Why didn't we think of that?

 Today's post  is about some of the things I've seen here in Brisbane that are good ideas we don't have at home. ( There are plenty of good things in the US that they don't have here, but that's anther post.)

 Electrical Outlets ( They're called "power points" here) with on/off switches. We don't need these as much with the lower voltage in the states but they are still handy and are safer.

The dual flush toilet, it flushes more or less water depending on the need.  Neither flush uses as much water as old style toilets. I've seen these in Europe too, but they were invented by an Aussie, so I thought I'd better mention them.

Individual air conditioner/heater units. ("Aircons" to the slangy Aussies). Many homes and apartments only have one or two of these, usually in the lounge and master bedroom. It's nice to only heat or cool the only rooms you really need, closing the doors to other rooms. We have on in each room but only need 1 most of the time. The high price of electricity here prompts a lot of things like this ( Compact fluorescent or halogen bulbs everywhere, solar panels, smaller appliances, lots of shade producing screens etc.)

This the shower/tub in our second bathroom. There's no shower curtain, just this folding glass "shower screen".  These are very common here and I wondered how they can use this and no curtain. I decided it's 3 things; the little raised edge on the tub to keep water from running down the side, The fact that the tub is set in a box of tile, and in case those fail, there's a floor drain. There are no overflows on sinks and tubs here, so there's always a floor drain. In our bathrooms, both the tub and the sink actually run into this floor drain. In most bathrooms, the walls are tiled top to bottom, and the floors are always tiled with a floor drain.

I walked past this the other day. It's an ad for on-your-phone grocery shopping, some things here are so up to date and many other things seem like it's still 1965 or something.

 This is the staircase  going up to Jeff's office building from the board walk. From the front you can't even see that it incorporates a ramp, he rides his bike right up this to the building.