paisleylass

If you have strong emotional attachment to your cats (mine is my baby!), it is worth taking them. Whether it is safe or even legal to let them out depends entirely where you live. You could keep them indoors or set up an outdoor enclosure. We are lucky to live in a cat friendly cul de sac, so our boy gets supervised outdoor playtime, he mainly stays in our yard or goes to the neighbours house to play with their cats.

This is just my opinion but cost wouldn't be a consideration, our cat is family and we'd never leave him behind. But then I'd rather starve than let him go hungry lol!

It's walking to the bus stop on workday mornings that kills me, so humid at 6am, I have a 12 minute walk which is great in mild weather but torture recently! If I'm lucky, the man next door leaves around the same time and I get a lift, but no such luck yesterday, boohoo!

Non work days are great, today I've just hung out in the pool. Feel sorry for the cat though, stuck in his fur coat!

Plenty of work around for those with PhD in public health in QLD! Loads of research going on. I have somehow made my way into the upper ranks of health data linkage/analysis with a lowly BA honours degree, but most in the field are Masters/PhD. Public/population health gives you a nice, broad field.

Firstly, it's great to hear your wife is cancer free!

Is your sponsored occupation one that requires a medical? Unless things have changed (as they frequently do), non-medical or teaching occupations didn't require a medical when we applied, we just needed a medical for PR.

I have a history of thyroid cancer, although it was successfully treated years ago. Oddly, that wasn't the sticking point in my medical - the panel doctor didn't bat an eyelid. I had a fibrosis on one lung that he suspected was TB! Further scrutiny from a specialist cleared me.

Hopefully the recency of your wife's diagnosis won't be an issue. Cancer generally isn't. That is, if you do need medicals!

Ahhh, I didn't know about that! To be honest I prefer trying stuff on before buying, though have bought some stuff from M&S online and it's all been good.

The more choice, the better!

I was in Harris Scarfe in Melbourne CBD yesterday, and spotted an area full of Red Herring clothes in the ladies section. There was an offer, buy one get half off second item. I have always liked Red Herring, not all the stuff, but there's usually something to my fussy taste. Happy days!

Today:

 

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Was a nice sunny day today hence the consistency. Best days in high summer we'll get over 30kwh. Just checked and the max ever was 33.8kwh for a day

Fantastic! Hope it won't be too long til Energex gets us connected!

I think avg daily consumption at our last place was about 18kw/day. But we were a bit conservative using the aircon. I'd love to run aircon in daylight hours within reason, just using solar, to avoid build-up of heat and then run fans after dark.

Next up, maybe replace old, noisy hot water system with solar!

Wow 25kw a day is loads, we'll look at battery storage when the price improves! Got 12c FIT which is double the standard, but still poor!

Just had solar fitted today! 5kw system, awaiting Energex connection. We haven't had a bill yet, excepfor the first couple of weeks when the pool pump was off, but will be interesting to see how our first full quarter without solar will compare to the following quarter with solar! I expect the bill will be pretty high as I ran the heater a fair bit for a few weeks after it was installed.

One last thing - if you rent a house with its own pool, make sure there's not much greenery growing by the pool. We had loads of bamboo that provided good shade, along with an unbelievable volume of leaves and crappy little twigs. Took ages to fish it all out, it never looked clean! Got very little nearby now, about 5 leaves have blown in since we moved in 10 weeks ago!

By the way, we have no kids and I use the pool every day, in fact now we have our own house I had a heater put in to keep the pool warm in winter. Novelty has never worn off!

Quite often, houses with pools have maintenance included in the rent. Our last place did, and we were supposed to pay for chemicals, but all chemicals used in maintenance were billed to the landlord so we never bought any! Can't estimate how much electricity cost as we had some solar panels, and the pump was on a special tariff. Can't have been extortionate as quarterly bill rarely went over $300, and we ran air con and two big fridge freezers as well. We used a pool cover and rarely needed to top up water, and tended to use the water tank if we did top up.

Seems reasonable, we recently paid about $1,000 just to move within Brisbane council area.

I packed some toiletries, including perfumes, in large ziploc bags, inside a platic tub, and they travelled fine. I'm a bit of a hoarder of toiletries, when the Reject Shop (a bit like Home Bargains) sells my favourite hair products for crazy low prices I stock up big! Got a cupboard full of bottles, lotions and potions!

Depends on fare conditions, but at that price I would think it'll be non-flexible.

Hmm, if even private clinics won't offer the vaccine, I reckon the only option is to get it done on arrival in Australia.

Pertussis vaccination is routinely administered to pregnant women, so it is widely available in the UK. I don't know whether the NHS would cover it for an adult male, maybe he could get it done privately?

Ohh, I'm not sure about residency requirements though...

ING Direct has a great savings account, Savings Maximiser. All flexible with withdrawals etc. Basic interest is 1.75% but there is also bonus interest total 2.75% on the first $100,000.

We've banked with ING a few months and it's working well for us. They do a referral scheme from time to time so let me know if you're interested and we could both get 75 bucks!

It's just the first time buyers stamp duty concession that excludes anyone who ever owned a house anywhere in the world. We recently bought an established house and got no concessions for being first time buyers, though we got an owner-occupier discount on stamp duty which was still extortionate!

Exactly Ken. I said legit. I don't have a UK address, so no go. The stupid thing is, I only watch two shows (Casualty and Holby City, haven't missed an episode in nearly 5 years since leaving UK, sad!!), and BBC is the only channel I'm aware of that show them!

Thanks chuck!!

We are thanks Jock! Lovely quiet area near parks etc, and crazy cat person neighbours! Very friendly. One slight (!) hiccup is my hubby got made redundant this week, and thus we are also now without transport. In an area with scant public transport that's rather inconvenient, hopefully he'll be back in work soon and we can get a car with the payout!!

I just watch iplayer on the telly by casting the app through chromecast, which we bought for Stan/Netflix. Casting phone screen was an added bonus!

I would happily pay for BBC content if there was a legit way of doing so, just as we pay for Netflix.

Really?! That's kinda what the vpn is for.

Quaking in my flip flops here!!