Mmm, donuts...

And herein lies my biggest problem with living in Canberra:

Yep, that's right. There's a Krispy Kreme in Kanberra, 4.9 kilometres from my house, according to Whereis.com. Eight minutes travelling time. I just can't deal with this kind of pressure.

On a similar note, this is the view from my front/back gate (there is some ambiguity as to the orientation of the house - the door on this side has the doorbell, but, as you can see, there's no street):

The bright light with the van in front of it is our local supermarket cum bottle shop (they're one and the same thing here). There is no question of driving down to the shops, ever: the shop is, in fact, closer to the house than my car is.

So basically, I'm left with beer, chocolate and Krispy Kreme, all incredibly easily accessible, and no reason to do any exercise, ever. Sometimes it's hard being me.

One important thing I've learned in my short time in Canberra is that apparently nobody here can drive. I briefly entertained the idea that the government was partly to blame for this - the city abounds with "Form 1 lane" signs, but "Form 1 lane ahead" signs are sadly lacking, so the realisation that the lane you were driving no longer exists and that you are, in fact, now driving down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic and are likely to die quite soon in a horrific car accident can come as a bit of a surprise. But then I saw this sign below a set of traffic lights:

Yes. That's right. Just in case you hadn't figured out how traffic lights work yet. I wonder how many people stuffed that one up before the council saw a need to install the sign?

While we're on the topic of pictures though (I've been saving them up until I could find the cable that attaches my phone to the computer):

This one's not all that clear, but for good reason. First off, it was 3 o'clock in the morning and I was in a moving car, so it was dark and hard to focus.

Secondly, and more importantly, it's a photo of the thermometer in my car (yes, my lovely, European-engineered car has a thermometer in the dash). In case you can't see, it says 0.0 degrees C. Until this point in time, I'd never seen a thermometer do that before! I was further horrified when, a minute or two into our (blessedly short) journey, it dropped to -0.5 degrees! Since then the temperatures have been more reasonable, if you can call 3.5 degrees during the day reasonable. I have never been so cold in my life. Everybody says you get used to the cold, but, so far, all that's happened is that I remember to wear a coat whenever I go outside. Always. No matter how reasonable the temperature might seem inside. And a scarf. And gloves. The people at work think it's hilarious.

And finally, one more photo - Canberra as seen from the top of Mt Ainslie (I was up the top of said mountain and felt I should do the touristy thing):


I can't quite see my house from here, but I think that the white smudge just to the right of centre up the back is a building in Woden, which is where Krispy Kreme is. For information regarding the location of my house relative to Krispy Kreme, see above.

Actually, I lied. I have one more photo which I feel the need to share with the world. It's a picture of one of the paintings in our rooms at the Bentley suite. There were several, all similar. The picture's actually sideways and I can't be bothered fixing it, so you'll need to turn your computer monitor on it's side to get the full effect, but I think you'll agree that it's the ugliest and most pointless picture you've ever seen:



As this post is now quite long and full of pictures, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave any actual writing until next time. Until then...