It's been about 6 weeks since I left Taiwan and it's getting harder and harder to believe that I was actually there. I've spent some time looking at photos from there, of ones I'd taken as well as friends' photos. Taiwan looks familiar, but it feels like a distant memory. I will say that I am SO glad that I don't have to eat the food there again. I have had a few funny moments though in Australia related to Taiwan. I had a mother and son come in to the running store I'm working at and they were speaking in Chinese and I understood some of it, so I decided to strike up a conversation in Chinese with them. It went pretty well. I was talking to a guy yesterday who is living and working in Hong Kong, and he said he'd just been in Taiwan a few months ago for New Year's. I said "oh really, how was that?" after completely spacing the fact that I had been there for New Year's.
Anyway, life has been good in Australia. I am unfortunately getting taxed 45% on my paychecks because I failed to obtain a tax file number before I arrived here, mainly because I didn't know I needed one. The running store I'm working at is good, although I know I don't want to work retail that much longer. Living with Kelly has been great, and much better than some people had warned living with someone would be. She's enjoying her job as well, although she's in the same boat as me in thinking that retail will only be of interest for so much longer.
There's a lot of Australian slang here. I'll give you a few examples of slang words and of different pronunciations of words:
asphalt - spoken 'ashfelt'
controversy - 'contrawversy'
88 - 'double 8' (any number is said like this, letters too)
777 - 'triple 7'
debut - 'dayboo'
how are you? - how you going?
stroller - pram
parking cone - witch's hat
trash - rubbish
total - all up
Hmm, I'll have to think of more later. Feeling a bit brain dead right now. I went to a punk show last night with Kelly, where we saw The Flatliners. I had seen them a few years ago in Denver with Jess and I'd met the singer there, where I told him to pick out one of the band's shirts for me to buy. So last night, I went up to him after the show, and told him about the last concert, and he remembered all the details. Even the name of the venue in Denver. He helped me pick out another shirt. He told me he couldn't believe how expensive everything in Australia is.
Other than that, Australia feels basically like home, minus knowing any people. The weather has been great, although we've gotten more rain in Brisbane than they've had in like 6 years or something. The running has been good. Our new apartment is working out really well. We're right across the street from the train station so we can both get to our jobs easily.
I did add about 100 pictures to my flickr page and that will give you a better idea of what has been happening down here in Oz! Check 'em out! Off to a race!
