5. Eat Fairy bread

Remember that list of Goals for Oz created by Tamar? Well #5 was eat fairy bread. I haven't found any yet (apparently its more of a home-made thing) but I did find these lovely treats at the store today and decided to buy them. They taste a bit like a fig newton. There is a lot of dough and a little jam. Pretty tasty but not my all-time favorite. I will still aim to make the fairy bread, though. Don't you worry, Tamar!

How big is Australia?

    

In some of my recent conversations with Aussie friends we try and compare the size of Australia to the US. Surprisingly, I didn't really have a concept of how the size and populations compared. So I did some research. Some basic facts:

Size:
Wikipedia tells me that the landmass of the States is 3,794,101 square miles whereas Australia is 2,941,300 sq miles (basically add Texas 4 times to Australia and they are the same).

Population:
The US has approximately 314 million people, Australia has a mere 23 million.
The population density of the US is estimated to be about 87.4 people/sq mile; Australia's population density is about 7.3 people /sq mile.

Wikipedia lists the most populated city in the US to be NYC with 19,015,900 people. The most populated city in Australia is Sydney with 4,605,992 people. Melbourne has 4,169,103 people which is quite a bit compared to Jacksonville (approximately 1,345,596) and Athens (192,541, most of which are students).

**bottom line here, the US is only about 1.3 times the size of Australia but has 14 times the people!**

Location:
The States are in the Northern hemisphere, Australia is in the Southern hemisphere. A difficult concept to wrap my brain around:  the south of the US is the warmest whereas the north of Australia is the warmest. Florida is about 1,800 miles from the Equator and Darwin (one of the northern-most cities in Australia is only about 850 miles away). Interestingly, Melbourne is only about 2700 miles away from Antarctica, roughly the distance from Florida to California!

States: 
Whereas the US has 50 states, Australia has only 6 states and two territories (I am in Victoria, others include South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia). Can anybody tell me how many territories the US has?

And there you have it! There will be a quiz later....

Settling in and new friends

I officially completed my first week of work and I have to say, I finished exhausted! Working 9 hours without caffeine is tiresome! I capped it off with a great weekend; I did some grocery shopping (took 3 trips to the store, not on purpose), lots of writing for my post-doc application, moved my bedroom around, and did laundry. I treated myself to an array of guacamole and 2 salsas, yum! Laundry was a bit different for me. We have a washing machine but it only fits about 1 sheet at a time - literally, I washed one sheet and one towel for my first load. Also, there is no dryer. Typically you put your clothes outside to dry but because its so cold things sometimes don't dry and I needed sheets to sleep on so I draped them over things in my room and turned on my space heater. Things dried before bed but because my pajamas and sheets were just washed I was overwhelmed with the smell of my cheap soap. I'm also seriously re-thinking the cheap sheets I bought. They are only about 225 thread count and feel like sandpaper. I just hate the idea of spending money on things I can't bring back with me but not sure I can sleep on these things forever. Hopefully they will soften up.

Today was another great day of work/existence. I woke up to an unexpected Google Hangout (similar to a Skype) with Brendan and got to finally catch up on things. It was nice to hear from him. Because I stayed with him right before I left, and then he came with me, we went from being spending every day and hour together to not speaking for over a week.

When I came home one of my roommates, Katrina, was making tacos and invited me to join her, her boyfriend (Sebastian, also my roommate), and his friend (Josh). We ended up talking for several hours and had a lot of fun. We spent a good amount of time discussing LOST, which really just made me feel at home. Among other things, we talked about national holidays and they would really like to celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving with me. They are very curious about the history of both and, like most Americans, would enjoy an excuse to dress up. They were also super excited to hear that I helped create and was in a zombie movie. I hope we can pull something together for the holidays, that would be so fun!

ps. I'm working on a picture for this one, I know it makes the read that much more enjoyable :)

Mt. Dew (and other sodas), uncovered!

Remember a while back when I posted that Mt. Dew (one of my worst guilty pleasures) was rare here but that we found something called "Mt. Dew Energized?" The drink seemed a bit odd because it said "with caffeine" on the bottle/can and I wasn't sure why. I think I figured it out! I've done some reading and it turns out that many (maybe most or all) non-energy drinks (including Mt. Dew) were not allowed to have caffeine. Somehow soda drinks (like coca cola) but not soft drinks (like Pepsi and Mt. Dew; don't really understand the difference) are allowed to have minimal caffeine. This explains a nasty and useless Pepsi I had the other day as well. Thus, it appears that these new Mt. Dew Energized are the first Mt. Dew's to have caffeine here in Australia. People are really posting about it. A little hunting on forums showed me that apparently this is common in other countries as well. In fact, it appears that the US is one of the only (or the only) country to have such liberal caffeine regulations. The fact that I don't really enjoy tea, and can't stand coffee, have made early mornings and long days a struggle and now I know I can't turn to sodas either - although it's probably better. My next plan is to make a chai tea powder concoction similar to that sold by a local coffee shop from back home. Hopefully that will help...

A few Aussis-isms

Today was my first full day of work and I must say it was a full day. I got in around 8:15 and left around 6:30 (for those of you with real jobs, spare the gasping please). I have a lot of meetings planned these first few weeks to get to know everyone in the 'office' and to hear about clinical experiences in the hospital. I also got to talk about some data today and it sounds like I'll be the lead quantitative analyst on the data set while I'm here. Both my supervisor and I got very excited about this and I thought of a million papers to write. Down boy, down.

Today's lunch with 3 other colleagues was quite fun as well. Interestingly, it was myself, two native Aussies, and one woman Canadian (been in Melbourne about 4 years) so we had a good time talking about words/phrases used in the three countries. A few I was unfamiliar with are below...guess what they mean (no googling!):

au fait (actually common in Australia, Canadian had never heard of it)
face washer
pushchair (or pram)
tomato sauce
slides
moccasin
trolley
thongs (not what you think, but probably used some in the states as well)

In other news, I've been invited to be a fill-in for a women's netball team on some Tuesdays. When I asked Candice (my co-worker/temporary boss) if she could show me how to play first, she said 'nah, you'll just get it." I've been told its most similar to our basketball, which I gotta tell you is just not a short girl's sport. We'll see how it goes!

3 states and 2 countries

I just had to throw this in there. The other day two of my friends, Sabrina and Mandy, and myself set up a Google hangout (it's like Skype but for more than two people). Sabrina lives in Wilmington, NC, Mandy lives in Portsmouth, VA and I of course am on a different continent so together we had 3 states and 2 countries talking all together. I haven't talked to either of them in a really long time and it was so nice to see their shining faces! 

Sabrina getting up close and personal. 

Google hangout also lets you put fun things on the screen. Pirate Sabrina trying out a few things. Sabrina talked a lot more than Mandy so I don't have any of Mandy. Great to see you guys!

First day at work and moving day

Today was both my first day at work and moving day to my new place - I love cramming everything into one day! Work was great. I was supposed to be there at 8:30 so I was my usual punctual self and showed up at 8:15, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Feeling confident in where I was going I walked up the stairs one floor to the second floor. I waited for 1/2 hour, my boss did not show up to meet me. So then I made several trips down to the first floor, up to the fifth floor, etc. After an hour we found each other and she told me that one floor up is the 1st floor because I started on the ground floor - jeesh! Today was more of an orientation day, I printed several articles, began using my computer, and watched a video. After a few more weeks of paperwork/ID badges (you have to swipe to get out of some places; fire hazard if I ever heard of one), I should be settled. There are a few more critical pictures I want to take, but these will do for now.

I actually work at the Melbourne Children's Research Institute but it is housed with and affiliated with The Royal Children's Hospital. There is also a partnership with the University of Melbourne. 

They just re-built the hospital. It's less than a year old and they put in a lot of 'extras' to make the hospital as fun as possible for children. They also have several indoor/outdoor playgrounds within the hospital, an aquarium, and a meerkat habitat. I bet (and hope) that all these features were inspired by research that says "children's development [and recover] is supported by outdoor play, creative exploration, and animals." I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

 

My desk! It's sort of like a cubicle but bigger. I have this really big nice Mac computer that I don't know how to use, my own phone, file cabinet, and my own 'spice rack' which is actually a me-size drawer to hold stuff. Perhaps I shall put 1,000 spices in it.

And I get a view! This is actually of the demolition of the old hospital. It's kind of cool to look at, really. At the very least I am SO lucky to have a wall full of windows and natural light. Four years of graduate school and my office was surrounded by 4 concrete walls.

My new place! I will get pictures of the outside soon but here is my room. It's on the second story and has a big beautiful window for more natural light. My friend Alyssa and her soon to be father-in-law helped me move in this bed I just bought and all of my things from the last place I was staying. All I had to do was assemble everything by myself..

Look at that wall of closets!

All I had to do was put an IKEA bed together with no tools. Except...

I did have tools! Thanks to Brendan (Walsh) and Natale, I had my very own screwdriver and knife. 

 

All put together! I'm slightly concerned that it will collapse beneath me as I sleep tonight but I think we can say that for most IKEA products. I guess I'll just wake up to another adventure.

Still a little messy but this is it. I have a bed, a desk, a comfy lounge chair, and more bookshelf space than I will ever need. Oh, and a space heater, VERY necessary. Did I mention it's very cold here?