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!

 I just found this news story:

They are complaining that there is Easter stuff available 3 months before Easter.

I saw Christmas stuff in late September/early October, and heard no complaints then, and Christmas is by far the biggest money drain for most people.

It bugs me how they start putting out Christmas stuff a quarter of a year before the actual event, but I don't hear anyone else complaining that it's too early. All I hear is that people have nearly finished their Christmas shopping in mid-November. But when they see Easter stuff suddenly they get all weird about it, even tho all they have to buy is a bit of chocolate for their kids? It's not like Easter is a big deal, it's hardly even celebrated in most families.

Ummm... despite seeing Christmas stuff the last quarter of a year, R and I bought no Christmas stuff, at all. We don't celebrate Christmas, so we didn't need anything. So no, I don't believe that people will buy it simply because it's on display, no one is forcing them to buy anything, and if they spend more money than they can handle it's all their problem.

People need to put their foot down and boycott all Christmas and Easter stuff until no more than a month before Christmas, and maybe a week before Easter.

Me: I think I will wash my car today.
R: No!
Me: What? Why not??
R: Because we are having concrete delivered tomorrow and I don't want it to rain.
Me: Oh... I hadn't thought of that.

Cuz everyone knows that if you wash your car it will rain the next day. So no car washing today.

Last you heard about the birds I was giving up bird keeping. Well, that never actually happened. The only person who was interested lived a bit of a drive away, and it was a big hassle trying to arrange pickup/delivery of the bird, so in the end we decided to keep her and get her a new friend from the pet store.

Since then they have been living in a cage outside in our patio area. They seem happier outside than in my office, as you would expect. And I am happy to have them out of my office with their constant molting and messiness.

I have been thinking about building an aviary for them for a long time, but last week it finally happened. R's business took a month off for Christmas, and so he had time to help me. I designed it all, and R helped by operating some of the powertools involved and helping to solve problems that we encountered. And he also did all the heavy lifting.

First we had to concrete a corner of the garden for the aviary to sit on, and for this we used a company called Concrete Taxi, which deliveres pre mixed concrete for little jobs like that, and it was all much quicker and cheaper than getting bags and mixing it ourselves.

Then we bought all the wood and started putting it all together. This took about a week, because of problems with the mesh and the frame not being completely square after the silly mesh went on it.

It is now finished and sitting on the concrete in a corner of the garden. It needs to be bolted to the concrete and have branches and food bowls put in it, and then it's ready for the birds to go in. So hopefully they will go in either today or tomorrow.

The aviary is 1400 x 1500 x 1800, so the two little budgies should have loads of room to play and fly around:) Not planning on getting any more birds, because the whole point of a big aviary was so they would have more room, and filling it with birds defeats the purpose. But if we do come across birds in need of rescue, then we have room for them, because I'd say the aviary can comfortably hold several more birds.

Photos of the whole construction process here.

Prince William arrived in Australia a couple of days ago for a visit. This has once again started a debate on whether or not Australia should become a republic. At the moment I believe just over half of the population supports becoming a republic.

Convo with R:

Me: I think we should keep the royal family.
R: Why?
Me: Because it's so much fun to tell Usatians that the Queen is the most powerful person in the world, not their president as they all like to think. It messes with their heads.
R: Is she?
Me: Yeah, she's queen of 16 countries and has the power to claim any land she wants for herself in any of them.
R: True, she is also the head of the Commonwealth, which has 54 countries in it.
Me: Yep.

So take that Usatians!

(Written by roger during a blog hijack)

Today being Australia day, there has been talk recently in the media about becoming a republic and losing the british monarchy. Naturally, the design of the flag has come up again, because it has the union jack in it. Suggestions have been made for how it should be designed. So I came up with one I really like:

It has a 7 pointed star and 7 red stripes to represent the 7 states of Australia. Only thing is it looks a little bit like Malaysia's or Liberia's flag...

R and I are currently sitting at a cafe with "free" wi-fi access. (It's not really free because you only get the one hour voucher after you buy drinks.) We arrived in NZ this morning at 0610, after our plane's departure was delayed from 6:30 pm to midnight. But that meant we got the flights refunded (in form of credit) and free dinner, so that was ok.

NZ is pretty similar to Australia on the surface, but once in a while you notice expressions that are different and other subtle differences, which makes you wonder how different they Really are... One big difference we noticed right away is the lack of gum trees.

I was hoping to compare their friendliness to that of Australians, but haven't had a chance yet. We have been to 10 souvenir shops, 2 cafes, MacDonalds, an Indian place, a liquor store and several convenience stores, and every single one is run by Asians. And they all stare at us as we walk in or follow us around as if they expect us to steal something, which I find rather offensive.

I am using my iPhone and we didn't bring a laptop, so I won't be able to post any photos until we get home on Feb 5, and because safari is a toy browser that can't handle HTML editing, I can't even post blog entries with paragraphs in them...