Melbourne

The last day of work on Friday was very nice. They put on a special morning tea, like they have done the past two weeks for other staff members who left, and everyone signed a card. I even got relieved of reception duty for the last half hour so I could join the happy hour early! That definitely put a smile on my face. I brought my camera to work and took photos of the walk to work and of my coworkers, so those will be up... uh... eventually. (Don't hold your breath!)

Saturday, I woke up early and I was up. I just had all these things running through my head to do and couldn't make them shut up, so I just got up and got started. It was a good thing I did too, because I was running around crazy until the party at 3. I had a little get-together in the park where we played cricket and ate cookies and had a little barbecue. Photos from that will also be coming... later.

Finally it was me, Alex, Dan, and Haidee left at the park, and we headed back to the house. Matt rejoined us after his dinner commitment, and Chris dropped by too and we played poker. (I also packed - only took about an hour.) When Chris left, we headed out to one of the local bars in West End and got home late.

Dan took me to the airport in the morning. Brisbane airport is very small. There was no line for security - but that might have also had something to do with the lack of actual security there. No one looked at my boarding pass or ID. I discovered later this is because the riff raff are allowed inside to meet people at the gate! How old-fashioned.

Anyway I'm in Melbourne now, safe and sound, and given the lack of sleep for the past two days it's high time I hit the hay! More later!

"And on, and on, and onto the next one..."

We are about to embark on my least favorite part of traveling: repeating myself. It will get really old by my fourth hostel when I'll have reduced my life story and what brought me to Australia to a thirty second or less soundbite, but it's begun at work already. People stopped by reception all day to inform me that tomorrow is my last day and to enquire whether I was excited or sad or would miss them, and where I was going afterwards. I do realize that it's very sweet of them to be interested in my plans, and actually, repeating them helps them become more concrete and real to me, but I get bored listening to myself recount it all. When they ask if I'm excited, it's usually a chore to say yes like I mean it, but at the same time it helps me refocus on the exciting part of traveling, instead of the stressful bits I get stuck on when dealing with the details.

I am excited, but I'm also nervous. Melbourne doesn't have the same tourist checklist that Sydney does, so I talked to everyone I knew who had been to or lived in Melbourne to get ideas and now I finally feel like I know how I'll fill my time there. I consulted my friend Shana from college who studied abroad there, Coworker Erin and Bookclub Meg who both used to live there, new Sydney-based friends Esben and Adina who have both visited, our Melbourne office colleagues, the New York Times, and my Lonely Planet guidebook. I'll stop by the Melbourne office sometime during that week to say hi and finally put a picture to it in my head, even though I don't know them very well. It will be nice to feel like I have some friends in the city though!

Speaking of the office crew, it was lucky one of them sent around an email about Monday's holiday, because I was going to visit them then! As I explained before, each state decides what holidays it's going to celebrate and when (see "Australian cooking measurements," September 17, 2007 in the blog archive to the right). It turns out that Monday is Labour Day in the great southern state of Victoria, so many an office and, I can only assume, museums and other activities, will be closed.

Next week is a big week for Melbourne: the holiday on Monday and then that weekend they host the Formula 1 Grand Prix. I am a little turned off by it all, as I tried to explain to several Aussies, because of the bevin (car-loving white trash) stigma attached to car racing in the US. However, as it's a big deal to Melbourne, I will take a passing interest , maybe buy a souvenir, and then get the heck outta Dodge! (Ooooh... no pun intended!) It goes Thursday to Sunday and I skip town early Saturday morning. We shall see how it goes... stay tuned!

Happy Leap Day!

It's sort of too bad that my last two weeks here will be filled with flatmate interviews. For some unknown reason, I need to be involved in the interviewing process, although as I pointed out to Alex, I would probably choose very different people than he would. His rationale is that ultimately the choice is Mia's, since we are looking for a girl to keep the male/female balance (otherwise she'd be fending for herself among four boys!), and if he can't make it to the interview for some reason, Mia needs someone's help in conducting the actual interview as she doesn't feel comfortable enough to do it on her own. I'm irked about the whole process on a number of levels, but it's not that big a deal, really, so I will sigh and get over it.

For some reason, the travel agent has sent me all my info separately - flight info in one email, hostel info in another, tour info in another, etc. And they're all PDFs. So I had a grand time the other night trying to consolidate all of it into one document for easy reference, because otherwise I will get to a city and realize I have no idea what hostel I'm going to or how to get there! It's great fun, really. This is, incidentally, how I realized that I don't have a hostel booked for Melbourne yet!

Yesterday was my supervisor's last day, so tonight we had an extra special happy hour (supposedly we were all going to a bar after but they were still in the office at 6:45, when I started getting hungry and made a beeline for home). One week left!

The Brissie Chrissie Hamper

I went into the city yesterday after working for a couple of hours at Place B, for Place A's Christmas party. When I got to the office, a coworker informed me that I should check out my "hamper." "What the heck is that?" I wondered as I followed her down the hall. Apparently it either means suitcase or is the name for Christmas baskets that the company gives out. The reason it's hard to tell which is that in this case, it was both. I certainly wasn't expecting anything, since I had only worked for them for about six days, but sitting on my desk was, apparently, a hamper. It was a rolling suitcase, covered in cellophane and tied with a big bow. I undid the cellophane as quietly as possible (which is to say, not at all) and opened the suitcase. Keep in mind the suitcase itself would have been gift enough - I have been wanting a rolly one for a while, and this is the perfect size for all the extra junk I have that won't fit in the backpack, plus it won't make my arm fall off carrying it! But anyway, I opened the suitcase and it was filled with goodies - mostly chocolate, much to my delight, but also crackers, a bottle of wine, and some other things. Yay Christmas!

(By the way, Aussies like to abbreviate everything in some way or another... hence the title of the entry: Brissie is Brisbane, Chrissie is Christmas.)

Peanut, peanut butter... (and jelly)

How people think peanut butter is disgusting is beyond me. Leaving aside for a moment that this is a nation of people who eat vegemite like it's going out of style (which is not so much gross as just really really salty) because Dan the Hungarian is grossed out by peanut butter, too. Grossed out - seriously - this is a guy who taste-tests his raw meat (to see if it needs more paprika, no doubt), and suddenly I'm the wacko? Riiiiight. (Though he did donate some celery to me and was so amused by the fact that I went straight to the cupboard and put peanut butter on it that he actually tried it, so I'll give him credit for bravery.)

In other news, my two places of employment have been duking it out for the pleasure of my presence in the new year. Place B was supposed to only have me for December and then give me back to Place A, but I am filling a gap made by a person on vacation and another one who quit and they are slow on the hiring uptake. The agreement they came to in the end was that I would go back to Place B for the rest of the first week of January just to hand things back over to the person who was on vacation, and then I'd go to A for a few weeks, until they run out of things for me to do, then back to B... sounds like a lot of bouncing. We'll see how it goes.

This is all in the midst of making preparations for my big camping trip between "Chrissie" and New Year's. Those of you who know me know I am not big on camping. However, this is a big music festival and a lot of people I know are going, so I think it might be fun. More fun than staying home and being bored out of my mind, anyway. I think I also have found a ride up and back from the festival - if this girl would ever email me back! I'm getting a tad antsy. I'd really rather not have to take enough things for a week of camping with me on a train and then bus.

Ok, I'm off to work at Place B for a couple of hours, then it's Place A's Christmas party and then I don't have to think about either place for a week and a half! Yay :)

All's Quiet on the Home Front...

Not too much to report this week, it's been a quiet one. Had a Christmas cocktail party for work on Tuesday - it was actually really easy to follow directions and mingle with lots of people because I didn't know anyone! However, I did feel really silly ostensibly "networking" because I only have another week to go. Oh well. They're nice people, anyway. Other than that, work actually kept me pretty busy for the first couple of days. But in general I spend all day online so that's why I'm not terribly eager to hop online once I get home to post on here... sorry :(

We've had some guests at the house in the evenings - Alex's friend Juliette, from France, came over on Wednesday and I made more latkes. Right now his friends Mark and Angie are visiting and they are having a jam session, which is pleasant to have in the background. Mia graduated from her program this week so we all celebrated a little with her last night. There's been lots of general hanging out and group cooking endeavors, which are always fun. I should come up with something new and interesting to do this weekend... check back in a couple of days ;)

Day 1, Take 2

So, I had my second first day of work on Thursday. It's gone okay so far. There's a lot to learn and it's hard to keep it all straight, lots of details, but I will get it. They also have a happy hour on Fridays, like the law firm, so I stopped by for a little while. It was nice to chat with and meet some of the other people there, plus I was killing some time before heading into the city for the tree lighting. It was pretty nice, they had some different performers singing Christmas carols and Santa came onstage for a little bit and then they lit the tree. I took some photos of it and of the ride into the city on the ferry, so those will be up asap.

This morning my housemate Dan the Hungarian and I went to the farmer's market, which was a lot of fun. There was a lot of food: fruits and veggies, honey, jams; plants; clothes; random guy cutting people's hair; massage table; musicians; etc. I got two enormous mangos the size of your head; Dan got a bunch of vegetables and swears we're going to make a vegetarian feast tonight. I said, "with meat on the side, right?" because every meal he makes has meat; he just laughed. He made kangaroo the other night and I tried some - he cooked it rare, which is not how I prefer meat anyway, but that aside it wasn't bad. It tasted a lot like beef, actually. I'm sure I'll have it again, so stay tuned!

Some notes:

• Australian women wear a lot of sundresses - or just dresses in general, like to work. It makes them look really dressed up, at least from an American perspective.
• Tobacco products have enormous warning labels that say things like "Smoking causes cancer" and "Smoking while pregnant harms your baby."
• Light switches are on the outside of bathroom doors.
• The drugstore is called the "chemist" (or pharmacy). They sell nothing but drugs - none of this random stuff like notebooks and Hallmark cards and food, like CVS.
  

More soon!

Pizza, pie....

“Looking for fellow ex-pats to share a turkey sandwich with on Thursday,” my posting on gumtree.com.au said. Kay from Nebraska took the bait and we met up in her neighborhood of Bulimba, not for a turkey sandwich after all, but for pizza. It was delightful to share our memories and talk of our families’ traditions surrounding this most American, and least commercial, of holidays. Then we headed back to her house where her roommate Kendra, also from Nebraska, was making pumpkin pie – from a pumpkin! They don’t sell canned pumpkin here, so Kendra actually roasted a pumpkin, which no one here thinks much of because they eat it as a vegetable like that all the time! Who knew? Anyway, it was delicious and tasted exactly the same, so kudos to Kendra and her mad baking skills. It’s just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. I did buy some potatoes today to make mashed potatoes though, which I have been craving for a few days now ;) I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings!

Oh, there’s so much to share! I had an eventful past couple of days. Let’s see… Kendra gave me a ride home Thursday night, which was a bizarre experience. I kept thinking cars were going to come right at us! I also sat in the front seat, left side, and it was weird not to have a steering wheel in front of me. Ernie, the American at work, said that you get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, but the weirdest thing is biking in the road because it seems like you never know where the cars are going to come from.

Speaking of transportation, I took a ferry for the first time yesterday. Let me back up for a minute. On Thursday, I was contacted by someone from a company with a connection to the law firm I’m working at, because my boss had suggested maybe I could pinch hit over there while one of their employees took a month-long holiday. So we made a plan for me to head over there Friday morning. As it’s based at the University of Queensland, which is across the Brisbane river to the west of me, I took a bus to the ferry and then it was just a quick 5-minute ferry ride down to UQ. On the way back, I just took the ferry right into “downtown,” which they call the CBD here (Central Business District, also known as “the city,” all other neighborhoods are called the suburbs). That second ride was half an hour and did not sit so well with me, but I can handle the ferry for five minutes. It was actually rather pleasant and peaceful. The river is not very wide, maybe half a mile. So I’ll be working at that company for about three weeks, starting Thursday. Both the company and the law firm are closed over the week from Christmas to New Year’s, so I’ll have to find some way of entertaining myself.

Speaking of holidays, yesterday, and entertaining myself… I went to a synagogue last night. It was definitely a very Orthodox service and I probably won’t be going back there, even though it’s right in the CBD and very convenient from work (well, for now). There is another synagogue in Coorparoo and a third one in Camp Hill, which are other “suburbs” nearby, so I’ll try those out.

It is raining right now. It rains really hard and with virtually no warning, for about half an hour and then stops completely. There is no wind so my windows have been wide open all this time and nothing has gotten wet. One of my housemates did have laundry outside that got soaked, though. You take your chances, I guess. The summer here is the rainy season, which is not what I expected. I expected warm, even hot, and sunny all the time and really it’s mostly hot, humid and overcast if not actually raining. But apparently March and April are good times to travel, so that’s good.

For Tom, who asked about the supermarket – I went again and paid a bit more attention, but yeah, it’s basically similar to a US supermarket. The one by my house is not as big as your average Safeway or Meijer, but it gets the job done. They don’t have weird things, at least not that I was paying attention to (I didn’t go looking for kangaroo meat, for example, though it might be there), but there are fewer things in general, just less of a selection. Fewer fruits and veggies – oh and apples are awful and mealy here, fyi. Mangoes are excellent, though, to make up for it. If I have an occasion to get to a supermarket elsewhere in the city I will let you know how it compares. The one by my house is a Coles, which is a chain, and they sell their own reusable bags for just $1, so I got two for lugging my groceries and probably one will follow me back home, which is fun because it says “Australia” on it.

Oh, and just to clarify, I called my 50-person office “small” because I was comparing it to the last place I worked, which had 200+ people. The new place has about 70 people.

One more thing about the water-saving: there are two buttons to push on the toilet, one for a half-flush, usually designated by a half-filled circle, and the other for a full flush. Use at your discretion. What a great way to save water!

Day 1

My first day of work went pretty well. It's a fairly small office, maybe 50 staff members, and they're pretty nice. I was given a few different tasks during the day and it passed quickly. The company is going to a new database so I need to import all the information from the old one and make sure it's all up-to-date (it's mostly contact info), which is the hard part. I was also given a stack of business cards of contacts someone made at a conference, with chicken-scratch notes on the back to decipher and enter into the database as notes along with the people's contact info, so that was a lot of fun. On the plus side, I can listen to my iPod at work, which will help keep me from going too crazy ;) They are going to rent me out to a company they do business with who needs some help right before Christmas as two employees go on maternity leave, so that should spice up life a bit - I'll get to ride a bus for three weeks! The excitement never ends...

One of the highlights (besides learning that the ladies in the office gather for tea every day at 11am) was that an American coworker stopped by to chat with me. Turns out he's from Grosse Pointe Woods which, relatively speaking, is close to where I grew up, so that was exciting. Also turns out we lived in many of the same places: Detroit, Ann Arbor for school, DC, Washington State. He gave me some tips on living here, which was nice. All in all, a good first day.

L'Auberge Espagnole

For those who asked, I'm feeling much better. It's just a cold, I just don't get colds very often and this one is taking its sweet time. But I'm almost back at 100% :)

Anyway... I had a little "interview" on Thursday, in which B. basically offered me the job, took me around to meet some people, and declared that they could probably keep me busy for close to four months - yippie! So then I set to work on housing. There is a website called gumtree.com.au that is basically like craigslist, and it had some really good-sounding ads on there. I went to see two places Thursday night. The first place was very nice but it took forever to get there during rush hour and is not walkable from work. It is just off a busy road and there is not much around, even in the way of roommates, and no common room. One of my goals for being here is not to sit in a room by myself with a tv, but rather to make friends so that even if I do sit at home (which I do a lot of - I'm kind of a homebody), I am at least learning something. Yes, I realize I would learn things from tv, but still. People trump tv nearly every time.

The second place I saw was much better in terms of my goals. If anyone has seen the movie "L'Auberge Espanole" it was just like that. The movie is about a French guy who moves to another country (I think Spain - I am totally going to butcher this synopsis but you can check imdb.com) for a year and moves in with a mishmash group of people from all over Europe and they have wacky adventures. When he goes to see the place and meet the roommates for the first time, he desperately wants them to pick him and to be their friend, and I felt exactly the same way (especially after the seeing the first apartment!) I really enjoyed everyone who was there and never wanted to leave - they "interviewed" me for about 3 hours, which was mostly just sitting around chatting. There are four roommates, two guys from Australia (one of whom is never around and wears all black and a Batman belt - I have no idea), one from Hungary (he's new too), and one girl from Japan (Eriko, we bonded over the koala cookies ;)). And it's in a really cool part of town, sounds like a lot of fun, and is in walking distance to work. I just moved in about 20 minutes ago and since most people are still asleep, I am taking advantage of the free internet and communal computer :)

The house itself is in hippie central, aka the West End, and reminds me of 318 Catherine, the house my friends and I lived in in college, so it immediately felt homey to me - in a certain dirty, hardwood floor kind of way. I'm not going to sugar-coat it, it's not the Ritz, it's $90 a week with no dryer because apparently "it never rains here," except it's raining today so there go my big laundry plans! Oh well.

Ok, I'm going to work on uploading those photos now. More later!

BRIZ-bin, rhymes with Lisbon

So, after a lot of thought, I've decided to make my way up to Brisbane. I have a job lead up there that sounds pretty for sure, but even if not, I've decided that it sounds like a city that is more my speed than Sydney. I have also learned that it is important to be flexible and even more important to do what feels right to me even if it means going my own way, rather than sticking to what may be comfortable for now but in the end is not fulfilling my needs. There is not much program support in Brisbane, but plenty of people have gone there to work so I'm not worried. I have enjoyed my time in Sydney and am looking forward to coming back as I travel (I'm for sure flying out through Sydney at the end), but it is time to get out and get going on things so I can stop stressing about them! The next and hopefully last big hurdle will be finding a place to live. The other night, I met a girl from Scotland who had lived at a hostel the whole time she was working in Brisbane. Apparently the rates are comparable but I'd rather have an apartment and just a couple of roommates. We'll see.

Anyway, tonight I get on a bus to Brisbane and get there tomorrow mid-morning. It sounds a little ridiculous, I know, it's about 16 hours on a bus, but there were many reasons I decided to do it this way. First of all, if I'm really able to sleep on the bus, it's one less night of accommodation I'll have to book. I also won't have to worry about losing my bag, clearing security, or getting to and from the hostels (the bus stations are very close to both hostels). Finally, it's just plain cheaper.

Then, I'll meet with this lady, Barbara, about the job on Thursday. She's been so helpful and patient with me through all of these struggles (most importantly, I didn't get my cell phone until today, which made our original plan to talk on Monday a bit difficult, especially since she wasn't available when I called from the pay phone), so I'm hopeful.

Oh, one important note about Brisbane: Apparently the whole state of Queensland just elects not to do daylight savings (since it's summer here), so it's an hour earlier there than Sydney. If you're using the world clock (::cough, cough:: Mom) just select Australia: Queensland: Brisbane.

An exciting discovery: my iPod has an alarm feature! Handy, since I managed not to pack an alarm clock. Although someone pointed out that you'd have to hook it up to speakers, but luckily I have them! Just not terribly practical for a hostel.

Monday morning in the big city

Yesterday, I took it easy, partly because I have a sore throat (must've picked it up on the plane - darn it!) and partly because I had to switch hostels mid-morning. I actually really like my new hostel, more on that later. When I did finally venture out, I headed for Darling Harbour, which is basically a big promenade. It was a bit much for me, so then I took a roundabout way of getting to Wentworth Park, which was not terribly exciting, but I did see some of a pickup game of "footy" (soccer). I got a little turned around heading back to pass by Paddy's Market and managed to get there just before their "official" closing time, although people were still buying like crazy when I left at quarter after.

Paddy's Market is the most intense market I've ever been to. Think of a big flea market, but with all Chinese people, all yelling "one dollah one dollah" at you, people everywhere shoving. I'm sure someone was making announcements, probably about the market closing, but you couldn't really hear anything over the din. I had read about Paddy's Market in my guidebook and it said you could buy fresh fruit and veggies there for really cheap. Part of the culture of my new hostel is that there is a huge kitchen and most people buy food at the supermarket to cook there. I managed to get enough veggies for two dinners, plus two apples and a banana, all for about $3 (maybe $3.50 US).

Walking around the city is a little exciting sometimes because it seems like you never know where the cars are going to come from! Seriously, though, it's a good thing they've painted instructions "Look Right" on the crosswalks so you remember to look the correct way for turning traffic. The crosswalk signals are interesting too, they make a funny noise when they change to "walk" (it's a little green man though). I wish you could hear it, it's really odd sounding.

About the new hostel. There is one medium-sized common room, right next to the kitchen which is very open, so it feels all connected. There are tables for eating and lots of sofas, mostly pointed towards the big screen tv. Last night, tons of people gathered down there to make dinner and watch tv. The channel it was on showed a bunch of episodes of Friends and Malcolm in the Middle, but there was also an ad for Maury, on later (oy). Amazing. It just has a much friendlier, more intimate feel than the other, enormous hostel (although this one's name is The Big Hostel, ironically). My dormmates are nicer and generally seem more considerate - I think because they tend to be longer term than the other hostel. All in all, a good switch.

Right now it's Monday morning and I am at the IEP office waiting for orientation to begin. Later I will get my cell phone and call the woman in Brisbane about working there, and go to the bank to open my account. It's supposed to get to about 25C today (about 80F) and it's been mostly gorgeous clear blue skies so far :)