The shopping antidote for homesickness

I need to start exploring further afield but one of my favorite places is Indooropilly Shopping Centre. To imagine Indooropilly you need to think Westfield Queensgate or Riccarton on steriods. Jon refuses to admit it but it's about three times the size! I think one of the reasons he disagrees, is the same reason I like it - we might be in Brisbane but there is so much that is familiar here. Pumpkin Patch, Portmans, Esprit, Just Jeans, Dymocks, Kikki K. - the list goes on. Yes there are three massive floors of Myers instead of Farmers, and there is Target and KMart rather than the Warehouse - but fundamentally it feels so similar that the "I'm totally new and lost" feeling fades away to "hey I know how this place works" The first time I walked in and saw the recognisable line up something unwound in me and I began to relax. The task of acclimatising to a new city and a new country suddenly seemed manageable.

Central city shopping areas tend to have their own character, and while I enjoy shopping there they are not always that effective for the typical parental/home management tasks. Today I needed a whole selection of useful things e.g. a couple of wicker baskets, a circuit board, some document boxes - a shopping centre with a substantial car park just is so much easier for that stuff.

Nick finds it extraordinary that he can walk into one of his favorite menswear shops and it is "exactly like it is at home"- I find it a relief! I also realised today that I could figure out the shops new to me by relating their pricing to the shops I know e.g. which is high end women's clothing and which is on the lower end of the scale. So while one could be concerned about the homogenisation of trans-tasman shopping and the economic impact the major Australian brands have on New Zealand ones (interestingly enough, here they are getting really worried about some of the big American brands encroaching) as an antidote for Kiwi homesickness ...it has unexpected dividends.

How about an N plate?

Standing at the Post Office recently I noticed the three different learner plates you use in Queensland to go the different licensing stages. It has regularly occurred to me while driving in a new car, a new city, or even with a very new driver that it would be useful if there was a plate that indicated to the world at large that this person might not be totally smooth and sure.

The other day as I navigated my way through central Brisbane, I decided maybe N for new would be an option. It wasn't that I was driving badly but that I occasionally slowed down while I looked for a street sign, or got caught out by lane markings. I know I will manage that particular trip fine next time - because now I know that rather than a left exit to go over the road to get to the new bridge, its a right exit. This means I wont have to get across three lanes of traffic to get where I'm supposed to be. I also know that the new bridge exits before the older bridge (in my head they were the other way around). Likewise I now know when driving to the really big shopping centre on the other side of the river that there are two lanes that go straight ahead and two lanes that veer right - so next time I'll be in the left lane that veers right rather than the right lane that goes straight ahead.

Several people suggested that we get a GPS to help us find our way around. Nick has duly done this and relies on it. After it tried taking me a VERY long way round to get Jon's school uniform on Friday I have taken to using Google Maps on my iphone to give me a visual start and then let the GPS re-calculate the route once I am well started. I also think it tends to stop you paying attention to the landmarks etc as you are listening to it rather than thinking about where you are. The GPS has some other significant failings as well - it navigated us into a tunnel and lost the signal so couldn't tell us to take the first tunnel exit (it was several km long) and worst of all - why cant someone invent one that responds to voice. It would make so much more sense if you could simply say an address and it calculated the route. Or you could say "roadworks" and it would find an alternate route.

In the meantime - I grabbed a copy of the Queensland road code so we could double check all the things we thought we knew and make sense of some strange signs. That way when we apply for a Queensland drivers license in the next couple of weeks it will feel honest :)

Loose Change

It's not the first time it has crossed my mind that familiarity with a country's coinage (or lack of it) is a dead give away about "at home" you are. As soon as you look attentively at the change in your hand/purse the person you are paying knows - this person isn't from around here.

There is a subtle difference between "the have I got enough in change" check and the "how much are all these coins worth" look. The whole of New Zealand went through it when the coins were changed. It's more than what they look like - it's the weight of them in your hand or pocket and the shape and feel.

Apart from the fact the Australian coins are heavy after several years of light coins, that the $2 is smaller than the $1, and they still have a five cent coin - I think I'll know I'm properly integrating when I can put my hand in my jeans pocket and have a good estimate of the value of what I'm going to pull out before I even see it. It's already surprisingly close.

Things I miss about my kitchen

I've just decided that I'm going to try and get into posting the small random moments about our big move rather than try and write major significant posts. A bit like my friends who are doing a photo a day.

Anyway what's kind of on top for me today are all the things that I miss about my kitchen. For an apartment the kitchen is awesome but despite that:

1. No waste disposal - I remember missing that in the apartment in Wellington as well but I'd have thought being so new this apartment would have a waste disposal in the second sink
2. Which leads to - no compost heap - most of our food scraps went on the compost heap anyway (before anyone gets into me about the environmental friendliness of waste disposers) Jon and I are muttering about maybe a worm farm.
3. The light switch - there are two but they are on the outside of dividing walls - i.e. you have to go out of the kitchen to turn them on. Which is irritating around five at night when it suddenly gets dark and you are used to just being able to put your hand out to turn on the switch. Especially as about exactly where you'd expect the switch to be, there is a phone socket.
4. The rangehood/ extractor pulls out - at about eye level - over the stove top. It must be designed for a five foot zero cook!
5. I miss my big stock pot, frying pan and decent knives which are fortunately all coming by sea freight in about four weeks
6. The cutlery drawer is in the wrong place although I think that is just habit - I have to go behind left when I am getting the teaspoon for my coffee instead of behind right. But after seven years of doing it one way several times a day..
7. And of course the very worst - I'm hanging out for my coffee machine and grinder! (Also currently at sea or languishing at Brisbane customs)

On the plus side - the dishwasher is a dishdrawer just like at home, which I think I would have missed. The oven and gas cooktop are awesome (seeing I had to leave my new oven behind) and it takes very little cleaning. Plus in the absolute absence of cookbooks I discovered Epicurious on my iphone which is brilliant having provided us with two dinner recipes and a yummy brownie recipe already. And the wonder kitchen shop three doors down has not only provided me with my favorite type of vegetable peeler but also stocks the Babushka measuring cups I was lusting over at Wanda Harland's before I left. So I'm sure I'll survive the minor irritations for now.

The fabric of a country

Over the last couple of days - since Anzac Day really, I've been thinking about what I'll miss about New Zealand when we move to Brisbane. In many respects while we were visiting a couple of weeks back I was struck by the similarities rather than the differences. Yes there were all those Australian accents, and my wallet kept getting weighed down by all that heavy coinage - but it all seemed pretty manageable. I've moved regions in New Zealand before and I was beginning to think it wasn't going to be much more of an adaptation than that.

Then on Anzac Day during the Dawn Parade when the Army speaker started his address in Te Reo Maori, I began to think of the day to day inclusions that I take for granted. Hearing and using Te Reo (however infrequently and badly) is one of them, and that God Defend New Zealand is the New Zealand national anthem. That I could as easily have been at a war memorial on Sunday which carried the name of one of my great, great uncles.

I know that the importance I place on cultural inclusion and the awareness of cultural equity is not universal in this country, but as I watched the boys leaving the college Jon would have gone to while I stopped at the crossing' I was struck by their incredible diversity of skin colours and ethnicity as they (at least in that moment) were laughing and joking together at the end of the day. And it troubles me that not one of the schools we could enrol him in, in Brisbane, had an indigineous role percentage of more than 4%.

And what worries me more - and why I am writing about it to remind me - is that after a few months I wont even notice the absence.

Christmas wanderings

After catching up with everyone at the Web Services morning tea (including doing a tweet for their Christmas tree) Jon and I headed over to check out the Christmas Shop at Kirkcaldies. We weren't that inspired by the Christmas Shop itself but - as ever- the Kirk windows were wonderful. We particularly loved this one which featured the bears knitting and weaving!

Catching up with Advent

I've found it ironic this year that I haven't been nearly as onto Advent and getting ready for Christmas as before - despite (in theory) having more time. I think part of it is not being in the office environment and general chat about counting down the days.
Today I took a break and made a conscious choice to do the three things that have been "nagging" at me. I made the Advent Wreath, put together Jon's new Playmobil Calendar (the last year for this I think) and got out the stack of Christmas books.

A new tradition I started when Jon was a baby, was to get one or two Christmas themed picture books each year (often from Amazon at the start). They only come out at Advent and are put away at Epiphany. When he was little we read him a couple each night - now he reads them to himself, although it is not unknown for him to bring one out to be read to him. As the tradition progressed, for a time I looked for books that reflected our summer Christmas as I would buy two copies and include one with our December 98 birthday buddy gift exchange.

It's a pretty substantial collection after 10 years. The first book in the collection was given to me when I was about 8 and is Dick Bruna's The Christmas Book, with his distinctively simple illustrations. Then there is Tomi de Paola's Clown of God which David got for his first Christmas from extended family followed by Why a Donkey was Chosen another year. I bought a copy of Lucy and Tom's Christmas by Shirley Hughes as it reminded us of our only winter Christmas in the UK.

That was the start - and now the collection includes what I would call the "heritage" stories, new editions of The Littlest Angel and The Night Before Christmas,which I remember from my childhood. There are the NZ books like Hattie's Christmas Gift, The Christmas Caravan, Santa's Kiwi Holiday and The Boxing Day Test. There are the beautiful picture book re-telling of the Christmas story - the grumpy cat in Michael Foreman's Cat in the Manger, the gathering animals in Room for a Little One, Joyce Dunbar's Follow the Star - and there are many more - children anxious about aspects of Christmas pageants, stories about Saint Nicholas, a fabulously illustrated story call Wensulas about the carol, and many more.

This year I've just bought a copy of Grandma's Kiwi Holiday - were Grandma saves the day when Santa falls ill on Christmas Eve, and Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. And I've just remembered it must be about time to find our copy of Jostien Garder's A Christmas Miracle which has a chapter for every day of December to match the pictures of an advent calendar and which I read aloud each night to Toby when he was about Jonathan's age now.