Yes, you are a foreigner

Sometimes I forget we are living in a foreign country. Australia is as western and modern as the US, the language is English, and the life here is very similar to life in America. There are the obvious differences of course; the accents, the driving on the left side of the road, the fact that December is hot and beautiful but July is miserable and cold…etc. etc. There are also many cultural differences, but it's probably far easier for an American to get used to living in Australia than somewhere like Japan or India.

So, naturally, we expect most things to be the same as in America and often find it a bit surprising when they are not. I also forget that I'm the foreigner!

Yesterday I was at a hospital to run a clinic. I went out to get a patient with a very simple name.
I went to the lobby and called out the name of the patient..
The 20 or so people in the waiting room didn't budge.
I called the name again. (These wasn't his real name, but let's just say the name was as simple as John Smith)
Again, no one moved.
I figured the patient must have taken a moment to use the toilet or run and grab a coffee at the shop next door.
So, I waited 10 minutes and returned to the lobby.
I called his name again.
No response.
He was my last patient to check, so I continued to wait.
Finally, I went to the scheduler's desk and let them know that "John Smith" probably wasn't going to arrive.
The scheduler informed me that he had checked in 20 minutes ago.
Finally, she said, "Let me help you."
She came out to the waiting area with me and repeated the name.
"John Smith", she said.
A gentleman who had been there THE WHOLE TIME stood up and came forward to us.
Now she didn't say this guys name any different than I had but he understood her and not me!
How hard is it to say "JOHN SMITH" anyway…and don't you stand up for just about anything that sounds remotely close to your actual name?
Eric's last name is Tjossem…people butcher that all the time and he still knows it's his name when someone calls it out.
The only excuse that the guy gave was that he didn't understand my strong Irish accent.

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We needed to have some documents certified for tax purposes. I figured I'd just find a notary public.
"A what?" said my coworkers.
Apparently, document certification is done here at the police station. So, yesterday after my patient not understanding my accent issue, I went to the local police station to get my certification.
I went to the public affairs room at the police station and waited in line with all the other foreigners for document certification. What I needed certified was every page of my passport to file with my Australian taxes. It was bizarre that I needed copies of my passport for tax reasons and bizarre how they were certified.

I returned to my office and had to tell me colleagues how strange I felt the whole experience had been. They didn't get it. They asked again about how it works in America and I tried to explain the notary public thing.

Have you ever tried to explain what a Notary Public is?

"So, it can be anyone", they asked?
"How do you find one?"
"They aren't police?"
"How do you trust them?"
And finally, "They charge a FEE??? That's outrageous!"

I guess when I think about it, the police certification makes a bit more sense.

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Thursday was Thanksgiving in America. Thursday here was just a regular old work day.

I miss the American holidays: Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, President's Day, and the 4th of July.
The holidays of "Cup Day, Australia Day, and Anzac weekend" are inadequate substitutes. It's like trying to celebrate Christmas without your own family traditions. You kind of miss them.

It was a stormy and muggy here on Thanksgiving Day and I had a long day at work. Two lightening strikes over the hospital shorted out the power in the surgery suite and we had a 15 minute "break" where we all just stood around in the emergency lighting making chit chat while waiting for the power to return so we could use the x ray equipment. (Yes, there was a patient quietly sleeping on the table in front of us).

The surgeon started to ask me about Thanksgiving and what it all meant. Everyone else started to pitch in with their questions as well. I should probably have had better answers.
"So, it was a harvest dinner to welcome the pilgrims?"
"But didn't the pilgrims then start to kill off the Indians?"

I didn't really know where to go from that question.


*Note to self: Become very informed about American holiday traditions, US health care system, government policies, government structure, and past presidents. People will ask you and if you have inadequate answers, you will feel silly.

I'm Back

I have been incommunicado for a long time and I am not sure why. In fact I am not even going to look to see when my last entry was. As I scratch my head to come up with a reason none are very good: I am too busy, I don't have much to say, nothing exciting is happening. In reality none of that is true, I will have to blame laziness. This is not the first time that I have been a victim of this particular sin and I am sure won't be the last.

The most important update of course is Madden. Everyday she is doing something different than she did from the day before. The learning and changes that take place blow my mind. If I could learn at half the rate that she does and move at half the speed, my intellectual pursuits and weight would never be a problem.

The blog photo at the top is taken during our trip to Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation in Queensland. Isn't it great? My lovely wife decided that the lighting was perfect on Four Mile Beach and we should take some pictures. In order to get the perfect shot I had to toss Madden multiple times. My shoulders and arms were aching but Beth kept egging me on. "Higher…..Higher….Keep going, but don't drop her". I am happy to report that not a single toddler or daddy was harmed.

I love the name Cape Tribulation. The image that it conjures is that it is a hard and unforgiving place. In reality it is only hard to get to, but worth the trip. It is unique because it is where the Great Barrier Reef joins the land in the northern part of Australia, so it has mountains, beeches, and is tropical. One of the activities that did was a tasting at an exotic fruit farm. I have learned that there are many fruits that I can do without. As a group we decided that there is a reason that apples, oranges, bananas, etc are popular. We should stick to them. It should be noted however, that if you can get your hands on miracle fruit you should give it a try. After you suck on the seed, everything tastes sweet. I am not kidding, as strange as it sounds we were able to drink vinegar.

As noted in previous blogs, TomKat and Suri were supposed to be our neighbors. That never panned out. I guess that the guy who owns the massive casino here is a fellow scientologist so they felt more comfortable staying with the gamblers. I did however get a gig as an extra on the movie that Katie was shooting here. I am amazed at the time that it takes to shoot these scenes. It was a 16 hour day of doing the same thing, but with different camera angles. My job was to follow Katie in through the "airport" and then pass her as she stops, so most of my day was spent standing right next to her (she is good looking) and waiting. Since the day was so long she had visitors….Tom and Suri stopped by to say hello. The three of them were within 2 feet of me, but as a peon I was not supposed to speak to them. I did get the "how you doin" nod from Tom as he flashed the pearly whites, and Suri is so darn cute. It is a surreal experience to be that close to people for that long a period of time and never even say hello.

Random Tuesday Thoughts - Grandparents, Husbands who use too much internet, and other randomness

Let’s talk breast feeding. It was never easy for me but I still kept it going in the mornings. In the middle of August I had to go to Sydney for a conference and both Eric and I wondered how the baby would do without getting her normal cuddle and morning feed. I brought that hateful breast pump to Sydney and diligently tried to keep up what little supply I still had.
In my absence Eric gave Madden an AM bottle and just put her on my side of the bed for this morning meal.
When I returned from Sydney, I woke in the morning and got Madden to feed her. She slipped into bed between us and smiled sweetly at me. Then she bared all 8 of her vicious little sharp teeth and bit down HARD. I cried, she wailed, and breast feeding was discontinued from that moment forward.
And so it ends with the same drama at which it commenced.
It lasted 10 months and 2 weeks and I can’t believe we continued that long.
But now we are done. Done, done, done and I’ve got the teeth marks to prove it. Done.

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My former employer was Guidant. They were bought out by Boston Scientific in 2006 and we changed names at that time. The bag I still cart around the hospital has the Guidant logo branded on the side of it. The Guidant tag line is “It’s a great time to be Alive!” I loved the company but hated that tag line. I looked at it again the other day and thought about how silly it is. “It’s a great time to be alive!” Isn’t that just another way of saying, “It’s a crappy time to be dead?”

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The traffic here is bugging me again. Rush hour is not an hour, it’s an entire afternoon and evening. There is satellite navigation in the car and its reading calculated the distance from my primary hospital to home at 8.2 km. Not far. So, why does it take me an HOUR to get home? The traffic is mainly congested just getting across the city. I watched the sat nav the other day and it took 30 minutes to go that first 1km. I could run home faster.

I change up the route home from time to time, but it always ends up taking the same amount of time. One of the routes is along the river. In the summertime, the rowers are out on the water and I watch them go up and back along the banks. I think I actually take in at least half of their practice session.

Sometimes, I wonder if they’d give me a lift.

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Eric remains a stay at home dad and enjoying his time with baby girl. I went away for conference in August and after spending four days away in Sydney, my normally quiet husband couldn’t stop talking when I got home. He proceeded to tell me about everything that happened on TV for the entire weekend. I think the highlight of his weekend was “So you think you can dance.” Based on that, we both agreed that he should probably get a job. He needs more stimulation…and I can’t listen to him talk about contestants on a reality show as if they are friends.

Sometimes we lie in bed at night and talk about how we would like to trade places. I would love to be home with Madden and he would love to go off to work. It’s just a grass is greener kind of thing and truthfully, I think we would both just welcome more balance in our lives.


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My lovely, dear, charming, enchanting husband used up all our Internet connection downloading all things Vikings. The last two games and every podcast associated with his team are now available for viewing/listening on his computer, but we are now over our limit and cannot log on to check our email.

Oh, dear Eric, I appreciate you and your need to see your home team, but please leave me just a little bit of Internet plan so that I can log on to my work email.

Yes, we do have the maximum plan, but even though it’s quite costly each month, they still limit our usage. I never thought I’d miss Comcast and the unlimited plan that we had in the states. Go figure.

Our usage kicks over soon and so it is likely I will be able to post this in the next week. Until that time, we are incommunicado...

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Today is September 23rd. That was my due date last year. I can distinctly remember the anticipation and tremendous fear that I felt at this exact time last year.

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Eric’s parents were supposed to arrive this morning. I took the day off work; we got up early, took baby girl to daycare, packed Eric into his loaner car, equipped the loaner car (parental chauffeur vehicle which doesn’t contain 500 kilos of medical equipment) with the automatic toll deduction from my car and headed out on the 45 minute trip to the airport. Eric’s parents’ flight was in but there was no sign of Eric’s parents.
The normally crowded international arrival area began to thin out. A flight from China arrived. 60 minutes passed. Everyone from the China flight departed the terminal. No more flights from LAX were arriving. It became apparent that something was not right. Where were they?
Unable to check the Internet from home (see above entry); we couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t sent us an email.
No, they would call. Certainly they would call.
On the way home, Eric got a call from his sister. Apparently their parents connecting flight out of Dallas was delayed and they missed their international connection…..over 24 hours ago…
They are stuck sitting in the LA airport. UGH. UGH. UGH.

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We are enjoying watching Eric’s folks play with Madden. She took about 24 hours to warm to them and now she has realized that they will always read to her or pick her up and play with her. She has mastered the art of the fake cough for extra attention.
For Eric and me, we have a new sense of freedom that comes from someone else entertaining our child! We also appreciate the extra help cooking, cleaning up, and help with the constant stream of laundry.

Madden is a really easy baby. She falls asleep easily and sleeps through the night, she isn’t a fussy eater, and she only cries if she’s hungry or tired. She can play by herself and is entertained easily. We were really proud when Eric’s dad asked us if she is always this good.
Yup. She is.

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This time of year in Melbourne is spring and it is usually dry and somewhat warm. Ever since Eric’s folks arrived, it’s been raining and unseasonably cold. They have an entire selection of shorts and T shirts, but packed no sweat pants or sweatshirts in their luggage. After a trip to the market on Saturday, they are now the proud owners of Aussie brand sweat suits. I had an entire weekend of activities planned – the outdoor farmers market, the Collingwood Children’s Farm, hiking and exploring in the Dandenong’s. After sitting around all weekend and trying to wait out the rain (I’ve never seen rain like this here), I forced everyone out of the house for a trip to the mountains to go hiking. We set off in a cool drizzle and by the time we arrived, it was a full downpour. We got Madden out of the car and into the stroller – the wind was whipping around us and the rain was blowing sideways. We ducked into the very first café we could find and decided we’d have an early lunch and wait out the rain before we hiked. An hour later, the rain was still coming down hard and we all just packed into the car and drove the hour home.
At least the view from the steamed up car windows was nice.

Ad of the Month

Unleash The Man Leather. Not sure what that means, but this one makes us giggle.

Ad of the Month

Did you know that Melbourne is home to the largest population of Greek people outside of Greece itself?
This TV commercial has been running for some time here. Safeway is one of the local grocery stores and they have this fantastic marketing campaign. This is their appeal to the local Greek population. It doesn't have subtitles because you will discover that you don't need to speak Greek to understand it.

Little paper packages

Every now and again a package will show up on our doorstep. OH, how we love that. This time, there was just one thing in the envelope. Thanks Mom, we got it and she loves her doll. Grandmas rock.

Ad of the Month

This commercial is actually not real.

It was the winner of The Gruen Transfer pitch. The Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising, how it works, and how it works on us.

In a segment called 'The Pitch', ad agencies compete to fulfill a seemingly impossible brief. In this segment, two agencies competed to design a commercial that would make Australians want to invade their neighbors to the southeast.

This is the winning commercial.

When I was your age, I had to get up to change the channel...

Pumpkins, Mohicans, and other Random Tuesday Thoughts

We went to a party last weekend that was basically a big Aussie style Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of July. Yes, it is winter here so the big heavy food is IN right now. However, the host ordered and deep fried 5 turkeys. There were only about 35 people total, so that ended up being about 2 ½ turkey's too many.

Aussies don't eat a lot of cooked turkeys and they are hard to come by. As a result, Eric was given the duties of carving the bird and people stood around and watched him.

Being the only American's, we were required to bring the pumpkin pies…

They don't DO pumpkin pie in Australia and they all think it sounds really weird. I guess it's a bit like trying to understand Vegemite sandwiches. Pumpkin for them is Squash and they put it on just about everything. I don't think there is a restaurant here that doesn't offer a pumpkin(squash) soup or a sandwich or pizza with pumpkin (squash).

Eric and I stood near the pies and watched as people cut little tiny slivers for themselves, then piled on the whipped cream, and tentatively brought a piece up to their lips. Most people looked surprised at the first taste and then proceeded to eat the whole miniscule piece on their plates. They were generally well received and a few folks even insisted it wasn't real pumpkin. Well, no, it's not butternut squash….it's real Halloween style jack-o-lantern pumpkin.

They don't do Halloween either, so that didn't really clear things up.

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My car is in the shop right now and the shop gave me a loaner car. I made the booking for the loaner car for a specific day as they told me they would have a large car available that day. My job requires a lot of gear and I generally have so much stuff in my vehicle that I need to do some big moving around if I try to take any more than one passenger. It seems that my booking was missed and instead of the big car, they gave me the extra small compact called a Honda Jazz. I am packed to overflowing with a baby seat and tons of gear. To make matters even more humiliating, there are large decals all over the doors and back that advertise the repair shop.

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It's junk day again. Got junk? Just leave it on the boulevard and it will be hauled away. About 3 times a year each neighborhood gets the opportunity to have their junk unloaded. We've never seen anything like it. There are couches, TV consoles, broken toasters, sewing machines, tupperware, kid's toys, lamps, printers, desks, computers – it's all out there on the lawn. And it's gone by nightfall.

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On my way to Madden's daycare on Monday morning I drove through a neighborhood that must be having junk day. Set amongst the random pieces of furniture and household goods was a large framed movie poster for Last of the Mohicans.

Odd. Makes one wonder what precipitated the owners to finally remove that from their home.

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Melbourne roadways are not built for large cars. In fact, they may not be built for cars at all. The small neighborhood streets often allow parking on both sides but only one car can travel down the road between those parked cars. The dilemma? These roads are two way traffic. The end result is that people come at you head on and dart in and out behind parked cars so that you can eventually pass each other. It usually happens at a normal rate of speed and looks like some sort of dance.

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At a birthday party, Madden was introduced to vegemite. She loves it.

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Australians are not complainers and they tend to act very civilized towards one another. When they do complain, it is usually done with such strong statements as "I am unhappy with this…" or "Since this is unacceptable, I'm wondering what you would be willing to offer as an alternative?"

I find I'm growing uncomfortable with any sort of shouting or strong language when I do hear it now. People listen when you voice yourself intelligently and they shut down if they feel insulted.

In the immigration office when I had to get M's Visa in her passport, I heard a Canadian guy really giving the officer a piece of his mind. Those of us waiting patiently were recoiling in our seats. Eventually the immigration officer told the guy he was moving his application to the bottom of the pile due to his bad behavior. When the guy shouted even louder, the Aussie told him, "Look, Mate, consider yourself lucky. I could have moved your application into the rubbish bin."

The Canadian finally bit his tongue and left the office.

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Due to the lack of complaining in this society, whatever service does manage to come your way will cause you to be very grateful. If you are in a restaurant and you are the only one at your table without food, have no worries. In 5 minutes you will be able to flag over a server who will then go to the kitchen and in another 10 short minutes you will be given the dish that doesn't seem to look like what you ordered. It is appropriate to be grateful for the opportunity to try something new.

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We are surrounded by accents. Who knew this place was so multicultural? And I actually thought they would think my American accent was cool. Silly me.

Ad of the Month

Boag's Beer from Tasmania. Love the kid with the lightsaber.