I have deduced that Australians love two things; roads and drink driving.
The roads in this city are insane. I am scared of them. The road outside the house is not a particularly busy thoroughfare but it is rammed with traffic almost constantly and Australians do not mind a little leaning on the horn either. In fact only yesterday a woman reversed into a static line of traffic from the opposite side of the street and called the guy behind her a 'fuckhead' for not backing up.
It is impossible to 'jay-walk' safely over here [for me anyway] there is of course the obvious confusion about which direction the traffic is supposed to be coming from, then the added complication of watching for trams and sheer expanse of tarmac which you are attempting to cross. Sadly, standing at a pedestrian crossing is not much more pleasant as it seems that waiting for the green man takes easily five minutes each time. This makes you feel really daft especially if you are alone at said crossing. So once you've felt self conscious for a few minutes and wondered whether you've missed the obvious and should have crossed already a noise like a nuclear weapon charging goes off [this is the cross safely noise] which literally frightens you across the road. Or half of the road. Because the roads are so wide that the time allotted to cross them in is not long enough so usually you only make it the middle. You then have to repeat the whole performance but this time in the perilous epicentre of the erratic, confusing circus.
Add to this that every other advert on the TV is about how not to drink drive and you may be getting the concept. Apparently there was a crack down on drink driving over a bank holiday weekend recently and just in Victoria 1 in 11 people stopped were prosecuted. Joy.
After a night's sleep I was feeling quite perky and got up around 11:00 and decided to be helpful around the house. This took a few hours. I discovered the dulcet tones of Bridget Pross who Leah and El have seen live. She is brilliant so I was rocking out to that a bit.
I went to visit El who works just around the corner in a tiny little office by herself helping backpackers with their tax returns. There are some crazy laws about tax returns over here. If you do any period of work and then leave the country you can claim up to 80% of your tax back after you leave! We went to the Grocery Bar and ate some tasty lunch. They have sandwiches here called Pitta's which are not made of pitta bread but they are good and full of cheese and avocado etc.
I then made my way back to the beach to finish 'The End of Mr. Y' which is brilliant and very interesting and should be read by everyone. I found St. Kilda pier and went to the end of it where there is a heap of shingle and rocks where penguins and sea lions appear sometimes, not that I saw any. I did not get any kind of tan which is disappointing. I think there might be a slightly denser smattering of freckles on my right arm but I can't be sure.
El made roast dinner and strangely although I didn't think that I would want it I really did and it was brilliant. Then we played a couple of hands of Rummy which I discovered I have been playing wrong my whole life which kind of explains why I never win.
A good day so good night.
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