DSGamer Down Under (Australia) and back

LeapingGnome wrote:

And good luck with customs DS! Curious, how are you getting around the city, are you guys buying a car and how does that work with American driver's licenses?

We have a car here, but we don't plan to use it for a while. We got around really well here via bus and train. The system here seems excellent.

We arrived just a bit ago. I feel really disoriented. A combination of not sleeping well on the plane, anxiety from the flight, that weird feeling of too much stimulation and information when you arrive I'm a new country. On top of all that this is the first time I've ever done something like this, moving to another country to live. When we finally got to our flat I felt dizzy and disoriented and had to lay down. Customs was fine, though.

Good to hear you arrived okay. Long flight with poor sleep and jet lagged, I'm not surprised you feel groggy. Some decent shops in North Sydney so you should be good to go. Don't forget to apply for Opal cards for public transportation.

DSGamer wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

And good luck with customs DS! Curious, how are you getting around the city, are you guys buying a car and how does that work with American driver's licenses?

We have a car here, but we don't plan to use it for a while. We got around really well here via bus and train. The system here seems excellent.

We arrived just a bit ago. I feel really disoriented. A combination of not sleeping well on the plane, anxiety from the flight, that weird feeling of too much stimulation and information when you arrive I'm a new country. On top of all that this is the first time I've ever done something like this, moving to another country to live. When we finally got to our flat I felt dizzy and disoriented and had to lay down. Customs was fine, though.

If you ended up watching Die Hard, you already know the best thing to do after a long flight...

Spoiler:

carpet+bare feet, NOT blowing up the building you are currently in (unless you're under attack from terrorists, in which case you have bigger issues right now)

Congrats, DSG! Just keep in mind that it's perfectly normal to feel totally disoriented for several days. As I told my last friend to move far away, baby steps towards your new life.

Feeling better. Geeky question, now. To be clear, with electronics like my laptop, monitor or PS4 that have standard 110 - 240v power ranges I should be able to simply replace the cable that runs from the wall to the charge block (or system in the case of the PS4), right?

Exactly right.

Welcome to Oz!

DSGamer wrote:

Feeling better. Geeky question, now. To be clear, with electronics like my laptop, monitor or PS4 that have standard 110 - 240v power ranges I should be able to simply replace the cable that runs from the wall to the charge block (or system in the case of the PS4), right?

Or just pop down to Woolies and get a Korjo USA to AU "plug" adapter. They run about $11each, not sure what your cable price is by comparison. You'll find them with the batteries, and powerboard adapters.

IMAGE(https://www.woolworths.com.au/Content/wowProductImages/medium/209563.jpg)

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Congrats, DSG! Just keep in mind that it's perfectly normal to feel totally disoriented for several days. As I told my last friend to move far away, baby steps towards your new life.

I googled this (because why not) and apparently it's fairly normal to feel depressed or anxious as an expat. Just the mind's natural response to so much change. I already have clinical anxiety so I hope this isn't something that hits me harder than it would someone else.

I have serious anxiety/depression and jetlag can exacerbate it. If you flew west it shouldn't be as bad but either direction it will still be a monster and not to be underestimated. Be prepared to take it easy and ease into the timezone. It can take 2 weeks to normalise.

Culture shock and homesickness will be the biggest hurdles. Culture shock will be extremely mild verging on non-existant coming from the US. You're unlikely to experience much moving from one English speaking new world country to another English speaking new world country beyond saying "Oh my god they have a cheese called WHAT?!"

Homesickness may hit you months or years later and it's a bastard. I'm not talking about the vague wistful longing for your homeland, I mean the sudden unexpected gutpunch when every cell in your body suddenly screams out that the sun is shining at the wrong angle. Sometimes it's bad enough to give me vertigo.

I know a couple of people in Australia that are not Goodjers, if you want to expand beyond the message baord. One is in university and is a native Australian, the other (an expat from Florida IIRC) is older and working. Let me know and I can pass on some ways to contact them.

Give it time dude, baby steps and all that!

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Give it time dude, baby steps and all that!

I'm trying. I'm one of those anxiety patients that gets anxious about possible anxiety.

So basically I felt bad getting off the plane which, as others have pointed out, could just be jet lag, long flight, etc. But I googled this in case there was something I was missing and stumbled on a bunch of articles about how expats often develop anxiety or depression. So reading articles about all the ways in which people develop anxiety or depression while being away from home basically caused more anxiety. Anticipatory anxiety about the anxiety that someday may become worse purely because I'm not in my complete comfort zone.

If that sounds crazy I completely understand. But I have anxiety and these things aren't rational. I knew things were going to be different. What I didn't anticipate was just how much "new stuff" was going to possibly overwhelm my brain. Or, at least, how much the sensation of absorbing "new stuff" was going to make me worried that I couldn't adapt.

So yeah, I'm taking baby steps. Or trying to. We still have to setup a home. We have to figure out stuff like the Internet. Someone was telling me yesterday that to provide cable TV and cable internet would require two coax lines. That didn't bother me. It just confused me coming from a place where you're stuck with a single provider for everything. So far it's either that or ADSL, which is really slow. So no Rocket League for me unless I got find Aussies who do Rocket League lan parties.

Even something as simple as my cell phone is challenging. My wife's company is offering anything Vodafone offers, but Vodafone doesn't have anything like my Note 4. So I might end up switching to an iPhone as a result. My US Note 4 is working great with the Vodafone SIM so far, but I'm led to believe that it's missing a crucial 3G band that will cause me to miss phone calls.

Those are all definitely first world problems and otherwise Sydney has been incredible. Especially food and grocery offerings. But those are still things that I have to sort out either way.

Maq wrote:

I have serious anxiety/depression and jetlag can exacerbate it. If you flew west it shouldn't be as bad but either direction it will still be a monster and not to be underestimated. Be prepared to take it easy and ease into the timezone. It can take 2 weeks to normalise.

Yeah. I already had a ton of anxiety coming into this. Since I had surgery and all the anticipatory anxiety related to that. And then visiting my parents was a vortex of anxiety because of how bad they're doing and what I was leaving behind, etc.

Maq wrote:

Culture shock will be extremely mild verging on non-existant coming from the US. You're unlikely to experience much moving from one English speaking new world country to another English speaking new world country beyond saying "Oh my god they have a cheese called WHAT?!"

Yeah. I'm not anticipating that that will be a huge problem. It's mostly just my brain processing "different stuff". This shouldn't be a big problem for most people, but given what I've gone through in the last year (tapering off of an anxiety medication, then going back on when my body went into shock) I am pretty sensitive to any difference in sensory input. Who knows, I might feel the same just going to a new suburb back in the US.

Maq wrote:

Homesickness may hit you months or years later and it's a bastard. I'm not talking about the vague wistful longing for your homeland, I mean the sudden unexpected gutpunch when every cell in your body suddenly screams out that the sun is shining at the wrong angle. Sometimes it's bad enough to give me vertigo.

I can't imagine. I'm very much in the mindset of just surviving today. It may sound insensitive to long term expats, but I hope I get to that point, because it will mean I survived the initial anxiety.

I don't remember, have you lived in another city in the U.S. before? I mean like as an adult moved to another state that was very different, say the midwest to Boston or Portland to Texas, that type of thing where the culture is very different? If you haven't done that before and lived through it, you're probably hitting that culture shock now and it can last a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It will get better!

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't remember, have you lived in another city in the U.S. before? I mean like as an adult moved to another state that was very different, say the midwest to Boston or Portland to Texas, that type of thing where the culture is very different? If you haven't done that before and lived through it, you're probably hitting that culture shock now and it can last a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It will get better! :)

I haven't. No. I grew up in Idaho and moved to Oregon for college and stayed there. Other than traveling the world fairly extensively I've never actually lived anywhere else.

DSGamer wrote:
Maq wrote:

Homesickness may hit you months or years later and it's a bastard. I'm not talking about the vague wistful longing for your homeland, I mean the sudden unexpected gutpunch when every cell in your body suddenly screams out that the sun is shining at the wrong angle. Sometimes it's bad enough to give me vertigo.

I can't imagine. I'm very much in the mindset of just surviving today. It may sound insensitive to long term expats, but I hope I get to that point, because it will mean I survived the initial anxiety.

No, not at all. You definately need to get through today, and the first week. After that, hopefully things will calm down a bit for you. At least you moved with someone else, so you have a support system already in place. It definately helped my second move overseas.

You should be able to play Rocket League with voicechat on 5Mbps.

Also, you can always hang out in a McDonalds with a Big Mac, or a Starbucks, or if you squint you can pretend Hungry Jacks still says Burger King with a flame-grilled whopper. I'm sure the accents will be different, but maybe it will be homely enough

Anxiety about anxiety is tough.

You probably only want cable TV if it's a part of a good package deal and well within your budget. Otherwise, broadcast TV and Netflix etc. should be adequate. The 3G thing sounds a bit weird to me, might be worth asking around some more.

At least you do speak the same language :). Mostly...

p.s. the burgers are better at Hungry Jacks.

DSGamer wrote:

Sydney has been incredible.

Wait until Australia Day, that place goes off!

Locals can give you a better guide of "where not to be" on that day if you decide to venture out.

The Harbour Bridge is usually flooded with fireworks, and the Opera House gets a bit of a sprucing up too. Of course, the crowds will be huge, so if you're still finding your feet, it might be worth reviewing the days' activities via Newsfeed the next day.

Don't forget to get some snake traps at the hardware store.

Random video game question. Any idea on when Australia gets Fire Emblem Fates? I briefly today considered preordering it at EBGames and picking up a 3DS. Mostly for the novelty of playing it on an Australian system. And so I could buy carts here. But when I went online (why is EBGames.com.au like 100% images given the bandwidth?) there was no release date on the game.

DSGamer wrote:

Random video game question. Any idea on when Australia gets Fire Emblem Fates? I briefly today considered preordering it at EBGames and picking up a 3DS. Mostly for the novelty of playing it on an Australian system. And so I could buy carts here. But when I went online (why is EBGames.com.au like 100% images given the bandwidth?) there was no release date on the game.

JB hifi has a 31/12/16 date listed, but they do that for all their TBC titles.

Welcome to Australian Gaming.

We are getting some pretty sweet 2DS Pokemon versions (the see through ones, relating to the color of the version preinstalled). That might be worth buying as your Australian curiosity. EB should have some screens of that for you to check out.

There's always the US e-shop, at least that would save you on buying a new 3DS.

http://www.vooks.net/fire-emblem-fat...

Official word is still "2016"

Not much upside to getting an Aus 3DS, other than walking into a store to buy carts. I haven't tried buying stuff on the US store with my US 3DS yet, but I assume it's possible.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

There's always the US e-shop, at least that would save you on buying a new 3DS.

That was my plan before I arrived and will be how I purchase them at this point. I just thought it would be fun to get them physically if they arrived at roughly the same time.

m0nk3yboy wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Random video game question. Any idea on when Australia gets Fire Emblem Fates? I briefly today considered preordering it at EBGames and picking up a 3DS. Mostly for the novelty of playing it on an Australian system. And so I could buy carts here. But when I went online (why is EBGames.com.au like 100% images given the bandwidth?) there was no release date on the game.

JB hifi has a 31/12/16 date listed, but they do that for all their TBC titles.

Welcome to Australian Gaming.

We are getting some pretty sweet 2DS Pokemon versions (the see through ones, relating to the color of the version preinstalled). That might be worth buying as your Australian curiosity. EB should have some screens of that for you to check out.

That's a fun idea. I don't have that form factor. Although it wouldn't look as professional when I go into "salaryman" mode next Wednesday and start playing on the train.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

http://www.vooks.net/fire-emblem-fat...

Official word is still "2016"

Not much upside to getting an Aus 3DS, other than walking into a store to buy carts.

That *would* be the draw to me, actually.

Just purchased my first umbrella since the one I purchased in college and never used. Not putting on a rain jacket in this humidity and heat. Now I understand why umbrellas exist.

lol.. you certainly arrived during an interesting weather week my good man.

Goo wrote:

lol.. you certainly arrived during an interesting weather week my good man.

People keep saying that, and I was preparedfor heat, but not that. We literally bought umbrellas while out and about last night. We were at JB Hifi TV shopping and as we were about exit the mall we saw it was pouring. Turned around, went back in and purchased umbrellas.