davidcook

So, on Sunday we went to a wedding. I ended up wearing a "lounge suit", i.e. normal business suit, and fitted right in. It would have been fun to wear a kilt, but I didn't feel like paying $200 to hire the outfit, knowing that mine is in the country now, just awaiting Customs and Quarantine processing. Anyway, the wedding was lovely, and the reception was in full swing when we left (relatively early, rwrylsin wanted a good rest before cycling in to work yesterday morning).

On Saturday we went house-hunting. We saw six places (one of them only because it was just across the road from us and we wanted to see how an auction went). One of them, while nice, was at the top end of our budget, and arguably too small for us. Two of them were ok, size-wise, but not ideal layouts (older houses with recent extensions), and not much yard space left after all the outdoor entertaining areas (cubby house, pool, etc) were included.
We turned up at one inspection to find it was the pre-auction inspection, so we decided to hang around for the auction to see how it went. It was relatively unexciting (maybe due to the rainy day we were having), but eventually reached a price the seller was happy with - a little over our budget, but not so far as to make our plans seem impossible.
Inspected another place, knowing that it was about $60k over our budget, just to see what it was like - impressive, in short. Oodles of space, very nice setting, very little work required to the place at all, convenient to transport - I could easily imagine living there quite happily.
And finally, a strange split-level place from the 60s or 70s, not for us, but I'm sure someone will like it (as rwrylsin noted, quite easy to imagine a bunch of students sharing the place ... ).

We'll try again this Saturday, concentrating more on the Box Hill area (last weekend we were around Blackburn and Nunawading), and see if anything grabs us.

Meanwhile, still enjoying the new bike - I've done 215 km on it so far, and enjoying it lots (apart from the occasional sunburn, due to forgetting what Australian sunshine is like, or simply missing some bits when applying suncream).

While we were in the Great Overseas, there have been a few changes in Oz.
For a start, we apparently have a New South Wales Broadcaster, rather than a national broadcaster, in the ABC.
How on earth did we end up in a state where they dare to show Victorians a "news" program which goes on about Sydney trains, NSW politics, NSW hospitals, and ends up with NSW weather - not even a "rest of the country" overview !
It's ridiculous !

Meanwhile, I'll make the bold claim that Mandarin Chinese is the second most spoken language in Melbourne (after English) these days, based on the number of people I've heard speaking it while out and about. I'm pretty sure this is a shift, as I recall there was more Cantonese around before, as well as Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, and so on. Now, Mandarin seems much more common.
(Of course, maybe I'm just sensitised after the trip to China, and because I still like to think that I know Mandarin (not so much, these days))