Week in review

I've had a rather long week... Tuesday I registered with another temp agency and I hope they can help me out. The woman I met with was so nice, though I wonder if I was so chatty with her because I felt comfortable or because I was starved for human contact. I've spent the last 3 days working an office job doing various, mostly tedious, tasks at a health insurance company. I finally broke the run I had of only working a job for two days at a time; working for only two days is good for my sleeping in, but bad for my finances. I had actually worked before at this health insurance company just last week. They liked me so much they had me back. Or they had meaningless work to be done. It was a nice working environment, today they had some Friday drinks in the office at the end of the day. I found it funny that they do the whole casual Friday thing, also funny what some people wear on "casual" day. For one guy it was wearing a suit without a tie. Oooh. It was interesting to work there and find out a bit what health insurance is like here. It's seems more complicated than Dutch health care, and there's all this difference between public and private hospitals and what cover you can get in each one depending on your insurance. There isn't really that distinction in Holland, but then there isn't really national health insurance either.

On Monday I finally made it to the Melbourne Zoo. I esp planned to go then because it was meant to be a nice day. It turned out to be rather hot, the last forecast I had seen before I went predicted 24 degrees but it ended up being 30, heh (well into the 80s for you fahrenheit folk). Definitely the hottest day since I've been here. Good thing I put on sunscreen before I left, though I should have known it was going to be warm, it was pretty warm already before noon. Anyway, the zoo was a lot of fun, though because of the heat the animals were a bit inactive or hiding in the shade. I still saw quite a lot though. The zoo is good in that they have quite large areas for many of the animals, like the lions are in a pretty big area and a walkway goes over it so you can look over them. They have a good gorilla area as well, and a new male gorilla who was frightening and made me think of the Rotterdam gorilla who escaped. There's a really cool Australian bush section, with native plants and some red dirt from the outback. I saw some kangaroos close up, there's wooden posts to keep you on the path, but it's not really a fence, they can wander around freely. Some kids snuck under it and were petting a snoozing roo. I tried to learn to spot the difference between a kangaroo and a wallaby. It's difficult, wallabies are shorter (but then there are small kangaroos too) and can't stand up as straight as kangaroos can. I think the key is in the ears, roos have longer, more slender ears. I think. There were koalas as well, moving around quite a bit considering it was a hot afternoon, but then they had just been brought a bunch of eucalyptus leaves. There were some sleeping wombats, one sleeping on his back and everyone thought he was fake or dead, but I saw him move. I saw some echidnas as well, they sort of look like porcupines, but are egg-laying mammals like platypuses (and you say it "eck-kid-na"). Didn't see any platypuses though, nor any Tasmanian devils.

Speaking of animals, some evil bastard bug or spider or something bit the hell out of me Monday night. I'm kind of freaked out not knowing what it was, esp with all the poisonous animals in this country, but at least I don't think I got anymore bites after Monday. In one night I got at least 11 bites on my hands, elbows, shoulder, and even one on one of my toes. The bites are still quite visible, they didn't create quite as massive a lump as Dutch mosquito bites do, but they were itchy for much longer, I think a couple were still itchy this morning, 4 days later.

Oh and I saw a massive lizard at the zoo, not one in a cage, one just wandering through some brush near the gorillas. I only saw it for a sec before it crawled into the bushes, but it was not like those little things O and I saw in Italy. It could eat a couple of those for lunch. And we have a similarly sized lizard living under the front stoop of our house. I've been trying my best to photograph it, but it doesn't come out often, or I'm not home on a warm day where it might come out to lay in the sun. It's around a foot long. Very freaky.

A bit of a rant... In about a month Australia will have their elections, though the date was only decided about a week ago. I guess quite a few countries don't have a set election date, but I do find it dodgy that the people in power get to decide when to make the date that they possibly could get voted out of power. And the date chosen is on a Saturday, I find that different. Anyway, the guy who's in power now, John Howard, is an idiot, similar to Bush or NL's Balkenende, he looks so much an idiot you wonder how he's been in power for so long, and I can't stand to watch him on tv. So they set the election date and then what was on tv that evening: the first ads from Howard's party. Handy, to have the ads all ready because you get to choose the voting date. Also, the date was set last Friday and the deadline for registering to vote was Wed evening this week. That just seems a shocking way to do things to me. Anyway, I was going to rant more about how Howard's big re-election offer right now is to cut taxes and how easy a ploy that is, yet if it goes through how harmful it is, but I can't be bothered to write it all out. It will be interesting to see how the next month goes though...

I likely will spend the weekend with Wendy at her mom's farm; the weather is meant to be great and back to about 30 on Sunday. Hopefully I can post some photos next week.