Remember to bring stamps!

One of the things about living abroad that can easily be overlooked is stamps from your home country.  As unlikely as it seems, you might find yourself needing vital paperwork from some home organization and that might include sending a self-addressed stamped envelope.  So remember to bring some stamps and maybe a few extra small denomination stamps too - in case there's a postal rate increase that happens in your absence. 

Maybe you should pay for that extra bag?

When you are going to live in a far off land as a non vacationer, you have to think about daily life.  And in some instances it might be worth paying for an extra piece of luggage when you first arrive or when you go back to the foreign country after visiting home.  It all depends on the math.  

First of all, I think the maxim "Pack only what you need" still applies when moving abroad as a non-vacationer.  Packing light is less of an issue when you have found a place to live in the foreign country and you are returning to that place after visiting home. 

The math part is that you need to compare prices (with the exchange rate factored in) in the foreign country and your home country.  For instance, in the U.S., the sneakers I like cost $40 (US).  In Australia, the same pair would cost $90 (US). Lets say with normal use you go through 4 pairs in a year.  This might be an exaggeration as to the amount you would use but bear with me on this for illustrative purposes.  Bringing 4 pairs from the U.S. would save $200.  The cost of an extra bag?  $200-250 (you should add in the cost of the bag too).  With four pairs of shoes you'll probably still have another 30-35 extra pounds you can pack into the bag which hopefully you will use for items that are cheap back home but expensive abroad.  

I'd suggest that extra bag be a duffel bag that you can cram into your regular allowed luggage when you visit home (thus avoiding extra bag fees). 

I am not saying this technique or strategy works every time but it's worth checking out.   

Chicken

In the U.S., chicken wings are more expensive (per unit weight) than chicken legs or chicken thighs.  In  Australia, it is the exact opposite.  That being said, the cultures seem to be very similar and thus presumably Australians love eating wings as much as people in the U.S.   I wonder why there is such a difference.

Ordering Books in Australia and maybe elsewhere.

Living abroad, as opposed to being a tourist means that probably at some point in time you will want to buy a book (if ebooks haven't taken over by this post).  You might not have alot of choice if you want to buy a tourist book to send to friends and for authenticity's sake you might have to buy local.  You have to admit it would be kind of cheezy to buy something that could easily be obtained online back at your friend's place of living.

Here in Australia, the price markups are huge and it isn't just GST.  I've seen books that are listed for $18 US be sold at stores in Australia for $70+ AUD.  If you take the strong Aussie (dollar) into account it's worse.  Ahhh but now the temptation is to immediately go to Amazon.com which charges $4.99 per order and $4.99 per item shipping internationally.  But you also have another option:  bookdepository.com which claims to have free shipping.  The thing about bookdepository.com is the prices, while nowhere nearly as bad as Australia, are often higher prices than the prices of Amazon.com - sometimes high enough to make going through Amazon.com better.  It can also depend on the mix of books you want.  On the other hand, strangely enough, some prices at bookdepository.com are lower than Amazon's - without even including Amazon's shipping.  

So there's always the question of value of time.  If money isn't that much of an object for you but you still want to feel like you are being frugal go through Amazon.com or bookdepository.com - instead of off the shelf from Australian book sellers (Sorry Readings, even you get undercut too).  If you want to save even more money then I'd do the price computations between bookdepository.com or Amazon.com.   Anyone have a better online store? do let me know.  

The relativeness of weather.

I have managed to wear long pants a grand total of 3 times since arriving on November 19th.  I wore jeans one day in November (it was a mistake I ended up sweating alot), then dress slacks for a 2 hour meeting in January, and then jeans again last week but then again that was for only the morning. 

It was a little strange to be walking around in shorts when you see all the Aussies wearing scarves, sweatshirts, etc.  Though actually the scarves are more dressy in style here than for warmth, I did manage to look a bit out of place.  You can't blame them for bundling up when the weather drops below 60F.  It never snows here!

Retail: Australia vs. U.S.

Now this is a very biased view but here's what I observe when you walk into a "decent sized" chain store (whatever that is but we're not talking about a specialty store where it's so small that basically the owner/operator is right there all the time).

At the entrance:
Australia: a loss prevention person is there to check your bags to see if you are shoplifting 
U.S.: a person is there to greet you and to ask you "Hi how are you today..." of course this isn't simply to be nice it's to start engaging you towards making a purchase (i.e. the personal pressure is on).

In the store:
Australia:  no one is around for you to ask if you have a question about a product or where to find something... they are busy at the cashier or at the entrance.
U.S.:  there area a few people around to immediately ask how they can help you (note it's not a yes or no question), to immediately start backing you into a corner where social graces would indicate that you have no excuse not to buy something... When's the last time you had someone just say, "Hi, I'm _____, if you have any questions while you are here, just ask."

Background music/store theme music - both countries: really bad.

At the Cashier -
pretty much the same, except in supermarkets Australia is big on self checkout - which is incredibly slow because the loss prevention settings are set on high... it basically thinks that half the time you didn't place an item in the bagging area when you did etc.  In Australia I recommend going to the cashier 99% of the time... even if you have one item and have to wait... it's that much faster.  That being said, self checkout is slower than the cashier in both countries. 

It would be nice if the two retailing systems could kind of meet half way in the middle.