Odds and Ends

Here a few observations:

1) Here the letter "Z" is pronounced like zed rather than zee

2) Alcohol is extremely expensive compared to the rest of the world but the Australians like to drink, so for the poor college student the common option is what they call "Goon" which is boxed wine. The most disturbing thing about it is that it says on the box made with the aid of nuts, milk, Eggs, and last but most unnerving of all FISH!

3) I tried to bake the past two days, and its difficult translating from the U.S. measurement system into the metric system. And at first I thought food prices were insanely high until I realized that a kilo is 2.2lbs. However, I made a rather large error when baking yesterday. I forgot that the temperature dial on the stove was in Celsius not Fahrenheit and I nearly ruined the bread I tried to make. In general its taking a bit to get used to the metric system.

4)I tried my first Tim Tam this weekend! Tim Tams are two chocolate wafers, with a chocolate filling then dipped in chocolate. I also tried a Tim Tam Slam as a fellow American refereed to it and I heard is the correct way to eat a Tim Tam. The procedure is to bite off the top and the bottom of the Tim Tam, then sucking on one end dip the Tim Tam into a hot drink. The Tim Tam works as a straw drawing the liquid while simultaneously melting into a molten mess.

5)There is no $1 bills. The smallest paper money is $5 giving a change a whole new meaning. Also the two dollar coins are very small which makes me nervous about losing them. There are no pennies, but things will be 1.99, but at the cash register you round up meaning it actually costs $2. But if your total would be 5.97 you would round down to 5.95 and get 5 cents back. The money is also infinitely prettier.

6)America needs to join the rest of the world in Football, Banking, Metric System, and an infinite number of things where we are just the odd ones out.