Petrol price cycle

When I eat breakfast I usually watch TV. In the morning I like to see the news. To me it's a good start of the day to get some orientation about what's happening in Australia and the world overseas.
However, I have come across one strange thing...
In the financial part of the morning news, besides reporting share prices, market indexes and currencies, they also report the current petrol price. Well, a little bit odd maybe you could think but not really that strange. The strange thing is that the price is always accompanied by a comment about where we are in the price cycle. Hmmm which price cycle? How can a serious journalist in advance say he/she knows where in a cycle we currently are?

As a recently become car owner of course petrol price is of interest so I started to research. And surprisingly enough it turns out that petrol prices vary up in down in obvious cycles in Oz. And it's not small variations. We are talking about 20%! How this can happen in a free market I don't understand but I guess it's just to accept and adapt your filling pattern!
The graph shows price in Sydney over the last 45 days.

And below it is. Our ticket to freedom. The Silver Pearl!!

Cheers!

Prince of Penzance

Today is another big day in Australia. You could actually say all Australia goes nuts today. In Victoria which is the state where Melbourne is capital they even have a public holiday. Also here in Brisbane more people than usual are out in the streets.
So is it a celebration of a historical event? No
The queen's birthday? No
Australian independence day? No
No no no
It's Melbourne Cup!
It's a horse race!
3200m gallop.



This engages the country to such an extent that they set up temporary betting kiosks in the city. They have special menus at the restaurants. People dress up in funny hats etc etc.







Of course yours truly wanted to take part in this and get some of the feeling and atmosphere of the race so together with my friends we went to a pub. (Had a nice dark Ale by the way, White Rabbit).













You could almost feel the nervousness an anxiety in the audience. Maybe it's not a good idea after all to bet a full months salary...

At 2 pm sharp the race started. People were standing up, screaming and yelling.
3 minutes and 20 seconds later it all was over. Silence... What happened....

Well it was a dark horse winner this year. The odds was over 100:1 and it was the first female jockey ever to win.
And the name of the horse: Prince of Penzance

Cheers!

.....and after this event next big "strange game season" is coming up. The Cricket league!
Well I guess you really have to respect a game where they have tea breaks!

Australian fauna

Everybody has of course heard about the fantastic and dangerous animal life in Australia. We have started to explore it! As Brisbane's location is sub tropical most of the species should of course be present here so we started by exploring some lush parks.

We felt that was both daring and enterprising to a reasonable level.

So what did we find? Well, actually no brown snakes so far.

The fellow above represents an extremely common specie. They are literally everywhere and although looking a little bit vicious they seem to be quite friendly. The biggest risk is actually to step on them. (As we haven't seen any squirrels in the parks I guess the lizards eat squirrels?!...)

Next guy is also very common. A little bit like the mallards back home they are everywhere. But they are much bigger. Despite their very big beak they also seem to be quite friendly.

But of course you need to be careful. And there are warning signs....  

In a country with 24 of the 25 most venomeous snakes in the world. With deadly spiders in every backyard. With crocodiles behaving like big killing machines. Not to mention the big white...

What would you then think the signs warn you about???

BIRDS!!!!!

Yes in Brisbane it's obvious that the danger comes from above!
The average Brisbaner certainly worries most about birds....

A funny consequence of that is that most of the cyclists have spikes made of cable ties on their helmets to protect from magpies, which are considered the most aggressive ones.

I actually cought a magpie on picture while preparing to attack me. Do you see the evil in his eyes?

Ok he didn't but honestly I was actually attacked by one of the below (You guessed right, I didn't mind the sign...) Not a pleasant experience at all even though he just flew very fast like a decimeter over my head making a terrible noise a number of times.

 Cheers!

Traffic red alert! The Swede is on the road

I have been driving.
On left side
In rush traffic.
For three days.

I'm still alive!

Well to be honest it wasn't the first time but now it was some years since last time.
It always follows the same pattern
- Takes one hour to get used to drive on wrong side of the road
- Takes two days to get used to sit on wrong side of the car
- Don't know how long it will take to get used to being overtaken on the right side!
Each time, and that are many ( I'm a careful guy), I yell "WHAT THE HE.." and press the pedal to the metal. "You bastards are not gonna pass me on the inside!" Then I pass them and slowly realise I'm actually the one on the inside...
Also wonder how long it will take to learn turn my head left instead of right to find the rear mirror not to mention using the blinkers instead of the wipers before turning...

Cheers!

Oumbärlig - A touch of Sweden

Last Sunday we decided to go for an excursion and explore something outside central Brisbane. We thought IKEA would be a good target as we also needed to complement our household equipment and after 5 weeks also felt it would be nice with some Swedish food :)

IKEA in Brisbane is located in Logan, a suburb one hour with bus south of the city.
Actually the bus trip in itself was quite interesting as they have built a separate road only for bus traffic. This road has bus stops that look more like train stations, i e the whole concept is like a commuter train solution but with buses instead of trains. No impact from traffic jams on the motorway. Quite smart I think. Never seen that before.

Finally at IKEA we could see that it is as popular here as in Sweden. Crowded! And everything looks exactly the same way. The restaurant served meatballs and salmon, just like home. Well it's a pity if the Aussies think these meatballs are the real thing. In Sweden we all know that mother's meatballs are the best and no mother would be proud of these pale, texture-less things served at IKEA. Anyway we enjoyed the cream gravy and lingonberry jam.

As mentioned the concept is exactly the same as home "Designed in Sweden, built for Australia" is the motto and if it wasn't for hearing english everywhere you could as well have been in Sweden.
Even the names of the products are the same.
And here I start thinking...  how does these names sound for a non swedish speaker? Do an Aussie have any clue of what hey mean or do they think it´s just something made up to be impossible to pronounce?Take for example "Oumbärlig" How would an english speaker pronounce that?  Waambaarlich?
Correct is rather oo-uhm-ber-lig
To be honest it's a rare word in swedish as well that hardly noone below age 40 would use.

For those interested all Ikeas product names
simply are swedish words.
Furnitures are usually Swedish towns and villages ex "Stockolm", "Liatorp", "Vitemölla" (The last one might make one or two of my swedish readers happy) and in some cases person names like "Billy", "Erik" or "Ingolf"

Smaller products used to be adjectives but I guess they ran out of them so now it can be any type of word 

The best thing for an expat is the food shop outside where you find things like pickled herring, swedish caviar, "knäckebröd" etc to fill your food stocks.

Oumbärlig?? => Something you can't live without

Cheers!

River fire

In last post I promised to tell you about River Fire. I'm sorry it took me some time to get it out but anyway, here it is.
River Fire is the Grand Finale of the Brisbane Festival that has been ongoing during  September with different cultural and entertainment events every day. Although many interesting events the big thing that everybody's been waiting for is the fireworks, River Fire!

Many hours before it starts the walks along the river and the best viewing points are crowded with people trying to get the best positions and also having barbecues at the same time. You could say it is a real family party.
Before the darkness falls there is a show with fighter aircrafts and helicopters flying very low along the river. We walked to South Bank which is the place where most people gather and watched the air show from there. After that we walked to Kangaroo point cliffs for the fire works to have a shorter and less crowded walk home afterwards.




At 7 pm it started. There were loudspeakers deployed that played rock music that was synchronised with the fire works in a way that it changed theme and colours with songs. Exactly same fireworks were fired from six different platforms in the river and in addition to that also some extras from the some of the roofs. Together it gave a massive experience.
Impressing!

The guys on the picture to the left obviously lived for this event. They had taken a perfect position and had rigged a camera, probably already in the morning, to film the full show. They were actually dancing synchronised together to most of the songs during the show!  

 Cheers!

Rugby

This weekend is special in Brisbane. On Friday there was the semifinal in National Rugby League and today it will be the riverfire, huge fireworks which constitutes the ending of the Brisbane Festival. I´ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Back to Rugby.For a Scandinavian the interest for this game is a little bit difficult to understand. I mean, I would guess the final in the Swedish Rugby league (I'm not sure it even exists) would gather 50-100 people from which 99% would be friends and relatives. To be honest most swedes would consider Rugby in general as something oldfashioned that was played in English boarding schools and forgotten about 50 years ago.

But here in Aussie it's huge. They even have three variants: Rugby League, Rugby Union and Australian Football.
So yesterday it was semifinal in Rugby League, Brisbane Broncos vs Sydney Roosters. Me and William decided this is a must in the Aussie culture and decided to go. We were not alone. The Suncorp stadium was sold out so we shared the experience with 51 800 people.
Mighty!

Before start there were interviews, fireworks and cheerleaders and you could feel the expectations in the air.
And then the game begun....  and we understood nothing. I mean the basic rules you pick up quite quickly but the tactics... Why don't they pass the ball instead of just running straight in to the first opponent they see?

When someone does something good and scores it's called a "try". But not immediately. Each "try" must obviously be preceded by at least 5 min referee video scrutinising. When you get your "try" you also get a free kick for two extra points. And here comes the next strange thing. When the player performs his free kick noone else on the pit cares. He is left on his own and neither his team mates or opponents seem to even bother watching.

Did I mention that after each "try" for the home team a horse with a rider came galloping around the arena!
Another interesting thing is that coaches obviously are allowed to be on the pit during ongoing play. They sort of run around with a towel and water bottle serving the players while playing.
A strange game it certainly is!

Cheers!


ps Broncos were totally superior and won by 31-12.

We have an apartment!

Finally we have an apartment! I was almost beginning to prepare for a life on the streets as time is flying and our current contract expires 29/9.
However on Friday afternoon I received an email saying we were approved by the owners for one of the apartments we had applied for.
It's not going to be cheap but we will have stunning river and city views for breakfast :). For me it will also be just 5 minutes walk to the office.

We were actually also looking at two apartments significantly higher up in the same building but found surprisingly enough that the lower situation were better due to less noise from the traffic on the Story bridge and closer water feeling.

My colleagues find it a little bit strange to want to live that central but our thoughts a that we have lived 25 years in a Swedish suburb so we don't need more suburban life and commuting here.
Anyway we look forward to that urban city life!



                                                                                                                             
So on the 29th we say good bye to Kangaroo Point and our Dockside apartment which has served us well for this first month.

Cheers!

Kangaroo Point

What would be the coolest address you could imagine when moving in to an Australian city?
Something like Crocodile Creek or Kangaroo Point?! Yes, you´re right. Our address right now is Kangaroo Point!!




It's a part of Brisbane located on a narrow peninsula close to the Central Business District but with the winding Brisbane River in between.

This means I actually start every work day with a nice river cruise :)





To the right you see my  "bus stop"

And to the left is my "bus"










Cheers!

The Journey

Now we have been two weeks in Brisbane. There has been so much to do and the first week a jetlag to cure so I haven't really been able to write any blog posts. But from now on I will shape up!
Since I have a bit of a backlog this first post will cover the journey and the coming days I will try to catch up with happenings and observations until today.
We started the journey on Monday 3/9 at 06:50. The weekend before was frantic. I can only say that we underestimated the work left with cleaning and removing personal stuff from the house big time. The night between Saturday and Sunday we only slept a few hours and the final night we eventually never went to bed at all!

Anyway we treated ourselves with some Aussie wine, provided by my former boss (thanks for that!) on Saturday night to start adapting to Australia.



On Monday morning after first having left our car for storage (Yes we left home 3:30) we arrived to Landvetter totally exhausted. And the journey hadn't yet even begun...
The flights went well. Air Berlin took us to probably the worst airport of Europe, Berlin Tegel. Then to Abu Dhabi where it was +40 at 11pm! , strange experience. The final leg was a 14h flight with Etihad in a Dreamliner, the new airplane type from Boeing! Quite ok I must say. Nice staff and nice food.

And most of all on the entertainment system they had the MECCA POINTER!!! This service provides, at any time, the direction towards Mecca in relation to the flying direction. It is of course a little bit difficult to kneel in that direction onboard the plane but maybe it is enough to just have it in mind.



Finally we arrived to Brisbane airport. Except for some queue to the passport control the border crossing went smoothly and not at all as in the TV show.
Taxi service was perfect and at the apartment Kathryn met up with keys and a welcoming kit, thank you!  We went for a short walk, took below first picture and fell into bed totally exhausted...

September is coming on quickly

Only 7 days left to take off now...