28 | November | 2011 | Yak Down Under

As life trundles along, days turn into weeks, and suddenly five months have passed since we arrived in Melbourne. Besides work and the occasional trip, how have we been filling our time?

We’ve been spending a lot of time with a second pair of “blind date” friends – Brian and Meghan. Brian is a teacher with the same agency as me, and posted a message on the ANZUK website to see if anyone in Richmond was looking to go for drinks. So the four of us met up back at the start of September and we have been hanging with these Calgarians since.

One thing we quite enjoy is Pub Trivia. Trivia is huge here, with most pubs offering a trivia night once a week to bring in the punters. After a somewhat ghetto trivia night at the Great Britain Hotel, we’ve finally found a quiz night that is run efficiently and is a lot of fun. Mt. View Pub has QuizMeister’s Trivia, complete with some video clues, audio clues, and free jugs of beer to be won. We’ve created a successful team, White Rabbit, consisting of me and Brian and our two sets of blind date friends. It is good to have some international team members and some Aussies so that all corners of knowledge are covered! Last week we tied for second so we can only go up from here!

A few months ago, we participated in a very Aussie pastime – Lawn Bowling! A friend of a friend got a Groupon for group “barefoot bowls,” and invited us for the fun. And fun it was! Kind of a cross between Bocce and Curling. It was tricky to get the right weight behind your bowl, in addition to managing the curl of the ball! It was a very chilled atmosphere, people casually milling about, drinking beer, and walking back and forth along the green. A good afternoon pastime that I would like to try again before we leave.

Brian, Dean and Emma

Bowler extraordinaire!

In September and October, the Rugby World Cup occupied a lot of our time. After trying to be interested in Aussie Rules Footy and Rugby League, it was fantastic to watch some high quality Rugby Union matches that I genuinely liked. There were a lot of exciting games and we watched a lot of the tournament, both at home and at the pub. Watching the All Blacks never fails to impress, and their Haka was awesome. The players provided some good eye candy, too! 🙂 In the end, I was really happy that New Zealand won it, and was impressed with Canada’s efforts on this world stage.

We’ve tried to branch off from our Queen Vic Market Sunday shopping sessions with the occasional visit to the Richmond Market. Because this one is only on Saturday mornings, it just seems harder for us to get there regularly. When we do, however, we are happy with the selection of local produce at prices that rival those at the QVM. This market, however, has many more “locals” who are rather possessive and domineering, namely the Richmond European Grandmothers! These old biddies are forceful, pushy, and care not that they are cutting you off or ramming their shopping trollies into your heels. Ouch!

As spring weather slowly leads to summer sun, we’ve been trying to reinstate the Sunday Session. Last week we found an excellent venue! The Lucky Coq offers rooftop bevvies, music, and FREE BBQ on Sundays! Hello! We went last week, partaking in a couple of delicious snags (sausages). This week, we went down to St. Kilda to browse their Sunday Market (so many nice things that I want for my non-existent home!!). The sun was completely unexpected, and made for a nice evening on the patio of the Espy, where we enjoyed some dinner and drinks. Sunday Sessions are a great way to end the weekend, but give me a dangerous feeling like I just want to start another one. Especially when I might not have work on the following Monday…. Like this morning. Hmmm…. Another jug of Carlton, anyone?