Picture Time

I'm a little late getting these posted here, but here are some recent pictures of Will when he turned 3 at the end of January.

And here's a little video of Will eating some lamb.

I haven't decided whether I will stick with Flickr or just put everything on this me.com account...

Restart

After weeks of disruption, I am finally settling back into a normal life. We moved on Dec. 18th, which is when I lost my internet connection for more than two weeks.  Since that day I have been sweating it out with moving heavy boxes of books (there were nearly 40!), putting together wardrobes from Ikea (no built-in closets at the new place), hosting a small NYE party with six kids in attendance, going to a Wiggles concert (those guys are geniuses), attending the Brisbane International tennis tournament, driving to the mountains, and washing lots of dishes. The picture below was taken aboard the Wheel of Brisbane, just a few days before Christmas. Although Will and V. enjoyed the views, I wasn't thrilled when the operators gave us an extra turn, due to my lingering fear of heights.

Our new home is a rented Queenslander house built in the 1920s. It features a large fenced-in yard in which Will loves to play.  Before I provide more details about our home, let me just preface this by saying that we really LOVE it.  It's one-storey, with all three bedrooms off the main lounge (living room). There's a separate large kitchen and dining room, full of bright, sunny, windows overlooking the garden. The entire house is built above ground, with plenty of storage in the space below. But, being an old Queenslander that hasn't been updated in decades, it does have a few quirky bits:

• no air conditioning--very tough to deal with when the temps hit the mid 30s (95 deg F) during the past week.
  
• no window screens-- allowing all sorts of strange insects to bite us all night long, as well as several small lizards to roam the walls.
  
• no dishwasher-- this is especially hard on V., who hates washing the dishes.  I am trying to do as much as possible, but I think we'll have to figure out how to get one installed soon.
  
• laundry done outside and under the house-- it feels a bit strange having to go outside to do the laundry, but I'm getting used to it.
• across the street from the railroad tracks-- Queensland Rail uses these tracks for both commuter and freight trains. We have pretty much habituated to the noise at this point, and Will still loves to watch them go by every 10-15 minutes.
  
• on a busy street-- the traffic going by our master bedroom window is often louder than the trains going by.  I am really starting to hate motorcycles.
• one powerpoint (electrical outlet) per room-- I have become quite proficient in using power strips and extension cords to keep our many devices running
  
• one bathroom--it's been years since I have had to share a bathroom, but we're getting along so far
  
• a 35-year-old stove-- the oven temperatures are printed in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, which means it was probably bought around the time that Australia was going metric.  One of the three burners doesn't work, and it takes forever to heat up the oven.
  
• maggots in the floorboards--yes, the flies like to lay eggs in the cracks of the kitchen floorboards. This is pretty disgusting, but we're determined to get it under control.
  

Again, I want to emphasise that we LOVE this place.  Now that I have a big lawn to mow, I went out and bought a classic Australian lawnmower, the Victa.  It turns out that power mowers are still a novelty in Australia, and the same Toro that I owned in the States is considered a luxury mower here.  I find mowing very relaxing, and I'm already looking forward to my next chance to cut the grass tomorrow.

So, that's our new life in a nutshell.  I am back at work this week, madly trying to catch up with everything I have had to neglect in the past month.  Happy New Year to you!

Sold!

Yes, we finally sold our house back in Atlanta!  It took 18 months and we suffered a huge loss, but the final transaction took place last Friday.  In the days before the closing I was up late making panicky calls to figure out how to move enough cash from our account to cover the balance at the lawyer's office.  I was told repeatedly that I should wire the money, but I couldn't do this without going to my bank in the States in person.  Then I ran into some maximum daily limits that stretched the transaction over three days.  I shudder when I think of all the fees I paid in my haste to get this done in time.

Alas, we no longer have a home in the States.  We have moved to Australia.

Recovering

In the days since my last post, our little family has faced some major challenges and savoured a few minor victories. V. is once again in action, having gone back to work last week. She still feels the back pain, but has learned some good exercises from her physiotherapist that have strengthened her back already. Will was pretty much back to normal last week, except for a lingering cough. Even I enjoyed 2-3 normal days of work until I fell to some horrible influenza virus. I haven't been that sick since I was a kid. I spent over three days in bed, and I'm just beginning to feel normal again this afternoon. Now we worry that Will's coughs and fever are once again on the rise...

We also had some action on our house. We had two "legitimate" offers that we counter-offered on, and we're still waiting for all that to conclude, so stay tuned. All I can say right now is that we won't have a penny (well, a 5 cent piece here in Oz) to buy a piece of cheese if the buyers accept our latest offer.

Oh, and I also stood in line for five hours last Friday (July 11) to get a 3G iPhone. Yes, I got it...eventually. It couldn't be activated by Telstra until Sunday, but now I am the proud owner of the latest from Apple. Someone called me a "Fanboy" for my actions. Hmmm, what other first Apple products have I bought over the years? Here's a few that I can remember:

• the first Mac (see my earlier post)
• the first laptop Mac, the Macintosh Portable (1989)
  
• the first "Bondi Blue" iMac (G3)
  
• the first iPod (in 2001)
  
• the first iMac G4
  
• the first Macbook Air

I think I like "FanMan" instead.

What It's Like in a Hot Market

I heard yesterday that there's a plan afoot to give temporary visas to American construction workers, who are suffering from a downturn in new home sales, so that they can come build homes here in Australia, where there is a shortage in all kinds of labor. In fact, I was told that the University of Queensland can't begin some construction projects for which they have received funding because local contractors are booked up months in advance.

For any American readers (or from elsewhere) who live in housing markets where things are slow, you would be quite shocked to see what life is like here in Brisbane as either a home buyer or a renter. For a start, most homes in our local area are sold by auction. In the States, auctions are usually associated with foreclosures, but here they are plentiful because the seller can potentially make a lot of extra money. During an auction a crowd gathers outside the house. After the bell ringer quietens the crowd, the auctioneer begins. The sellers stand nearby looking nervous, not so much because they are afraid they won't get their minimum price, but because their dreams of hitting the big time might be just too unrealistic. My guess is that, in this local market, more often people end up make a rather huge profit when they sell.

For renters, the story is similar. There is a real shortage of affordable rentals, especially for students. It appears that most properties are owned by single investors, who have bought a second home to rent out and for which they receive a tax deduction on the mortgage interest (note that such a deduction does not occur for the first home's mortgage...one of the stranger mysteries of Aussie economics). Because these small-time investors don't want to be bothered by the responsibilities of managing their property, they typically use an agency that specializes in rentals. One of the biggest agencies around here (near the UQ campus) is prorentals.com.au. Because rentals are in such demand, agents from these places typically schedule just one or two 10-minute showings of a particular property each week. This is your only chance to see the property. Last month, when my PhD student from the U.S., Michael, and his wife Erin were looking for apartments, they had to zip around a large area to many of these showings. Each time they would show up, there would be a fairly large crowd standing outside the property waiting for the agent. Roughly half the time, the agent never did show up (and it must be said that prorentals was one of the worst offenders). Another 20% of the time, the twenty-something agent would turn up, but announce that the property was already rented. I saw some people, probably newly arrived to Australia, going from property to property by taxi. It is only after one has seen the property that you are allowed to submit an application (a legal requirement). And, for each property there are many, many applicants. The owner of the property then sifts through all these applications at once and makes a pick. I can easily imagine where some housing discrimination could creep into the process. By the way, it was only when Michael and Erin finally deviated from the major rental agencies' methods and looked at the Saturday newspaper ads, did they find an apartment that was shown to them by someone at a mutually convenient time, and for which their application was successful. The scary thing about all this is that there's talk of opening up rentals to the auction process as well...

So, yes, sometimes being in Australia feels like we have entered some sort of alternate universe. Back in Atlanta, our house is currently being advertised as a rental or a buy, but we still haven't had a bite. There are nights when I have a dream of a riotous crowd gathered outside our home back there, which has divided itself into two groups--one that wants to buy it and one that wants to rent it. Then, just before the auction starts, a twentysomething male with spiky hair and wearing an ugly tie drives up in an agency car and screams, "sorry, but that property is already sold." But then I wake up...

Frustation For Sale

Have you checked out the link to our house that's for sale back in Atlanta?  It's a very nice site, but I am open to any suggestions to improve what our realtor has done with it.  My reaction is biased. I easily get sad when I look at the pictures of various parts of the house--especially Will's room, which V. and I painted together, and the family room, where we spent many hours watching Will--first lying on his back, then crawling, and then finally walking.  We have had barely a nibble from a potential buyer in the past 12 months.  The most common complaint is that it needs extensive "updating," which we concede, but that's also why it's listed at more than $100K less than anything else in the neighborhood.  Lowering the price isn't much of an option, as we are already looking at barely paying off our mortgage if it were to sell close to the asking price.  A few of my colleagues here have suggested that we contemplate just declaring bankruptcy, especially in light of the mortgage payments we send back to the U.S. every month.  Of course, we now live in Australia, where we would be immune to the hit such an action would take on our American credit history. But that would also mean that we really couldn't move back to the States for at least seven years.  And, perhaps more importantly, I would have to get over the whole stigma attached to someone who doesn't pay off his debts.  For now, we have decided not to think about this option until September 1.  Hopefully, someone will come along and fall in love with the place the way we did.

Sleepless in Arkansas

(Don't you think the title of this post would be perfect for the sequel...Imagine, 15 years later, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are living in the same little town in Arkansas, but don't know it. One day, they each drive to the same Walmart in Benton, looking for a small alarm clock. As they reach for the last $3 special on the shelf, their hands touch...)

Yes, we are in Hot Springs Village, where my dad and his wife retired 12 years ago. We are also very tired this morning. Last night Will had a miserable night of tossing and crying, and V. & I paid the price. He hasn't slept nearly enough in the past three days, which is surely the culprit. The lack of normalcy is hardest on him. But what can we do? I drove him around the country roads for nearly two hours yesterday so that he would nap. At 2 am, V. was giving him a bath. We sang every song we could remember--including about ten rounds of "Yellow Submarine" (with all the verses). We haven't experienced anything like this with him in over six months.

For those of you have never visited this part of Arkansas, let me assure you that it is absolutely beautiful. It's full of rolling mountains, dense forests, lakes, and the occasional pasture that seems to pop out of nowhere. Of course, I'm trying to soak up all this American landscape, complete with chigger bites. But I'm also keeping an eye on the Brisbane rental market...

The Floor Show

Who needs to pay the big bucks to go out at night when you have this entertainment at home?