1 pic. First glance to Australia
Am I alive after 32 hours flight (Vilnius-Oslo-London(and then flying above Lithuania land again)-Hong Kong-Sydney? Do I manage to survive in this island/continent down-under? Are you interested in what is so much different here in Australia than in Lithuania or Europe, at which situations I want to say: c’mon, that’s nonsense? Do you have any myths about Aussie that I would be able to check? If yes, keep on reading, commenting and asking, these are the topics I want to share the most.
Here I am in Sydney, St. Leonards, sitting in our apartment called McHouse. It is ruled by United Nations consisting of new comers (representatives of Brazil, Colombia, Lithuania) and regular habitants trying to represent Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Croatia, UAE, India… Australians do like internationalism and the ones I know do have empathy in other countries.
Just people working in customs do not have loads of this 
feature. Declaring that you have a sausage means leaving it for them in the airport. And don’t try to exceed any of declared limited products, you will have to pay for all of them. Anyway, when you are here for the first week, you just start motivating that it is OK to have some extra expenditures… It is OK to find a nice WBS shop and have some wine. It is OK for internationals to enjoy going to the harbor although bars around there are expensive and travelling in Sydney is relatively expensive.
2 pic. Internationals going out: wine and harbour
So how do we match our needs and habits spending 
almost 24/7 together? Well I am extremely glad that while living with all of those different people you can taste and start cooking various different dishes, like risotto. Just there is one exception: look at the myth parts of this blog… Although now there are 9 of us living and even working together, no fights are happening so far. What we all really appreciate are constantly appearing jokes about everything…
Australian English version and some particular words are cool, but the expressions that we create by ourselves (no matter if there was a purpose or it just happened) are unforgettable. Eg. In trains you should hear “Doors are closing”, but if you are a Brazilian and still in the jet lag, you might here “Dude, its closing”. Dude, when are we stopping using dude? Ok Ok, this is very “Australianish”, but I am pretty sure that no one says “yabayaba” instead of “year by year”. Well here no one does as well, but some tend to mishear J
My friend Lithuanian intern in Pakistan called Andrius offered me to start counting how many times I will be using “that is stupid”, “how can you do it like that” and so on. That’s how a topic of differences emerged in this blog.
The first thing that really hurt me, a girl from Klaipeda, in love with Svyturys Extra, was a price of beer. You can buy a pack of 6 cans from up to 24 Aus$, which equals around 48 LTL (multiply from 2). That does hurt my feelings. However, when you see a bottle of wine costing 8-10 Aus$, you just calm down and change your habits. Wine is good here, a lot of it is Australian.
Feel free to ask me whatever you want me to check. The more myths I am checking, the more interesting and memorable my experience here will be.
The thing I have checked on the first night of being in Sydney, even though I really didn’t want to know, was… Do people eat kangaroos here? They are so cute in pictures. Even a cartoon with a kangaroo Skippy was created. Damn it, they do eat Skippies and it is a cheap meat… Anyway, I have decided not to eat before seeing a live version of it.
Some friends told me that although it is winter, you will still feel warm, you will see parrots flying around, will go swimming and drink cocktails under high palms in the beach. Well, this needs to be clarified a bit. The temperature varies between 10-15 ºC in June, it is windy and sometimes rainy. I prefer wearing a coat, but if the sun is shining then I take it off, but others keep dressed up warm. We do have palms everywhere. We do have more interesting birds than pigeons, but I haven’t noticed any parrots so far. I guess people are not swimming in the sea, but I am going to check it properly next week.
I am planning to update this blog at least once per month. Next weeks are going to be extremely interesting: functional transition at work, sales trips to Canberra, networking events and business meetings in Sydney, planning and goals setting, preparing for a huge national conference in Melbourne. All of this will be combined with sightseeing and meetings friends that are outside of the working area :) Dude, that’s awesome.
Cheers and hugs,
L.
