If last week was a normal week, then this week has been an exceptionally normal week. No doubt that feeling was aided by Isabelle being sick Thursday night. We woke up to her trying, and not succeeding, to get out of the top bunk of the bunk bed before her stomach decided to empty itself of its contents. It was not a pleasant thing for anyone involved so I will spare you the details. But that meant I got to stay home on Friday with a sick child. That certainly made it feel very real that we are now very much moved in.
Things a very similar, yet different
Being in an English speaking country the language barrier is rarely a problem. At least not in Melbourne. It would seem that most people in this city do not have a very thick, or stereotypical Aussie accent. Yet it is not the same as the States as the people are more British in nature. Having spent time in Britain over the past five years working for a British company I can also confidently say that they are also not quite British. So things are different enough that everything seems familiar and at the same time it is different. Take driving for example. Yes, they drive on the left side of the road but you get over that quite fast. The funny thing is drivers seem to want to drive the speed limit no matter what, but at the same time Aussie drivers do not speed. We drove on the freeway a while back when doing the Great Ocean Road. The speed limit on a proper 6-8 lane freeway was only 100kph (60mph) and no one drove more then a few kph over the limit. In Norway on the E18 that has the same speed limit it is quite normal to do about 20 over the limit. And even more odd is the fact that we are talking a proper freeway which in the States would have a 70mph limit (about 110kph). So you would think Aussies value road safety. Not quite. Indeed, they have proposed a 30kph limit in suburban areas for the state of Victoria, but currently if there is no other signage you can drive at 50kph. And on Shannon Street that we walk along on our way to school it is very noticeable that that is too fast. First off, you have cars parked along the road on both sides making it hard for two cars to fit abreast and second there are even chicanes to promote drivers slowing down. Yet no one seems to care that these things are present and they drive the speed limit. And even though it is the law that drivers yield to pedestrians that is not always the case. So again, very similar to to being in either the US or Britain, but at the same time different. Naturally this is only my own experience and observations for the places I have been. Other places in Australia might have different driving norms, but something tells me that isn’t necessarily the case.
Changes to the blog
This week there will be no photos at the bottom of the blog post. First of all I haven’t really taken any photos this week. As mentioned it was an exceptionally normal week punctuated by normal things, like going shoe shopping for the kids on Saturday. Or staying home to wash the bathroom on Sunday. Or going to the park to enjoy the rather warm autumn we are having. They say this will be the warmest autumn on record and I am inclined to believe them. But I digress. This blog was made with simplicity in mind, but I can tell it might be just a little too simple. Dumping all the photos for each post at the end isn’t ideal. It makes for slower loading and poor viewing (if you are not on a desktop computer). So I thought maybe to implement a gallery style photo presentation. That would mean only loading thumbnails and on mobile you could open a photo and click to the next. Much like you would in any other photo viewing app. Speaking of which I have also considered adding a separate photo feed so that those who are interested can get a more day-by-day update on our life. Having sworn off any traditional social media it is not so simple as creating an Instagram account or such. How I am going to implement a separate photo feed remains to be seen, but I have a few ideas on how I can achieve this. Stay tuned!