Even though we sold off all of the power tools and kitchen appliances, we still brought a huge number of electric devices overseas. It's been real <sarcasm>fun</sarcasm> trying to make all this stuff work on 220/240V 50hz. Some things were easy. These are the manufacturers I now swear my allegiance to. Just plug in an Australian power cable and it works. My next favorites are the ones like the PC's - just flip the red switch on the back and plug in the Aussie cable.

I've got a whole bunch of 'wall-wart' transformers that need to be replaced. These are all still pretty easy - just plug in a new wall-wart and everything is fine. The only problem is the price. These guys are about $30 each here. I need (let's see...) about 30 of them. You do the math. Luckily I found a bunch of standard 9V supplies on clearance for $5 each and bought all they had (7 or 8). They were on clearance because they use a different style connector. So I have to get out the soldering iron (oops, looks like I need a new soldering iron because my old one is 110V) and change the connectors.

Now we're getting to the real <sarcasm>fun</sarcasm> stuff. The Marshall amplifier. In fact Marshall claims that you should be able to use this anywhere in the world. Well yes, but you have to open the case and rewire the power transformer. This isn't something most people are comfortable with. Luckily I am. Did this one last night.

Next are the weird wall-warts. Dual 18V AC, 9VAC@2.1A, etc. These are getting hard. This takes a trip to Dick Smith (the only local place to buy electronic parts), and try and match a transformer to the job. It's hit or miss at this stage. Some of the transformers need to come from overseas, which costs more than the items I'm trying to convert. So it ends up being cheaper to throw them away and buy new - like the soldering iron. And I've got a kid and a house full of pets. Can't just hang a naked transformer off the edge of the desk like I could have twenty years ago. It needs to go in a box with all the bare wires taped up. That's another 5 bucks or so and another couple of hours each. I've gotten clever in a couple of spots - my wireless router for instance requires 5V at a couple of amps. So I plugged it into an extra drive cable on my PC.

But now I'm getting down to the nitty gritty. I've got about 20 more items to rewire and another twenty more wall-warts to purchase. 4 or 5 items that can only be run on an isolation (240V <-> 120V step down) transformer, and 2 or 3 that can only be run via a pure sine wave inverter off a car battery because they really, really need a clean 60 hz sine wave and this is the only way to get it.

Still a couple of months before everything is up and running. But every day I get another one or two working.  And I know what I'm doing. Most people attempting this would just have to suck up and buy everything fresh.

Those of us living in the Southern Highlands have been feeling either profound relief or a huge collective guilt - depending on who you speak to. This is due to the fact that the country of Australia is still gripped in a drought of epic proportions. Every night we hear it on the news. Conserve water. Lots of folks are facing mandatory cutbacks in their allocations. Meanwhile here in Robo (that's Australian for 'Robertson' for the benefit of our nothern hemisphere readers) - we've got rain, rain, and more rain. The ground is saturated. The highways are closed. It's freaking (that's Californian for 'incredibly') wet.

Finally moved in to our new house. Of course timing is everything. They unloaded all the stuff we had arriving from the states in the middle of a blooming cyclone/typhoon/hurricane thing. OK it wasn't even quite a category 1 tropical storm, but it sure wreaked havoc with the southeast coast. The movers took it all in stride. One guy was out there in short sleeves - with about 7C temperature and pouring rain with gale force winds.

The net got connected again last night. We were without it over the weekend. Today the cable guy is here. Boxes everywhere. Packing materials everywhere. Lots to do.  

When was it that I packed up all the stuff? Oh yeah, it was March 21st. The latest estimate has us finally receiving the container next Tuesday. That's about 2 1/2 months later. Don't think I'll be doing anything like this again, but if I do, I've learned a few things.

With any luck we'll be moving into the new house tomorrow. Notice that this is happening a few days ahead of actually having stuff to move into the new house. Oh well.

So far the hardest thing to get used to is the sticker shock. There are very few discount stores, but even if you adjust for the relative valuation of the Australian and US dollars, things still cost about twice as much, sometimes four times as much. Wages are about the same or less. It's interesting to ponder where all this profit is going. I know what some of these Chinese goods cost wholesale. Then there's duty, GST (General Sales Tax), and hefty markups. A discount here is 10% off list price, which is usually double the US list price. In the states, a typical discount in 2007 is 10% above cost.  The Australia dollar is worth around 20% less than the USD (and gaining rapidly).

This is a long way of saying that the retail environment is in a different world than that which I left. It's still possible to make a profit in retail. However I'm in no great hurry to jump back in to that fray. Once bitten, twice shy. But self employment is getting to be a likely possibility. More on that at another time.