Category Archives: Interesting! (Well, for me)

We had a FANTASTIC day on Saturday.

Absolutely brilliant.

I woke up and went through to our gym (OK, the extra bedroom we dont know what to do with, so we put the exercise bike in it and got a weights bench, so its now a gym 🙂 ). Did a good upper body workout – I am increasing my bench press again to a far less embarrassing weight 🙂 – and then 20 minute interval training on the exercise bike. ROAR!

After a nice long shower, we decided to go into Perth to get some breakfast. I fancied taking Ian to Pranz – a cafe in west perth just up the road from my work. They do amazing paninis. I have only had the veggie ones, because they are fab, but the rest also look good. Cept west perth appears to be shut at the weekend. So, we took a drive to east perth to see what it had to offer. And apparently, east perth has only marginally more than west perth at the weekend! Ah well, we skipped breakfast and went straight for lunch. So, we went for sushi! There are two great sushi bars with conveyor belts here, and from a conveyor belt is the very best way to eat sushi.

Once sushi-sated, we took a wander along Hay St and stopped off for ice-cream. Yay! It was oh so very tasty. Hay St was full of people, vibrant, sunny, shops were open, buskers were performing. Goths were gathering on steps in front of buildings. It was all good.

The sky was beautiful and clear, it was around 30C. And I got the aforementioned sunburn. We had the roof down on the car, it was just great.

Later on that night, after dinner, we went back out for a run in the car – we are considering East Perth to stay in once the lease is up on this place and wanted to see it at night. So, once again through East Perth, it was so warm we put the roof down again 🙂 Happy to report that East Perth is quiet at night, while being in walking distance of a couple of pubs and restaurants.

Well, we have had a fantastic weekend!
Its been really sunny for a whole week now, with temperatures at least 22C each day, and getting to around 27C this weekend. The nights are still a little chilly, but nothing we (and 20 minutes with the oil heater) cant cope with.

We got word on Friday that our stuff had cleared quarantine – Ians boots needed “decontaminated” because of his smelly feet, but they will clean them up and we can collect them in a week or so – but everything else is arranged to be delivered here on Tuesday. I cannot stress the relief that will be! We have coped OK, but we have bare minimum to live with at the moment – 4 plates, forks, knives, cups, garden chairs and the cheapest crappest sofa ikea provides. We are still mostly living in the computer room. But when our stuff arrives we will finally spread out and actually use this place!

So, on Saturday morning we went out shopping and got Ian a new phone – we have been looking for a few weeks, since his stopped working properly and refused to acknowledge the SIM card (we have been using it as an alarm clock since.) The battery on mine cant last overnight, so we both need new phones. On Saturday we got one for Ian, and I had near enough a panic attack – the phone cost $100 (£50) more in the shop than it did online, but the online shops looked particularly dodgy. Apparently I am still not quite over the “dont spend a single penny more than you have to, they might take the house” from the company going under. Looks like it will take more time to get over all that …

Ian is happy though, he loves his new toy 🙂 I will get one soon too. When my heart rate recovers.

We then came back and spent the afternoon in the garden – I did some sun bathing and have ended up a little sunburned on my back. Ian pottered about and cleaned the pool. Then we tried out the pool. Oh my god but it is still cold, it takes a long time to warm up a puddle of water that big 😉 We still went in though … but I think we could have caught hypothermia if we had stayed in much longer. Billy Connelly and his “In you go, you big jessy” came to mind 😉

We are not that close to anything particularly here – by car is fine, but walking we are a wee bit out of range of most things. But, there is a Botanical Garden about 15 minutes walk, we still havent seen the garden (and the mini golf) yet, but they have a cafe, which on a Friday and Saturday does pizzas. So, we took a walk down there and had tasty pizza and beer and a wander back up. It was fantastic, and we will definately be doing that again.

Walked up the road, grabbed another drink, and sat in the hot tub for half an hour.

What a brilliant Saturday!

Today, we cleared up as they will need space to put our stuff, then, for lunch went to the movies! We had booked seats at the “Gold Class” showing of Wanted. What a refined way to see a movie… private lounge to wait in, you turn up a bit early for the film, peruse the menu, go up and order, and tell them when you want it to arrive. When you go in, you get a giant recliner (electrically operated) and a table for the food and drink to go on. Waiters then bring the food and drinks you ordered, when you asked for! So, we got some tasty starters a glass of wine and a beer about 20 minutes in, and then half an hour after that another set of drinks, and a pizza for us to share. It was fab!

I am so looking forward to the wii getting here!

Anyone bored with their wii fit that they wanna send over? I cant get it for love nor money in the UK atm …..

One of the things we had to think about coming out here was the cost of living – the received wisdom is that it’s cheaper to live, that the standard of living is higher. To be honest, the closer we got to flying out, the more concerned we were getting that this really wasn’t the case..

So, here we are two months after arriving – we are paying bills and just getting on with normal life rather than the really unusual ‘is this still a holiday’ feeling. How has it panned out? The exchange rate is currently 2.05 AUD to 1 GBP, so basically, take the prices I am mentioning here and divide them by two, you are pretty much on the money.

Well, there’s the obvious ones – Petrol is cheap cheap. We pay between 1.40 and 1.50 for a litre of fuel, which is insanely low – although, you wouldn’t think so to hear the local press. They are moaning about this as if it was the end of the world. Public transport is not too bad. I spend 3.83 each way on the train each morning: which gets me about the same distance as going from Wishaw to Glasgow Central.

Electricity is about $126 a month – and as you know, we are not light users, what with the computers. We don’t have a gas bill yet, so we have yet to see what the Hot Tub costs to run!

Eating out is expensive – and very, very poor. We have had two hugely dissappointing chinese meals, both with gristley meat, dry chillis added, and bizzare selection of odd veg – cauliflower and broccoli? in a kung po chicken? blech. The indian food is even worse – Angad and Naveen, the two indian guys in the office reckon that it’s just not possible to get a decent indian meal in Western Australia… still, getting back to the point, a pretty poor indian meal (not even as good as you would get from the 3-in-1 on a friday night) set me back about $55, a similarly poor chinese meal was $46.

The exception is steakhouses – they are pretty darn good and seem to be very cheap: The ‘Hog’s Breath’ in Joondalup cost about $40 for plates that were quite a challenge to finish – and tasty too.

Pizza Hut is interesting for the differences – the pizzas are much smaller for one! the ‘large’ Australian pizza is about the same as the medium UK one: they don’t do one as large (except as special promos). They are cheap though – we got Three large pizzas for $13 and ate them over two nights!

There’s a fish and chip shop in the local shopping area, and they do portions that could , in all seriousness, cause a heart attack in one sitting. two ‘scoops’ of chips for $4, which is about 30cm by 30cm when wrapped up… a fish supper (that’s a ‘barramundi’ or ‘red snapper’ supper, of course, not cod or haddock!) is about $12.

We did a big shop today (one of our famous batch cooking sessions to fill up the freezer), and that’s a good chance to show what the prices are like for just normal ‘stuff’. We get our veg from a farmer’s market rather than Woolworths or Coles (asda/tesco in everything but name)…

That lot cost $31 – including $2 for the 2L apple juice and about $4 for the eggs (which are free range – they don’t seem to do any other kind). One thing that’s a little eerie, and I need to point out – the fruit/veg really is that colour – there’s no paint/photoshop trickery here.. The stuff just seems more bright, crunchy.. almost more ‘real’. That’s one thing – we are eating dramatically more wholesome food here in australia – the fruit and veg is delicious, and just seems to taste better.

I guess I should doff my cap to Iain Lawson at this point and admit defeat – it seems that my defence of Tesco etc was misguided!! C’moan the fairmers!

in fact, when we popped to the farmers market today, a wholesale butchers has opened in the next unit so we are using that too. it’s a little like costco’s butchers department in it’s scale, but that’s all it does.

Em and Anna are probably the ones who will get this (being Costco meat junkies like us!) but this lot came to about $160 – which includes $31 for a side (yes, a whole side) of lamb, and those giant packs of chicken ($9 a kilo) The mince is premium lean stuff, and costs about $4 a kilo.

Soft drinks are about $3.50 for a 2L bottle of diet coke – the harder stuff varies a lot: beer is cheap, whisky is, how shall we say it.. not. I found a shop selling Bruichladdich ($79 a bottle) and Bowmore 12 year old ($75 a bottle).

so… basically, yes – the staples of life are a bit cheaper. Our problem came from the fact that we lived out in the boonies, lived very cheaply from low cost supermarkets etc, and wore clothe supplied by George and Matalan… so we started from a fairly low base. I suspect that anyone who lived a slightly more upmarket life in the UK would be finding Perth quite a bit cheaper.

Righty, time to get the next bacth of mega-bolognese on the go…