I love filing taxes!

Last night we did filed our Australian taxes over at our friend’s place. Surprisingly, it was one of the best nights I have had here in Sydney. How can you not have a great night when you find out that you are getting back almost $5000? Yeah, apparently it pays to be poor here in Australia. This should excite our families to pieces as they will now be getting Christmas presents rather than just hugs this December. For Veronica and I, well, this windfall is the equivalent of a financial miracle. Needless to say times have been a little lean since moving into our own place two weeks ago. Frugal has been the name of the game, counting each and every 5 cent piece, packing our lunches, and rummaging through trash bins for our other meals (jokes).

In fact, I was so happy that I completely forgot that earlier in the day, while talking to a property headhunter, I was offered another job, as a recruiter, but this time in property. I must give the shady, back handed vibe out quite well I suppose? Who cares for now, the Luttrell’s are no longer in the poorhouse! Viva el Australian Government!

This weekend we are off to Kangaroo Valley for a friend's 30th birthday. Should be good times, and our next post will definitely have photos.

Cheers.

FG, APEC, and our new casa

Much has happened since our last post (somehow this seems to be a recurring theme for this blog) and now Veronica and I have officially become a married, adult couple once again. Yep, we finally ponied up and got our own flat after 8 months.

This past weekend, which happened to be 3 days long due to APEC being held here in Sydney, we moved into our very own place here in Manly. (Don’t worry; we didn’t move to a seedy part of town, in fact we moved only about 100 yards away from our former place.) To say we were excited would be an understatement. Due to our fantabulous Ghetto Shopping Spree furniture spoils (described in detail last post), our clothing, and other assorted knick-knacks that have been collected during our 8 months here in Manly, the move took the better part of Friday.

After our lengthy Friday, Saturday morning was spent treating ourselves to a late wake up, whereupon we went to our new, favorite spot Barefoot for a flat white and a waffle. Unfortunately we still had to move two wardrobes that our friend Charlotte’s family was giving us. Since these two wardrobes are quite massive I had to wait for our buddy Morgan to help me with them. During this downtime, Veronica and I went shopping for a used refrigerator at a shop in Manly. It was rather shocking to see how much some of these secondhand fridges were priced at. On a cheaper note, we found some excellent prices at St. Vincent (a Salvation Army type store) and ended up buying a TV for $35. (Side note: the age old adage “you get what you pay for” has never rung so true to me before living here in Sydney). Once our shopping was over it was time to move the cumbersome wardrobes. The first wardrobe was moved over without problems, however the second wardrobe was dropped on its side after the door swung open and smashed my right index and middle finger. Luckily, I only got nasty cuts on both fingers as it could have easily broken a finger in different circumstances. Following the wardrobes, Morgan and I headed back to the 2nd hand refrigerator store where we picked up the affordably priced fridge that Veronica and I had picked out earlier. I won’t give you a play by play of the intricate delicacies that were harnessed in moving the fridge, but trust me when I say that old fridges are disgustingly heavy. If you have the means, or you have a weak back, invest in a new fridge. Or you could just pay an extra $30 to have the store deliver it. J

Our friend Johann was back in Sydney at the end of his month long vacation here in Sydney, so Veronica and I went into town to meet him and his girlfriend Kavita for dinner. It was nice to have a good dinner and hear about all the places Johann saw on his trip. I couldn’t help but feel a tad jealous, here Veronica and I have been in Australia for over 8 months now and I feel we have barely even made it outside of Sydney.

Sunday we finished unpacking all our bags and then we broke down the remaining boxes that we had used moving. The place, now uncluttered, felt like our home. We headed over to the mall to buy a few odds and ends at the dollar store. The weather was overcast and rainy, like it had been all weekend. The crap weather was kind of nice, as I didn’t feel horrible for not getting out for a surf.

We went to bed early so Veronica could have a good night sleep since she is working out in the field for the first 3 days of the week. I got up early as well Monday so I could get a surf in before work. The waves were chunky and disorganized, but there were some rides to be had at Manly Beach. I took a fairly savage beating on a nice, pitching wave. It would have been a great ride had I made the drop, but I completely buried the nose of my board in the flats after the drop, thus getting recycled up and over the falls. Good times nonetheless.

I thought I would give you the best “Bush-ism” of the APEC conference. Apparently Georgie started to pay tribute to all the Australians who are over in Iraq fighting for freedom. The only problem is, Georgie referred to them as “Austrians”. Apparently you can be a well traveled American and yet still be an utter retard in geography.

I want to end this post with a reference to the section of the title “FG”. If you look closely, you might be able to make out in the photo to your left the image of a Contents page. This is a book I checked out of the Manly Public Library last week, Jorge Luis Borges “Labyrinths”. Borges is a renowned Argentine writer who only wrote short stories, essays, and reviews, but not a single novel. However, or perhaps partly due to never having written a novel, Borges is looked upon as a literary genius on the scale of Kafka. Much like Kafka’s writings, Borges stories are quite intricate, and riddled with hidden meanings. But I digress, the reason I mention this book that I am reading is to share the laughter I experienced when I first opened the book and looked at the Contents page. Besides 8 stories on the first page of the Contents section, and on another 2 stories on the second Contents page, there are the letters FG written in pencil. Apparently whoever checked this book out wanted to share their colossal wisdom with other readers, because on the top of the Contents page our previous reader unlocked the secret of FG by stating FG = F****** Good. I know what you are inevitably thinking; truly this literary scholar of Borges has a profound sense for the written word. If it wouldn’t be such an outright copy of Max Fischer’s move in “Rushmore” to find out who had marked the school’s Jacque Cousteau book, I daresay I would go on the hunt to find out just who was behind the immortal description, FG.