Do It Yourself

If there is one thing that one must absolutely have in a household in Australia, it is the toolbox - with all the tools intact.

You see, we have to assemble furniture IKEA-style. Yep, unless you don't mind forking up lots of money getting someone to set up your furniture (labour is pricey here), you'd better learn to be handy with tools.

I'm lucky. Alex, being an engineer, is pretty good at reading manual instructions and putting the pieces together. If I were on my own here, I probably won't have any furniture in my house! Either that or I'll have to make sure I get so filthy rich that I can afford people to assemble my furniture for me.

The same goes with chunky electrical items. You know how confusing it can be when you see all those cables and wires with different colours and you just don't know what goes where? Yep, you have to figure all that out yourself too. The guys from the electrical shop will just drop your Plasma TV, fridge, washing machine, etc and then make their exit. They don't hang around plugging in the wires for you.

Well, Australia is a great country. But sometimes, certain things are still better in Malaysia. At least you don't have to worry about fixing the wrong leg onto your brand new chair. Guess you can't have it all!