at last, another posting

i think that the initial burst of blogging enthusiasm has finally burnt itself out, even though i have the same amount of time on my hands in sydney as i did in kansas city - it's an unfortunate tendency of mine to expend a lot of time on the initial phase of any new project i undertake and then after a period of a month or so my enthusiasm tends to wane somewhat

so i have nothing much to report, just some general observations

the temperature here carries on climbing - 35 degrees c today

we've been quite shocked at how expensive this place is to buy food both in shops and when eating out - the prices here are comparable with london - fortunately the food in restaurants here is much better than london

loading pictures onto this blog takes forever with our wireless modem

australians are far more like the brits than americans are - this however may just be the effects of living in a big city and the toll this has out on its inhabitants

tv here sucks - even more so than in america because in the usa there were at least some very funny and imaginative tv commercials - thank the lord for american and british imported programmes

i have revised my opinion of the beaches here - we went to bondi a couple of weekends ago and it was beautiful - the sea with its three or four different shades of blue, the near-white sand of the beach and the craggy sea cliffs forming the curves of the bay - we walked around the cliffs and there was another beautiful beach and bay - and they go on and on....

unfortunately our apartment was in the wrong place to see the fireworks at the opera house that concluded the final of australian idol last night (yes it's as crap as the x factor in the uk and american idol) - the harbour bridge got in the way, although we caught some of the refelcted light in the windows of the skyscrapers surrounding the opera house - i think it'll be better on new years eve when the display takes place on the harbour bridge itself...