Signs of progress

I've been a pretty busy hombre here trying to settle a bunch of odd little schedule and syllabus problems that are to be expected in any new program.  Some of these involved multiple back and forth e-mails and some right-on-the-border-of-testy exchanges as I try to figure out who is really in charge and who is doing the Aussie version of the French functionary's "Yes, ziss ees a problem, m'sieur, but it ees your problem." 

If the academic side of that is bad enough we've killed some serious hours just trying to get a second (and preferably third) set of keys for the sogenannte "Boutique Apartment" we have so expensively rented--what a comedy of errors that has been.  We haven't found a key-grinder clueless enough to ignore the "Do Not Duplicate" warning on the vital gets-you-in-the-actual-building one, and even Ryan the Haphazard from the agency struck out--but his brilliant "solution" seems to be to give us another set of mailbox key and inside-door key, so that--get this--we can lock the outside-door key in the mailbox as we leave, and then have everyone use that key!  Brilliant!  All it takes is one time for somebody to forget, and we are climbing the trellis and breaking in through the clapped-out screen door!

The use of the plural pronoun should clue readers in that we are now a trio of happy warriors and worriers: Am and Alex arrived yesterday morning, having missed their connector from Brisbane and having enjoyed a long layover in / near LAX with the cousins, and because it was Labour Day Bank Holiday and I wasn't teaching as I ordinarily would on a Monday, I was able to head in and meet them at the gate.  So nice to see them, and I can't believe it but Alex seems even taller than he was two weeks before.  Crazy.  We taxied home and then did some ferry riding--like an idiot I didn't take group photos yet.  But soon.  Right now they are hashing out their own phone saga (turns out the iPhone that Amelie thought she'd had unlocked in Berkeley wasn't), and performing a major shopping.

 In the airport with a little time to kill and some caffeinating to fuel a binge of course planning and list making (dodging the slew of purple-clad supporters of the Melbourne Storm, newly crowned champions of the National Rugby League competition the night before), I found this strategically placed advertisement.  I am not sure you'd find this Stateside. 

And what do you make of this, outside a Thai restaurant in Manly, a beautiful ferry ride's north of the central ferry terminal?  It just goes to show something, but I'm not clear what. 

Tomorrow is a killer day with the first meeting of the "Learning Through Internships" course-ette that is supposedly going to help my students be successful Antipodean interns (in my exhortation to them I have invoked my friend Dr. Gene's hospital dictum, "Show me an intern who only doubles my workload and I will kiss her feet"), but which has provided some serious hair-pulling that I alluded to earlier.  After that I teach "my" class into the evening, and then return to Fam Sweet Fam.