Not lag, latency. But yes, I've noticed it, especially being in Australia myself. Blocks tend to reappear fairly often. To me it seems the compromise was reasonable in order to run well without crashing or experiencing non-network lag.
The latency seems to be more or less the same for me. I know the new server is in Europe (Germany, right?), but where was the last server located?
I believe Vincent was based in Florida, USA and the original Alice (before the merge) was in California.