This is the blog of a Norwegian (Marianne, aka 'M') who moved to Australia in 2007 to be with Roger (aka R) and feels lucky to have escaped a comparatively communistic country with ridiculous weather!

R and I are now located at the Y Hotel across the road from Hyde Park in Sydney. We have come to Sydney to meet up with Qads and his wife Sarwat, who are arriving from England early tomorrow morning. We are showing them around Sydney until Thursday, then flying back to Brisbane where they will stay with us for a month. Qads has spent heaps of time in Australia previously, but Sarwat has never been here, and pretty much nowhere else interesting either, nor has she ever seen the ocean or a big city, so it will be interesting to show her around.

It's quite chilly here in Sydney, it was about 15 degrees when we arrived just after sunset, and after walking around the city for a bit my ears were aching from the cold. I don't know how I ever managed in Norway....

What's funny is we went to the hotel and checked in, went up to our room and found that it was a twin room rather than a double room. We went down and told them and were given a double room, and I casually commented to Roger that the same thing happened at the hotel in Oslo. We settled in and then went out to dinner. When we got back we realised that our heater didn't work, so we went down and told reception, and they gave us a new room. Again, this happened in Oslo. Then, in the new room, the heater didn't work either, and that's when it got freaky, cuz the exact same thing happened in Oslo! What are the chances...

Due to having visitors from UK, we went to Seaworld yesterday. We'd all been there before, except Sarwat, and with her never having experienced anything fun or exciting where she grew up, we thought she'd enjoy it. And she did:)

Towards the end of the day, we went into the photo centre, where people can buy photos of themselves that were taken during the rides and while swimming with dolphins etc. We only went in to get a couple of drinks, and ended up behind a woman who was kicking up a stink at the checkout, because photos of her kids were posted online for people to buy.

The photos were obviously posted so that people could find them and order them to buy, but this woman had a problem with it because she didn't want other people to 'be able to buy photos of her kids'. She made the staff member promise to have them removed from the website so that no one else would have access to them.

This is a good example of people not using their logic abilities. Obviously no one will spend money on buying photos of other people going on the rides, they would only buy photos of themselves. And paedophiles won't bother spending money on photos of fully clothed kids when they can download child pornography for free.

Also, they spend all day in a theme park, where people take photos left and right anyway. Loads of photos would have her kids in the bacground. Loads. I know I ended up in in the background of at least two photos, and they were just the ones I noticed being taken.

Silly people, getting all worked up for nothing.