Prepping for Our First Adventure - Night 3

Still not quite on Aussie time, as I awoke with sun at 5:30 am. No sense wasting a beautiful morning lying in bed and listening to the trains roll by the Albion Station, so I got up and went for a walk. I headed east and found the little shopping center technically called Woolowin. It has a grocery store, a Bi-Lo (whatever the hell that is), a Blockbuster, numerous real estate offices, but most importantly, a St. Vincent de Paul’s. I’ll be headed there later today to buy some work shirts and large sun hat, plus whatever cheap garb I can get my hands on.

Later on, my trip to St. Vinnie’s was a total bust. Some very nice $6 dress shirts were plentiful. There were also four racks of women’s belts, a whole bin of cassette tapes for $1, and special section of stuffed animals, but anything remotely resembling a men’s work quality shirt was nowhere to be found. I returned to the house empty handed. After lunch, Peter and I jumped the train to downtown to try to find some free internet at one of the libraries and for me to finish my shopping. (Note: The ticket men at the Albion station could be the most unhappy people on the planet, I guess calling out “The Shorncliffe Line will be arriving on Platform 4 in three minutes” all day can really take its toll.)

Brisbane from the Pedestrian Bridge

The city library on the north bank, though a beautiful building, was useless to a tourist. One needed a library card to do anything, including going to the bathroom. Across the river the State Library proved quite a bit more fruitful. The information center on the first floor was packed with people on laptops and others waiting in the queues for a free 20 minute online session on the provided desktop computers. While the wireless was free, it was terribly slow, and though I was able to answer some email and post a blog entry, I could not upload photos nor view any such content. What should have taken me 30 minutes, took 3 hours. I need to find a better place to get a free connection, or just break down and pay for it somewhere.

We then headed to Target in the Queen’s Street Mall underground. Within 2 minutes of being in the store I had lost Peter, not an easy thing to do considering the tall, skinny Korean was wearing a black and white Where’s Waldo-ish hat. After a few laps I gave up on him, figuring he had either went his own way or been decapitated by the samurai clad man who was hanging out in Housewares section. Either way, I could have been no further help, so I carried on with my afternoon. I felt a bit bad, because his English is marginal and he got lost yesterday and had to take a cab home, but I got over it. I eventually found some suitable work shirts at the Big W on sale for $10. A pretty good deal considering, my little tube of Carmex cost me $4.75. My advice to anyone coming to Australia: stock up on cosmetics, they are double or triple the price over here.

Returned home to do some reading and took a nap. In the evening we had a large communal spaghetti dinner. Afterwards everyone took their turn emptying their camera memory cards onto my computer. We are going to get some DVDs this week so I can burn everyone a disk at the end of the volunteer session. Most people, like myself, are staying over here for at least a few months, some more, and photos seem to accumulate pretty quickly in a beautiful place like this. Turns out my laptop will be a savior to more people than just myself.

What I Learned Today: Spending a day with someone whose English isn’t the greatest teaches you to clean up your vernacular slang and poor enunciation habits. I don’t know how many times with Peter I had to rephrase something because I was speaking in Midwest slang or uttering nonsense out of the corner of my mouth. Also, it is really funny listening to him pronounce his Ls as Rs. New Zealand becomes New Zearand, library is ribrary, etc. If you think the girl from Lost in Translation was exaggerating, she wasn’t.

PS: Speaking of language issues, yesterday Matt, the funny guy from Wales, was telling a story about him and his brother’s trip around New South Wales and Victoria in a camper van, when he managed to use the words Wanker, Tosser, and Bloody Fucking Bollocks all in the same sentence. Classic fucking British (or Welsh, rather).

written by

exumenius on October 13, 2007 from Brisbane, Australia

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

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