Knee-man

Second stop today already: Woolworths supermarket. Thankfully Nicole allows me to read the paper outside. Nice for her and nice for me ;-)

PS: The first stop was an electronic parts store. Kinda like a Do It Yourself place for geeks.

Third stop IKEA. Our stuff will be here soon(er or later) and in preparation for the tsunami of goods we've started buying storage space. I'm sure it will be all over our blogs tomorrow...

"WINE 99".

Gavin had his ligaments tightened in his knee. Let's hope it did the trick for him. His knee has been behaving bad lately and action needed to be taken. I hope he recovers quick.

The Mason

Nicole walking Mason this morning. He was very naughty early morning because he attacked the cocky in the cage. Nothing happened thankfully and Nicole was right there to give him a good lesson in what's right and what's not.

Lateron we walked him and he was incredibly well behaved, hardly pulling at all (except in this picture...). Maybe the little chat with Nicole earlier made him realise again who's the boss...

After all that hard work you have to rest. Preferably against our door of course which is really handy.

Guestblogger Erik Stel sent me this photo recently. I now have his approval to post it! ;-) It was taken in Marocco on his vacation there. Shown are some goats that like to climb trees. I think it's hilarious and a good shot at the same time. Thanks Erik!

The big L

The past few days I've been doing a bit of studying. Well, you can hardly call it studying. It's more like... sharpening your common sense. I did lots of example tests for my drivers theory-test online (http://www.raa.net/page.asp?TerID=192 - click "multiple choice questions" for a good laugh) and thought that today I'd give it a go so we went to the office and lined up.

I found out where those magical license plates come from! I have to get one of myself one day. It will say "KING". Or "K1NG" or "THE KING", you get the drift. Oh, what about "UR KING"? ;-)

Anyway, I did the 8 "give way" questions. Can't make any mistakes there otherwise you have to pay $20 and try again! (nice of em eh?) I passed them so I was allowed to do the other 42 questions (multiple choice - 32 must be correct to pass). I passed those as well with only 1 error and thus I walked out (after paying another $40 for material they gave me and my actuall license pass) with my temporary paper license. WOOHOO! Adelaide, be afraid. Be veeeeeEEEEEEeeery afraid! ;-)

I'm now allowed to learn how to drive a car when I have these stickers on my windows and a fully (normal) licensed car driver is in the seat next to me.

I went for a first testdrive tonight and it went rather well. Tried lots of starting and stopping and changing gear from 0 - 2. The car is too small for me. My right knee was killing me when I got out and my back was all sweaty...

I might have to buy a Jaguar as they are nice for tall people aparently.

The day got even better. After we came back I tested the phone and found out that the cnuts from AAPT had disconnected us, W00T! We immediately called Telstra to hook us up coz god forbid we delay our internet any longer, and they're sending a technician here next thursday.

Lets keep our fingers crossed!

The big tired

Nicole was on the phone once more. A bit of history:

- We signed up with them mid November. This took 5 (FIVE) minutes.
- We were told a phoneline would be ready in 3-5 days.
- Nothing happened so we started calling. They said Telstra (owner of ALL phonelines) was working on an upgrade in our neighbourhood and that they couldn't help us untill they were done.
- We talked to the Telstra guys doing the actual work a week later and they managed to give us a line. HU-FUCKING-RAY!
- From early December till now we have had a phoneline. According to AAPT (*spit*) we were not able to get any other services but local phonecalls on this line.
- We called AAPT (*spit*) about 9 times now and WITHOUT EXCEPTION the time untill we got to speak to the first person has been 50 or so minutes. It's gets kinda frustrating after a while.

Even if Telstra can't hook us up any faster, we want to get rid of AAPT (*spit*) now because of the ridiculous waiting times. So:

- We cancelled with AAPT (*spit*) yesterday and were told that after 24 hours we'd be disconnected from them and free to go with a new carrier.
- Called Telstra (phone company we want to hook up with now) after lunchtime today (more than 24 hours later). Of course nothing had been cancelled (AAPT (*spit*) has to cancel our line at Telstra).
- Called AAPT only to be told that:
a) It takes 3-5 days to cancel
b) The managed can only call us back (as fucking if!!)

So the score up till now is:
The cnuts from AAPT are keeping us from getting a new carrier for even longer. Their service is aparently even worse than I thought yesterday. It has knocked me right off my feet to be honest. I felt like a zombie the rest of the day.

In despair I figured maybe we should get a dial-up modem, since we can make local calls... So we drive up to Internode and what do we find there? A "we moved" sign... YAY! FUN!

We got there as it was not far away from the old place but we haven't signed up. 56kb/s modems still cost $80 here!!!!

Shopping was a dream today because due to the whole phone thing I was so stunned I couldn't care less!

Sanding when we came home. Hmmmm, sanding, I love it ;-)

If you can't beat them...

Nicole on the phone with AAPT or Telstra, I can't remember. AAPT are absolute cnuts. We phoned them about 7 times now and WITHOUT exception the waiting time before you get to speak to the first person is 50 minutes give or take 4 minutes. When I called, I had to wait the standard 50 minutes PLUS another 55 minutes before I got put through to the NEXT person, who basically could do fuck all for me. Very, very disappointing.

Our talks with street personnel AND people on the phone from Telstra on the other hand has been wonderful. They seem a little bit more expensive but at least when you call them you got someone talking to you within 5 minutes.

So today we cancelled our order with AAPT and we will sign up with Telstra the coming days.

Even in The NL I have not seen customer service as bad as displayed by AAPT and that says a LOT!

Good times, Terry. Good times.

Good times arrived indeed in the form of our first belongings. It was the box we sent while at my folks' place. It contained some paperwork, modeltrain stuff (pretty exciting for me), a few books and... coats, one of them being my Mulligans bomber jacket. I love that jacket to bits but god knows when I'll be wearing it here.

The rest of the day was a bit boring. When that happens we usually play solitaire on our computers (not quite the same as World of Warcraft but alas) or...

... we watch TV. The Australian open is on and with my new found interest in tennis this can be rather an entertaining activity.

The welcoming committee

Shopping.

I photographed this building on my first holiday here, 7 years ago now. I reckon it's a great spot to take pictures. There are actually quite a few old industrial buildings around town worth photographing. I should really get our big ass camera with me and do a round some day.

In the evening we went to Semaphore and Largs jetty. This was our welcoming comittee.

Zie de maan schijnt door de bomen (if you can see it)

Can Seaguls drink salt water? They're rather happy with this supply of fresh water. About the only one in their territory at the beach.

Semaphore road in one direction.

Semaphore road in the other direction.

Vincent McEnroe

Today I played tennis for the first time ever. I had a blast for about an hour when I started to get really hot. I had more energy left but it was just getting too hot and sweaty. But I'll be back!

It was great fun but I have to learn to not hit so hard coz a few balls went way over Karin or Gavin's heads *grin*

I would hereby like to thank our ball-boy "Gavin" very much for doing such a wonderfull job at retrieving the balls I f*cked up that way. Thanks mate, you're very welcome to come along next time again! ;-)

PS: I gracefully nicked this fine piece of photography from Nicole. But since it's a photo of myself I don't feel bad at all ;-)

After the tennis we had dinner at Karin and Gav's place. It was nice as usual. Also as usual; Mason sneaking out of his beanbag.

Karin in the kitchen.

Nicole and Gavin in the "living".