The price of Bananas in Australia

I found out why Bananas are so expensive.  A hurricane (they call them cyclones here) wiped out most of the banana crop. 

I can't answer for all the other expensive stuff here.  For one thing there are a lot more free range items for sale here.  I have to admit when eggs from free range chickens cost twice as much, I'm willing to buy them from hens that just sit.  I justify it by telling myself that perhaps we are being a bit too anthropomorphic.  How do we know they don't just want to sit and do nothing.  The whole idea that chickens desire to roam the countryside is probably overrated.  Especially when the countryside is rife with coyotes and chickenhawks.  Anyway, where was I.  Oh yes.  At the grocery store I can buy either eggs laid by free range chickens or barn laid eggs.  Meaning that the chickens can roam freely within the barns--this is written explicitly on the packaging.  I've yet to see eggs for sale from chickens that get their own little apartment. 

I guess, though, that if chickens are going to be given free range, it makes sense to give it to them in Australia.  There is a lot of land out there.  And nobody wants it.

No one drinks drip coffee here.  Everyone uses a coffee press.  Our apartment doesn't have a coffee maker, which is okay because I have yet to find coffee grounds.  But for $2.68 I can get eight little coffee teabags.  The apartment does come with an electric teakettle and for $2.68 I can get 50 hot teabags.  We are becoming more Brit-like with every hot beverage we drink.  Really, it has become a nightly ritual for us to all sit down and eat two cookies and drink hot tea (Caleb's is mostly milk, sugar and a couple tablespoons of hot tea.)  We do this because the good tasting cookies are expensive, but if you dip the ones I buy in hot milk tea they taste okay. 

And I ironed one of Eric's shirts this morning.  I think this is a first.  Eric has always had his shirts sent somewhere to be laundered and pressed.  I pitched in by dropping it off.  Now I'm ironing and shopping online for those shirts that do not wrinkle because of some sort of technology gained from NASA.  A month without coffee should allow me to buy one.