Daily Life in Oz III

A couple of weeks ago we were hanging out with an American who came to Sydney for a visit. He mentioned that he saw a neighbourhood park in Sydney and the play equipment caught his eye.  The slides were extra tall, the swings were bigger, the bars were made out of old-fashioned, noggin knocking iron. He even stopped to play for a bit. He made the point that because Australians are not litigation-happy - there were still some last bastions of bold play adventure. In America everything would be low to the rubber-coated ground so no one could get injured and sue someone.

I thought about that and realised it was true and I started thinking about all of the ways our life here is just a little bit better than in the USA due to the lack of legal liability. 

I rented (hired) a car at Avis once and the lady at the counter was confused about my questions about liability coverage. It is completely different here - they don't have the same notions we do about who is responsible to take care of who.

Another benefit we noticed...  we recently moved from the beach apartment to a very urban, very small apartment that is a few blocks from the office. We are enjoying the convenience  and we still go to the beach on the weekends. 

Shortly after moving in, we realised that the apartment had bugs. The exterminator came and we walked through the place. 

He rubbed his chin and said - "hmmmm.... these are German cockroaches. hmmmm.... they are tricky ones.  Got any children here?"

Nope.

Any pets?

Nope.

Any health issues?

Nope.

Okay. Good. I've got just the stuff. Now step back a little. Don't worry - Health and Safety requires me to put on this space suit when I'm spraying - but you don't have to worry.

He hosed down the floor around the base boards and cabinets. When he got to the bedroom door he kind of paused and looked inside... then he looked at me... we had pulled the bed away from the wall because we didn't want the roaches leaping off of the wall and onto our pillow at night. He had seen this configuration before and knew what it meant.

His electronic voice activator punctuated his sentences like two scuba divers talking under water "cssssht - we don't usually spray this in the bedroom... cssssht".

I said "but we saw some in there". 

"cssssht Okay. Then I'm going in csssshhht".

This is not some wimpy, all natural, good for the environment, ddt-free, USA stuff - this was the good stuff like they used back in the 1930's. 

The next day German cockroaches were having spasms on our floor and we had to sweep up their bodies all over the place. 

One application and this place is completely bug free. We are so happy. This bug spray is great. It should be legalised in the US. One application and no more bugs and we haven't really seen any side effects so far. We took this picture last night to memorialise our celebration at declaring the place free and clear!