10 Favourite things about being back in Australia

Tis Saturday morning and I have been back in Sydney for just over one week. Been hanging low so to speak. It feels less of  shock this year coming back home than last year. The reverse culture shock last year was particularly intense, I had a six hour wait in Cairns waiting for my connecting flight to Sydney.- so I ended up wandering around town for a few hours.

This year, not sure what’s going on but just been relaxing at Mum’s and not doing a great deal. Seen cousin Carol and her family a few times, Yolande was staying here for a few days and has since left, but mainly been doing a heap of internet stuff. Basically taking advantage of Mum’s new broadband connection and running a bunch of updates of my laptop (both XP and Linux). Thought I’d check the bandwidth usage so far and in three days – close to 700Mbs have already been used up – out of a monthly quota of 2Gb. I went to the Optus website an apparently what happens once you exceed the quota they “throttle” your link speed down to 28.8kbps. Shucks!! Probably time to back off and just use it for email, blogging, etc…

(When I head to John’s place tomorrow – will certainly be sucking the gust out of some of his bandwidth. Mum is on a 512kbps plan and John is on a whopping 1.5mbps)

So what are some of the things that have hit me so far being back in the so called civilised world. Perhaps a list is in order – let’s aim for 10 things:

1) No pot holes on the roads!!
2) The order and structure of it all.
3) Consumerism and the silly season.
4) The cost of things.
5) The number of mobile phones.
6) The clear lack of human interaction.
7) Obesity.
8) The crap that people eat.
9) The unhappy look on people’s faces.
10) Late model and expensive cars.

And what have I really enjoyed about being back home?

1) Seeing the family.
2) Mum’s cooking and nurturing.
3) Driving again.
4) The coffee and chocolates.
5) Bread.
6) The prospect of going to the movies (on the cards this arvo).
7) Being in holiday mode : the relaxing and sleeping in.
8) There’s always a shop open…  somewhere.
9) The low cost of mobile calls.
10) Having access to broadband.

So…

What is planned for next few days?

In a couple of ours I catch the train down to Hornsby and catch-up with my old mate Brett R. Certainly looking forward to spending sometime with him. In the end we will probably do a movie at Honsby, perhaps go to his place back at Hornsby Heights for a vego meal and then sit around and talk heaps. Brett’s one of my all time best mates and we have known each other for well over 25 years. I’ll be crashing at his place tonight by the way.
Then tomorrow of to John and Therese’s place at Dural for some babysitting in the evening, some web surfing and then we will celebrate new year’s together.

Stay over night at Dural Sunday evening) and then to Andrew’s place for a BBQ on New Year’s day. Andrew lives at Hornsby Heights and will see many faces I have not caught up with for years. Should be an OK afternoon.

And Monday evening….  Tuesday ?

Who knows?

Adventure man…  adventure!

I have heard said that:

“Spirituality lies in the direction of unknowingness”.

Rob