The Unfamiliar

Travel plans are finalized! (Or should I say, finalised ;)) A week in Melbourne, then a tour up the "Red Centre" (where Ayers Rock is, among just a couple of other things - it is the outback, after all!), then a couple of days in Sydney before heading to a tour on the south island of New Zealand, then a few days in LA and then home! Phew - makes me tired just thinking about it!

I had borrowed a travel guide to New Zealand from a coworker at "Place B," because, well, he offered, and also because I thought I was going back there. He eventually needed it back and realized I wasn't coming back, which coincided with a meeting he had at our office today. So reluctantly, because my plans were just finalized and I had been waiting to see how much time I would have and where before I looked through it, I finally opened it and skimmed through as much as I could before I had to give it back to him today! It was nice to see him again though and we got a chance to catch up a little.

As the substitute receptionist / mail handler in an international patent law firm, I recently had the occasion to come across mail from the US. For those of you who have limited experience with other countries, it seems to me that almost every one has its own paper size. Australia's is called A4, and it's maybe half an inch longer and just slightly smaller width-wise. For the first time, 8.5x11 looked really bizarre - short and fat, where A4 paper is tall and skinny! It's just such a slight difference both directions, but it's amazing how quickly your eye gets used to it!

US phone numbers are also starting to look a tad short, though that's mostly to do with the fact that they're divided differently, they're the same amount of numbers (12-3456-7890 or 1234-567-890 vs the US's 123-456-7890). The fact that they have different formats for different kinds of numbers threw me at first, too. The first one above is for a regular landline, and the second one is for a mobile (cell phone), which all start with 04 (it's like an area code - it's actually a really good idea to have a way to tell if a number is a cell phone or not - one of many Australian things I wish we would adopt!). If your number fits a pattern another way, you can also read it that way, for example: 07-463-66-88-22. Then there are toll-free numbers, which are only 6 digits! Don't ask me how that works. They're all 13-xxxx (13-56-44 for example).