First priorities

G made the point yesterday that it's a stressful thing to move to a new country. Concurrently, you are moving house, finding a new place to live, working out which are the good areas of town, finding work, opening new bank accounts, registering for the equivalent of tax file numbers, navigating different protocols for various things, and generally just figuring out what on earth is going on.

Doing any one of these things is a handful; doing all of them at the same time is madness. It's probably good that we didn't think too long and hard about this before we left. Of course, we realised that we'd have to be doing all of these things, and we didn't assume that things would fall blithely into place without any hassles. However, I don't think that we should have thought too hard about all this otherwise the instinct to take the path of least resistance might have kicked in, and we might have stayed. It's only been a week, but we don't have any regrets so far (this might change once the cold weather kicks in).

The good news is that G has a third interview for a job today, and according to the HR rep this one is more-or-less a formality before he's offered the job. We can only hope! We put in an application for a place to rent yesterday, so having one of us employed would certainly smooth things over in that regard. I don't want to write too much about the place we applied for, because I don't want to jinx things....hopefully there will be more to come shortly.

So, on to the title of this post - our (or probably my) priorities. I am sick already of all the clothes that I brought. The suitcase looked big when it was empty, but it feels like I have about three outfits now, and I'm tired of all of them. Pleased as I am with my 3.25 pound op shop coat, I don't really want to build of wardrobe of second hand clothing. So, for me, a priority is getting more clothes! There are plenty of shops here, almost, it seems, more than back in Brisbane. And I love winter clothing, so it seems to be perfect, really. The minute that G hears about a successful job offer, I'm hitting the shops to buy up big!

Some interesting observations:

• Scottish people love their gambling. It seems that there are two or three betting agencies on each street, and there are many, many different ones to choose from (including, inevitably, one called "McBet"). Bingo halls are also popular, but one must be a member in order to play. There are also various small private casinos, which is bizarre for someone from a city with only one, giant casino.
• You can't move without coming across Australians, which is almost disappointing - weren't we supposed to be the only Australians in Edinburgh? We went to a tiny cafe in the outskirts of Edinburgh, and were served by a bloke with a broad Aussie accent. We also came across a Brisbanite in the local pub, who greeted us with "Team Brisbane!" when we went back there yesterday. As G observed, when you meet someone in Australia, the first question is usually "What do you do?" When you meet a fellow Aussie over here, you ask instead "Where are you from?"
• They slug renters a lot more here than in Australia. We had to pay a 175 pound application and credit check fee when we applied for this place, which is non-refundable regardless of whether you are successful or not. Plus, each property is charged a monthly Council Tax, for things like rubbish removal, road upkeep etc - essentially council rates. However, WE have to pay this fee, not the landlord, which is a bit rough. Ads for rental places do not include this in the monthly rent, so you have to ask what the council charge is - luckily our current landlords alerted us to this, or else we would have had no idea about this when the first bill arrived.

Anyhow, better go...

Much love