GlobeGazers Down Under

There and Back Again

Bernd — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:08:52 +0000

We’ve booked the remainder of our flights, here’s a small recap of our whole trip.

5-6: Flight QF 81 from Adelaide (15:00) to Singapore (21:00)
6-6: Spend time and see sights in Singapore
7-6: Spend time and see sights in Singapore
8-6: Spend time and see sights in Singapore
9-6: Flight CX 736 from Singapore (10:00) to Hong Kong (14:05)
9-6: Flight CX 416 from Hong Kong (16:30) to Seoul (21:10)
10-6: Spend time and see sights in Seoul
11-6: Spend time and see sights in Seoul
12-6: Spend time and see sights in Seoul
13-6: Flight CX 421 from Seoul (09:30) to Taipei (11:00)
14-6: Spend time and see sights in Taipei
15-6: Spend time and see sights in Taipei
16-6: Spend time and see sights in Taipei
17-6: Flight CX 421 from Taipei (12:00) to Hong Kong (13.45)
18-6: Spend time and see sights in Hong Kong
19-6: Spend time and see sights in Hong Kong, leaving just after midnight
20-6: Flight CX 293 from Hong Kong (00:05) to Rome (07:10)
21-6: Spend time and see sights in Rome
22-6: Spend time and see sights in Rome
23-6: Spend time and see sights in Rome
24-6: Flight IB 3613 from Rome (12:15) to Madrid (14:50)
24-6: Flight IB 6772 from Madrid (15:45) to Barcelona (16:55)
25-6: Spend time and see sights in Barcelona
26-6: Spend time and see sights in Barcelona
27-6: Spend time and see sights in Barcelona
28-6: Flight BA 485 from Barcelona (13:05) to London (14:25)
28-6: Flight KL 1022 from London (17:10) to Amsterdam (19:30)
29-6 to 9-7: Spend time and see sights in Holland
10-7: Flight KL 1031 from Amsterdam (17:35) to London (17:50)
10-7: Flight CX 254 from London (22:20) to Hong Kong (11-7 17:05)
11-7: Arrival in Hong Kong
11-7: Flight CX 105 from Hong Kong (23:35) to Adelaide (12-7 09:45)
12-7: Arrival in Adelaide, home at last

Seasons change, time passes by…

Bernd — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:50:29 +0000

Well *cracks fingers*, needs must.

Hello! We are still very much alive and kicking, or alive at least. Summer is gone and by now the temperature has plummeted to a cold 17 degrees, so it’s practically Winter over here. It also has become clear to us that Australians are, in general, not at all familiar with the concept of double glazing and wall insulation. Thank god for reverse cycle air conditioning (still not sure where this name comes from, but it means that we don’t have to freeze to death).

The last couple of months revolved mainly around working, though we had a nice little break at the end of January when we visited New Zealand for Yvo’s visa validation trip. The suitcase, by the way, ended up arriving the next day, as it had missed the connecting flight in Sydney.

So what’s new with us? To be honest: not much! A few weeks ago we were informed that the owner of our house intends to sell it as soon as our lease is up, so we’ll probably have to start looking for another property coming spring, so that’s a bit of a bummer. At least it’s a good opportunity for us to make sure that South Australia is the place we want to be and whether or not we should move closer to Melbourne or even Sydney. Time will tell I guess.

This Thursday my sister and nephew will arrive from The Netherlands, likely making them the only ones of our friends and family to have seen our awesome home.

June will see us visiting The Netherlands, though we’ll take a small detour, as we try avoid long flights as much as possible. Our itinerary looks something like this:

We still have to book all hotels and the flights from London to Amsterdam and from Amsterdam back home, but this should at least give you an idea of what we’re doing in June.

I’m afraid that’s all from us for now, as we need to head out to Aldinga Beach to collect stuff we bought from the Dutch Store

Underwear Inside-out Day

Bernd — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:07:52 +0000

Today is wear-your-underwear-inside-out-day, or at least, here in New Zealand it is. Or maybe it’s just us. I don’t know, all I know is that our suitcase is not here in our hotelroom and that Qantas is still working on finding it. We did manage to buy some deodorant at a 24hour supermarket, so we at least have something to mask the smell Besides this small discomfort, all is well in Aotearoa and we’re about to leave for the visa agency to get Yvo’s permanent resident visa attached to his passport.

Another Spider Update!

Bernd — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:03:00 +0000

This morning, while Yvo was about to take a shower, I walked to our office (Bedroom 1) to check the news and see what was happening on Facebook. I opened the door, died a little and then closed the door again. Probably inspired by the occupy-Wall-street-movement, a big brown spider had taken over the office and had started an occupy-Bernd-and-Yvos-office-movement. I opened the door again, at which point the spider decided that it didn’t like the ceiling anymore, so it let itself drop to the floor and then started running like an idiot. Around that time Yvo arrived and we took some pictures to identify this particular spider. Since removing big spiders is my new hobby, I proceeded capturing it in a pint glass and we took some more pictures. Please feel free to correct us, but we’re pretty sure that this was a Huntsman spider. Despite looking horrible, this spider actually captures other spiders, so it’s good to have Huntsman spiders around the house. Our little Huntsman now wanders around in the backyard, hopefully catching some white-tailed spiders for us.

(click the photo for more pictures)

Spider News Flash!

Bernd — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:03:53 +0000

Happy new year! While Yvo was on the phone with his parents, I grabbed the camera to make some close-ups of a spider. This spider has family in every room of our house, so it seemed like a good idea to find out which family we’re dealing with. Our house, so it would appear, is invested by Lampona, or the Lampona murina, to be more precise. For those of you that aren’t into Arachnology, this species is also known as White-tailed spiders, or those-horrible-monsters-that-hide-in-your-stuff-especially-your-underwear-to-bite-you-after-you-had-a-nice-shower. Fun, right!? This is how they look in their quite-terrifying-but-not-that-harmfull-phase.

Hello, we’ve got a banner!

Bernd — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:24:39 +0000

Look up! No, not at the ceiling, at the top of this page! It is a banner, a spanking new banner!

Also, our stuff finally arrived today, YEAH! This morning at around 8.30 a truck pulled up to our house, delivering the goods we shipped to ourselves in September. Basically this means that we now can wash our clothes and sit on a couch to watch some television. To get an overall impression of our house at the moment, see the pictures on Flickr.

Did you know that you can reply to this post using your Facebook login? Easy, huh?

Stay indoors and set the airco to freeze!

Bernd — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:40:10 +0000

We must go on holiday. No really, we do. If you’d ever decide to apply for an Australian visa (which, in the end, is totally worth the effort), you’d probably lodge your visa application from outside Australia (this is called an off-shore visa application). An off-shore visa can only be granted to you if you’re off-shore. If you happen to find yourself on-shore while a positive decision on your visa is made, you’ll receive a pre-grant letter. This letter basically tells you to leave to country so that you may receive a grant letter (which means that the visa is granted). Silly? Perhaps, but those are the rules. A few days ago Yvo received a pre-grant letter, so he now needs to leave the country and, since travelling alone is quite boring (even if it’s only a six hour flight), I’ll have to accompany him on this trip. Next year (next month actually, but next year sounds more awesome), 30 January, we’ll leave for New Zealand in order for Yvo to receive his visa. Life here, as you can see, is very tough.

Did I mention the weather yet? This weekend temperatures are expected to be as high as 38 degrees, which is somewhat unimaginable if you’re used to being in The Netherlands around New Years Eve (3 degrees and a slight drizzle). Also, did you know that this is a dry heat? Jealous yet? Yes? Well, please come over, we have plenty of sun to go around, a spare bedroom and we’re happy to supply you with all the vegemite you can eat (it’s a by-product of beer manufacturing, so it’s must be good)!

This morning we also received information about our consignment, it’ll be delivered tomorrow. TOMORROW?! (I’ve you’ve ever seen MuppetVision-3D the voice inside your head just instantly changed to Gonzo, otherwise: Visit Disney!). Yup, it’s on short notice, but since we’re working from home it won’t be a problem. This New Years Eve will be spent on the couch watching television (also, we bought a television) and enjoying the Sydney fireworks at 11.30 (Sydney is 30 minutes ahead of time).

Before I leave you, I do have a little spider-report. As the weather warms up, the spiders are getting bigger. I’ve already electrocuted three of these half-the-size-of-an-iPhone monsters and where the first two were sitting in the laundry room, the third one was on a wall in the spare bedroom (don’t worry, we promise to eradicate all spiders in this room when you visit). Also the second spider spawned within five minutes of the first one, which leads us to believe that the spare-bedroom-spider might also have a doppelgänger which we haven’t found yet. Also, spiders are scary, it’s okay to be afraid of them (click this link if you need a laugh ).

Old car!

Bernd — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:30:40 +0000

Let me start with some news: We have bought a car! I’d love to write that we bought a new car, but migrating to Australia turns out to be a somewhat expensive hobby, so we’re low on funds. Still, we do need some form of transportation for groceries and such, so we decided to buy the cheapest car we could find, without having to compromise on details such as seats and a windscreen. Our Mitsubishi Lancer is from 2001 and, surprisingly, doesn’t smell like death (this in contrast to the ’02 Ford ‘Moldy’ Falcon, which was our second choice). As it turns out, $5,000 doesn’t give you that many car options down here. Anyway, tomorrow we’ll be picking up the car, so I’m sure you’ll find some pictures on Flickr after that. This reminds me: Did our Dutch readers survive the traffic today? Today a light changed to red just before we were there and we had to wait 45 seconds before we were able to continue our journey, so we can totally relate to your 330+ kilometres of traffic jams.

We’ve been away from The Netherlands for about two months, and neither of us really misses it. Don’t get me wrong: We do miss our family and friends -wait, I have to close the blinds, even though it’s nearing 7pm, the sun is still really hot-, but that’s about all we miss. The only thing wrong with being here is listening to Christmas music while the weather is predicted to hit 30 degrees by the end of the week… oh well We’re still having a great time here and even picked up gardening to give us something to do besides work (lack of television does seem to change us a little bit).

Edit: I told you so

Internet at last

Bernd — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:10:13 +0000

…now, this is basically what happend to us. I’m sorry? You weren’t listening? The internet was what? Off? Well, is it on now? Yes? Good, let me bring you up to speed then!

Our little spider adventure in the car left us longing for more wildlife encounters, so we decided to visit the Adelaide zoo. This zoo is known for its two pandas, which are the only two pandas on the southern hemisphere. Pandas, known for their desire to become extinct (take a look at their diet if you don’t believe me), somehow made it into the 21st century and let me assure you that they look very cuddly. There’s really not a lot I can tell you about these creatures, but if you can cope with the many, many appeals made by Jimmy Wales and friends, there is a great site I can redirect you to that has all the information you may need.

After the panda exhibit we walked around and took pictures until we were tired and needed a break. We bought ourselves some drinks and sat down on a bench, conveniently located in the shade. So far the day had been great and that would be all I would have to say about it, if it weren’t for the little house of horrors that came wandering by as we were enjoying our drinks. Do you know that feeling, that something very disturbing is happening in the corner of your eye, but that you just are unwilling to recognise it, just to shield yourself from mental scarring? That is exactly what happened to us. We were, of course, forced to act upon the situation after a few nanoseconds, to avoid the pending doom. After we jumped away from the bench, we turned around to see what we had just escaped. Keep in mind that at this point, we didn’t know the first thing about Australian spiders, so we weren’t able to properly assess the situation at that time. We just saw a hairy spider, almost the size of an iPhone, but way fatter, in fight with a huge red wasp-like creature. The fight wasn’t really a fight, as we discovered moments later, but in reality the wasp was dragging the spider along. Ah! I can hear you think: “Shouldn’t that be the other way around, aren’t spiders supposed to catch insects?”, well, apparently, all bets are off in this country. As we watched the little show the wasp and the spider were performing, a little cute birdie landed next to us to keep us company, or actually, to snatch the spider from the wasp, as happened only seconds later. The wasp looked seriously pissed after this, so we decided not to stay and watch what would happen next.

The whole situation left us terrified, but curious, so we went onto the Google to try and find out what we had seen. Australia, as it appears, is home to the spider wasp (which, coincidentally, is a great word to replace ‘spider man’ in the Spider Man tune -or the Spider Pig tune, if you’ve seen the Simpsons movie: ‘Spider Wasp, Spider Wasp, does whatever a Spider Wasp does…’). Our particular spider wasp managed to catch a huntsman spider. The spider wasn’t dead, it was just paralysed and destined to become a brand new incubator for the wasp’s offspring. The bird, in hindsight, probably did it a favour by killing and eating it, as a quick dead is, as far as I’m concerned, preferable to slowly being eaten alive by a wasp larvae for months only to see your abdomen burst open (and then dying) as a new spider wasp emerges from it. Just today I bought myself an electric insect zapper, so I should be safe.

I’m probably leaving out a few important details, but as of Tuesday 29 November we’ve leased a beautiful house in Mount Barker, SA! It took quite some time to find something the both of us felt comfortable with living in for the coming 12 months, but this house meets all requirements besides having a pool. Though the pool will be missed, the parrots in the garden do make up for it a little bit. Our first order of business was getting the power reconnected to the house, as the prospect of going through the house at night by the lights of our telephones wasn’t really appealing. Next was getting the phone line and then internet connected, which, as it turns out, takes quite some time here. Tuesday saw Yvo waiting for the electricity guy (which would visit us between 7am and 7pm) and me driving to IKEA Adelaide to buy beds and get them delivered to our home. Wednesday we went shopping for a fridge and now we’re just waiting for our stuff to arrive (this saturday), to clear customs and quarantine inspection (3 weeks minimum) and, of course, delivery. Thank god we’re in the Adelaide Metropolitan Area (which is only slightly smaller than Holland’s Randstad), so delivery will be free of charge.

I’ll try to go into more detail regarding the past two weeks later on, but for now, this is basically what happened to us.

Is that a spider crawling over the windscreen?

Bernd — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 03:31:51 +0000

Thank God for user manuals. Do you know that the average TomTom manual functions perfectly as a spider swatting device? If you don’t believe me, please ask Yvo, as he practically saved my life while I was driving over an intersection and a spider suddenly bungeed from the windscreen towards my face. Me screaming like a little girl definitely helped Yvo to find the right motivation to terminate the little bugger, so I at least contributed to the solution.

Yes! We’re indeed still alive! Currently we are distributing our time between looking for rental properties, working on our project and not getting murdered by spiders and/or snakes. We’ve found several properties we’re interested in and we’re expecting email responses from real estate agents in the coming hours/days. The project will probably keep us busy for quite some time and the spider problem is obviously very much under control.

Internet in the hotels in apartments around Adelaide is expensive (27.50 a day with a 350MB data limit), so we’re not really able to upload photo’s or post stories. At the moment we’re in the hotel lobby where the internet is slow, but free.

Yesterday we drove to Strathalbyn, Echunga, Mount Barker and Hahndorf to get a decent impression of the region we’re interested in. The weather here is not to bad, though we had some rain yesterday evening (it only lasted for 10 minutes, but it still counts). The day time temperature is about 27 degrees and at the moment the skies are blue