New Year's Eve 2008

During the day of New Year's Eve Martin worked and my mission was to get number plates for Little Car. I had the previous day managed to get Insurance and armed with that I went off to get the CTP (Compulsory Third Party), also called Green Slip, Insurance, which covers injuries to people. It was not easy. 1961 MGs never did exist in Australia. They were imported as Austin Healy Sprite Mk II. So, they do not exists in their computer system. I finally managed to get my Green slip. I then went to the RTA (Road Traffic Authority) to get Registration done. It felt like what I can imagine being old 1960's unemployment offices. Take a ticket, wait, be called forward, be inspected and then denied.
The first time I did not get as far as to speak with anyone as I did not have the required sets of ID (I have already written a piece of Australia's obsession with ID). I had brought my Driving Licence (as proof of who I am) and my Rental agreement (as proof of address), but that was not enough. I needed my passport, a credit card and my rental agreement. So when I came back and queued for another hour, I was told that the Chassis number on the Import permit was not identical to the chassis number on the car. The problem is that in Sweden they only care about the number (in my case 1004), but on the car is whole code, in my case (GAN1L1004) and they said it could not be registered unless they are the same, asked me to get back to Canberra and change the Import application. However, I cannot do that as on the Swedish Registration document it only states 1004. So I rang up Colin, the car mechanic who has been looking after Little Car and he asked us to get over there on Friday and he will take us to his local RTA. Will see how it goes.

In the evening Asa came over and we had cheese, biscuits and wine on the balcony, overlooking Manly beach and the Pacific Ocean. Very pleasant. At 9pm we went up on the 16th floor roof terrace and watched the pre-fireworks. There were a pack of teenagers misbehaving and throwing their glass over the edge, but the fireworks were very nice. After steak & chips we went back up at midnight to the real stuff in Sydney. Considering we are around 15 km (10 miles) outside we had quite a nice view. I got a text from a UK friend around 1 am and rang her up and we had a nice chat, but went to bed around 2 am, which is pretty good for me (Martin came an hour later or so).