Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

I didn't want to bring up the issue of living costs in my first post from Oz -- it seemed a tad  déclassé to mention money so early on; but now that -- five weeks in -- I'm on my second, I can restrain myself no longer. The cost of living here is ridiculously expensive, and for the first couple of weeks I wandered around the shops feeling like Alice strolling through Wonderland -- wide-eyed and bewildered -- since the prices seemed as fantastical as if they'd been dreamed up by the Mad Hatter and  March Hare themselves; over a pot of something far stronger than tea. 'A bag of apples? Nine dollars seems fair!' Having lived in three different countries, nay continents, in  the past 12 months, I'm well placed to make cost comparisons between them and I must say, the UAE wins hands down when it comes to being the most affordable for food, furniture, and of course petrol -  naturellement,  (although rent in Abu Dhabi borders on the farci...

I'll be honest, for my first few days in Australia I languished in the dungeons of despair and felt as if I'd landed in one, giant, flat, characterless suburb, punctuated by the occasional functional shopping centre or empty park -- the UAE with a better finish. And with nakedness.  Lots of nakedness.  It's curious; proper clothing seems to have been entirely dispensed with here, even shoes in many cases; and people walk around in shorts so tiny they barely cover their underwear; which I doubt they wear -- it's probably too much trouble... This, in my book, is definitely preferable to the ' please don't offend by showing any actual skin ' brigade who so militantly patrolled the chat forums and malls of the UAE to ensure that the disrespectful were promptly put in their place (some statistics: I was asked on four occasions to cover up during my three years in the UAE -- twice by local, be-hijabed women; twice by older, middle-aged, grey, English women). ...