Response to some comments left for me

Pictures of me on my birthday…
I was too busy having fun to take pictures of myself on my birthday. A couple of the ladies here found out it was my birthday so they took me out for a milkshake immediately after class. Now I figure most of the guys here would be jealous if they found out about this because they can’t even get one girl out to a restaurant and I had two – taking me!!! OK, maybe the guys could do it but just haven’t tried… In the evening, I went to someone’s home and since the host found out about the big day, there was ice cream, chocolate cake, candles, and the famous song. I had a great evening and got home late. Although I’m not with family and I’m away from my friends back home, I’m meeting a ton of great people and starting to develop some good friendships. These people made sure I had a great day! Since I don’t have any pictures of me on the day, I’ll just tell you with a sudden shift of appearance I’m looking younger all the time. Although I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life being told I look older than I actually am (which can be incredibly painful and destructive to someone as insecure as me), I’ve had two people tell me in the last two days that I don’t look as old as I am. I told one of them I had shaved that morning and that probably made the difference - she didn't buy the reasoning.

Australian tax system…
I have not yet taken the time to enjoy learning the system out here but this much I can tell you…This country has something right that the rest of the highly taxed world should learn from. When an item says $5.95, that’s what you pay, there’s no such thing as looking at the price then wondering what $5.95 plus 13%, 14%, or 6% (depending which Canadian province you’re in) is. Tax is included in the price. I also know that if I get a tax file number, I’m better off having money in a savings account here because the interest rate is higher; but if I don’t have a tax file number, they with-hold about 45% of the interest for tax and I’m then better off keeping the money in Canada

Does the water spin the other way…
Before I left Canada, I spent a lot of time and used a lot of water repeating a highly scientific experiment to determine which way water spins when it drains so I could do a proper comparison. My results showed that it spins counter clockwise about 65% of the time. Based on the laws of statistics, that’s not enough to conclude beyond reasonable doubt which way it spins, but for the average person it’s good enough. Last night I did another highly scientific experiment. Sydney has been in a dry season for a while now so I can’t use a lot of water doing this but I had done dishes and had water in the sink to I watched as it drained and took note of which way it spun. I achieved the same result 100% of the time I watched water drain in a sink and can conclude that it does in fact drain clockwise – exactly opposite of the direction it drains in Canada. In case anyone is wondering, I did try this with the toilet in the airplane somewhere near the equator but was unable to produce any real results. I came to the conclusion that when you flush a toilet over the ocean, it just opens a hatch to the outside of the plane and anything in the toilet is sucked out at 600 miles per hour…Be careful next time you’re taking a canoe across the ocean, there could be some nasty stuff coming out of the airplane above :-)