Top 100 Differences

Top (favorite) 100 differences of living in Australia:

• Beaches.  In my mind, the single greatest asset that Sydney has to offer.
• Availability of fresh, in-season  fruit from from all over Australia, including multiple varieties of things like mangoes and bananas (lady finger bananas are our favorite)
• Mid-range wine: While beer is astronomical in price, wine is generally a good value ~ $15 bottles.
• Screw top wine bottles
• Ferries as a mode of public transit
• Rock pools: Saltwater-filled Olympic sized swimming pools are nestled into the harbor all around the city.
• Learning the arcane and perverse rules of  cricket.
• The inventiveness of Australian phraseology and colloquial idioms (warrants a separate list for itself)
• Cinemas: Assigned seating, and many have a bar where you can purchase beer and wine, good chocolate, and bring it to your seat with you!
• Cheap airline tickets.  We bought tickets in January to fly round trip to Byron Bay (a beach town up the east coast) for $49 each way per person, including taxes.
• Vegemite
• Asian food: Thai and Indian is everywhere here, and the quality is generally very high.
• Turkish bread
• Dual flush toilets are the norm
• No member of the Bush family has ever been elected to Office in Australia
• Giant fruit bats flying over the city at sunset

Bottom (least favourite) 100 differences of living in Australia:

• 
• The unnecessary insertion of the letter ‘u’ in the word above
• Cost of beer.  The absolute minimum you will ever shell out for a six pack of beer is $14.  And this is not microbrew, this is your big name lagers like Toohey’s and VB (equivalent to Bud and Coors).  An ale of any kind will set you back at least $20 for a six pack. How is it that a country with the 4th highest beer consumption per capita pays so much for  crap beer?
• Beer selection.  Would you like a lager or would you like a lager?  Anybody from Boulder want to come down and help me open a Mountain Sun franchise in Sydney?
• Lack of mexican food.
• Cost of rent.  Puts San Francisco to shame.
• Bike commuting: No doubts about it, Sydney is the least bike friendly city I have ever lived in.  No bike lanes, minimal shoulders, bad traffic, and drivers not used to bikes.
• Peanut butter: No such thing as peanut butter without sugar or vegetable oils as far as we can tell.  Ironically, we found incredible all natural peanut butter in New Zealand made from Australian peanuts!  Go figure.
• Sprawl: It takes the better part of an hour to escape the spawl of the city.
• DVD mail order service are crap
• DVD New Releases = Came out in the states 6 months ago
• Cost of renting a car is a total fake out.  $30 per day is advertised, but then you have to spend another $35 per day on insurance.
• More to come…