Curse the damn exchange rate! The poor little Aussie dollar

If the international foreign exchange market was a playground, the Great British pounds would be the big bully cool kids, the Euros would be the slightly less-cool kids that hang around with the pounds for street cred, and the Aussie dollars would be the wimpy little kids getting picked on in the corner (probably holding on to the Kiwi dollars for support). I am a little bitter since I did an international money transfer today (through my most favourite discovery ever Tranzfers) and I was feeling all rich with my $4,000 AUD... until I turned it into GBP 1,592.80. How depressing. But, it could be worse I suppose. I'll never forget when, en route to London from Sydney for this trip, I stopped over in Bahrain for three hours. My dad had given me $10AUD so I could get something to eat when I stopped over (bless him :) but upon my arrival in Bahrain I found that 10 aussie dollars could not even get me a cup of coffee! How very embarrassing.. :) It's a good thing this trip (or lifetime interlude) has given me experiences money can't buy...else I'd be demanding a big refund! (I do have to admit, it's entirely doable to live here comfortably when you're actually earning pounds - or if you have saved up more dollars than I had when I first arrived!!).

In other news - have found a couple of geeky sites people moving over here might find useful. So you don't have to eternally ask "what time is it over there" when your parents/friends call, here is a very handy Time Zone converter (I need this all the time) and on a completely unrelated topic, I found this good blog which tells you how much your take-home pay in the UK will be after tax - Net Salary Calculator