Saturday news..

To be completely honest, I am throughly annoyed. I wrote a great blog post and then proceeded to lose/erase it.  Sigh.  So here we go again...fingers crossed!
Our day started at 7am up in Dave's office watching the Orioles play. There was excitement in the air on the 12 th floor! Sadly they lost, However the view is great!

While there, Colette, Bill and Sierra called us to see if we wanted to go appliance hunting. Woo hoo! ;I dearly hope that the salesman was working on commission today. We bought a refrigerator, washer, tv, rice cooker, iron, electric jug, hair dryer and toaster. I felt like a new bride, except for the fact that we were the ones paying for it all ourselves!  There was a sale, buy one get the second item half off. So we saved a bit of money for things we are going to have to buy in a few weeks anyway. Our friends bought even more than us with the same salesman.  I will say that his manager was looking very pleased!  We celebrated with a lunch at the Willow and Spoon which is voted the best cafe in Brisbane.
Feeling very full of ourselves and still on a shopping high we decide to go down to Queen Street mall and buy a phone for me. So clutching our new bank cards and with a spring in our step we walked down. The salesman was very nice but informed us up front that he had ONE iPhone and there was no one else he knew of that had one, but he couldn't sell it to us....seriously. We were not deterred and proceed to pick out a phone plan that will fit our needs.  We ask him again if we can buy the phone and he decides that he will email his manager to get authorization to sell it to us. Mind you this is a place that sells phones and phone plans, but nothing is as it seems here.  We eventually get the thumbs up and I start filling out the paperwork until I get to the part where it wants to add up your 100 points. What's that you ask?  Well we thought it only applied to big things like renting/buying homes and cars...apparently not. In Australia they have a point system and you want to get to 100 or above. So for example you receive 50 points if you can cough up 4 rent receipts, 40 points for a passport, 20 points if you can get a written reference from your former agent, 10 points for an electricity account, etc.  I have on my person only one thing worth 40 points....we have to walk. The good news/bad news....they close in 15 minutes so I don't think they will sell the phone, but we will have to walk down there tomorrow right when they open and hope the same guy is there and still willing to sell us the phone.  Seriously...
On the way back to our apartment we pass a sad little bakery and buy a sweet to eat later tonight. My cherry pie was a two bite pie for $3.25...things are expensive here!


Two nights ago we had THE BEST sashimi and sushi I've ever had. The chef asked us what fish we liked and then proceeded to make our meal piece by piece. No menu required and he was a master at making it all. We went home having eaten more than we ever had and with a huge grin on our faces!
Tomorrow we will go and see about the only iPhone available in Brisbane
Just to give you an idea how much we walk each day, my pedometer is registering a little over 13,000 steps a day!
Toodles and cheers!  Lovey and Dave