We're excited. Australia is a nice place. A really nice place. For the third year in a row, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, and Melbourne have all made the cut for the 10 best cities to live - worldwide. We love Australia. We got engaged in Australia and it's really the perfect halfway house for an American/British couple. It has the space, friendliness and can-do attitude of the US combined with British common sense and a genuine sense of fair-play. Also, Rupert Murdoch no longer lives there.
Australia is also expensive. Food is particularly expensive. You're thinking, how bad can it be, right? Well let's take for example, one of the most essential products on earth, a 24 pack of decent beer (say, Goose Island equivalent) that will set you back a whopping AUD$72 (that's USD$68!!!) A lime, a single lime - not a pack or a bag of limes, but a single lime? AUD 1.75 (USD1.65).
Fortunately, like other expensive places (Scandinavia, Switzerland) the salaries just about make that a fathomable expense.
Anyway as I said, we're excited. After a brief bout of nostalgia on leaving Malaysia (and Asia generally) I also very much feel like it's time to go. We've been here just over three years now and I think that's a pretty good run. As our time here grows shorter I also find that I'm quickly losing patience and tolerance for all of the little inefficiencies and hassles that were quaint and 'all part of the experience' in the early days of our arrival. Now, I just really want a dishwasher and the ease of paying my internet bill online.
But before we go we've got one more tropical Thanksgiving and Christmas to get through, one more jaunt to Thailand and lots of catching up to do on this blog. Departure day is January 24th.
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