we were back to Rose Bay by 3. Then it was time to sample the fabled Rose Bay beach. The walk down by the bay to the beach was pleasant and by pleasant I mean took us 2 minutes. The beach is quiet and out of the way. It is small but we had it to ourselves. The sun and the sand were great and the water was not cold at all. Unfortunately that is mostly because the water is not too deep either. I walked out into the bay from the beach a couple hundred feet without the water reaching my waist. So I will have to find somewhere else to get my swimming in. Still though, it was a lot of fun to play in the water. We tossed a ball around in the water trying to skip it off the surface making it harder for the other person to catch. We enjoyed this game immensely. Overall, I hope to spend a lot of time down at the beach. Even if I go down there to just read or sit, I am excited to frequent our own personal beach quite often.

After a quick shower around 6, we were back running errands busing it back up to Edgecliff to buy some serious groceries. Unlike the night before, we stocked up and each purchased food to last us a few days. It was really nice to make a sophisticated meal (did not include take away (which is how they say 'take out' down here), frozen pizza, or hamburgers) for the first time in Sydney. Jerin had some chicken pasta and sweet potatoes that looked excellent while Taylor and I (maybe Braylor) concocted an excellent chili from baked beans, beef, onions, and mushrooms. It was a good first run at perfecting a chili recipe and we have a lot of creative ideas on how to improve upon it for next time. Don't worry we'll keep you updated as further trials occur.

Finally the grand finale of the day was when the Rescuers (or maybe the Fabulous 4 or some other more ingenious name for this most intrepid quartet) viewed the new Office "Business Ethics". We laughed, we cried, and it was the first of many times the four of us sat down to watch our favorite show. Huddled around Taylor's laptop with Jesse's mini speakers providing a slight improvement over the mac's onboard supply with the four of us packed onto one couch in the dark in the living room, I want everyone to understand that this trip is no walk in the park. We are really roughing it out here. So all in all, it was a good day. Also, Taylor and I conversed briefly with a random cute girl on the bus today. I enjoyed it. Step in the right direction. More to come tomorrow hopefully.

Business Ethics

Overall I felt the episode was ok. I think part of it was watching the show on a laptop with lower sound and picture quality than what I have become accustomed to. We didn't see Pam at all which I thought was terrible. There were excellent moments (there always are) but overall I didn't feel it was as nonstop as the last couple episodes (the premiere of this season and the finale of last season). The whole story line with Meredith sleeping with some guy felt a little forced and didn't really resonate with me (whatever that means). Meredith is one of my least favorite characters so maybe that is why I didn't really appreciate the episode too much. Jim's surveillance of Dwight was amazing though. How can you not get excited when Dumbledore Calrissian begins his epic quest to Mordor? Anyways, I think I want to watch the episode again before I really decide how I felt.

My Journey

It took me 46 hours door-to-door to get from Kissick's house to the hostel in Sydney. I flew 15 hours to Gaungzhou, China, waited there for 15 hours, and then flew another 10 hours to Sydney. My plan was to leave the airport and go walk around Gaungzhou for the day, but when I got to customs, they wouldn't let me leave because I had no boarding pass to Sydney and no Chinese Visa. A woman took my passport and told me, "You there wait." Everyone left customs and I stood there for half an hour... alone. I was the only person around. I was sure they had stolen my passport and I was going to have to bribe the police to get it back. Finally, they came back and two people escorted me to my gate and told me repeatedly I was not allowed to leave. I slept as much as I could, but was starving. I went to a restaurant and ordered some food off a menu that made no sense because the English was so broken. Two eggs, two pieces of ham, a coffee, an orange juice and a water cost me $40 American. I thought China was supposed to be cheap. I starved myself all day and then an hour before my flight I couldn't take it anymore and bought three chicken wings for $7. I couldn't wait to leave the airport, but my flight got delayed an hour. When I finally got to Sydney I had to wait an hour for the shuttle. It was worth it though because after I ate and showered at the hostel, Jesse, Lindberg and Erin showed up and we got down to business.

Let's get it started

Monday October 13^th… 2008 – 9:30pm

Well this is the first time I finally decided to sit down and write about what has been going on in our trip so far. It’s been so hectic doing this and that, even though we’re out here in the land where it feels like you should be doing nothing but chilling out – we’ve been putting tons of pressure on ourselves to try and get stuff done. And even if I do say so myself – we’ve done a pretty darn good job. It may not seem like a lot – getting set up to live, but it has been a ton of stuff. And we’re not quite done yet…

First we had to figure out what the heck we were doing and what we had to do when we got off the plane, because we had no idea, and no phone, and no internet, and no computer because we watched movies on the plane and had no way to charge our batteries. Long story short – we were screwed, but not panicked. After figuring out how to get some access to free internet were in business, and business was good. We got a free ride to a hostel because we booked two nights and it luckily ended up being in a great location. Then we found the “helping people”, who hook us up with internet and other goodies.

After getting a permanent mail address, filing for a tax file number, searching for places to live, picking out the best and cheapest phone plans, buying awesome pink phones because they were $10 cheaper than the black ones, taking a two hour nap, and walking about a thousand miles… we were all ready for a drink or two. Our hostel hooked us up with a free ticket to this place called the Gaff where all you have to do is buy a drink and then you get a free, albeit semi-crappy, dinner.

Over the next couple days we explored the area and tried to get leads on houses/apartments/etc. and after actually seeing just one we were beginning to lose heart. Then we found an awesome one and had to hustle to make it there because it was so last minute. The guy, steve, was pretty much a jerk to us and we thought we had no chance on the place until he called me back later letting me know it was “our lucky day.” Honestly it probably was too – the place is sweet. The jerk steve, now our landlord, set us up and we moved in the next day (yesterday?).

After dragging hundreds of pounds on public busses to our apartment and getting everything dumped off, it was off to Kmart to get things going for the flat. Pots, pans, silverwear, and anything else you can think of we bought. The cheapest stuff you could imagine. A set of fine dinner plates, mugs, bowls, side plates (16 pieces total) for only $9.59 australian (apprx $6.50 USD at the time). Not too shabby. Today we went to the grocery store and stocked up on food and finally figured out how to work our stove.

Oh I forgot to mention the boxed wine the other night. We were feeling especially cheap because we were concerned with how much money everything was costing (when the dollar menu at McDonalds all of the sudden costs 2.29 you get scared). So we decided to buy the cheapest thing in liquorLand – boxed wine. I think it was about 10 bucks for 4.4 Liters of the lowest quality wine on the planet [extra 10% free!!]. We sipped on some delicious boxed wine whilst playing liar’s dice, only the classiest for the rescuers down under. Oh and taylor was here by this time and he and Lindy talked to these german folks who moderately spoke English. The reason I bring this up is they are getting paid 17-18 bucks an hour promoting something, and they barely speak English. So we’re confident we’ll be able to get jobs. Also the german dude had a girly friend, so we’re also confident Brian and Taylor can make it happen eventually… hopefully.

Funny little things have been happening that make us so excited we’re here, all the time. Last night while we were watching Casino Royale out-of-nowhere fireworks start going off right outside our flat. Did I mention we live on the bay. Our house is in the bay – floating. Ok not really, but it’s really close. So the fireworks are going off in a barge mere meters from our flat. I love meters, almost nearly as much as I love Kilograms. Kilograms are the greatest things in the world. It’s weird buying 3L of milk instead of the full gallon… however.

Alright that’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll write more frequently once we get better internet situations so the blog can make more sense. One of us will try to upload something at least every couple of days, if not every day. Erin is in charge of pictures so if there aren’t any good ones – blame her.

Jesse “psyched to be a rescuer” Meredith