Reinventing ourselves in a new locale…Tolerance and patience for this new way of life…

The rainy view of what is aptly named, Double Island, as seen from our veranda.

It’s been raining every day since we arrived. We’ve heard this is unusual for this time of year. For now, we don’t mind. Let’s get the rain out of the way while we become acquainted with life in our little corner of the world.

This surf and dive shop were having what they referred to as a “Killa Surf Sale.” I giggled when Tom didn’t get it right away. It’s Australian lingo for a “killer of a sale.”

It’s 2:00 pm and Tom is sitting outside under cover of the veranda roof, safe from the rain, listening to his favorite radio show. The wifi signal is better outdoors that inside the house.

As a matter of fact, today, we purchased a SIM card for one of our mobile hot spots at the local phone store.  We stopped by the phone store several days ago, but they required a passport in order to purchase the card which we failed to bring along. We had forgotten in our muddled state of mind that one must show a passport in order to purchase a new SIM card.

Peering out to the mall from inside the Telstar phone and tablet store where we purchased a SIM card for our hot spot device which we don’t yet have working. I’ll work on it later today and if it doesn’t get going, we’ll head back to the store tomorrow, bringing the hot spot and my laptop.

Once we have the hot spot working, which hasn’t transpired as yet, we can drive anywhere with navigation working on our phones. To explain that further, we have no cell service on our phones. Since the cost of calling the US is too high via the use of a cell phone with a SIM card, we’ll continue to use Skype and our Skype phone number for calls to family and friends.

This morning the service was fast and friendly at the Telstar store in the Smithfield Mall.

For local calls here in Australia, we’ll use our Skype phone number which is only US $1.25, AUD $1.61, per hour or by the minute proportionately.  As for the navigation working while we’re in the car, it goes like this:

1.  Turn on the hot spot until a signal is indicated.
2.  Connect the phone to the hot spot until the signal is indicated.
3.  Use MAPS on phone to set the desired trip location. Navigate as usual as one would with an active data account on the phone.

In our old lives, we rarely shopped at K-Mart but here is Australia, it made sense when we needed a few household items. We spent US $23.14, AUD $30 for four iced cube trays with lids, two jumbo iced tea pitchers, two pans for the oven and one microwave cover. Tomorrow, we’ll tell you what we couldn’t find anywhere!

This makes life considerably easier for us. In some countries we cannot purchase SIM cards, including in the US when we were in Hawaii. This is odd to us. Eventually, required cell contracts will disappear, allowing users to have access to local signals using online downloads and/or SIM cards. 

A cosmetic store in the mall carrying many popular US brands. Shops are similar to many in the US but aren’t necessarily familiar chain stores. Australia has many of its owns brands and providers.

In some ways, we’re impressed with how readily available technology is in Australia compared to other countries we visited. No, they don’t have high speed services where we’re located and the service is slow to say the least.  But, we’re in a mountainous ocean village which typically have poor signals this close to the ocean and with this type of terrain.

In some ways, service is tricky when Andy explained how when the Internet goes down at the shopping mall, business literally stops and the shops may close. Isn’t this the case in most countries anyway? We’re all subject to modern technology.

This appears to be a parasite type plant growing on a palm tree in the yard.

Its easy for us to recall how in Kenya, both the Internet and the power would go out almost daily. That experience made us more tolerant when these unforeseeable situations occur. With our own working hot spot we hope we’ll have better control of mapping our future exploration, even if we have to drive a distance to acquire a decent signal.

Tom’s water shoes were on the veranda. When he move them, what appeared to be a lizard took off out of sight, leaving behind this live tail that wiggled around for about 10 minutes.  Can’t imagine what this was.

Resting over these past four days, we’re finally headed to the grocery store to try to shop again today. We can’t wait to take photos of the abundance at the mall where the Woolworth’s market is located and also the mall as we walk through there once again to the Telstar store.

Candle holders? Not quite sure…

With a trip to K-Mart for a few pans and ice cube trays, we discovered a missing element of life in Australia that requires an adjustment we’re surprised to be making.

Tomorrow, we’ll share the important part of our daily lives that we’ll be missing in Australia that requires a huge sacrifice.

                                               Photo from one year ago today, June 15, 2014:

We were on our way to Funchal to renew the rental car, a task that won’t be required here in Australia where we were able to rent it for the full three months. For details and more photos from that trip, please click here.