Abigail Travels to Oz

I have landed and feel somewhere between walking on a treadmill and slowly moving forward. The trip over was fine ... fortunately for me the flight from LA to Sydney was oversold -- the airline needed to upgrade some of the customers to business class -- one word for this "skybed" ... it is really cool in that you can configure your seat many different ways including making it completely horizontal ... and you can do it in a way that you will never annoy the person sitting behind you. Although I was very tired and just wanted to sleep, after reading an article that Ingrid passed on to me (about the wonders of "Oz" cuisine, even on Qantas), I stayed awake long enough to eat this very good dish (good enough to be served in a nice restaurant).

In Melbourne, all started out seemless -- was picked up taken to the bank, the real estate office, the apartment. Then off on foot to find a phone. Found the phone, plugged it in to discover that there was no dial tone ... what was I doing wrong? In the end turns out that a phone guy has to come to the apartment so he can flick a switch (unbelievable) and the company (without telling me) decided to send someone early on the day I arrived ... so no phone now until Monday (the next day on which someone could come).

Right now I am sitting in a cafe a few blocks from our apartment connected via a wi-fi hotspot -- rather cool.

The weather here is great -- in Melbourne it can be a bit unpredictable -- the locals tell me that if the weather is bad at any given moment, just wait for 30 minutes and it will be better. From the last 24 hours this is definitely true.

More tomorrow on the adventures of setting up an apartment in a foreign country.