Sinclair's Blog

Hello to Everyone,

First off, we want to wish all of our friends and family a Very Happy New Year! We hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas too. We had a nice Christmas here spending the day with the family at Tri and Diem’s (Van’s younger brother and his wife). Christmas night we had dinner at Cass’s (Van’s youngest sister) house with friends of hers. It was a nice time and our first Christmas with family in a while.

New Years was a lot of fun. We went to a party at the Royal Melbourne Hotel for a “Burlesque New Years Party”. It was a lot of classy strip tease and circus type shows intermixed with dancing. There were about 400 people there in various stages of dress and costumes. You definitely could have transplanted the crowd and entertainment back to Caliente and fit right in. It was the first New Years that I haven’t worked in many years. It felt a little weird and I missed arguing with Phil and joking with Hal and all the rest of our Caliente friends. It was nice being able to just party though, and not having to clean up.

Well, it’s been an interesting few months, to put it mildly. People here watched the US election very closely. I know it may upset a lot of you reading this, but there was a huge amount of support for Barack. They are calling it the 2^nd Camelot here and there is a lot of hope that the US will lead the way the world the way it once did. It’s interesting watching the US from the outside and hearing others perspectives. Having been out of the US for a few years now, the last two months are the first that I have heard the majority of people I come in contact with, and the media speak positively about the US. It’s nice to hear finally. For those of you getting ready to fire off the anti- B emails, please breath, count to ten and remember that I’m just letting you know what is being said by the locals here so that all of our friends can get a look at things from the outside as we do.

The economy is slowing here the same as everywhere else, but it hasn’t hit as hard yet. They don’t have a lot of the core issues here that started the slide back in the US. There is no huge overstock of housing, and they don’t have a deficit, although it is looking like the second will become a reality in the next year.

On a more positive note, my job is still going well. I’ll hit four months this week and so far, so good. I like the market a lot; it’s very interesting dealing with all of the stall holders (140 of them). Some of them have been in the same stall and business for three generations. It’s an eclectic mix of native Aussie’s, Italian, Greek, Middle East, Asian, you name it and someone is from that country. I will be taking a two day senior first aid certification course this month. I’ve been through the training before, but it will be nice to get a refresher. The city is also sending me to Swinburne University at the end of February for a Project Management Diploma course. There were only 17 slots open in the course and I got in over several who had applied. It will be a big challenge going back to school and working full time, but I really appreciate the opportunity and the program will help me now and in the future.

Van is getting ready to launch her new web site, Phoviet.com.au It’s a Vietnamese portal for the community with advertising for businesses and info for the Vietnamese community here which is quite large. She’s very excited about it and is working really hard to make fly. She has other contracts too, but this one is her baby and the main focus of her business right now.

We bought a car a little over two months ago. We picked a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV. It’s a diesel and does very well on fuel and operating costs. Diesel here has gone down about 50 cents a litter, but is still running at $1.23 a litre or $4.92 a gallon. We like it a lot. Van does most of the driving for her business, as I use the trains and trams to get around for the most part. The mass transit system here is awesome and Melbourne has the largest train and tram system in the English speaking world. I know this because I went to the City Museum and they had a display with the history of rail travel in Melbourne.

The big news is that we moved into our own apartment November 20^th. We got a one bedroom with study for Van to use as an office in St Kilda which is part of the township that I work in. You can Google our address at 155 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda 3182 (actual address is 5/155). You can’t really see our place from the street view, but you can see the huge tree in front of the building and the park (Albert) across the street. We are on the top floor of the Waldorf building which is a 1930’s Art Deco four story mansion that has been converted to restaurants at the street level, four business sweets on the next floor and a total of 5 apartments, three on the floor below us and ours along with one other on the top floor.

We can see the park and the CBD skyline out our front windows. It’s beautiful and we feel very lucky to have found it. Apartments are very hard to come by here, with up to 40 people trying to get the same apartment when they become available. We are less than ten minutes tram ride to my work and another five minutes to the CBD. You can walk from our apartment to the beach in ten minutes and Fitzroy Street is lined with cafes, bars and restaurants all along the boulevard.

It’s very strange going into full summer in January. We both love summer though and are enjoying the warm weather. It’s nice being so close to the beach too. It reminds me of being next to the water in the Dominican Republic. The days are running around 25c (77f) now and will warm up to 35+ (95f) over the next few weeks. We walk along the beach every day round about sunset; it’s so much fun living in this area in the summer. It’s like one long beach party with all of the tourists and locals at the beach and cafes.

We can’t describe how much we miss everyone. As much as we love it here, we miss the smiles, laughs, friends and family back in the US and Dominican Republic. Thank you to everyone who keeps in touch with us. We love hearing from you so drop us a line.

Lastly, I will be going live with a new blog soon and this will be my last conventional group email with the full updates. It’s through Van’s web site and I will post this and past updates, photos, etc. For those of you familiar with blogging, it’s a great way to keep in touch and stay up to date with everything that is happening.

Cheers Everyone! Talk to you soon,

Sinclair

Vân’s Corner

Well hi everyone, Sinclair always does such a good job of writing everything there is little left over for me. On the personal front, I love Sinclair for bringing me home and I think my family does too. We hang out a lot and they all absolutely love him, so life is really good. He’s learning a lot of new things with not just the Australian culture, but the Vietnamese one as well and the Le Clan peculiarities to top all that off.

Well it’s been a busy couple of months with all the festivities. Moving into our love nest in St Kilda, celebrating Christmas and New Year, and now truly gearing up for the Lunar (aka Vietnamese/Asian).

Christmas. Seafood is a big thing here at Christmas so guess what we had … oysters, sashimi (I even prepared lobster sashimi myself), prawns on the barbie you name it. All of this with a very chilled Australian red Shiraz champagne so that’s quite different for Sinclair. As part of the Christmas tradition here in Melbourne, we went to Federation Square in the middle of Melbourne and watched on giant screens the live broadcast of Carols by Candle Light with over 450 different performing artists. It’s an annual fund raising event for the Blind and Visually Impaired which was wonderful and always set things into the festive spirit.

New Year was also a lot of fun with the Burlesque party Sinclair mentioned and it made me miss Caliente and our friends. Unfortunately, some of the pictures are a little risqué so they could not be attached to this email J

Now for the whole of the remainder of January, we are gearing up for the Lunar New Year (TET, for the Vietnamese New Year, which is early on January 26^th this year). We went to one of the many festivals today and of course Sinclair fits in perfectly. He eats all the local fares spooning in the extra chilli so the Vietnamese just loves him. You’ll need to stay tune for the next update with all the pictures of the festivals we will be going to the rest of this month.

Sinclair’s work is going really well and he loves it. I go to the market occasionally and get treated like royalty (and so I should of course J). Everyone speaks highly of his work so that’s really nice. The only really bad thing about all this is that Sinclair is just doesn’t like to accept any gifts, that I constantly have to turn up to the market to accept gifts and freebies on his behalf J

We both love living in St Kilda which is just constantly buzzing with activities … pubs that never empty, street buskers in all shapes and size, skinny clad women AND men strutting their stuff for summer, the street café culture, you name it. And restaurants after restaurants after restaurants … There’s so much to do and constantly something festival being organized. For those who know of the kite surfing in the Dominican Republic, well they get into that here too at the bay, so it’s really nice to sit with a glass of chilled Australian Chardonnay or New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and watch the world go by.

When we actually tire of living the life of a tourist a home, I actually work! I started a company specializing in customized web development solutions and online marketing. Of course I’m working hard and just absolutely love it. I love the work, the challenge, and the flexibility of running my own show. I don’t want to change one iota of my life right now … well may be with the exception of just more money J.

Life is just so good to me. I think back on the good times at Caliente (and also the hard times I’ve had, for those who remember my illness) and thank you all for the wonderful friendship and how you’ve all touched my/our lives.

We love sharing snippets of our lives with you and really enjoy hearing back from you all.

Hugs and kisses from Down Under,

Vân

Here are some pics;

Going native in Sydney

Opera House Sydney

Waiting for the train in Melbourne with Sinclair, Jess, Vân, Kevin, Nathan, Ethan.

Rialto Tower in Melbourne, 90 floor residential building in Melbourne

Christmas in Melbourne

Christmas Day Melbourne 2008